First of all...if you don't know what this term means and you are expecting to be found in Google searches...you definitely need to contact us.
If you do know what this means, you will find the below study very interesting:
First of all...if you don't know what this term means and you are expecting to be found in Google searches...you definitely need to contact us.
If you do know what this means, you will find the below study very interesting:
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Does your business spend time and money generating leads that languish neglected in a pipeline? "The industry wide statistic of 70% of leads never receiving effective sales follow-up is astounding," writes Maria Pergolino atMarketo. "With the mass amount of resources devoted to lead generation, the act of following up on leads has to be improved to experience growth in conversion rates."
To achieve maximum ROI on your lead-generation programs, she offers this three-point strategy: Make contact as soon as possible. If you wait too long, leads might forget who you are—or, worse, assume you don't think they're worth your time. Pergolino recommends the assistance of automated software to efficiently score each lead. "[A]utomation targets prospects based on demographics, activity history and online behavioral triggers allowing your sales team to follow up on the highest-potential leads first, while allowing marketing to nurture the rest," she explains. Keep in regular contact with leads. Don't send an email, however, unless it has content they'll consider relevant. "Send pertinent messages related to where your prospect is in the buying cycle," she says, "[and offer] information to help move them from one stage to the next." Be sure your in-house teams talk to each other. Your pipeline will stagnate if Marketing and Sales don't establish an ongoing dialogue about the parameters for qualification. Remember: Those parameters can be cyclical, and are likely to change as a sales department's priorities change. reposted from MarketingProfs A lot of people ask me about the merits of buying clicks on search engines with AdWords, vs. getting free visitors with what's called "search engine optimization" - loading up your web pages with strategic keywords so you can get ranked #10 or #3 or #1 on Google's free search.
Well at first glance free is certainly better than paid, but there are some big IF's that you need to consider first! Remember: you can only optimize a website for maybe ten words and phrases - not hundreds - so you should choose very, very carefully. But the most important thing is choosing the RIGHT words and phrases to optimize for. Now here's the kicker: If you don't use a pay per click strategy to determine which words and phrases actually attract paying customers first, you will almost always choose the wrong keywords. The words you initially think you want are almost always different than the ones that actually work - believe me, I've made that mistake many times. Considering it takes 30 days to several months to see results when you're playing the search engine optimization game, you CANNOT afford to target the wrong keywords. When you do pay per click campaigns properly, you'll see that there are almost always a few really productive words and phrases that only 2-3 people are bidding on, instead of 10 or 20 bidders. What that means is that those people are not optimizing their websites for those same keywords either. Well just like pay per click, search engine phrases have varying degrees of competitiveness. If you want a #1 ranking for the phrase "Digital Camera" it's going to be a LOT harder than getting a #1 ranking for "Kodak DX6340" which is a popular digital camera. And the traffic will be much more targeted, too. When you do search engine optimization, you must pick battles you can win. When you share articles with your readers, don't forget to ask those readers for their opinions on the subject matter. Link them to your Facebook Page to join the discussion. They can also comment on Twitter using a hashtag to brand the discussion. Starting a discussion builds engagement between you and your customers. This gives you insight into which topics resonate with your audience.
Any successful B2B marketing strategy "involves the integration of email marketing," Maria Pergolino asserts in a post at the Marketo blog. Whether designed for lead generation or nurturing leads and repeat buyers, carefully crafted email campaigns and messages can still achieve optimal results, she notes.
To help B2B marketers keep email as a vital component of their marketing mix, Pergolino offers seven best-practices that "alleviate common issues and ensure each email will not only reach the targeted recipient, but also compel the reader to open it." Among her recommendations: Start with a clear objective. "Is it to send out an email newsletter purely for informational purposes?" she asks. "Is it for lead generation or to share information to solve a customer’s problem?" Never send an email without knowing what you want to achieve, and how the message will help you reach that goal. Choose a "from" name the recipient will recognize. That might be the name of your company rather than a person she has never met. "Having a trusted from name encourages higher open rates," Pergolino notes. Time delivery for optimal open rates. "Many believe sending email on Tuesday is optimal while Fridays are the worst day to send out B2B messaging," she explains. However, others argue for weekend delivery. The key is determining when your customers are most likely to open your messages. Use analytics to improve every aspect of a campaign. Gathering strong analytics data helps marketers understand success and failure, and "iterate accordingly," Pergolino notes. The Po!nt: Email is still a player. But terrific open rates won't happen on their own: It's up to you to apply tactics that will help make your B2B e-messages effective—and downright irresistible. by DJ Waldow Published on February 2, 2011
From biz360: If you are just sending emails out to a list and don't have some familiarity with these terms and there implications, we should talk. In this article, you'll learn...
