Split testing in email marketing is not a profoundly new concept, but I am consistently surprised by how many of our clients follow the status quo without understanding that a minor tweak could significantly improve their email marketing performance.

This is not just theoretical, below are a few examples of how I have used split testing  to increase our email marketing performance.

Email#1 – Testing HTML Email Design

Which HTML layout would drive you to click through to the offer?

Option A – Basic Design with Expert Picture

Option B – Strong 2 Column Layout

While both of these HTML email design layouts have been used in the past, we were able to leverage the best of the two designs through recognizing Option A produced a 6% greater click-through rate than Option B.  The open rates were similar, but remember open rates can be deceiving because many email clients automatically open or will register back as open without the contact actually clicking on the email.

Email#2 – HTML vs. Plain Text Emails

Consider using plain text personalized emails over the heavy graphics and code used for HTML emails.  The personal touch can break through the clutter in today’s marketplace.  When split testing the same copy and subject line between an HTML email and a plain text email, the plain text email outperformed its competitor.

Do you prefer to receive HTML or plain text emails?

Option A – HTML

Option B – Plain Text

The results from this split test were resounding.  Option B boosted a 51% greater click through rate than its Option A HTML counterpart.  Personalizing your emails to come from a living, breathing individual instead of a computer generated email blast can mean the difference between connecting with your potential clients and missing the mark completely.

Email#3 – Subject Line Testing

Subject line testing is one of the easiest and most impactful tests one can perform. MarketingProfs will tell you there are easily 7 Dirty Words You Can’t Use in Email Subject Lines and Easily 100 More You Shouldn’t Use Either. Email subject lines can affect more than your open rate and click through rate…it can actually affect your deliverability.

Does a final offer peak your curiosity?

Option A – Last Chance

Option B – Register

Letting your prospects know this is the final opportunity for the offer always peaks their curiosity; they need to know what they are potentially missing out on.  As you can imagine Option A outperformed Option B by a 28% greater click through rate. This is significant when it could be your only foot in the door.  Subject lines should taken seriously, not just an afterthought of the email message.  Consider your subject line the title of your self-published masterpiece…give it some thought and test, test, test to ensure it becomes a best seller.

Remember…Split Testing is for Everyone

Just when you think you have the right formula for email marketing try a few more split tests; it can only reinforce your methodology or make it better.  For more resources on split testing and email marketing check out these resources:

1. http://www.clickz.com/

2. http://www.marketingprofs.com/

3. http://www.meclabs.com/

Image Source: eConnect Email Marketing

This article assumes that you recognize the benefits of social media but don’t have the time in your day to dedicate to the constant checking, posting, re-checking required to really make the most of social media tools. Cutting down that time and focusing on the basics of social promotion, by automating the syndication of your content, will allow you to focus your time on the creation of more valuable content and/or relationship building via social tools.

Getting started with social media automation

Step 1) Get your content ready

Ideally you’re running modern blog software (WordPress) on your website which allows for the syndication of your content via RSS feeds.

To find the RSS feed on your website, navigate to your blog’s homepage, view the source of the page and look for a line like this:

<link rel=”alternate” type=”application/rss+xml” href=”http://www.YOURWEBSITE.com/feed/” />

Alternatively, you can follow the directions here.

Step 2) Choose an automation tool

I’ve used http://ping.fm in the past but recently discovered http://dlvr.it/ which offers more options and a slicker UI.

Step 3) Add your feed and choose your destination

Paste the RSS feed address you copied from step 1 into the tool then select an icon of the social media tool you want to get started with.

Follow the instructions to provide dlvr.it with access to your first social media profile.  (Don’t worry, you’ll be able to add more profiles in just a second.,)

Step 4) Setup additional destinations

The standard method of setting this up will involve a single RSS feed on the left (Sources) and a handful of accounts on the right (Destinations)

You can setup destinations for:

• Twitter
• Facebook
• LinkedIn
• Tumbler
• Google Buzz
• MySpace
• Status.net

There’s even an RSS destination option which gives you the ability to take a handful of sources, process them, and combine then into a single RSS feed to be used elsewhere.

Step 5) Double check

Make sure your delivery is set to “active” otherwise nothing will happen.

