Anything Goes Marketing

B2B Webinar Best Practices from VMware

2012-01-03T08:31:00.000-05:00

As you’re gearing up for a great new year, I wanted to highlight some webinar/event best practices from the marketing team over at VMware. VMware has found that this marketing channel is one of their most successful when it comes to ROI so taking a few pointers and optimizing your own efforts could pay off big time this year. They achieved an ROI of 1324% in 2010 - not too bad! They were kind

Measuring the Impact of Lead Nurturing: 3 Methods You Can Use

2011-08-08T01:35:00.003-05:00

One of the things that I love most about my role is when I'm able to visit customers and participate in a customer user group. This past week I was down in Atlanta for the Eloqua All About Revenue Success Tour and I led a breakout session on the different ways that companies measure the success of lead nurturing. Why is this so important? If nurturing is improving the number of overall leads

5 Tips to Improve Email Response

2011-05-06T00:05:00.000-05:00

Are your recipients not responding to your emails? This is a topic that I’m sure hits home with many of you. You work hard on getting an email campaign together, you send it out and then you find that the results were not what you were hoping they would be. I originally responded to a discussion on Focus called What strategies can you recommend for enhancing performance of email marketing

So You Think You Know Marketing Automation

2011-01-16T16:11:00.001-05:00

If you've recently rolled out marketing automation or are considering it, have a look at this two part series that was orginally published on the "It's All About Revenue" blog: So You Think You Know Marketing Automation Part I Have you recently rolled out a marketing automation platform like Eloqua, have you been using one for awhile, or are you considering one in the near future? Welcome to

How Email Deliverability and Relevancy are Directly Related

2010-11-22T02:20:00.001-05:00

It’s not too early to start planning for email campaigns you will be launching next year. To help you with this task, I’m going to share a number of takeaways from a recent MarketingSherpa webinar that I attended titled “Top Tactics to Improve Email Relevancy and Deliverability” and included experts from MarketingSherpa and Return Path. In this post, I’ll provide a summary on some interesting

5 Corporate B2B Blogs That You Should Copy

2010-10-18T04:00:00.000-05:00

The importance of blogs in your B2B marketing mix can't be overlooked. Blogs are too important in keeping customers and future customers informed about your industry, your products and your company, driving people to your website, and generating leads. A recent study by Hubspot found that those companies that use blogs generate 67% more leads than those that don't. However, anyone that can open a

Lead Scoring Has Drastically Changed – How do You Measure up?

2010-08-26T22:09:00.003-05:00

With my son Matthew turning one this week, I’m feeling a bit nostalgic. I dug up and started contributing to a personal online journal that I hadn’t touched since 2004, reviewed pictures from past trips with my wife, and reflected on memories that I’ve had in my first year as a dad. Taking a look back and reliving great times in your life provides perspective and helps explain how things have

Tips to Improve How You Segment Your Database

2010-07-04T06:23:00.002-05:00

Hi everyone. Between taking a nice vacation, recovering from the vacation and then work travel, the ‘old blog was collecting some dust. During my travels and discussions with customers, one of the items that keeps coming up is the need for clean, complete and accurate data. When you have the right data you can laser focus your marketing efforts and achieve a higher response from your marketing

Customer Service at its Best: Wind Mobile

2010-04-22T01:35:00.006-05:00

For someone who lives and breathes customer service as part of my profession I am very critical with companies I deal with as I have a high expectation on the type of service I should receive. I’ve finally found a company that does a fantastic job at servicing its customers across many channels and you know I have to blog about it. Up here in Canada we’ve had three main mobile providers for as

Wake up and Send More Email

2010-04-07T02:25:00.004-05:00

Social media is all the rage these days and I’m in complete agreement that it should be part of your campaigns but let’s not overlook the power of email and how it’s being underutilized by many organizations today. From conversations that I have with marketers I sometimes sense this feeling of anxiety when I recommend that they should increase the frequency of emails that are sent to their