Whether you send email campaigns (as a marketer) or receive them (as a consumer), you need to understand email terminology. The following is a list of 17 email marketing terms that every business should know. (Note: This list is not comprehensive, nor is the discussion of the terms, each of which could be the subject of an entire article. So consider this list a starting point). 1. Blacklist: A blacklist contains a set of IP addresses that are suspected of sending out unsolicited email (spam). If your sending IP has a high complaint rate, high hard-bounce rate, or a bunch of spamtrap addresses (see term No. 16), you are more likely to be blacklisted. Bonus: Having your IP addresses blacklisted is bad. Do everything you can to avoid it from happening. 2. Bounce: An email that is rejected by the receiving mail system is said to have bounced. An email can be returned as "bounced" for many reasons, such as having an unknown alias (username), nonexistent domain name, or full inbox. (See more in the "Hard Bounce" and "Soft Bounce" sections.) Bonus: Pay particular attention to the number and rate of bounced emails, both of which could negatively affect your overall deliverability. 3. CAN-SPAM Act of 2003: Signed into law in December 2003 by President Bush, CAN-SPAM establishes the standards for sending commercial email in the United States. Bonus: This act is the minimum standard for sending commercial email in the United States. Most email service providers (ESPs) have much stricter requirements. 4. Click-through rate: Similar to open rate (see No. 12), CTR can be measured different ways. The most common, however, is clicks divided by emails sent. For example, if you sent an email to 100 people and 12 of them clicked on one or more links, your click-through rate would be 12%. Bonus: Before sending out your next email marketing campaign, determine which links you want your subscribers to click. Design your creative to meet that goal. 5. Cost per thousand (CPM): Most of the major ESPs charge email marketers based on the number of emails sent per given time period (month or year). Rates are based on 1,000 emails. Typical CPM rates can range anywhere from a few cents to several dollars, based on overall volume. Bonus: When shopping around for an ESP, have a good sense of the total number of emails you plan to send per month or year. Also, ask about overage fees! 6. Deliverability: The number of emails that are sent minus those that bounce equals deliverability. See more under "Inbox Deliverability Rate." Bonus: Note that there is often a difference between deliverability and inbox deliverability. What matters more is the latter—the number of emails that reach the intended recipients' inboxes. 7. Email service provider (ESP): An ESP is an organization that provides a tool or service that enables marketers to send out mass emails to their clients, prospects, and customers. Many ESPs also provide strategy and consulting services. Bonus: Not all ESPs are created equal. Much like people (and cars), they come in all shapes, sizes, and colors. Find the ESP that best fits your business needs. 8. Hard bounce: A hard bounce is an email that does not reach the intended recipient because of some permanent error. In server-speak, it's defined by a 5xx error code. Hard bounces can occur when an alias (username) or domain does not exist. In most cases, emails that have hard-bounced will never be delivered. Bonus: Hard bounces are often the result of sending email to an old or purchased list. Beware: A high number of hard bounces will have a negative impact on your overall deliverability and domain reputation, making it harder to send emails in the future. 9. Inbox deliverability rate: This term refers to the proportion of emails that reach the intended recipients' inboxes for a given email campaign. Put another way, it's determined by emails sent minus those that bounced, dropped, lost, blocked, filtered as spam, etc. Bonus: There are many email delivery services (Return Path, Pivotal Veracity, etc.) that can help determine your inbox deliverability. 10. List purchase: Buying an email list normally involves not only an exchange of money but also an actual handover of an email list (a file). Buying a list means that you, the list buyer, actually purchased the list. It's yours. You can do with it as you please. (See "Buying an Email List vs. List Rental." Bonus: When is it OKto buy an email list? Never! (Though some marketing lists are OK.) 11. List rental: As opposed to buying a list, renting a list does not allow for an exchange of list ownership. Instead, the list renter is merely using the list owner's email addresses to send a targeted message. (See "Buying an Email List vs. List Rental.") Bonus: List rentals can be very effective as long as clear expectations are set up front, and the subscribers receive value from the email. 12. Open rate: Essentially, open rate is the number of emails opened compared with the number sent. In other words, if you send a campaign to a list of 100 addresses, and 22 emails were opened, you'd have a 22% open rate. Simple, right? Not so fast. Not all ESPs measure open rate the same way. Some count a click as an "open." Some count those delivered (sent minus bounced) as the denominator. It gets even stickier if you consider that "opens" are really just a measure of an email that's rendered in one's inbox, and so does not necessarily mean the message has been read. (The industry is moving to standardize the way open rates are measured.) Bonus: Before using open rate as a metric for success, be sure your business knows how it's being measured. 