Step 6) Check your stats

Give it a week and then log back into dlvr.it, click on the Stats tab and monitor changes in your audience as well as click-throughs on the links the system is posting to your account.

Step 7) Advanced techniques

Once you’ve got the basics covered, I’d recommend playing around with some of the unique features this service offers.

You can have the service add Google Analytics tracking parameters to the URLS the software posts for simplified segmenting within Google Analytics.

Automatically replace instances of keywords with hash-tag versions. This is very powerful as it allows you to extend the reach of your posts by having them show up for popular hash-tag searches. I highly recommend you don’t overdue this as it could destroy the readability of your posts.

That’s It

You’ve now automated the syndication of your blog posts to all of your social accounts.

Wind-up bird photo source: http://www.etsy.com/listing/34437041/vintage-wind-up-bird-toy-luli-western

Well, making LinkedIn work for your business to business marketing can be a challenging task. The design is still very much in-flux so you can expect a lot of things to change, perhaps even during a campaign (as happened with one of our own). But for now at least, if you want your LinkedIn advertising campaign to succeed you’ve got to work with it.

So what do you need to get started?

• Define the geographic location of your market. You can select by continent, country, state, all the way down to particular cities. Depending on what you’re selling you’ll need to be precise to maximize your LinkedIn campaign potential.
• Select the companies you want to target. You can target categories of company or specific companies and people within those companies.
• Select the job title or job category of people you want to target. LinkedIn can help you target that high-level executive.
• Write your ad content, make it snappy, and bring on the lead conversions!

By setting these requirements you could reach some proportion of LinkedIn’s 120 million users. That’s right 120 million users. But unless you have something 120 million people are all definitely going to like then reducing the number that you target is going to be important. Not least because there is one piece of critical information that will define how successful your business to business LinkedIn advertising campaign will be:

“Your click-through-rate is everything”

Now this seemingly innocuous phrase is loaded with every aspect of the success of your campaign. There are two critical factors you have to bear in mind when thinking about this and its application to your campaign.

1. How many people do you want to see your campaign (impressions)
2. How many people do you expect to click on your Ad (click-through-rate)

The number of people who see your ad (impressions) is defined by the audience you are trying to reach and the specifics of the first 3 items in the getting started list. By increasing the number of people in your audience you increase the number of impressions you get. Unfortunately, and here’s the rub with LinkedIn, you can’t define when that impression appears or under what circumstances.

The clearest difference between Google Adwords PPC campaigns and LinkedIn advertising is that with LinkedIn impressions are not content specific. They are end-user specific, but what good is it to you if your ideal user sees your Ad when they’re searching for a job online?

Another important factor is that once your ad has gathered a certain number of impressions (we’re not currently sure the threshold) LinkedIn begins to track it against an expected click-through-rate. Once your Ad drops below that level; then you’re in trouble. Best industry guesses put that figure at 0.025% CTR; although you can expect to see changes in this as LinkedIn becomes more of a platform for business-to-business sellers. Meaning that 2.5 people have to click your ad for every 1000 impressions.

So you’re ad is being seen by lots of people, but at a time when they might not be looking to buy. That places an incredible extra pressure on a LinkedIn campaign: exciting people out of their job-searching, social slumber and into a buying, business-to-business frame of mind. And that’s no easy task. You’ll need exciting copy, great images (50x50pixel optimized) and an offer that will blow their socks off.

Does “social media experience” on a resume work for or against an applicant?

If the role is not specific to social media strategy / execution, then does hiring someone who updates their status 75 times in a 24 hour period a good or bad thing?

How much work is getting done when an employee gets bombarded every 15 seconds with the latest breaking news throughout the day? What kind of an impact does that have on concentration and, ultimately, productivity?

It seems my concerns are legitimate.

A recent study of companies with 1000 employees or more revealed that 8% have terminated staff for social networking actions.

Should employers gauge an applicants social media activity prior to interviewing?

A study by CareerBuilder found that 45% of companies researched applicants’ Social Media profiles during the hiring process.

*Infographic Source

I’m not at all surprised that many companies are researching candidates online. Furthermore, I’m not shocked that what they are finding during that research portrays the candidate negatively. Regardless of the news headlines, it seems many people aren’t aware of the privacy limitations and/or settings provided by their social media application.

