Fireproof List Building Tactics in B2B Marketing

MarketingSherpa recently published a chart, identifying the main list building tactics B2B marketers use. In its B2B marketing benchmark 2011, the company found email turned is the third most important lead generation for B2B marketers.

A closer look at effective B2B email list building tactics that work according to correspondents.

Registration during purchase is one of the list building tactics that is considered very effective. Prior to the purchase of an item or a subscription of any service, the customer is typically asked to register his information for quicker access to his account in the future. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Email marketing, Research Tagged With: , , , ,

Email is Alive and Well as a Proven Inbound Marketing Channel

Although social (business) media is booming, email is still an important communication channel.

Below you can find an infographic by Monetate looking at the conversion rate for email marketing compared to Twitter and search. It also provides some tips on increasing conversion using email.

On a technical level you notice a huge increase on email views on iPads: +73%, and also quite an increase of openings on mobile devices. Something to keep in mind when designing your email lay-out. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Conversion, Email marketing, Infographic Tagged With: , , ,

Growing your Email Subscriber List: Seven Tips (and Some Social Media)

“The money is in the list”. A saying which is often heard when it comes to email marketing. Expanding their email subscriber list is an ongoing priority for email marketers.

The most important element is making sure that your emails offer relevant content and treating your future subscribers as human beings.

When defining an email subscription strategy, think from the viewpoint of the people you would like to subscribe. What do they want? What are their needs? What are their preferred communication channels? [Read more...]

Filed Under: Email marketing Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Is Email Marketing a Conversation?

Conversation An ongoing discussion in the industry regards whether or not email marketing can be a conversation. The notion that it should be a conversation has quickly evolved into what almost amounts to a philosophy for some. You will hear some very smart people evangelize this way of doing things.

I suspect this view developed from a way of driving home the point that in general, email marketers are often damn lousy at doing anything other than shouting sell lines at people over a megaphone. The message needed to be driven home that if your marketing email content lacked relevance, you were unlikely to have success with it. The nice thing about relevancy, it is usually a win-win for both the sender and subscriber. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Email marketing

EMAIL: What’s in a Name?

What’s in a name? I’ve broken down the word “email” as an acronym to hopefully provide a little inspiration. I chose the words below to highlight what I think are some important components of a good email marketing strategy. Now, you might have gone with different words for some or all of the letters and that’s fine! In fact, I’d love for you to add your suggestions in the comments!

E – Engaging
By engaging I mean relevant and timely content. That means you need to do a little research and tie your campaigns into what’s happening around your subscribers and what they are interested in. Set up a content calendar and use it as a guide to tie in to what is going to engage your subscribers.

M – Mobile
Many analysts are calling 2011 the year of mobile marketing and there’s good reason for it. Smartphone growth over the next five years will double in some markets. This not only requires you to actually design a mobile-friendly newsletter, but also to consider some different approaches to engage mobile subscribers. Think about the fact that these subscribers have technology which travels with them. A mobile subscriber base opens up all sorts of new opportunities for you as a marketer. I think such things as day of week and time of day may matter more with mobile. For example, if you are hitting people during the commute, you might have better luck because they are looking for a distraction while on the train. If you are sending on Saturday you might want to change the message drastically because people are more relaxed and focused on leisure and family.

A – Action
Do your emails have strong calls-to-action? Do you know exactly what it is you want people to do when they read each newsletter? Of course you want them to convert, but how? Are you trying to get them to your website or your store or what? If you aren’t clear on the objective, I assure you that your subscribers won’t be either.

I – Inspiration
Are you working in a cave where you just do the same thing and never take a look at other people’s work for inspiration? Don’t just pump out the same old tired template time and again. Check out one of the “lookbooks” for some ideas.

L – Landing Page
Landing page optimization is one of the most important components of a successful email marketing campaign. Landing pages should be uncluttered and have a strong call-to-action. Don’t make people think about what you want them to do when they get there! Don’t force them to go hunting for the related item you were promoting in your newsletter either! Keep the focus of the page tight and create as many landing pages as you need for each objective to keep it that way.

