Email Marketing Metrics You Should be Tracking

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 sanctioned women’s ski jumping as an official event making it the only Winter Olympics activity that does not allow women to compete in. We’ll come back to this story – let’s focus back on email marketing.

Sometimes it’s What’s Missing That Counts

I was reading MarketingSherpa’s 2009 Email Marketing Benchmarking Guide looking for useful metrics and tips. I found some extremely interesting data that I will discuss in future posts but what interested me more was what I believe is missing based on what I discuss with my customers on a day to day basis. The goal of this post is not to criticize the great work by the MarketingSherpa folks but rather to provide feedback and start a discussion on the types of benchmarks that should be included in future reports – especially when we’re talking about b2b marketing.

Email Metrics That Need Benchmarks

Here is a list of the email metrics that I would like to see in future MarketingSherpa Email Benchmark reports:

• Automated Email Metrics. I’m not referring to autoresponder emails but rather to campaigns that contain two or more automated emails. These emails should be sent using a marketing automation system like Eloqua. The goal is to demonstrate that key email metrics such as opens, click-throughs and conversions are much higher while unsubscribes are much lower using an automated program such as lead nurturing when compared to manual email sends (“one offs”). It would be very useful to B2B marketers to have benchmarks to track if their automated campaigns are trending upwards or downwards year after year.
  
  In addition, at a time when marketers need to do more with less, automated email campaigns allow marketers to reach many more recipients with a fraction of the effort. Therefore another metric may be the number of emails sent using automated campaigns and/or the number of programs executed. Considering that a recent Aberdeen Research report clearly demonstrated that best in class companies are finding lead nurturing successful, adding in these types of metrics should be a no-brainer.
  
  Once we start down this path we can create many different categories as there are a number of different types of automated campaigns such as re-engagement campaigns, renewal programs, trial programs, and welcome campaigns.
  
  
• How Email Contributes Further Down the Sales/Marketing Funnel. A common theme in 2009 is that marketers need to prove the value of their marketing spend in even greater detail. Therefore email opens as an example is not good enough. What we need to see is metrics such as the number of marketing touches (including email) that lead to an opportunity and/or closed deal. This data needs to go beyond the communications that marketing is sending but should combine the efforts from marketing AND sales.
  
  I know that you're thinking this is not easy to do and I agree with you but today’s marketing automation systems track all of the “digital body language” associated to a customer or prospect and display this data in ROI reports. It’s this type of data that will allow marketers to decide which messages are working and which aren’t and to clearly demonstrate the value that marketing is contributing to the organization.
  
  
• Database Accuracy Metrics. The cleaner your database, the better your marketing results will be – this is fairly obvious. However, do we really talk about this and benchmark this data enough so that marketers perceive this as a high priority? Marketers need to go beyond just generating new subscribers but also to ensure that they maximize the investment of these new contacts by ensuring that the profile for this contact is accurate and contains the necessary information for further segmentation. It’s been proven that contacts with accurate and complete information allow for better segmentation and personalization for email campaigns which increases response. I would like to see metrics that include the percentage completeness of contacts for key contact fields and the resulting email response metrics for campaigns that involve data that has been cleansed.
  
  
• Multi-channel Metrics. The success of email marketing campaigns should no longer be looked at in isolation. In fact email marketing should no longer be looked at in isolation. Successful marketers are combining email with other channels such as SMS, direct mail, social media, tele-prospecting and recorded voice to maximize its effect.
  
  It would be very helpful to see which channels combined with email were the most successful in certain situations. For example, should B2B marketers combine email and SMS messages for event reminders or is email sufficient? Did a combined direct mail and email campaign really lift response for a new product launch or was email sufficient? Marketers are looking for benchmark data to help them make decisions on how to maximize their marketing dollars and these types of metrics could really help.
  

With that said, MarketingSherpa may already be compiling these metrics in other reports but I did not see them in the recent email benchmarking report and wanted to ensure that they’re aware of these key items. I would love to hear from you if you feel these items should be included in future reports and if there may be other metrics that may be missing. And oh yeah, go sign the petition over at http://www.wsj2010.com/ to allow these courageous ski jumpers to fulfill their dream of competing in the Olympics in an event that is an obvious omission.

Chad H
Follow me on Twitter: @chadhorenfeldt

PS: Become a fan of my new son Matthew on his Facebook fan page.

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Tips on Using Twitter to Boost Your Marketing Efforts

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 your company but they’re good to keep in mind.

I’ve already written a post on tips for using Twitter and email marketing but I wanted to take this to another level. This is not a post on the basics of Twitter. If you want some basic tips on Twitter, check out Twitter 101 or Hubspot’s How To guide. I was inspired by those bright people over at Radian6 who showed me some of the untapped potential of Twitter. This led me to research the ways that marketers are leveraging Twitter to improve their engagement with their target audiences. Most of these tips are dead simple so enjoy and use them well.

Taking Your Marketing to the Next Level With Twitter

• Link to Your Twitter Testimonials. If you go to Radian6’s home page, they’ve included a banner that says “See what they are saying about us on Twitter”. What they’ve done is used the Twitter “favorite” feature to mark the posts where people have made positive comments about them and then featured this prominently on their home page as well as on confirmation pages. This is simple, yet brilliant. They’ve leveraged Twitter to show both Twitter and non-Twitter users what real people are saying about them. You could probably create an RSS feed from this URL as well and then display this content in real time on your blog or website.
  