5 Marketing Automation Email Tips

2010-01-26T03:26:00.003-05:00

I have the pleasure of welcoming a new bunch of Eloqua team members who we start off with a boot camp here in Toronto so they get to know each other and the rest of the company. I’m going to outline some of the cool things our customers do but I’ll also provide a short intro on what I do in my day to day. To make it easy for everybody, I like to describe my role as a sherpa for our customers. Not

5 Mistakes B2B Marketers Need to Avoid in 2010

2009-12-22T01:28:00.006-05:00

2009 has been a long year but as I reflect back on my many conversations, I've created a top 5 list of items to avoid in 2010: 1. Not having a defined social media strategy You would be surprised by the number of companies that say “yeah, social media is important but it’s not important to us at the moment”. In 2010 you will not have a choice but to make social media part of your overall

B2B Marketing Trends From Eloqua Experience 09 Via Twitter

2009-11-15T23:57:00.006-05:00

Earlier this month I left my newborn and poor wife at home for an unforgettable week at Eloqua Experience in San Francisco. This sold out event brought together some of smartest marketers from all over the world. While there were a few keynote speakers, the conference focused on having the Eloqua community share their experiences so we could all learn from each other.The main difference this year

How To Build a Lead Nurturing Culture Part I

2009-10-20T07:00:00.001-05:00

Are any of you out there new fathers? How about new parents? I’m still getting the hang of holding my 2 month old son while I check my emails or read a book. I’m getting much better at this juggling act and on some of those nights when he stays up I’ve been able to generate some blog post ideas – I just didn’t have the two hands needed to type until now. :) So here we are. My biggest inspiration

Email Marketing Metrics You Should be Tracking

2009-09-14T00:10:00.007-05:00

If you weren’t aware, Canada (Vancouver specifically) will be hosting the 2010 Winter Olympics. I was inspired to write this post by a group of brave Canadian ski jumpers that are have been denied permission to compete in the upcoming games. You may be saying – wait a minute, ski jumping is an Olympic event so what’s the problem? The “problem” is that these athletes are women and the IOC has not

Tips on Using Twitter to Boost Your Marketing Efforts

2009-08-03T13:35:00.007-05:00

Are you already tired of Twitter? Do you think it’s just a fad? Well think again because the popularity of Twitter is growing at an alarming rate. I’m always trying to think about how marketers can better leverage the social media technologies that are out there and then share them with you. As you read these, you need to think about your end goals. Many of these may not be worth it to you and

Top Automated Marketing Personalization Tactics

2009-06-29T23:41:00.006-05:00

There is a lot of talk these days that personalization is back in marketing but what does that really mean and what are some of the tactics you can use? This is important: Besides all of the technology out there that can make this process easier, it’s important to keep in mind that the goal is to create engaging experiences for your customers and potential customers so that they will

Latest B2B Marketing Trends From SiriusDecisions Summit 09

2009-05-17T12:28:00.011-05:00

If you’re looking for an eloquently written post on how B2B marketing has changed and recommendations on what you should do, you’ve come to the wrong page. What I have done is reviewed the tweets from the latest SiriusDecisions Summit 2009 and captured points that I thought were interesting and categorized them. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to go (not without trying!) but as you’ll see from

Top 10 Triggered B2B Email Marketing Campaigns

2009-04-05T22:35:00.003-05:00

One of the themes for marketers in 2009 is “doing more with less”. While some marketing teams are facing cut backs and spending freezes or reductions, they still need to hit their goals which may include generating X number of leads, Y amount of influenced pipeline and/or Z amount of influenced sales. A key part of “doing more with less” is automating your email marketing

Sharing Space: Marketing and Sales

2009-03-24T23:27:00.010-05:00

Although we’re in a down economy I’ve still been able to travel twice out of the last three weeks meeting with clients, working until all hours of the night and seeing first hand what is on the minds of marketers these days. I personally wouldn’t have it any other way.During my travels, I saw the following parking space that made me stop and consider the message that it was saying (had to take a

Social Media Success Stories

2009-03-08T13:16:00.005-05:00

I get a few blank stares at times when I talk about social media technologies with friends and colleagues but I’m starting to win people over day by day. How am I doing this? With real stories! Today, I want to share these stories with you to help you better understand the power of social media and to hopefully inspire you to continue on your social media efforts or to jump in for the first time.

