Marketing Insights

For those who know me personally, you may be surprised it has taken me even this long to post something about Twitter. Well, today is the day. Many marketing success stories are popping up especially in regards to consumer brands. Great examples, indeed, but I have long suspected usefulness of Twitter for all types of marketers - some proof from the Groundswell team at Forrester.

I believe that Twitter is a useful tool for any marketer in any industry; however, the way you use it may be different depending upon your communication objectives with prospects and customers as well as your own career needs.

Learn
I personally started out just listening to the Twitter elite and marketing gurus to see what they posted about marketing topics that I was interested in. It was a great way for me to check in, get a pulse for  trends, and drill down further when I had time to research. I would certainly encourage any marketer to leverage Twitter in this way.

Tip: You don’t have to be “on Twitter” all day long – it can quickly become a timesink. Set up times in your day or week to tune in and review tweets.

Listen and Engage
Then, I discovered TweetDeck and become a much more efficient Tweeter by organizing my followers in groups and searching on keywords, etc. Now, I am able to really connect with Eloqua customers and partners – it has been incredible to watch the our active and growing community here. The ability to reach out and answer questions or direct people to resources in the moment has proved helpful to internal employees, customers, and partners alike. Are your customers, partners, and employees talking about your brand or asking questions you can answer on Twitter?

Tip: Maybe you just want to listen. LinkedIn has a great integration called Company Buzz where you can monitor tweets on certain brand names if TweetDeck and other tools appear daunting.

Embrace
Now, I feel that I am hitting the next frontier of Twitter – sharing and exchanging ideas. Now that I have a voice via this blog, I want to get the messages and ideas out to our community and beyond. I also want to hear more directly about what is working for people and what is not so that I can share this back with my clients.

So I am exploring a new set of chirping tools to maximize the dialogues I can have with my network on Twitter. First, I discovered auto DM functionality with TweetLater. I was intrigued enough that I set one up to welcome new followers:

 Thank you for the follow! Hope my tweets inspire your own marketing efforts.

My assumptions were as follows: (1) I advocate the best practice of a welcome, why wouldn’t I practice here? (2) I can go days and sometimes weeks when I travel without logging in to Twitterland…if I welcome them weeks later, will they even remember me? I did read some “best practices” to not self-promote and tried to make it about the follower and not me. Some Twitter purists, disagree, however. Some advice from a 10-year old – The Top 4 Common Twitter mistakes:

 Seriously, get rid of those auto responders. Auto responders are impersonal.

But, do they really have to be? Is it possible to have a warm, value-add auto welcome to a new Twitter follower? Or, are they simply a No-No in Twitterquette? I am certainly still learning how best to leverage this medium and welcome thoughts on if Auto DM Replies can work. I am now considering revising mine to:

 Thank you for the follow! What marketing topics are you most interested in?

Please comment or vote on our poll or send me an @jenhorton on Twitter with your thoughts!

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If you have autoresponders set up on your website forms (and I sincerely hope you do!) you may want to spend a few minutes making sure they’re up to date. Does the call to action still make sense? Is all of the contact information correct? Does the design reflect your latest branding?

You can check on this through your marketing automation system, or by simply filling out your website forms. You might be surprised by what you find!

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Most clients start out with a lead bucket and an opportunity bucket.  Marketing works with leads, sales works with opportunities.  However, as you move toward an integrated marketing funnel, it is important to incorporate additional lead stages in the buying cycle. 

A Lead Stage field buckets leads and opportunities into a category to help marketers understand how effective their programs are based on conversion from one stage to another.  It also helps with understanding which group I can include or exclude in a marketing program, based on where they are in the buying cycle. 

