B2B Lead Blog

Email marketing is a mature marketing tactic, yet I don’t believe B2B organizations are capitalizing on its potential to generate leads.

I realized this when I read MarketingSherpa’s just-released 2013 Email Marketing Benchmark Report. They surveyed 594 B2B and B2G marketers, of which just about half send out 10,000 to 10 million emails every month. The top priority for the entire group is to deliver highly relevant emails – it ranks above even driving website traffic and revenue.

This makes sense, considering highly relevant email will achieve the other two goals.

But, I wonder how easily they can create highly relevant emails when only 15% reported they have dedicated resources to produce content for each stage of the buying process, as you can see in the below chart, Chart 3.32 – Tactics utilized to improve email relevance and engagement:

Q: Which of the following tactics is your organization using to improve the relevance and engagement of email content delivered to subscribers?

This makes me wonder what is being sent in those 10,000-plus emails each month:

• Do they know what information their prospects want at each stage of the buying cycle?
• Do they know how they want to consume that information?
• Do they have the means to provide that information through their emails?

If they can’t confidently answer “yes” to these questions, how do they expect to achieve their goal of producing emails that are relevant to their marketplace?

I discussed this with my colleague Daniel Burstein, Director of Editorial Content, MECLABS, and he agreed with my concern and related a conversation he had with one of our company’s Research Partners. They, too, wanted to send emails that were relevant and didn’t know where to begin. Typically, as a matter of rote, they blasted out an email every week about one of their products. The marketing team knew it wasn’t the optimal approach, but didn’t have the time to think it through – the emails had become merely another part of their weekly list of activities.

Daniel advised them to ask these questions before any email send:

• What is the goal they’re trying to achieve? What is the pain they’re trying to ease? Essentially, know your audience. (I know this is Marketing 101, but when the vast majority of B2B organizations aren’t dedicating the resources to respond to these issues in emails, I thought it needed to be pointed out.)
• Is this a content-focused or promotional email? If it’s content-focused, then what content do you have that’s going to help them ease their pain or achieve their goals? And remember, good content doesn’t sell – it provides information to help prospects regardless of whether they buy from you.  (Promotional emails may teeter way too much on the brink of spam unless they can directly relieve a prospects’ pain point or help them achieve a goal.)
• Why should they open your email? Does the subject line clearly and concisely convey why it’s worth it for them to use their precious time to read it? Are you making a promise you can deliver on?
• Why should they want to engage with you further after reading the email? If you’re directing your audience to a landing page, what in the email should compel them to click through to read it? What’s in it for them if they do? Does that landing page deliver the promised value? Is it crystal clear what their next step should be? Again, what’s in it for them if they take that next step?

Taking Daniel’s advice will put marketers well on their way to achieving their goal of email relevancy, and all of the benefits that come with it.

Related Resources:

Email Marketing: How to maintain low opt-out rates

Email Marketing: Only 21% of marketers integrating mobile with email

Email Deliverability: Only 39% of marketers maintain an opt-in only subscriber list

Email Marketing: 3 overlooked aspects of automated messages

Email Marketing

I had the pleasure of attending MarketingSherpa’s Email Summit 2013 a couple of weeks ago, and while I was there, Jim Ducharme, Community Director, GetResponse, an email marketing vendor, asked me how to maintain low email-marketing opt-out rates.

My answer, in a word, was relevance. Watch the video below to find out more.

Relevance is the foundation of lead generation, which is, at its core, a series of conversations. Like real-time conversations, we can’t bore the recipients of our emails by talking about ourselves all the time – we have to discuss what they care about.

• If all we do is focus on winning the sale, they’re going to tune out or opt out.
• If we focus on how we can help them, we’re going to build trust, and when they trust you, they’ll stick around and likely buy whatever it is you’re selling.

The foundation of relevance is knowledge of your marketplace:

• Know what keeps your prospect up at night,
• Know what makes their lives easier or harder and
• Know how your value proposition helps.

This knowledge provides the context for compelling, relevant conversations your prospects will be eager to be a part of. Below are a handful of articles from the B2B Lead Roundtable blog to help you generate these kinds of conversations with your customers.

8 Questions to Steer Your Marketing Priorities – Find out the value of asking a handful of customers questions directly – not through surveys, focus groups, digital body language or social media.