Filed Under: Email marketing

Grandparents and Email Marketing: a Golden Opportunity

Grandparents and email marketing When it comes to technology such as email, seniors are far too often overlooked because we assume they are rooted in the old ways and not technically savvy. Oh, we’ve all heard the horror stories from someone about how they get calls from parents or grandparents daily about how they’ve managed to “mess up the thingies on the PC screen”, but in fact, your parents and grandparents are just as able and just as adaptable as you are – if the technology has relevance for them.

When it comes to grandparents, I don’t have to tell you that one thing which is extremely relevant are their grandchildren. Any technology which offers them an easy way to stay in touch and spoil the kids is going to be popular with a segment of the economy which in many countries is very powerful, active and growing.

For example, according to Nielsen, grandparent households spend 4.4% more each year than others. Almost 40% of those responding to the survey said they support their grandkids with everything from clothing to food. And this is a growing segment with senior numbers in the US alone expected to rise 11% by 2015.

While these numbers are US focused, they still carry a powerful message to email marketers anywhere who are looking to expand their reach and subscriber base. Mom and dad are not the only people out there looking to spend dollars on the kids and the households they live in.

Identifying target groups: think beyond the obvious

When a new baby is on the way it’s not just the parents who are looking for information and bargains. The grandparents are also doing research online according to Nielsen. When my father found out he was about to be a grandfather, he went on an email communication and information rampage. By far the most popular activity for expectant grandparents is email and that means email marketers have a golden opportunity to target a market segment that have disposable income and are motivated buyers.

Marketers should be very aware of this growing demographic and keyed into the fact that they make purchases for younger demographics as well as themselves. Remember when kids used to cut out toys from catalogues and give them to mom and dad for birthdays or Christmas? Technology has made that kind of thing even easier! A couple of clicks and Sally has just sent Grandma a link to the new MP3 player she wants or the new jeans she’s dying for.

If your market is the younger generation, you should also be considering relevant content for the older grandparents too! There may be a lot of marketing potential gain to your company if you provide resources targeted at older consumers who make purchase decisions for the younger set.

Educate people on products they might not be acquainted with, answer questions which would be relevant to a grandparent. Heck, maybe even send them great excuses for spoiling grandchildren which they can use on the parents if they get any resistance!

J-P De Clerck

JP3 J-P De Clerck is a 360 degrees interactive marketing consultant and serial blogger, specialized in the cross-fertilization of online channels and interactions. His areas of expertise include email marketing, social media marketing, search engine marketing, content marketing, web analytics and conversion optimization. He manages several blogs and online communities regarding various interactive marketing and media topics.

You can connect with him via Twitter or visit his personal blog here.

Filed Under: Email marketing, Research

3 Essential Email Marketing Message Types

3 Essential Email Marketing Message TypesIt’s easy to bore your customers to death with email: just send them the same type of message repeatedly and you’ll succeed.  We’re often guilty of this when we send our e-newsletter and little (or nothing) else. 

And while a newsletter absolutely has a place as a staple in your email marketing program, it should be far from the only type of message you send your customers on a regular basis.

After your email newsletter (which can be weekly, every other week, or monthly depending on how much content and activity you have), I recommend weaving these three message types into your email marketing stream at regular intervals throughout the year: [Read more...]

Filed Under: Email marketing Tagged With: , ,

SWYN: Why People Do and Don’t Share Email Marketing Content on Social Networks

SWYN: Why People Do and Don't Share Email Marketing Content on Social NetworksI recently came across Contactlab’s European E-mail Marketing Consumer Report 2010 and found some very interesting statistics for European email users. It’s a large report at 40 some pages, but a few questions about sharing newsletter content via social networks caught my eye and I wanted to briefly touch on that subject here.

When asked if they had ever shared a newsletter with friends on a social network, the overwhelming response was negative with 73% saying no, they hadn’t. Breaking down 27% who did share by country, Italy had the highest percentage with 41% while the United Kingdom and Germany were at the bottom with 17% and 15% respectively.

When those who did share a newsletter via social were asked why, 59% stated they shared the newsletter content via social because it was interesting. The next most popular reason for sharing was a discount offer which ranked number one among 36%.

