Category Archives: B2B

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Over the years I have implemented automated programs and experienced the extraordinary results they can deliver – from cost saving and improved engagement to higher customer satisfaction levels. However marketing automation magic cannot be conjured up through software alone, and I would argue that the magic is not in its ostensibly “fast and easy-to-implement” software. I think the magic comes from within the tests and learnings within your existing email programs.

When driven by a solidly built customer-focused relationship marketing strategy, marketing automation can be a profitable lead generation and management device combining insight, processes and technology that helps to scale your lead management program. Sure, it can be super speedy to get up and running (ask any software vendor); it can include seemingly cool social behavioural insights and of course it can show results quickly. However getting there is anything BUT speedy, cool and quick (ask any revenue-focused marketer). One of my favourite no-nonsense blog posts last year is from Marketing Profs.: “Planning, detailed execution, and a thorough analysis are key to success. It’s not magic. You can’t just snap your fingers and “poof”― all your marketing campaigns and drip sequences have been put into place.” I couldn’t agree more.

So how do you create Marketing Automation Magic?

Try looking inside your long-running email marketing program. For some time now digital marketing mavens have been foretelling the demise of email marketing in favour of social sharing routes and yet, email is the very foundation and channel by which marketing automation is powered. Need convincing? Take a look at these statistics: Twitter sees about 140 million tweets per day. Email? 188 billion messages. And according to data from Forrester’s Q1 2011 North American B2B Technology Marketing Tactics and Benchmarks Online Survey, email marketing still ranks fifth in a range of 21 tactics that marketing professionals deploy to attract, engage, and persuade customers along the buying lifecycle. Therefore, understanding the behaviours generated by your past email newsletters and by analysing test and learn program results, marketing automation implementations can deliver real results quicker.

You’ve probably been sending monthly email newsletters regularly and have a wealth of information and learnings dating back years. Don’t treat your marketing automation implementation and your email marketing activities as mutually exclusive. Use the vast knowledge and insight sitting in your existing email marketing tool. For example, knowledge of the right format that drives the best results is just one of the insights that should be drawn into your marketing automation plan. If you have been advancing your email marketing program over the last couple of years, you already have insights to drive best-in-class automation:

Mobile usage across your customer base
Social interactions and behaviours
Website behavioural metrics
Timing and content insights by customer segment
Revenue generators by content segment

An excellent case study is Citrix’s Anti-newsletter Strategy that employed learnings from their email marketing program and applied them to their automation program. What they learned from their quarterly email newsletter helped drive success in their automation efforts.

Three stages to developing an email marketing strategy

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Developing a good email marketing strategy can be a daunting task. To help you get some perspective, here are 3 key stages to keep you on track.

Develop a customer centric communications strategy.

I know this can be a bit of an overused statement, but to make the email channel work in the modern environment of priority inboxes’ etc it is vital. Focusing on the needs and motivations of the customer as they would relate to your brand is a great place to start. If you are going to be talking to the customer and expect them to engage, purchase or become loyal as a response, you’ve got to say the right things. This can’t be done at a campaign tactical level, when the heats on to get more sales to hit target; it needs to be part of an overriding communications strategy. This strategy will set out more than just how many promotional emails need to be sent to achieve revenue objectives. To develop this email communication strategy, these are some of the key elements.

Understand how your customers perceive the brand and its products or services.
Research the motivations and needs that engagement with your brand satisfies.
Research the strengths that define your brand equity.
Define your customer lifecycle and set business rules to identify where each customer sits.

Focus the strategy on increasing LifetTime Value

Once you have got a clear idea of your customer and the stages the customer goes through in their engagement with you (from discovery to defection), you can start to plan. One key objective of any email communications strategy should be to increase revenue by increasing customer lifetime value. Now, don’t think this is purely a retention statement, it equally counts for acquisition too.

Acquisition

If you’re going to be focusing on lifetime value, it will have an impact on which sources you target for acquisition. Customers coming from sources that provide a low lifetime value customer should be avoided, or the price you pay for acquiring the prospect should reflect their future value. In the case of an email address, they are not all worth the same, so the first task would be to identify sources of prospect email addresses that will provide good future customer value. A good place to start is to look at any results you have from past activity, and look at the overall sales achieved over time, from those customers. The problem with email is that it is a cheap marketing medium that can be abused with little (apparent) cost implication. Good email prospect data, costs far more than poor quality prospect data, but can be far cheaper in the long term, as it produces good long term results.

