5 Mistakes B2B Marketers Need to Avoid in 2010

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 marketing strategy. If you’re company is just breaking ground in this area, at the very least make a commitment to listen to what people are saying about you. For example, check out http://addictomatic.com/ and search for your company name. Most likely, you are being mentioned. Now search for your competitors. This may be enough of an impetuous to get moving on a reactive social media strategy such as “monitor what is being said about you and respond where needed to protect our brand”.

Addictomatic is a free tool that will get you started down this path. You may want to look at some of the paid services out there such as Radian6 or Vocus. Once you have this down, you can then start working on a proactive strategy and determine what it will take in your organization to make this possible. If you’re having trouble with this concept, skip down to #4.

2. Not sending relevant and timely messages

If you continue to only send email blasts on a schedule that you dictate to your email subscribers, you risk massive list attrition, damaging your overall email deliverability and a loss of sales and sales opportunities. The key to sending relevant communication is to automate the process. This may mean creating a lead nurturing program for new inquires on your website or using dynamic content in emails that presents a more relevant message. This concept needs to be at the forefront of your planning in 2010. If you have an automated program in place, look at ways that it can be adjusted to get an even higher response.

3. Not having an accurate picture of your database

Did you have an email campaign this year that received a lower than expected response and blamed the creative or the offer on the poor results? It may well have had to do with these items but did you consider looking at the state of your list and/or database? I highly recommend that you query your database to understand how "active" your contacts are. You need to understand the true state of your database so you can make decisions on what you need to do in 2010 to achieve your goals. Knowing how many contacts in your database have bounced and unsubscribed is no longer enough - you need to understand how much "dead wood" you're carrying around.

In addition, your data may need a "face lift" or a complete makeover as it's either inaccurate or out of date. Consider using data tools that are included in your marketing automation system to clean up your data. You can also look at services like Fresh Address (http://biz.freshaddress.com/) that can clean up your email addresses or providers such as ReachForce or MarketOne that can generate leads based on your specific needs.

4. Not taking advantage of your online community

As a marketer, there are thousands of online resources out there that you can take advantage of to improve your marketing skills. You can even get a marketing degree from schools online. However, this is just “half the battle” (why am I having memories of GI Joe cartoons from the 80s?). You need to engage other marketers to really learn and get the most out of the resources that are available and there are online communities that are waiting to be taken advantage of. Here are some things you can do today:

• Search for a LinkedIn Group that interests you and join it. Participate in discussions or start a new one yourself. Not sure which group to join? See which groups your connections have joined or ask them directly.
• Ask and answer questions on LinkedIn. You may see a theme here. There are a lot of experts in your area that are willing to help you so have a look at LinkedIn Answers. To begin, I recommend browsing the Marketing and Sales category and looking for a subcategory that interests you.
  
  
• Join Twitter and look for a Twitter List that includes tweets about areas of marketing that interest you. To get started, use a tool like http://listorious.com/ that lists some of the top lists on Twitter. An easier idea is to look at the list of a tweeter that you admire and follow their list. Here is my Twitter list that I generated that I follow daily. Again, to really engage the community you need to ask questions and respond.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. At my company, I’m an active participant in our customer only community. If you’re lucky to have such a community available to you, take advantage of it. Find out who the people that contribute the most and try and help them out if they need it. They will hopefully help you in return. You may want to look for them on LinkedIn or Twitter and follow some of my recommendations above. I’m a big advocate of Xobni that is a plugin for Outlook. It helps me easily add people to my Twitter and LinkedIn communities – check it out.

5. Not using best practices or acting on lessons learned from past campaigns

While this may be a given, you need to be continuously updating your skills to get the most out of your marketing campaigns. I highly recommend that you subscribe to resources such as the Marketing Insights blog, MarketingSherpa, MarketingExperiments, SiriusDecisions, ClickZ, and MarketingProfs to name just a few of the great resources that I use on a daily basis. This is on top of the number of great articles that my community of LinkedIn and Twitter provide me.


I also recommend testing your campaigns by using A/B and multivariate testing for emails and landing pages. What you may find is that you're going to be creating your own best practices based on what you found successful.


My last point is to accurately track your campaigns so you can easily see why certain campaigns were more successful that others in order to reproduce this success for future campaigns.

Of course, one of your biggest sources of best practices should be the vendors you work with. Part of my daily job is to work with marketers to help them improve their campaigns and make them successful. You too should have access to a live person that can meet with you regularly and that can provide you with advice on what you’re doing right and where you can improve. Make that a priority for 2010 if you can.

I hope you enjoyed these and please let me know if there are additional mistakes that you recommend avoiding in 2010. Happy Holidays from my family to yours!



Chad H
@chadhorenfeldt
”You’re so 2000 and late” courtesy of zazzle.com
”The Battle” image courtesy of Patrick Hester's Blog
”Good Data, Bad Data” courtesy of CounterForce Blog
”Your community Profile” courtesy of www.socialdesire.com

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Email Autoresponders 2.0 in B2B Marketing

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, Heather Foeh and her blog post "Friday Quick Tip: Re-Visit Your Autoresponders". By autoresponder email, I mean the confirmation email that a registrant immediately receives when they fill out a form on a website. Heather has some good tips to ensure that your information and call to action(s) is up to date. At times, marketers set these up and then forget about them. In this post, I want to highlight some of the interesting trends I'm seeing in marketing automation - specifically the autoresponder email and how you can take advantage of this often neglected marketing gem.

The Evolution of the Autoresponder Email

Let's start with the evolution of the autoresponder. Although this post is mostly from a B2B perspective, the items described here can also be applied in the B2C world. In the past, email recipients were used to receiving a text based email that had a simple message that thanked the subscriber for submitting their information. This in itself was a big step forward as many marketers either didn't have the capability to implement this due to their technology provider or the insight to add this tactic. Now, there are many different types of autoresponder emails from product/service confirmations to event detail information. In this post, I want to concentrate on the use case in which a user either signs up for a newsletter or to access resources from your website. Here is a quick timeline to trace how far marketers have come by displaying how past autoresponders appeared:

1. The Traditional Email Autoresponder

Thanks for registering.