Here are the Lead Stage fields we recommend and a description for each:

• Suspect  = list purchase, unknown web visitors, pre-show registration lists, raw names
• Inquiry = prospect raised their hand, responds to a campaign
• Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL)  = meets marketing qualification criteria —- Note: In order to prioritize which MQLs should go to sales, Lead Scoring can be incorporated.  For instance you might  have one MQL with a Lead Rating of A1 and one with a B2.  Both are marketing qualified, but based on Lead Score / Rating they will go to sales as priority or non-priority for follow-up.
• Sales Accepted Lead (SAL) = sales determines the lead meets their acceptance criteria, this lead  is not yet in an active pipeline
• Sales Rejected / Recycled Lead (SRL) = sales determines the leads is not sales ready and recycles this lead back to marketing —- Note: Some organizations opt to have sales change the Lead Status field back to MQL. However, in order to get better reporting and have a dialogue with sales, it might be easier to incorporate this additional Lead Status.
• Sales Qualified Lead (SQL) = meets specific sales stages and sales converts to Opportunity and adds to their pipeline. —- Note: Typically sales uses sales stages during SQL (e.g. proposal, pricing, negotiation, pending signatures, etc.), usually following a sales methodology.  Marketing can choose to add these to their funnel and report based o the stages as well.
• Customer = purchase 

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This is my tried and true method for determining if the call to action is easily discernable in an email: squint.  That’s right…open your email, roll your chair back from your desk, and squint. Is it clear where you should click? Can you see it without scrolling? This certainly isn’t scientific, but it gets the job done. Remember, you have 3-5 seconds to grab someone’s attention when they open your email, so make it easy for them to act. I’m a big fan of beautiful design, but if it’s so stylized that the call to action doesn’t stand out enough, then it might be time to make a tweak or two.

Try it on one of your emails today and let me know what you think. 

(P.S. – This works well for other marketing efforts as well: landing pages, direct mail, etc.)

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I was recently working with a client who was convinced that they had an email communication frequency problem. As we looked at the data to validate the hypothesis, we discovered there was actually an entirely different and potentially greater problem – over 40% of the database had not received a single email communication at all. Wow – not even a thank you for your interest email had been sent.

There are two critical points in your relationship with a buyer where you have their greatest attention:

(1) when they learn you might be able to provide something of value to them; and,
(2) when they actually do business with you.

 As marketers – we are typically great at welcoming our customers into the family after they sign the contract or give us a credit card number. But, why do we wait so long to “welcome” someone to our organization? Why not welcome them at the point they explicitly express interest in our organization?

When to welcome. You want to welcome someone because they raised their hand for more information. Think information desk visitor versus door-to-door vacuum sales. Also, consider where your buyer is coming from and why so that you can tailor your welcome appropriately. In a transactional purchase – it may very well be the first purchase. In a more considered purchase, it may be the first time they download some information from your resource center.

 “Thank you for your interest in {what they expressed interest in, or came from, etc.}.
We would like to take this opportunity to welcome you to the {insert brand name here} family.”

Be human. Nobody wants to be welcomed to a distribution list and reduced to a mere email address. Use language that really highlights specific value to your buyer when welcoming a new email subscriber. And, set the tone and let them know what type of communications they can expect. Chad White of Email Insider Blog gives some great examples from retailers that “get it” and those that don’t.

“Welcome to our VIP group! As a member of this group,
you will get first dibs on special offers and savings with us.”

Build loyalty. Delivering value is the best way to build loyalty with your customer. If you are going to ask them to provide more information about themselves, be sure to use that information to personalize and tailor the next communication in a way that adds value to them. If you demonstrate that you are leveraging the datapoints to create value – they are more likely to provide additional details in the future. And, please do not ask for the same datapoints over and over again.

“Thank you for taking the time to tell us more about yourself.
We thought you might find {insert unique offer here} of value.”

Go beyond a single touch. A multi-touch Welcome Campaign is a great opportunity to watch and determine what their level of interest really is. If they engage with your initial welcome continue to the dialogue based on their interests and then score them at the end to determine if they are close to purchase or not. If they are – ensure the right sales resources are alerted. If they are not – nurture them until they are ready. A simple program may look like: 

Step 1: Look to see if inquiry is new to the database.
Step 2: Send initial welcome email from Company X . Provide special offer by answering one or two profile questions.
Step 3/4a: If person engages, serve offer relevant to question answers. Send final email with links to additional resources person may be interested in.
Step 3/4b: If person doesn’t engage, acknowledge intent is to help and not annoy, so please let us know if you would no longer like to receive these communications.

Your buyer wants information. You have their attention. This is a great opportunity to listen to your buyer, route them to the right resources, and consistently introduce new audiences to your unique value proposition. If you do not have an automated Welcome Campaign for your new prospects – do not wait any longer to get one in place. If you have one in place, please re-evaluate from your customer’s point of view to identify opportunities for improvement.

