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Keep Your Lead Nurturing Messages Fresh

Posted on September 19, 2011 by in Email Marketing, Lead Nurturing, Marketing Strategy

Here’s a quick tip on how to keep you lead nurturing campaigns fresh – create templates that link to dynamic content.

What’s dynamic content? It’s a page that’s regularly updated but maintains the same link. Good examples of this are your blog (the main page, not a specific blog post), your social media pages like Twitter and Facebook, your company news page or a page where you announce new features.

Below is an example of a very basic nurturing email with dynamic content.

Dynamic Nurturing Email

Linking to this dynamic content means your nurturing campaigns stay fresh over time. You can craft simple templates with messaging pointing the reader to check out your latest blog posts and no matter when they visit, the content will be current (assuming you update your blog, of course).

Directing prospects to a page that showcases your new features is especially helpful when nurturing lost leads. If you lost a deal to a competitor, it may have been because of a certain feature your product didn’t offer. Drawing attention to product innovations can be an effective way to put yourself back in the game when it’s time for a lost customer to renew their contract with their current vendor.

As you develop your lead nurturing strategy, think about how to make your campaigns low maintenance. This will ensure they that they are effective time savers for your marketing team.

Why Titles Can Make or Break Content

Posted on June 8, 2011 by in Email Marketing, Landing Pages

For most B2B marketers who create content for various marketing and sales initiatives, titles can make or break the content. Whether the goal is to push or pull, users generally make their decision based on the title of the white paper, subject line of the email, headline of the blog post, and so forth. For this reason, it is essential to appropriately name your content to make it both appealing for users and easy for them to find.

Each type of content has a different set of titling guidelines that reflects the formality and flexibility of the content.

White papers are versatile content because they can be pushed out through various marketing channels or  made available on the website to pull leads in. But they can also be very time-consuming and require an investment from the reader. Therefore, their titles should get straight to the point and give the user an idea early on of what to expect. For example, a white paper on The Four T’s of Effective Email clearly informs the reader of the benefit to be gained from a read.

Case studies help companies demonstrate the value of their product through the real-world success of a client. Ideally, a prospect will read a case study that most aligns with their situation to gain an understanding of how they can benefit from the product. The right title can help match a prospect with the appropriate case study. Give your case studies titles that reflect the client’s previous situation and then the bottom-line improvements that resulted.

Blog posts allow for the most freedom and flexibility of  the content available. The typical blog post requires less time and resources to produce, but suffers from minimal investment from the reader. For this reason, developing the right title for a blog post means creating a great hook to catch the attention of the reader. Your title should reflect the content of the post while stirring up interest and curiosity.

An important factor that exists across the board is to keep SEO in mind. A strong, keyword-rich title can add more value to your content as search engines discover it and users share it. This can result in more back-links and an improved online presence for your company.

Get Personal with Variable Fields

Posted on May 18, 2011 by in Email Marketing

Get your foot in the door.

Personalization can help get your foot in the door.

Consumers are becoming aware of the technology at a marketer’s disposal and can spot an automated email a mile away. The impersonal nature of these emails is generally off-putting and frustrating for the customer. People want to feel as though a company is grateful for their interest and is engaging with them as a real person rather than as a number or a nameless opportunity for money.

However, at the same time, it is difficult for businesses to maintain efficiency while personalizing emails for customers. Ideally, an online marketer can use an automated solution that sends personal emails. This reduces the workload for the marketer and pleases the consumer.

The solution to this problem is variable fields – data tags in an email. By getting personal with customers through the use of variable fields, you are able to connect with them by name, job title, and company.

How Variable Fields Work

When creating an email template or sending a new email, you can select variable fields to be placed in the email. These fields are placeholders for content and are populated with information from your database. Offering various content on your website can help capture information for your database. Using variable fields, an automated email can be sent out to each new prospect addressing them by name and signed by their rep. Here’s an example of the most basic use of variable fields:

Dear [first_name],

Thank you for showing interest in our product. Please let me know if I can pass on any further information that may be of interest to you.

Regards

[sales_rep]

In the email above, the automated email addressed the recipient by first name and appeared to come from the sales rep. As opposed to most automated emails that are addressed as “Dear Satisfied Customer” or even worse, “Dear Interested Buyer.” Marketers can create lead nurturing programs in the same vein that appear personal to the prospect and require no effort from the salesperson. Once a prospect responds to an email during the lead nurturing, the salesperson can engage and start at the right point in the sales cycle.

Getting Your Foot in the Door

Studies show that the best way to convince someone to purchase your product through email marketing is to get past the “delete” threshold. Many people will delete an email that looks too much like an advertisement straight off the bat. Therefore, sales and marketing often work together through to construct automated emails that don’t look like advertisements. If a lead clicks the email and likes what he or she sees (a direct address, understanding of who he or she is, recent purchases, etc.), that lead may decide to make the plunge and make a purchase.

