by Gary Levitt
Nobody loves email marketing more than I do. But even I admit that within the grand taxonomy of consumer touchpoints, e-newsletters hold a sorry position.
They're the longwinded busybodies who never get invited to the cool parties. Porcelain-skinned print campaigns turn up their perky, sans-serif noses at e-newsletters' frumpy templates and canned copy. Super Bowl spots kick sand in e-newsletters' bespectacled faces.
Yet, these boxy embodiments of mediocrity move product and build loyalty. Marketing people are aware of this—they've proven it with charts and everything. You need an e-newsletter and you know it.
Before rolling up your sleeves, cranking up the REO Speedwagon, and cooking up some long-form creation-wizard-based love, please review the following six bromides from a recent how-to article phoned in by a reigning email-marketing magnate.
After each, I'll explain how to do the exact opposite so that you can avoid polluting the e-cosystem with mediocre e-newsletters.
1. Share expertise
Wrong—share ignorance. Consider the old Zen adage "the more I know, the less I know." It means the more expertise we have, the more we're dazzled by just how little we currently understand.
Pick something you're marvelously clueless about and confess the fact to your readers. They won't fault you for it—but they just might love you for it. As long as the topic you're "ignorant" about is something they didn't even know they were ignorant about until reading your enlightening e-newsletter.
2. Tell a success story
Wrong—tell a failure story. It humanizes your company and demonstrates your high standards. Example: a legendary 1960s ad for the Volkswagen Beetle showed just the car, with "Lemon" in bold type. The copy explained, "The chrome strip on the glove compartment was blemished and needs to be replaced."
While other car companies waxed self-congratulatory about success, Volkswagen cornered the market talking about failure. You can do the same with your e-newsletters—simply master the art of strategic self-criticism. It never fails.
3. Conduct a relevant interview
Wrong—conduct a gloriously irrelevant interview. Approaching a topic head-on can be a headache—especially if it's been done to death. Try a sideways approach. What can your design firm glean from interviewing a homeless man? How might a chat with a priest spice up your women's fashion newsletter? Why would a software developer pick a farmer's brain about emptying grain bins into semi trailers?
I don't know the answers to these questions, but I'm willing to read your e-newsletter to find out!
4. Take an in-depth look at a product or service you offer
Wrong—take an in-depth look at a product or service you refuse to offer. As the visionaries of 37signals say in Getting Real (sort of a Thomas Paine's Common Sense for the digital generation), "do less than your competitors in order to beat them."
Embrace l'esprit du moment by poking satirical fun at the superfluous features common to your industry. Waving the simplicity banner while it's still in vogue is smart—and your next e-newsletter is a smart place to wave it.
5. Springboard off of current events
Wrong—springboard off of that which is timeless. Your readers are suffering from information overload—spare them the latest trope on gas prices, politics and Paris Hilton. Realize that the guys reading your scrap metal e-newsletter probably don't give a rat's ass that it's Halloween.
And while you're at it, throw away the springboard. Relying on convoluted conversation-starters is a milquetoast way to win friends and influence people—both in life and in e-newsletters.
6. Ask your readers
Wrong—listen to readers. In the words of Louis Armstrong, "if you have to ask what jazz is, you'll never know." Same wisdom applies to knowing the hearts of your readers. Get in sync with customers' needs by observing their riffs in natural online habitats built around your company. Replace pre-fab surveys with improvised forums. The intuition you gain will free you up to follow the inspiration of the moment and hit the high notes needed to create authentic brand loyalty.
* * *
Rebelling against clichés will keep your customers reading, and it'll keep you writing—without falling asleep. This matters. Readers can sense when you're just going through the motions. That can't be good for your brand, regardless of what the stats say.
So ask yourself: Am I excited about my e-newsletter? Does it express my voice and vision? Did I have fun creating it? If you have to ignore an army of email experts' advice (including mine) to get to where you can answer "yes" to those questions, so be it. That's called employing the virtues of e-newsletter disobedience.
Super Bowl commercials, watch out!
Friday, November 28, 2008
Five Steps to Building Brand Equity for the Small Business
by Mike O'Toole
Instinctively, every small business owner understands the importance of brand equity, even if they may not be able to define the idea. Marketing-speak aside, brand equity is how your customer recognizes why you are different and better than the alternative.
Brand equity is built on that customer's direct experience with your product or service. This experience, repeated over time, creates equity or value in your brand. And it serves as a shorthand in the buyer's mind that separates you from everyone else.
Brand equity is what creates loyalty that carries beyond price or the occasional product or service bump in the road. It is the quality that motivates your customers to recommend their friends or colleagues to you.
Everyone wants brand equity. But building it, when you are more likely to qualify for the Inc. 500 rather than the Fortune 500, can be a puzzle. Particularly when the role models for brand equity are global icons like Coca Cola, Volvo, or Sony—hardly your peer set.
The good news is that the path to building brand equity is clear. Here are six simple steps you can take to get started:
1. Clarify your position
The first step to building brand equity is to define your positioning: the single thing your company stands for to your customers. Single is the operative word here. Good positioning forces hard choices.
To define your brand position, get the key leaders in your company together. Decide what makes you different and better than your competition. This might sound blindingly obvious, but most small businesses are too busy responding to customers or making payroll to do a lot of introspection.
You don't need an agency or consultant to get started. There are a couple of good exercises out there that you can do on your own. A simple one that I like is the Positioning XYZs:
"We are the only X that solves Y problem in Z unique way."
Where...
* X is the category of the company, product, or service or other offering you've chosen to own.
* Y is the unmet need of your target audience.
* Z is the differentiation, advantage, or key positive distinction you have over your competition.
2. Tell your story
Clear positioning is critical, but positioning statements are internal touchstones, not external expressions. Your next job is to make it interesting, to imbue the rational positioning with emotion.
All brands are stories, and a good way to get started is to document and share your best corporate stories: the founding insight of the company, the times you went to extraordinary lengths to take care of a customer, or the background behind the big product breakthrough.
The good news is that with ubiquitous broadband access and Web-based applications, it is within every company's grasp to share these stories more broadly through rich-media video and audio.
B.Good (www.bgood.com), a small restaurant chain in Boston, has done this well. It's a burger joint that promises "real food," positioning itself against the typical fast-food burger and experience. The real food story begins with the stories of the "real people," the founders whose corporate values are based on their experiences growing up at their uncle's restaurant. You're reminded of these stories when you're in the restaurant or checking store hours online.
3. Bring it to life
Once you have the story, you need to bring it to life. Make sure that the way your company looks and feels to the outside world matches that truth. This leads to questions about your corporate identity: Do the basics (starting with your name and logo) make the impression you want? And your broader system for communicating to the market: Web site, brochures, your retail environment.
A client of mine talked about his Web site as a "corporate veil" that obscured what made the company special. Does your corporate identity reveal the best truth about your business, or does it hide it?
4. Start building brand before they buy
Think beyond the transaction. Brands begin at the transaction level, but the brand experience goes much deeper. The opportunity to create a brand impression starts long before the buying decision. The principle is a simple one: Give away an artifact of your brand for free. In the professional services world, this means a taste of your service or your intellectual property. Here are two creative examples:
Igor (www.igorinternational.com) is a naming consultancy based in San Francisco. It has built a methodology—and a client list that rivals those of much-larger branding agencies. That methodology is laid bare in a 100-page guide to naming that it gives away—without any registration requirements—on its Web site.
This move is both generous, in the spirit of Web content "wanting to be free," and also incredibly shrewd. The naming guide is rich, detailed, and outlines a very clear process for naming. Igor understands that giving away IP (intellectual property) doesn't cost it business—but it is its lead business generator.
It doesn't have to be just IP. Peet's (www.peets.com), the coffee retailer, allows customers to send their friends an "eCup," an email redeemable for a free cup of coffee. This is an ingenious way to enable the fiercely loyal customers of Peet's to promote the brand themselves.
5. Measure your efforts
Here are a few direct ways to measure the progress of your brand:
* Ask your customers. Survey a subset of customers, prospective customers, and (ideally) people who chose a competitor over you. You'll be surprised at how candid people will be about your strengths—and your weaknesses. Make sure you ask the most important question in any customer research: Would you recommend us to a friend or colleague? Research (check out www.netpromoter.com) has shown that the willingness to recommend is the most important indicator of brand health. This research can be done quite cheaply online, using free or near-free tools like KeySurvey (www.keysurvey.com) or SurveyMonkey (www.surveymonkey.com).
* Check your search rankings. I don't know all of what Igor measures, but I do know it fares very well in what is perhaps the most important measure of them all: organic search results. Type "product naming" on Google, and chances are you'll see Igor come up in the top three listings (the earned ones in the middle, not the paid ones on the top or side).
* Monitor the social media conversation. In most categories, consumers are holding a very active and candid conversation about the brands they love and hate. Check out what they're saying about you in blogs, bulletin boards, and vendor-rating Web sites (www.technorati.com or www.yelp.com are good places to start).
* * *
At the end of the day, brand value is tangible. If you're skeptical, take a look at Interbrand's annual survey of the world's most valuable brands.
These companies start with a clear, focused position in the market. They have built a special relationship with customers that extends far beyond the product. And they exercise a fanatical discipline in how that brand position is communicated in the market.
These are practices you don't need a billion dollar marketing budget to emulate. In fact, you can start today.
Instinctively, every small business owner understands the importance of brand equity, even if they may not be able to define the idea. Marketing-speak aside, brand equity is how your customer recognizes why you are different and better than the alternative.
Brand equity is built on that customer's direct experience with your product or service. This experience, repeated over time, creates equity or value in your brand. And it serves as a shorthand in the buyer's mind that separates you from everyone else.
Brand equity is what creates loyalty that carries beyond price or the occasional product or service bump in the road. It is the quality that motivates your customers to recommend their friends or colleagues to you.
Everyone wants brand equity. But building it, when you are more likely to qualify for the Inc. 500 rather than the Fortune 500, can be a puzzle. Particularly when the role models for brand equity are global icons like Coca Cola, Volvo, or Sony—hardly your peer set.
The good news is that the path to building brand equity is clear. Here are six simple steps you can take to get started:
1. Clarify your position
The first step to building brand equity is to define your positioning: the single thing your company stands for to your customers. Single is the operative word here. Good positioning forces hard choices.
To define your brand position, get the key leaders in your company together. Decide what makes you different and better than your competition. This might sound blindingly obvious, but most small businesses are too busy responding to customers or making payroll to do a lot of introspection.
You don't need an agency or consultant to get started. There are a couple of good exercises out there that you can do on your own. A simple one that I like is the Positioning XYZs:
"We are the only X that solves Y problem in Z unique way."
Where...
* X is the category of the company, product, or service or other offering you've chosen to own.
* Y is the unmet need of your target audience.
* Z is the differentiation, advantage, or key positive distinction you have over your competition.
2. Tell your story
Clear positioning is critical, but positioning statements are internal touchstones, not external expressions. Your next job is to make it interesting, to imbue the rational positioning with emotion.
All brands are stories, and a good way to get started is to document and share your best corporate stories: the founding insight of the company, the times you went to extraordinary lengths to take care of a customer, or the background behind the big product breakthrough.
The good news is that with ubiquitous broadband access and Web-based applications, it is within every company's grasp to share these stories more broadly through rich-media video and audio.
B.Good (www.bgood.com), a small restaurant chain in Boston, has done this well. It's a burger joint that promises "real food," positioning itself against the typical fast-food burger and experience. The real food story begins with the stories of the "real people," the founders whose corporate values are based on their experiences growing up at their uncle's restaurant. You're reminded of these stories when you're in the restaurant or checking store hours online.
3. Bring it to life
Once you have the story, you need to bring it to life. Make sure that the way your company looks and feels to the outside world matches that truth. This leads to questions about your corporate identity: Do the basics (starting with your name and logo) make the impression you want? And your broader system for communicating to the market: Web site, brochures, your retail environment.
A client of mine talked about his Web site as a "corporate veil" that obscured what made the company special. Does your corporate identity reveal the best truth about your business, or does it hide it?
4. Start building brand before they buy
Think beyond the transaction. Brands begin at the transaction level, but the brand experience goes much deeper. The opportunity to create a brand impression starts long before the buying decision. The principle is a simple one: Give away an artifact of your brand for free. In the professional services world, this means a taste of your service or your intellectual property. Here are two creative examples:
Igor (www.igorinternational.com) is a naming consultancy based in San Francisco. It has built a methodology—and a client list that rivals those of much-larger branding agencies. That methodology is laid bare in a 100-page guide to naming that it gives away—without any registration requirements—on its Web site.
This move is both generous, in the spirit of Web content "wanting to be free," and also incredibly shrewd. The naming guide is rich, detailed, and outlines a very clear process for naming. Igor understands that giving away IP (intellectual property) doesn't cost it business—but it is its lead business generator.
It doesn't have to be just IP. Peet's (www.peets.com), the coffee retailer, allows customers to send their friends an "eCup," an email redeemable for a free cup of coffee. This is an ingenious way to enable the fiercely loyal customers of Peet's to promote the brand themselves.
5. Measure your efforts
Here are a few direct ways to measure the progress of your brand:
* Ask your customers. Survey a subset of customers, prospective customers, and (ideally) people who chose a competitor over you. You'll be surprised at how candid people will be about your strengths—and your weaknesses. Make sure you ask the most important question in any customer research: Would you recommend us to a friend or colleague? Research (check out www.netpromoter.com) has shown that the willingness to recommend is the most important indicator of brand health. This research can be done quite cheaply online, using free or near-free tools like KeySurvey (www.keysurvey.com) or SurveyMonkey (www.surveymonkey.com).
* Check your search rankings. I don't know all of what Igor measures, but I do know it fares very well in what is perhaps the most important measure of them all: organic search results. Type "product naming" on Google, and chances are you'll see Igor come up in the top three listings (the earned ones in the middle, not the paid ones on the top or side).
* Monitor the social media conversation. In most categories, consumers are holding a very active and candid conversation about the brands they love and hate. Check out what they're saying about you in blogs, bulletin boards, and vendor-rating Web sites (www.technorati.com or www.yelp.com are good places to start).
* * *
At the end of the day, brand value is tangible. If you're skeptical, take a look at Interbrand's annual survey of the world's most valuable brands.
These companies start with a clear, focused position in the market. They have built a special relationship with customers that extends far beyond the product. And they exercise a fanatical discipline in how that brand position is communicated in the market.
These are practices you don't need a billion dollar marketing budget to emulate. In fact, you can start today.