Lead Nurturing: Build trust, win more deals by helping prospects – not selling them – Find out how to execute a relevant conversation.

3 Steps that Helped Skyline Exhibits Increase New Product Sales by 18% – Learn how Skyline Exhibits identifies and responds to problems in a way that improves its value to customers.

Sales-Marketing Alignment: How consistent messaging helped ADP engage customers at a faster pace – ADP reveals how Marketing and Sales align themselves to enhance the value proposition by identifying and responding to unmet customer needs.

Content Marketing: Slow, steady pay off for manufacturer – Find out how a manufacturer’s simple email campaign, featuring one piece of relevant content a month, is producing more leads than trade shows at a fraction of the price.

Related Resources:

MarketingSherpa Email Summit 2013 Wrap-up: Top 5 takeaways for email marketers

Mining Gold through Email Integration: 3 lessons from MarketingSherpa Email Awards 2013 winners

Email Marketing: 142% higher open rate, 15% bigger list from retailer’s strategy

Marketing Automation: 25% more engagement, 0% unsubscribe in 4-email series

Email Marketing

Editor’s Note: This is the second of a series of articles to help marketers and salespeople looking for a reliable lead list. Read the first post here: “List Buying: 3 reasons why this tactic can be deadly for marketers.”

In the previous blog post, Mike Volpe, CMO of HubSpot, exhorted marketers to stop buying lists and start doing their jobs:

“Doing marketing right, building relationships and creating love for your company requires some work,” Volpe said. “Suck it up and do your job, and please stop giving marketers a bad reputation by cutting corners.”

In this blog post, Ellie Mirman, Head of SMB Marketing, HubSpot, and Kaci Bower, author of the MarketingSherpa Inbound Marketing Handbook, give three tactics to help you immediately start building those relationships that create the kind of lists that produce great ROI (and great reputations).

Tip #1: Just ask

“There are so many places where you already have the opportunity to capture someone’s contact information. But you need to ask for it,” Mirman says. She explains it’s much easier to ask when you’re offering them something of value in return. She gives a couple of examples:

• When people log on to your website, offer free content — like an e-book, whitepaper or article — that will help them regardless of whether they purchase from you.

• When you meet someone at an event, inquire about their positions, challenges and opportunities; offer to send them information that can help make their lives easier.

Check out the resources below if you need help giving prospects content that will make them glad they gave you their contact information:

• Learn how ECI Telecom set up its content marketing strategy: “How Content Strategy is Transforming an Entire Marketing and Sales Organization.” If you don’t have the resources to develop your own content, pay special attention at timestamp 20:00 to find out how to leverage third-party content.

• Find out the basics of how to produce content people will care about in the MarketingSherpa blog post, “Content Marketing: Focus on Value, not Length.”

Tip #2. Work with a partner

“It can take time to build up a decent-sized list when you’re just starting out,” Mirman admits. To speed up the process, she has three bits of advice:

• Find a partner with an audience that matches yours
• Ask if you can sponsor an email campaign
• As part of that campaign, offer their audience a chance to join your list

“The recipients will see the email is coming from someone they already have a relationship with, it introduces them to your business and your content, and it can send a lot of highly qualified traffic to your website,” she explains.

For more ideas on how to quickly build your list, look at this blog post from HubSpot: “21 Awesome Ideas to Grow Your Email List.”

Tip #3.  Build your inbound marketing framework

Inbound marketing is where leads find you, instead of you finding them. It’s the smartest way to build a list of prospects who are eager to learn more about your company.

“Consumers are more empowered than ever before; they can go online to instantly research and compare products and services,” Bower explains. “They don’t want to be sold or interrupted – which is what happens when your name lands on a purchased list. What today’s consumers want is information that will quickly answer their questions and ease their pain.”

Bower provides a highly simplified outline on how to build an inbound marketing architecture that ensures prospects can find you in their moment of need and sign up for your list.

A. Drive search traffic to your website

“The first thing most people do is a Google search when they want to know more about a product or service,” she explains. “The goal of search engine optimization (SEO) is to help search engines, in response to those queries, find and rank your Web content higher than competing sites.”

