Not Your Parent’s Old Company Newsletter

At the same time, Aprimo recently reintroduced eNewsletters to our customers, partners and prospects. Why? Anyone who receives information from Aprimo marketing knows we strive to provide useful tools to make marketer’s jobs more strategic and productive. Yet, in our internal marketing meetings, we always came back to a need for an interactive channel that tied all of our nurturing campaigns, thought leadership papers, resources, tools in best practices in a summarized, hyperlinked and easy-to-digest resource. We also wanted to turn up the dial on our listening meter.

This is the third in my series of how the Imperatives of the Marketing Revoloution apply toBusiness-to-Business (B2B) marketing.  This imperative is titled "Let Go, Customers Control Your Brand." 

It could be said that this has been the case all along.  In reality, the customer's opinion of your company is always what has driven your brand.  The major difference is the level of communication from customer to customer versus vendor to customer has changed the game.  In the past, a strong marketing organization to influence the opinion of the market regarding their brand by controlling the message and the references and testimonials.  That is no longer the case...social marketing has ended any aspect of control by a vendor.  Now all of your references and realities are out there for the market to learn and understand.

So, how do you respond as a B2B Marketer?  The same way you need to respond to anything these days - with the truth.  What is important for you to do is make sure that the truth is good news.  So, what is important is for you to listen to prospects and customers needs and provide a solution with vision that addresses those needs.  Customers and prospects can articulate their issues and challenges (it's the rare customer that can provide feedback to the design of a product, however).  You need to apply creativity and innovation to addressing those issues and challenges.

The market will buy on message for a while.  There's a groundswell of evidence that many current b2b marketers are not realizing the vision of nurture marketing and lead scoring.  Customers are still buying but expect some lash back in the lead management arena soon.  Customers cannot keep up with the volume of content required for lead nurturing and this is preventing them from realizing the value that vendors have promised. I think it's similar to adding automation at the end of a manufacturing process but not setting up your materials and purchasing.   You can ramp marketing volume without setting up your whole marketing process to support the volume...but I digress. 

So, let's test this theory.  Will customers start to speak up about these issues (it means admitting struggles publicly so that part will be interesting)?  Will any of the "hot" lead management brands start to suffer from this lack of success? 

Here's a link to the previous posts -

1. Marketing Must be Accountable
2. The CMO as a Change Agent

Have you been keeping up with the mobile ad wars between Google and Apple? The wars started back in November 2009 when Google announced plans to buy the AdMob network. Apple responded by launching its new iAd network, which sends ads to iPhone users.  

• According to SNL Kagan, virtually 100 percent of Americans will have mobile devices by the year 2013.
• Punchkick Interactive & Mobile Marketing Watch claims there are twice as many “texters” as email users worldwide.
• Forrester Research estimates that this half-billion dollar industry will surpass $1.25 billion in 2014.

Good luck – and I hope to see you on my iPhone soon.

If you have the data, there’s tremendous value in segmenting. In fact, a recent JupiterResearch study found that engaging your audiences in more relevant communications increases net profits by an average of 18 times more than broadcast mailings. Any bit of segmenting from your data will help. You may have gleaned customer information directly from online forms; or you’re collecting behavioral data from PPC search activity or through your website analytics platform by visiting trending data. Whatever the case, it’s invaluable to the success of your communications – whether it’s your monthly newsletter or an on-going nurture campaign.

Start by making each email count by implementing email marketing best practices. Here are 3 primary steps you can take to increase your email’s ROI:

1.  Be relevant and personal. The basics here are tried and true: Talk to your customers the way they want to be talked to; know their purchase history and timing. 1 to 1 Media’s 2009 Direct Marketing Survey found that Relevancy improved click-thrus by 53%. And for Pete’s sake, don’t annoy by over-emailing.
2.  Try advanced segmentation. While the basics help a lot, try something beyond your comfort zone to see if you can score major lifts. Things to try: gender, location, hobbies, type of company (for b2b). Keep splitting your lists. There are plenty of tools out there to help with this.
3.  Engage new customers. Sounds obvious but many marketers miss this crucial step. You have a very small window of opportunity with new visitors; make sure you give them your best, and most welcoming, shot. Find something that new visitors value – research, analyst reports, intriguing white papers, case studies with real data for example.

Once you’ve started, take segmentation as far as your data allows.  One motorcycle company used segmentation to create new lists based on riding styles, then further divided those segments into lists based on purchase history and email behaviors. Their new, highly targeted email campaign achieved DOUBLE the open rates (38.6%, up from 18.5%), and TRIPLE the clickthroughs. (20.6% from 6.2%.)

Not only does segmentation allow you to drive a more personalized message that leads to higher performance, by segmenting on previous response history you can reduce your actual email sending costs simply by sending to the smaller, more qualified list.

 A customer who is communicated to in just the right way earns your trust. And that’s the ultimate success. So start being smart about using your data to really relate to your customer. As an added bonus, you’re sure to reduce your costs and increase your ROI.
 

