The holiday season for many small businesses can be a make or break time.

For those in the retail business, for example, the holiday rush can be an opportunity to make up for lackluster sales earlier in the year. For small businesses that have a tough time selling over the holidays, it can place them in a very precarious position heading into the next year.

In the event your company’s got questions regarding its e-mail marketing opportunities with the coming holidays, here are some thoughts to consider:

• Make sure your distribution frequency is good – Another important item to keep in mind is that your distribution frequency is solid. Be sure to check the activity from your mailing list a year ago at this time, making necessary adjustments along the way. Prior to the holiday email cycle starting, push out a re-engagement campaign to get less active members engaged. That can include a special email to folks who haven’t opened or clicked in the last several months or a holiday survey to determine what subscribers want from you this season. Also look into having an added opt-in with a holiday campaign to grow the distribution frequency just for those customers seeking it;

• Stand out from the crowd – It is important to remember that your subscribers’ get inundated with email promotional content leading up to the holidays. That being the case, you need your online marketing message to stand head and shoulders above the rest. Make sure you give the subscriber incentive to want to read your message and not hit the delete button;

• Get your message out early – Start the message campaign early and inform your subscribers the importance of doing their business sooner rather than later with the holiday rush coming up. Make sure that your promo emails are done in plenty of time so that they get to the consumer sooner than your competition’s does;

• Engage your social media channels – Given the importance of social media in today’s marketing efforts, make sure you engage the different social networking sites (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn etc.) to target additional audience members. The great thing with social networking sites is it is a free other than a little time and effort. Be sure, however, you don’t use SM just to promote endlessly. Take the time to engage with both present and potential customers regarding your products and services. Bottom line…. be engaged;

• Be relevant after the holiday rush – It is a given that many shoppers look for bargains right after the holidays, so give them a reason to want to come back to you in 2012. Offering incentives to stick with you after the holidays is a great way to go about that;

• Be a mobile player – With more and more individuals using mobile devices to stay in touch with the world, be sure your campaign can accommodate such needs. When designing copy and images, make sure they will work smoothly with mobile devices. This brings on added importance given that many individuals will have their mobile devices with them while shopping etc. You can provide them with valuable deals and offers right at that time.

The bottom line is that the holiday season demands much attention from consumers; make it so that you’re at the top of their shopping wish list.

Dave Thomas, who covers among other subjects vehicle insurance writes extensively for www.business.com an online resource destination for businesses of all sizes to research, find, and compare the products and services they need to run their businesses.

Since marketing plays such a key role in the direction of many companies, take the time to review your company’s efforts and if they are being directed squarely where they should be.

Reviewing Your Marketing Needs

As you review your company’s marketing needs, analyze where your return on investment (ROI) could be improved, where money may be disappearing to and where you see your company’s finances down the road.

Among the specific areas to zero in on are:

• Numbers review – It is important to review the company financials to determine if change is necessary.
• Marketing efforts – Where are your marketing dollars going? Have you changed anything significantly in the last six months or years? If so, what were the end results?
• Get an outsider’s opinion – While it is easy to judge things from your end, have an outsider look at your marketing efforts. They can give an unbiased viewpoint as to what may be working, what isn’t likely to work and where the dollars should be going;
• Do an industry review – See what others are doing with their marketing efforts. Are they putting the pedal to the metal or are they pulling back? While you don’t necessarily want to emulate what the competition is doing, it doesn’t hurt to review their efforts.
• Customer feedback – Most importantly, get feedback from the clients you are marketing to. Find out what they like and don’t like. If they feel something isn’t working but you aren’t aware of that, how will you fix it?

While you don’t want to be changing your marketing efforts every month, tweaking here and there is by all means a good thing to consider.

If you decide that a change to your marketing game plan is in order, be sure you can answer the question as to why this is in the first place.  At the end of the day, companies need to determine and understand the ongoing cost of promoting and advertising their brand to their customer base and the potential prospects.

Dave Thomas is an expert writer on items like copier machines and is based in San Diego, California. He writes extensively for an online resource, providing expert advice on digital copiers for small business owners and entrepreneurs at Resource Nation.