Monday, November 10, 2008
Email Hygiene: Six Ways to Polish Your List
by Eric Groves
Fifty million people changed their email address last year. How many of those old addresses are on your email list right now?
You already know the importance of a permission-based email list. You even practice list segmentation to improve the relevance of the emails you send to your customers and prospects.
But how much time do you devote to cleaning your email list? If your email hygiene is lax, you're greatly limiting the success of your campaigns.
An up-to-date, clean email list can have a big impact on your delivery, open, and click-through rates, not to mention your ongoing compliance with CAN-SPAM laws.
Permission is perishable. Just because you received permission to send emails to a prospect three or six months ago doesn't mean they're still interested—especially if you're an infrequent emailer.
Act quickly when you receive permission to ensure that your email recipients remember you and your service. The older your list, the more likely it needs a checkup.
Has it been a while since your last cleaning? Follow these six steps to polish up your email list:
1. Analyze bounce-backs
After every email campaign you send, analyze the bounce-backs you receive. Identify the different reasons for the bounce to determine next steps (Was your email was blocked? Is the recipient is no longer at that address?). Remove hard bounces from your list. This is also a great way to identify and correct obvious typos in your list (e.g., ".con" instead of ".com").
2. Manage your unsubscribe requests
If you use an email marketing service with automatic unsubscribe, this step is handled for you. If not, you must do this yourself—and not only because you want to maintain a clean list: It's required by law.
3. Monitor your "reply to" address
Many recipients are fearful of using the unsubscribe function as it has been used by spammers as a way of verifying an address rather than as a legitimate unsubscribe. So, be aware of unsubscribe requests coming to your "reply to" address and permanently remove those unsubscribers' addresses.
4. Examine your open and click-through rates
You may think your email list is pretty clean, but look closer. Have your open rates decreased over the past six months or year? Are your click-throughs on the decline?
Over time, people can lose interest in a specific product or service, or they might move or change jobs and no longer require your service, but they haven't taken the step to unsubscribe. These subscribers may meet the requirements of permission-based email, but in reality they're just clogging up your list.
If you cannot re-engage them, it's best to simply remove them and move on.
5. Re-engage inactive list members
Segment your members who haven't opened your emails for the past six months and create some special communications just for them with the goal of getting them to re-engage and open your emails. If that doesn't work, remove them.
Clearly, they aren't interested; and your time is better spent communicating with people who are interested.
6. Rebuild your list the right way
As you weed out the bad emails and unsubscribes, you'll of course want to rebuild your list with new, interested subscribers. It's imperative to grow your list the right way, with permission-based emails.
Make it easy for interested parties to opt in wherever they come in contact with you, your brand, or service—such as on your Web site, in your email signature, at your physical store, etc. It's also a great idea to give them options for the types of communications they want to receive from you (e.g., newsletters, promotions, coupons) and how often (e.g., weekly, monthly).
* * *
If you haven't cleaned up your list in a while, the first time will be a little challenging; but afterward, cleaning your email list should be a simple matter of maintenance. Set aside some time following each campaign or just once a month to analyze your unsubscribes, open rates, bounce-backs, etc., and toss the bad emails out.
Your sparkling clean email list may shrink a bit, but it will outperform your big, old, messy list any day.
Eric Groves is senior vice-president, worldwide strategy & market development, at Constant Contact
Fifty million people changed their email address last year. How many of those old addresses are on your email list right now?
You already know the importance of a permission-based email list. You even practice list segmentation to improve the relevance of the emails you send to your customers and prospects.
But how much time do you devote to cleaning your email list? If your email hygiene is lax, you're greatly limiting the success of your campaigns.
An up-to-date, clean email list can have a big impact on your delivery, open, and click-through rates, not to mention your ongoing compliance with CAN-SPAM laws.
Permission is perishable. Just because you received permission to send emails to a prospect three or six months ago doesn't mean they're still interested—especially if you're an infrequent emailer.
Act quickly when you receive permission to ensure that your email recipients remember you and your service. The older your list, the more likely it needs a checkup.
Has it been a while since your last cleaning? Follow these six steps to polish up your email list:
1. Analyze bounce-backs
After every email campaign you send, analyze the bounce-backs you receive. Identify the different reasons for the bounce to determine next steps (Was your email was blocked? Is the recipient is no longer at that address?). Remove hard bounces from your list. This is also a great way to identify and correct obvious typos in your list (e.g., ".con" instead of ".com").
2. Manage your unsubscribe requests
If you use an email marketing service with automatic unsubscribe, this step is handled for you. If not, you must do this yourself—and not only because you want to maintain a clean list: It's required by law.
3. Monitor your "reply to" address
Many recipients are fearful of using the unsubscribe function as it has been used by spammers as a way of verifying an address rather than as a legitimate unsubscribe. So, be aware of unsubscribe requests coming to your "reply to" address and permanently remove those unsubscribers' addresses.
4. Examine your open and click-through rates
You may think your email list is pretty clean, but look closer. Have your open rates decreased over the past six months or year? Are your click-throughs on the decline?
Over time, people can lose interest in a specific product or service, or they might move or change jobs and no longer require your service, but they haven't taken the step to unsubscribe. These subscribers may meet the requirements of permission-based email, but in reality they're just clogging up your list.
If you cannot re-engage them, it's best to simply remove them and move on.
5. Re-engage inactive list members
Segment your members who haven't opened your emails for the past six months and create some special communications just for them with the goal of getting them to re-engage and open your emails. If that doesn't work, remove them.
Clearly, they aren't interested; and your time is better spent communicating with people who are interested.
6. Rebuild your list the right way
As you weed out the bad emails and unsubscribes, you'll of course want to rebuild your list with new, interested subscribers. It's imperative to grow your list the right way, with permission-based emails.
Make it easy for interested parties to opt in wherever they come in contact with you, your brand, or service—such as on your Web site, in your email signature, at your physical store, etc. It's also a great idea to give them options for the types of communications they want to receive from you (e.g., newsletters, promotions, coupons) and how often (e.g., weekly, monthly).
* * *
If you haven't cleaned up your list in a while, the first time will be a little challenging; but afterward, cleaning your email list should be a simple matter of maintenance. Set aside some time following each campaign or just once a month to analyze your unsubscribes, open rates, bounce-backs, etc., and toss the bad emails out.
Your sparkling clean email list may shrink a bit, but it will outperform your big, old, messy list any day.
Eric Groves is senior vice-president, worldwide strategy & market development, at Constant Contact
5 ways to increase deliverability
By Karen J. Bannan
Story posted: July 31, 2008 - 3:37 pm EDT
This week e-mail services company Return Path released its Q2 2008 Reputation Benchmark Report. The results highlight the fact that for many b-to-b marketers, deliverability may still be an issue. According to the report, e-mails sent from “legitimate” e-mail servers averaged a delivery rate of 56%; 20% were rejected and 8% went into some type of filter. The rest—16%—were bounces. In other words, almost half of the time, e-mail marketers’ messages aren’t getting through. There are ways to increase deliverability, though, according to George Bilbrey, Return Path’s general manager of delivery assurance. Here are five to consider:
1) Make sure your e-mail server—or your ESP’s—is configured correctly. If you maintain your own e-mail server, it’s crucial that it’s set up correctly. If not, Bilbrey said, you run the risk of being classified as an illegitimate server. This means making sure your reverse DNS settings—which map an IP address to a host name—are correct and use your domain name. “You don’t want to have a big string of numbers. You want it to say, ‘mail.domainname.com,’ ” he added.
2) Keep your unknown user rate down. When you send out an e-mail to someone who doesn’t exist, the ISP or server that’s handling that e-mail keeps track of that delivery attempt. Log too many of those attempts and you risk being placed on a black list or blocked at the server level. If that happens, none of your e-mails to that domain or ISP will get through. This can happen when e-mail recipients change jobs or don’t log in to their e-mail address frequently. Your best bet, Bilbrey said, is to check for unknown users after every mailing and remove them immediately. Your IT person or ESP should be able to provide you with a list of bounced e-mail addresses and help you remove them.
3) Track your reputation. Companies such as Return Path track e-mail senders’ reputations based it on a variety of information such as inclusion on black lists, complaint rates and e-mail volume. Keeping track of your score will give you an idea of your deliverability rates because reputation scores tend to correlate with deliverability, Bilbrey said. “It’s definitely a case of the higher the score, the higher the deliverability,” he said. You don’t need to subscribe to a service to check on your reputation. Return Path provides a free service at senderscore.org, for example.
4) E-mail often. If you don’t e-mail your list often enough, e-mail addresses can become stale. This means you may end up with more undeliverable messages than you would like. In addition, even if your messages do get through, recipients may forget that they signed up for your messages and report you as a spammer. The fix, Bilbrey said, is to make sure you reach out to your list at least quarterly, although monthly is even better. “With triggered events, the condition that triggers an e-mail may never occur,” he said. “It’s good to send out quarterly messages to weed out bad addresses right away.”
5) Don’t get caught in a spam trap. ISPs and large domain holders may set up spam traps, placing e-mail addresses that don’t belong to anyone on their home page or around the Web to thwart those spammers engaged in e-mail harvesting. You can end up sending to one of these addresses if someone maliciously signs one of these addresses up for your list or if a legitimate e-mail address is entered incorrectly. You have two ways of preventing this problem, Bilbrey said. The first is to implement a double opt-in so you can verify every address before it goes on your list. The second is to e-mail double opt-in e-mail messages from a separate domain as well as a separate IP address. “If you do hit a spam trap and get on a black list, you can go to the ISP or the domain owner and say, ‘This is my confirmed opt-in welcome stream. I can’t control what people input. That’s why I have a double opt-in in place,’ ” he said. “The ISP sees you’re trying to do the right thing and, as long as you provide some evidence that that’s what you’re doing, you won’t have a problem getting off the black list and at the same time, the rest of your e-mail list is safe.”
Story posted: July 31, 2008 - 3:37 pm EDT
This week e-mail services company Return Path released its Q2 2008 Reputation Benchmark Report. The results highlight the fact that for many b-to-b marketers, deliverability may still be an issue. According to the report, e-mails sent from “legitimate” e-mail servers averaged a delivery rate of 56%; 20% were rejected and 8% went into some type of filter. The rest—16%—were bounces. In other words, almost half of the time, e-mail marketers’ messages aren’t getting through. There are ways to increase deliverability, though, according to George Bilbrey, Return Path’s general manager of delivery assurance. Here are five to consider:
1) Make sure your e-mail server—or your ESP’s—is configured correctly. If you maintain your own e-mail server, it’s crucial that it’s set up correctly. If not, Bilbrey said, you run the risk of being classified as an illegitimate server. This means making sure your reverse DNS settings—which map an IP address to a host name—are correct and use your domain name. “You don’t want to have a big string of numbers. You want it to say, ‘mail.domainname.com,’ ” he added.
2) Keep your unknown user rate down. When you send out an e-mail to someone who doesn’t exist, the ISP or server that’s handling that e-mail keeps track of that delivery attempt. Log too many of those attempts and you risk being placed on a black list or blocked at the server level. If that happens, none of your e-mails to that domain or ISP will get through. This can happen when e-mail recipients change jobs or don’t log in to their e-mail address frequently. Your best bet, Bilbrey said, is to check for unknown users after every mailing and remove them immediately. Your IT person or ESP should be able to provide you with a list of bounced e-mail addresses and help you remove them.
3) Track your reputation. Companies such as Return Path track e-mail senders’ reputations based it on a variety of information such as inclusion on black lists, complaint rates and e-mail volume. Keeping track of your score will give you an idea of your deliverability rates because reputation scores tend to correlate with deliverability, Bilbrey said. “It’s definitely a case of the higher the score, the higher the deliverability,” he said. You don’t need to subscribe to a service to check on your reputation. Return Path provides a free service at senderscore.org, for example.
4) E-mail often. If you don’t e-mail your list often enough, e-mail addresses can become stale. This means you may end up with more undeliverable messages than you would like. In addition, even if your messages do get through, recipients may forget that they signed up for your messages and report you as a spammer. The fix, Bilbrey said, is to make sure you reach out to your list at least quarterly, although monthly is even better. “With triggered events, the condition that triggers an e-mail may never occur,” he said. “It’s good to send out quarterly messages to weed out bad addresses right away.”
5) Don’t get caught in a spam trap. ISPs and large domain holders may set up spam traps, placing e-mail addresses that don’t belong to anyone on their home page or around the Web to thwart those spammers engaged in e-mail harvesting. You can end up sending to one of these addresses if someone maliciously signs one of these addresses up for your list or if a legitimate e-mail address is entered incorrectly. You have two ways of preventing this problem, Bilbrey said. The first is to implement a double opt-in so you can verify every address before it goes on your list. The second is to e-mail double opt-in e-mail messages from a separate domain as well as a separate IP address. “If you do hit a spam trap and get on a black list, you can go to the ISP or the domain owner and say, ‘This is my confirmed opt-in welcome stream. I can’t control what people input. That’s why I have a double opt-in in place,’ ” he said. “The ISP sees you’re trying to do the right thing and, as long as you provide some evidence that that’s what you’re doing, you won’t have a problem getting off the black list and at the same time, the rest of your e-mail list is safe.”
How to Avoid TMI in Email: When Less Is More
by Josh Nason
You have them dead in your sights. They're eager to sign up for your email list. (Yeah, they actually want to get information from you!) The user is on your site and that all-important Subscribe click is made. You are seconds away from having another prospect to market to, and then... they stop.
They go away, never to return because they were turned off. Why? What happened?
It's an ill that has plagued marketers for years. Heck, even I had it in my former life as a sports marketer. It's called TMI-tis, short for Too Much Information-itis. You're not alone, however, so don't fear. Read on for help in curing your email marketing ills.
It starts simply. You're setting up fields for your email signup form and instead of grabbing just the basics for information, you start to wander. What if I got all the information I want up front? That would save me so much time! Who cares about emailing them at that point? I'll have it all! Bwahahahaha!
So then it begins: name, address, home number, work number, mobile number, bag phone number, AOL IM, Yahoo IM, favorite band, favorite station, favorite team. Sure, you don't make it required that all the fields are filled in, but while they're there why not offer it, right?
All they wanted was to supply you with was an email address, but instead the end users are looking at a form worthy of governmental consideration.
Eventually, the process you create gets so bad that the person attempting to sign up can't even find where to enter in an email address, which was the only reason they clicked to begin with. They get frustrated, the browser window closes, and within seconds you've lost a potential addition to your list because you came down with TMI-tis: You got greedy.