Here are the basics for improving ranking:

• Identify the right keywords. These are the words your prospects type in when they’re looking for your product or service. In fact, periodically ask your best customers what they typed into Google when they first started searching, per this article: “8 Questions to Steer Your Marketing Priorities.”

• Use these keywords. Make sure they’re represented in your website’s code, like title tags and meta tags, as well as in content and social media.

• Link your site with others. Search engines pay attention to how many other sites link to your sites – essentially, point to your site as an authority on a subject. Make sure you give people a good reason to link to you, and it should be good content. Editorial, research, multimedia, infographics, software and any valuable resource, like tools or calculators, are all good “link-bait.”

B. Develop content that aligns with your audience

“Too many companies think, ‘Okay, we’ve got this product, so we should definitely produce a whitepaper and brochure. Oh, and we need a webinar, too,’” Bower explains. “Instead of shooting in the dark with this approach, know what kind of information your customers need to answer their questions at each stage of the buying cycle so you can efficiently move them along it.”

C. Build your social media presence

“Social networks bring together like-minded people, provide platforms to share and influence opinions, and are a great way to find out what people think about your organization, its services and products,” explains Bower.

• Listen first.What are people saying about your company? Your industry? What are their issues and challenges? This can help shape your content so you can give them information for which they’ll gladly exchange their email address, says Bower.

• Position your organization as a thought leader and bring them back to your website (with the opportunity to add their names to your list) in three ways:
  • Set aside time every week to cull through questions related to your industry on Q&A Forums, like Linkedin or Quora, and on sites specific to your industry where people are looking for guidance and expertise.
  • Thoughtfully answer as many questions as possible, without pitching products. Offer links back to your site where they can exchange their contact details for information that will, again, help them with their issues regardless of whether they buy from you.
  • Start a blog, if you already haven’t done so, that addresses your prospects’ challenges and pain points. And, of course, give them an opportunity to provide you their contact information.

D. Always bring customers back to a place where they can be added to your list

See the graph at right, which outlines how a prospect finds content through organic search and social media sites and is then guided to a place where she can give you her contact information.

To find out more about how to develop the kind of inbound marketing architecture that effectively builds lists, check out the first-ever MarketingSherpa Inbound Marketing Handbook, where Bower provides detailed step-by-step guidance, including worksheets, exercises and case studies.

Related Resources:

MarketingSherpa Inbound Marketing Handbook

30-Minute Marketer: Growing Your Email List

30-Minute Marketer: How to Integrate Social Media with Email and SEO
Inbound Marketing: How a software company generated 190% more leads with a small budget

Email Marketing

Editor’s Note: Buy, build or both? This is the eternal quandary for many marketers and salespeople looking for a reliable list to contact. We’ve asked Andrea Johnson, Senior Editorial Analyst, MECLABS, to cover both sides of this debate. Today, she explores the downsides of list buying. It’s the start of a three-part series. The next two posts will focus on how to build a list and then on how to use a purchased list if you choose to go that route.

You’re on deadline when an email flashes across your screen. You don’t recognize the company or person who sent it. The subject line is meaningless. You instantly banish it to the junk folder and carry on with the task at hand.

Or your phone rings. You pick it up to hear:

“Hi, this is Ima Teleprospector calling from Irrelevant Company, and I wanted to find out when you might be purchasing Irrelevant’s Products.”

The interruption has made the Irrelevant Company even more so.

I wish I could say these scenarios are exaggerations, but they currently happen at offices everywhere … every day. Why? Because there are marketers and sales professionals still entrenched in the ’80s. They treat email like direct mail, where you:

1. Buy a list
2. Flood a certain ZIP or SIC code with a cleverly designed message
3. Wait for the leads to pour in

In fact, a couple of weeks ago, one of the members of the B2B Lead Roundtable group on LinkedIn asked:

“I am looking for input on lead purchasing. What data should I know before I purchase a list?”

I took this question to leaders at HubSpot and ExactTarget, organizations that launched marketers into this millennium by providing tools and knowledge to use today’s marketing channels in a way they consider more effective.

Mike Volpe, CMO, HubSpot; Ellie Mirman, Head of SMB Marketing, HubSpot; and Chip House, Senior Director of Relationship Marketing, ExactTarget, agreed that no amount of data will help in a list purchase.

They have one piece of advice: Don’t do it.