Perhaps the volatility of the energy markets is driving them to seek new lands offering better stability and security. Perhaps the possibility of positioning their businesses in markets with little, or no, competition has many companies looking at around for bigger and better opportunities. Whatever the reason, there is a growing trend among energy service providers to seek opportunities globally.

But, How Do You Grow Globally…

Bringing your business to market is all about putting the right message in front of the right audience at the right time. The trouble with marketing somewhere other than where you live is precisely that: You do not live there. How do you gain exposure? How do you know what messages will be well received? How do you know when those you want to deal with are ready to buy—if you even know who your real prospects are in the first place?

There are 2 options: get a consultant, or get a marketing automation system. Having been a consultant I have no desire to heap too large a pile of coals on my head. However, there is one truth I will confess: as a consultant, I was NOT cheap. I knew what the best options were, how to engage and how to get results. I also knew that my knowledge was well outside the scope of my clients—that is, they NEEDED me. And I charged for it.

A marketing automation system, like that of ActiveConversion, does much of the work of a consultant. The system literally educates those marketing into new territories by providing answers to key questions, such as:

• Which marketing campaigns are driving visitors to my website?
• Of those visiting my website, how often do they come and which products or services are they most interested in?
• Which of my competitors are checking me out, and what are they looking at?
• Who are the most relevant contacts at my prospects’ business?
• Whether prospects are at the right point in their buying cycle or not, how can my business stay top-of-mind (professionally and ethically) with my prospects from afar?
• When is the best time to commit sales resources to maximize my chances of converting my best prospects?

And one of the most interesting aspects of this information: it is gathered anonymously. No one has to fill out a form for you to know who they are, what they’re looking at, or how interested they might be.

Whether you plan to take your business to places where angels fear to tread, or if you’re staying close to home, a marketing automation system will keep you on top of your prospects, competitors ,and your advertising effectiveness—all for a lot less than I ever charged.

Database marketing has the ability to generate a wealth of information about your customer.  However, properly harnessing this information and using to increase revenue can be tricky.

Barriers to Email Marketing

The most common barriers for email marketing are 1) time and 2) ensuring that your message is not immediately buried in a recipient’s trash folder.

Building lists for email campaigns can be very time consuming: building a list with thousands of contacts is not easy.  Constructing the body of the email requires a significant amount of time as well.  The email needs to be short enough so readers are not bored, but still long enough that you are able to properly convey your message.

The first step to avoid having your message deleted is to personalize the email.  Use the recipient’s name, company, and industry in the email.  Moreover, make sure that the subject matter of the email is relevant to the recipient: sending information about animal care to a beverage company is unlikely to have the desired results.

Having the Right Content

The second step is to ensure the content of the email has value to the reader and can trigger an appropriate action.  The subject of the email is the first line of content the viewer reads.  This line is the difference between the reader opening the email or deleting it.  It must be relevant to the reader, create a desire for more information, and encourage the recipient to read the body.

The body of the email builds a relationship with the reader by providing information about how your products and services will benefit them.  Successful communication in the email body is crucial for conversions.  Encouraging readers to visit your website or reply to your email is how you measure the effectiveness of an email campaign.  Thus, the content in the body of your email must provide information valuable to the reader and generate an action such as calling your sales team.

Tracking Results

The most important stage of any marketing campaign is learning from the results.  Without properly tracking who opened which email or who clicked what, email marketing is as effective as leaving a voicemail and hoping the message got through.  Tools such as Vertical Response can track which recipients opened your email and which of those recipients went further and clicked on conversion links in the body of the email.  This information is critical to understand what sort of message your audience is looking for and what types of offers encourage them to engage with your business.

Tracking recipients after their initial conversion is just as important.  Most tracking tools only indicate that a reader has clicked on a link inside the email body.  Learning details about a prospect’s visit to your website is important in driving the sales cycle.  Tracking tools, such as ActiveConversion, can identify which pages visitors viewed and how they were originally directed to your website.  Combined with the information from the initial email campaign, you are better able to identify which leads are the most interested in your products and services.  Your sales team can then focus on these highly qualified leads saving them from chasing down every recipient that opened the email and generating more revenue for you.