Email Autoresponders 2.0 in B2B Marketing

2009-02-21T13:30:00.012-05:00

Reflecting back on a long week I had the pleasure of meeting a number of new clients and seeing what they have accomplished as part of their online marketing initiatives. I am extremely lucky to see some of the most cutting edge marketing tactics being used and wanted to highlight some of them here.I was inspired this morning after my 11 cups of coffee by a former customer and now colleague,

Lead Management and Football

2009-02-19T00:59:00.005-05:00

In one of my meetings these past few weeks I was thinking of an analogy where I could break down the lead management process into much simpler terms so everyone could understand their roles - this is where football comes in. Why football? Well, if I compared it to hockey no one outside of Canada would care. I'm going to introduce the players and coaches below and then summarize how the different

Why I Use Twitter

2009-02-02T01:32:00.006-05:00

While I'm not turning this blog into a Twitterfest, I've had a few people ask me recently why I use Twitter and how do I use it effectively without it taking over my life. Instead of answering people one by one I thought I would write a quick post on it (it better be a quick post!). I hope that you find this useful. And hey, this blog is called "Anything Goes Marketing" so I'm just keeping it

Email Marketing Gone Wrong - It's not the 1990s Anymore

2009-01-21T23:39:00.012-05:00

I've just got off the treadmill and getting ready to turn in and received an email from a Canada's largest retail drug store - Shoppers Drug Mart or "Shoppers" for short. The email broke most of the essential email best practice rules and I want to ensure that you are aware of these and that Shoppers takes these into consideration for future campaigns. This email may have cut it 1999 but will be

Twitter and Customer Service - Potential PR Nightmare

2009-01-18T16:55:00.006-05:00

Your company may have just started down the path of using Twitter as another communication channel. (If you're not there yet, that's cool but keep reading because there are some items to be aware of. Now back to our story). You may use it to highlight upcoming events, press releases and product/service updates. Using it for this purpose is fairly straightforward. It's mostly a marketing function

10 Tips for Using Twitter And Email Marketing for B2B

2008-12-21T20:11:00.009-05:00

I was told that every blog needs a "top 10 post" and I thought today would be a good day to write one on a topic that is growing in popularity. That topic is Twitter and how best to use this tool for your B2B marketing efforts. I thought I would take a stab at providing tips on blending a tried and true tool like email with Twitter. Let me know what you think and if you have additional tips (

How to Prevent List Attrition yet Drive Event Attendance

2008-12-16T00:43:00.004-05:00

This week's blog post was inspired by an idea by Yaro Starak over at Entrepreneurs-journey.com who suggested to look for blog ideas by scanning Facebook groups. I decided to do a quick scan on Linkedin instead and found a great topic on email marketing. Here is the question that was asked:How does your company email customers about events and web seminars without sending too many emails to the

The Recession is Here - Time to Become an Eco-Marketer

2008-11-16T18:34:00.010-05:00

When I say that you should become an eco-marketer, I don't mean that you should add some corny green recycle image to your website (who would do that?) or support a "Save the Whales" campaign. Although I'm a big supporter of environmental issues and started my career running an environmental organization, I would like to focus on eco-marketing in terms of demand creation.I focused my research

Is your Company Being Blogged About?