Here are three reasons why (and I’m sure they could offer more, but these are enough to strike fear into the heart of any marketer):

Downside #1: You could decimate your company’s email marketing program

When you send emails and text messages without the recipient’s prior permission, the Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing (CAN-SPAM) Act strictly requires the email makes it clear that what the recipient is receiving is advertising. (And we all love getting email advertising, right?)

“Names on any list you purchase did not give your company explicit permission to email them,” says House. “So when you email them, it’s unsolicited spam and you run the risk of having future emails blocked by Internet Service Providers.”

House explains anti-spam organizations will seed lists with spam traps – inactive email addresses – which email deliverability experts refer to as honeypots. (Picture Winnie the Pooh’s arm, or head, getting caught in the honeypot, and you can quickly understand what these traps are meant to do.) Legitimate companies will quickly scrub these inactive addresses from their email lists after they get a bounce message, while list providers may not. And, if these addresses receive an email from your organization, it could be targeted as a spammer, irreparably damaging your future email deliverability.

Downside #2: The response rate will be nil

Mirman insists relationships are critical to email marketing success, and buying lists does not buy an instant relationship.

“There are a lot of email best practices around segmentation, behaviors and triggers; you cannot practice any of these when you buy a list,” says Mirman. At minimum, she says:

• The recipient must recognize you and your company
• The email should respond to her past engagement with your company
• It must offer, in response to that engagement, something she’ll value

Downside #3: You’ll harm your brand’s reputation and your sales results

“People don’t like getting cold calls,” says Volpe. “And you risk having your emails end up in spam filters because people don’t want emails from people to whom they have not given permission.

“In some regions of the world, like Europe, automating emails to people without their permission is against the law,” he points out.

Ultimately, when emails end up in spam and phone calls end up in voicemail or, worse yet, in a dial tone, conversion and close rates tank, resulting in an unhappy sales team.

So what’s a marketer to do when he needs leads fast?

“Names on list are not leads,” counters Volpe. “Doing marketing right, building relationships and creating love for your company requires some work. Suck it up and do your job, and please stop giving marketers a bad reputation by cutting corners.”

To give you a full look at all of your options, on a future B2B Lead Roundtable Blog, I’ll provide actionable advice to help you get started building your list. After that, we’ll look at how to purchase a list and what to do with it, if you choose to go that route.

Related Resources:

Do You Expect Your Inside Sales Team to Practice Alchemy?

Email Marketing: Avoid the pitfalls of a direct-mail mindset

Email Deliverability: Riddles answered on spam complaints, feedback loops, and dedicated IPs

Email Deliverability: How a marketing vendor with 99 percent delivery rates treats single opt-in lists vs. double opt-in lists

How to Build a Quality List and Make Data Drive Leads

Email Marketing

Mobile marketing for B2B is one of the newest marketing channels yet, according to the 2011 B2B Marketing Benchmark Report, it ranks second only to whitepaper downloads for growing B2B email lists – even though only 48% of the B2B companies responding have a mobile version of their website.

“As more businesses target marketing to mobile, I expect even better results,” says Meghan Lockwood, MECLABS research analyst.

She will be moderating a panel discussion, Integrating Mobile Campaigns for the Complex Sale, at the MarketingSherpa B2B Email Summit this Wednesday in Las Vegas.  I caught up with her to preview the discussion and reveal what she expects to be some key takeaways.

“There’s an immediacy to mobile that captures an audience as they move through their day, especially busy executives. However, before investing in mobile marketing it’s critical that you thoroughly know your funnel and your key value proposition, and how mobile can advance that,” she warns. “You must be very strategic because marketing to mobile users isn’t inexpensive or easy; you have to code for viewing content on every platform you are targeting – from Droids to iPads – and codes vary by operating system. You have to know what your audience is using and how they’re using it to make sure the investment pays back.

“However, as you can see from the results of the B2B Marketing Benchmark Report, companies are already using mobile to inform and support other marketing channels, and are getting great results,” points out Lockwood. “Considering less than half of B2B marketers are embracing mobile, there is real opportunity for those who know how to strategically use it. After all, the first to engage a customer through a new channel is often the one who makes the greatest impact.”