Nice to see that at least among the Europeans surveyed here, the main reason to share was because the content of the newsletter was interesting, meaning it was relevant to them. Perhaps even a good discount offer isn’t going to trump relevancy when it comes to sharing something from a newsletter.

What about the reasons for not sharing an email marketing newsletter via social? When asked that question, 59% stated they don’t like distributing promotional messages. Even more intriguing was the second most stated reason for not doing it; not knowing how. Of those surveyed, 17% said they didn’t know how to share content from a newsletter via social. When it was broken down by country, the highest percentage was in the U.K. at 26%, followed by users in Spain and Italy at 22% and 20% respectively. At the other end of the scale, only 5% of Germans reported the same issue.

Obviously we’d all love people to share our content, but are email marketers really encouraging people enough? All you really need to do is ask people to share your newsletter on social just as you would ask them to forward to a friend. Of course, this presupposes that your email marketing newsletters are rich with relevant and engaging content which people would just love to pass along.

It all seems reasonably straight forward here:

  • Produce newsletter content which is relevant and engaging which makes people look good when they share it with friends.
  • Ask people to share your content by working the invitation to do so wherever it fits in your newsletter.
  • Have sharing buttons displayed prominently in your newsletter. Put them at the top, bottom and even after each piece of sharable content.

No matter what you do, there’s no guarantee people will share your newsletter content with friends via social media, but it’s a good bet they won’t if you don’t bother to ask.

Filed Under: Email marketing, Social media marketing Tagged With: , , , , , ,

QR Codes: When, Where, Why & How

QR Codes When, Where, Why & HowLast week I posted an introduction to QR codes inspired by a whitepaper from GetResponse. Today, I thought we might consider the when, where, why and how of applying QR codes.

 

 

A camera equipped smartphone which has the right reading software installed can scan these codes in an instant and then do such things as:

  • Load a webpage
  • Contact info
  • Send an SMS
  • Provide Geo location
  • Register for a contest
  • Sign up for your newsletter
  • Follow a link to a web page
  • Play a YouTube video
  • Like a fan page on Facebook
  • Add a calendar event
  • Wifi network login

It’s a pretty cool way to convey some basic information quickly and easily. Chances may be better today that someone has a smartphone in their pocket rather than a pen, so allowing them to scan GEO location info or even an address and phone number from a billboard or print advertisement is convenient.

Size, location and how the QR code is integrated into your material are key considerations. Obviously you want people to notice the code so they’ll scan it, but not make it so overpowering that it dominates or distracts from other elements.

QR codes are still a novelty, but don’t go over the top with them. Try to use them in a way which saves someone effort and time. Again, think about the fact that it’s likely easier to find a phone in a purse or pocket than a pen and paper. What relevant information can you convey via QR code which will save someone a little hassle?

If you’re going to use QR codes consider that there are probably two things which really attract a mobile phone user to scan them:

  1. Convenience – scanning a QR code is certainly easier than typing something in or writing it down.
  2. Surprise/novelty factor – It’s that Easter egg effect and you should have something fun and worthwhile in the egg to reward them.

Remember, you’re asking people to reach into pocket or purse and snap a picture of the code to initiate an action. Don’t disappoint them! Give them something for the effort! Send them to your newsletter sign-up page and then let them download a discount coupon.

It may seem a bit redundant to put a QR code into an email. These codes appear to be best suited to connect the non-digital world via smartphones. Of course, there’s also a convenience factor in being able to quickly scan info into your phone from a website or email. However or wherever you use the codes, convenience and creativity should be guiding principles.

If you are still wondering about what QR codes are and how they work, the best way to reduce any confusion would be to try creating some. Here are three free QR code generators you can use:

  • KAYWA
    A nice simple generator
  • Zxing
    Easy to use with more abilities such as Geo location and WiFi
  • Beqrious
    Another good generator which also allows you to easily create QR codes linking to social media profiles and allows you to include graphics with the code image.

I think you can get pretty creative with QR codes so long as you don’t forget the main purpose is convenience for the user. If you do take the novelty approach, make sure you always reward someone for their time and effort.

Filed Under: Email marketing, Mobile marketing Tagged With: , , , ,
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