• Socializing Your Landing Pages. On his reside blog, Philip Nelson describes how Eloqua includes a number of Twitter links below the main call to action to continue the conversation via Twitter and other social media outlets and to leverage tools like Twitter to further promote your marketing materials. It also includes links to prominent Eloqua Tweeps that will help build your Twitter brand.
  
  



• A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words. If you’re looking to make your company seem more real to prospects and customers, Twitter is perfect for this. However, words can only say so much. If you’re at an event, have a cool employee get together or doing a live webinar, all you need to do to make your Twitter account come alive is a camera phone and a Twitpic account.
  
  Once you sign up at Twitpic, you’ll get an email address that you can email your pics to from your phone. The subject in your email is the message that will appear with a link to the pic. It’s that easy. Doing this in real time helps employees, customers and prospects feel like they are right there with you. Barefoot_exec provides an excellent example:
  
  
  
• Change Your Twitter Home Page Pic. This idea literally jumped out at me when I went to Dunkin Donuts Twitter page.
  
  Look at the size of that drink! You know that they’ll change the iced drink to hot chocolate come the fall. That is a good use of Twitter for your marketing efforts. Think about how you can time the changes to your pictures to promote events or product launches.
  
  
• Combine the Power of Twitter and StumbleUpon. The new URL shortener Su.pr makes it easy to shorten and track long URLs but goes well beyond that. By using this service, you can point people to your blog posts and events and have readers further promote it by indicating to the StumbleUpon community that they like it. In addition, this service makes it easy to promote a page on both Twitter and Facebook at the same time as well as allowing you to schedule when the Tweet should be published if it’s specific to an event or if you want to Tweet and have a life.
  
  
  
• Direct the Conversation #1 Using Hashtags. People are going to start talking about you on Twitter and you have little control over this conversation. However, there are a few tricks and tools you can use to direct the Twitter stream. For example, if you have an event, promotion, theme etc… create a hashtag for it (what is a hashtag?). Here is a great example of how Dunkin Donuts created a contest and used a hashtag to focus the conversation and engage its customers. To win a prize, their Twitter followers had to write about a bold moment in their lives. By using the hashtag, #FrznCapp, tweeps could monitor the conversation using the Twitter search tool:
  
  
  In a recent webinar, Marketing Experiments had a great idea of including a slide at the beginning of the presentation that included the Twitter hashtag for the webinar and provided two ways to monitor and contribute to the presentation: Using Tweetchat.com or Search.twitter.com. To take this further, include the hashtag in the event invites and reminders on your emails, landing pages, tweets and your other marketing channels.
  
  
• Direct the Conversation #2 Using Unique Twitter Accounts. With my wife in the final stages of her pregnancy we’re seeing a lot of movies (while we still can). At the end of a preview its typical to see a URL for the movie site. I was a bit dumb founded when I saw “Follow us on Twitter”. Movies are jumping into the Twittersphere – check out: http://twitter.com/JulieandJulia
  
  Think about an upcoming event or a new product release – would it make sense to create a unique Twitter account? There are many possibilities here but you need to think about how you would support that Twitter account.
  
  
• Tracking Twitter as a Source of Web Traffic. Make sure that you can clearly track the source of traffic to your website from Twitter. This goes beyond tracking Twitter at the aggregate level. When someone fills out a form or purchases a product, you should be able to trace this back to the link you tweeted about. This can be done in a few ways. We typically use query strings to track other channels as well as paid search and banner ads.
  
  
• Forcing User to Promote You on Twitter. This is something that will definitely not work for everyone but I thought it was unique. When I “upgraded” to the new HooteSuite Twitter platform, it forced me to tweet about why I liked HooteSuite before I could complete the upgrade process.
  
  
• Creating Surveys for Twitter Followers. Use a tool like PollDaddy to engage your Twitter followers. You can use this information for a future campaign and share the results with your followers. This of course assumes that you have developed a strong following. Don’t be afraid to tweet about the survey more than once. Some of your followers may not have seen your tweet the first time.
  
  
• Cross Promote Across Your Social Media Sites. This tip may be obvious but it’s certainly not done enough. Don’t look at your social media sites in silos. If there is a good conversation going on in your LinkedIn group, direct tweeps to it. If you’ve posted a bunch of pictures on your Facebook fan page or videos on your YouTube page, use Twitter to promote it.
  
  The opposite works as well. Use your blog to promote an offer that is exclusively through Twitter. Twitter can also be used to direct customers to content and/or discussions in a customer only portal. Just ensure you warn your followers as you don’t want to alienate those that can’t access the content. The possibilities here are endless but it’s time to start to brainstorm on how to leverage all of your social media channels to get the most out of them that will achieve your marketing goals.

I hope this post gave you some new ideas. Please let me know if you have any others.

Chad H
@chadhorenfeldt

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Technorati Tags: Twitter,HooteSuite,Facebook,Social Media,Engaging Twitter followers,Best practices Twitter

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Top Automated Marketing Personalization Tactics

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 respond and ultimately purchase your products and services.

A personalized approach facilitates this process. It allows you to make people feel special by providing timely communication that is more like a dialogue than a one way conversation. The trick is to create this type of personalized experience that will drive sales but to make it easy for marketing to execute and not break the marketing budget bank.