2008-11-09T19:47:00.005-05:00

Last week I mentioned how you can track your company's brand on twitter. Incidentally I did predict Obama winning the election and also the Dolphins beating the Seahawks today so I'm on a roll!This week I found a new site that you can use to compare how you're company is doing on the blogosphere versus your competition. The tools is called www.trendpedia.com. I liked this site because it

Obama beats McCain... on Twitter

2008-11-02T18:38:00.009-05:00

Are you having a tough time convincing your boss your company needs to get on Twitter? I checked out a site called Tweetvolume that tracks the number of times a term(s) is mentioned on Twitter and presents it in a bar chart. You can compare multiple items which allows you to compare the mentions of your company vs. another company.Here's a few I tried:Coke vs. PepsiPC vs. MacWii vs. Xbox vs.

Landing Page Optimization: Mini Case Study

2008-10-13T18:42:00.006-05:00

It's Canadian Thanksgiving up here today and I'm all about giving back. I'm always looking to help out marketers with their landing pages ever since I went to the Marketing Experiments Landing Page Workshop earlier this year (yes, it was in Florida and no, I didn't just go to the beach!). From time to time, I check out MarketingProf's Know How Exchange where people post their marketing questions

Improved Email Click-Through Tracking Using Query Strings

2008-09-28T16:58:00.008-05:00

If you have a call to action that is directed at the same landing page more then one time in your email, what is the best way to track which link received the most unique clicks?Let's back up and review why this topic is important for marketers. As a best practice, it's VERY important to:Have more then one link in your email to the desired landing page. For example, one link may be an image while

Lead Nurturing - How to track ROI?

2008-09-20T11:27:00.007-05:00

The concept of lead nurturing is something that is complex for some but very straightforward for others. To keep it simple, I look at it as a way of keeping your company top of mind to your potential customers or existing customers who are qualified but not yet ready to buy. I'm not going to reinvent the wheel here so check out Brian Carroll's blog post for a more in depth explanation.Quick

Newsletter Content that Engages Your Marketing Database

2008-09-09T00:58:00.005-05:00

Take a minute out of your day and have a look at this ad (it's worth it):Yes, this is an ad but what is appealing is the message. This is not about beer. This is not enticing you to go out and drink beer. It's providing a message that hits you on an emotional level and when they have you right where they want you (at the "Thank You"), they flash their logo up there. This beer company is going

The Right Way to Generate More Leads on Your Site

2008-06-22T22:52:00.008-05:00

It's been a very busy month with lots of travel thrown in. Throughout my journeys much of the conversation comes back to generating a higher quantity of leads from the web that are of better quality. I had the pleasure of attending the Marketing Experiments Website Optimization workshop that was held in Florida earlier this month (still waiting for my landing page professional certification badge

Improve Email Conversions. Save Time. Watch American Idol

2008-05-17T12:57:00.008-05:00

I just read a simple but effective white paper from Bronto on sending a repeat emails to those that don't respond to your first email. This concept is an obvious one but the article does provide some good strategies on how to improve email response.What it doesn't discuss is how to make the process of sending a second email to those that don't open or click on the first email you sent an easy one

Preventing incorrect email addresses

2008-05-07T22:30:00.003-05:00

Do you have a lot of bounce backs in your database? Keeping your data clean is a top priority for the marketers I speak with. I was just reading a good article on Marketing Sherpa that outlines "4 Ways to Fix Misspelled Email Addresses". I really liked one of the ideas which involves displaying the email address to the web visitor as part of a second step in the registration process. A simple

In memory of my father in law

2008-04-09T18:47:00.003-05:00

Below is a video that I captured of my nieces, my sister in law and my recently deceased father in law. He was a wonderful and generous person and the best father a son in law could have. In the short time we spent together, he taught me much and I will dearly miss him.

Should You Still Email Your Press Releases?