2. Email Autoresponder 1.0

[Insert company logo here]

Thanks for registering.

Click here to unsubscribe.
CompanyX address

3. Email Autoresponder 1.5

[Insert company logo here]

Dear FirstName,
Thanks for registering to receive [insert name of resource] from CompanyX. Please be sure to return to www.companyx.com.

Regards,
CompanyX

Manage your profile or click here to unsubscribe.
CompanyX address

Autoresponder Email The Next Generation

Looking at the examples above, there really isn't anything wrong with the autoresponder 1.5. It provides relevant information, it's simple and to the point. I would also include a few other items as part of autoresponder 1.5: relevant static links to key areas of your website as well as asking recipients to whitelist your email address. This is all great but, if you're looking at ways to get more out of your autoresponders then keep reading.

I've found that autorepsonders can have open rates that can achieve greater that 80% open rates and clickthrough rates in the 20-30% range which blow industry averages out of the ball park. Registrants who fill out forms almost expect to get these emails as they have already taken the time to provide you with some type of information. The least you can do is provide them something useful in return. Other goals to keep in mind is to encourage the new subscriber to open and read future emails but encourage as well as interacting with you in other channels that they may not have known about.

1. Personalization: Adding "Dear FirstName" in your email is good but you're wasting an opportunity to build a relationship between the new registrant and a real person at your company. You know the saying "people buy from people" - well it's true. A recent Aberdeen report has demonstrated that email personalization drives higher email open and conversion rates. Knowing that registrants will most likely open the autoresponder reduces the risk of having a real person in the "from line". What this does is begin or continue the relationship between the prospect and sales rep. As an added tip, make sure you add the name of your company in the first few characters of the subject line so the email recipients realizes that the the name of the person in the "from line" is from your company.
   
   Once the person opens the email, have a signature that includes a real person's name and contact information. The autoresponder should encourage the email recipient to contact the sales rep if they have any questions. The best in class marketers have their CRM synced up to their marketing automation platform which means that known contacts from their CRM should already have an associated sales rep. Your marketing automation platform should also allow you to dynamically include the sales reps information as part of the autoresponder. As an added tip, include a picture of the sales rep. If the registrant is new to your system, have a generic signature that perhaps is from your CMO or a known figure within your organization. Your marketing automation platform can also help you build signature rules based on other contact information such as geography which allows for a personalized approach even if a web visitor has yet to be assigned to a sales rep.
   
   This type of personalization leads to a much stronger and smoother hand-0ff process between the marketing and sales teams which I described in my last post "Lead Management and Football". Using this technique demonstrates that marketing is at the top of their game.
   
   
2. Dynamic Content: This is one of the key areas that makes me smile when I'm reviewing how our customers are getting the most out of our product. Dynamic content in an email allows you to:
   
   • Simplify the autoresponder email creation. Instead of having 20 different versions of the same email, have one email that you can easily maintain. Using dynamic content you can change key areas such as what was exactly downloaded as well as customizing a call to action either based on what they downloaded and/or the interests that were specified in the registration process.
     
     In one example, I have a client that promoted different case studies based on the industry that was specified in the sign up process. In another example, a client specified exactly what was downloaded by capturing this in the registration process and then dynamically displaying this on the email. These techniques are simple, effective and led to increased response.
     
   
   
• Pull in content from RSS feeds: I've outlined this concept in an earlier post Latest Trends in Email Marketing: RSS and Calendar Reminders. You can promote corporate blog posts, upcoming events, press releases and the newest white papers/case studies in an RSS feed(s) that you can add to your email either underneath the main "Thanks for registering text" or as a side column. This means that not only are you saying "Read our latest blog posts" but you're actually including the title of your latest posts as well as a link to read the entire article. In this way you have new content that is dynamically added to your autoresponder without the marketer having to make any manual updates. This is a great way to get more out of your content and drive new registrants back to your website.
  
  
• Personalize who the email is coming from. I described this above but want to point out that this is a form of dynamic content
  


3. Promote Other Channels: More and more marketers are using social media to keep prospects engaged while they are in the sales and marketing funnel. In addition, more and more of prospects are using social media to learn about your products and services as well as comparing you to your competitors. As I outlined in 10 Tips for Using Twitter And Email Marketing for B2B you can add your company's Twitter address, Linkedin groups and links to RSS feeds such as your corporate blog to your autoresponder emails.
   
   You should consider other channels as well. For example, Breaking Point Systems offers a free poster which has proven to be a very successful campaign. I also find this approach brilliant as the autoresponder email drives recipients back to the website to fill out additional information to receive the poster. Another idea is to include a link to a video that may be a customer testimonial that is relevant to the recipients challenge or job role.
   
   
4. Sales Should not Follow up the Email With a Call: So you're reading this post and hopefully enjoying it and then you read this and you're like "What? Chad - you should have stopped after the second cup of coffee". Just because a web visitor signed up for a white paper or a newsletter on your website and you have pasted a nice picture of the rep on your autoresponder doesn't give anyone the right to call them up. If you have a properly defined lead management process, leads should only be passed on to sales for follow up if the prospect has attained a high enough lead score. In this way, you're focusing your sales team on the prospects that are more inclined to buy and sparing a potential buyer from being called too early in the purchase process.
   
   
5. Don't Stop After The Autoresponder: You may be saying: "Wait a minute - so, sales shouldn't follow up but I shouldn't stop after the autoresponder?". That's correct. As I mentioned above, you want to ensure that new subscribers are "sales worthy" according to the agreed upon definitions that you should have between sales and marketing. A great way to keep a new subscriber informed about your company is to move them into a nurturing program typically called a "welcome program" for new subscribers. This may involve a few different channels including having someone follow up with them by phone to further qualify the "inquiry" but the first few touches should be via email to demonstrate the value of having provided you with their email in the first place and to build a profile which translates into a lead score for marketers that have implemented a lead scoring system.
   