I've listed the top tactics that I typically discuss in my day to day client meetings. Together, these make up a personalization playbook that you may want to keep in mind when you plan and execute your future campaign:

• Email / direct mail merge fields: This is the bottom of the pyramid in terms of personalization. Adding someone’s “first name” to an email is the least that you can do these days. While it may seem obvious, don’t overlook it as it’s more important in conjunction with the other tactics I've listed below.
  
  
• Personalized URLS (PURLS): I like to think of PURLS like those place cards at weddings that have your name on it and tell you where you’re sitting. It’s like an exclusive invitation that is also very practical. It’s saying “Yes, you belong here – now go sit down at table 10”. What do you do? You go find your table! PURLs act in the same way as they have your name as part of the URL and they take you to what you feel is an exclusive website designed just for you. We've found that people have responded better to offers that contain a personalized URL (such as www.fun.com/yourname). With the right technology, this is also very easy to do.
  
  
• Form pre-population: When you've strike up a conversation with someone you've just met at a party, do you keep asking them what their name is every two minutes? NO! They would feel that you weren't listening to them and move on. It’s not that much different in the world of marketing. We want to feel that when I’m engaging with you that I’m at a place where “everyone knows your name” (now you know why I included the video on Norm). If you've already collected information from someone, avoid asking for it again at all costs. You should make the customer feel that you are carrying on a conversation from where it left off last time – not starting all over again.
  
  
• Email / direct mail sender personalization: Notice how this is getting more difficult as we move down the list? When you send a post card to your family from your trip to Spain (I really want to go back to Spain but can’t with a baby on the way) do you sign it “Yours Truly, the marketing team”? NO! If there is someone in your organization that has a direct relationship with the intended recipient, send it from them.
  
  For B2B companies, have communications sent from sales reps or Account Managers if a relationship has been established. A recent Aberdeen Research report has proven that this technique can dramatically boost response rates. In B2C, this is more difficult but there may be opportunities to explore. For example, some sports teams can experiment having communications personalized from their players.
  
  Yes this method requires additional effort and yes it does mean that your data needs to be in order for it to work but it’s a proven method that brings your company closer to your prospects and customers. When sales reps call into prospects and they're not seen as strangers, there is a higher chance that they can make traction. This is especially the case if your prospect has already received an email from your company with a thought-leadership piece that was based on their interests and had a picture of the rep to put a face to the name. This process is 100% easier when you have tight integration between your customer relationship management tool and your marketing automation tool.
  
  I use this technique as part of an automated customer education nurturing program that I created and am seeing greater than 50% open rates when emails have the sender name of the account representative.

• Personalized email/direct mail content. There are two parts to this and I could spend a whole blog post just on this topic. I’ve already discussed the first part which is personalizing the sender and signature of email or direct mail communications. The next part which is even more difficult is personalizing the message.
  
  Why is this part so difficult? For example, it would be great to have a platform that would know your home insurance subscription is due in 60 days and have an email automatically sent to you that told you to look for a mailing with your renewal documents. This email would include the name of person that will call you and what the new subscription cost will be.
  
  This can be difficult for a number of reasons:
  
  1. It can be costly to have a system that can execute these types of complex campaigns
  2. You need a way to collect the data and systems that make it easy to action on. For example, I recommend creating email campaigns based on the past web behaviour of individuals or their digital body language. This requires a system that can collect this data and then have an easy way to query this data so it can be actioned on.
     
  3. You need to have clean data. To personalize the message, you need to have the data to personalize it that is normalized and complete.
  4. It requires data sources that are integrated so they can be easily queried to create lists and personalized messages. There’s no point spending days building a list – it’s just not cost effective.
     
  5. Content must be created for each segment – this requires resources etc…
     
  
  To make this a personalization a bit easier, technology advancements allow you to add dynamic content sections to mostly generic communications. By adding in some slightly personalized sections you can really show that you can really make a difference in your response numbers. This may mean displaying a special offer for repeat purchasers or dynamically displaying an article in your regular newsletter that is geared specially to your customers. Is it worth it to make these personalized adjustments? What I recommend is to try it out and test the results. In countless examples it has led to increased response rates and reduced the time needed to execute campaigns by eliminating redundant steps when targeting multiple segments.
  

• Dynamic landing page/microsite content.This is similar to the last point but typically is more flexible. Emails and direct mail are fairly static while website content can dynamically change on the go. For example, you can create campaigns that ask a series of questions that builds a profile and creates a personalized knowledge library or demo for an individual based on their selections in a web session. This also goes hand in hand with PURLs as the PURL is the gateway to a personalized microsite.
  
  This content should change based on the behaviours that the contact has exhibited over time. Only display the content that the web visitor will find relevant or you won’t find them there very long. We use a technique called "Progressive Profiling" where we collect addition information over time and build a more complete picture for the sale team.
  
  You can blend other elements such as merge fields, form pre-population, and dynamically displaying the sales rep’s contact information to make the web experience as personalized as possible.

• Event triggered communication. We've talked about delivering the right message, now we’ll talk about how to deliver it at the right time. There are many different ways to do this but the best time to deliver the right message is at a time that matches your customer’s buying process. When my air conditioner blows up and it’s 100 degrees in the shade, that’s the time I want a call from someone that can fix my air conditioner.
  
  Here are so more obvious examples of triggered communication:
  
  1. Sending confirmation emails when a product is purchased or a white paper was requested
  2. Sending unique communications to new email subscribers Sending a promotion email to an opted-in subscriber who has visited certain product pages X amount of times in Y amount of days
  3. Email and Direct email sent to trial recipients over the lifetime of a trial
  4. Customer communications based on the terms of an agreement. The insurance example above is a good one
  5. An email promotion sent to customers on their birthday
     
     
  Some of the key requirements that I've described above are also required to make this a reality – namely a system that can automatically detect these triggers and fire off the
  right communication at the right time. If you have the right tools and data synced up correctly, your only limits are your creativity and your free time.