2008-03-16T19:20:00.003-05:00

On B2B Online, Tricia Robinson answers the question "Any tips for using e-mail to send press releases?". She goes on to write about not placing the whole release in the email, not including attachments and some other typical email "best practices".Here's a tip: "Don't do it". Does your whole database need to know every time you hire a new executive or win an award? Perhaps but you should really

Email Branding Tip to Increase Open Rates

2008-03-16T19:06:00.004-05:00

This is a quick post on a great tip from Stefan Pollard in hist post: Use Brand-Recognition Elements to Combat Inbox Triage.Stefan recommends putting your company name in the "view online" link at the top of your email. For example:"BEFORE: If you can't see the images in this e-mail, please click here to view this e-mail through your Internet browser.AFTER: If you can't see the images in your

Latest Trends in Email Marketing: RSS and Calendar Reminders

2008-03-09T19:43:00.007-05:00

As we move into a new week there are some interesting trends and technology enhancements that will start to change the way that B2B companies use email. For those that are thinking "email is email - how can it change?", keep reading.Trend#1: The Blogletter is Coming - Actually, it's Already Here.You may recall I blogged about a concept called the Blogletter (combo of email newsletter and blog

Are Webisodes Just for B2C? Who Hired Bob?

2008-02-24T18:03:00.006-05:00

Kraft has an interesting new microsite that follows the life of Bob at his workplace and his quest to replace the existing coffee machine with a Kraft Tassimo. Bob is one of those crazy co-workers that has a few screws loose. In fact, you could probably open a Home Depot with the trail of hardware he leaves. However, as someone that has seen like 20 different coffee machines at work over a span

Anything Goes Marketing is Attracting Attention

2008-02-14T02:09:00.009-05:00

Although I`ve slowed down my blogging (too many things going on and I have a new project brewing - more details soon) I`m getting some attention from around the marketing universe.Bulldog Solutions has quoted me recently on their BullBlog from my post on using video with email: ``Anticipating concerns about the complexity of video, blogger Chad Horenfeldt of Eloqua notes, "If a three-year-oldcan

Give web visitors the resources they need - Customized Google

2008-02-07T01:13:00.001-05:00

Raise your hand if you answer yes to all of the following questions:My company has a websiteWe have great resources on our websiteSome of these resources help our customers and prospects learn more about what we do and affect the buying processIt's difficult to find these resources on our siteYour hand raised? I've got a fairly simple solution. If you're on my blog (that's directed to my RSS

Email Tips for the New Year Part I

2008-01-27T20:40:00.000-05:00

Greetings! I've finally had the chance to go through a number of email newsletters and reports and I wanted to highlight some interesting email tips.Email Subject Line Tips: Use Personalization and Search Engine OptimizationI can blog about keeping your subject lines short but you already know that and I just reminded you. :) Here are some additional interesting tips:MailerMailer's latest

Lessons Learned in Cost Rica - Being Customer Centric

2008-01-09T00:38:00.000-05:00

My brain is slowly de-fogging from my trip to Costa Rica. My wife and I had a wonderful jammed pack week full of tours, hikes and R&R at the beach. Beyond the beauty of this country and the relaxing siestas in the sun, I was reminded of a valuable lesson - go above and beyond for your customers.We booked an eco-tour which means that we travelled to various areas of Costa Rica to learn more about

Anything Goes Marketing on the Globe and Mail

2007-12-17T23:00:00.000-05:00

Here I was minding my own business, taking in some caffeine while I scanned my web traffic. What did I find? I`ve been added to the blogroll on Canada`s largest national newspaper. The blog is called Hard Sell Blog by Keith McArthur who writes for the Globe and Mail. His blog is about the latest in marketing and advertising. I know my American friends are saying `Whoppie` but it`s nice to be

Resources on Aligning Marketing and Sales for B2B Companies

2007-12-17T20:30:00.002-05:00

If you somehow stumbled on this post and said "Yes, this is just what I was looking for and will help save our company" you really need to get a hold of yourself! This article may give you some additional information that you didn't have but it's not going to make your sales team start using the CRM properly or get marketing to only pass on qualified leads to sales. It's time to get a grip and at

