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 Centralizing your email marketing efforts |
| author: Judith Nemes |
| source: B2B Magazine |
| date : 11/29/2007 |
Many companies aren’t coordinating their various departments’ email marketing efforts, according to a Jupiter Research report released last month, “Maturation of Email: Controlling Messaging Chaos Through Centralization.”
Some 24% of executives surveyed said six or more departments manage their email messaging activities separately. Almost half the executives questioned (44%) said they believed their email would be more effective if it were managed from a central platform. |
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Outlook 2007: The Sky Isn't Falling |
| author: Karen Gedney |
| source: Clickz |
| date : 2/21/2007 |
When I first read about Outlook 2007, I thought its email design limitations would bring us back to the days of text-only business-to-business (B2B) email.
Though text-only email can be very effective (and has outperformed HTML email in many cases) a text-only inbox would be a boring, bland experience.
I was jumping to conclusions. Although Outlook 2007 will cause its share of headaches, they seem to be surmountable.
To get a high-level perspective on what changes B2B email marketers should anticipate (rather than the nitty-gritty details of what their email designers will contend with), I spoke with Eric Boggs, product manager at Bronto, the North Carolina-based email marketing software firm. |
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How to Hire a Great B2B Email Copywriter |
| author: Karen Gedney |
| source: Clickz |
| date : 1/10/2007 |
My last column on the growing demand for business-to-business (B2B) copywriters generated a lot of interesting comments and questions from readers, especially with those who are frustrated with their current cadre of writers. So let's take a look at how to hire a great B2B email copywriter.
I went through the following exercise a few months ago with my coach when I was looking for a fellow copywriter to help me with a big project. Since I'm in the market again, it will help me to repeat this process as I share it with you.
First, list all the requirements you have for a copywriter, then rank them in priority order. Here's what I've decided I require most: |
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Next-Level B2B Email Campaigns |
| author: Karen Gedney |
| source: Clickz |
| date : 5/3/2006 |
You have a bunch of email campaigns running, perhaps for your event marketing or Webinar promotions. They're generating good results. Congratulations! Your marketing department has mastered entry-level email marketing.
Now if only you could increase the scale of your email marketing and integrate it more tightly with your overall marketing campaigns, you could realize even greater revenue growth.
That's the situation Pavilion Technologies, a leading provider of model-based software for manufacturing, found itself in last year.
Back then, Pavilion deployed email campaigns to promote company Webinars and its user conference, while reserving multichannel marketing campaigns, such as direct mail and telemarketing, for awareness building and lead generation. |
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Designing B2B Email for Deliverability |
| author: Karen Gedney |
| source: Clickz |
| date : 4/19/2006 |
| Many marketers overlook the effect design can have on the deliverability of their email messages. So today, I thought I'd pass along some email design tips sent to me by Melissa Richards, director of marketing at Bronto Software. Because design isn't my area, I also asked Allister Klingensmith, the designer at Leibowitz Communications who created my e-newsletter, to review Bronto's recommendations to call out the ones he thought were most important. |
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Notes From the Email Field |
| author: Karen Gedney |
| source: Clickz |
| date : 4/5/2006 |
In this week's column, I'm going to share a number of somewhat unrelated observations from my experience writing business-to-business (B2B) email.
Writing to BlackBerry Users
When a client asks me to write an email, I assumed I was writing to someone viewing the e-mail from a desktop. I realized the error of my ways the other day, when I heard a salesperson say he'd received 274 out-of-office replies to an e-mail sent on his behalf to IT vendors!
This tells me e-mail written to salespeople (or anyone who travels) better be able to render well on a BlackBerry -- or it's history.
That salesman also mentioned getting 10 calls from potential clients in response to the email. Half were from prospects he'd spoken with in the past. This tells me email's value as a reminder to people who may be thinking of buying your product but just haven't gotten around to it yet.
Also keep in mind, as I've written before, with so little of the subject line appearing on a BlackBerry, you must make those first 15 characters count. My sense is the more businesslike those first few words, the better. Try using subject lines such as "Action Item," "Reminder," and "Comments Due" to catch the attention of an on-the-go BlackBerry user. |
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Email Help for a Help Desk Company |
| author: Karen Gedney |
| source: Clickz |
| date : 3/22/2006 |
If you're a B2B marketer and haven't moved a significant portion of your marketing communications to email yet, this case study featuring Parature, the award-winning provider of help desk software, should be the convincer you need to get started.
Recently, I spoke with Parature's marketing VP, Cyndi Ogle, about why she uses e-ail to communicate with clients and prospects and her successes in both areas. She credits a lot of her success with her relationship with email provider, VerticalResponse. |
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Getting Personal With Newsletters |
| author: Karen Gedney |
| source: Clickz |
| date : 3/8/2006 |
How many of you first turn to the "Personal Journal" or Sue Schellenbarger's "Work and Family" column in the "Wall Street Journal"? I know I do.