• Automated, personalized voice messages. When I think about automated voice messages, I think back to an episode of the Simpsons where Homer spammed all of Spingfield trying to solicit money from them. That is a bad example.
  
  An example that I've seen really work well is combining personalized voice messages with email. For example, if you have an important webinar coming up, why not send a voice message from the webinar presenter inviting them to the webinar and telling them to look out for an email invite. For those that have registered, have a personalized voice message reminder. They key is to have this process automated so you don’t have to create different lists and coordinate the execution. All you need to do is to design the process and let the technology handle the rest.
  
  
• Sales tools. A tactic that I recommend is to create email templates for the sales team that allows them to modify the content and supplement their own personalized messages for each situation based on what they know about a customer or prospect.
  
  For example, I use email templates in Outlook that I've created using my marketing automation tool. I can easily change up the text for these emails in Outlook to personalize them based on the specific circumstance before I send them. The template makes this process easier for me but it’s the personalization that is needed to make the content relevant.
  

You may have counted 9 points and said “what gives?”. The 10th point is using social media to deliver an automated, personalized experience but this concept is still in its infancy. There are a few examples here and there but for the most part, social media is real time communication by real people and the personalization is controlled more by the consumer. It will be interesting to see what new technologies develop in the near future.

Let me know if you have any other examples or opinions that you want to share.

Chad H
@chadhorenfeldt

PS: Here is a good article worth reading: The Four Dimensions of Personalization

Technorati Tags: personalization,marketing automation,Simpsons,microsites,direct mail,email,smart marketing,Cheers

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Latest B2B Marketing Trends From SiriusDecisions Summit 09

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 the comments below, some great stats and thoughts have been captured by attendees via Twitter (yet another reason to use Twitter).

At some point I would like to come back to each category and focus on them specifically but for now, here is some organized Twitter talk for y’all – enjoy it:

Sales and Marketing Alignment
jblock: Only 32% of sales and marketing orgs work together to define programs for existing customers. @megheuer #sds09

megheuer: Sales is protective of customers and late-stage deals; marketing needs give options, not mandates, to help at this stage #sds09 @tjaros

jblock: 72% of B2B orgs can segment the customers and prospects in their marketing database. @megheuer #sds09

jblock: Management changes served as a catalyst for greater sales and marketing integration at Aspect @thetravelingcmo #sds09


megheuer: #sds09 If leads that marketing thinks are qualified get ignored by sales, find out why/what's changed to fix it @tjaros

megheuer: Question: Marketers, do you understand the compensation structure of the team you feed leads to? No=FAIL #sds09 @tjaros


megheuer: #sds09 "whole sales team is motivated to make this work" so positive changes in marketing really make a difference --Perry Dembner


megheuer: #sds09 If leads that marketing thinks are qualified get ignored by sales, find out why/what's changed to fix it @tjaros

megheuer: #sds09 Ennis: "Get everyone clear on marketing's contribution to revenue" and use a common language to track, explain it

megheuer: #sds09 @joegalvin says sales 2.0 is really about the dominance of buying cycles and increasing productivity through sales readiness

megheuer: #sds09 Only19% of attendees have sales and marketing collaborate on sales playbooks; 58% don't create them at all

megheuer: #sds09 Goal of sales playbooks is increased productivity: More opportunity, shorter sales cycles, higher win rates

megheuer: #sds09 It's not a new selling paradigm, it's a new buying paradigm, powered by technology @joegalvin says

cahidalgo: #sds09- 59% of attendees do not believe their sales and marketing are aligned. amyblack: #sds09 how do you increase adoption? Process drives productivity - start with process then implement technology.

Lead Nurturing

jblock: @tjaros: If you get one deal out of a reconstituted leads program, it's worth the effort. #sds09

jblock: 5%-10% of leads that are sitting in your CRM system as "dead" can become real opportunities if put into a nurturing program. #sds09

cahidalgo: #sds09- Tony Jaros - lead nurturing business rules must be established by BOTH marketing and sales in order to be effective.

megheuer: #sds09 "When leads are actively disqualified, that' a good thing- you can address that lead in an automated way to nurture it" –@tjaros

megheuer: #sds09 When a quantity function (1-and-done marketing) feeds a quality-focused function (sales), leads fall out at top of funnel @tjaros

megheuer: #sds09 21% of attendees have a lead nurturing program in place now; twice that number are "working on it"

Marketing Effectiveness Measurement

megheuer: Biggest change in marketing results: About a 10% drop in closed deals over the last year @tjaros #sds09

megheuer: #sds09 @jneeson reports 55% of marketing inquiries generated via the Web today; email 19%; events 15%, direct mail 11% (averages)

megheuer: Great metrics to track from CyberSource: # of days to close a deal and # of marketing touches to close #sds09

megheuer: "We know that sometimes approximate is good enough to get us where we're going" for marketing reports -Brenda Kring #sds09

megheuer: Need to be able to measure overall ROI and also activities, to align them with your overall strategy #sds09 @lazgonzalez