   What is important is to provide content that is relevant. Relevancy depends on the recipient's interests that they provided, what they have downloaded and/or which pages, offers or emails they responded to. Frequency is also very important. Try to prevent recipients from receiving email content that they have already received. You also want to ensure that recipients are not receiving too many emails in too short a period of time. However, I believe that relevancy trumps frequency and if the content is relevant, recipients will want to receive it and if they don't feel like looking at it right away, they'll still want to get information from you in the future.
   

Measure the Results

Measuring the results is very key in this process. If you've read the above you may either be excited or overwhelmed. I would recommend benchmarking your current key email and conversion metrics and then slowly adding some of the techniques above and seeing the results. For example, by adding in personalization, are your sales reps receiving inbound calls as a result of this email? Of course, you will need a process in place to measure this (perhaps a dedicated line) but I would recommend starting simple and building on your successes. While these recommendations will require an investment of time up front, it will pay off in the long run.

Have you tried any of these techniques? How has it worked for you?

Chad H.
@chadhorenfeldt

Tweet this!

Related Posts:

• Latest Trends in Email Marketing: RSS and Calendar Reminders
• Lead Management and Football
• 10 Tips for Using Twitter And Email Marketing for B2B
• Dynamic Email Content: The Next Generation of Personalization

Technorati tags: autoresponder email, e-mails, email frequency, relevancy, social media and confirmation emails, personalization, Twitter B2B marketing

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Why I Use Twitter

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 real on here and keeping you in the loop on the latest marketing trends. I do have some other posts that I'm working on that get more into tips and tricks so stay tuned.

I'll start off with why I use Twitter and write a follow up post on my strategies for managing it.

Why do I Twit?

• It seemed cool and cutting edge. One of the best practice consultants at my company, Jennifer Horton, introduced me to Twitter as the next big thing in social media. I thought at first she was crazy but after jumping into it and being able to converse with social media experts, bloggers, customers, competitors, colleagues and friends in a friendly and cooperative format that would otherwise be impossible, I was hooked. I guess being already exposed to the social media world made twittering a logical step. Twitter is quite similar to blogging but you are limited to how much you can write (140 characters) and there is much more of a chit chat going on.
  
  
• I'm in the loop. Ever feel like people are talking about you behind your back? Well you can do what Michael Scott on The Office did and get everyone to tell you how they feel about you or you can listen in on Twitter. Twitter allows me to better understand the landscape that I work in. I hear what challenges customers and fellow colleagues are experiencing as well as the latest trends in marketing. I feel like I can get into the head of some of the most forward thinking thought leaders as well as students that are struggling to understand difficult concepts. I hear about news before it becomes news and when it does become news I hear it from the direct sources. Now that's what I call being in the loop.
  
  
• I can respond. With my central role in driving customer success, I'm always looking for ways to make customers better. With Twitter, I can learn how to create better experiences for customers by arming myself with knowledge. I see Twitter as a huge knowledge share where people continuously pass around information. I specifically look for those people that can help me and I will promote those Twitters that provide me with valuable insights. The fact that I can easily thank someone for helping me is amazing.
  
  Not only do I listen to my fellow tweeters, I also look for people that may need assistance in my field and try to contribute to the Twitter information library. Again, it's my nature to help people and I try and do this as much as possible. This may mean answering a question, providing tips and tricks I find or responding to a customer concern. I like that I can correspond via Twitter and I can typically do it when I want it and how I want it (via Twitter or direct message). The fact that Twitter encourages you to respond and that communication is restricted to 140 characters and is informal makes it so appealing.
  
  In addition, one of the most important responses I give to people in Twitter is a "follow" which means I've chosen to receive to listen to their Tweets. If you get an "unfollow" from me (which is extremely rare), it means you've said something that's really offended me.
  

• People respond to me. I think one of the most satisfying reasons for driving my Twitter usage is to generate new followers that listen to my tweets as well as to have people reply to my tweets, directly message me via Twitter or retweet (forward) my tweets. Everyday I meet new and exciting people as well as learn view points that I would not be exposed to otherwise. Heck, I even announced that my wife is pregnant on Twitter and had people I barely know congratulate me. The interaction that is achieved on Twitter is the engine the drives it.
  

I hope that you have found this useful. I encourage you to try out Twitter by registering an account. When you do, follow me at @chadhorenfeldt and I'll be sure to follow you and help you get up and running!

Chad H.

PS - stay tuned next time for a post on how I manage my use of Twitter.

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Landing Page Optimization: Mini Case Study

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 and I try and help out.

The following was posted on MarketingProfs:

Landing Page Critique For Agency's Ppc Campaign
Posted By: melissa on 10/10/2008 5:23 PM (CST)	125 Points
Hello, We are running a PPC campaign for a full-service marketing agency, and trying to decide on the best landing page for the promotion. The conversion goal is for prospective clients to call or complete the short contact form. The pay-per-click categories/keywords are for: marketing agency, advertising, copywriting, design, branding, etc. Lead results so far have been pretty good, but conversions are terrible (we have not used any of these landing page designs yet). It's possible that we are not attracting the right audience, however it may be another reason. We have developed 3 different variations for the landing page - please review these links (refer to each as 1, 2, or 3) and let me know what you think? Thank you, 1 -- http://www.discoverycomm.com/landingSample/DCG1.html 2 -- http://www.discoverycomm.com/landingSample/DCG2.html 3 -- http://www.discoverycomm.com/landingSample/DCG3.html

Here is my response (I admit I'm not modest and don't pull any punches). The picture above is the first example that is provided:

