Get Rid of Your Marketing Database Deadbeats

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 rates down.

What CBS Sportsline did it to its Database Deadbeats

CBS realized that these database fungi were doing nothing for their email success rates and it gave them one opportunity to confirm if they wanted to receive emails from Sportsline and then deleted them from if no response was provided. As reported by MarketingVOX "The move was made to create a more engaged and active recipient pool after discovering that the high volume of emails was diluting its brand instead of building equity."

While you may not want to be as cut throat (you may want to give people 2-3 chances to opt back in), you need to take a good look at your database and create segments that are not solely based on say vertical or demographic information but also based on activity. Consider sending different call to actions to those who have not expressed any interest in any of your recent email campaigns or visited your website in the last few months. This can include a survey in which you ask them what they want to receive or if you should just remove them all together.

Why do I Need to do Anything? They'll just Unsubscribe if They are not Interested

You may be saying "if these are not interested in receiving our emails, they will probably just unsubscribe ". However, that's not the case as some email recipients are scared to unsubscribe as it may be used against them (it confirms they exist) while others can't be bothered and will just delete your email. Even worse, some may report you as spam. It may be time to say adios to your database deadbeats before your database becomes a mess of data that no one has any faith in.

The cleaner your database, the better response you will receive and the more your confidence your marketing and sales teams will have with it.

Chad H.

Tags: email marketing, marketing database, database deadbeats

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

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 it's too late" . Click here is old, boring and something your grandma might say. It's like web -10.0 (ok, I added that last stuff for effect).
  
• Bold your call to actions to make sure they stand out. This means not bolding too much of your other text
• Add links for the same call to action on images, links, headers throughout the email. Don't just add one link and pray that the recipient will find it.
  
• The call to action answers the question of the recipient 'What's in it for me?". Make sure that this is the case.
• Make sure you add the call to action high up in the email.

Have fun with your emails and good luck!

Chad H.

Check out my Email Marketing 101: Tips and Best Practices for more information on email marketing.

Tags: email marketing, writing email call to actions

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Elect Susie! Here is Some Creative Viral Marketing

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 of all of the web 2.0 tools such as Youtube, facebook, and myspace.

Ok, so Susie is not her real name and this poor little girl is being used by the Children's Defense Fund but you must applaud their efforts - let's hope that they let "Susie" eat and sleep!



In any case, the campaign is smart, funny and should raise some buzz for the cause of children in America. Good luck Susie!!

Chad H.

Tags: susie flynn, US politics, word of mouth marketing, social networks

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How do I Generate More Leads from my Website?

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 registration forms) to better understand what and why they fill out forms on websites. Here is a summary of the key points:

• While both marketers and users agree that registering for white papers, analyst reports and demos is acceptable, 45% of users are OK with registering to download product information. This item didn't even crack the top 5 for vendors! What does this mean? It means that you should experiment with putting this information into a PDF and placing a form in front of it. Think about it, a prospective buyer is evaluating your product and wants to read more about you. Most likely, they'll fill out a form (if it's simple) to get a PDF on your product.
  
  
• 72% of users said that a detailed summary of the white paper will encourage registration. What does this mean? Don't just put the title of the webinar on your landing page with a "Download now!" link beside it. Web visitors want a sneak peak at the white paper to ensure that it's worth their time to go through the registration process. You can read about best practices on this area from my post: Improve how you use White Papers for Lead Generation - Part II
  
  
• While most people provide their real name and email address, most don't provide their real phone number or answer custom questions accurately. This means that many registrants really don't want to be called and don't really care to answer such questions as "When do you plan to buy a product like ours?". Besides name and email, choose your registrations carefully! In addition, don't discount leads based on the lead qualification questions you've asked on a web form. Many just choose the default answers so they can get through the process and download the webinar or webcast that they want.
  
  
• 56% of users use business email addresses but 46% use non-business email
  addresses. Just because someone has signed up using a hotmail or yahoo address doesn't mean they should be treated any differently then someone from IBM or Goldman Sachs.
  

What does this mean for marketers and online lead generation?

• Try creating product summaries that require registration
  
• Ask for basic information only - the more you ask, the less accurate it will most likely be
• If you want people to register for something, ensure that you provide a good amount of detail on the landing page that will encourage registrations
• Since the lead qualification data that is provided may not be accurate, build processes that measure activity (email opens, form submissions, web activity) to gauge the interest of a particular prospect and assist in lead qualification. In addition, you may need to use data from third party sources (such as D&B) to verify how qualified a company is rather then relying on what the web visitor provided.

I hope these tips serve you well and good luck in your lead generation campaigns!

Chad H.

PS - please let me know if you have any examples that you would like to share.

Tags: form registrations, white papers, lead generation tips, KnowledgeStorm

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Increase Attendence for Webinars and Webcasts

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 the emails on time, had a good amount of registrations but only had 2 people actually listen in?

How do you increase actual webinar attendance?

It's easy if you have a good topic and a well thought out campaign. This tip will help to ensure that those that registered will actually show up. Steve Girshik over at the The Innovative Marketer published a document I made for my clients that tells you how to create a Microsoft Outlook calendar item that webinar registrants can save into their own Outlook calendar. This ensures that they have booked off the appropriate time and don't skip off. It's only one page - it can't much easier.

As an added tip, why not engage registrants before the webinar by giving them a quick call and asking them what they expect from the webinar or have an automated telephone reminder? I've also had companies send me surveys prior to the webinar asking me what I feel is important in regards to the topic of the webinar and also provides some foreshadowing so I get excited about the webinar.

Hope this helps!