MarketingFuel: 52% of attendees dont track conversion rates [in their sales pipeline] and 77% dont track sales cycle lengthi n the sales pipeline #sds09 jblock: Only 24% of orgs have a closed loop process between sales and marketing regarding detailed info on opportunities. #sds09

kdewitte27: #sds09 Org's that have embraced a closed loop approach=+21% profit and +24% rev growth vs -6% and 0% for those that haven't (3 yr timeframe)

amyblack: Deborah Nelson at HP says that her "best in class" roi target is $70 earned for every dollar spent. #sds09

Sales/Marketing Funnel

stharris: #sds09 Most case studies are after purchase. Why not have one on Why they switched? Case studies across the demand waterfall. (Tony Jaros)

cahidalgo: #sds09: TJaros- "The demand waterfall is as much about human behavior as it is numbers." Human change management is part of process change

megheuer: Omniture improved # of opportunities by 5X, marketing's pipeline contribution by 7X based on linking brand to demand #sds09

megheuer: "Not about how we measure progression of a sales opportunity, but how we impact the progression of an opportunity" -@joegalvin at #sds09

jeffernst: #sds09 @jneeson This year sales is not just telling marketing we need more leads, we need marketing's help advancing our pipeline opps.

jblock: Focus is not so much at the top of the funnel; it has shifted to pipeline acceleration and sales enablememt. #sds09

Channel Marketing

jblock: Partners need guidance from their suppliers to run effective multi-touch campaigns. @lazgonzalez #sds09

cahidalgo: #sds09-common definition of a lead expands beyond direct sales and marketing and must also extend to the channel.

kdewitte27: #sds09 trend in channel demand gen strategy: let the partner create his leads and have the vendor support them with the right tools.

megheuer: #sds09 Channel programs shifting $ to supplier-to-customer programs, delivering message themselves, not waiting for partner @lazgonzalez

MarketingFuel: 83% of #sds09 attendees have absolutely no visibility into Channel marketing campaigns and effectiveness. Do partners really want you to?

Marketing Automation

megheuer: #sds09 Marketing automation is a requirement for best-practice performance says @jneeson

megheuer: #sds09 Prediction from @jneeson is by 2015, up to 50% of b-to-b marketers will deploy marketing automation


Marketing Structure

cedwardbrice: #sds09 more than half of audience making organizational changes to their marketing functions

kingsol: #sds09 Common theme between Deb (HP) and Buell (IBM) on creating single marketing themes for global deployment. Develop Once, Run Anywhere [DORA]

megheuer: #sds09 "Cajoling and good citizenship did not work" to drive use of run-once-use-everywhere programs; Centralized org structure did

megheuer: #sds09 By 2015, dominant marketing model will be an architecture of plays and tactics in an integrated, multi-dimensional approach

megheuer: #sds09 Attendees report marketing ops (38%), field mktg (36%) are areas of marketing programs that will change the most by 2015

megheuer: #sds09 The marketing demand center has advisory, execution and technical resources--more value-add than execution only @jneeson

megheuer: #sds09 Most attendees report their marketing org structure is a hybrid model (43%); 2nd most common is centralized (32%)

megheuer: #sds09 Leading organizations invest in marketing skills and address gaps in technology, process and programs that hurt progress

Social Media

cedwardbrice: #sds09 B2B organizations with a coordinated reputation strategy gain an average of 40 percent more inquires

brainshark: #sds09 Create content in smaller chunks that can be reused @jblock Convergence of Social and Traditional Media

megheuer: Need to have a baseline--do an annual audit of communications and social media activities to see what works/doesn't @jblock #sds09

megheuer: "We can't stick our heads in the sand anymore and not monitor what's going on in social media" -@jblock #sds09

megheuer: @jblock: Use a combination of social media and traditional awareness tools to improve leverage and reach of assets #sds09

amyblack: #sds09 Social media is cheap (technology) but expensive from a human resources stand point - it takes time and effort to do it well [ Amen!]

megheuer: #sds09 Only a small number of btob organizations have a coherent strategy for social media says @jblock


amyblack: #sds09 Communities are the fastest growing social media segment within b2b orgs - blog adoption is still higher ( 33% vs. 29%)

amyblack: #sds09 prediction that social media will become more a function of product marketing as that group needs to have a dialogue with customers

Here are some quick thoughts that I’ve jotted down (more later - just went through 25+ pages of Twitter search results and need to reflect more on this):

• Inbound marketing is and will be extremely crucial go forward but marketers need to develop strategies to target leads that are deeper in the sales/marketing funnel – especially in this economy
• Importance of lead nurturing (no need to say more right now)
  
• No mention of lead scoring - any comment on this from summit attendees?
  
• Suppliers are looking for ways to help out their partners
• Social media in B2B marketing is still at its early stages but expect this to grow enormously for the next summit
• The key across all of these topics is sales/marketing alignment. It may also be the most difficult part.
  

Thanks to all of the twitters who passionately twitted at the conference and gave people like me some semblance of being there. Of course, muchos gracias to @siriusdecisions for bringing together great presentations and great people.

Chad H.
@chadhorenfeldt

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Technorati Tags: B2B Marketing,sales marketing alignment,lead management,lead nurturing,Twitter,BtoB,social media,demand waterfall,marketing automation,marketing ROI

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Top 10 Triggered B2B Email Marketing Campaigns

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 campaigns. While many may label this as “lead nurturing”, it goes well beyond lead nurturing. It’s at times like this when you need a bounce in your step and powerful tools that will make it easy to keep you engaged with customers and prospects but allow you to leave work at a reasonable hour.