Let me preface this as I've been certified by Marketing Experiments in landing page creation. Out of the three, I liked the design of the first landing page but truthfully, I don't see your conversion rates increasing. Here's why:

a. What is compelling the web visitor to respond? What's in it for me? All I hear about is your company. I don't feel you've touched on any pain points of my company. This page seems way too broad. Create a title that is compelling and really hits on the keyword that someone typed in that led to them landing on this page.
b. The offer is the same old same old. Above someone mentions a case study. You'll have readers that do not want someone calling them right away. I would recommend starting the "conversation" with a simple download that hits on a pain point of the marketer as the call to action and not the "free discussion". Send them a follow up email with another call to action and see if they are interested. This will definitely increase your conversions.
c. This is petty but the letter looks like a 5 year old designed it. I'm not talking about the copy but rather the design. The letters are all sloped. This can be improved. (Actually, as I read this again, the copy is really hokey)
d. This is also petty but there is no submit button on the form!! You need something compelling such as "I want my free consultation" or "Have George call me".
e. Add a privacy agreement. This reduces the anxiety of the web visitor.
f. It's a best practice to remove the site navigation so keep the page as is. I disagree with a few of the folks above. Don't confuse the web visitor with additional information.

Good luck!!

I hope you found this helpful and feel free to send your landing pages my way and I'll try and review them (also feel free to go to the MarketingProfs forum and criticize my feedback or post a comment right here!).

Chad H.

PS: This case study on B2B online backs up my recommendations above.

Technorati Tags: Landing page optimization, improving conversion rates, PPC campaigns,copy writing that hits a pain point, call to actions work, Happy Thanksgiving Eh

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Improved Email Click-Through Tracking Using Query Strings

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:

1. Have more then one link in your email to the desired landing page. For example, one link may be an image while one is a text link
2. Know which links in your email are performing better. You can use this information for future campaigns.
   

Jay Kulkarni over at B2B wrote an article on this subject called:"How can you ensure that you’re effectively tracking unique click rates on the same URLs within your e-mail creative?" Jay suggests using web redirects on subsequent versions of the link. For example, say you have a link to an event such as this HP event. Here is the original URL:
https://h30406.www3.hp.com/campaigns/2008/events/poweritdown/index.php
You could then create a redirect such as:
http://www.hp.com/poweritdown/index.php that will redirect the web visitor to the original URL but will allow you to track that an email recipient clicked on the second URL and not the first URL.

Track Multiple Email Click-Throughs To The Same Landing Page Using Query Strings

There is another way of tracking mutiple click-throughs from different links in an email that go to the same page. This process I'm going to suggest may be easier for you as well - no need for setting up a redirect. I typically recommend using query strings to get this type of tracking. All you need to do is add a query string and a query string value to the URL and you can track multiple instances of a URL that go to the same page. For example, let's take the original URL example I used above. To make this a unique URL, I can add a query string called "link" with a value of "2" (I used 2 as this is the second instance of the URL). Here is what it looks like: https://h30406.www3.hp.com/campaigns/2008/events/poweritdown/index.php?link=2.

Looks easy eh (My Canadian accent coming through)? Well it is. This doesn't require any technical know how and any good tracking system should differentiate URLs based on query string values. Try this out and let me know how it goes.

Chad H.

PS: I talk more about query strings and how they can be used for improved tracking in my post called One way to tackle closed loop marketing.
PPS: Follow me on Twitter

Technorati Tags: tracking multiple call to actions, email click-throughs, Improved results, query strings

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The Right Way to Generate More Leads on Your Site

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 :) ). From that conference, combined with a very good study on email tactics in retail I've been inspired to write a post on this topic.

What's in it for me?

They key point hammered home at the Marketing Experiments Workshop is that all points of interaction on your website should answer the following question from the web visitor's perspective: "What's in it for me?". Therefore, if you have one of those newsletter sign up boxes on every page of your site (like the one I have in the top right hand corner) that says "Enter your email to get our newsletter", you may need to rethink this area as you're not providing a compelling reason for the visitor to sign up for your newsletter. A better approach may be "Get expert updates on X" (by X I mean a specific topic that is assumed to be relevant to the site's content or why would they be there in the first place). Even the submit button should be written in a way that answers the question "What's in it for me". For example: "Send me Product Alerts".

To use a simple sign up form or to not use a simple sign up form - that is the question.

To go back to my last point on that newsletter sign up - should this be a simple email only form or should you have a link that directs web visitors to a newsletter sign up page? This depends on your target audience as well as the type of segmentation and personalization you would like to perform in your marketing campaigns. B2C companies may only need email to begin the conversation but B2B companies typically collect company name and first and last name.

Here are the points to remember:

1. Most of the pages on your site can be accessed from a search engine. Don't assume that web visitors come waltzing through the front door (your home page). A website is like a big semi-permeable blob (think back to your to your biology days) that can be entered from all areas. Therefore ensure that you have a call to action on every page to engage new visitors and turn them into leads that you can market to.
   
   
2. Ensure you answer the question "What's in it for me" and don't assume that because they are on a website about say hot dogs that the visitor will know that the newsletter will provide the latest deals on hot dogs. Don't assume anything. You need to spell it out.
   
   Another bad tactic that I see is to use landing pages for multiple purposes. For example, directing newsletter registrations to the Contact Us page. This is not a good idea as the call to action doesn't correspond to the desired result and possible subscribers would be scared off as they don't want Mr/Mrs Salesperson calling on them asking them how many hot dogs they want.
   
   
3. The more fields on your web form, the less conversions. For some marketers, this is OK as they only want serious submissions. For example, if you're inquiring about how you can fly into space through one of those private space programs, you first need some serious coin to be considered. It would be a good idea to ask subscribers for their annual income before having someone in sales call them back.
   