She will expand on these thoughts with panelists Nick Fuller, Director of Strategy & Analytics, eDialog; Josh Herman, Vice President of Product Strategy, Acxiom Corporation; Kate Williams, Consultant to T-Mobile, and R.J. Talyor, Director of Product Marketing, ExactTarget. The conversation will include:

Integrating mobile with other channels. “Complex sales have a longer gestation period and some are very content-based; which requires nurturing and repetitive touches with content like newsletters and whitepapers,” says Lockwood. Reading them on a small screen can be next to impossible, so she advises giving prospects the option to forward the content to their tablet or laptop for review later.

Analyzing existing customers’ usage. “For a few companies, creating an app that can make their customers’ jobs easier, such as ordering inventory immediately from a job site, could create powerful brand engagement. These organizations will literally be at their customers’ fingertips all of the time. Of course, I can’t emphasize enough that you must make sure your audience will use an app before taking the time and money to develop it.” Lockwood points out. “However, mobile is a great tactical tool for learning more about your customer – technology can track location, phone type, links clicked, time spent on content, and more.”

Knowing what your audience is seeing. “You must have first-hand understanding of the full user experience,” insists Lockwood. “Test your mobile marketing campaigns on yourself. Know how long they take to load. Know what your email looks like on mobile. After all, according to Return Path, that’s how almost a quarter of your audience is seeing it – they say that 23% of all email is viewed using a mobile device.”

Testing. “Mobile marketing is still in its infancy, so it’s smart to begin with a clear objective and measure its effectiveness in achieving it,” she notes. “For instance, at the Summit, Silverpop is having a contest leveraging its new PlacePunch platform. Attendees who check in via mobile from certain locations and activities can win an American Express gift card. They’ll get an introduction to PlacePunch and Silverpop will build their list.

“Best practices will emerge over time. In the meantime, be strategic about your mobile marketing activities, and test them so you know precisely what works and what doesn’t,” she advises.

Do you think your marketplace is ready for mobile marketing? Why or why not?

Are you using it already? If so, tell us how – what has worked and what hasn’t? We’d love to hear from you.

If you can’t attend the conference and are hungry for more mobile marketing advice, whet your appetite with  MarketingSherpa’s 30-Minute Marketer: How to Use Mobile for Marketing: – 11 Quick Tactics for Taking Your Marketing Strategy Mobile.

Content Marketing, Email Marketing, Event Marketing, Marketing Strategy

I always look forward to the announcement of the MarketingSherpa Email Marketing Award winners; they’re a great source of inspiration. In fact, just couple of weeks ago I wrote about how the B2B Best in Show Winner’s unexpected email approach grew its subscriber base by millions.

But honestly, I think B2B marketers might be more disillusioned with the power of email, if the feedback from 1,745 marketing organizations in the 2012 B2B Marketing Benchmark Report is any indication.  Email marketing remains one of the top three lead-generation tactics, just below websites and SEO.  Yet they claim its effectiveness dropped from 40 to 26 percent from 2010 to 2011.

Maybe this year’s Email Marketing Awards can point to one of the reasons why this is happening. If you look at the list of winners, you will note no one won the top award for innovation.

I asked Adam Sutton about it. He’s a senior reporter for MarketingSherpa. He edits and writes for their email and inbound marketing newsletters, has easily interviewed hundreds of marketers about their email marketing initiatives, and he’s one of the event judges.

“We don’t give out an award unless a company deserves it and an entry really ‘wows’ us,” he confesses.

But he also concedes that impressing the judges is getting tougher every year. “Email is a mature tactic as far as digital marketing goes; the low-hanging fruit is gone and you have to be more creative to reach the fruit that’s higher on the tree,” explains Adam. “But there’s still plenty there – especially when it comes to reaching people through newer technologies like smart phones and tablets. Of course, you want to make sure it’s worth targeting that segment of the marketplace, and you want to make sure you can measure the results. But I think there’s opportunity that companies aren’t taking advantage of.”

But what if your audiences aren’t avid users of iPads or smart phones?  

“I think it’s a running joke here at MarketingSherpa: I’m sold on triggered emails, like confirmation emails and thank you emails,” says Adam. “Triggered emails are marketing for you all of the time. When you’re on vacation, when you’re sleeping, when you’re working on another project, they’re still out there driving business without you having to add any resources.