Why? Because these articles interest me, personally. They're relevant to my life.
Why, then, are so many business-to-business (B2B) e-newsletters, all so relentlessly focused on business? Marketers view the e-newsletter as a sales vehicle designed to move the company's goods or services. Offering information in an e-newsletter format is simply a means to that end. It's a terrific approach. Many companies benefit enormously from it.
The problem is after a while, reader fatigue sets in. After all, how much business information can any working person read in a day?
What readers really want is a break, a diversion, some eye candy, even some inspiration to distract us from the task at hand. |
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Getting Personal With Newsletters |
| author: Karen Gedney |
| source: Clickz |
| date : 3/8/2006 |
How many of you first turn to the "Personal Journal" or Sue Schellenbarger's "Work and Family" column in the "Wall Street Journal"? I know I do.
Why? Because these articles interest me, personally. They're relevant to my life.
Why, then, are so many business-to-business (B2B) e-newsletters, all so relentlessly focused on business? Marketers view the e-newsletter as a sales vehicle designed to move the company's goods or services. Offering information in an e-newsletter format is simply a means to that end. It's a terrific approach. Many companies benefit enormously from it. |
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Scarcity of lists continues to stunt e-mail prospects |
| author: Carol Krol |
| source: B2B Magazine |
| date : 2/13/2006 |
While e-mail has become a well-established part of the marketing mix, it continues to be fraught with myriad challenges, including a shortage of prospect names and the cost of lists.
Limited e-mail list quantities present a big problem, b-to-b marketers say. |
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What It Takes to Be a Good E-Mail Copywriter |
| author: Karen Gedney |
| source: Clickz |
| date : 1/25/2006 |
| E-mail advertising is a relatively recent phenomenon. As a result, many very experienced copywriters are inexperienced in crafting e-mail messages. So, I've created a little primer (with an ulterior motive)... |
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Action Speaks Louder Than Words |
| author: Karen Gedney |
| source: Clickz |
| date : 12/14/2005 |
As a direct mail writer, I was trained to always first write the order card, or call to action. Working with the final objective in mind keeps copy focused and succinct. That's even more important in the real-time world of online marketing.
You can see that action-oriented philosophy at work in a series of e-mail messages written to ConferenceCall.com customers.
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E=B-to-B-to-B: The Need for Multi-Tiered Newsletters |
| author: David A. Fish |
| source: Chief Marketer |
| date : 11/11/2005 |
| Why do many IT manufacturers know so little about their end-users? Because, in many instances, the companies selling their products aren’t even their customers. Channel selling, while obviously valuable in moving products, makes it very difficult for vendors to get close to their resellers’ customers. Operating largely in the dark, vendors who market through resellers often find it difficult to learn much about these end-users—including what business issues interest and motivate them, what products and services they want, and what technological hurdles they face. |
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Marketing Firm Markets Itself with E-Letter |
| author: Eda Galeno |
| source: Chief Marketer |
| date : 11/11/2005 |
What’s the best way to get your point across? Definition 6, a marketing services firm, thinks it’s through its email newsletter called definingINSIGHTS.
“We wanted to start to publish our point of view on topics that we thought were relevant to our customers,” says CEO Michael Kogon. “We had been very successful as speakers, with public relations and contributing articles, but we hadn’t yet started publishing our point of view.” |
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Herman Group Newsletter Looks Into the Future |
| author: Eda Galeno |
| source: Chief Marketer |
| date : 10/26/2005 |
Not many of us can see into the future. But The Herman Trend Alert, an e-zine from The Herman Group, helps readers do just that in the area of workplace trends.
Although the newsletter is read mostly by senior executives, it also attracts government employees, corporate owners, and housewives. The weekly e-zine is sent to over 25,000 people in 72 countries and is available in four languages: English, French, Spanish and Portuguese. |
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PTC Helps Resellers Get Out the News |
| author: Ray Schultz |
| source: Chief Marketer |
| date : 10/26/2005 |
PTC, a firm that offers product lifecycle management tools, noticed something a year or two ago: Several of its value-added resellers were sending email newsletters to their customers.
But they varied in quality. Some e-zines were PDF attachments sent by email and others were “a little klugey,” says Greg James, senior director, worldwide channel marketing for PTC.
But the potential was there. So PTC has launched an email newsletter program for the VARs, enabling them to deliver material from a central content database. |
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The Shel Horowitz Newsletter Experience |
| author: Eda Galeno |
| source: Chief Marketer |
| date : 10/26/2005 |
Everyone likes to save money, both in business and on pleasure. That’s why Shel Horowitz’s email newsletters appear to be flourishing.