   However, if you are just trying to start a conversation to attract a larger audience to a subject area that you have expert content in, the less fields on your form that you do have, the higher the conversion rate. Always ask yourself if you really need those additional form fields (say for segmenting or personalization) and can you get that information in a future campaign or do you need this information right away.
   
   Another consideration is to ask subscribers what type of information they would like to receive. This is definitely recommended. It should also be clear how often you will be sending subscribers communications.
   
   
4. Test, test, test... I know you hear that all the time. Imagine being stuck in a conference room for 8 hours straight each day in Florida right beside a PGA golf course and being forced to hear that when you could be outside. Of course the Marketing Experiment people are right. You need to test out the method that will work the best for your situation.
   

I hope that this post has been helpful and I should be adding some additional findings from my landing page workshop experience. In the meantime, feel free to check out my twitter profile for updates on marketing tools and info that I pick up. I just found an interesting tool that can tell you the type of email client that your subscribers are using to view your email in. This can be key in better understanding how best to design your emails.

Chad H.

PS: I just changed my blog updates sign up form text - we'll see if it improves conversions. I think I need to provide content more often. :)
PPS - image courtesy of www.wearyourbeer.com

Technorati tags: beer, landing page optimization, Marketing Experiments, Call to Action, What's In it for Me, test, PGA, Tiger Woods, Space - the final frontier

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Tips for Confirmation Pages

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 Pages

In 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 after you sign up for their newsletter. It's brilliant as it sets expectations (i.e. when you can receive emails, what will be in them) and gives you a bit of the company's personality (which is boring by the way). This is a great idea and you can do a lot with this concept as the confirmation page is like a gateway into receiving additional information. The web visitor has given consent for you to send them emails and an audio message sets the tone for a great relationship. You might also notice that these guys have added a chat feature so you can ask them questions as well. These Delivery Monitor folk are some really bright people.

Tips for Your Unsubscribe Confirmation Pages

Stefan Pollard continues to write some brilliant posts on the unsubscribe process. He recommends making this a two step process. Have an unsubscribe link in the email and make the email recipient chose to unsubscribe from the landing page. On the confirmation page, he recommends adding the following:

• Include a customer contact number
• Have a link to a contact form
• Include a feedback survey
• Add a manage your profile link. Perhaps they still want to receive your emails in some capacity. For example, have a way for them to unsubscribe temporarily
• Tell them how they can re-engage with you at a later point
• Let them know that they can subscribe to a blog feed via RSS.

The bottom line is that you shouldn't give up on these guys just yet. Your marketing and sales team has fought to get them in your database and you want to keep them there. You also want to extend the same courtesy that you gave them when they first opted in as it's part of the brand experience. It's time to test out some of these concepts to get the most out of your database.

Do you have any great ideas you've tried?

Chad H

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How do Marketers Measure Online Marketing?

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 ROI

On another note, the DMA found that e-mail's ROI will reach $45.65 for every dollar spent in 2008.

Anna Chernis of the DNA claimed: "E-mail produces the highest response rate for lead generation —especially for house campaigns—of direct mail methods we have studied,"

The one item to note is that in 2005, email delivered $57.25 for every dollar spent on it so there is a downward trend here.

Bottom line: You can produce with email but in order to secure your marketing budget, you need to prove that sales are directly related to your marketing efforts. Can you really prove marketing's effectiveness based on click-throughs? Here is one way you can use to improve the way you track your marketing campaigns using a closed-loop approach.

In addition, email ROI is decreasing but there are ways to leverage email with other marketing channels such as search, direct mail, podcasts and videos to help increase the effectiveness of email.

Happy marketing!

Chad H.

PS: Here's a related article over on ClickZ called: Why E-Mail ROI Is So Amazing

Tags: DMA, email ROI, marketing metrics

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

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 Wikipedia, a web widget is a small piece of code that you add to a web page. You also have desktop widgets (for example, the ones that come with Windows Vista, Apple and Yahoo widgets).

Why should I care about widgets?

• They are helpful as they provide useful information. For example, I have a weather application right on my desktop so I easily know the weather for the week.

• Market to your prospects. Are you trying to demonstrate leadership in your industry? Building your brand? Trying to drive people to your website? Consider creating a widget that will include your logo, a link to your website and provides useful information (see point #1) that will demonstrate your knowledge on a particular subject. It can even be something fun like a game - anything that reflect well on your company and/or brand.
  
  
• Communicate to customers more efficiently. Imagine if you were able to alert your customers instantly with a widget (for example, new tickets go on sale or a software alert) or provide them with a widget to receive mission critical information to their mobile device (this is a mobile widget)? The possibilities are endless. With widgets you get around email. If your widget is deemed useful, people will download it and use it.
  

What do Widgets and the Next US President have to do With Each Other?

This is an easy one - check out this widget from the Washington Post that I easily added to this post. This says it all. It provides an easy synopsis of the major presidential candidates and their positions. It demonstrates that the Washington Post knows its stuff and helps readers cut through the political rhetoric. It also provides a plug for Daylife - the company that built this widget.



The new craze is using widgets with social media sites such as Facebook and MySpace. For example, I downloaded a widget for the show The Office for Facebook that displays quotes from the show. Widgets demonstrate how companies are working together more to build on existing platforms and provide more useful applications.

Let me know if you have found other interesting widgets and if you find these useful.

Chad H.

PS - widgets can be a huge time drainer as well so watch out!
PPS - Larry Chase pointed me to Widgipedia: http://www.widgipedia.com. It's a widget search engine and directory . Get your widget on!

Tags: web widgets, The Office, Facebook, social media, Washington Post, Hilary for President

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Driving More Web Traffic: The Community Effect

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 tweens on how I'm down with gaming - boy was I wrong.

During my conversation I got the low down on "what's in" these days which includes RPG games (don't know what that is? Come on, what's wrong with you? :) ) and playing with your friends online. This is where gaming is like gambling. Like a slot machine, Xbox (Microsoft) makes you not only shell out for the system and the games but if you want to play online, you need an Xbox Live subscription. If you're a parent you probably know all about this. How does this relate to driving web traffic?