B2B demand generation professional are being encouraged to drive nurturing programs to develop prospects with initial interest to the point where they are ready to begin a buying process.  By automating this aspect of demand generation, sales is in the position of working higher qualified leads.  But getting started with this process has more complexity than just defining a nurture campaign and turning it on.  If you are in a position where you are not yet using lead nurturing (you should know that you have a lot of company so don't feel like you are behind), you are probably in one of two general categories for handling leads today

1. You may have an inside sales or telemarketing group that is pre-qualifying inbound leads and setting appointments for your sales team.

2. You may be routing inbound leads directly to your sales team or distribution channel.

In either case, your sales channel is used to a certain quality and volume of leads driving their activity.  If you use Option 1, you likely send a reasonable volume of leads to your sales team and find that a fair number of people are taking appointments to placate your telemarketing team but the deals don't go anywhere so you have a quality problem.  If you are using Option 2, your sales team has gotten used to sifting through your leads and is probably picking out the apparent good leads and ignoring the rest. 

Lead nurturing will clearly help either scenario but it will also disrupt the current volume and quality that sales is handling. So, you need to get your sales team ready for this change and find a way to redirect their effort due to less leads from marketing.

Turning all of these knobs along with defining your nurture campaigns (define the buying stages, aligning content to these stages, defining your different buyers, etc.) is not a simple process.  One thing that might help is a logical way to get started with lead nurturing to help you get started and understand the impact.  Here's one idea...look for more soon.

Revive Nurture - One type of nurturing is used to find lost gems in your current list. This is a great place to start as it doesn't disrupt your current lead gen processes.  It simply finds some lost opportunities and drives some increased volume for your sales teams.  You can run this nurture campaign by identifying contacts that have not interacted with you or responded to any of your outbound activity for a prolonged period (e.g. consider a period equal to your typical buying cycle).  Contact these people to see if they are still interested in hearing from you and offer them some information.  Obviously, you probably won't get a big response but you will likely drum up some opportunities.

Customers have “contact rights!” Unfortunately, not all marketers respect them, let alone optimize them for mutual benefit to brand and individual. Why not? I’m glad you asked, and I’ll start my answer with a very light definition of contact optimization.

Contact Optimization: A 1:1 marketer’s use of industry software to centralize business rules, constraints, and priorities and customer preferences that they can apply during a campaign segmentation to ensure the final target audience comprises only the individuals for whom that campaign represents the optimal mix of message, offer, time, and channel to meet current business objectives.

Answer: As optimized campaigns typically produce better results, I am somewhat perplexed as to why   we still have industry colleagues who do not use these tools in concert with their campaign management solutions. Here’s my thoughts about why I think they should use contact optimization solutions -- for reasons that benefit the professional, the company, the customer as well as industry peers:

•       Relevance: Show you know and listen to your customers, or you may pay the price. Yesterday’s overlooked marketing messages are today’s annoyance, as consumer apathy turns to anger and hostility.   Emerging communication venues like social networks can turn a “private” matter public in just a few minutes, weaving and leaving a wrath of brand bashing that will need to be silenced and reversed.

•       Accountability: Unwanted messages are, simply put, marketing resource waste. With increasing pressure to cut cost and grow revenue for maximum ROI, we have our marching orders. Management’s accountability mandate gives us license to optimize and an opportunity to move away from defending spend to championing and promoting its value. 

•       Responsibility: Keep the industry self-regulated.   We have had only a handful of regulations and restrictions imposed on us over the many decades of 1:1 marketing.   Key to a future with marketing freedom that mirrors our past is an ability to pro-actively adjust and align marketing strategies and tactics for mutual relationship benefit, as the customer perceives it. 

•       Reach: Prevent the creation of an email “postage stamp.” The big expense associated with off-line marketing tactics like direct mail and the complexities of a multi-channel marketing may have heavily influenced historical optimization solution use.   As more of us have shifted our emphasis to online communications, a low cost channel, we may not see the “benefits.” This couldn’t be further from the truth, as the email glut continually causes ISPs to develop new ways to filter and block emails. Perhaps they may even begin charging “postage” to reach the inbox.

•       B2B marketers are in need, too. As more B2B marketing organizations build marketing automation solutions with field enablement functionality, these firms will need to centralize contact rules and priorities to ensure that Sales and Marketing teams with access to the same pool of prospect and leads are aligned in their messages, offers, and treatments. With their focus on the integration of their demand generation and lead nurturing solution with their SFA tool, most B2B firms overlook the importance of establishing and automating contact management processes.

We have the means to not only respect customers’ marketing “rights,” but we have the duty to do so!  I can incorporate easily and efficiently the customers’ “rights” in my marketing strategies and tactics without compromising business performance. So can you! 

The key to achieving your desired conversion rate is relevancy -- pure and simple.  It's more than using your microsite software to support specific campaigns.  It's about testing and delivering personalized emails with relevant content that drives customers to a personalized and relevant experience on your microsite. 

A few words stand out in the above paragraph that merit additional attention.

Personalize - This means many things to many people.  It can be as simple as embedding the customer's name in the email message.  A recent study by Aberdeen found that personalizing an email with a name increased conversion rates by 200-300% over non-personalized emails.