Let's get to the root of what you're trying to do: collect emails from someone who wants to stay in contact with your company or client. They've attempted to engage you by opting to give you their address, so you've already achieved your goal. Stop right there.
While it's tempting to assume that they'll be willing to give you every possible bit of information while they're at this critical juncture, ask yourself what you're going to do with that information when you get it. Is there an immediate purpose and plan, or are you getting it "just because"? If you hesitate with answering this question at all, then you should be asking just the basics: first/last name, email and zip code. This allows to you know who the email owner is, how to contact them, and where they're from.
However, if you really need that info right away, I'd suggest going about it a different way.
Most times, you will probably get those highly coveted demographics and psychographics just by smart marketing. Try a targeted data-collection initiative to your list, securing information for the chance to win something of high value. You could do a direct sales campaign, offering a specific product in a specific window of time that would achieve your data collection goal. Or you could just practice great email marketing and entice them to provide information in other legitimate ways.
A few examples:
* Sending out timely newsletters with worthwhile and engaging content that builds trust. If users trust the source, they will be more likely to supply information for a contest or some other sort of data-collection drive.
* Doing a "recommend-a-friend" push whereby you award prizes for the most people recommended who sign up for the marketer's list. On the sign-up landing page, ask the initial user (the "recommender") for the rest of their info. If they're engaged in asking others to sign up and there's a trust already established, this might be a chance to get them if you feel the timing is right.
* Surveys: If you can create a very short-and-sweet survey asking some other important information, you can probably also get your additional demo information here.
Ultimately, there are ways to get what you want without overwhelming end users and losing them before they bite the hook. Don't overcomplicate the process... just do what you do best!
A good rule of thumb is to put yourself in the slightly-worn out seat of the end user. You're a busy person just like your potential subscribers. If you were sitting in front of a computer and signing up for an email list, what would you want your user experience to be like? Signing up to receive emails shouldn't be an uncomfortable and lengthy process.
A few other thoughts on the email-signup process:
* Please, please, please don't make people choose a username/password to get emails. I subscribe to a few arena mailing lists to get information on concerts, and two of them required me to create a username/password. Why? I'm not that concerned about someone hacking into my account and changing my music preferences from Tool to Toby Keith, so why should they? It's email, not national security.
* Always use the double-opt-in process. Keep your lists legit and clean. This is something people are now accustomed to doing, so don't look it as a needless extra step on their behalf.
* Keep them on your site during the signup process. I cannot stand it that when I'm attempting to sign up for a list, a non-branded window pops up for me to fill in. Any email marketing company worth its salt should able to provide you, the marketer, with HTML code that you can format into your own site, so that users don't have jump to a stock order-form landing page.
My marketing friends, the golden rule with avoiding TMI-tis is to keep it simple. Do whatever it takes to get subscribers in your database with as little difficulty as possible. Then, get the rest of the information the old-fashioned way: by providing a service they absolutely have to have.
You have them dead in your sights. They're eager to sign up for your email list. (Yeah, they actually want to get information from you!) The user is on your site and that all-important Subscribe click is made. You are seconds away from having another prospect to market to, and then... they stop.
They go away, never to return because they were turned off. Why? What happened?
It's an ill that has plagued marketers for years. Heck, even I had it in my former life as a sports marketer. It's called TMI-tis, short for Too Much Information-itis. You're not alone, however, so don't fear. Read on for help in curing your email marketing ills.
It starts simply. You're setting up fields for your email signup form and instead of grabbing just the basics for information, you start to wander. What if I got all the information I want up front? That would save me so much time! Who cares about emailing them at that point? I'll have it all! Bwahahahaha!
So then it begins: name, address, home number, work number, mobile number, bag phone number, AOL IM, Yahoo IM, favorite band, favorite station, favorite team. Sure, you don't make it required that all the fields are filled in, but while they're there why not offer it, right?
All they wanted was to supply you with was an email address, but instead the end users are looking at a form worthy of governmental consideration.
Eventually, the process you create gets so bad that the person attempting to sign up can't even find where to enter in an email address, which was the only reason they clicked to begin with. They get frustrated, the browser window closes, and within seconds you've lost a potential addition to your list because you came down with TMI-tis: You got greedy.
Let's get to the root of what you're trying to do: collect emails from someone who wants to stay in contact with your company or client. They've attempted to engage you by opting to give you their address, so you've already achieved your goal. Stop right there.
While it's tempting to assume that they'll be willing to give you every possible bit of information while they're at this critical juncture, ask yourself what you're going to do with that information when you get it. Is there an immediate purpose and plan, or are you getting it "just because"? If you hesitate with answering this question at all, then you should be asking just the basics: first/last name, email and zip code. This allows to you know who the email owner is, how to contact them, and where they're from.
However, if you really need that info right away, I'd suggest going about it a different way.
Most times, you will probably get those highly coveted demographics and psychographics just by smart marketing. Try a targeted data-collection initiative to your list, securing information for the chance to win something of high value. You could do a direct sales campaign, offering a specific product in a specific window of time that would achieve your data collection goal. Or you could just practice great email marketing and entice them to provide information in other legitimate ways.
A few examples:
* Sending out timely newsletters with worthwhile and engaging content that builds trust. If users trust the source, they will be more likely to supply information for a contest or some other sort of data-collection drive.
* Doing a "recommend-a-friend" push whereby you award prizes for the most people recommended who sign up for the marketer's list. On the sign-up landing page, ask the initial user (the "recommender") for the rest of their info. If they're engaged in asking others to sign up and there's a trust already established, this might be a chance to get them if you feel the timing is right.
* Surveys: If you can create a very short-and-sweet survey asking some other important information, you can probably also get your additional demo information here.
Ultimately, there are ways to get what you want without overwhelming end users and losing them before they bite the hook. Don't overcomplicate the process... just do what you do best!
A good rule of thumb is to put yourself in the slightly-worn out seat of the end user. You're a busy person just like your potential subscribers. If you were sitting in front of a computer and signing up for an email list, what would you want your user experience to be like? Signing up to receive emails shouldn't be an uncomfortable and lengthy process.
A few other thoughts on the email-signup process:
* Please, please, please don't make people choose a username/password to get emails. I subscribe to a few arena mailing lists to get information on concerts, and two of them required me to create a username/password. Why? I'm not that concerned about someone hacking into my account and changing my music preferences from Tool to Toby Keith, so why should they? It's email, not national security.
* Always use the double-opt-in process. Keep your lists legit and clean. This is something people are now accustomed to doing, so don't look it as a needless extra step on their behalf.
* Keep them on your site during the signup process. I cannot stand it that when I'm attempting to sign up for a list, a non-branded window pops up for me to fill in. Any email marketing company worth its salt should able to provide you, the marketer, with HTML code that you can format into your own site, so that users don't have jump to a stock order-form landing page.
My marketing friends, the golden rule with avoiding TMI-tis is to keep it simple. Do whatever it takes to get subscribers in your database with as little difficulty as possible. Then, get the rest of the information the old-fashioned way: by providing a service they absolutely have to have.
Minimize List Churn by Reducing Unsubscribes
by Loren McDonald
Reducing the number of people who unsubscribe from your mailing list is one of the key ways to minimize list churn and in turn make it easier to grow your list.
That doesn't mean you make it harder for people to leave, however. Instead, learn why people leave, offer them other ways to remain in the relationship, and make the process a great customer experience.
Unsubscribes: A Fact of List Life
Email consumers control their destiny—choosing when to opt in and when to say adios. But, unsubscribes can also be a good thing. The alternative is a poor brand experience for the subscriber and spam complaints or deadwood on your list that masks true performance.
Make the process easy. You'll minimize spam complaints and likely retain the customer relationship through another channel.
Why People Unsubscribe
According to JupiterResearch:
1. 53 percent say they unsubscribe when the content is irrelevant.
2. 40 percent say they unsubscribe when email is sent too often.
How to Optimize the Unsubscribe Process
1. Make the unsubscribe and alternatives links stand out in your emails
Display a clearly labeled unsubscribe link prominently in your email message, in an easy-to-read font size, style, and color that match your email design. Don't try to hide it by blending it in with the background color, shrinking the type size, or moving it around each time.
Put it in both your primary or secondary navigation below the fold and near the bottom or in your email administration area if you have one. However, if you have a high spam-complaint rate, add it to the very top of your emails.
2. Deploy a combination unsubscribe/preference page
Create a well-designed, branded page that explains exactly how to unsubscribe, thanks the user for his/her patronage, and offers alternatives to unsubscribing but completes the unsubscribe process quickly for those who really do want to leave.
Test it for ease of use. Check it and the email unsubscribe link regularly to be sure they're working correctly.
A. Unsubscribe function
This page should make it easy and obvious how to unsubscribe. In fact, a ruling in May by the Federal Trade Commission prohibits requiring logins or passwords, surveys, or the viewing of offers to complete the unsubscribe. The entering of an email address is the only requirement allowed.
Pass the subscribers' email address and preferences through to this unsubscribe page. They won't have to enter any information; they'll merely check or uncheck boxes or select radio buttons.
After completing the unsubscribe or preference changes, launch a thank-you page that confirms the action(s) and again offers ways to continue the relationship via other channels, such as RSS or catalogs.
B. Suggested alternatives
Many of your subscribers who click the unsubscribe link just want some aspect of the relationship to change.
Retain these subscribers with an unsubscribe/preference page that allows them both to change preferences and to opt out. Include these alternatives:
* Changing their email address. Best practice: To reduce mistakes, load the form with the address they used to subscribe.
* Changing the frequency. Offer some appropriate options, such as a weekly or monthly digest of daily or weekly messages.
* Changing the format. Let users switch from plain text to HTML or vice versa, as well as a "mobile" version—a shortened HTML format minus images—if you offer it.
* Changing the channel. Show users how and where to sign up for your RSS feed(s), SMS messaging, or direct mail, if you offer them.
* Changing their profile or preferences. People's needs and interests change over time. Present their profile/preferences this page or link to your preference page.
* Subscribing to your other lists/emails. You may have other emails or newsletters of more relevance to the subscriber. Present a list (with descriptions, if possible) of the emails you offer and highlight those they are currently receiving.
C. Alternate contacts
Always provide your customer-service phone number and email and postal addresses in case the subscriber has problems, such as when a page is not loading or in case of error messages.
D. Exit survey
Try to capture why subscribers are opting out. Use radio buttons listing the top five or so reasons you know why people are unsubscribing. Then, provide a comment box for people to elaborate or list other reasons, and study what they say. Make it clear the survey is optional.
E. Timing statement if the unsubscribe is not immediate
Consumers expect your emails to stop as soon as they unsubscribe, even though in the United States the CAN-SPAM Act allows up to 10 days to remove someone from a list. If, for whatever reason, it takes you several days to process an unsubscribe, include a statement such as the following: "When unsubscribing, there may be a delay of up to seven days. We apologize in advance if you receive further emails during this period."
Other Best Practices
* Launch a thank-you page that confirms the actions the subscriber took and thanks that person.
* Track your unsubscribe rate over several campaigns to spot trends, correlate with spam complaints, and analyze to find patterns.
* Test different unsubscribe formats to find one that works best.
* Minimize the need for unsubscribing by optimizing your opt-in procedure and following email best practices throughout your relationship.
Reducing the number of people who unsubscribe from your mailing list is one of the key ways to minimize list churn and in turn make it easier to grow your list.
That doesn't mean you make it harder for people to leave, however. Instead, learn why people leave, offer them other ways to remain in the relationship, and make the process a great customer experience.
Unsubscribes: A Fact of List Life
Email consumers control their destiny—choosing when to opt in and when to say adios. But, unsubscribes can also be a good thing. The alternative is a poor brand experience for the subscriber and spam complaints or deadwood on your list that masks true performance.
Make the process easy. You'll minimize spam complaints and likely retain the customer relationship through another channel.
Why People Unsubscribe
According to JupiterResearch:
1. 53 percent say they unsubscribe when the content is irrelevant.
2. 40 percent say they unsubscribe when email is sent too often.
How to Optimize the Unsubscribe Process
1. Make the unsubscribe and alternatives links stand out in your emails
Display a clearly labeled unsubscribe link prominently in your email message, in an easy-to-read font size, style, and color that match your email design. Don't try to hide it by blending it in with the background color, shrinking the type size, or moving it around each time.
Put it in both your primary or secondary navigation below the fold and near the bottom or in your email administration area if you have one. However, if you have a high spam-complaint rate, add it to the very top of your emails.
2. Deploy a combination unsubscribe/preference page
Create a well-designed, branded page that explains exactly how to unsubscribe, thanks the user for his/her patronage, and offers alternatives to unsubscribing but completes the unsubscribe process quickly for those who really do want to leave.
Test it for ease of use. Check it and the email unsubscribe link regularly to be sure they're working correctly.
A. Unsubscribe function
This page should make it easy and obvious how to unsubscribe. In fact, a ruling in May by the Federal Trade Commission prohibits requiring logins or passwords, surveys, or the viewing of offers to complete the unsubscribe. The entering of an email address is the only requirement allowed.
Pass the subscribers' email address and preferences through to this unsubscribe page. They won't have to enter any information; they'll merely check or uncheck boxes or select radio buttons.
After completing the unsubscribe or preference changes, launch a thank-you page that confirms the action(s) and again offers ways to continue the relationship via other channels, such as RSS or catalogs.
B. Suggested alternatives
Many of your subscribers who click the unsubscribe link just want some aspect of the relationship to change.
Retain these subscribers with an unsubscribe/preference page that allows them both to change preferences and to opt out. Include these alternatives:
* Changing their email address. Best practice: To reduce mistakes, load the form with the address they used to subscribe.
* Changing the frequency. Offer some appropriate options, such as a weekly or monthly digest of daily or weekly messages.
* Changing the format. Let users switch from plain text to HTML or vice versa, as well as a "mobile" version—a shortened HTML format minus images—if you offer it.
* Changing the channel. Show users how and where to sign up for your RSS feed(s), SMS messaging, or direct mail, if you offer them.
* Changing their profile or preferences. People's needs and interests change over time. Present their profile/preferences this page or link to your preference page.
* Subscribing to your other lists/emails. You may have other emails or newsletters of more relevance to the subscriber. Present a list (with descriptions, if possible) of the emails you offer and highlight those they are currently receiving.
C. Alternate contacts
Always provide your customer-service phone number and email and postal addresses in case the subscriber has problems, such as when a page is not loading or in case of error messages.