After reading Ed Henrich’s excellent article on ClickZ Top 10 Triggered E-mail Programs to Build Relevance, I wanted to take a more B2B slant on it but as you’ll see, many of the triggered email programs apply to both B2B and B2C. By triggered email campaigns, I mean an email or a series of emails being sent based on an action of a contact in your database, by their inaction or by their state (for example, a new customer). Here are my top 10 triggered email marketing campaigns:

1. Transactional Messages. Transactional messages or autoresponder emails are some of the easiest and most beneficial campaigns to setup. By transactional email, I’m referring to the automatic email that you receive when you sign up for a newsletter or download an e-book. The open and click-through rates are typically much higher for these types of emails as the web visitor has engaged with your organization and almost expects to receive something in return.
   
   In addition, Michele Linn over at Savvy B2B Marketing recommends that “instead of providing an immediate download of the offer (e.g. white paper, webinar, etc.), send an email with a link to it”. Therefore, the transactional email becomes more than just a record of a transaction but the offer itself. This is recommended for a number of reasons as it provides a greater assurance that the email provided will be legitimate, makes it easy for the recipient to forward the document on and acts as a bookmark to easily find the document at a later date. Here is a perfect example: A web visitor finds your pay per click ad on a Google search results page and clicks on it. On the ensuing landing page, they are able to download a relevant white paper after filling out a short form. Instead of providing the white paper on the confirmation page after the form is filled out, send a link to the white paper in an email. This ensures that you get the most of out your paid search campaigns.
   
   For more information on autoresponder emails, see my post “Email Autoresponders 2.0 in B2B Marketing”.
   
   
2. Welcome email campaign. While an autoresponder may be part of a welcome email campaign, this type of campaign typically includes 2-3 emails sent over a period of 2-3 weeks and should have different messaging.
   
   With some marketing automation platforms, you can automatically check to see if the contact is a new one to your database after they have filled out a form. If it is a new contact, send that person an email that acknowledges that they are a new registrant and provide information on what they will receive and when they will receive it. You should also include a link for them to update their email subscriptions and their profile.
   
   Follow up emails that are part of the welcome email campaign may include sending the latest newsletter, or key videos and/or documents based on the information provided. Some organizations use welcome email campaigns to gain additional information on the registrant for better segmentation – something we call “progressive disclosure”. The key to this campaign is to demonstrate to the new registrant that it was worth it to provide their information and build a long lasting relationship.
   
   
3. Event/webinar campaigns. This is fairly obvious one. When someone signs up for an event, send on the event information to the registrant via email. One item often overlooked is automating the entire event registration and follow up process. A fully automated event contains the following emails:
   -First invite
   -Second invite to those that didn’t respond to the first invite
   -Reminder email for those that registered a day before the event
   -Reminder email for those that registered on the day of the event
   -Follow up email thanking those people that registered and attended
   -Follow up “sorry we missed you email” to those that registered but didn’t attend.
   -OPTION: If an event has size restrictions, have an automated email sent when capacity has been met and send another automated email to those on the waiting list if additional room was made available.
   
   When setup correctly, this type of automated process can save the marketer countless hours as the lists are automatically generated and emails are sent as per the schedule set up ahead of time. For more tips on improving your webinar campaigns see Paul Teshima’s excellent post Four Practices to Increase Webinar Effectiveness.
   
   
4. Inactive or Dormant Lead campaign. By inactive, I mean a contact in your database that has not responded to an email or visited your website within the last six months. I’m not referring to a lead that sales forgot to follow up on but this program may include those contacts as well.
   
   Similarly to your welcome program where you had unique messaging based on their “new contact” status, you’ll want to customize your messaging for those contacts that have not demonstrated any recent activity. The key here is for your marketing automation platform to automatically feed these inactive contacts into a campaign that will fire off these targeted emails. If you have to manually mine your database for these “inactives” or pay someone to do it, you are not “doing more with less”.
   
   These types of emails can include the following:
   -Special offer that re-engages the contact
   -Survey that asks the contact what type of information they would like to receive
   -Notice that if they don’t respond, they will be removed from regular communications.
   
   I’ve seen campaigns that flag contacts as “inactives” and removes them from receiving "regular" emails but if these inactive contacts demonstrate any activity, the inactive flag is removed and they set to receive regular email communications.
   
5. Customer service survey. Automatically send out a follow up email after a customer service case was closed asking for feedback. This is again a simple idea but often overlooked. This type of campaign can prevent issues from boiling up.
   
   
6. Renewal reminders. If your product or service is subscription based, automatically enter key customer contacts into an email campaign that sends auto email notifications that their contract is about to expire at the 90, 60 and 30 day mark prior to the renewal date.
   
   
7. Trial tips. If your product includes a limited free trial, enter contacts into a trial campaign that will send targeted emails throughout the trial with value add materials that encourages the lead to take the next step in the purchase process.
   
   
8. New customer program. For new customers that have purchased your product or service, enter them into an email campaign that introduces them to your product as well as your company. Your product may have been purchased by a select few but will be used throughout the organization. Having a “new user/customer” campaign can help people that aren’t familiar with your product get better acquainted.
   
