Marketing. Tried and True Digital Glue for a New Media Landscape.

Transcription

1 Marketing Tried and True Digital Glue for a New Media Landscape

2 What is a Springboard? Let s be honest, marketing today is not always easy. The transition from marketing as an art to marketing as a science has put a premium on rigor, data, process, testing and optimization. Keeping track of marketing trends and understanding the latest technologies can be a handful for you and your organization when combined with other day-to-day responsibilities. At Demand Spring, our Springboard guides are meant to help you breathe a little easier. They are designed to trim the fat and provide the most critical information on trending demand generation topics to quickly educate newcomers and help seasoned professionals stay on course. In other words, consider these guides a springboard to help you confidently and successfully dive headfirst into the marketing practices your organization needs to know to drive demand generation success.

3 Marketing & The New Digital Buyer Today s B2B technology buyers are empowered by abundantly available information. The proliferation of the Internet, social media and mobile devices has simplified access and personalization of the information required to inform much of the buying process for technology solutions. At any given moment, the competition to engage business and technical evaluators across a variety of channels is fierce. In an inbound world, the key question for marketers is if there is still a place for outbound marketing? The answer, when it comes to marketing, is a resounding yes. Best-in-class marketing organizations today have established a healthy balance between inbound and outbound channels. While inbound is a critical means of capturing demand and serving content through owned, earned, and paid digital channels, outbound is required to create demand, especially amongst audiences MarketingSherpa s most recent Benchmarking Report identified that 67% of organizations increased their budgets last year, with one-fifth of them increasing it by more than 30 percent. such as senior business executives and line-ofbusiness professionals who don t spend much time searching the web for technology solutions. While many have questioned the continued effectiveness of marketing (The Wall Street Journal declared dead in 2009), statistics continue to show a tremendous return from marketing. According to the Direct Marketing Association, marketing remains the king of marketing ROI, generating a $40 return for every $1 spent. While marketing budgets continue to increase, more money doesn t always mean a greater return. Successful marketing practices in 2013 differ greatly from those just a few years ago. As stated above, the expansion of social media, mobile devices, increased privacy legislation and marketing automation are just a few of the key items that have made the scene today much different from years gone by. The aim of this guide then is to enlighten and equip marketers with today s best marketing practices by exploring two crucial user milestones: Getting Opened and Driving Response. In the time it took you to read this sentence, 20 MILLION S WERE WRITTEN BILLION s are sent worldwide per day TODAY 11.2 hours Average time spent reading+answering s per week

4 Getting Your s Opened As it is in driving click-throughs, relevance is the key to getting your opened in this age of inbox indigestion. Recipients of your s determine in a nano-second whether to open it or delete it. Who it s from, when it s sent, subject line copy and context are four of the key elements that impact open rates. Let s look at these in more detail. From Field: Send it from a known individual, such as an account manager or executive sponsor, rather than a company. Use variable data in the From field in your marketing automation or marketing platform. Subject Line Length: Approximately 40 characters long, however, more targeted audiences do respond to more specific and longer subject lines. Ensure the most impactful words are before truncation in preview panes and mobile devices. Send to yourself to test truncation. Litmus is also a great tool for testing subject lines in the top clients. Subject Line Copy: Focus on the audience and the offer, not yourself. Your subject line needs to tell the reader what s in it for them. Use action words to inspire and drive response. Personalized Subject Lines Key to Open Rates The best-performing s include subject lines personalized with the recipient s name and an additional data point, like location Based on a sample of 200M+ s Data provided by 12.0% 10.0% 8.0% Name 6.0% 4.0% 2.0% 0.0% -2.0% No Personalization -4.0% Company Custom Personalization Exclamation Mark

5 Nurture s Triple Results: Instead of batch & blast, marketing should be used primarily to nurture prospects through the buying cycle. Harvest inbound inquiries and apply marketing automation nurture streams against them. Remember, only approximately eight percent of inquiries are sales ready now, yet 80 percent eventually buy. Nurture s with relevant offers tied to a prospect s current buying cycle stage have driven three times the open and click-through rates in our experience. Permission Marketing: Opt-in is not only good practice, it s the law in many countries. If you are sending to many European Union countries and Canada (Bill C-28) you need to be an opt-in practitioner. This may cull your list significantly, but it will also result in your communication being seen by a more relevant, engaged database. Time and Day: It used to be that Tuesday to Thursday between 9:30 to 11:30 am and from 1:30 to 4:00 pm were the best times to send marketing messages. Now it s not nearly as clear. Mobile devices and blended work/life schedules mean people are always checking . After hours usually means they aren t in meetings or conference calls and hence have more focus to devote to your . Bottom line test timing to find out what works best with your target audience(s). 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% BEST TIME OF DAY 4am 8am 12pm 4pm 8pm BEST DAY OF WEEK Monday Data provided by Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Reported most opens 44% on Tuesday Reported most opens 53% 8am-12pm Do you find yourself stressing over open rates? Stop. Open rates are highly inaccurate. Those with images turned off don t get counted. Those using preview panes do even if they don t open the . While measurement is always important, the best way to analyze open rates is from a relative perspective. For instance, how are open rates trending over time for the same list segments? Focus on the fundamentals and the best practices described above, and also monitor the downstream data (click-throughs and inquiries). Better open fundamentals will help drive better response rates.