D. Exit survey
Try to capture why subscribers are opting out. Use radio buttons listing the top five or so reasons you know why people are unsubscribing. Then, provide a comment box for people to elaborate or list other reasons, and study what they say. Make it clear the survey is optional.
E. Timing statement if the unsubscribe is not immediate
Consumers expect your emails to stop as soon as they unsubscribe, even though in the United States the CAN-SPAM Act allows up to 10 days to remove someone from a list. If, for whatever reason, it takes you several days to process an unsubscribe, include a statement such as the following: "When unsubscribing, there may be a delay of up to seven days. We apologize in advance if you receive further emails during this period."
Other Best Practices
* Launch a thank-you page that confirms the actions the subscriber took and thanks that person.
* Track your unsubscribe rate over several campaigns to spot trends, correlate with spam complaints, and analyze to find patterns.
* Test different unsubscribe formats to find one that works best.
* Minimize the need for unsubscribing by optimizing your opt-in procedure and following email best practices throughout your relationship.
Friday, November 7, 2008
The Definitive Guide to Business-to-Business Marketing in a Recession
by Jon Miller
Does an economic slowdown necessarily mean that business-to-business marketers have to find even more ways to do more with less? Or can a downturn create opportunity for smart marketers to grow and thrive?
In this guide to B2B marketing during a recession, I answer these questions and share specific strategies you can use to shine when times are dark.
Are We in a Recession?
First of all, I should explain I do not think that the US is in a recession—yet. A recession requires two quarters of negative GDP growth, and the Bureau of Economic Statistics reported 0.6% growth for Q4 2007 while preliminary numbers for Q1 2008 show 0.9% growth.
So we may not yet be in a recession, but times are growing increasingly difficult for consumers. The subprime mess is real, rising energy and food costs are cutting into discretionary spending, and the weakened dollar is importing inflation to our economy.
According to the Web site How I Spent My Stimulus, the $152 billion stimulus package is going primarily to reduce consumer debt or pay for higher gas and food costs, not to stimulate incremental spending.
I like to say that we are in the worst possible non-recession. And, since prior downturns avoided becoming a (global) recession because of resilient spending by American consumers—a saving grace we don't have this time—things may still get worse before they get better.
What Does This Mean for Business-to-Business Marketing?
Fewer consumers means less demand; less demand means efforts to stimulate demand (i.e,. marketing) are less effective overall. In other words, when people buy less, advertisers spend less. According to research firm Veronis Suhler Stevenson, advertising in the US dropped 9% in the 2001 recession and Internet advertising specifically fell 27%.
I should point out that this slowdown applies to business-to-business marketers as well, because as consumer spending drops the businesses that sell to those consumers reduce their spending as well.
However, these macro trends hide two important facts:
1. Branding and other forms of push marketing drop in a slowdown, while direct marketing tends to rise. When budgets are cut, the channels with the least ability to measure marketing ROI are cut especially hard as companies shift spending to more measurable channels. Investment bank Cowen and Company looked at the last six recessions since 1950 and found that spending on direct marketing actually grew during six recessions.
2. This time is different for online marketing. In the 2001 recession, online marketing was still unproven and got caught in the downward collapse of the Internet in general. Today, the trend to shift advertising dollars to measurable online channels is proven and won't disappear anytime soon. However, just because online marketing won't crater doesn't mean it isn't immune from a slowdown. In fact, eMarketer recently reduced its 2008 estimate for US online advertising to $25.8 billion. That is a 7% reduction from its prior estimate—but it is still 23% higher than 2007's total. In other words, the recession may slow down the growth of online marketing, but it's still growing at a significant pace.
What this means is that a recession will accelerate the decline of interruption-based mass advertising that simply shouts your message to customers. In its place we will see increased growth in measurable and relationship-based strategies such as search marketing, email marketing, lead nurturing, and online communities.
A downturn can also create opportunity for the companies that are more efficient at turning marketing investments into revenue, since there will be less competition overall.
In a study of US recessions, McGraw-Hill Research found that business-to-business firms that maintained or increased advertising expenditures during the 1981-1982 recession averaged significantly higher sales growth than those that eliminated or decreased advertising. It found, in fact, that by 1985 the companies that were aggressive recession advertisers had grown their revenue over 2.5X faster than those that had reduced their advertising.
Seven Strategies for B2b Marketing During a Slowdown
Given these macro-economic trends, how should you allocate your marketing budget—and time? Here are specific business-to-business strategies you can use during a downturn:
1. Use lead management to maximize the value of each lead
In a recession, risk-averse buyers take longer than normal to research potential purchases. When you first identify a new prospect (regardless of whether he/she downloaded a whitepaper, stopped by your booth at a tradeshow, or signed up for a free trial), that prospect is more likely than not still in the awareness or research stage and is not yet ready to engage with one of your sales reps.
This means that you need lead scoring to identify which leads are highly engaged and lead nurturing to develop relationships with qualified prospects who are not yet ready to engage with sales. Without these capabilities, as many as 95% of qualified prospects who are not yet sales-ready never end up turning into a sales opportunity. These prospects are valuable corporate assets that you worked hard to acquire, and in a down economy you need to do everything possible to maximize value from them.
Implementing even simple automated lead-nurturing programs can yield a 400% improvement in the conversion of qualified prospects into sales opportunities over time. Net-net: Companies that can do a better job of managing leads and developing early-stage prospects into sales ready leads will be in the best position to thrive in a downturn.
2. Focus on your house list
In a recession, you may have less money to spend on acquiring new customers. The solution is simple: Spend more time marketing to (and building relationships with) the people you already know.
Activities that can help you get the most out of your existing relationships include conducting lead-nurturing campaigns, creating new content to offer to existing prospects, and cleaning and augmenting your marketing lead database with progressive profiling.
3. Build and optimize landing pages
When times are tough, it's more important than ever to maximize the return on your advertising. Whether you are using Google AdWords, banners, sponsorships, or email campaigns, a dedicated landing page is the single most effective way to turn a click into a prospect.
A relevant landing page can easily double conversions versus sending clicks to the homepage, and testing your pages can increase conversions by another 48% or more. Together, these tactics alone can result in 2.5X more leads for every dollar you spend, something that's sure to look good in tough times.
However, most companies are under-using this important technique: 44% of clicks for B2B companies are directed to the homepage, not a special landing page, and of B2B companies that use landing pages 62% have six or fewer total pages.
A recession is perhaps the best time to focus on some of these basics.
4. Content is for later in the buying cycle
When buying slows down, you need to focus more than ever on making sure that you are finding the prospects who are actually ready to buy—or, even better, make sure that they are finding you.
One great way to do this is to focus your offers on content that will appeal to someone who's actually looking for a solution (as opposed to thought-leadership and best-practices content, which can appeal to prospects who may one day have a need but are not currently looking). Examples of this kind of content can include "Top 5 Questions to Ask a Potential Vendor" whitepapers, buyers guides and checklists, analyst evaluations, and so on.
5. Appeal to the nervous buyer
A recession can mean more risk-averse buyers, which may lead to a tendency to go with "safe" solutions. This is fine for large established companies, but it means that younger companies need to do more than ever to reassure buyers and build trust.
Tactically, this means including customer references, reviews, expert opinions, awards, and other validation as part of your marketing.
Strategically, a recession means fewer risk-takers and visionaries, so take a lesson from Geoffrey Moore's Crossing the Chasm (pdf) and use methods that appeal to mainstream pragmatists: industry-specific marketing tactics and solutions, vertical customer references, relevant partnerships and alliances, and whole-product marketing.
6. Align sales and marketing
Today's prospects start their buying process by interacting with marketing and online channels long before they ever speak with a sales representative. This means companies must integrate marketing and sales efforts to create a single revenue pipeline.
The old days of functional silos and poor communication between the two departments must end. A tougher selling environment, driven by a recession, means this is more true than ever.
7. Don't be a cost center
Most executives today think that Sales delivers revenue and Marketing is a cost center. Marketers are partly to blame for part of this mindset, since when we use metrics such as "cost per lead" we frame the discussion in terms of costs, not in terms of impact on revenue. More subtly, language like "marketing spending" and "marketing budget" instead of "marketing investment" perpetuates these beliefs.
In a recession, marketing needs more than ever to change these perceptions. This means that marketing investments must be justified with a rigorous business case and should be amortized over the entire "useful life" of the investment. And it means marketing must increase marketing accountability by demonstrating the impact of each marketing activity on pipeline and revenue.
Of course, this is easier said than done, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't try. Even small steps, like reports that show the total opportunity value for each lead source or campaign, can make a big impact.
Conclusion
Even if we aren't in a recession, we are in for some tough economic times—and an economic slowdown means a tendency to scale back marketing spending. However, research shows that a downturn creates opportunity to accelerate growth faster than your competitors. This means it may be the best time to step up your marketing—at least in quality if not quantity.
The marketers who focus on getting the most out of every dollar spent and on demonstrating marketing's impact on revenue and pipeline will be well positioned to come out of the slump looking like a star.
Does an economic slowdown necessarily mean that business-to-business marketers have to find even more ways to do more with less? Or can a downturn create opportunity for smart marketers to grow and thrive?
In this guide to B2B marketing during a recession, I answer these questions and share specific strategies you can use to shine when times are dark.
Are We in a Recession?
First of all, I should explain I do not think that the US is in a recession—yet. A recession requires two quarters of negative GDP growth, and the Bureau of Economic Statistics reported 0.6% growth for Q4 2007 while preliminary numbers for Q1 2008 show 0.9% growth.
So we may not yet be in a recession, but times are growing increasingly difficult for consumers. The subprime mess is real, rising energy and food costs are cutting into discretionary spending, and the weakened dollar is importing inflation to our economy.
According to the Web site How I Spent My Stimulus, the $152 billion stimulus package is going primarily to reduce consumer debt or pay for higher gas and food costs, not to stimulate incremental spending.
I like to say that we are in the worst possible non-recession. And, since prior downturns avoided becoming a (global) recession because of resilient spending by American consumers—a saving grace we don't have this time—things may still get worse before they get better.
What Does This Mean for Business-to-Business Marketing?
Fewer consumers means less demand; less demand means efforts to stimulate demand (i.e,. marketing) are less effective overall. In other words, when people buy less, advertisers spend less. According to research firm Veronis Suhler Stevenson, advertising in the US dropped 9% in the 2001 recession and Internet advertising specifically fell 27%.
I should point out that this slowdown applies to business-to-business marketers as well, because as consumer spending drops the businesses that sell to those consumers reduce their spending as well.
However, these macro trends hide two important facts:
1. Branding and other forms of push marketing drop in a slowdown, while direct marketing tends to rise. When budgets are cut, the channels with the least ability to measure marketing ROI are cut especially hard as companies shift spending to more measurable channels. Investment bank Cowen and Company looked at the last six recessions since 1950 and found that spending on direct marketing actually grew during six recessions.
2. This time is different for online marketing. In the 2001 recession, online marketing was still unproven and got caught in the downward collapse of the Internet in general. Today, the trend to shift advertising dollars to measurable online channels is proven and won't disappear anytime soon. However, just because online marketing won't crater doesn't mean it isn't immune from a slowdown. In fact, eMarketer recently reduced its 2008 estimate for US online advertising to $25.8 billion. That is a 7% reduction from its prior estimate—but it is still 23% higher than 2007's total. In other words, the recession may slow down the growth of online marketing, but it's still growing at a significant pace.
What this means is that a recession will accelerate the decline of interruption-based mass advertising that simply shouts your message to customers. In its place we will see increased growth in measurable and relationship-based strategies such as search marketing, email marketing, lead nurturing, and online communities.
A downturn can also create opportunity for the companies that are more efficient at turning marketing investments into revenue, since there will be less competition overall.
In a study of US recessions, McGraw-Hill Research found that business-to-business firms that maintained or increased advertising expenditures during the 1981-1982 recession averaged significantly higher sales growth than those that eliminated or decreased advertising. It found, in fact, that by 1985 the companies that were aggressive recession advertisers had grown their revenue over 2.5X faster than those that had reduced their advertising.
Seven Strategies for B2b Marketing During a Slowdown
Given these macro-economic trends, how should you allocate your marketing budget—and time? Here are specific business-to-business strategies you can use during a downturn:
1. Use lead management to maximize the value of each lead
In a recession, risk-averse buyers take longer than normal to research potential purchases. When you first identify a new prospect (regardless of whether he/she downloaded a whitepaper, stopped by your booth at a tradeshow, or signed up for a free trial), that prospect is more likely than not still in the awareness or research stage and is not yet ready to engage with one of your sales reps.
This means that you need lead scoring to identify which leads are highly engaged and lead nurturing to develop relationships with qualified prospects who are not yet ready to engage with sales. Without these capabilities, as many as 95% of qualified prospects who are not yet sales-ready never end up turning into a sales opportunity. These prospects are valuable corporate assets that you worked hard to acquire, and in a down economy you need to do everything possible to maximize value from them.
Implementing even simple automated lead-nurturing programs can yield a 400% improvement in the conversion of qualified prospects into sales opportunities over time. Net-net: Companies that can do a better job of managing leads and developing early-stage prospects into sales ready leads will be in the best position to thrive in a downturn.
2. Focus on your house list
In a recession, you may have less money to spend on acquiring new customers. The solution is simple: Spend more time marketing to (and building relationships with) the people you already know.
Activities that can help you get the most out of your existing relationships include conducting lead-nurturing campaigns, creating new content to offer to existing prospects, and cleaning and augmenting your marketing lead database with progressive profiling.
3. Build and optimize landing pages
When times are tough, it's more important than ever to maximize the return on your advertising. Whether you are using Google AdWords, banners, sponsorships, or email campaigns, a dedicated landing page is the single most effective way to turn a click into a prospect.
A relevant landing page can easily double conversions versus sending clicks to the homepage, and testing your pages can increase conversions by another 48% or more. Together, these tactics alone can result in 2.5X more leads for every dollar you spend, something that's sure to look good in tough times.
However, most companies are under-using this important technique: 44% of clicks for B2B companies are directed to the homepage, not a special landing page, and of B2B companies that use landing pages 62% have six or fewer total pages.
A recession is perhaps the best time to focus on some of these basics.
4. Content is for later in the buying cycle
When buying slows down, you need to focus more than ever on making sure that you are finding the prospects who are actually ready to buy—or, even better, make sure that they are finding you.