Horowitz is an author, public speaker and marketing consultant. He started the e-zines to promote his books, but now finds them more useful in bringing in consulting clients.
His consumer e-zine, Frugal Fun Tips, offers 8,000 readers quick tips on how to save money. The possible areas of savings? Travel, dining, entertainment, romance and more. It was launched in 1997. |
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CDW Offers Something for Everybody |
| author: Eda Galeno |
| source: Chief Marketer |
| date : 10/12/2005 |
You wouldn’t send a special report on small business tax relief to government clients, would you? Nor would you expect civil servants to be interested in the latest white papers on educational products.
That’s why CDW, a technology solutions provider, sends out separate weekly e-newsletters—CDW for businesses, and CDW-G for government and education recipients, says Kurt Baldassari, director of e-commerce. |
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Hotel Chain's E-Zine Program is B-to-B and B-to-C |
| author: Eda Galeno |
| source: Chief Marketer |
| date : 9/28/2005 |
When Fairmont Hotels & Resorts launched its email newsletters four years ago, it didn’t aim them only at guests. The chain uses two of its four e-zines to serve businesses.
Of course, the biggest one is on the consumer side.
Checking In is directed towards members of The Fairmont President’s Club. It is sent quarterly to 250,000 subscribers and has an open rate of 30%. It features copy on exclusive packages for President’s Club members, special promotions and reviews of feature destinations. |
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A B-to-B Delivery Checklist |
| author: Ray Schultz |
| source: Chief Marketer |
| date : 9/28/2005 |
B-to B marketers don’t get any respect. Their postal mail has for years been blocked in corporate mailrooms. And now they find that their email isn’t getting through, according to Elaine O’Gorman, vice president of marketing for Silverpop.
For every 100 B-to-B emails sent, an average of 14 bounce, O’Gorman says, citing research from Jupiter and MarketingSherpa. Of the remaining 86, only 76 make it to their destination. No wonder 40% of all B-to-B marketers say that delivery is their biggest problem. |
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Direct Mail Vendor Uses E-Zine to Inform Clients |
| author: Eda Galeno |
| source: Chief Marketer |
| date : 9/28/2005 |
How’s this for a switch? A direct mail services company starts an email newsletter when it wants to serve clients.
QuantumMail.com did just that when it launched The Direct Mail Marketer. The firm insists that it is not trying to sell anything.
“We wanted another avenue to talk to customers where it was more give and less take,” says Brandon Cornett, Quantum’s advertising manager. “Typical marketing is, ‘Hey we want you to buy something.’ But we really wanted to give something back.” QuantumMail.com draws customers from a variety of industries, but the majority are real estate firms and related businesses like mortgage, remodeling and franchise companies. |
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Customization - You Know It’s Good For You..But! |
| author: June Macdonald |
| source: One Degree |
| date : 6/17/2005 |
One of my clients is on a limited budget and sends email once a month to sell their products and usually chooses to send a group message with multiple products per message. This can work very well if you are selling small ticket items such as books, DVDs or apparel, but in B-B, targeting is everything. How can you customize and stick to a small budget?
The answer is you can’t necessarily. But what you can do is tie your budget to your revenue.
For example, let’s say you sell computer leases and each contract is worth $3000. Your clients are in pharma, design and government. If you are sending one email a month and spending $3000 (just as an example), how many leases do you need to sign to break even? In this example, let’s say 2. |
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Tricks of the Trade for B-to-B Emailers |
| author: RICHARD H. LEVEY |
| source: Direct Magazine |
| date : 5/15/2005 |
When it comes to email, yesterday's best practices often are today's conventional wisdom.
Take scheduling. One piece of channel doctrine states that Tuesdays and Thursdays are the best days for sending email blasts. But are they?
“Not anymore, because everybody goes out on Tuesdays and Thursdays,” said Michele Egan, worldwide director of direct marketing for American Power Conversion, a power-supply and surge-protector marketer.
Claire Carpenter, vice president of Direct Media Inc., recalled a successful campaign for motorcycle parts that was sent on Sunday. |
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Email Campaigns Are Plagued by Volume |
| author: Lisa Picarille |
| source: DestinationCRM |
| date : 2/25/2004 |
A new study reveals that average B2B email response rates are steadily dropping.
The report, "Building High Response E-Mail," from direct marketer Harte-Hanks, examines 2,626 permission-based email campaigns--more than 17 million messages--focused on B2B campaigns in the telecommunications and high-tech markets. |
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D&B uses Flash e-mail to promote data product |
| author: Russell Shaw |
| source: B2B Magazine |
| date : 1/19/2004 |
Starting in September 2003, D&B, the risk management product and services company formerly known as Dun & Bradstreet, began distributing a Flash e-mail to help demonstrate and promote its Enterprise Risk Assessment Manager tool.