Chad

Tags: B2B Webinars, webcasts, Outlook Calendar

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Web 2. Slowww - Low Adapatation by Corporations

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 days

Marketers 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 large corporations adopting to Web 2.0. looks promising as it seems that over half of the companies surveyed either have a blog or plan to have one (internal or internal) and the same goes for RSS (Click here for the image). However, the key words here are "or plan to have". If you know marketers, they would like to do as much as possible (and will sometimes promise as much) but there is a little thing called resources and reality that pulls us all back to earth.

The other main issue has to do with the company policies that can can some of these ideas before they get off the ground. For example, podcasts require companies to buy into the idea of publishing regular interviews that can humanize a company. This may require dedicated or partially dedicated resources that seek out customers and industry experts for these podcasts. For many companies, this requires a fundamental shift in the way that marketing is seen as
typically B2B marketers are focused on advertising, events/trade shows, and direct marketing. Podcasts can be seen as a lot money for a lot of nothing. Marketers first need to convince management to trail this concept and then need to prove how podcasts (and other web 2.0. strategies) affect the bottom line.

Private Blogs Don't Count (Either Does Being on Facebook and Having 500 Friends That are Co-Workers)

Does your company have an internal blog? I've worked with companies that have started one and then they died along with other collaboration tools such as an internal wiki, forum and RSS feeds. Why did it fail? There wasn't global adaptation of these tools and we weren't forced to use them. In addition, management didn't review how they were used and paid little if any attention to what was being written. For example, I would write a post on the company blog directed to company executives and no one would respond - nothing, nada (you can tell that I wasn't to happy about this). It's for this reason that I don't even consider these real marketing "blogs" because if they fail it's no big deal considering that the public doesn't see them. These are internal communication devices that can assist a company on facilitating ideas as well as promoting a corporate community (especially for global companies). If you're on Facebook or Link-in along with some of your co-workers, you can't say that your company is web 2.0. savvy. Give me a break. Web 2.0. only really applies when the public is interacting with your company and the conversation is ongoing. Internal web 2.0. devices should be used to support the external ones. For example, an internal blog could be used by marketing to create public blog posts.

Web 2.0. the Reality - OK, my Reality

What I didn't really like about this emarketer.com study was how limiting it was in its definition of web 2.0. Is having a video on your site really web 2.0.? I don't think so. Putting that same video on YouTube and other PUBLIC video sharing platforms is. Allowing people to comment on your video and post their own videos is. I don't even consider a blog as being part of web 2.0. unless I can leave a comment. If I can't leave a comment that it's just a regular website that typically does well in the search engines. I'm not even going to touch areas such as allowing the public to "tag" or recommend content (for more of this, see my recent post on USA Today).

Part of the spirit of web 2.0. is the ability for people to interact with other people and not just have a site or feed where the conversation is flowing in one direction. It's the concept of a real two-way conversation that is causing large companies to shake in their boots. This is evident in the above chart that demonstrates how little the concept of public blogs have been adopted by the Fortune 500. While this is improving, it's evident that most companies only play lip service to the idea of really listening to their customers and prospects and providing the ability to join the conversation.

Yes, there are horror stories out there regarding user generated content but as I've said in the past, if you're already in the public, people are talking about you. It's best to help direct the conversation by providing the tools to do so. In this way, you can better monitor what is being said.

Do you agree with my definition of web 2.0.? How do you define it?

Chad H.

Tags: emarketer.com, web 2.0. marketing web 2.0., USA Today, YouTube, blog marketing

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USA Today is Web 2.0. OK

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 Today didn't just build a new website, they built a new online community that has a completely new experience. The website is no longer a site that you go to when you want the latest information and then leave - it's become a community that many web users call home. You can now register (which includes uploading an image) to become part of the community which entitles you to create a profile, add friends and leave comments which leads me to the next web 2.0. theme.
  

• User Generated Mania: USA Today allows its community members to leave your own comments on actual articles. The success of this is clearly evident with close to 1000 comments left for article that covered the tragic shooting at Virginia Tech. From scanning through the comments, USA Today has provided a forum for its members to cope with this senseless act by allowing visitors to have their say. You can equate leaving a comment to lighting a candle or dropping a flower off a memorial - it isn't much but it's something and the least that we can do.
  
  To demonstrate the importance of these comments USA Today actually profiles some of them in a rotating header image on the home page. Readers can recommend comments that they like and also report those people that abuse this feature.
  
  In addition, the USA Today community allows for its online readers to rate articles to guide readers as to which articles were actually enjoyed by others in the community.

• My blog, your blog, OUR blogs: As a community member, you can write your own blog on USA Today or you can read one of the various "expert blog" on the USA Today website. They have The Weather Guys, American Idol chatter, and a sports blog. The effect is that you feel like your really one with the USA Today website as you can try and copy the experts and comment on their articles as well as write your own.
  

• Simple, Boring, EFFECTIVE RSS Feeds: If you're still one of those people that could care less about RSS it's time to get serious about it if you produce quality content on a regular basis. On USA Today, you can subscribe to blogs, articles, videos - whatever you want. They also have a section called "Other Voices on the Web" which is an RSS feed of articles from other sites. In this section, USA Today has republished articles from blogs and other sites from around the web.
  
  
• Interactive Features Keep 'em Coming Back: If you and your spouse want to have your own celebrity name like Bennifer or Brangelina, check out the Celebrity Couple Name Maker. (My wife Allie didn't mind "Chadlie"). These type of interactive elements that ask for user input keep people coming back to your website.

So if you're looking to learn more about what this whole web 2.0. thing is all about, skip the books, the reports, the analysts and hot air and check out www.usatoday.com.

Chad H.

PS - To the families and friends that have suffered from the recent tragedy at Virginia Tech, I would like to know that we are thinking about you up here in Canada.

Tags: USA Today, web 2.0., American Idol, user-generated content, UGC, news blogging, fun with web 2.0., online communities

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