Relevant - The message/offer needs to resonate with the customer.  Relevancy can be driven by events,  prior purchases, and/or through segmentations.

• Events - A customer that downloads a whitepaper or article about a product or service could be ripe for a follow-up email or call.  A dramatic increase in bank account balance could signal a call-to-action from a bank about investment options.  A very personalized email could be triggered to drive customers to personalized microsites with a relevant message that speaks to the customer's need or interest.  Lead nurturing applications can play a key role in supporting your marketing efforts related to customer events.
   
• Prior purchases - Simple cross/up-sell campaigns can be driven by product purchases.  For instance, a customer that purchases a water filter could receive an email that drives them to a microsite that attempts to enroll them in scheduled deliveries (recurring sales!) of replacement filters.  Data mining can also use information about prior purchases (RFM type data) to predict the likelihood of a customer's interest in other products or services.  Then we simply communicate to customers about the products they are most likely to purchase (based on a statistical probability to respond).  We won't always be right, but more times than not, this type of personalized communication will increase conversions and improve our campaign results.
   
• Segmentations - There are many ways to create segmentations.  One is based on industry, product and customer knowledge that is accumulated over time.  For instance, "I've worked in this industry for 10 years and know that females, aged 21-25 are the best targets for my product."  Another interesting segmentation approach that improves campaign results is customer clustering.  Clustering is a data mining technique that creates customer segments where everyone in one segment is similar to each other based on customer attributes (e.g., gender, age, prior purchases, geographic location, income class, etc.).  While everyone in a given segment are similar to one another, each segment in general is quite different from any other.  Once we profile each segment, it is easy to develop a personalized message that goes beyond first name.  The actual copy/text of the email can be personalized to be perceived as even more relevant.  If just using first name for personalization leads to a 2-3 X conversion improvement versus mass email, just imagine what affect personalized copy will have.  Let's look at an example.
  
  A large print newspaper in the northeast was experiencing declining subscribers like many of it's counterparts nationally.  The newspaper appended Census data (number of residents, race, ethnicity, age, income, home value, average commute time and many other variables) at the zip+4 level to all of it's subscribers. It then used clustering to create five different clusters of customers based on the Census data.  Their idea was to profile each group and develop editorial zones based on these segments.  Each editorial zone would receive it's own unique newspaper content based on assumed interests as derived from the cluster profiles.  One cluster was comprised of the highest proportion of customers with high home values, 4-year degrees and the lowest proportion of people with blue-collar jobs.  This cluster also  enjoyed the highest penetration in terms of current subscribers.  You can see how the content this group would be interested in would differ from the cluster with lower education and income.  By personalizing the newspaper content, the newspaper reduced the rate of subscriber loss from all segments/zones. 
  
  This information was also used to promote customizable online versions of the newspaper as well.  Subscribers now opt-in/out to various content.  As such, they are directly professing their interests in a topic or issue.  This information is even more powerful from a marketing perspective than what we "deduce" via analytics, and can drive a circular process where we get to know the customer better and better over time.  This increases customer loyalty and ROMI.
  
  Many organizations have even taken this idea farther from a Social Marketing perspective.  Customers can form their own clusters by opting in/out of particular forums or discussions.  Creating customer segments based on the forums or discussion groups to which they belong is valuable low hanging fruit.  Some leading edge companies are also applying Text Mining to customer posts to take proactive steps for customer loyalty/retention, cross-sell and acquisition efforts.  More to come on Social Marketing and Text Mining in future posts.

• The top three tips for marketing process management to drive revenue through enhanced customer communication.
• The top three tips for marketing process management to improve operational efficiency, reduce costs, and eliminate waste.
• How can companies assess technologies and derive value from marketing process management?

As I cruise along at 24,000 feet on my way to the Gartner CRM event I can’t help but appreciate the complexity of air travel.  Cram 130 people into a metal cylinder and fling them from Indianapolis to Phoenix.  Repeat thousands and thousands of time around the world every day. How do they make this a successful and repeatable process?  One key is automation.

For example, autopilot allows the intelligence of the airplane systems to automatically perform operations so the pilot doesn't have to.  Autopilot lets systems and software take care of the ‘normal’ activities a pilot would go through to fly along at cruising altitude.  I’m sure autopilot was complicated to program and test but the result of that effort is hugely beneficial.  

Many companies have no autopilot equivalent for any facet of marketing.  “Marketing needs to be high touch” or “Outbound Marketing is too complex to automate” they might say.    My guess is that if we found a way to automate the intricacies of keeping a plane aloft at 30,000 feet we can probably automate some of the processes marketing is doing manually today.

One significant autopilot capability for Marketing is triggered dialogs.  Triggered dialogs give marketing the ability to pre-define a series to steps to take for a given person that matches a certain criteria.  Here are some real-world customer examples of utilizing triggered dialogs:

• Automatically respond to a website whitepaper request with the selected content.
• Automatically follow-up with a prospect two-weeks after a sales call.
• Automatically send reminders to attendees of an upcoming webinar.
• Automatically route leads against lead score thresholds to the appropriate team