Salespeople called potential clients to introduce ERAM and then e-mailed the demo to them, said David Brooks, VP of new-media services at the Guild Group. Salespeople then followed up with another call to discuss the product and the demo with clients. |
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Toshiba scores with sports event |
| author: Roger Slaven |
| source: B2B Magazine |
| date : 8/11/2003 |
Toshiba Network Products (TNP) of Irvine, Calif., pulled off one of its most successful events ever—a sports-themed party at ESPN Zone during last year’s Broadband Plus 2002 show in Anaheim—for 20% of the cost of a show booth.
“Right up front, we planned carefully, promoting the event early and often to our most important customers,” Boring said. “Red Door Interactive played a crucial part in designing save-the-date email messages that encouraged registration and drove traffic to our Web site, where they could see a Flash demonstration of the product.” |
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Smooth Sailing |
| author: Debra Judge Silber |
| source: Direct Magazine |
| date : 5/1/2003 |
The CRM story at Fleet's corporate bank is no yawner. While financial services companies typically save the bells and whistles for their retail operations, in the past two years FleetBoston Financial — the seventh-largest financial holding company in the United States, with assets of more than $190 billion — has pumped up its corporate arm with new technology, revised strategies and a focus that has yielded substantial results. Among them: a 14% compound annual growth rate in cross-sell revenue, matched with 16% growth in products per customer, along with a marked shift toward more reliable, non-credit revenue.
“We always say it's tools, programs and channels,” says Dean Athanasia, executive vice president in charge of Fleet's Business Development and Strategy Group (BD&S), which began formulating the approach in the fall of 2000. The tools to which he refers are contained within Business Advisor, Fleet's internally developed information platform based on eFinance, a version of Siebel System's eBusiness application configured for the banking industry. Programs include an enhanced segmentation scheme based on customer value as well as refocused direct marketing efforts. Under the umbrella of channels, Fleet has widened communications through the Internet at the same time it has remained firmly committed to maintaining the relationship manager as the primary sales channel. |
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E-Nurturing, the IBM Way |
| author: Joanna Belbey and Karen Gedney |
| source: Clickz |
| date : 4/23/2003 |
| Years ago, Karen worked at IBM's sales department as a college intern. She remembers the staff as the most professional, pleasant people she's known in over 20 years in business. So, when she spoke to Kyle Miller of IBM Canada about the "e-nurturing" strategy IBM uses for its WebSphere software solutions, it felt like old-home week. Miller, a strategist for IBM's Worldwide Direct Marketing of WebSphere, described his team's high-value approach to intelligently moving prospects through the sales cycle. |
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Seven Questions for an E-Mail-Specific Creative Brief |
| author: Joanna Belbey and Karen Gedney |
| source: Clickz |
| date : 4/9/2003 |
| In past columns, we've discussed the importance of a creative brief. Today, a few extra points for that brief to take into account the special opportunities and challenges email offers. |
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Email or Newsletters? Why Not Both? |
| author: Joanna Belbey and Karen Gedney |
| source: Clickz |
| date : 3/26/2003 |
When clients first explore the idea of an email campaign, the question usually arises, "Should we do a straight sales email or a newsletter?" The discussion typically centers on the merits of one over the other.
As a recent case study from the London-based Tarsus Group demonstrates, it can pay to employ both. This international business-to-business (B2B) media group organizes the biannual Labelexpo Americas trade show, serving the label and narrow-web printing industry. |
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Chemicals Firm Replaces Mail With E-Letter |
| author: LARRY RIGGS |
| source: Direct Magazine |
| date : 3/15/2003 |
| Advanced Polymer Alloys, a chemical manufacturer facing a budget crunch, replaced postal mail and direct response space advertising last year with an email newsletter. The results were so good that the firm now plans to redesign the letter and increase its frequency from quarterly to six times a year. |
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B2B Newsletters – Learn From The Data |
| author: David Herscott |
| source: Opt-in News |
| date : 3/14/2003 |
| Opens, click-throughs, bounces and unsubscribes - these are the standard reporting metrics available in every email marketing technology worth its salt. However, in order to really make your email newsletter more valuable to customers and prospects, you need to learn from data that may not be so readily available. According to Debbie Weil, publisher of The WordBiz Report: “getting beyond the basic stats will enable you to measure the interactivity between customers and content, revealing the strengths and weaknesses of your ongoing dialog with them.” |
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Phone-Based Email Capture: The Next Wave? |
| author: Joanna Belbey and Karen Gedney |
| source: Clickz |
| date : 3/12/2003 |
Thinking about the relationship between the telephone and email, the old Girl Scout song comes to mind: "Make new friends, but keep the old./One is silver and the other gold."