How do you keep Social Media usage within acceptable limits?

By setting and communicating expectations clearly with your existing and future staff.

I’ve modified an employee guideline document to provide you with a boilerplate for drafting your own Social Media usage guidelines document.

Download: [Your Company Here] Social Media Employee Guidelines (Free template, registration required)

This document will get you up and running with your own Social Media guidelines in less than 2 minutes.

Next time you’re applying for a job,

You might consider participating in the Social Media Recruitment Test to see how you may be perceived by a potential employer before it’s too late.

This has had me thinking plenty about not just about what we do to build effective business websites, but also about the things businesses still do that can defeat the purposes of their website, those purposes being:

• Raise brand awareness;
• Boost prospects and leads;
• Drive sales.

As a writer and communications specialist, there are the top 4 mistakes I see on company websites:

Unclear Messaging

You know what you do – after all, you live and breathe it. However, your average website visitor does not necessarily know what you do or the depth and breadth to which you do it. It seems obvious that your target audience needs to easily identify what you do, but a lot of businesses fail to make their messaging clear.

Many website home pages seem to be written under the mistaken assumption that if the browser found your website, they automatically know what you do. In fact, your homepage is where you should make your elevator pitch, which can be expanded upon in the About page.

Lost Identity

Yes, you resell software made by another company, be it Microsoft, Sage, SAP, Epicor, etc. But don’t lose yourself in the process. You need to tell visitors why you’re the best outfit to buy it from, implement it and maintain it. After all, selecting the right solution provider is the key to software solution implementation success.

This of course also relates to creating unique copy rather than simply duplicating copy from software vendor websites – not only will doing this bury your identity, but it will also hurt your SEO (read Website Copy – What is it Saying About Your Business? for details). Make your identity clear on each and every page through your copy and page design. Drill in why you are the No. 1 choice and make your business unforgettable.

Squandered Lead Gen Opportunities

Your responsibility doesn’t end with getting warm bodies to visit your website; it’s only the beginning. Offering visitors an opportunity to give you valuable contact and/or business information in exchange for a relevant resource – a white paper, video or evaluation tool – can drive leads.

There are 2 keys here:

1. Offering something unique and valuable to prospects. Ditch the tired brochures that can be found on the websites of your competition. Invest in creating unique downloads that speak to the expertise your business offers clients.
2. Creating compelling offer copy. Rather than simply providing a link to your offer, create compelling copy to “sell” it, with a graphic treatment that makes it stand out. Placement of the offer can also drive lead generation; often, placing it in the middle of the page rather than at the bottom boosts conversions while also providing a visual break to the rest of the page copy.

Ineffective or Nonexistent Blogging

Consistently posting content to a blog on your business website means you always have fresh content, and search engines like this, meaning it drives your SEO.

However, there are a few ways you can negate these benefits. One is to have a single person identified as your company blogger, usually someone in marketing (don’t be offended, marketing/communications folks – I’m one of you!). You want your blog to reflect your business’s depth of experience, so have different people from various departments blog on their respective areas of expertise.

Make sure you share your content too. No point producing it if no one knows it’s there. Encourage visitors to subscribe to your RSS feed. Posting links via social media like LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook will help drive brand recognition in addition to SEO.

Now Get Cracking

Now you know the mistakes most businesses make and you suspect you’re making a few of them. Not sure how to proceed, or lacking the time and resources to do it yourself? Contact Us to talk to one of our website design and consulting experts.

*World’s Worst Website image © http://www.angelfire.com/super/badwebs/

]]> http://www.salesworks.com/blog/online-marketing/4-website-mistakes-you-cant-afford-to-make/feed/ 0 http://www.salesworks.com/blog/online-marketing/a-rough-schematic-for-crafting-your-b2b-follow-up-process/ http://www.salesworks.com/blog/online-marketing/a-rough-schematic-for-crafting-your-b2b-follow-up-process/#comments Thu, 28 Apr 2011 18:31:49 +0000 Colin Greig http://dev2.salesworks.com/?p=4528

When a business is engaged in Pay-Per-Click, Search Engine Optimization, etc to generate leads the general assumption is that they have a process in place to follow up with and nurture those leads. Unfortunately, this is not always the case and we see a lot of vendors who lack any form of cohesive, stringent follow up / sales process.