Spring Cleaning for the Marketing Department – Part 2

Posted on March 28, 2011 by in Analytics/Reporting, CRM, Email Marketing, Site Design

It happens every year – you’ve spent an entire weekend cleaning out your house only to be relaxing on Sunday afternoon and realize the basement hasn’t been touched. Almost immediately your mind initiates an internal debate to decide whether or not it’s really necessary to clean the basement. You may argue that the basement is in decent condition and most guests only see the main part of the house anyway. Is it really necessary?

For the productive marketer, spring cleaning has involved updating the company’s marketing materials (white papers, email templates, etc.) – the main part of the house – to reflect product improvements and service upgrades. But chances are that your marketing automation vendor has also been busy this past year rolling out new features to make your life easier. So, instead of taking Sunday afternoon off, finish up all of your spring cleaning and revamp your marketing automation strategy to take advantage of all of the new features.

Key Marketing Automation Upgrades

  • Compatibility – A versatile marketing automation solution strives to integrate with as much technology as possible. You may have been reluctant in the past year to upgrade your software in fear that your marketing automation solution would be incompatible. Take the time to find out if your vendor has achieved compatibility with the latest web browsers, email connectors, and CRM solutions.
  • Reporting – Given that a huge selling point of marketing automation is marketing ROI, it’s important for marketers to be using the latest tools to demonstrate the value of their marketing efforts. Most vendors know this and are constantly updating their reporting features to let marketers create better tables, charts, and graphs for the higher-ups. Often when you first implement a marketing automation tool, you get caught up in the tactical campaign elements and you don’t spend time understanding how you can report on your data. With the end of the quarter approaching, this is a great time to think about how you can use reports to show that your hard work is paying off.
  • CRM Integration – Most marketing automation vendors are continually improving their integration with the different CRM systems. Because each CRM has its own API and functions differently, the engineers are having to learn each system and figure out ways to implement the new features. This means that little upgrades are constantly being made to better improve CRM integration and you may have overlooked some. Now is a great time to revisit your vendors blog or feature list to find out what new improvements have been made. Often, to take advantage of new features you need to update your integration package, so be sure you’re working with the latest and greatest edition of your tool.
  • Automation – The key to marketing automation is the ability to take time-consuming tasks away from marketers and automate them. Ideally, when you first started marketing automation you handled the basics of automating scoring, grading, drip nurturing, etc. It’s probably time to take automation to the next level and really see what the possibilities are. Think through what other areas of your marketing campaigns you may be able to automate, and work with the sales team to find out how you can use automation to help them as well.
  • Other Features – Luckily for marketing automation customers, the industry is continuing to grow and the landscape is getting more and more competitive. The only way for vendors to succeed is to innovate and differentiate their offerings. Keep tabs on your vendor’s blog and other outgoing news to be informed of the next big announcement. For instance, your company may have recently added connectors to plug in to other marketing resources like a chat solution to sync on-site chats with with prospect activities or a Jigsaw connector to help you find more information about people in your database.

With your marketing automation strategy revamped and your marketing materials refreshed, your company is ready to generate some great leads and exceed quarterly goals.

Spring Cleaning for the Marketing Department

Posted on March 11, 2011 by in Email Marketing, Social Media

Spring cleaning is an annual (and often dreaded) task in many households. It’s the time of year that you scrub every nook and cranny, climbing high to reach the ceiling fans and crouching low to dust the baseboards. While it’s not always the most fun task, you feel much better when it’s done and you’re proud to show off your home to family and friends.

So, when’s the last time you gave your marketing materials a good polish? Ideally you’d make updates on a frequent basis, but in a busy marketer’s world, this isn’t always a reality. Over the past year, it’s likely that your product has undergone some improvements, you’re offering new services or the industry has evolved in some way. Here’s a list of items you might want to review to make sure all of your materials are up-to-date.

Spring Cleaning for Marketing Checklist

  • Review your white papers and check for outdated information, new features you can include to enhance the information, new industry research that may be relevant and new images or product screen shots to add.
  • Give your frequently used email templates a once-over and be sure all information – especially links – are up to date. This is extra important if you have “set it and forget it” items like autoresponders that you may not edit frequently.
  • Revisit your social media profiles on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and other sites to be sure they still accurately reflect your product offerings and highlight the latest and greatest features.
  • Audit sales proposals and presentation materials to be sure they don’t contain any outdated product or pricing information
  • Brainstorm new keywords that might help you bring in more paid and natural search traffic, and nix any old or unsuccessful terms

Now, doesn’t that put a little extra spring in your step?