Here's why. Yes, email is increasingly the preferred mode of business communication. Heck, our phones at work barely ring any more.
Yet when it comes to actually getting email addresses (and permission to use them), many email marketers return to the old, tried-and-true way of communicating with their clients and prospects. You got it -- they call on the phone. |
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Online Surveys, Part 3: Real-Life Tips and Tactics |
| author: Joanna Belbey and Karen Gedney |
| source: Clickz |
| date : 2/26/2003 |
| We did our own informal survey of clients, colleagues, and ClickZ readers to research this three-part series on online surveys. For this final installment, we're going to do a brief rundown of some tested tips and tactics -- in survey form. |
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Online Surveys, Part 2: Pump Up Your Results by Email |
| author: Joanna Belbey and Karen Gedney |
| source: Clickz |
| date : 2/12/2003 |
Need to take your target market's pulse? As we mentioned in our last column, online surveys give marketing professionals a fast, easy, and effective tool for finding out what makes their audience tick.
Here's an illuminating case study that came our way. It proves great marketing research can be done on a small budget. |
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Online Surveys, Part 1: Instant Marketing Intelligence |
| author: Joanna Belbey and Karen Gedney |
| source: Clickz |
| date : 1/29/2003 |
What do your customers really want? Before online surveys, you could only guess... unless you wanted to invest in an expensive, full-fledged marketing survey.
Now, you can create that survey yourself, send it by email, and begin receiving results just a few minutes after a recipient answers the last question.
Benefits of online surveys: |
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Get Your Email in Shape for 2003 |
| author: Joanna Belbey and Karen Gedney |
| source: Clickz |
| date : 1/15/2003 |
No, we're not talking about clearing out the 6,000 emails clogging your inbox in an effort to unclutter and simplify your life.
Today's column is about firming up and adding more power to your email messages for greater profitability in 2003. So flex your fingers over your keyboard and get ready to give your brain a workout. |
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Down to Business-to-Business |
| author: Kris Oser |
| source: Direct Magazine |
| date : 1/1/2003 |
Michelle Feit, president of email marketing company ePostDirect in Pearl River, NY, takes on the business-to-business issues of the day.
DIRECT: What's happening on the business-to-business side?
FEIT: The big issue is that the email list industry has come a long way, but things we do on the postal side — like merge/purges and the National Change of Address process on lists — are not as available on the email side. Also, mailers still aren't incorporating the data into their private databases to be able to mail better and smarter and to query more effectively. |
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Software Marketer Engages Prospects |
| author: Kris Oser |
| source: Direct Magazine |
| date : 1/1/2003 |
A year ago, software company Primus Knowledge Solutions began scrambling for a way to hold on to prospects through a long sales cycle in the face of a tanking economy and corporate belt-tightening.
Email, the communication tool of choice for Primus' techno-savvy customer base, seemed the quick, cheap and obvious answer.
“We needed a simple, fast, proactive tool to keep Primus at the top of their mind, so when the time came that the software initiative got funded, we'd be on the short list,” says Paula Skartlind, director of marketing communications at the Seattle-based firm. |
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Rev Up Your Sales Engine With Leads, Leads, Leads |
| author: Joanna Belbey and Karen Gedney |
| source: Clickz |
| date : 12/18/2002 |
For most business-to-business (B2B) marketers, generating leads for the sales force is top priority. The best way to do this is to set up sales engines -- lead-generating systems that consistently churn out high quality leads at the lowest possible cost in time and effort.
We asked two marketers how they generate repeatable sales lead sources. |
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Questions and Answers With the Email Expert |
| author: Joanna Belbey and Karen Gedney |
| source: Clickz |
| date : 12/4/2002 |
| Occasionally, in response to our columns, we're asked questions that fall outside of our area of expertise. Not wanting to leave our readers in the lurch, we've passed these inquiries on to Sean Meehan, general manager and VP of email development at Grey Direct. Here are Sean's responses to some recent -- and oft-asked -- questions on Email Profiling, Message Deployment and Tracking, and HTML in Outlook. |
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Eye on b-to-B: Prospecting, Not Spamming |
| author: Karen M. Kroll |
| source: Multichannel Merchant Magazine |
| date : 12/1/2002 |
Say "email prospecting," and many marketers squirm. The term often brings to mind the unsolicited emails that crowd electronic mailboxes, touting everything from herbal remedies for baldness to instant mortgage approval. So while they're interested in email's ability to inexpensively reach prospects, most b-to-b catalogers are taking a wait-and-see approach when it comes to prospecting electronically.