Retention

Without the understanding of the customer (and you’ll only get this from the research suggested above) you won’t be able to sell to the customer what they want, how they want it. You’ll only be able to sell your product or service how you perceive it. Customer knowledge also allows you to tailor communications for each stage of the customer lifecycle. This will make your communications more relevant, more effective and more likely to meet business objectives. The strategy should be one that makes every marketing communication be seen as a positive experience by the customer, not a negative “interference” experience. Ensure you do this by following these key rules:

Define the commercial objectives for each stage of the customer lifecycle.
Develop a customer communication plan that reflects the customer research and meets business objectives.
Ensure research and testing is part of the strategy, to promote future development.

Make it part of a multi touch, multi channel strategy

In a connected world, where people are hooked onto the grid in multiple ways, touch points come via multiple channels. Just to take one example of a device, the smartphone can deliver a marketing message via email, web, social and SMS simultaneously. Studies have been suggesting recently that someone is likely to be watching the telly or walking round a store while access their phone, so the potential for cross media confusion abounds. Add this to multimedia spamming potential, and it makes integrated marketing communications essential for each channel’s success. Email has an important role to play in future direct marketing, with its unique strengths, it can only be effective as part of an overall cross channel strategy. Complimenting other channel activity, email often drives an uplift on other channels as well.

Taking a strategic approach to the email channel can bring lots more opportunity to the party, ultimately allowing customer knowledge to drive content, timing and targeting; nudging that little bit closer to true one to one marketing.

Put Yourself in a Recipient’s Shoes and Improve the User Lifecycle

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There’s a famous proverb which suggests that to truly understand how people function, you should walk a mile in their shoes.

I think this is something that applies to email marketing in a big way. To really be successful, marketers should put themselves in the shoes of their recipients. This will help understand what the experience is like on their end, allowing future messages to be improved and results increased.

Here are two elements of the user lifecycle where email marketers should put themselves in the shoes of their recipients:

1. The sign-up form

Once you realise the possibilities of a good email marketing strategy, it’s easy to get a bit lost on a power trip of segmentation and personalisation, ruthlessly demanding more and more data from registrants to try and get more value from them.

It’s true that being able to target and segment campaigns effectively and efficiently is a noble goal. Getting the right data is imperative, but thinking about precisely what you need them to input is just as important. Are all the questions you ask necessary and relevant when you send out your campaigns? Remember to test your sign up page: how does the number of questions, the format of the questions (check boxes, drop downs) and wording of the questions effect sign up rates?

2. Sharing is caring

In all the presentations I’ve ever given over the years, I’ve always asked attendees if they use the ‘forward to a friend’ link as a recipient. A handful people – usually 5% – put their hands up. However, when asked ‘who has ever used it to actually forward a message to more than five people’, no one has ever left their hand up. This is clearly a much more personal one to one communication tool. Therefore, as an email marketer, it’s important for us to consider why people use such links and when.

Maybe the ‘forward to a friend’ link just isn’t as popular as it used to be. Look at how the world has changed; since the rise in popularity of social media and its integration into all our work, is email the first medium we think of when sharing content?

One thing I love about social sharing via email is that it is a fantastic tool to explain the benefits of targeting and relevancy. By ‘putting ourselves in the user’s shoes’, as marketers, we should know that when a recipient finds content relevant, compelling and stimulating, they’re more like to share it. Often this can take time, effort and budget. But the size of the prize is what makes people’s eyes light up. In my personal world, with just three quick clicks, to Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin, I can share a message with thousands of my friends and followers.

Build your links and lists

The engagement stats and additional reach these messages have can be phenomenal. It appears that my friends can’t help but click on the content I have shared with them. But why? Its simple: they are in my social network because they share common interests.

Therefore make sure your email creative includes a link back to your sign up page. It’s a great way to build your list with new subscribers that are interested in your products and services.