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I have a client whose company attends about 25 trade shows per year and up till now the follow-up for these events has been a little haphazard. We’ve begun working on ways to provide a series of automated post-show emails for these events. We want to come up with something scalable that can work for all of the events, but at the same time has a personal touch and features some show-specific elements. Here’s the direction we’re heading right now – but we’d love to hear your ideas to helps us improve:

• Email One will be sent to the show attendee approximately one week after the show — that gives the attendee time to come back to the office and sift through all the email they missed while they were away so our message won’t get lost.
  • The From Name is the company name at this point since the relationship with the prospect is just getting off the ground.
  • The Subject Line mentions the fact that the attendee stopped by the booth. We will run an A/B test on:  “It was nice to meet you last week” and “Thank you for visiting our booth”.
  • The Design mirrors elements of the trade show booth graphics. (This one can be tricky, especially if your company has multiple booths that don’t all look alike. In that case, you should just rely solely on company branding.) TIP: Another thing I’ve seen work well is to include an image of your booth giveaway item if it’s unique and memorable.
  • The Content is short and to the point. A quick thank you, a link to the online Flash demo of the company’s product, a toll-free number, and a “I want someone to call me” button that drives them to a form. We also use this chance to introduce them to the name of their salesperson and include all the necessary contact details. (In case you’re wondering, we’re using the Signatures feature of Eloqua to make this happen.)
• After one week we check to see if the recipient clicked through the email to the demo or the contact form. If they did, we know that they’re now being followed up by the salesperson because of some other cool features we have in place. If they did not click through, we send them a plain text version of the initial email with a different subject line. 
• After two weeks we check again to see if they clicked through and if not, we add them to the educational nurturing program.

This may seem like a very simple (overly simple?) solution and I’ll be the first to admit that there’s a lot of room for growth. However, this ties back to my previous post (Don’t Be An Overachiever) in that we’re starting small to get something off the ground. For the past two years the client hasn’t had anything in place for consistent event follow-up. Now that we have this small solution in place we can focus on building out more complexity going forward.

How are you following up with your events? Do you have any ideas we should consider adding into the next round of edits in this program?

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When hiring for demand generation professionals it’s sometimes difficult to gauge the person’s understanding of the concepts. Providing a Homework Assignment after a phone interview, prior to the second phase onsite interview can help. Below is a list of ten behavioral questions to obtain more information about the candidate plus a logic exercise.

This assignment is VERY telling.  In fact, when I’ve interviewed candidates, the verbal interaction was great. When they used their written or logic skills, things fell apart OR became very clear. I was able to clearly understand if they simply took their resume and converted it into their assignment or actually thought about the questions and provided intelligent answers and provided me with some insight as to who they are as a marketer.

Behavioral Questions

1. How do you define success?
2. How would you know you were successful?
3. What have you done to improve your marketing knowledge?
4. What would your marketing plan look like?
5. Have you ever been really proud of a marketing campaign?  Please explain.
6. If you owned your own business, what would you do? OR Tell me about your dream job.
7. Describe your management style.
8. If you were hiring for this job, what would you look for?
9. What has been your biggest professional disappointment?
10. Tell me about the most fun you have had on the job.

Exercise

1. Create a template for a marketing budget. Explain the company’s target audience, business model and what marketing programs / tactics have been selected and why. 
2. Develop a welcome program for net new leads, what would this look like?
3. Take three campaigns from your past work experience and describe the planning stage through execution and describe what you would or would not change, and why.
4. Define a segmentation strategy and how a database might be set-up to accommodate this strategy.
5. Create a report or dashboard necessary for managing a marketing funnel.

The answers to the behavioral questions should provide you with enough detail to understand the candidate’s approach to the position as well as a bit more insight into their personality and fit for your organization. The exercise should provide you with insight into their logic skills: did they create a Visio document, a PPT presentation and/or excel spreadsheets to show as well as tell you what they would do or have done in the past? This exercise allows the candidate to demonstrate their creative side (art) as well as logical side (science).