Then again, the relatively low cost of contacting prospects by email rather than by print mail or outbound telemarketing has encouraged some catalogers to test email prospecting programs. |
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Innovative and Inexpensive Member Marketing Techniques |
| author: Joanna Belbey and Karen Gedney |
| source: Clickz |
| date : 11/20/2002 |
There's a hotbed of ingenious email activity going on, and it's not happening in the places you'd expect: the Fortune 500, dot-com survivors, or big technology leaders. It's going on fast and furiously, without a lot of fanfare, at the professional associations to which we belong.
Why? Seasoned association marketing executives, who have always had to "squeeze a nickel until the Indian rides the buffalo," know a good thing when they see it. They're committing to email marketing, making it work overtime to achieve amazing results. |
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Behind the Scenes, Part 2: Follow the Tech Leader |
| author: Joanna Belbey and Karen Gedney |
| source: Clickz |
| date : 11/6/2002 |
"Marketing on steroids." That's how we heard online marketing described at the Jupiter/IAB AdForum two weeks ago, and we couldn't agree more. Email gives marketing and sales departments an unprecedented agility to communicate with prospects in new interactive ways, without all the heavy lifting that used to prevent so many well-intentioned projects from getting off the ground.
We interviewed one of healthcare's most tech-forward companies, Oxford Health Plans, to discuss how it's using technology and email to improve communications with insurance brokers and to dramatically shorten the sales cycle. |
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Behind the Scenes: What Works and What Needs Work |
| author: Joanna Belbey and Karen Gedney |
| source: Clickz |
| date : 10/23/2002 |
| For this column, we spoke with Sean Meehan, VP and general manager of email development at Grey Direct, and Matt Godson, regional marketing director of the Institute for International Research (IIR). We wanted to know about their successes and challenges in B2B email. |
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Embrace the Gatekeeper |
| author: Joanna Belbey and Karen Gedney |
| source: Clickz |
| date : 10/9/2002 |
Many salespeople and marketers think in terms of getting past the gatekeeper. In the good old days, if you called before nine or after five, you had a good chance a senior executive would pick up his own phone. Salespeople now try to think of clever ways to slide past the gatekeeper to reach the "real" decision-maker.
Not us. Rather than diminishing the role of the gatekeeper, we glorify it. Embrace the gatekeepers! Acknowledge they are intelligent, hard-working folks with their bosses' best interests at heart. They're trusted associates and valued colleagues with extraordinary power. After all, they control the flow of information to top executives. Their mission is to filter out everything that won't make their bosses more successful. |
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Copy that Inspires On-The-Spot Decisions |
| author: Joanna Belbey and Karen Gedney |
| source: Clickz |
| date : 9/25/2002 |
| Many products have a very short life cycle. Conferences and corporate events fall into that category. You no sooner start promoting it than it's over. When you ask a prospect to register now, you really mean it. One day after the event is too late. |
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Get on the Executive Radar Screen, Part 2 |
| author: Joanna Belbey and Karen Gedney |
| source: Clickz |
| date : 9/11/2002 |
Our last column was about positioning your conference to immediately telegraph itself as a must-attend event for executives by leveraging its past reputation, playing up the current year's theme, and extending an offer to encourage early registration.
Let's get to the nuts and bolts of writing and formatting a winning save-the-date email.
The Subject Line Is Everything
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Get on the Executive Radar Screen, Part 1 |
| author: Joanna Belbey and Karen Gedney |
| source: Clickz |
| date : 8/28/2002 |
You've just walked out of the kick-off meeting for your next conference. You have the date, location, and, hopefully, the name of the event. At this early point in the event promotion lifecycle, that may be all you have to go on. Most likely, the actual agenda, list of speakers, and topics are works in progress.
Ideally, you'd wait until the whole program is finalized. When promoting a conference or similar business-to-business (B2B) event, you rarely have that luxury. To get on the radar screen (and calendar) of executives you need to reach, you need to send a save-the-date email, pronto. As discussed in an earlier column, for C-level executives you'll want to mail as much as 12 months in advance; for everyone else, 6 months is a good lead time.
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Timing Is Everything |
| author: Staff |
| source: Clickz |
| date : 8/14/2002 |
| With any marketing campaign, the key to success is capturing the attention of your prospects -- if only for a moment. You want them to pause just long enough to get a sense of whether what you are offering meets their needs or, better yet, satisfies their wants. |
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The Replacements: 5 ways to replace lost clients |
| author: Chris Sandlund |
| source: Fortune Small Business |
| date : 8/1/2002 |
You do and you do and you do for them. And for a while, your clients can't get enough of your services. It looks like your relationship is going to go on forever. Then, suddenly, they stop returning your calls.
