B2B Marketing Blog

A great post back on Sept 10 from Funnelholic called Increase in Connect Rate = Increase in Conversion Rate made one point vividly clear: it is critical to resist the urge to dump all arguments for buying into an email campaign (or in a trade show booth meeting, or in a cold call) just because we have that prospects attention for once, and because we’re afraid of never getting it again.  Predictably, there is too much content, too big a message to swallow, and the prospect’s eyeballs roll back in their head and they delete the email, or leave the booth, or say “not interested” and hang up.

Marketers ALWAYS try to achieve too much with their campaigns and in most cases they are trying to sell the product when what they really need to do is sell the next step.

He goes on to make great points regarding Marketing Automation software, pre-connect scripts or emails, and opening scripts: use MA to help time the connect, then sell the connect, then with permission sell the next step.  Like any worthwhile, complicated, time consuming endeavour, break a sale down into bite sized pieces, and then achieve them sequentially.  Offering a glass water to a thirsty prospect will be more successful than offering a fire hose.

What do Salesforce.com‘s Marc Benioff and ActiveConversion‘s Fred Yee have in common?

They’re both in the running to be named one of the 50 Most Influential People in Sales Lead Management in 2009.

Read more

SMB Marketing Blog Editor:
Fred is a frequent contributor to this blog and we’re grateful for all of his input.  We’re voting our appreciation and encourage all of our readers to do the same.

Traditionally, email marketing is something which is owned and operated by the Marketing Department.  Marketing professionals would market newsletters, event & webinar invites, press releases, etc. to leads in the marketing database.  If those in Sales were lucky, they were able to see reports from those email marketing campaigns (ex. click throughs, opens, forwards, etc.).  An overlooked application of email marketing has been the ability to allow sales professionals to ‘nurture’ their sales leads using email marketing tools as well.

Realistically sales professionals are doing this regardless, often in ways that are not “best practices” in an age where ISPs aggressively filter spam.  We have even seen some instances where sales professionals, sending their own marketing messages out of their desktop email account, have shut down their companies internal web servers or gotten their domain ‘blacklisted’ as a spam domain, something which is surprisingly easy to do.

There are tools that like the CRM SalesForce.com which allow sales professionals to send out email marketing messages to their leads or customers, but these are often limited by a maximum number of messages they can send out per day.  This is  far from ideal for professionals that cover a large territory, or have a large database of contacts they need to reach out to.

Sales professionals need to be able to easily reach out to their contacts with timely offers, to nurture them through long sales cycles, and most critically, to be notified when this strategy has worked and a contact has re-engaged. Today’s marketing automation tools like ActiveConversion partner with Email Service Providors (ESPs; the only viable way to email large lists and avoid being blacklisted as a spammer) and allow Sales professionals to do just that with a minimum of effort.  Typically there are a predefined or templated set of messages that are sent to an individual engaged in an evaluation of your solution (ex. whitepapers, spec sheets, etc), and a different set for those in long term nurture campaigns.  With tools like ActiveConversion|SalesView, salespeople can decide with the click of a mouse which messages they want their prospects to receive and how frequently they are touched.  This helps sales to ensure no opportunities are lost and no prospects are forgotten about.

If you would like to learn more about lead nurturing, download this free whitepaper here.

Real-Life Lessons in Using Google AdWords
from the NYTimes Small Business Guide, October 14, 2009

This is a very good background article by the NYTs on Google AdWords, further evidence that Google AdWords are going mainstream.  Maybe I’m too deep into the forest, but I’m still always surprised by how many small and medium sized business managers who don’t know, or know enough about Google AdWords to realize what they are losing out on.

“It used to be that business owners often struggled to afford advertising for their products or services. Google AdWords has changed that by offering an inexpensive way to spread the word. But if you don’t do some careful planning, you can easily find yourself spending thousands of dollars with little to show for it.”

Kudos to them for also identifying that unless done properly, Google AdWords can also be a waste of money.  The truth is, in the same way when someone clicks through on a “natural” search (the unpaid portion of Google) Google is interested in sending searchers to the best quality content, Google has the same goal for click throughs on ads.  This is why having good search engine marketing skills is key to successful AdWords Marketing.  If Google likes your website for certain keywords, it will like your ads and the website it directs searches to because it is relevant. Seems commonsensical, but the popular perception is that you just have to bid the highest and your ads will show up highest.

Double Kudos to the NYTimes for mentioning the wisdom of outsourcing the setting-up and maintenance of AdWords campaigns.  Outsourcing this is low cost, and it far outweighs the opportunity cost of not doing it well.

Lately I’ve received many non opt-in emails from companies that I have never heard of. I deleted most of these emails as soon as I get them. At the same time, I opened and looked at a few of them.  The ones that get my attention usually have good email subject lines. Some even got me to click on the link in the emails just to see what they’re about.

The email subject line is one of the most important elements of your email campaign. It can make or break your campaign. If you don’t have a compelling subject line, the chance of your email even getting opened is slim.

Take a look of the email subject lines that are in my Deleted mail folder. Do you see a pattern below on why they got deleted (company names are changed)?

• Free Evaluation of ABC Encrypted Portable Drive
• Data Company Adds Cascaded Replication to DR Infrastructure
• EFG Company: Request for Meeting
• Meeting Request: Introducing our new product
• XYZ data centers: High density collocation & Managed Server / Storage Solutions

Marketers have to realize the importance of email subject line. To give you an idea on how you should write your subject lines so that more recipients will open your emails, let’s take a look at the elements that make most of us open and read the emails.

Personalization
If you have details about your recipients then use them in your subject line to get their attention. If you see your company name or even your first name in the subject line, you’ll likely feel that the email is specifically sent to you. There is a good chance that you’ll open and read the email.

Relevancy
Similarly people will open the email if the subject line contains the topic of their interests. By using relevant events in an organization, you can create a subject line that can relate to what’s going on in that business and provide solutions to the challenges they are having.

Curiosity
When the email subject contain relevant interest, adding curiosity wording can entice people to open and read the contents of your email. Many times it will also improve your click through and conversion rates.

Non spammy words
Certain words in the subject lines would be flagged as spam by spam filter or even the recipient. Try to avoid words like “free”, “offer”, “cheap”, “stock”, “earn”, “$$$”, etc. As soon as I see email subject containing these words (if they bypass my auto spam filter), I usually move to the delete button.

The email subject line is one of the most important elements of your email campaign. It can make or break your campaign. If you don’t have a compelling subject line, the chance of your email even getting opened is slim.