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I hate not getting confirmation for an event that I have registered to attend – or worse, not getting any pre-event details at all. So, trust me, I was disheartened to hear from attendees of an event that my team hosted last fall that they hadn’t received any email confirmation details.

 Attendee: “We never received instructions on where to go?”

 Me: “You didn’t get an email two days ago from us? We didn’t get any bouncebacks?”

 Attendee: “Who was it from?”

 Me: “Our SVP of Marketing.”

 Attendee: “Who is that? Never heard of him, must have deleted it.”

Big lesson learned. In email marketing, the FROM line is important. I would argue that it is the single most important element in building trust with the recipient of your email message. In fact, your email FROM line could be preventing you from even getting in the door. Consider the following about your FROM line:

• Opportunity to build loyalty. Always have your brand represented in the FROM line no matter what. People will recognize your company or product brand before they remember an individual person’s name. When in doubt on what to do with your FROM line – just make it your brand – it is familiar.
   
• Match follow-up communications. If a human being will be following up on the email communication, the FROM line is a great opportunity to build affinity to that person’s name and warm up receipt of the phone call or message. Again, ensure the brand is represented.
   
• Consider your relationship. Who are you talking to? Is it someone who you just met? Is it a customer you are currently doing business with? Is it a strategic partner? The relationship could be a big determining factor for your FROM line. For example, if they just opted-in to receive communications from your company and you are sending a welcome message – trust me – they probably don’t know any of your sales reps. But, they are more likely to remember your brand at that point in time. If they are further along in the evaluation process or business relationship – they may be more responsive to an individual that they know.

• TEST, optimize, and then be consistent. Of course, there are never any absolutes. Testing your FROM line can give you a big lift in open rates and click through rates. One client saw a 37% increase in open rates alone by adding the brand to the FROM line. Formats to test out:

From: Eloqua

From: Jennifer Horton, Eloqua

From: Jen, Eloqua

From: Jen with Eloqua

Consider this –  I got this email last week: 

It was from Apple iTunes Store…I immediately right-clicked to get those images to see what the latest offer was…

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All of you overachievers out there know who you are. One minute you have the bright idea to organize your books by genre and within thirty minutes you’ve decided that you need two new bookshelves, you’d like to paint them red before you use them, you’re going to move your bed to the other wall to accommodate the new red bookshelves, and that means you need to go through the four boxes of stuff that have been lurking under your bed since you moved in five years ago. This is called ‘biting off more than you can chew’ and if it could be an Olympic sport, I’d receive a gold medal.

Many of my Eloqua customers fall into this trap. They decide it’s time to create a lead nurturing campaign for the first time. My counsel is this: start small, take baby steps. But the grand idea of a lead nurturing campaign has my overachiever friends in its grip. Look at all the possibilities! I can have incredibly targeted messaging for each industry AND buying stage! I’m the master of personalized content!

Whoa there, my friend. When you start to break that down, it gets messy. If you have five target industries and 5 buying stages, that’s 25 emails. And you’ll need something compelling in each email — do you have that many assets and offers? If not, you’re going to need to hire a writer or give up your evenings and weekends because I know you don’t have free time during the day to devote to writing. And here’s the sad thing that happens…we overachievers get overwhelmed and give up.

So let’s go back to my advice: START SMALL. If you don’t have a lead nurturing campaign at all right now, a short 3-email drip campaign is 3 times better than what you have right now. And I’m pretty sure that you already have 3 assets or engaging pieces of content you can offer, so that eliminates the sleepless nights. Schedule an hour block of time on Friday to get the three emails in a consistent format so they ‘belong’ together in the drip campaign. Then schedule an hour next Tuesday to build the automated program in your marketing automation software and run your tests (note: click on every link – you’ll be glad you did). On Wednesday morning, turn on the program with its handy automated feeders and you are a rock star when you walk into your weekly marketing team meeting.

What’s next? Now you can breathe deeply because you have something running, which is much better than the nothing you had last week. And now you can focus on your segmented messages by industry and buying stage in small steps. Create one of the 5 paths this month, create the next one next month, etc. Do you see the pattern here? Baby steps = success. Trust me, you can do it.

(And yes, I recently organized my books by genre and had to purchase a new bookshelf from IKEA. But I refrained from painting it red and moving the bed. See…I’m learning!)

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