What Does Your Follow Up / Sales Process Look Like?

For many partners, their processes for following up with prospects looks something like this:

1. An email to prospect is manually written and manually sent by a salesperson at their convenience.
2. If a phone number is available for the prospect, a single call is made and a voicemail is sometimes left with a message of the salespersons choosing.
3. Sometimes notes are left in their CRM about the contact attempts
4. Sometimes a salesperson might follow up once at a later date.

Your current follow up process doesn’t cut it.

In the above example,

• No structure or methodology = no accountability
• No “multi-touch” process = 7 touches to make a sale is the classic, golden rule
• No automation = opportunity for a prospect to fall through the cracks.

Sending out Newsletters is NOT nurture marketing:

• They are untargeted, unspecific and usually not valuable enough to be read by prospects who aren’t already customers.
• They reinforce your brand to your existing customer base – in our experience they do not win you new customers.

Mass email “blasting” notifications of events is NOT nurture marketing:

• Event notifications should be delivered to prospects based on the products or verticals that they have raised their hand to – everything else is untargeted, inefficient and results in training your prospects to ignore your emails or mark you as a spammer.

What a successful follow up / sales process might look like,

This is a very general guide to how your automated nurturing program might work.

1. Suspect requests gated resource via landing page form, becomes a prospect.
2. Prospect receives branded, personalized response with link to access resource.
3. Partner sends prospect a simple follow up survey 48hrs later:a. Did you find the resource helpful?b. Did it meet your expectations?c. Do you have any remaining questions?d.Would you like an expert to give you a call?
4. 7-14 days after that email the Partner sends a follow up offer that is directly related to the original offer.a. The email contains a link to a gated form which delivers the white paper and requests different information from the prospect:i. Email (pre-filled in automatically ideally)ii. Office Phone Numberiii. Number of Employeesiv. Job Titlev. Buying Timeline

   vi. Etc.

   b. This process qualifies the prospect further for your sales team.

5. Prospect received the white paper, their trust in the partner has increased; the partner has become credible and is positioned well for a phone conversation.a. Your telesales team is notified to call the prospecti. Work with a sales coach to craft an effective telephone script.ii. If they reach a voicemail, don’t hang up – refer to your voicemail script.
6. Repeat sets 4-5 again and again, 7-30 days between touches, ideally at least 7 times
7. Interspersed between these “offers” emails are automated, personalized email asking the prospect:a. If they would like to speak with a software consultant.b. If they would like a quote.c. If they would like a demo.d. If they would like information on a diagnostic.e. Etc.
8. Build out your next nurture campaign for the next core topic (vertical, product, etc).

How To Execute This Strategy For Your Business

This can be a manual process or automated using software ranging from $20 a month to $5000. The concept is the same regardless of the execution.

• If you’re generating prospects already then steps 1-2 should just need some refinement.
• Step 3 could be done via Outlook manually, in a few minutes per prospect, for a small partner getting a few prospects per month.
• Steps 4-7 are more difficult to execute on a larger scale. The process that you build out at this stage is essential to your automated marketing machine and can be used to process/nurture leads from direct mail, bought lists, PPC, SEO, etc. – it’s very flexible.

Depending on your businesses size and objectives, some form of automated follow up marketing system is likely a required investment. However, beware of the labor overhead costs in setting up, maintaining and creating content (emails, resources) for your marketing automation system.

Quick Tips:

• Leverage the power of VisitorTrack to pull contacts for visitors who visited but didn’t convert.
  • Add these contacts into your automated nurture system.
• Once a prospect reaches a specific threshold of engagement (e.g. clicking through on 2 emails), they are flagged to:
  • Send out a set of high impact boxes with a specific desired action.
  • Have your sales team follow up on the boxes.
  • Etc.
• Communication between marketing and sales teams is critical. Everyone needs to be aware of what the strategy is and what the expectations are.

Selecting The Right Marketing Automation Software

There are more than 100 solutions on the market. The process of selecting marketing automation software can be a painful experience – not unlike what ERP vendor’s clients face when choosing business management accounting software for their company.

However, this is a topic for another post.