There are three main components any business will need if it is to have any hopes of being able to get the kind of B2B business it is looking for. They need to be able to have a website which takes advantage of everything that SEO has to offer. It is necessary to have a working knowledge of the social media sites to use them correctly. It is also necessary to be able to market through means like email. If you have mastered these concepts, you will be assured of having a great business with a lot of success.

Using SEO for Marketing

Of all of the different online marketing techniques, one of the most important is the ability to draw people to your website without having to pay any money at all. By using SEO material, it is possible to make sure that those searching for the things you have to offer will be able to find your website. They will learn about your company through the kind of content that you have available so that they can see how your company will benefit theirs.

Using Social Media for Marketing

Purchasing managers spend just as much time online through social media sites as anyone else. They want to find out about the businesses that they are buying from before making a purchase. Make sure that all of the content which is on your social media site will properly represent your company to any possible clients. This way you will be able to build a loyal following of people who will receive every piece of marketing that you attach to Facebook posts as well as the posts that make to your Twitter account.

Using Email for Marketing

Email is still something which is checked every day by individuals and businesses alike. It is possible to gain the attention that your company needs by sending out different emails. This way you will be able to market everything from a digital security system to the services and products other businesses might want to purchase. Gathering email addresses is possible through your social media pages as well as through your website. Using them will help you to get the word out about the latest that your company has to offer.

Author: Matt Kraustrunk, Resource Nation.

Resource Nation provides free tools, tips, and purchasing advice for business owners and entrepreneurs in over 100 business categories ranging from phone systems to credit card processing. Whether it’s connecting businesses with local and national pre-screened vendors, or offering easy service comparisons on a VoIP service, Resource Nation empowers business decision makers by providing the information they need to make smart choices.

The most important question asked is, “How can I improve my tradeshow ROI?” There are many ways to market for a tradeshow and many ways to spend your money, but often little if any ROI is realized. The most compelling factor to attend a tradeshow and set up a booth is the prospect of meeting face-to-face with the decision maker. But is your tradeshow marketing investment totally justified when you are just a needle in the haystack?

There are many other techniques to market a tradeshow: you can sponsor an event, you can write editorials in the event magazine, you can advertise on the tradeshow website etc.  Tradeshows are already an expensive endeavor, and they can cost more if you choose to advertise using these other popular channels.  If you are not a large company, costs for tradeshows can be significant considering the already limited marketing budget.  On top of the advertising costs, there are other associated costs such as designing the booth, time that your sales reps spend to exhibit, flying costs, as well as food and lodging.

So, how much do you get back on the investment you just made on the tradeshow? Not as much as you were expecting, but the use of online marketing techniques can boost your tradeshow investment. In my last post, I wrote how you can combine the use of traditional and online marketing techniques and benefit from them, but here I’m describing how you can use online marketing to better market your tradeshows.

Following some concerns and solution suggestions based on online marketing and online tools – thus making it the most for your tradeshow investment.

BEFORE the show: How do we get more people to visit our booth?

Invite people from your list to meet you at the booth. Give them a compelling reason for meeting: a big prize give away, or a free product, or a free software copy, or free consulting time or free passes to the tradeshow in your email. Give prospects a good reason to meet you to make the best use of their time and money.

DURING the show: How do I maximize marketing during the show?

When the prospective client meets you at the tradeshow, you can scan his badge and register him in your system. These are already partially qualified leads and can be entered into your CRM or Marketing Automation system. Using a marketing automation system will let you know exactly who clicked on your offer, and then scanning their badges at the show and assigning those leads to your system can qualify your leads further.

AFTER the show: Who are my best prospects? Whom should I follow up? What do I do with the big list of names?

After the show, send the prospective client a thank you email note with the prize giveaway announcement, and have the prospects click on the results. If the prospect does more than just look at the prize landing page (for example visit other web pages) browse your product page or the pricing page, you can see how the accumulated scoring of your leads will give you a better picture of the lead quality. Now that you know who is really interested, you can nurture them further using marketing automation tools.

Therefore, during various stages of your tradeshow you engage the prospect, and help qualify the leads that actually will be worth spending your time on.  With online marketing, make before the show, start of the sales cycle.