Tips for Confirmation Pages

2007-12-13T19:55:00.000-05:00

Well, here I am on the east coast and stuck at the airport due to this freezing rain. Grrrr!!I came across a few interesting tips for your confirmation pages:Using Audio and Chat on Your Confirmation PagesIn what seems like ages ago, I wrote a post about blogging while being stuck at airport.Use an audio confirmation clip on your confirmation page. Check out how this is done on Delivery Monitor

Email and Video: Tactics you can use Today

2007-12-09T11:57:00.000-05:00

I may be getting older but I had a crazy flashback yesterday. I went to the movies to see August Rush (I give it 1 thumbs up) and of course I was forced to sit through about 20 commercials that mostly focused on gifts I must buy before the move started. One commercial stood out - a new video phone that is being offered by a mobile carrier up here called Rogers (Verizon is the equivalent the US).

Adding a Feedback Survey to an Email

2007-11-25T16:31:00.001-05:00

Should you or should you not place a survey (form) in your email? I've seen both positive and negative results and all that I can suggest is to test this for yourself. It's a known fact that forms in emails will not render properly in Outlook 2007 and Hotmail but you may find an increase in conversions for forms directly in the email. Again test this for yourself and let me know how it goes. This

Email Personalization Tip: Improve Response Rates

2007-11-11T17:48:00.000-05:00

I have a great email marketing tip for everyone this week based on a real email campaign. As part of this campaign, an email was sent out to all customers asking them to fill out a survey. The first email used a generic personalization method. This meant that the email came from a VP which only some of the recipients may know.After achieving a decent response after the first email, a follow up

How do Marketers Measure Online Marketing?

2007-10-30T22:20:00.000-05:00

While there is a big push these days to get to the true ROI of your online marketing campaigns, we don't seem to be there yet.According to a Penton Media Custom Research study commissioned by PROMO Magazine, click-throughs and response rates are still mostly used to measure the success of marketing campaigns.Measuring Email ROIOn another note, the DMA found that e-mail's ROI will reach $45.65 for

Americans Hate Canadians

2007-10-27T16:19:00.001-05:00

I'm pretty steamed at the moment. I don't know how else to explain this but to say that Americans hate their brothers and sisters to the North. Are you guys jealous of our health care system or something? What is it??If you try and access TV show episodes like The Office, you get messages like this: "We're sorry, but the clip you requested is not available from your location". I'm sorry, what?!

I have a new job... in viral marketing

2007-10-27T15:11:00.000-05:00

No, I haven't left my current job. I've added a second job working for the Dundler Mifflin Infinity team, Sudbury Ontario Branch. I'm not joking! I submitted my application on the new Dundler Mifflin Infinity website which was accepted and I plan to help them sell paper. My first task was adding that nice banner ad over there. Go ahead and give it a click. You use paper, don't you?If you

Subject lines that work

2007-10-22T21:47:00.000-05:00

Good post on how to write subject lines with examples from Adrian Singer over at software projects.Here are his four main characteristics of how to write a successful subject line:#1. It needs to reference something you know about#2. It needs to be something that is important to you#3. It needs to have an expiration or urgency factor#4. It needs to be something you yourself can act uponHere is

What is RSS? Check out this video

2007-10-21T17:18:00.000-05:00

Instead of me writing about what RSS (Real Simple Syndication) is , I'll let this whiteboard geek tell you all about it (thanks MarketingProfs!). Feel free to pass this along to your manager who doesn't understand what the hell RSS is and doesn't want to invest in it:Chad H.Tags: RSS, Really simple Syndication

Automated Customer Scoring - Going Beyond Leads

2007-10-21T16:22:00.001-05:00

Automated Lead scoring is a term that many in the B2B world are familiar with. Essentially, you take the typical manual lead qualification process that a sales rep or call center does over the phone to find the best leads and let technology do this for you. Can you apply this same concept to customers? I think you can and those of you in B2C already do this quite well.At a recent

Your Reply To Email Should Allow Me to Reply!