One great way to do this is to focus your offers on content that will appeal to someone who's actually looking for a solution (as opposed to thought-leadership and best-practices content, which can appeal to prospects who may one day have a need but are not currently looking). Examples of this kind of content can include "Top 5 Questions to Ask a Potential Vendor" whitepapers, buyers guides and checklists, analyst evaluations, and so on.
5. Appeal to the nervous buyer
A recession can mean more risk-averse buyers, which may lead to a tendency to go with "safe" solutions. This is fine for large established companies, but it means that younger companies need to do more than ever to reassure buyers and build trust.
Tactically, this means including customer references, reviews, expert opinions, awards, and other validation as part of your marketing.
Strategically, a recession means fewer risk-takers and visionaries, so take a lesson from Geoffrey Moore's Crossing the Chasm (pdf) and use methods that appeal to mainstream pragmatists: industry-specific marketing tactics and solutions, vertical customer references, relevant partnerships and alliances, and whole-product marketing.
6. Align sales and marketing
Today's prospects start their buying process by interacting with marketing and online channels long before they ever speak with a sales representative. This means companies must integrate marketing and sales efforts to create a single revenue pipeline.
The old days of functional silos and poor communication between the two departments must end. A tougher selling environment, driven by a recession, means this is more true than ever.
7. Don't be a cost center
Most executives today think that Sales delivers revenue and Marketing is a cost center. Marketers are partly to blame for part of this mindset, since when we use metrics such as "cost per lead" we frame the discussion in terms of costs, not in terms of impact on revenue. More subtly, language like "marketing spending" and "marketing budget" instead of "marketing investment" perpetuates these beliefs.
In a recession, marketing needs more than ever to change these perceptions. This means that marketing investments must be justified with a rigorous business case and should be amortized over the entire "useful life" of the investment. And it means marketing must increase marketing accountability by demonstrating the impact of each marketing activity on pipeline and revenue.
Of course, this is easier said than done, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't try. Even small steps, like reports that show the total opportunity value for each lead source or campaign, can make a big impact.
Conclusion
Even if we aren't in a recession, we are in for some tough economic times—and an economic slowdown means a tendency to scale back marketing spending. However, research shows that a downturn creates opportunity to accelerate growth faster than your competitors. This means it may be the best time to step up your marketing—at least in quality if not quantity.
The marketers who focus on getting the most out of every dollar spent and on demonstrating marketing's impact on revenue and pipeline will be well positioned to come out of the slump looking like a star.
Stick to the Script!
To ease the pain of cold calling, "A good sales script is essential," says Christine Comaford-Lynch. The perfect script should contain four elements, she says:
Start with who you are and where you are calling from. Move on to explain what you are selling. Continue with two compelling features of what it is you're offering. Finish with a request for commitment, by asking: "Is this something you want?"
Don't be discouraged if the answer to that last question is "no." According to Comaford-Lynch, disqualifying bad leads is an essential part of the lead-gen process. In fact, the dialogue you prepare with a good script should be able to both attract a good lead and disqualify a bad one. Two tips for creating that perfect dialogue:
Limit your script to 45 words at most. "Conventional sales theory (and countless studies) have found that after 30 seconds, your listener will begin to have negative feelings about you. That means you really have about 20 seconds, which … only works out to about 45 words," she says.
Practice your offer with a 14-year-old. If he or she understands it, it's likely clear and concise enough.
"[C]ustomers' buying decisions have a lot to do with five factors," Comaford-Lynch concludes: "trust, respect, brand recognition, quality, and price. … So drop the schmoozing, and start building rapport."
The Po!nt: Get writing before you start calling. The key to an easy cold call is an informative script, well-rehearsed, that's designed to build rapport—as well as disqualify a bad lead.
Source: BusinessWeek.
Start with who you are and where you are calling from. Move on to explain what you are selling. Continue with two compelling features of what it is you're offering. Finish with a request for commitment, by asking: "Is this something you want?"
Don't be discouraged if the answer to that last question is "no." According to Comaford-Lynch, disqualifying bad leads is an essential part of the lead-gen process. In fact, the dialogue you prepare with a good script should be able to both attract a good lead and disqualify a bad one. Two tips for creating that perfect dialogue:
Limit your script to 45 words at most. "Conventional sales theory (and countless studies) have found that after 30 seconds, your listener will begin to have negative feelings about you. That means you really have about 20 seconds, which … only works out to about 45 words," she says.
Practice your offer with a 14-year-old. If he or she understands it, it's likely clear and concise enough.
"[C]ustomers' buying decisions have a lot to do with five factors," Comaford-Lynch concludes: "trust, respect, brand recognition, quality, and price. … So drop the schmoozing, and start building rapport."
The Po!nt: Get writing before you start calling. The key to an easy cold call is an informative script, well-rehearsed, that's designed to build rapport—as well as disqualify a bad lead.
Source: BusinessWeek.
Bridging the Gap Between Email Marketing and CRM
by Drew Adams
It's easy to get frustrated when mapping out the complexities of integrating email marketing with a CRM application. Companies want to view all customer data, including email marketing statistics, in one easy-to-use application. However, few CRM providers have mastered the art of email marketing.
Some organizations attempt to build their own email tool within a CRM application for managing email marketing, but this often results in poor deliverability. A new system can't immediately leverage the whitelisting status that reputable email marketing companies work hard to maintain. Also, by bringing email marketing in-house, a company must dedicate staff time to developing relationships with ISPs.
Many firms turn to an API, or application-programming interface, as the solution. APIs bridge the gap between CRM and other third-party software applications, which is useful for organizations that wish to manage customer data and email campaigns in one interface. A user may view sales data, demographic, and other customer data in the CRM system. The API is simply a bridge between the two systems, allowing them to talk with one another.
Why is integration important? Simplicity. By using a single interface, users can quickly gather information from various sources rather than logging into different applications. Everything they need is available by the click of the mouse from their CRM's interface.
OK, I'm ready to integrate my CRM with an email marketing solution. What next?
Before you do hours of research on an email marketing company's API, ensure that your own system has an API. If you're using a CRM that does not allow third-party applications to connect, it may be difficult to achieve this level of integration.
Assuming you have a system that can plug in, you may begin shopping for an email marketing API. Your first step is to perform the standard email marketing litmus test:
* Is it whitelisted with the major ISPs?
* Does it use third-party services to measure deliverability?
* Does it offer Sender-ID and DomainKeys?
* Does it ban rented or purchased lists from their system?
* Does it offer and encourage double opt-ins?
* Does their feature set meet my needs?
* Does it screen resellers and API users to ensure they aren't abusing the system?
If the answers to those questions are favorable, then one can move on to evaluating the API. At this point in the evaluation process, you should pull in your development team, if applicable.
What Does the API Need to Do?
Automatic contact subscriptions
One of the main uses of an email marketing API is to subscribe people automatically to email lists from a third-party system. For example, when a customer is added to your CRM, an API call can be made to automatically add that person to an email list. Without the API, your marketing manager will be pulling double duty adding the email address to both the CRM and the email application.
Leverage whitelist and deliverability setup
Email campaigns kicked off by using third-party API services use technologies such as DomainKeys and Sender ID so that mail coming from your clients will be seen as legitimate mail.
In addition, the IP addresses of the sending servers will already be set up on whitelists giving the highest possibility of getting in the inbox.
Finally, third-party API servers will be set up on feedback loops with the ISPs. This means that when anyone reports a message as spam to an ISP, generally through the "spam" button inside the mail reader interface, a notification of that will be sent back to the sending server.
This allows email marketers to unsubscribe the recipient and keep track of how many people are complaining and take appropriate actions if those complaint rates spike.
Open and click-through tracking provided automatically
Those who might be thinking of adding email capabilities into their applications may soon be asked to provide statistics on how the email performed, meaning how many people opened or clicked on the message, how many messages bounced back, and how many people reported the message as spam.
Writing the code to deliver those statistics takes lots of time and testing, which is the reason many people choose to leverage an email marketing API. Those statistics come "built-in," which means they can be reported back to the senders, giving them actionable intelligence.
Unsubscribe and bounceback management
Managing subscription status is an important component of an email marketing system. When using a third-party email marketing API, an "Unsubscribe" link will automatically be added to all emails going out. The system tracks unsubscribes and does not send to that address again. In addition, any recipient mail that bounces back—either temporarily or permanently—will be tracked and reported back to you. All this ensures that you are CAN-SPAM and whitelist compliant, and yet another potential headache you don't have to worry about.
Speed of delivery (and message throttling)
Third-party systems are built to send mail and can deliver it quickly if need be. However, to ensure maximum deliverability, third-party providers enable throttling capabilities to ensure ISPs don't get mail faster than they are willing to accept it. This helps with deliverability.
Conclusions
There isn't a magic button to bring all these components together. Integrating your email marketing application and your internal databases will take time and planning. By selecting an email marketing application, along with an open CRM application, you can increase efficiency and ROI by bringing these powerful tools together.
It's easy to get frustrated when mapping out the complexities of integrating email marketing with a CRM application. Companies want to view all customer data, including email marketing statistics, in one easy-to-use application. However, few CRM providers have mastered the art of email marketing.
Some organizations attempt to build their own email tool within a CRM application for managing email marketing, but this often results in poor deliverability. A new system can't immediately leverage the whitelisting status that reputable email marketing companies work hard to maintain. Also, by bringing email marketing in-house, a company must dedicate staff time to developing relationships with ISPs.
Many firms turn to an API, or application-programming interface, as the solution. APIs bridge the gap between CRM and other third-party software applications, which is useful for organizations that wish to manage customer data and email campaigns in one interface. A user may view sales data, demographic, and other customer data in the CRM system. The API is simply a bridge between the two systems, allowing them to talk with one another.
Why is integration important? Simplicity. By using a single interface, users can quickly gather information from various sources rather than logging into different applications. Everything they need is available by the click of the mouse from their CRM's interface.
OK, I'm ready to integrate my CRM with an email marketing solution. What next?
Before you do hours of research on an email marketing company's API, ensure that your own system has an API. If you're using a CRM that does not allow third-party applications to connect, it may be difficult to achieve this level of integration.
Assuming you have a system that can plug in, you may begin shopping for an email marketing API. Your first step is to perform the standard email marketing litmus test:
* Is it whitelisted with the major ISPs?
* Does it use third-party services to measure deliverability?
* Does it offer Sender-ID and DomainKeys?
* Does it ban rented or purchased lists from their system?
* Does it offer and encourage double opt-ins?
* Does their feature set meet my needs?
* Does it screen resellers and API users to ensure they aren't abusing the system?
If the answers to those questions are favorable, then one can move on to evaluating the API. At this point in the evaluation process, you should pull in your development team, if applicable.
What Does the API Need to Do?
Automatic contact subscriptions
One of the main uses of an email marketing API is to subscribe people automatically to email lists from a third-party system. For example, when a customer is added to your CRM, an API call can be made to automatically add that person to an email list. Without the API, your marketing manager will be pulling double duty adding the email address to both the CRM and the email application.
Leverage whitelist and deliverability setup
Email campaigns kicked off by using third-party API services use technologies such as DomainKeys and Sender ID so that mail coming from your clients will be seen as legitimate mail.
In addition, the IP addresses of the sending servers will already be set up on whitelists giving the highest possibility of getting in the inbox.
Finally, third-party API servers will be set up on feedback loops with the ISPs. This means that when anyone reports a message as spam to an ISP, generally through the "spam" button inside the mail reader interface, a notification of that will be sent back to the sending server.
This allows email marketers to unsubscribe the recipient and keep track of how many people are complaining and take appropriate actions if those complaint rates spike.
Open and click-through tracking provided automatically
Those who might be thinking of adding email capabilities into their applications may soon be asked to provide statistics on how the email performed, meaning how many people opened or clicked on the message, how many messages bounced back, and how many people reported the message as spam.
Writing the code to deliver those statistics takes lots of time and testing, which is the reason many people choose to leverage an email marketing API. Those statistics come "built-in," which means they can be reported back to the senders, giving them actionable intelligence.
Unsubscribe and bounceback management
Managing subscription status is an important component of an email marketing system. When using a third-party email marketing API, an "Unsubscribe" link will automatically be added to all emails going out. The system tracks unsubscribes and does not send to that address again. In addition, any recipient mail that bounces back—either temporarily or permanently—will be tracked and reported back to you. All this ensures that you are CAN-SPAM and whitelist compliant, and yet another potential headache you don't have to worry about.
Speed of delivery (and message throttling)
Third-party systems are built to send mail and can deliver it quickly if need be. However, to ensure maximum deliverability, third-party providers enable throttling capabilities to ensure ISPs don't get mail faster than they are willing to accept it. This helps with deliverability.
Conclusions
There isn't a magic button to bring all these components together. Integrating your email marketing application and your internal databases will take time and planning. By selecting an email marketing application, along with an open CRM application, you can increase efficiency and ROI by bringing these powerful tools together.
Five Inexpensive Direct Mail Tools to Generate Sales Leads Fast
by Dean Rieck
There are many new ways to generate sales leads today, but direct mail remains one of the most powerful lead-generation tools.
Even successful online businesses are discovering that direct mail is essential for growth, since newer marketing tactics, such as SEO, social media, and email marketing, often have limitations because of the rapidly changing rules and technical issues involved.
While a mailer isn't as sexy as a viral video and it's not a hot topic at conferences, it's the most reliable way to reach people at home or at work. Its reach is wider and deeper than any other medium's. Plus, there are few restrictions on format and no message filtering or blacklisting headaches that plague email marketing.
Isn't direct mail expensive? It can be. But don't think that you have to create big, flashy mailers. In fact, when your goal is to generate sales leads, simpler, cheaper formats often work better. That's because the purpose of a lead-generating mailer is not to tell the whole story but to say just enough to get people to ask for more information.
Here are five basic direct mail tools that you can use to generate sales leads quickly and inexpensively.
1. Sales Letter
The letter is one of the simplest and most effective direct-mail tools available. It won't win any design awards, but if written well it's one of the few types of advertising that people will actually read all the way through.
To generate sales leads with a letter, you generally want to offer something free, such as a brochure, sample, demo, evaluation, or information kit. There's no need to get fancy when writing your letter. Keep it simple. Identify a problem, present your solution, and offer to send your freebie. Doing so allows interested prospects to identify themselves and gives you or your sales people a "foot in the door."
The simplest letter mailing includes a one- or two-page letter and a reply card in an envelope. You can enclose anything else you like, but remember that your goal is to get people to ask for more information, not to close the sale immediately. Less is more.