]]> http://www.salesworks.com/blog/online-marketing/a-rough-schematic-for-crafting-your-b2b-follow-up-process/feed/ 0 http://www.salesworks.com/blog/online-marketing/why-b2b-companies-can%e2%80%99t-ignore-social-media/ http://www.salesworks.com/blog/online-marketing/why-b2b-companies-can%e2%80%99t-ignore-social-media/#comments Thu, 07 Apr 2011 19:42:00 +0000 Lori Kittelberg http://dev2.salesworks.com/?p=4482 Once upon a time it was commonly believed that social media was a time-waster for B2B companies. Times have changed.

In December, Google and Bing confirmed in an interview with search engine land’s Danny Sullivan that Twitter and Facebook links indeed have an impact on how well a webpage ranks. In a nutshell, in addition to helping boost your presence and credibility, retweets and link-sharing on Facebook by the right people can help drive your organic search results.

Now ignoring social media simply will not do. Armed with the right information, tackling social media can feel a lot less daunting.

Dos and Don’ts to Maximize Your Social Media ROI

Once you have your Twitter and Facebook pages in place, here are our tips on how to get the biggest bang for your investment.

1. Do keep the lines of communication open.

• The point of social media is engagement. If you want to spread news, you can’t accomplish that by disenabling comments from your Facebook wall or moderating overzealously. Responding in a timely, professional manner can turn that less-than-flattering comment into an opportunity to further build trust with your fan/follower base (unless it’s made by a troll).
• Mashable has a handy guide: How to Deal With Negative Feedback in Social Media.




2. Don’t follow/like blindly.

• Your ratio of followers/friends matters. You don’t have to follow everyone who follows you. The idea is to follow or like those who you are likely to engage with – clients, prospective clients, industry leaders, etc. Indeed, your SEO is impacted not only by your number of Twitter followers, but also by the quality and relevance of your followers.




3. Do focus on quality over quantity.

• Build quality content and they will come. Ensure your bloggers write about what they know best (rather than having a single communications person write it all). Likewise, share content created by others based on quality.
• And when you share content, whether your own or from a trusted source, don’t simply say, “Read this.” Pose a question or ask followers to share their own experience with you. Invite the engagement that social media is meant to encourage.

4. Don’t post too often.

• You know that aunt who friended you on your personal Facebook account? The one who constantly posts updates on her Farmville progress? You don’t want your business to become that aunt. Inundating people is a sure way of getting unfollowed or unliked.
• HubSpot’s Facebook page ebook recommends posting once every other day. Twitter is a different game and you have the flexibility to tweet more often. John Moore of The Lab suggests 1-5 times/day for newbies. Because you will be tweeting more often than you update your Facebook page, do not use an auto-updater that posts everything to both.




5. Do have a personality.




• Social media gives you an opportunity to be creative. For instance, you can post on pop topics that may have some relevance to what your business does or your industry.
• When Chrysler was embarrassed by a tweet that included the F-bomb, SALESWORKS posted a Facebook update posing the question, “Who is handling your social media?” Injecting some personality helps boost followers, who will be at the ready once you share more targeted information or articles with them.




]]> http://www.salesworks.com/blog/online-marketing/why-b2b-companies-can%e2%80%99t-ignore-social-media/feed/ 0 http://www.salesworks.com/blog/online-marketing/the-top-three-costly-pay-per-click-ppc-misconceptions/ http://www.salesworks.com/blog/online-marketing/the-top-three-costly-pay-per-click-ppc-misconceptions/#comments Thu, 31 Mar 2011 20:21:12 +0000 Adrian Stepczynski http://www.salesworks.com/blog/?p=2707 There are many misconceptions regarding Google AdWords – below are the worst offenders.



“The Display Network Doesn’t Work”

The display network (renamed from the content network) is a large collection of websites where Adwords ads can appear. These ads (text, video or image) are automatically placed based on themes in your keyword lists but can also be placed manually.

The misconception here is that the display network produces low-quality traffic that has no intention to buy. This is simply not true; the display network reaches over 70% of unique internet users around the world and has the advantage of reaching customers at different points of the buying cycle.

For Example:

A user might begin a search for ERP software with the sole intention of researching their options and reading reviews. While on a review website for ERP software, though, the user might notice the ads of a solution provider and click on their ad eventually resulting in a sale for that advertiser. With search-only traffic this customer would have been missed.