So the next time you are a part of tradeshow, think about the before, during and after of the tradeshow, and how online marketing can help generate stronger leads. Download this PowerPoint slide deck and read this whitepaper that talks more about the challenges which companies face today, and learn more about increasing tradeshow ROI using the online marketing techniques. Go on and start perfecting your tradeshows!

Related articles

• Webinar Recording- Learn How to Substantially Increase Your Trade Show ROI (b2b-marketingblog.com)
• Global Petroleum Show 2010 Exhibitors; Find the needles in the haystack! (b2b-marketingblog.com)
• Tradeshows: What’s your ROI? (b2b-marketingblog.com)
• B2B: Tradeshows (b2b-marketingblog.com)
• How to Engage a Tradeshow Audience Year-Round (marketingprofs.com)
• Make Your Next Tradeshow a ‘Qualified’ Success (marketingprofs.com)
• Let Your Brand Shine at Tradeshows (marketingprofs.com)

In this recent study of Interactive marketing priorities for SMBs, (Forrester) for 2011, Shar VanBoskirk believes that 54% of marketers will decrease their marketing budget for traditional tactics.  While more than half of the marketing budget is now being spent on interactive/digital/online marketing, it is still hard for some companies to actually understand the true value or ROI gained from this medium. The return on invesment is approximately measured based on the number of click throughs (CTR’s) from email marketing or Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising or from number of page views calculated from certain analytical tools. Online form, used by marketers to gather useful information of their prospects, is also very powerful online lead generation technique. But with stats indicating that only 1-2% actually will ever be willing to share you their information, makes this lead generation technique not that attractive (The ‘Contact Us’ fallacy: The importance of identifying anonymous visitors).

I’d like to share here how companies can still make use of their traditional marketing. Combining both traditional and online marketing techniques (powered by marketing automation and sales intelligence tools) companies get the best possible ROI  from their marketing budget. Integrated marketing will not only augment your marketing efficiency, but will also give your marketing a much needed boost in this digital age.

Use marketing automation tools to nurture leads you already have in your sales funnel

Meet with your prospect at a networking event. Exchange your cards hoping that they might call you or that you will get back to them when the time is right. But, is the time ever right? After the event, your card will either end up in a pile of other similar cards collected over the years or will just be forgotten. You can alternatively choose to nurture those leads on the given email address. Marketing automation tools can nurture leads with pre-written, automated email messages, and help you stay on top of their mind, giving them a chance to learn more about you.

After all, on an average it takes about 7-10 touches to register certain brands and their marketing messages. A series of nurture emails with valuable content such as thought leadership, industry knowledge, and links to marketing collateral can help you reinforce your marketing message in several ways.

Use CRMs funneled by marketing automation to continue building the relationship

Prospect info gathered from these traditional channels can be manually entered into your CRM. Marketing Automation (MA) tools synced with certain CRMs make it possible to send the prospect info from CRM to MA tools to track future visits. You can also track if your prospect show more interest in your offering after your initial meeting. Marketing automation is then used to track, score, and nurture those prospects until they become a qualified lead. Anonymous visitor identification system, can also report visits from different individuals from the same company showing their cumulative interest. Keeping a watch on your prospect/company will help you solidify the next steps within your sales process.

Use of email marketing to inform and persuade your prospects in the funnel before the show

Bulk emails can be used to inform your prospects of the tradeshow booth you are setting up or a seminar you are hosting. The email informs and persuades the prospects in the list to come and visit you at those events, and they are an excellent way to – increase the awareness of your brand, and get a meaningful reason to get in touch with your prospect list to inform your prospects about your events along with your new or existing initiatives.

A set of 2-3 emails before the event is reasonable to stay in touch with your prospects and persuade them to take an action (such as opening the email, looking at the content), and hopefully attending and meeting you at the show.

Use online marketing with traditional techniques to increase brand awareness and get business online

It is never too late or too expensive to start online marketing and improving your website for better conversion. Online marketing will help you get business online and also help you establish your brand’s awareness.  This online presence creates a buzz around your company and products, and definitely gives your company an edge in the digital age. Combining the use of editorials or advertorials in your target market magazine along with an online banner ad will hit multiple audiences, both offline and online.

To learn more about combining traditional and online marketing (powered by marketing automation), read this whitepaper on increasing tradeshow ROI .