2. Postcard
Yes, simple postcards are a terrific way to generate leads. They're easy to print and as cheap as mail gets. If you're a small business, you can even print postcards through a variety of online printers and apply stamps and address labels by hand.
To get the cheaper postcard rate, the minimum size of any postcard you can send in the US mail is 3.5" x 5", and the maximum size is 4.25" x 6". You can certainly create larger postcards, and many businesses do. You simply have to pay more postage. Larger sizes give you more room for your message and photos or graphics. Just be sure to talk to your printer first to determine the most efficient size for printing so you get the most for your money.
Postcards are particularly good for generating a quick phone call or for driving people to your Web site. Since cards are small and offer little room for copy, your product or service should be familiar and easy to understand. Your offer should be simple and direct. People don't read postcards as much as they glance at them.
Your phone number or Web address should be big and bold so people can't miss it. If you're driving people to a retail store, make sure to give clear directions and a simple map if you have room. Telling people what you want them to do and how to do it is the best way to maximize response.
3. Flyer
You want simple and cheap? Print up a flyer on ordinary paper, fold it, affix a mailing label and a stamp, and throw it in the mail. This kind of guerrilla tactic is dirt cheap and can produce fantastic results for all kinds of businesses.
It's particularly good for small, local businesses (or businesses that want to appear small). Unless you're selling Mercedes sedans or Rolex watches, no one expects you to do fancy mailings anyway. In fact, in a pile of over-designed ad mail, a simple flyer from a local business stands out. People are subjected to so many clever ads, they develop "ad blindness." To get people to notice you, just mail them ugly flyers that don't look like ordinary advertising.
When you're mailing a flyer, you should fold it in thirds (called a "roll fold") and affix a tab to hold it closed so it can survive the journey. You will put your main message on the inside with teasers and your mailing information on the outside. And be sure to design the flyer so that when you read the address, the folded side is on the bottom and the tab is on the top. Most printers, even small ones, should know this.
4. Invitation
When you see the word "invitation," you probably think of small cards with heavy paper and elegant printing asking you to a wedding or formal dinner. But invitations can take almost any form. They're simply a way of presenting an offer that feels personal and important.
You can certainly go the expensive route if you have an expensive product or service. But you can invite people to an event with any of the formats above: a letter, postcard, or flyer. Just start the headline with the words "You are invited to..." then tell people what the event is.
You can invite people to an open house, special sale, party for your best customers, product demonstration, informational presentation, or anything that requires getting people to a particular location. The key is to make people feel that they are special and not everyone is being invited. Once they get there, your sales people can go to work.
5. Special Delivery
FedEx and other quick delivery services are far more expensive than regular mail, but this is a technique for a special "wish list" of your best prospects. If you have 100 key people you want as customers, spending the money to overnight a brochure or information kit may well be worth the investment.
This mailer is guaranteed to get opened. Who can resist opening a FedEx package? Inside, you should include a personal letter explaining who you are and what you are offering. You might send a sample with a note that says, "Here's a small sample of our product. If you'd like to see the real thing, call me and I'll have one shipped to you." Or you could enclose a disk with a video presentation or a white paper with detailed information about how others have used your product.
Once again, don't try to fancy it up. You are sending a message to a highly select group of people, so it should look like you've done it personally. This isn't advertising, it's a personal contact from you to them.
* * *
No matter what direct mail tool you use to generate leads, remember to follow up quickly once you get the lead. Hot leads cool off quickly. Ideally, you should respond to people within a week, two weeks maximum.
Give your leads to the salespeople and make sure they understand what was offered so they can follow up with a phone call.
Almost every day a new marketing technology or technique is developed. But good-old-fashioned direct mail hasn't lost any of its power for generating leads.
There are many new ways to generate sales leads today, but direct mail remains one of the most powerful lead-generation tools.
Even successful online businesses are discovering that direct mail is essential for growth, since newer marketing tactics, such as SEO, social media, and email marketing, often have limitations because of the rapidly changing rules and technical issues involved.
While a mailer isn't as sexy as a viral video and it's not a hot topic at conferences, it's the most reliable way to reach people at home or at work. Its reach is wider and deeper than any other medium's. Plus, there are few restrictions on format and no message filtering or blacklisting headaches that plague email marketing.
Isn't direct mail expensive? It can be. But don't think that you have to create big, flashy mailers. In fact, when your goal is to generate sales leads, simpler, cheaper formats often work better. That's because the purpose of a lead-generating mailer is not to tell the whole story but to say just enough to get people to ask for more information.
Here are five basic direct mail tools that you can use to generate sales leads quickly and inexpensively.
1. Sales Letter
The letter is one of the simplest and most effective direct-mail tools available. It won't win any design awards, but if written well it's one of the few types of advertising that people will actually read all the way through.
To generate sales leads with a letter, you generally want to offer something free, such as a brochure, sample, demo, evaluation, or information kit. There's no need to get fancy when writing your letter. Keep it simple. Identify a problem, present your solution, and offer to send your freebie. Doing so allows interested prospects to identify themselves and gives you or your sales people a "foot in the door."
The simplest letter mailing includes a one- or two-page letter and a reply card in an envelope. You can enclose anything else you like, but remember that your goal is to get people to ask for more information, not to close the sale immediately. Less is more.
2. Postcard
Yes, simple postcards are a terrific way to generate leads. They're easy to print and as cheap as mail gets. If you're a small business, you can even print postcards through a variety of online printers and apply stamps and address labels by hand.
To get the cheaper postcard rate, the minimum size of any postcard you can send in the US mail is 3.5" x 5", and the maximum size is 4.25" x 6". You can certainly create larger postcards, and many businesses do. You simply have to pay more postage. Larger sizes give you more room for your message and photos or graphics. Just be sure to talk to your printer first to determine the most efficient size for printing so you get the most for your money.
Postcards are particularly good for generating a quick phone call or for driving people to your Web site. Since cards are small and offer little room for copy, your product or service should be familiar and easy to understand. Your offer should be simple and direct. People don't read postcards as much as they glance at them.
Your phone number or Web address should be big and bold so people can't miss it. If you're driving people to a retail store, make sure to give clear directions and a simple map if you have room. Telling people what you want them to do and how to do it is the best way to maximize response.
3. Flyer
You want simple and cheap? Print up a flyer on ordinary paper, fold it, affix a mailing label and a stamp, and throw it in the mail. This kind of guerrilla tactic is dirt cheap and can produce fantastic results for all kinds of businesses.
It's particularly good for small, local businesses (or businesses that want to appear small). Unless you're selling Mercedes sedans or Rolex watches, no one expects you to do fancy mailings anyway. In fact, in a pile of over-designed ad mail, a simple flyer from a local business stands out. People are subjected to so many clever ads, they develop "ad blindness." To get people to notice you, just mail them ugly flyers that don't look like ordinary advertising.
When you're mailing a flyer, you should fold it in thirds (called a "roll fold") and affix a tab to hold it closed so it can survive the journey. You will put your main message on the inside with teasers and your mailing information on the outside. And be sure to design the flyer so that when you read the address, the folded side is on the bottom and the tab is on the top. Most printers, even small ones, should know this.
4. Invitation
When you see the word "invitation," you probably think of small cards with heavy paper and elegant printing asking you to a wedding or formal dinner. But invitations can take almost any form. They're simply a way of presenting an offer that feels personal and important.
You can certainly go the expensive route if you have an expensive product or service. But you can invite people to an event with any of the formats above: a letter, postcard, or flyer. Just start the headline with the words "You are invited to..." then tell people what the event is.
You can invite people to an open house, special sale, party for your best customers, product demonstration, informational presentation, or anything that requires getting people to a particular location. The key is to make people feel that they are special and not everyone is being invited. Once they get there, your sales people can go to work.
5. Special Delivery
FedEx and other quick delivery services are far more expensive than regular mail, but this is a technique for a special "wish list" of your best prospects. If you have 100 key people you want as customers, spending the money to overnight a brochure or information kit may well be worth the investment.
This mailer is guaranteed to get opened. Who can resist opening a FedEx package? Inside, you should include a personal letter explaining who you are and what you are offering. You might send a sample with a note that says, "Here's a small sample of our product. If you'd like to see the real thing, call me and I'll have one shipped to you." Or you could enclose a disk with a video presentation or a white paper with detailed information about how others have used your product.
Once again, don't try to fancy it up. You are sending a message to a highly select group of people, so it should look like you've done it personally. This isn't advertising, it's a personal contact from you to them.
* * *
No matter what direct mail tool you use to generate leads, remember to follow up quickly once you get the lead. Hot leads cool off quickly. Ideally, you should respond to people within a week, two weeks maximum.
Give your leads to the salespeople and make sure they understand what was offered so they can follow up with a phone call.
Almost every day a new marketing technology or technique is developed. But good-old-fashioned direct mail hasn't lost any of its power for generating leads.
Tips for Improving E-mail Marketing Performance
By Karen Gedney - May 28, 2008
You may not think of yourself as a publisher. But if you're involved in sending out e-mail marketing for your company, you've got the makings of a mini-publishing empire on your hands.
In most companies, e-mail marketing is proliferating at a rate that's far outstripping the staff resources dedicated to it.
B2B (define) companies that don't consider themselves in the publishing business are generating a huge amount of content in the form of event and Webcast campaigns, e-newsletters, surveys, lead-generation e-mail, and e-catalog promotions.
And often, there's just a small e-mail marketing department dedicated to handling it all. Overworked and underbudgeted, this group is often tasked with formatting content provided by outside departments into a usable e-newsletter template and blasting it out the door.
They may review open rates and CTRs (define) after the fact, but they rarely have time to strategize how to improve these rates in advance -- when it can make a difference.
Having consulted at a number of companies where this is the case, I have a number of questions and recommendations that you might want to consider if you're planning a midyear review of your e-mail marketing performance.
Are You Reaching Your Ideal Customers?
If you're just looking at your open rates across the board, you might be missing something pretty fundamental. It could be that you're getting a lot of interest, but not from the decision-makers who have the budget, authority, and need for your products.
Match your sales team's top prospect list to the list of people who open your e-mail to see if you're getting through to the right folks.
If not, you must rethink your e-mail strategy. You may need to test a segmented publication to reach this desirable group of decision makers. Or if your best prospects are C-level executives, you may need to concede that an e-mail-only approach isn't the best way to reach them -- and instead create a multichannel campaign that includes high-quality direct mail, dimensional packages, and telemarketing.
By focusing on your ideal customer, you may find that you can streamline or curtail e-mail communications to prospects on your list who are less desirable or unlikely to buy.
Are You Reaching Your Ideal Customers on Their Preferred Communication Device?
If you send out dense multi-article e-newsletters to sales executives who are out of the office all day and only read e-mail on their BlackBerrys, your communication strategy is out of date and out of sync.
It's time to strip down your content from a too-much-information format to a need-to-know format that your audience can read on the go.
While formatting e-mail for the BlackBerry is a relatively new challenge and there aren't too many best practices available yet, you can:
- Ask new e-mail subscribers how they want to receive your messages when they sign up. Usually most e-mail preference centers offer the choice of text or HTML. However, one e-mail service provider told me that 95 percent of people sign up for HTML. So I would drop the text option and replace it with a handheld or BlackBerry option.
- Offer a "View by handheld" link at the top of your e-mail.
- On your mobile version:
- Strip out your banner, but be sure to create a text-letterhead with your company's name.
- Put your call-to-action link up top.
- Top-line your information in just a few sentences.
- Front-load your subject line so that it says everything in the first 15 characters (the length of the BlackBerry screen.
Are You Helping Your Reader Self-Identify the E-mail They Need to Read?
If you bombard your prospects and customers with look-alike e-mail messages with vague subject lines, how will they know which messages to open?
Categorize your messages according to your readers' needs and your objectives. For example, your sender lines could be categorized in the following way:
- XYZ Co. Webcast
- XYZ Co. Event
- XYZ Co. Survey
Or you could alert readers to the type of communication they're receiving at the beginning of the subject line, then follow up with an intriguing teaser that entices them to open your e-mail:
- [Webcast] Recession-Proof Your Marketing
- [Event] Marketing in Uncertain Times
- [Survey] Share Your Insights for Special Report
- [E-Newsletter Name] Top CMOs Reveal What's Working Now
In the same way, the e-mail messages should be categorized by using different formats. For example, e-newsletters shouldn't use your company's traditional banner. They should have their own mastheads with the publication name, a subtitle describing the value to the reader, and the issue number and date. And Webcasts invitations should look distinctly different from live event invitations.
Are Your E-Mail Messages Taking Too Long to Write? Are They Missing the Point?
There aren't a lot of writers trained in the fine points of e-mail writing. As a result, most companies aren't achieving their objectives in terms of sales generated.
To make things easier, create fill-in-the-blank templates for the main types of e-mail communication you send out. Areas to include in your template:
- Subject lines: Specify the optimal number of words or characters, and provide a few of examples of subject-line approaches that tend to work well.
- Alt-text tags and photo captions: Require that each image (including your company banner) include an alt-text tag in the image itself, as well as an intriguing caption.
- Preview pane: Require that the e-mail's whole message be summed up in one or two sentences at the top of the e-mail, so that it shows through the preview pane.
- Call to action: Specify where the call-to-action message should go (near the top) and how often it should be repeated in the message.
- Sidebars, Johnson boxes, and hotboxes: Create a template to break up information into bite-sized chunks that all appear in the initial screen.
Finally, guide your writers to where their creativity really counts, including:
- The subject line: If it isn't good, no one will open the e-newsletter.
- Your event or Webcast name: It better be compelling, or no one will attend.
- Your headlines and lead-in sentences: If you don't catch readers in the first few seconds of opening your e-mail, you'll lose them as they hit delete and scroll away to view the rest of their inbox.
Follow these guidelines, and you'll soon be thinking like a publisher by creating e-mail content that your audience really wants to read, and streamlining or discontinuing e-mail efforts that aren't making the mark.
What techniques are you using to manage e-mail proliferation, strategize communications, and get that e-mail out the door quickly? Let Karen know.
Friday, October 31, 2008
Five B2B Email Marketing Tips
by Stephanie Miller
Editor's note: See Stephanie in person at the MarketingProfs B2B Forum, Driving Sales: What's New + What Works. Catch her session on "B2B Email That Moves the Needle." Sign up for the event and use promo code ESPK08 to save $200 on the registration fee.