“I would look for every opportunity to create a triggered-email campaign. Frankly, I’m surprised that I’m not seeing more of these.”

While it may be more challenging to innovate within the larger email industry, Adam thinks the B2B space is wide open if you’re willing to learn from your B2C counterparts.

“Analyze how B2C marketers nurture leads with triggered email, follow-up email, or cross-selling opportunities. Think about how to use those ideas to reach your audience,” he advises. “I’ve learned in my years of writing newsletters that there are very few case studies that aren’t universally applicable. If you think your email efforts are stale, we have hundreds of case studies to give you some fresh ideas.”

Adam points out a number of case study resources:

• Download the free MarketingSherpa Email Awards 2012 Special Report.  
• Subscribe to MarketingSherpa’s free inbound and email-marketing newsletters.
• Have a fresh email campaign that you think is worthy of a case study? Email him at adam.sutton@meclabs.com.

“Tell us what you’re doing, and think about entering the Awards next year,” advises Adam. “Whatever you do, I encourage you to set aside time to contemplate your email program. If it’s not something you’re impressed with, if you consider it more of an expense and a hassle than a performance-driver, strategize a fresh approach and consider getting professional support.”

Email Marketing, Marketing Strategy, Thought Leadership

How many emails have you sent prospects and customers this week? How many opened them? How many acted on them?

If you’re like most marketers, the answer too often is, “Not enough.”

It’s a hard fact: people are being inundated with so many sales pitches via email that it’s harder than ever to get prospects to not delete your email, no less take action. It’s no wonder that when marketers are obsessively focused on what’s in it for their prospects to open an email, remarkable things happen – like several million new subscribers.

That’s precisely what Citrix attained through a campaign to grow their subscriber base. Typically, when organizations want to grow their email lists, they do things like coming up with a gimmick, giveaway or contest to convince people to sign up. Instead, Citrix decided to leverage their lists to attain new subscribers. They emailed content their existing subscribers valued so much that they eagerly shared it with their colleagues and Citrix made it easy for them to do so. The subscribers’ colleagues appreciated the emails so much that they decided to subscribe too.

The result: an overall email list increase of several million contacts (35%), “which has greatly increased our media spend efficiency. We are generating demand without having to directly pay for the usual media channels like banner ads, Adwords, etc.” explains Baxter Denney, Manager, Database Marketing at CitrixOnline.

It also resulted in receiving the 2012 Email Marketing Awards’ B2B Best in Show. To read the details of how the Citrix email campaign conclusively proved the value of sharing vs. selling download the free MarketingSherpa Email Awards 2012 Special Report. It features more than 100 pages of the industry’s smartest, most-effective innovations, as well as campaign descriptions, sample emails, extensive results metrics and judges’ analyses.

And if you want to learn even more about the most innovative and effective ways marketers are using email to drive more opportunity and revenue, consider attending the next Email Marketing Summit, Feb. 7 – 10, at Caesar’s Palace Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. To review an agenda go here: 2012 Email Marketing Summit. Receive an extra $500 off registration by entering promotion code 192-ST-1004.

Email Marketing, Social Media

Last week, I attended the first-ever MarketingSherpa/MarketingExperiments Optimization Summit in Atlanta. It was an
evidence-based marketer’s dream, three days chock full of real-world case studies and analyses that drilled down to the intricacies of what makes some online marketing campaigns convert better than others.

What surprised me, however, was how little this has to do with website or landing page design and how much it has to do with a prospect’s mindset. These marketers definitely weren’t learning where to place button “A” to get the most conversions, in fact, they learned that no matter how successful a landing page, chances are, copying the treatment simply won’t yield the same results.

That’s because no matter how brilliant the landing page, you’re not going to be having the same conversation with your customers as the brilliant designer is having with theirs. Which brings me back to the points of this article, “Integrate Online and Offline Marketing Efforts to Continue the Conversation.” Even though we use different mediums, lead generation is all about having a conversation that engages our customers and guides them along the buying cycle.

And these days, that buying cycle typically brings them to a landing page that will further speak to them in a way that will ultimately drive them closer to a sale. That’s definitely not about where to place a button; it’s about thoroughly understanding what motivates the customer to “click here.”