By making a slow, steady effort to continue to add new and diverse customers, you'll keep your company healthier than most, even in a tough economy. Here are some creative, low-cost ways to find new business now. |
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B2B Email How-To's: From Planning to Creative, Part 2 |
| author: Joanna Belbey and Karen Gedney |
| source: Clickz |
| date : 7/31/2002 |
| In part one, we described the planning process for any B2B email campaign. In these busy times, it's easy to get swept up in the rush and just start sending out emails frantically. By taking time in the beginning of each campaign to plan ahead, you'll not only get better results, you'll also avoid the frustration of shifting goals, mixed messages, and duplicate efforts. |
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B2B Email How-To's: From Planning to Creative, Part 1 |
| author: Joanna Belbey and Karen Gedney |
| source: Clickz |
| date : 7/17/2002 |
Now that "Save the Date" email has replaced those old stodgy printed conference marketing letters (with long lead times, expensive printing, letter shopping, and postage), you're on easy street, right? You can probably prep it over your morning latte and blast it out in the afternoon!
Well, not really. Because email can be turned around faster than traditional media can, it's tempting for management to tell you to "just shoot out an email." Like any marketing effort, the real key to your success is careful planning and project management. Here are a few tips to help any business-to-business (B2B) direct marketer stay organized. |
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Email Leads the Conference Communications Stream |
| author: Joanna Belbey and Karen Gedney |
| source: Clickz |
| date : 7/3/2002 |
| Though it's a tried-and-true practice, launching a conference is the most daunting and underrated challenge in B2B marketing. Typically, you only have about six months to go from the initial idea to the actual event. |
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The Ordinary Marketer |
| author: Chris Maher |
| source: Clickz |
| date : 6/19/2002 |
A book entitled "The Ordinary Marketer" would be a tough sell. No one I know or you know wants to be ordinary. We live in an overstimulated age, one that borders on (and I borrow this word from medical research) excitotoxicity. Only the exceptional is enough and, even that, just barely.
We all want to hit the grand slam, attach ourselves to the perfect mate, and achieve some measure of earthly glory. Tiger Woods is focused on winning only the tour's major events. And you will find no self-help tape that features the following affirmation: "Repeat after me: I am ordinary. Ordinary is good. I take that back: Ordinary is just, well, ordinary. But you can get used to it. And, with that car, that paycheck, and that hair, I think ordinary works for you." |
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Email Copy for the Next Economy |
| author: Chris Maher |
| source: Clickz |
| date : 5/22/2002 |
| Let's say you've lined up the perfect list that targets the right job titles. You've crafted a can't-miss offer: an opportunity for prospects to engage in a live, Web-based Q&A with an industry luminary plus a complimentary report by an industry analyst in exchange for the prospect's registration. |
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Conference Blog: Earthquakes, Wizards, Words and Email Stats |
| author: Debbie Weil |
| source: Clickz |
| date : 5/15/2002 |
Here's what I learned at the net.marketing conference last week in New York City:
Multi-channel marketing is the new buzz phrase. If you're an email marketer and not thinking direct mail and other offline tactics, you should be.
A little ho hum at a conference is fine, compared with an earthquake (which struck last year in Seattle).
I don't have a blog (yet). Therefore, I'm not cool.
Wizardry is alive and well, at least in some marketing circles.
Sixty-six percent of online marketers are publishing an e-newsletter, according to H. Robert Wientzen, who heads the DMA. This means an e-newsletter is no longer the new new thing. Yours better rise above the clutter. |
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Context Matters |
| author: Chris Maher |
| source: Clickz |
| date : 5/8/2002 |
| A couple of years ago at a ClickZ conference in Boston, when the new economy was in full blather and froth, I finished a speech by telling a story about my late Uncle Edwin, whom we all knew as "Uncle Sonny." |
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B2B E-Newsletter Launch: A Handy Checklist |
| author: Debbie Weil |
| source: Clickz |
| date : 5/1/2002 |
Virtually every business colleague, client, and potential client I talk to these days tells me starting an HTML e-newsletter is on the front burner of her marketing plans. This is the month/quarter/year, it's gonna happen.
What's holding them back? For starters, it's a lot of work. There are many steps and multiple pieces to the puzzle. From vendor selection to HTML design to figuring out what to write about, there's much to think through.