   
9. Education programs. By education programs, I’m referring to the traditional lead nurturing campaigns. This is typically a series of emails sent over a period of time that helps keep your company top of mind for potential customers. While I’m not going to focus on the substance of these emails, I will indicate how these campaigns are triggered. These types of campaigns can be triggered by:
   -Sales reps entering leads into a nurturing program via a trigger in your Customer Relationship Management (CRM) database. Many CRMs are fully integrated with a marketing automation platform which easily allows for these types of campaigns.
   -Lead Rating not being high enough. If a lead is deemed “not yet ready to be sent on to sales”, they can be automatically added to a lead nurturing campaign with the goal that they lead will eventually raise their hand to indicate they are ready to be engaged.
   -Activity/User interests. As an example, if a certain link was clicked on an email (or not clicked on), a contact can be added to an email campaign that will send on more targeted information. Another example is when a web visitor was looking at a page or series of pages on your website, automatically send them a follow up email that provides additional information with a call to action to speak to an expert that can answer any questions that they may have had. Ed Henrich referred to this as a “browse program”.
   
   It’s these types of automated email campaigns that when set up properly can produce tremendous results. The key to this is ensuring that you are measuring the outcomes of these nurturing campaigns. See my post “Lead Nurturing - How to track ROI?” for more details.
   
   
10. Reference Program from Net Promoters. This was an idea I brought up to my own company but it took Ed Henrich to remind me about it. If your organization runs a Net Promoter survey, send an automatic follow up email to those that are “promoters” asking them if they would act as references

These are my top 10 triggered email campaigns but this is by far not a full list. Having the right tools allows you to create highly customized automated campaigns. I hope that you found this useful and please let me know of other automated email campaigns that you may have deployed and how they fared.

Chad H.

Technorati Tags: lead nurturing,e-mail marketing,lead scoring,autoresponders. automated email campaigns,ClickZ,event marketing,webinars

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Sharing Space: Marketing and Sales

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 picture of it – thanks Andrew!). Take 30 seconds and really think about the message this is conveying:

Here are some items to consider:

• The only parking spaces reserved were for outside sales and customers
• There were enough parking spaces available for everyone (reserved spaces were not essential)
• What do other employees (including inside sales) think when they see this?

You may have the following reactions:

• I don’t think this is a big deal. Sales are coming from all across the country and need a special place to park when they visit headquarters
• Outside sales are getting the recognition they deserve for making the company what it is. They should repaint the white lines and repave the cracked pavement.
• Why should sales get their own parking spaces? I work my but off yet have to find my own parking spot or take public transportation.

Any of these opinions are valid but here is something to consider – we’re in a down economy right now and sales are not as easy to come by as they once were. You may be selling the sharpest and finest knife set ever created with a brand that everyone knows, loves and trusts but at when money is tight, people will consider all of their options. At your own company there still may be plenty of interest for your products or services but companies may not have the budget to purchase from you which means longer sales cycles and missed forecasts. How are the best in class companies still reaching their 2009 targets?

Come Together. Right Now. Over Me

SiriusDecisions, a leading source for business-to-business sales and marketing best-practice research and data, recently indicated that while the sales team may be suffering, best in class companies are repositioning their marketing strategies and tactics to help them out.

These marketers are not focusing on programs that are strictly lead generation campaigns but rather geared to existing clients and deals in the pipeline. Alden Cushman at SiriusDecisions notes that:

“Instead of focusing on generating new leads, these programs represent a more effective way for marketing to impact the extended sales cycle by helping to move deals that have stalled in the pipeline. Without question, the economy is driving this trend, as the program numbers we're seeing are now more in balance with specific sales requirements."

This entails a greater emphasis on sales and marketing being in tune with each other and supporting each other during these rough times. Heather Foeh over at the Marketing Insights blog has delved further into some tactics that marketers can employ which I would recommend having a look at. I would also recommend sales and marketing have joint goals, clear definitions of each stage of the lead management funnel (which are approved at the highest levels), and metrics that support those definitions. All of these items should be reinforced at regular meetings where sales and marketing are working off the same dashboards and/or spreadsheets.

Here are some additional tactics to consider:

• Ensure that marketing is communicating any activities that it’s partaking in to the rest of the company along with the results. This can be in the form of a newsletter, webcast, blog or podcast.
  
• Marketing needs to involve sales as much as possible in their marketing efforts. This includes coordinating on marketing campaigns, looking for opportunities where leads may have fallen through the cracks, and better understanding what potential buyers are looking for at different stages of the buying process and their challenges
  
• Provide useful tools to sales. Just the other day a marketer showed me a custom link they added to salesforce.com that integrated LinkedIn to the contact and lead records. It literally takes 5 minutes to add this custom code and the rich data that sales now have access to is unbelievable. I have other clients that are passing over activity data to sales (such as web visits) so sales can better prioritize who to follow up with. Other tools can summarize web activity at a higher level. The key here is to make this is as easy as possible for sales to work with and execute on.

The message I want to leave with you is that companies need to break down the walls of exclusivity that may have created for sales so that marketing and other areas of the company can better serve them. It’s time for sales to give up those reserved spaces to improve the alignment across the organization. It's the best in class companies that get this concept that will thrive in this down economy and capitalize on the opportunities that exist.

Chad H.
@chadhorenfeldt

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Related Posts:

• Resources on Aligning Marketing and Sales for B2B Companies
• Digital Body Language: Golf, Putting, Sales Reps, and Growing Revenue

Technorati Tags: marketing and sales alignment,linkedin,down economy,recession,SiriusDecisions

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Social Media Success Stories

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.