As Flint McGlaughlin, Managing Director and CEO of MECLABS, put it: “You don’t optimize landing pages, you optimize thought processes.”

Online marketing optimization leverages testing to make sure you’re speaking as clearly as possible and really getting through to prospects. As Adam Lapp, Associate Director, Optimization and Strategy for MECLABS Conversion Group, explains in this post, “Landing Page Optimization: Is it actually possible to optimize a landing page?,” that’s a never-ending journey.

While it certainly would be simpler to copy what someone else is doing successfully and apply their ideas wholesale to your online marketing campaigns, you must understand where your own customers are coming from and what’s driving them forward.

If you’re interested in more takeaways from the summit, I encourage you to check out these links:

Optimization Summit Wrap-up: 6 takeaways to improve your tests and results

Test with Poor Results Can Improve Marketing

Why Landing Page Optimization is So Important

Live from the Optimization Summit: Landing Page Optimization with Boris Grinkot

Live Experiment (Part 1): How many marketers does it take to optimize a web page?

Email Marketing, Marketing Strategy, ROI Measurement, Web/Tech

New technology to connect with customers is emerging every day. But even so, nothing is as efficient and effective as a simple phone call for beginning the conversations that ultimately result in sales, points out Brian Carroll.

During the latest B2B Lead Roundtable Webinar, Brian and his colleague, Brandon Stamschror, Senior Director of Operations for MECLABS Leads Group, explained how to make the most of the oldest and best sales conversion tool: the human touch. They explain why:

• The human touch is essential, especially if you count on inbound marketing to drive opportunity and you want to make the best use of sales time and resources.
• Quality data is critical. Good data significantly lowers your cost per lead. In fact, it slashed costs by more than half for a multi-billion dollar Cisco partner.
• Teleprospecting is about connecting with people, and that requires making sure every call counts through thoughtful value-adding conversation.

If you missed the presentation, you can watch the replay below.

How One Company Slashed Their Cost per Lead by More than Half from B2B Lead Roundtable on Vimeo.

View and download slides via SlideShare

Here’s a summary with time stamps to identify key sections:

4:10 – Lead generation is about building relationships. Brian emphasizes that lead generation requires communication and conversation: identifying the right people in the right companies, and engaging them with memorable, relevant conversations.

6:28 – Teleprospecting and email are the two most effective lead generation tools. Brian explains that while emails are a great way to support a conversation, they’re not a good way to start one. “What’s needed to drive conversion into the complex sales is the human touch,” says Brian. He notes that the fastest-growing companies, the companies that are fueling huge amounts of growth, look to teleprospecting and inside sales to maximize effective selling time.

8:11 – Qualify leads accurately and make the most of your sales team’s selling time with teleprospecting. Eighty percent of marketing leads are lost or discarded, according to MarketingSherpa. The biggest reason? They’re not ready to talk to a salesperson. The prospect may have responded to marketing campaigns and provided basic contact information, but sales professionals need much more than that. They need a valid business reason to talk to them and you’re not going to get that on a web form.

10:03 – Quality data is critical. Brandon reveals the outcomes of a breakthrough experiment the MECLABS Leads Group just completed with a $3.6 billion Cisco partner. They tested how higher cost/higher quality lead data affected the cost per lead. The outcome: cheap data is very expensive. The difference between the best- and worst-performing lists was an astounding $581 per lead! Listen to the webinar to find out the details.

22:58 – There are six teleprospecting rules that produce leads. The emphasis is always on building relationships. Teleprospecting is not about talking, it’s about listening.

24:55 – Rule 1: Sustain the calling. Developing relationships is a serious micro-conversion. Therefore, teleprospecting should be long-term and consistent. While most sales people give up after three times, it can take 8 to 19 calls to reach a prospect.

27:21 - Rule 2: Make every call count. There’s no such thing as a wasted dial; every call is an opportunity to learn. Brian advises taking a top-down approach. When you start calling at a higher level, the person you’re speaking with is more apt to confirm contacts and provide referrals. Know the specific role you’re calling for so that if you get voicemail, you can “zero out” to get another referral. Be in the moment. People are open to cold calls if they’re relevant. Five to 10 percent will be ready to speak to you about what you’re selling. With the rest, be prepared to add value to their day regardless of whether they’re ready to buy. After all, 70 percent of brand perception comes from direct contact with a salesperson.