Gaming - The Online Community of Youth

Besides Facebook, MySpace and other web 2.0 online communities, my wedding table guests explained that they spend a tremendous amount of time playing online Xbox games. Why? Because it's a chance to play with your friends online which is far away from reality, parents, school etc... Did your parents ground you? No problem, you can still hang with your friends in a make belief world. It's no wonder that one of the more popular games is called "Fable" as this is a fairy tale world. These games are addictive as it's no longer the challenge of just you against the computer - it's also you "against" your friends. You now have a type of peer pressure to keep you coming back and spending more money and time online (with Microsoft).

How do You Capture the Online "Gaming" Effect?

This is the big question. Today, there are many articles out there on "marketing conversations" like this one called "Conversational Marketing" by Diane Hessen. What is the "social glue" that will keep people coming back to your site, opening your emails and buying your products and services? A great example of this is MarketingProfs Know-How Exchange. This is almost like gaming for marketing professionals (almost - there is no sniper fire or three pointers).

The Know-How Exchange allows small to mid-size businesses to post marketing questions on a wide variety of topics and the community provides responses. These questions are sent to the community daily via email. Points are awarded to the people with the best answers by the people who asked the questions. These points are called expert points. You now have a rating that you can compare with others. I have responded to 13 questions and had 8 of my answers accepted. I've accumulated 501 points and I have a batting average of 615 - not bad! Watch out A-Rod! The key item here is that very little engagement is required by MarketingProfs as the community drives itself.

The Know-How Exchange really works. It's a free service that allows its members to have their say (the ongoing conversation effect), it provides real answers by real professionals (usually) which gives it authenticity, it gives companies the chance to win new business by finding opportunities and it demonstrates that MarkingProfs is the place to go for marketing resources and thus promotes its premium memberships. This is really win win at its best.

Does it have the peer pressure effect? Yes as it lists the "experts" that have accumulated the most points overall which is like a video games high scores that everyone is trying to beat. It may not be the same as playing a collaborative video game but it's close as many of the regular experts tend to way in on the questions.

How can you Start Your Community?

This post was more to get your mind thinking of the possible and how communities can work. A few easy ideas on starting conversations in your industry is to have an "ask the expert" knowledge exchange. You can start this off by asking your customers for questions that they may have about their industry. For example, I work in the online marketing world so clients may ask what is the average open rate for software companies that have revenues over $500 million. Get the conversation started and use your team to answer these questions (perhaps the service component of your business). As this concept grows, you will start to develop a repository of resources that you can use to post on your site or your blog which is great for new content (think SEO). You will also start to grow a core group of members. As this idea grows, you may want to move to a format where you bring in advocates of your products and services. These may be clients and partners that may already have blogs and websites that support your cause. You can then move to more of an online community effect where the content is no longer solely dependent on your company.

I hope that you have found this informative and I wish you luck on building your online community. Remember to ask yourself what is the social glue that will keep your community together. If you can't answer that then you're not ready to start an online community.

Chad H.

Tags: Xbox, MarketingProfs, online communities, RPG

Image is from www.xbox.com (Microsoft - please don't sue me)

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

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 want to test out your product so I can evaluate it myself before I have a salesperson call me or before I invest anymore time in your company!

Thought Leaders Need to Keep Thinking

There are different ways that you can interact with prospects on the web but it's time that companies start to smarten up. Call it web 2.0 or the YouTube generation - whatever - people expect more from the web and they expect more from your website. It's time to think outside the box on how you can show off your products and services. Yes, thought leadership is also crucial. This involves demonstrating that your company is at the forefront of your industry and contains the best and the brightest people. The idea around thought leadership is to draw people to your business but once they are there, then what? Throw them a bone and show them that you're more then ideas - you have a product that has what they need to succeed.

Allow me to engage and interact with your product!

I'm finding more and more that the car manufacturers are at the forefront of this movement to take the web to the next level. Some campaigns like the one from Nissan I've criticized for their lack of authenticity and others like Mini and Honda I've praised for their uniqueness and marketing savvy.

A new campaign that I've found by Lexus is an ingenious one. In order to demonstrate how safe their vehicles are, they've created a microsite called ActivelySafe.com. If you go the site it doesn't just go to a microsite straightaway but opens up the real Lexus site to their 2008 RX product page and then opens up the microsite as a site overlay. This brilliant as it solves one of the dilemmas as to how marketers can drive we visitors back to the main site. OK... back to the microsite. To show you how safe the car is, they show you a picture of the front end mashed up and allow you to actually fix the car by pulling the front end of the car (see image)! This shows you that if your in a front-end accident that the car folds up nicely without injuring the occupants. This is obviously appealing to the target market and what's most important is that they are not just saying that safety is important - they allow you to see it and try it for yourself. This is a great use of flash technology and allows the web visitor to really engage in the product which is brilliant.

Some other elements that I liked on the microsite is that they allow you to do some of the other "standard features" (they're standard now) like "building" your own car and finding a dealership. The effect here is to build one interactive experience on another. You can always close the window and you;re on the main Lexus site. Lexus is taking this further by using similar storefront displays that allow passer-bys to "fix" the cars using body movements. This is a great way to combine the web and non-web experience and drive home the message.

Remember that the more that you actually engage your prospects and stand out from your competitors, the more likely they will want to engage with you. It's time to think how you can apply this approach to your product or service.

Chad H.

Tags: interactive marketing, integrated marketing, online marketing, lexus rx

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I Invented the Word Blogletter

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!

Chad H.

PS - Ok, the term blogletter has been used for many purposes but it seems that this was the first time it was used for this purpose - prove me wrong!

Tags: blogletter, combining an enewsletter and a blog

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Lead Generation "Insights". Yeah Right!