Here we are, oh email marketers, caught in the middle. On the one hand we are celebrated for being the go-to resource for generating short-term revenue results (anyone have that "hey, our numbers are down, send another email" conversation this week?). On the other hand, it's "funny" how the applause dies down when the budget talk comes around and we continue to be handicapped by limited investment and strained resources.
What's an email marketer to do?
With that reality as our foundation, I'm leading a panel of great marketers at the upcoming MarketingProfs B2B Marketing conference in June. Return Path blog subscribers can.
Here are five ideas from a panel that I'm leading at the MarketingProfs B2B Marketing conference in June that you can apply to your own program. I'll be expounding on them during our panel at the conference. (Sign up for the conference and save $200 with the promo code ESPK08.)
1. Turn the recession to your advantage
Email is easy and inexpensive to get into, so more and more businesses are sending messages. You can see the result is in your inbox—more and more clutter.
That means our messages have to be better than everything else to break through. To get better messages you need to create great subscriber experiences. And that requires discipline around sending frequency, segmentation, data integration and advanced measurements and reports. Which requires more investment in the channel.
So when you feel the pressure to do more with less, focus on proving how sending more targeted messages will result in higher return over time and add value to your email asset. For example, trigger a message around a customer lifestage event—renewal, contract anniversary, upgrade, number of uses, new to the relationship, etc. Show how those messages earn higher engagement, in order to automate them for every subscriber.
2. Improve your benefit statement
Email is the highest-ROI channel, so be sure to capture email addresses at every touchpoint. Since you want to capture email at the point of entry, your homepage may not be the best location if most visitors come through alternative pathways.
Make sure there is a strong, compelling benefit statement on every search and advertising landing page, at the bottom of every blog post, in every sales and customer service call, in every webinar and every whitepaper download page.
The key here is "compelling." Product announcements and press releases are not compelling. These ideas are: Productivity tips, insider reviews, chances to network with peers, invites to cool events, and exclusive access.
3. Simple segmentation is essential
If you do no other segmentation, distinguish your messages between prospects and customers. These are singularly different groups with different relationships to your brand/products and different knowledge levels of your product and solution benefits. Treat them differently, or you will continue to optimize your email marketing for neither.
4. Sender reputation matters in B2B, too
Though many B2B marketers think that the feedback they get from the Web-based ISPs (AOL, Yahoo and MSN/Hotmail) isn't relevant since their file is not saturated with these domains, the reverse is actually true.
Those ISPs provide important feedback about your sender reputation based on complaints (registered at the ISPs when a subscriber clicks the "This is Spam" or "This is Junk" button)—and you can use that data to understand your program's deliverability at corporate systems.
Most business system administrators use Cloudmark or Postini—both of which are strongly based on complaint data—to decide what messages to allow past the gateway and to your subscriber's inbox. And, of course, some businesspeople specifically use consumer email systems to get email they don't want in their corporate inbox. It could well be person123@ AOL or Yahoo is also important.person@ your biggest account.
If you don't know your sender reputation, start here for a free evaluation: www.senderscore.org.
5. Test the tone
As the inbox clutters and budgets get tighter, test tone. Will your subscribers respond better to a happy, sunshiny "spend now to get ahead" message of hope, or a more somber, "how to get more with less" partnership approach?
Perhaps one will work better for different types of product messages.
Need more great B2B marketing ideas? Sign up for the MarketingProfs B2B Marketing conference now. Remember to use promo code ESPK08 and save $200.
Stephanie Miller is vice-president of strategic services for New York-based email performance-management company Return Path (www.returnpath.net) and the co-author of Sign Me Up: A Marketer's Guide to Email Newsletters that Build Relationships and Boost Sales. Reach her at stephanie.miller@returnpath.net.
What Is Your E-mail's Value?
Merkle notes two key findings based on its annual consumer survey "View from the Inbox":
- 50 percent of respondents had bought something based on a permission e-mail message, up 3 percentage points from the previous year.
- 50 percent also said a company that "does a good job with e-mail" influenced their purchase decision.
Conversely, a negative experience can drive customers away. In Merkle's report, 32 percent of respondents said they stopped doing business with at least one company because of its poor e-mail practices.
We talk a lot about how to improve e-mail deliverability by using opt-in subscription practices, managing your reputation, segmenting lists, optimizing content, and testing. But it all boils down to this:
Provide demonstrated value in each e-mail.
It would be nice to think your e-mail program's value would be so obvious that readers would see it in each message. Alas, we live in the real world, so we know we have to sell the value at all points in the e-mail relationship, even before it begins officially.
Promote your e-mail value at the following crucial places.
Home Page
This is your first chance to sell potential subscribers on your e-mail value. "Sign up for e-mail updates" and a link don't begin to hint at what they will receive if they hand over their e-mail addresses. "Join now and receive e-mail-only discounts and advance sale notices" makes the value clear and begins to set subscriber expectations.
Registration Page
This is your showcase, the best location to explain the benefits of signing up for e-mail, including the kinds of e-mail you send, how often, and what the content entails.
All too often, though, companies who have an otherwise excellent e-mail program give this short shrift. They rarely dedicate a page solely to the value of their e-mail program.
Instead, they slap up a checkbox and a one-sentence value statement more focused on the subscription function itself.
Elements to convey your e-mail value proposition more effectively:
- Explanation of benefits: What's in it for them?
- Privacy policy: Assure them you'll treat their e-mail addresses responsibly.
- Preference page: This increases message relevance.
- Sample messages: Let subscribers see what they'll get.
- Links, images, and transactions (subscribing, confirming, even unsubscribing): Make sure they work reliably each time.
Welcome Message
This is another opportunity that too many companies waste with a simple "you are subscribed" message. It's accurate enough, but it does nothing to remind subscribers about what they signed up for and what value your message brings.
Thus the welcome message, sent immediately after opt-in confirmation, has become a generally accepted best practice for conveying value before you mail your first program e-mail.
The optimum welcome program encompasses more than just a single message. It includes a separate cycle of message designed to get your readers engaged as quickly as possible.
Your e-mail program's value should shine through in each message, reminding subscribers of what they signed up for and that they need to open each message or miss out.
Regular Program E-mail
These are the regular e-mail messages you send as part of an established programming cycle. However, if all you do is sell, sell, sell, you'll wear out or bore your readers. And bored readers are likely to click the "spam" button to make you go away, especially if they don't trust your unsubscribe to work.
Elements to help remind subscribers about your e-mail program's value:
- E-mail-only discounts (one-time or permanent, only for subscribers)
- Invitations to fill out surveys or complete profiles
- Directions on how to use products or to contact company reps
- Account statements, membership numbers, links to key functions on your Web site
- Company or product news
- Changes that affect the e-mail subscriptions
Transactional E-mail
Naturally, a transactional e-mail's first job is to confirm an action, deliver an account statement, ask for a payment, or conduct other business. However, you can remind subscribers of your e-mail value here, too, provided you keep the focus on the transaction.
To do this, put the business in the top half to two-thirds of the message content, then put your e-mail value proposition in the bottom third to half. This is also called putting it "below the fold," a reference to a standard broadsheet newspaper page, where the most important stories go on the top half, above the fold.
Midcycle Messages
Don't wear out your list by sending more e-mail than you promised. However, a carefully chosen and timed message sent between campaigns or in the middle of a publishing schedule can restate and refine.
Use these messages to remind subscribers, especially less active ones, about e-mail benefits or account details to bring them back into the fold. Invite them to update their profiles. Send a short survey. Offer incentives for referrals. Explain any program changes that could affect their subscriptions.
Final Word: Emphasizing Value Is Easy
It might sound as if you have to overhaul your messages to make the value clear, but you might just need a simple retooling. Put yourself in your subscribers' shoes again, and see where you can add information or functionality, improve design, or boost convenience. Never waste another chance to remind your subscribers of all the benefits they have coming.
Until next time, keep on deliverin'.
Thursday, June 12, 2008
How Marketing Can Go Beyond the 'Make It Pretty' Syndrome
by Laura Patterson
At a recent conference, Sylvia Reynolds, chief marketing officer for Wells Fargo, asked, "When did Marketing become the make-it-pretty department?" Reynolds then reminded conference participants that the fundamental role of Marketing has always been about the customer.
Essentially, Marketing's role is to find, keep, and grow the value of customers. So what does that mean, and how does a marketer get beyond the "make it pretty" syndrome?
We can use the American Marketing Association's (AMA) definition of marketing as a guide. The AMA defines marketing as "an organizational function and a set of processes for creating, communicating and delivering value to customers and for managing customer relationships in ways that benefit the organization and its stakeholders."
By using this definition, we can see that marketing is more than a creative function; rather, it about a set of four critical customer-focused marketing processes.
Creating Value
Marketing sits in the space between the company's capabilities and what the customer wants. By understanding the core capabilities of the company, and then matching it with customer wants and needs, marketing drives value creation.
This means Marketing must fully understand the customer. In this capacity, the marketing organization serves as a driver of an organization's value chain by insuring products and services are shaped by customer expectations and demands.
Communicating Value
To be the chosen supplier for your customer, you first have to be on your customer's short list. To be on the customer's short list, you need to know what the customer values so that you can communicate how your company and its products/services deliver on this value in such a way as to create preference for your company and its products/services over alternative options.
Every customer touch point affects the customer's decision and action; therefore, every touch point needs to tied to and communicate the value proposition.
Delivering Value
By establishing a strong link between customer value requirements and the major value-producing activities in the company, Marketing is in the unique position to enable the company to deliver on customers' value expectations. Marketing can then use these value expectations to drive customer preference and stimulate purchase decisions.
One way to think of this is that at every customer touch point—whenever a customer will be affected by a decision or action—the people involved in that touch point need to understand and deliver on the value. In some organizations this is known at "moments of truth."
Marketing is in the unique role of being able to look across all the touch points and monitor whether the value is actually delivered. Through constant monitoring, Marketing can help determine whether it is delivering on its value promise and whether the value proposition needs modification.
Managing Customer Relationships
We need to think beyond technology when we think of customer relationship management (CRM) and instead realize that CRM is a business philosophy in which the customer plays a central, critical role in all business activities.
Though we can debate who "owns" the customer, Marketing is in the ideal position to be the centralized point for aggregating, segmenting, and analyzing customer data. This ability to create a single view of the customer comes with responsibility—to take a leadership role in the creating and managing the processes associated with the company's customer relationships.
* * *
For organizations to grow, the leadership team relies on Marketing for more "than just the pretty stuff." It should be able to depend on Marketing to develop marketing strategies that create and deliver superior perceived customer value.
With this emphasis on increasing value, Marketing can help the firm achieve growth by penetrating existing segments, developing new markets, and creating new products and services.
Accordingly, marketers should be willing to own and be accountable for these four processes if they want to serve as growth champions within their organization and leave the "make it pretty" syndrome behind.
See Laura in person at the MarketingProfs B2B Forum, Driving Sales: What's New + What Works. Catch Laura's session on "Proving Marketing's Value: Tangible Tools and Metrics for the 21st Century." Sign up for the event and use promo code ESPK08 to save $200 on the registration fee (save $350 if you sign up before May 19).
Laura Patterson (laurap@visionedgemarketing.com) is president and cofounder of VisionEdge Marketing, Inc. (www.visionedgemarketing.com) and author of Measure What Matters: Reconnecting Marketing to Business Goals and Gone Fishin': A Guide to Finding, Keeping, and Growing Profitable customers.
Published on May 13, 2008
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
Marketing after a merger
The goal of delivering a better product should dictate what brand is used - and how
by Bernadette Johnson
page 1
Most people agree a successful marriage takes work: Among other things it calls for communication and commitment.
It's not unlike marrying companies or brands. Consolidation can lead to greater efficiencies, better products - stronger companies overall - but it requires a thorough integration strategy and marketing plan to convince shareholders, employees and especially customers that the move is a good one.
Studies have shown that a high percentage of mergers worldwide fail to create value; in some cases they even destroy it.
"The challenge is that more fail than succeed," says Nancy Helstab, managing director at marketing consultancy BrandEdge of Toronto, citing a Canadian Business study, conducted by the Boston Consulting Group, that showed 60% of the large Canadian mergers over the past decade (among publicly traded companies) underperformed their sectors and actually destroyed acquirer shareholder value.
"The ones that succeed," she continues, "are doing it not strictly for growth reasons but because they think there is some added value they can provide; combining forces to deliver something better. That's what should motivate [a merger]...and dictate what brand will be used, and how."
There's no blueprint for success, no one common strategy. Rather, pundits point to several different formulas employed by the likes of Telus-Clearnet, TD Canada Trust, Rona-Revy, Chapters-Indigo, Sun Life-Clarica, and even the newly named Conservative Party.
Over the last year, Montreal-based Rona has actively sought to solidify its brand across Canada, says senior national marketing director Michael Brossard. In the West in particular, the home improvement chain completely rebranded its Revy (Revelstoke) stores, which it purchased in 2001, under the Rona banner.
"It was important for us to own a brand name out West, but the Revy name was so well-established that we decided to keep both brands for a while, and [ease into the] integration."
The transition was spurred on by a successful integration campaign (print and radio), that featured then Revy spokesperson Bob advising consumers that while the name was changing, the brand promise and heritage would not. In fact, Brossard adds, that campaign achieved top-of-mind-awareness of about 50%.
Similarly Rona's most recent Ontario campaign, produced by Montreal agency BCP, stars the Building Box's (now Rona Home and Garden) Hammerhead mascot shedding his suit in an effort to explain the change to consumers. While its Building Box and Revy stores have all been consolidated under the Rona banner in Ontario, the company still maintains sub brands Lansing and Cashway, both purchased between 2000 and 2001. These banners have a very strong brand equity among their key trades people and contractor targets, Brossard says. "We want to maintain that heritage."
Consolidating its banners is a wise move for Rona, says retail consultant Ed Strapagiel of Toronto-based Kubas Consulting, adding that it is tough to sustain - and rationalize - several brands that hold the same promise: Each brand is serving a similar need in the marketplace, so there is not an awful lot of difference.
"They're likely going to increase the efficiency of their advertising, and of their presence in the marketplace, by being known as one thing," he speculates. "Trust in uniformity."
Rona's consolidation is also an example of a regional-to-national strategy, adds Helstab, whereby a company that wants a national presence will buy up local or regional brands, much in the way Telus moved East by acquiring Clearnet. In such cases, she adds, the parent brand will almost always keep its name/positioning, or at least incorporate it over time.
The latter should also hold true in cases where a company purchases another organization in an effort to further its industry growth and/or market leadership, she adds.