36:28 – Rule 3: Throw away the scripts. Conversation is the goal. Outline the first 30 seconds of the call, briefly explain who you are, your company, the purpose of your call and how you’re going to add value. A call guide is a living document that should be flexible and assume multiple outcomes. It should outline the call’s goal, how you can add value, the important questions that you need answered, and the business issue you need to help solve. Remember: it may take several conversations to qualify someone as a sales-ready lead.

42:44 – Rule 4: Always be relevant. Sales training teaches that we need to follow-up. It doesn’t teach how. “I just want to catch up” or “I just want to touch base” is code for “Are you ready to buy yet?” That’s not being relevant; relevancy is connecting with people by understanding their priorities and their company’s priorities. MarketingSherpa found that 92 percent of B2B buyers are open to cold calls if the salesperson is relevant.

47:34 – Rule 5: Gain opt-in. Do this by sharing valuable information. Provide your teleprospecting team an email template with a valuable piece of content, it’s an easy way to gain email addresses. Brandon and Brian role play so you can hear how it’s done.

49:48 – Rule 6: Always follow up (with nurturing). This segment addresses how to deal with the 85 to 95 percent of prospects who aren’t ready to buy immediately. It outlines how to filter and find relevant content to keep them engaged, and how your teleprospecting team should present it. How do you know you’re nurturing? When what you provide offers value even if the prospect never buys from you.

53:53 – Put the rules into action. Remember, building relationships takes time. But when you add the human touch and bring all the pieces together, this is where conversion takes place. It takes conversation to achieve the discovery that qualifies leads at the level that most sales people need.

B2B Telemarketing, Cold Calling, Email Marketing, Human Touch, Inside Sales, Lead Generation, Lead Nurturing, Lead Qualification, Webcasts/Webinars, Webinar Replay

Last Thursday, I spent a solid half hour explaining the intricacies of how we helped one organization execute a lead-nurturing campaign that generated $4.9 million in additional sales pipeline growth in eight months. Look for the replay of this MarketingExperiments webclinic later this week.

I delved into setting up lead-nurturing tracks, documenting the lead-nurturing process, measuring lead-to-opportunity conversion rates and the like. (Want clarity on what lead nurturing is?  Watch this two-minute video: http://bit.ly/fvJVL6)

At the webclinic’s conclusion I was asked, “What’s the quickest, cheapest way to implement lead nurturing?”

I get that question all too often.  So I thought I’d use this platform to share my barest-bones lead-nurturing strategy. I’ll do my best to resist the urge to elaborate. Volumes could be written about each bullet point. In fact, they have been.

1. Set up your nurturing database. Include all of the people you could potentially sell to: people you’ve met at trade shows, who have spoken with your sales team, who have responded to your website, etc.
2. Review your database. What do you know about the people in it? What industry are they in? What are their titles? Where did you get their names?
3. Decide what information would be most relevant to them. Begin by asking your sales team, “What questions do your customers ask most often? What do they care about? What issues are they facing?” Find content – articles, blogs, whitepapers, and the like – that addresses these issues. Pass this content by your sales team. Ask them whether their customers would value it.  As much as you can, repurpose content. For instance, whitepapers can be transformed to articles and articles to blogs.
4. Email prospects this relevant content, but whatever you do, don’t pitch. These should be simple emails that are written as if you are speaking to them directly.  Be genuinely helpful. Provide your sales team email templates so that they can follow up and engage in their own conversations.
5. Follow up with a human touch. Make a personal connection and follow up emails with phone calls to directly gauge prospects’ interest. Never rely on email alone.

Lead nurturing can be executed without expensive marketing automation tools; there are plenty of simple, low-cost platforms to start off with. You can create databases in Excel and run mail merges from Microsoft Outlook.

I hope this quick-and-dirty rundown of lead-nurturing execution is helpful. If you want more details, look for the webclinic posting later this week. Check out my  free eBook, too.

Related article: Lead Nurturing is Walking the Buying Path with Your Customers

Finally, let me know if you want me to simplify this explanation even further.  After all, Einstein said, “If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.”

Email Marketing, Human Touch, Lead Generation, Lead Nurturing, Sales, Sales Leads