2007-10-08T19:36:00.000-05:00

I just wrote a post, went for my run and checked my email again. I realized that I have a ton of unopened email from MarketingVOX. I get daily emails from these guys which help me keep up on the latest but you know what, I can't keep up with it and it's mostly just too many details that I am not interested in. I gave up and I unsubscribed as I had no other choice.I figured, hey, I'll take an

One way to tackle closed loop marketing

2007-10-08T17:47:00.000-05:00

Now that the summer is behind us I feel that I have a few extra pounds from the BBQs and beers on the patios. I've promised myself to go for at least 2 morning runs during the week and a trip the gym on the weekend. I'm still working on the 2 runs per week but I'm getting there. I know that if I don't go, I see the results of the hamburger that I had for lunch the next morning on the scale. When

Looking for Ideas to Generate More Leads?

2007-09-29T11:17:00.000-05:00

If your company is generating enough leads already, please stop reading right there.Still here? There is an excellent FREE report from RainToday that has just been launched called: The One Piece Of Advice You Can't Generate Leads Without. It's full of great articles from the industry experts (not just a RainToday person writing a bunch of articles) such as Brian Carrol and the MarketingSherpa

Easy Tip: Maximizing Your Whitepaper Downloads

2007-09-25T22:14:00.000-05:00

I'm going through my old emails and I found one of those rare MarketingSherpa studies that are "open to the public". This is a great one that focuses on B2B lead generation.As you can see from the chart, people who are accessing white papers less frequently would prefer not to have to fill out a form. Really? I don't think you knew that! It's pretty obvious that we all hate filling out a form.

Who will be the Next President? Mr. or Mrs. Widget

2007-09-16T12:51:00.000-05:00

Widgets are becoming more and more popular these days as additional tools for marketers. Widgets have been around for a while but they are being used more frequently (especially on social media sites) which is why they are gaining additional attention. There are different types of widgets but I will be focusing on web widgets as I found a great one for all of my American friends.According to

5 Ways to Set Expectations in Online Marketing

2007-08-07T20:04:00.000-05:00

I was camping this past weekend and my sister brought with her a CD of this hilarious comedian, John Pinette. If you haven't heard of him, you will soon enough. Here's a clip of him describing how he hates lines of any kind.Why is this so funny? I think we all hate lines. We all hate waiting. We want what we want and we want it now! The reality is that we're going to have to wait. If this means

How to Adjust Your Landing Pages For Search

2007-07-20T18:17:00.000-05:00

Does your website have a home page? Ok, that's a stupid question but because of the preponderance of use of search engines in browsing the web, home pages are just not the same as they once were. A site can now have multiple home pages depending on what search query was used to end up on your website. Is your website ready?I was reading a great article on Imedia called Websites: The Secret to

Combining Direct Mail with Your Online Marketing Efforts

2007-07-18T22:27:00.000-05:00

Many B2B marketers today are either slashing their direct mail budgets or drastically changing the focus of these campaigns to make them more targeted. MarketingSherpa in conjunction with KnowledgeStorm have released a recent study that demonstrates that direct mail is still relevant.I like to read a white paper on actual paper!If you think waaaaay back, there was a time when all newsletters and

Driving More Web Traffic: The Community Effect

2007-06-24T11:13:00.000-05:00

I was at a wedding this past weekend and I was talking to a 10 and 12 year old who were avid "gamers" (video game players). As a side note I equate gaming with gambling as they both can be costly and are ridiculously addictive. I myself am not a gamer but was recently handed a free Xbox (the old one) and couldn't help playing a "few" games. I was feeling confident that I could speak to these

How to Improve Your Email Newsletter

2007-05-26T11:54:00.000-05:00

Do you have an email newsletter? Many B2B and B2C companies produce a newsletter or newsletters that are geared to a specific audience or audiences. There is no question that newsletters are a great way of keeping your company top of mind to your customers and prospects and increasing brand awareness as well the perception that your organization is the industry expert. Here's the issue: How can

Get Rid of Your Marketing Database Deadbeats

2007-05-14T22:06:00.000-05:00

If you have a marketing database you probably have something in there that is like a cancerous tumor. It's what I call the "database deadbeats". Database deadbeats are what I refer to those contacts who are in your database but are really useless - they don't return to your website, open your emails, register for webinars or buy your products anymore. They take up room and bring your response

Don't Use "Click Here" in Emails", Use This Instead...