Timing is Everything: Lead Nurturing Best Practices

Posted on February 14, 2011 by in Email Marketing, Lead Nurturing

inboxToday I read an article on MarketingCharts that summarized some research done on why people “unlike” a brand on Facebook. The top answer? Overposting. Don’t cha just hate it when someone clogs up your newsfeed? This reminded me of a recent case in which I unsubscribed from an email list. It wasn’t because I didn’t like the company, in fact, I buy from them often – it was because the just sent me too many emails. Sometimes two messages a day, for a product that I only buy about once every three months. I was actually disappointed to unsubscribe, as I love the coupons they send, but the frequent messages were just too much of a nuisance.

Frequency is something that’s very important to keep in mind when you’re setting up your automated email programs, such as a lead nurturing campaign. You want to keep your brand top of mind, staying in front of a product until they are ready to buy, but you don’t want to annoy them and cause them to unsubscribe. The Facebook study actually showed that there was little correlation between “unliking” a brand and refusal to buy from that company in the future – but I’d assert that B2B relationships are a bit different. Because, in many cases, the emails are designed to look like they are coming from a specific sales representative, too frequent or non-relevant emails could result in the person having negative feelings toward your sales rep next time they pick up the phone and call to follow-up.

Best practices recommend sending nurturing emails somewhere in the range of once every 1 – 2 weeks. This could vary in some cases – for example, you may send someone an informal welcome or follow-up email when they are placed on the nurturing track and then send along their first piece of promised content shortly after, to get them started on the program. It is also recommended that you have several different nurturing tracks – some for a more aggressive sales approach, and others for a long-term, educational approach. Prospects should be placed on the appropriate track based on their expressed interest and their stage in the buying cycle. If a prospect is placed on a nurturing track, but is also involved with a sales person, the sales person should be aware of all nurturing touch points so that they can bring up the nurturing messages when talking with a prospect (again, making the experience appear more personalized) and also so that they don’t send additional emails within a short window of when a nurturing email was sent. This can easily be accomplished with a marketing automation tool, which shows the sales representative a record of all past prospect interactions.

When it comes to email marketing and lead nurturing, the familiar golden rule applies – email others as you would like to be emailed.

Working Miracles With Lead Nurturing

Posted on October 8, 2010 by in Conversion Rate, Email Marketing, Lead Nurturing

I was just talking to a salesguy today about an amazing miracle he worked with a presumed-dead lead. The sales team had more or less written it off as dead by mid-2009, and the lead pretty much fell off the radar after that. But in early 2010 (almost a year after “dying”), this same lead was put on a nurturing track wherein a drip campaign sent out periodic emails about new product features and improvements.

It was the email update about a new CRM integration that caught this lead’s attention. This new feature solved one of her major pain points and was exactly what she had been waiting for! She clicked on the company’s pricing page, and the salesguy reengaged her and gave her the information she needed. He ended up closing a lucrative deal not long after that.

This is a prime example of how marketing automation can help you work miracles with your own dead leads. Lead nurturing reminds old prospects that your company still exists, and sending periodic updates on product development and features can be the spark that rekindles a relationship that your sales team might’ve otherwise left for dead.

Revive those dead leads with strategic use of lead nurturing! For example, a specially targeted drip email campaign that focuses on new features might be just what you need to hook disengaged prospects back into the buying cycle. You never know what sort of miracles you can work until you stop letting missed opportunities fall through the cracks.

6 Ways to Make a Sale Without Being Sales-y

Posted on August 2, 2010 by in Email Marketing, Lead Nurturing

There’s no bigger turnoff than dealing with a salesperson who seems desperate to make quota. Similarly, generic email blasts and marketing communications can alienate leads who could potentially become good customers. So how do you make inroads with prospects without coming off as obsessed with making a sale? Here are six suggestions:

  1. Share an article. Passing along helpful information is beneficial on two fronts: it empowers your prospect, and it makes you seem knowledgeable. When you share a relevant informational article, your prospect is that much more likely to turn to you, their well-informed friend, when they’re ready to make a buying decision.
  2. Send a gift. There’s nothing that will make a prospect’s day more than getting a little “just because” token. Gifts shouldn’t come off as bribes-in-disguise, so make sure they’re relevant. If you know they’re an avid coffee drinker, send them a Starbucks gift card. After a promising demo, supplement it by mailing them a copy of an informative book about your industry or field. Offering free trials or webinars are also ways to shower prospects with perks that will likely influence their buying decision in your favor.
  3. Be a good listener. Sales and marketing folks are used to doing all or most of the talking. Sales reps use scripts and rehearsed spiels, while marketing people are fluent in keywords and branding-speak. But your prospects don’t want to be talked at. They want to be able to communicate with you on a basic level and in a two-way exchange. Keep it conversational and make sure you’re doing at least as much listening as talking.
  4. Anticipate needs. This is one of the most valuable lessons I learned during my short stint in the restaurant business: Providing excellent service depends on anticipating your customer’s needs and responding accordingly. You can create opportunities where none existed by anticipating a need that the prospect didn’t even know they had.
  5. Solve problems. Solving problems goes hand in hand with anticipating needs (above). When you know a prospect’s pain points or anticipate their needs, be ready with a solution. Nobody wants to focus solely on problems and complaints. Try presenting solutions in your prospect communications, and you’ll likely be surprised with how responsive your audience becomes.
  6. Give advice. Sound advice dispensed freely by an industry expert can really win over skeptical prospects. Be that expert and offer up your honest professional advice to fence-sitters. The worst that can happen is that you don’t close the sale in the end, although you could have arrived at that outcome anyway. Not only will you maintain your integrity, but you’ll also greatly improve the chances that the prospect will turn to you for solutions in the future. The far more likely scenario is that giving out advice will boost your credibility and build trust with prospects, which will ultimately translate to more closed sales at the end of the day.

Quick Email Tip: Ditch the Attachments

Posted on June 3, 2010 by in Email Marketing

Online marketing, especially marketing automation, is great because it allows you to track all that insightful lead activity, right? So you don’t want to lose a single opportunity to see how your potential prospects are interacting with your site, content, email and all the other great stuff you’re putting out their on the web.

When it comes to emailing out proposals, white papers, case studies and other materials, skip the attachments and instead send a link to a hosted file. This makes it easy for the recipient to view (no downloading, locating the file, dealing with network security). More importantly, it allows you to track the link clicks. Did a prospect request a white paper but never get around to reading it? Did they open it right away? Did they revisit it after a few days time?  All of this information can be very helpful to sales reps when they make a follow up call.

In most cases, files can be uploaded and hosted within your company’s website content management system. If that sounds like a hassle, look for a marketing automation system that offers file hosting. Not only can you upload your marketing content, like white papers, but you can also upload any images you use for emails or landing pages, allowing easy access during the design process.

As Seen On TV: 6 Lessons For Marketing Automation

Posted on February 18, 2010 by in Email Marketing

I came across a great article recently that invoked the spirit of the recently deceased pitchman-of-all-pitchmen, Billy Mays. Everybody’s familiar with this guy, especially those of us that watch a lot of late-night TV. While he might have been a tad abrasive, to quote the article, Billy Mays “sold the hell out of stuff.” He got right to the point: You’ve got a problem, I’ve got the solution. His enthusiasm was contagious. How many times did you scoff when you heard the grating intro for one of his commercials (“HI, BILLY MAYS HERE!”), only to find yourself longing for the quirky product by the end of the spot? Let’s face it: the guy was talented. And, as the article points out, his salesmanship all boiled down to five fundamental lessons about successful direct marketing:

Solve your audience’s problem(s). Identify and empathize with their pain points, and then convince them that you’ve got the solution.

Emphasize your product’s mass appeal. Don’t fall into the trap of trying to be all things to all people. Instead, show why you offer the ideal solution for many people. A large, satisfied user base speaks volumes about the quality of your product.

Explain why your product is unique. Why do you stand out from your competitors? Why should they choose you over the others?

Give ‘em instant gratification. As the article puts it, don’t sell them seeds–sell them a fully tended, flourishing garden. Make it easy to say yes. Throw in a little something extra for free if you can.

Prove it. Consumers are increasingly skeptical of grandiose claims; what really sells them is proof. If you can demonstrate the effectiveness of a product, chances are you’ll win them over.

The article also suggests that marketers who are not limited to a 30-second TV spot actually have an advantage over TV pitchmen like Billy Mays. I’m not so sure I agree. Consumer attention spans seem to get shorter by the day. While a TV commercial might be ignored or muted by some viewers, it still nets a large captive audience–people who, by default, do nothing and end up sitting through it anyway. Web ads and direct marketing emails are more likely to get just a few seconds of attention before they are navigated away from or deleted forever. If anything, there is one more lesson to be learned from the pitchman approach:

Keep it short and punchy to drive your message home. Hone your pitch to a few key points so you can get it across in an effective way before you lose your virtual platform. Leave them saying, “Hey, I want one of those!”

Imagine that your webpage or email was limited to 30 seconds of viewing time before it vanished. What would you want it to say? What would you most emphasize? Is there anything unnecessary you could cut out? Once you’ve made these decisions, ask yourself the most important question: Will the core of your message stay with your prospects after they start looking at something else?


Billy Mays

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