6 Optimizing & Driving Response Organizations are continuing to increase their marketing budgets. Unfortunately, we continue to see declining performance in click-through rates and inquiries. Why is this? In short, marketers haven t adapted their marketing practices to keep pace with the rate of change of how people consume it. Social media has conditioned us to shorter communication, yet many marketing messages remain much longer than people are willing to consume (as proven by heat mapping studies). More and more of us are consuming on our smartphones and tablets, yet according to a study by Salesforce.com, only 25 percent of marketers have optimized for mobile. Given the amount of s we send (both for lead generation and as part of nurture streams), even small improvements can yield big results throughout the funnel. Here are some key ways to boost response: Communication, not Advertising: The beauty of direct response communication is that it s direct. It s written to an individual. Yet, many marketing messages look like billboards, with all the warmth of the Arctic Circle in January. Personalized Signatures Increase Open Rates By 500% Personalizing signatures can increase open rates by 5x and click through rates by nearly 3.5x With signatures Without signatures Data provided by 40% 30% 20% 10% 0% Open Rate Click Through Rate Five Ways To Make Your Marketing More Personal And Relevant Send it From a person, not a company. For example, Jane Smith, ACME Company (pairing the name and the company makes it personal and credible). Have it come from someone they have a relationship with, such as their account manager or an executive sponsor. People respond better to people they know. Personalize it at the top of the body copy. Using Hi instead of Dear helps to make the language as natural and current as possible. Make the copy warm and inviting, like you are having a conversation with them, rather than talking down to them. Signed by a person (Jane Smith). This also gives you the opportunity to include a P.S., one of the most read elements in direct response communication. Tone down the graphics. Rich text is not only much more mobile friendly, it also doesn t scream advertising.

7 Short and Sweet: Increasing work hours, volume, available content and 140-character conditioning are causing us to shorten the time we are willing to spend on an marketing message. We recommend two to three paragraphs in an , with a max of four lines per paragraph. Bullet points are great but keep them short. Heat mapping studies show that people only read the first five to six words in a bullet point. Mobile: Optimizing for mobile is a must have today. Here are some of the key actions you can take: Design (or test) Rich Text Format (RTF) s. They are more personal and mobile friendly. If HTML is preferred over RTF, ensure you send a Multipart MIME (sends in both HTML and plain text) or include a View on mobile link in your preheader. This should be an HTML-lite or RTF version. Keep subject lines short (40-45 characters), file sizes small (<70K) and under 600 pixels wide (for Android devices; ios automatically resizes). Test, Test, Test: Nothing will boost response better over time than really understanding your audience(s). Subject lines, from, offers and personalization are all testable elements to consider. Remember to ensure that you are doing single variable testing. Data: percent of the success of an comes down to your data. Remember the three P s of data: Permission: Opt-in should be your standard, not only to comply with privacy legislation but also to optimize response. Preference: Ask your audience what they want to hear about from you, such as information on specific product segments, industry-related information, or special events, among others. Pruning: Many marketers are afraid to show a decline in the number of records in their database. Don t be afraid to clean and cull from your list those who have not responded in more than six to 12 months. This will allow you to focus and grow your database with those who are interested and engaged in your communication. Nurturing over Batch & Blast: We live in a fast-paced world, obsessed with new (house, car, clothes). That has also been true traditionally of our marketing practices, favoring more campaigns and new campaigns. Remember though that only 8 percent of business to business inquiries are sales-ready, yet 80 percent will buy within the next 24 months. Focus instead on using and marketing automation to nurture prospects throughout the buying cycle (and even after closed lost). Open and click-through rates are typically two to three times better on nurture s than batch and blast ones. Moreover, automated campaigns enjoy 200 percent higher conversion rates. 45% Better % Pipeline Sourced from Marketing Marketing Automation Users 22% Better % Sales Time Spent Selling 25% Better 45% 31% 62% 51% 84% 67% % Revenue Plan Attainment Non-Marketing Automation Users

8 Conclusion In today s fast paced, information rich world, relevance is the key to your communication breaking through. marketing is still a very valuable tool in your marketing toolbox, but leveraging it successfully requires that you heed many of the insights offered in this Springboard guide. Let s summarize the key learning points: marketing is best suited to creating demand amongst audiences that don t typically search for your type of solution through inbound channels (for example, executives, line of business professionals), and also as highly targeted nurture communication delivered via marketing automation. is just one piece of the puzzle. An omni-channel world demands a multipronged approach for maximum efficacy. It is imperative to integrate across all your operational channels (such as web, social media, blog) in order to create seamless connections for your customers. ENDNOTES The Wall Street Journal - online.wsj.com/article/sb html Smart Data Collective - smartdatacollective.com/ajaykelkar/101431/ -marketing-isntdead Constant Contact - constantcontact.com/product-blogs/ -marketing/permissionmarketing/ Relevance is the key to building trust and nurturing a relationship using marketing. Do you enjoy talking to the pre-recorded robotic voice on the telephone when all you want is to speak to a real person? That s exactly what your customers want: a human conversation. It s your responsibility to listen to their needs and deliver. Strive to be friendly, compelling and interesting. Above all, make it worth their while. Strategy is nothing without meaningful metrics. Marketing automation platforms such as Eloqua and Marketo and marketing platforms such as Constant Contact allow you to measure the true impact of your marketing efforts by delivering detailed figures to aid strategic decision-making. Most importantly, you can measure the ROI of your campaigns and how it correlates to customer engagement with your brand. Salesforce Pardot - pardot.com/ /changing-role -marketing/ Salesforce - com/ /changing-role- marketing/ Eloqua - resources/grande-guides/grandeguide-to-lead-nurturing.html marketing is the digital glue of the new media landscape. Utilizing it successfully and inventively will keep your marketing channels working together. Furthermore, as the dominant electronic communication medium, marketing enjoys an ROI greater than any other engagement tactic, proving itself as a vitally important medium not soon to be discounted. Oracle/Eloqua - eloqua.com/resources/bestpractices/marketing-automation.html Marketo - marketing-automation/