2007-05-14T21:40:00.000-05:00

Stefan Pollard over at EmailLabs has provided some good tips for creating call to actions for your emails in his article called: "8 Tips for a Stronger Call to Action". Here are the main points that I took away from it:Stop using "Click here" in your emails! Enough already!! You should add links to action words like "Learn more", "Download this white paper now" "Register for this webinar before

Elect Susie! Here is Some Creative Viral Marketing

2007-05-13T21:41:00.000-05:00

10 year old Susie Flynn has just announced her intention to run for the US presidency and if I was American, I just might consider her. She is trying to raise awareness for children in America without health insurance. There is in fact 9 million children in America without health insurance! Check out her site at www.electsusie.com. I want to applaud her for her great campaign so far and her use

How do I Generate More Leads from my Website?

2007-05-12T12:12:00.000-05:00

Many B2B marketers ask these questions daily: We have this great website, we use email, we use search - what else can we do? How can we further optimize our practices to increase the amount of leads we generate?A recent study by MarketingSherpa and KnowledgeStorm provides some additional insights that marketers should be aware of. They surveyed both vendors and users (people who actually fill out

Increase Attendence for Webinars and Webcasts

2007-05-03T18:59:00.001-05:00

Here's two scenarios that you may have found yourself in: 1. Have you ever signed up for a webinar that your really wanted to go to but then when the day of the webinar came you said to yourself, "I don't have time for this ^&%#". 2. Have you ever created a webinar campaign that had a finally tuned list that was directed at a specific vertical, spent days getting the emails just right, deployed

Web 2. Slowww - Low Adapatation by Corporations

2007-05-01T23:25:00.000-05:00

The discussions around web 2.0. continue to peak my interest and a recent article from emarketer.com shows how little progress large corporations have made in this area.I Plan to Increase my Lead Generation by 3 billion % in 30 daysMarketers make many promises and not all of them are based on facts (I know, you're saying "really??"). From the article Business Crawls onto Web 2.0, the path to

USA Today is Web 2.0. OK

2007-04-23T21:35:00.000-05:00

If you're looking for an example of a website that employs some of the latest and greatest of web 2.0. and does it successfully, look no further then USA Today. USA Today has reported a 380% surge in web traffic since it re-built its website last month with over 40,000 more user generated comments.Here are some of the web 2.0 elements that I spotted:More then a Website - a Web Community: USA

How do you allow prospects to get closer to your product?

2007-03-24T10:19:00.000-05:00

Have you ever been miffed when trying to test out a product from a website?It amazes me at times when I go to websites and when I want to demo or test drive a product I'm either given a message such as "Fill out a form and someone will contact you", sent to a fact-sheet with boring statistics or a powerpoint presentation opens that shows me nice pictures of happy people. That isn't what I want! I

Landing Page Strategies and Lead Qualification

2007-03-18T14:16:00.000-05:00

Here are some quick tips from the experts - Google that is - on how to improve your landing pages. Check out the Top 7 Landing Page Strategies on the Google Analytics blog.I found #4 interesting: "Using qualifying copy". This strategy is used by marketers to try and limit the form submissions to only those people who are truly interested in your product or service. Google recommends that you

I Invented the Word Blogletter

2007-03-13T21:43:00.000-05:00

According to Veronica Brown over at the Content Factor, I co-invented the word "blogletter" which is a combination of a blog and an enewsletter. This is based on my blog post called: Where Do Your Email Newsletters Go? Email Heaven? Becuase I did publish my blog post first on this subject, I'm taking full credit for this - yeah baby!