Key Findings from Nielsen’s Email Newsletter Report

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Nielsen Norman’s Email Newsletter Usability Report is out. You can read the Executive Summary here. Some of the key findings are as follows:

Email newsletters invoke more emotional responses from users than websites.
69% of users said they look forward to receiving at least one newsletter
Most said newsletters had become part of their routine
Many users refrain from unsubscribing from newsletters with the four main reasons being:

Emotional attachment to the newsletter: Users said that it didn’t feel good to sever the relationship, even when they no longer read the mailings.
Low expectations for the website’s usability: People assumed that it would be difficult and time-consuming to unsubscribe, so they postponed the job for another day and simply deleted the newsletter’s current issue.
Fear that unsubscribing would fail and would subject the user to even more mail: Many people have heard that asking to get off spam lists only confirms the validity of their email address to the spammers; this notion has become an urban legend that contaminates users’ mental model of legitimate newsletter publishers as well.
Easier options: It’s often easier to simply use a spam-blocking feature to stop future issues than it is to unsubscribe.

Mobiles are being used to kill time. Many users say they read for longer on a mobile than on their desktop.
Therefore newsletters and landing pages should be optimized for mobile reading wherever possible
Users admit to clicking ‘spam’ instead of unsubscribing when they tire of a newsletter
Users spent an average of 51 seconds on reading the newsletters in their inbox
Newsletters must be designed to be scanned. Only 19% of emails are read thoroughly
40% of users cited the following four reasons for valuing a newsletter:

Informs of work-related news or company actions (mentioned by two-thirds of users)
Reports prices/sales
Informs about personal interests/hobbies
Informs about events/deadlines/important dates

Email Newsletters are a better way to stay in touch with customers than Facebook or Twitter
When asked to ‘receive updates’, 90% elected to receive a newsletter over 10% throgh Facebook.
50% of users said that newsletters affected their B2B purchases (occasionally)
Newsletters must be seen as a long term investment
Finally, when asked why they liked newsletters more than one third replied:

Email newsletters are informative and keep users up-to-date (mentioned by two-thirds of the users).
Email newsletters are convenient and are delivered straight to the user’s information central; they then require no further action beyond a simple click.
Email newsletters have timely information and real-time delivery.

Innovating your email program

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This week I have watched with interest as one of my colleagues on the Email Marketing Council asked a discussion board about innovation in email. So far the group has remained fairly quiet.

So when it came to writing this blog piece I thought I would challenge myself to come up with some innovative ideas that you might want to apply to your existing email program. This is definitely outside of my comfort zone as I always like to make recommendations that are backed up by cold hard facts and metrics but here goes…

Innovate your email program

1. In the retail sector, how about sending emails out to let recipients know that their local store no longer has a product in stock but it can still be ordered online if they are quick. This could be based on products they have browsed for previously. This would have been very useful for me just before the Christmas period!

2. Depending on the products you sell and the time of year, it might also be an interesting idea to revise the online check out process and ask if the product is being purchased as a gift. If it is, why not use “Send to a Friend” functionality to send the recipient of the gift information / instructions about their present. This not only adds value but also helps you to collect data on the end customer.

3. In the hospitality sector why not collect data on all attendees at the event rather than just the organiser. In this way you can quickly grow your email database and send targeted emails to gather information on food choice and post event feedback.

4. Because I never seem to have enough time to plan my holidays as well as I would like I never seem to find out about a local event until I return from the holiday. Personalised emails could be used to let holiday goers know what is happening before they actually arrive at their holiday destination.

5. I am increasingly seeing examples of shopping cart recovery emails (an email to tell a recipient they have left a product in their shopping cart) but what about adding a second cycle to these messages. For instance if the recipient still hasn’t purchased 48 hours later, send an email to let them know how they can get help with their order or reminding them of the benefits of your service?

6. Moving away from campaign ideas, perhaps you could find out exactly what system your recipients receive their email messages on i.e. Outlook 2003. This information could then be used to tailor your content accordingly, for example sending video content just to those people where you know it will work correctly.

7. Local government or utility providers could give each customer their own email address (housenumber@streetname.com). This could remain with the property and ensures you always have the correct email address for the property.

8. In the B2B sector you could ask your subscribers to create a folder just to put your businesses emails into (and provide instructions on how to ensure your messages filter into the folder). In this way your company name and industry expertise will be easy to find whenever your customer or prospects need it.

Hopefully my eight “ideas” above will have given you some food for thought. What innovations are you planning on adding to your email program this year?