The truth is most website visitors avoid filling out forms.  Forms are so prevalent; nobody wants to fill out another form. Besides exposing their email address, people know if they fill out a form, they can expect to be hit with email.  Even if you put valuable information behind a form, most visitors’ feel that they’ll likely find what they need if they keep searching.

Losing Without a Chance to Participate

As mentioned, people don’t fill out forms unless they have to.  For most buyers, they’ll only fill out a form when they’ve done enough research to make their decision or next move.  If you don’t have the ability to identify a buyer during the early stages, you may not even have a chance to participate before losing.

If you can identify a potential buyer in their research stage and proactively engage with that buyer, your odds are significantly increased.  Especially if you are the only one among your competition who can engage them before they engaged you.

There are a number of anonymous visitor tracking solutions available that can help companies do more than just wait for inquires. Identifying anonymous visitors provides your sales team the ability to make well-timed calls, your marketing team the ability to nurture leads and business intelligence on your potential customers, and gives businesses a critical edge in this increasingly competitive business environment.

EmailStatCenter.com is reporting that, “67% of US internet users say the motivation behind giving their email address to a company is to receive discounts and promotions. -ExactTarget “Email X-Factor Study” (2010).” If this is the case for your subscribers, you got over the first hurdle which is to get them to subscribe, but then you have to keep them engaging.

Segmenting Your Audience
Another key point in email marketing is making your readers feel like you didn’t send out a mass email. They probably know you are sending out a mass email, but the more targeted you can make the email, the more you can make them feel like they are getting a private email from you.

BtoB Online points out, “Understanding the status of the subscriber is critical in crafting your copy. Are they customers, prospects, lapsed customers or lapsed prospects? Imagine the different messages you could convey just on that knowledge alone.” If you don’t already have a few different emails drafted to send to these different categories of subscribers, test it out see if you see better conversion rates.

Call to Action
Having a call to action can be very beneficial—not to mention a great way to measure how many people are reading your emails. Most email programs have metrics for how many people are reading your emails, but what you may not know is if people don’t scroll down far enough in the email then many email software programs don’t count that open rate.

Setting up specific landing pages for your readers is a great way to measure not only the people opening your emails, but the number of readers who are actively engaging in your brand. If you already do this, see if moving your link from the middle or bottom of the email to the top has a better response. The more you change things up, the better you can see what works and what works better.

Scheduling
Scheduling your email is just as important as the copy and who you are sending it to. Daily tips or emails can be a great idea, but who is going to take the time to actually read and click through your email every day—probably not many. Instead try and keep it to monthly or even bi-monthly. It saves you time, and your customers can get more information in each email—which could make them more eager to read it.
Email marketing is a great tactic to utilize, and “according to the Direct Marketing Association, every dollar spent on e-mail marketing generates $43.62 in revenue,” reports DM News. Keep in mind this is just an average, being able to hone your skills and get more organized can produce even better results. What have you found useful?

Shannon Suetos is an expert writer on phone systems based in San Diego, California. She writes extensively for an online resource that provides expert advice on purchasing and outsourcing decisions for small business owners and entrepreneurs such as VoIP service at Resource Nation.

Success at this point will usually sound like “…interesting, send me an email with your info in it and I’ll get back to you”.  The big question is did they say it to be nice,  to get you off the phone?  Or are they genuinely interested? If they are not interested, you may have just set yourself up for a waste of time following up with them.  What you really want is insight into who on the “send me an email” list really is interested, who is actually engaged with your message.

One path to this insight is through a combination of a content-rich website, and marketing automation like ActiveConversion.  When they ask for the “more information email”, the email itself contains links that lead to the information/content.  With the ActiveConversion Outlook plugin installed, if they click on any of those links, you’ll see if they clicked through and what they looked at.

If they said they were interested, but didn’t click through on any of the informational links, well, not as qualified.  However if they clicked through and looked at multiple pages, and even more significantly, if they returned later for a second look at your website, notch them up as having passed qualifying test #1.

Keep in mind this same approach is useful when re-engaging with customers and old prospects.  Even deep into a relationship sell, being able to gauge how interested and engaged a prospect is with the new message you’re delivering is invaluable.