13. Permission-based email marketing: Asking for, and obtaining, permission to email subscribers is the basis of permission marketing. Most often, subscribers will check a box to give you consent (permission) to send them emails. Bonus: Though not necessarily required by the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003, permission-based email marketing is often a requirement of ESPs. 14. Soft bounce: A soft bounce is an email that does not reach the intended recipient because of some temporary error. In server-speak, it's defined by any error code other than 5xx. Note that sometimes the mail server will not return an error code at all. Typically, soft bounces are due to full inboxes or temporary "hiccups" by mail servers or ISPs. Bonus: Most ESPs will retry soft bounces after a specified period of time. Often, soft bounces eventually get delivered. 15. Spam: We all know spam when we see it. Typically, spam is email that is unsolicited or email that we didn't sign up (opt in) to receive. (In real life, however, spam is any email that is unwanted.) Bonus: Remember that the consumer ultimately determines whether your email is spam. 16. Spamtrap/honeypot: These are old/inactive/unused email addresses that are intentionally set up to catch spammers. If you have spamtrap/honeypot email addresses on your list, it may be time to review your process for growing your email list. Bonus: Having spamtrap/honeypot email addresses is a red flag to ISPs that you are a spammer. 17. Whitelist: A whitelist is a list of "approved" IP addresses and senders. If an Internet service provider (ISP) has whitelisted an IP address, it is more likely to accept incoming email from that address. Bonus: Having your sending IP address whitelisted does not guarantee that your email will be delivered 100% of the time. When used improperly, email personalization can go horribly wrong, writes Dutch Hollis at Chief Marketer. "You could, for instance, thank the wrong person for a purchase or misspell a customer's name," he explains. "Mistakes like these leave the customer with a bad impression of your brand—quite the opposite of the reason you chose to customize your digital communications to begin with."
To help you avoid any personalization faux pas and keep your recipients smiling, Hollis offers recommendations like these: Use your preference center to ask subscribers how they like to be addressed. There's almost nothing less personal than getting someone's name wrong, Hollis notes. "I have a friend named William who goes by Bill," he explains. "When he receives an email that greets him with 'Dear William' or 'Dear Will,' he knows right away that the sender doesn't know him well." Make sure your list is squeaky clean. "The customer information stored in your database is what will appear in the email," Hollis reminds us. "If a customer's name is misspelled or just a first initial is provided, that is what they'll see." He suggests a second segment that inserts salutations like "Dear Friend" or "Dear Valued Customer" for subscribers whose given names remain in doubt—but also cautions that this generic solution could highlight the weakness in your data. Don't use a subscriber's name more than once or twice in each message. When you make repeated use of a name—say, at the beginning of several sentences—it starts to look forced and unnatural. The Po!nt: Don't fake it. The whole point of personalization is to connect with your customers in a meaningful way. Do whatever it takes to ensure that the effort appears—and is—sincere. Source: Chief Marketer. Phase I: Observation
As Yogi Berra famously noted, "You can observe a lot just by watching." A bit of research and observation up front will make your participation later much more productive and prevent false starts and missteps. Some of the questions to answer in this phase:
Last week I spoke at Entrepreneur Magazine's Growth Conference in Atlanta. Many sessions were packed and afterward a group huddled around me and peppered me with questions.
#1 Question: "Why should I spend money buying clicks when I can get traffic from LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, etc? And for that matter, why shouldn't we just try to get free search engine traffic?" I said: "Let's say someone has a website with a #1 listing on Google. You're selling a million dollars of product a year with FREE traffic. No advertising. The site makes a quarter million dollars a year of pure profit. They're willing to sell the whole business to you for 1 year of profit. Would you buy it?" I got puzzled looks. Most said, "Yeah, that would probably be a good deal." I said, "Let's say Google changes their algorithm and your site completely disappears from page 1. Sales drop to nearly zero. What would happens then?" "If all your traffic is free and you don't know how to BUY traffic, you're done. "Or what if it's all from social media? What happens when you stop pushing content out there?" Let's say that same site makes $125,000 a year profit after paying $125,000 for advertising. How much is that worth? * It's worth a whole lot more than the free traffic site, I'll tell you that much. The ONLY thing you can depend on, ultimately, is the ability to BUY a customer at market price and turn a profit. Once you know how to do that, you'll never go hungry. Your mission is not to put $0 in and get $1 out. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to put $1 in and get $2 out. That's a business. Anything else is a bankruptcy waiting to happen. |