If you are poised to launch an e-newsletter but haven't made the leap yet, here is a checklist of key steps and considerations. This is not a complete list. (You can read about a content formula in my last article.) Nor are the steps necessarily in order; a number of things must be done simultaneously. But if you can check off most of the items below, you're ready to go. |
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The Secret Life of a ClickZ Columnist |
| author: Debbie Weil |
| source: Clickz |
| date : 4/3/2002 |
| A good subject line is like art -- hard to define, but you know it when you see it. Concocting a winning subject line for a business-to-business (B2B) email isn't a step-by-step process, yet there are a few characteristics good subject lines share. |
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Newsletter Sponsorships: B2B Success |
| author: Heidi Anderson |
| source: Clickz |
| date : 3/7/2002 |
| The folks at SilentRunner were wondering recently if an email newsletter sponsorship would solve their marketing problem. The security solution firm that was spun off from Raytheon was looking for new ways to reach its customer base of Fortune 1000 companies. They decided to run an ad in a very targeted publication. The results went beyond what they were hoping for. |
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CONTENT CONTROLS B2B REACH |
| author: Rodney Much |
| source: Opt-in News |
| date : 3/5/2002 |
| I’m looking for 350,000 double opt-in email addresses for senior level management positions in the pharmaceutical industry. Good luck. Opt-in and direct email are definitely NOT the same. Opt-in requires a voluntary action on the recipient’s part to initiate permission for receiving such offers…direct mail does not. |
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Ouch!: Why B2B Acquisition Email Campaigns Can Be Tough |
| author: Debbie Weil |
| source: Clickz |
| date : 2/20/2002 |
This is an email marketing story that doesn't have a happy ending -- yet.
It's a true account with names changed to conceal the client's identity. And it's a cautionary tale about how tricky business-to-business (B2B) email acquisition campaigns can be these days. Flooded inboxes and an increasing intolerance for unsolicited mail make it more difficult than ever to get the response you want.
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The Offer Culture |
| author: Chris Maher |
| source: Clickz |
| date : 2/13/2002 |
| Over the past year, our team has had the joy of watching a client organization become, bit by bit, transformed by our collaborative efforts. |
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B2B Basics: A Judicious Mix of Technology, Timing, and Travel |
| author: Heidi Anderson |
| source: Clickz |
| date : 1/10/2002 |
| Let's start the new year right by getting back to basics. Today's case study shows how a company that pays attention to fundamental principles can create a successful email marketing campaign. |
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HOW TO HANDLE AN EMAIL MARKETING FAILURE |
| author: Clint Symons |
| source: Opt-in News |
| date : 12/12/2001 |
| When opt-in email campaigns go wildly wrong it is usually because of miscommunication between parties involved. Earlier this year Houndware, and industrial asset tracking company, experienced this problem first hand. |
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Leveraging Your Confirmation Emails |
| author: Debbie Weil |
| source: Clickz |
| date : 10/31/2001 |
| The lowly confirmation message gets short shrift in the email marketing cycle. You know the emails I'm referring to -- the perfunctory autoresponders that pop into your in box to confirm an online transaction, a sign-up for an e-newsletter, a request for a white paper, an RSVP to a Webinar, and so on. |
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Top Five Tips for Killer E-Newsletter Content |
| author: Debbie Weil |
| source: Clickz |
| date : 6/27/2001 |
What are the top five tips for killer e-newsletter content?
If you're like me, you salivate at the direct marketing approach to solving a problem. You're looking for an answer you can quickly absorb -- in a neat, tidy package.
The fact is, there are probably six top tips. Or maybe nine. It doesn't matter. Read on to find out why.
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Report From the Field: Email Marketing Best Practices |
| author: Debbie Weil |
| source: Clickz |
| date : 3/7/2001 |
The buzz on last week's DMA net.marketing conference in Seattle is that there was no buzz.
A record low number of registrants and exhibitors, prompted no doubt by the dot-com downturn, dampened whatever excitement there is about the continued growth -- and success -- of online marketing.
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Crafting an Effective B2B Subject Line |
| author: Debbie Weil |
| source: Clickz |
| date : 2/21/2001 |
Do the following subject lines grab you?
Here you have, :o)
Hi: Check This!
If you were bitten by the "Anna Kournikova" bug, these may sound familiar. Remember this one?
I love you.
If only it were this easy to write enticing subject lines in B2B email marketing. The virus propagators seem to nail it every time. Maybe we can learn something from these nasty folks. Why do we open their messages?
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Expelling the Myths of B2B |
| author: Kim MacPherson |
| source: Clickz |
| date : 9/18/2000 |
If your focus is on B2B, then chances are your targeted market already receives tons of promotional email. Obviously, time is valuable for these people and, realistically, you probably have a total of five seconds or less after they open their email to capture their attention and interest.
When it comes to marketing to a business-to-business audience, the top response drivers may not be what you think. Conversely, what you may think of as tried-and-true principles may be killing your response simply due to overuse. |
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