When Montreal-based pulp and paper firm Domtar purchased four paper mills from Atlanta-based Georgia Pacific in 2001, it effectively doubled its size - becoming the number-three player in the category. But it realized that its plethora of brands could overwhelm the consumer, says Scott Townsend, director of strategic marketing initiatives at Domtar.
"We went from 54 brands to one brand, which is Domtar," he says. "Product names have become sub-brands, and they are phased out if they are too confusing."
The approach has permitted Domtar to deliver a consistent marketing message. Everything from its lifestyle-oriented advertising by New York-based agency desgripped gobe group to its newly developed packaging, featuring silhouettes of people at work, links back to its positioning, "a different feel."
But there are instances where the acquired company's name and positioning can be leveraged.
In early 2002, when Sun Life purchased Clarica, senior folk from both companies got together to determine the fate of both brands. According to Peggy Jarvie, EVP customer knowledge and branding, many different options were considered: one brand vs. the other, a co-mingled brand, and a completely new brand. In the end, with the help of focus groups and a brand assessment, they elected to use Sun Life as the corporate brand, but maintain use of the well-known Clarica brand to continue to target its retail mid-market customers.
"We put an enormous amount of effort into communicating to our customers and employees and advisors what the relationship was going to be," says Jarvie, pointing to the two waves of cross-country advertising Sun Life did at the time of the merger to allay any customer concerns.
Jarvie says they've been tracking consumer response to the Clarica brand since it launched in 1999 (pre-merger), as well as perceptions of other brands in the market. And though there have been some fluctuations over the last few years, her sense is that they haven't been impacted by the merger.
Toronto-based Chapters too has maintained separate identities for its Indigo, Chapters and Coles brands mostly due to the brand equity behind each one, says Sorya Ingrid Gaulin, director of PR and regional marketing. In fact, she adds, the book retailer has made the selection across both of its superstore formats (Chapters and Indigo) very similar, however, the perception from the customer is that they are getting something different. Coles' mandate, meanwhile, remains one of convenience (because of its mall locations) and community (customers tend to be voracious readers and visit the retailer frequently), she says.
"We want to be respectful of those different perceptions. The key for us is not so much amalgamation - it is making our stores as relevant as possible to the customer. And that to us means drilling down to the selection and the customer experience," says Gaulin, adding the retailer now has a new inventory system to help it do exactly that. Eighteen months in the making, the system will eventually allow it to tailor the inventory in each store across the country based on spending patterns, among other things, and help it further its goal of being relevant, she says.
Since the merger though, the retail chain has focused its marketing (mostly print ads supporting national campaigns) around its large-format brands - often positioned together since most of its offers apply to both brands; and always listing the integrated Web site www.chapters.indigo.ca. However, she says, in the year to come it will turn its attention to the Coles brand.
This month, it launched a promotion called Bag-a-bargain that actually extends across all formats and will include all of the brands in its print ads, which it sometimes does if the offer is not brand-sensitive. Gaulin says: "It's value- and savings-based, so it is relevant to all our customers."
- with files from Lisa D'Innocenzo
Monday, May 5, 2008
Focus Groups 2.0
By Jack Aaronson , April 18, 2008
While we've talked for over a year about how social networks may alter the landscape of retailing, many companies are finding another use for social networks: as modern and more interesting, focus groups. Whereas focus tests were out of reach to smaller companies with tight budgets, social network-based focus groups (which I'll call Focus Groups 2.0) are a significantly less expensive entry into the world of focus testing.
Traditional focus groups work like this:
- Your company (or a third-party provider) contacts a number of users in your target demographic and offers them a small amount of money to participate in a focus group.
- The focus group company (generally, experts in the field) works with you to create a list of questions and topic areas.
- A trained facilitator runs the focus group while the client (you) watches behind a mirror.
On the downside, this "town hall" type group can fall victim to bullying. One loud participant can sway or intimidate the others from expressing differing opinions.
Focus groups organized and run by professionals are invaluable, and I'd never say the current social networking version can completely replace them. But real focus groups get expensive, and there are many benefits to Focus Group 2.0.
Focus Groups: A New Approach
Smart companies are creating new, ongoing dialogues with their customers via social networks. Most use them as another promotional channel, but some are really taking an interest in their customers and their opinions.
At Shop.org last week, I sat down with Jordan Nasser, who's in charge of online marketing and creative at H&M. He created the H&M social networking pages on Facebook and MySpace. Each site has a different look and feel, owing to the different audiences on the two platforms and the technical limitations of each platform.
The H&M pages are wildly successful, with over 83,000 friends on MySpace and over 67,000 "fans" on Facebook. Because H&M doesn't have an online store in the U.S., they use social networks to increase brand awareness and help create dialogue between H&M fans. This has organically grown to also include H&M employees, who regularly contribute to the message boards. Where some companies would fear allowing their employees to have an open platform on which to directly interact with customers, H&M sees the benefits of empowering staff this way.
On the H&M sites, Jordan (and others H&M staffers) routinely answer users' questions. While one might worry these forums would turn into another customer service channel, the forums are littered more with questions about store openings, store events, and general brand questions. Oh, and lots of testimonials about how much people love the brand.
While this direct dialogue with real consumers (not just people fitting a demographic in a focus group) is great passive feedback, H&M and other companies also take a more active approach to conduct focus testing with this group of customers. Even if the customer doesn't get the answer they wanted, they express how grateful they are to talk to a human being. Consider how much more connected they must be to the brand because someone like Jordan is talking directly with them, versus how they probably view more "anonymous" brands like Sony (where it's nearly impossible to speak with a human).
Last spring, H&M put 50 user-submitted T-shirt designs on their MySpace page and asked visitors to vote for their favorite. Within four weeks they had over 5,000 votes and a clear winner. They mass-produced the shirt and put it in over 20 stores. The shirts sold out almost immediately.
The social networks also solicit user feedback in this manner. When Facebook decided to redesign its pages, it showed users a preview and asked for feedback. Retailers launching new functionality on their sites could easily do this via these social networks. Online polls, surveys and message boards are a quick and easy way to get feedback from real-world users in a comfortable environment.
One problem with real focus groups: participants often try to be smarter than they are, or project what they "think" everyone would want onto their own needs. Online focus groups (which are so informal the users don't really think of them as focus groups at all) most likely generate more honest feedback. Moreover, these customers actually spend money with you, they're not "demographic fits" that may or may not care about your brand. If indeed your brand is how people see it (to paraphrase a familiar quote), the knowledge gained from these people (who are living and breathing your brand) is invaluable.
An Alternative, Not a Replacement
Focus group companies truly are the experts when it comes to asking a group of people the right questions. But one-to-one interaction devoid of a group mentality is probably more honest and interesting than group testing. Social networks allow this to scale in a way traditional focus groups can't. Plus, it's significantly less expensive to throw a few questions up as on online poll and see what the response is.
Taking a lesson from H&M and other retailers, the first step is to create social networking pages on the various networks that people like and with which they want to interact. Next, go through the same steps you'd take when creating a traditional focus group questionnaire, but tailor it to the online experience. Add interactivity, especially in cases where you're asking about possible new features and functionality.
Done correctly, you might just find a treasure trove of user knowledge you always thought was too expensive or difficult to obtain.
Questions, thoughts, comments? Let me know!
Until next time...
Jack
Client 101: How to Write an RFP, 2008 Edition
By Sean Carton , April 28, 2008
Way back in 2001 I wrote a guide to RFP-writing for clients. It was intended to be a helpful checklist and also (selfishly) a pre-emptive strike against getting any more byzantine RFPs (define) that took weeks to complete and resulted in bids so wildly divergent that clients often had to turn to haruspicy or other ancient methods of divination to make a decision.
Recently I got a letter from a reader who found the column helpful but had a simple question: what's changed since 2001? It got me thinking: what has changed? After all, that column was written seven years ago. Something must have changed since then, right?
Yup. A lot's changed since those dot.bomb days. We've seen online advertising take off to heights that few had predicted back in 2001. Social media has arrived and taken the world by storm. Heck, Facebook, MySpace, and Del.icio.us wouldn't even exist for another couple of years. Online video shot into the stratosphere in the intervening years, spurred on by the launch of YouTube in 2005. Broadband's gone past the tipping point, online gaming's become a multi-billion dollar industry, and more and more people are moving away from traditional media and heading online for all their news and entertainment needs. Yeah, things are a little different now then they were back then.
Even so, a lot hasn't changed, at least when it comes to building online presences for companies and working to get the word out about them. Everyone still needs a Web site, though in most cases now it's about redesigning sites rather than putting them online from scratch. Even so, many companies are still challenged by the tasks of integrating their online and offline businesses and many still are challenged by simple questions of who's going to maintain the site, how content's going to get there, and how much of the budget should be shifted to online operations.
Regardless of the hype spun by many Silicon Valley wags and tech-press boosters, my experience over the past seven years tells me that a lot of companies and organizations are still making the transition to fully dealing with how the Web has changed how they do business. While nobody asks why or if they should have a Web site anymore, many still aren't sure what to do with it once they have it.
I see a lot of this ambivalence reflected in the RFPs that cross my desk just about every day. One major change since 2001: most concerns I deal with involve operations and marketing and not technology. I don't get a lot of RFPs written by the information technology department anymore (e.g., RFPs that ask obsessive questions about server platforms and development languages). However, I get a lot of RFPs written by marketing folks who seem clueless about the day-to-day work it takes to keep feeding the beast that's the Web site or how to change internal practices to make the switch from old ways to the new. A lot of the new requests I get are big on branding and image issues but awfully light on requirements for content management and database integration. They're also pretty light on understanding how most consumers use the Web now, often spending lots of time worrying about the "experiences" they want to create rather than recognizing that people go online to get stuff done.
So yeah, a lot's changed since 2001. Here's how to deal with the new realities if you're trying to find someone to redevelop your old site or build a new site from scratch so you can get responses that allow you to judge your new potential developers:
Budget. As in "how much do you have to spend." Unfortunately this is one thing that hasn't really changed much since 2001. If you want to get bids that you can actually compare, you must give some sort of budget range in your requests for proposals. Not putting in a budget is like going to a bunch of different homebuilders and asking them to build you a house. One might come back with a proposal for a mansion and another might come back with plans for a bungalow. They're both "houses" but comparing them is an exercise in futility. Thinking that developers just "make up" prices to match budgets is absurd. How much "stuff" you're going to get depends on your needs and on how much you're going to spend. It's a much more useful exercise to compare what one company will give you for $100,000 versus another company.
Content and content management. If you have a content management system you're happy with, say so. If you're planning on developing the content yourselves (or need someone else to do it), say so. Probably the biggest stumbling block for most Web projects is the content that's going to fill the site. Before you start looking for someone to build a site for you, you'd better know how you're going to deal with your content issues. Likewise, if you have specific content management system requirements, say so. Otherwise, you might end up with bids specifying systems that could range from zero dollars for open source solutions to many hundreds of thousands of dollars. Be specific!
Timeline. Be realistic with your requested launch dates. Just about everyone puts "ASAP," but doing so is a recipe for disaster because "as soon as possible" is about as subjective as you can get. If you do have a specific launch date in mind, be specific about that too. Be realistic in your expectations. Redeveloping a site (even a small one) isn't going to happen in four weeks, unless you want a crappy site. If you have specific benchmarks or events that you have to shoot for (tradeshows, product launches, board meetings, etc.) say so. It helps a developer to know what to propose to meet your deadline.
Customer/audience profiles. Who is this thing for? What are they like? How do they interact with your company now and/or how would you like them to interact with your company. Knowing whom the site's for makes it a lot easier for a potential vendor to tailor its solution to the needs of your organization and customers. It's not necessary to include multi-volume psychographic profiles. But knowing that you need a site for 18 to 35-year-old men is a lot different than a site for pre-teen girls.
Spec work. Don't ask for it. It's rude and wastes our time as well as yours. If you want to know what someone's design capabilities are, ask for portfolios and case studies.
Your goals. Why do you want to redevelop your Web site? What's so bad about the old one? What market (or internal) forces are driving the project. How will you measure success? Knowing all this ahead of time and letting your potential vendors know is key to getting a solution that will help you reach those goals.
Your internal style. This may sound a bit goofy, but take a good look at your internal work styles and let potential vendors know so that they can give you realistic bids for project/account management as part of the proposal. Is there a single person who can make decisions? Is there a group that needs to reach consensus before a decision is made? What's the path to take something from concept to approval? Providing this information means that a vendor can tailor its project management costs accordingly. If a vendor ends up losing money during the project because every step needs a series of meetings before approval or because nobody can make a decision, it will probably start charging you more or answering the phone less.
Technical requirements. Unless you're contracting for some hard-core custom development, you don't need to spend a lot of time on technical requirements besides providing a description of the platform you currently use. If you don't care and plan on throwing everything out, say so. If you do care and you're bound by internal policies or the need for a particular technology that can be maintained internally, say so and be clear about it.
Hosting and maintenance. Do you care where the site is hosted? Are you planning on maintaining it yourself? What kind of ongoing relationship do you want to have with a vendor? If you're one of the many who's gotten burned by long-term "relationships" forced on you by a Web vendor, make sure you tell potential vendors you don't want to have any ongoing costs. On the other hand, if you want to outsource everything, make sure you tell them that, too.
Social media. Think hard: do you really need to have a blog? If you do, that's fine. But don't just start asking for things you don't know how you'll maintain or don't need. Social media has transformed the way the Web works but it's also a major commitment. Make sure that you know what you're getting into and whether or not what you want is going to be strategically necessary or just "cool." Not that there's anything wrong with cool -- as long as you understand what you're getting into.
Rebranding initiatives or other major changes. If you're about to embark on a 12-month project to rebrand your company, please say so! If you're about to change everything, I would recommend not redoing your Web site until you know where you're going. Don't think you'll get a "two-fer" by using the Web development project to drive the rebranding of the company. You'll just end up with a lot of internal hassles and additional costs.
KISS. Finally, keep it simple. Don't demand multiple printed copies, odd bindings, or whole bunch of documentation that you're not going to read. You can always get that stuff later on if you need it. What you're looking for is a concise description of what you're going to get plus verifiable evidence that the company you're going to get it from is right for the job. Get references and call them. Ask for case studies that detail both design and results. Look at work done for similar companies. It ain't that tough, but if you follow the "keep it simple" rule and ask for the things I've detailed here, you're going to end up with proposals you can compare objectively and quickly.
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