RainToday which is typically a pretty good source for small B2B companies looking to market professional services almost blew it with their new research report called "What's Working in Lead Generation". While I didn't purchase the complete report, I had a look at the executive summary and wasn't impressed until the last few points. In the downloadable PDF, they provide 6 lead generation insights for 2007. These insights are really not that insightful. Here they are:

1. Brand Matters. Really? I was "surprised" to read that those companies that have a stronger brand recognition generate more leads. Note the heavy sarcasm.
   
   
2. Know Your Target Market. Are they serious? This seems pretty obvious. It was even more obvious that the companies that know their target market (includes knowing which companies to target, knowing the titles of the people of these organizations as well as the specific people) tend to generate more leads. Wow, that's groundbreaking there.
   
   
3. Cold Calling Works. I don't even know where to start on this one. It's fairly logical that proactively calling someone will generate more business then just sitting on your ass. If you have your act together and have a decent strategy, you'll never really need to purely "cold call". This ties in with the next "insight"
   
   
4. Integrate Your Tactics. This too is obvious to some marketers but was one of the better "insights" and demonstrated the strengths in combining different marketing channels such as email, direct mail and follow up calling. While it's easy to generate a list and blast out an email and wait for the responses to roll in, this obviously can't be your only tactic.
   
   
5. Nurture the Leads you Have. OK, this was a good one because it's often overlooked. Many marketers talk about how many leads they generated at an industry conference and how many of those leads turned into sales. What about those leads that seemed to go nowhere - what happened to them? Were they not ready to buy yet? Did they not have the budget? What did your company do with these leads? A typical response I hear is that we don't really have a strategy here. Some companies rely on their sales team or demand generation team to follow up but do they really do this? Does a lead really want to get continuously nagged by a sales rep?
   
   RainToday notes that 50% of leads are not "sales ready" and require additional nurturing. This is crucial. By lead nurturing, I mean such practices as sending regular newsletters that demonstrate the expertise of the company in a particular industry inviting a prospect to a webinar and/or live event that provides tips to the target market and portrays you as a leader in your space. This is not just a "one-off" campaign but includes multiple touches over a specific length of time. Typically I see campaigns that direct targeted offers with relevant content that is delivered over a 1-2 month period. The goal is educate and keep in touch with a prospect until they are ready to buy your product or service.
   
   From my experience, lead nurturing needs to be easy to setup for it to work and you need to get buy in from all levels. The more automated it is, the better and the more you will get out of your efforts. Sales also has to be included in the planning process as they need to know that the goal is to help them and not get in their way. There are many times that I see these projects fail as sales (or the demand generation team) wants to send the messages themselves. Sales and marketing can work together. Lets repeat that. Sales and marketing can work together. That was pretty easy? :) For example, say marketing sends a prospect a new whitepaper on how to save your company money, sales should be able to see if the prospect opened the email and clicked through to the website and then follow up with that person. In this way, sales can focus on those prospects that are genuinely interested in your business. If they had the time to open your email or respond to a direct mailer, they shouldn't mind if you drop them a quick call.
   
   For the messaging itself, the relevancy part of this is crucial. Sending information that doesn't provide value to your prospect is a waste of time and can actually hurt you as the person may unsubscribe or look to your competitor.
   
   You can add complexity by sending different content based on the prospect's past behavior. For example, say the CIO your targeting doesn't open an email that you send, either send them another email with a different message or perhaps send them a direct mailer. This is easier to do then you think but does require a well thought out strategy. It's obviously worth it when you start to see those leads that were once considered losses turning into sales. You will also need a way to track which marketing initiatives helped get you the sale - in this way you can show your boss that the money you're spending is paying off and is not being "wasted". I always recommend starting small and monitoring the initial results. Once you prove that the strategy works, you can invest more heavily as you will have the proof to back up the needed resources to get it up and running and to maintain it. The main part here is creating fresh new content that will keep prospects interested.
   
   
6. Indicators of Future Lead Generation. This section made no sense and was really just an ad for the entire report that I wouldn't purchase.

I would definitely recommend subscribing to RainToday's monthly newsletter but I wouldn't spend anything on the report unless your really new to this area. I would be more inclined to check out Brian Caroll's blog - even though he caters to the larger B2B deals while RainToday seems to focus more on the small biz market.

As a quick question, have you used lead nurturing? Has it worked? Any insights into lead generation that you want to share?

Chad

Tags: raintoday, professional services, lead nurturing, lead generation, demand generation

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Have you Thanked Your Customers Today?

Are you saying to yourself "it's another day and I have so much to do with so little time?". I think we're all saying that so don't worry. Here are two words that you can say that are easy and will go a long way "Thank you!".

We sometimes forget that our customers are the lifeblood of any organization. Al DiGuido is his ClickZ article "The Power of "Thank You" explains that in today's world of technology, there is no reason that you shouldn't be thanking your customers. He sees email as the optimal technology to do this by using transactional emails. If someone buys your product or downloads some information from your website, send them a thank you to show that you value them as a customer or a potential customer.

You can take this concept further. Your sales team should always thank prospect for their time in a follow up email to a prospect meeting. Your customer service team should end each conversation with a "Thanks for calling and feel free to call again with any concern that you have". You can even have them send a quick follow up email with a thanks and here's how to get a hold of me. Why not add their picture to the email and really make it personal? Some companies add their sales rep's pictures to their email, why not customer service?

For all of us bloggers it's imperative that we thank all of those people out there that have either left a comment on your blog or linked to your blog. I regularly try and go out and seek those bloggers that have linked to my blog to see what they are writing about and leave a comment.

Give thanks to those that have helped make you what you are and don't ever forget them.

Chad H.