It’s also important to understand that the Display network does allow for full control of where ads appear. To get the most out of your display network campaigns sites should be monitored regularly and removed if they are performing poorly.

“PPC Is Too Expensive”

It is possible to spend a lot of money in AdWords or other PPC platforms but the truth is that there is no other advertising platform that comes close to the same level of reporting, control and effectiveness. You only ever pay when someone decides to click on your ad (showing clear interest) and so if you spend $4,000 in a month you can rest assured that at the very least you got visitors to your site, the same can’t be said for a TV ad or a newspaper ad.

With PPC you also get online real-time reporting that provides statistics on the performances of ads, keywords and other details; this feedback allows for campaign optimization that is purely based on performance.

Campaigns should never be left unmanaged as there are always opportunities to make improvements. Poorly-managed campaigns will cost you and can lead to unprofitable marketing efforts. If you’re not seeing the benefit of your efforts you may require someone with experience to set up and manage your campaigns.

“PPC Is An All-In-One Solution”

If you have tried PPC and it just didn’t work for you then that doesn’t necessarily mean that it wasn’t a good fit. In many cases advertisers expect PPC to solve all their problems when the reality is that PPC is only one link of a very long chain. If any particular “link” is broken then the whole marketing effort will fall apart.

In other words if the solution you’re offering is outmatched by competitors or if your website is outdated and hard to navigate then PPC is like putting a bandaid on a gaping wound that needs 20 stitches.

So if you’re doing PPC then you need to be looking at every single thing that PPC relies on such as your landing pages and website, the solution you’re providing, the offer (if you’re doing a squeeze page) and most importantly your lead/sale nurturing process and if you don’t know how to do these things well then you need to consult with someone who does.

Incorporating a complete marketing strategy alongside PPC will definitely help yield the type of results you’re looking to achieve.

]]> http://www.salesworks.com/blog/online-marketing/the-top-three-costly-pay-per-click-ppc-misconceptions/feed/ 0 http://www.salesworks.com/blog/online-marketing/what-revolutionized-the-web-in-2010/ http://www.salesworks.com/blog/online-marketing/what-revolutionized-the-web-in-2010/#comments Wed, 16 Feb 2011 17:05:08 +0000 Bryan Villanueva http://www.salesworks.com/blog/?p=2549

Sitting at my desk working on a new project, it dawned on me that much has changed in design and design concepts in the last year.

From the new standard of web markup language to even how fonts are displayed on a website. Adjustments much be made accordingly to keep up with this rapid moving market…

HTML5, CSS3 and Javascript

2010 took a big leap forward, in the right direction, with web markup language.  HTML5 is still quite away from being standard across all browsers, but the viewing sites that are built in HTML5 and CSS3 are very pleasurable to the eye. To see what the hype is about visit www.html5gallery.com this site has a lot of examples of sites built in this markup language.

Modern browsers like Safari, Chrome and Firefox all support HTML5 & CSS3. Unfortunately, Internet Explorer 9 may not support all features, but in time it will be forced to.

Javascript adds to the magic to our viewing pleasure when visiting websites. Javascript plays a major role of development of HTML5 and CSS. The combination of all these languages helps push web designers and web developers progressively in to the future of producing exciting and interactive websites.

Social Networking

There is no doubt that social networking is gaining popularity every day. You know it’s big when they make a blockbuster movie about it. When a website becomes a verb like, tweeting, you’ve established more than an a social trend. Social networking has become so powerful, some people think Facebook is the internet.

Mobile Web

The web browsing experience has been change with the iPad, tablets, smartphones and portable laptops to operating systems, like the Android and Windows. The internet can be accessed virtually anywhere with or without a wi-fi connection.

The mobile industry has changed the way we create and design websites. Not only do we have to consider sizing and colors of a website, but how we build them. One of the changes that help us is the web markup language, like HTML5 and CSS3.

Many iphone apps are created only in HTML5. That being said, many designers now are now strictly designing for the mobile web. The industry has grown so fast and large that it’s becoming its own market for web designers and web developers.