LinkedIn: Starting an Alumni Group

When Linkedin started a groups feature (like Facebook groups) I thought about how I could network with former colleagues. Some of the smartest people that I knew were from a technology post-grad college that I attended called the “Information Technology Institute (ITI) in Toronto. I decided to create an ITI alumni group to pool together these brilliant people and the results have been terrific thus far.

In a few short months, the group has 32 members without having done any advertising. There is also an active discussion going on about how ITI grads are succeeding and how ITI has contributed to this. I now have 32 new people (and growing) that I can network with who share my similar background and interests. Did you go to ITI? Join the ITI Alumni group (now I can say that I have done some advertising).

LinkedIn tip: Look for ways that you can create niche groups that pull together people with similar interests.

Twitter: Maximize Your Travel

In the past, I had blogged about why I use Twitter so it’s exciting for me to provide a success story for Twitter. In today’s economy, many companies are limiting travel in order to save a few bucks. In my new position, I not only manage my own clients but manage clients across an entire segment. I of course lead an amazing team, but this new position requires me to be active with as many customers in my segment as possible to support my team. Twitter helps me keep in touch with various clients and colleagues as well as better understand what people in my network "have on the brain". Besides the virtual interaction of Twitter, it has far greater benefits.

In my recent travels to Atlanta, I posted the following after I just arrived in the city and was doing some prep work from a Starbucks:

Visiting clients in Atlanta. Beautiful day! Beautiful city! Now to get down to work.

I then received a direct message (DM in Twitter lingo) via Twitter from a client in my segment in the Atlanta area asking me what my role at my company was and if I service clients in the area. I sent the client an email later that night after I verified who they were explaining to them who I was and suggested meeting for breakfast as I had time before another scheduled meeting. We ended up meeting and I was able to help this client out as much as I could in the short meeting time that we had. Here is the response from the client on Twitter after I tweeted about a successful tweet up:

Ohhh...knew I didn't have the lingo down @chadhorenfeldt ! Great success indeed - Eloqua crew welcome in Atlanta anytime!!

Twitter tip: Keep your network updated as to where you are. Twitter is a fantastic networking tool and it can help you maximize your travel time.

Twitter tip #2: Make sure you add your Twitter URL to your LinkedIn profile. I just connected to someone as I was writing this post.

Tripit: Maximize Your Travel #2

Tripit is a great application that allows you to post your travel plans so other people in your network can see them. A recent improvement has made this feature even more valuable – integrating with LinkedIn. Now, when I update my travel plans to Tripit, it will display my travel plans to all of my LinkedIn followers. This is helpful as I can keep track of people I work with and clients and partners have a greater insight into my travel schedule. For example, our sales team can see my travel plans and perhaps pull me into a prospect meeting if I'm in that area.

For my recent trip to Atlanta, one of our partners saw that I was visiting Atlanta and asked if I would be visiting them. I followed up and let them know why I was travelling and that I didn’t think we needed to meet this trip. I think it’s great that our partners are following our travels and offering up to meet. This definitely shows that power of Tripit.

Tripit tip: Use it and ensure that you have tied it into your LinkedIn profile. If you’re a manager or higher up, get others in your company to use it as well.

PS: The Tripit people have also made it very easy to post your trips – just email your travel itinerary to plans@tripit.com and it will update your network automatically. That is very cool.

Blogger: Blogging is the Differentiator

Some people may have written off blogging and I admit that I have a love/hate relationship with it but in 2009 I’m definitely seeing it as even more important social media tool. While anyone can sign up for the networking tools I listed above, blogging acts as a differentiator as it forces you to come up with good content that people will want to read (if that is your goal). While Twitter does this as well, Twitter is limited by its 140 characters (this is a debate for a future post). I see blogging as a way of connecting many of the dots in social media - let me focus on a recent story to show you what I mean.

Back on December 21, 2008, I wrote the post “10 Tips for Using Twitter And Email Marketing for B2B”. Perhaps because it was the holidays it didn’t receive that many page views at the time I published it. About a month or so later, it was picked up by another blogger, Kathy Pay, and then quickly by the Twitter community. Here is an example of what this looked like on Twitter search:

The result was a surge of traffic to my blog, additional Twitter followers, and blog RSS subscribers. The post was then picked up by other social media hubs such as StumbleUpon and Digg which pushed additional traffic along with search engine traffic.

Blogger tip: While I use Blogger, you can use any blogging platform that works for you. The real point is that good content drives traffic and your blog can be the driver for all of your other social media efforts.

Blogger tip #2: Make sure your blog is featured in your Twitter profile, on LinkedIn, Facebook and any other social media app that you use.

Best Story for Last

Almost three years ago I married my wife. That in itself is an accomplishment but it’s how I met my wife which is the interesting part. I found my future wife on Jdate.com which was a social media site before the term social media was widespread. We are happily married and are expecting our first child in August.

Takeaways: Before I sign off, I did want to point out that my stories demonstrate a few things to keep in mind:

• The power of social media tools. My stories are at a very small scale and something I do in my spare time. Imagine how you can use social media tools for your business

• Social media tools are interrelated. Think about how you can blend in various social media tools to increase your own voice in this digital world as well as your company’s.

I hope you enjoyed these stories and I encourage you to relate your own stories in the comments area. Did this post help you better understand the power of social media?

Chad H.
@chadhorenfeldt

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Technorati Tags: social media,Twitter,Linkedin,Tripit,success stories,Atlanta. StubleUpon,Digg,Facebook,Blogger,web 2.0 tools,online marketing

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