PS - I'm going to go thank my wife for allowing me to buy a 40' plasma.
PPS - Thanks for reading this blog and all of your comments
PPPS - Thanks www.caror.org for that great image above

Tags: clickz, email marketing, transactional emails, customer appreciation, Thanking your wife

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Improve how you use White Papers for Lead Generation - Part II

Have you created a white paper for your organization in order to generate leads? If you have, there are some great tips that Michael Stelzner has just written about in an article Getting The Most From Your White Paper Marketing.

His big tip is that you should consider providing a large chunk of the white paper for free before you ask for a web visitor to register for it. He uses the gaming industry as an example. There are some sites out there like EA Sports (one of my favourites) that will let you download a sample of the game before actually purchasing it. What Michael failed to mention was that you typically have to register for the sample but you get his point.

Here are some of his other tips that I liked:

• Keep the registration form out of sight. People are scared when they see it. Warm them up to the idea of registration with some "meat" from the white paper.
• Keep the registration form questions to a minimum. Only ask what you need. For example, why ask for zip code if all you need is state for your lead distribution processes.
• Provide some quotes on those that liked the white paper (like mini book reviews). Those quotes could be from industry big wigs or industry analysts (my tip).
• Send an auto-responder email letting the person know about other resources that are available. Michael suggests a slight delay in sending the white paper but I disagree. Nobody likes to wait around for anything these days and if there is a delay, they'll go to your competitors site and/or they'll forget why they registered in the first place.

One tip that I'll add is that it's always great if you have an industry analyst like Gartner or Forrester write a white paper about your company (assuming it's a positive one!!). This gives your company and products the credibility it needs to get people to consider you.

Do you have any tips that have increased your lead generation using white papers?

If you're interested in creating your own white paper or want some tips in writing a new one, see my post called Writing a White Paper? Read The Following Book in which I review Michael's book.


Chad H.

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Writing a White Paper? Read The Following Book

Perhaps you're looking to position your business as the industry expert or convince C-level executives that you understand their business issues and can provide solutions they need. Whichever the case, creating a white paper will help your organization generate new leads and help close out sales. The next question is - How do I create a white paper? You may think it's quite easy but when you sit down and you're in front of your monitor with your Starbucks grande latte you realize that writing a white paper is a tremendous task.

Writing a White Paper - Where do I Start?

After reading Michael Stelzner's new book "Writing White Papers: How to Capture Readers and Keep Them Engaged" I would highly recommend that you start with this book. Michael is one of the leading authorities on the topic of writing and marketing white papers and has written a simple easy to read book on the topic. Why should I have any idea on this subject? I provide advice to my clients on a daily basis on how to improve their online marketing tactics so I know a bit about white papers and lead generation. I also have a writing background with a Masters' in history (I know history! Thank goodness I went back to school in technology!).

Why "Writing White Papers"

Why did I like this book? Michael clearly lays out what the purpose of white papers are, what you should be trying to achieve, how to research your given topic, how to structure your white paper, what to avoid (really important!) and how to market your white paper once you have completed your masterpiece.

Some of the specific items that I liked were:

• Great tips such as interviewing subject matter experts for your white paper as well as some excellent marketing ideas such as strategies in displaying your white papers on your website. For example: Provide quotations on what people thought about your white paper.
  
• Excellent research resources at the end of the book
• Clearly laid out plan on how to write white papers. Michael even discusses the setting and frame of mind you want to be in when starting to write a white paper. All he needs to do is write the white paper for you (which I'm sure he would gladly do for a cost!)
  

While I found the book a bit repetitive, this was effective in reinforcing the key points of the book. Michael also recommended that when someone fills out a form to download a white paper, you should delay the sending of the white paper for 30 minutes. I'm not sure I would recommend that as typically web visitors expect things right away and may not want to wait around for this.
However, this is something that you may want to test out for yourself.

After reading this book (which only took me about 3 hours to plow through) I was even inspired to think about a white paper that would be specific to blogs. Michael believes that white papers really should be without humour and personality but blogs as we know are much different and are all about being informal. How about something called a "Blog Paper"? :)

Any other good books that you've read to help generate leads for your business? I wish you all the success at this!

Chad H.

Tags: Writing white papers, online marketing, lead generation, starbucks

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Honda Gets its Elements in Order With Fun Game

Here's an award winning integrated campaign by Honda to promote it's sporty Element. It combined, TV spots, search marketing and even YouTube videos!! The agency that designed the campaign ended up winning an award which isn't too surprising.

Why is this campaign so good?

• It's a great product. Start off with a great product and you're off to a good start

• It's fun. It's game that allows you to test drive the car above ground and below. This represents the car as it seems like a fun car.
  
  
• It's funny! You're interacting with rabbits and other animals. At one point the car tells a rabbit that its feet are huge and that it must get great traction. The Element that informs the rabbit that it has 4 wheel drive.
  
  
• It hits its target market. I think I'm part of this market as I've noticed this car and may consider it if/when we purchase a new vehicle.
  
  
• Its integrated. a. you have TV commercials that kicked this off. b. you have a website that directly relates to the commercial. How do I know this? Check out the META tag description the campaign site: <meta name="description" content="So you like that funny Honda Element TV commercial, huh? Well, then, come play a game or two with the Element and friends on an adventure-filled island. The Element is definitely a different animal.">. c. you have a site that's finely tuned for search (try searching Honda Element TV commercial) d. It's even advertised on frickin' Wikipedia and Youtube. They've got the bases covered.
  

Here's the YouTube video:



The only thing they may have missed was including a link from the main Element profile page on the Honda site (Duh??). That happens sometimes when the left hand can't speak to the right.

Have a great weekend!

Chad H.

PS - If your recall, Honda has done some other great commercials - remember the Cog Commercial?
PPS - What if Honda had included a blog for this camaign so we could keep the buzz going about this great car and great campaign?? Blogging still has a ways to go before it breaks into B2C full force.

Tags: Honda Element, online marketing, integrated marketing, youtube, B2C marketing

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