Typography for web

Last but not least, my favorite development of 2010, is the use of the @font-face rule. There are other methods like Cufon, sIFR and FLIR. But the @font-face rule is the simplest and strongest method the help of services like Google Font API with another service, like Typekit. This can make your designs and brand look exactly how you want it.

How are you using the web technologies of 2010 to improve your website and mobile marketing?

]]> http://www.salesworks.com/blog/online-marketing/what-revolutionized-the-web-in-2010/feed/ 0 http://www.salesworks.com/blog/online-marketing/are-you-romancing-your-prospects-or-turning-them-off/ http://www.salesworks.com/blog/online-marketing/are-you-romancing-your-prospects-or-turning-them-off/#comments Wed, 09 Feb 2011 18:00:03 +0000 Erica Hakonson http://www.salesworks.com/blog/?p=2560 With Valentine’s Day just around the corner, I thought this would be the perfect time to think about how you are romancing your suspects/prospects, or turning them off with your first encounter.

Are Traditional Marketing Tactics Extinct?

In this digital day and age, many companies have done away with many methods of traditional marketing, including direct mail. Many felt the traditional market was too saturated, others wanted to hop on the web-based bandwagon and some even threw their hands in the air and stopped marketing all together.

With the average number of corporate emails projected to be 228 sent and received by a worker a day in 2011¹, are your online marketing tactics as effective as they used to be?

The Saturated Digital Market

Talks about saturation, before the days of mainstream corporate email, were you sending and receiving over 200 letters or other correspondence a day? The barrier to entry in the online marketplace is nonexistent these days. It has become difficult for your suspects/prospects to differentiate an email from a reputable company versus an email from a spam engine. It’s time to differentiate your business.

Romance vs. Cheesy Pick-Up Lines

Marketing is somewhat of the courtship, a romance, to your prospective buyers. You wouldn’t pitch one pick-up line (“Do you have a Band-Aid? Because I skinned my knee falling for you.”), and expect to propose marriage directly after. So why do you think one email or one Google ad is going to seal the deal with your prospects?

They need to be romanced – flowers, chocolates, love letters, phone calls and dates – the whole bit. They need to know you are serious about starting this long-term relationship with them, that you are invested. Sound familiar?

Here is where traditional marketing comes back into play.

You need a mix of tactics to show your prospects that you are the right business/solution provider to take care of their needs. This means don’t just stop at the email campaigns or paying to show up as the right choice in the search engines. Show them you understand them, you want to help them and that they need you.

Expand Your Bag of Tricks

Don’t be a one-trick pony. Use all the weapons in your marketing arsenal to get their attention:

1. Website – The first-impression. These days this is the first thing a prospect sees; don’t make it be their last. Represent yourself well with a clean design, optimized and relevant material, while giving them a reason to keep coming back (e.g. weekly blog, valuable white paper offers, event registration).
2. Emails – The love letters. Nurture; send them valuable, unique information that your competitors aren’t offering.
3. Pay-Per-Click Campaigns – The referral from a friend. Let them know you are the right choice, showing up when they don’t even know they are looking for you.
4. Direct Mail – The flowers and chocolates. Remind them what you do and why you care; high-impact mailers delivered via courier get you the most attention and differentiate your offering from the competition.
5. Phone Calls – The late-night calls. Following up on emails and direct-mail pieces is a must. Don’t let too much time go by without them hearing from you – include a date invite in the conversation (webinar, briefing or demo).
6. Webinars/Executive Briefings/Product Demos – The dates. Exclusive webinars, executive briefings or scheduled product demos is where the rubber meets the road; you are arranging an event you know would interest the prospect to build your relationship (e.g. Inventory Management Webinars for Manufacturers and Distributors, Utilization Tracking and Management for Professional Service Firms).

Just remember, you’d never expected a marriage proposal after your first encounter, so don’t expect a good response from your prospects either.

Have you had success with romancing your prospects? I’d love to hear your story – erica@salesworks.com.

Until next time, don’t forget about the “flowers and chocolates” – your prospects will appreciate them just as much as your dates do.

_{¹ Email’s Friendly Fire. The Wall Street Journal [Internet]. 2007 November 27. Available from: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119612732031704719.html}

]]> http://www.salesworks.com/blog/online-marketing/are-you-romancing-your-prospects-or-turning-them-off/feed/ 0