Multichannel Marketing for B2B Marketers

They’d better be. For that’s where your email may well be read.

U.S. consumers spend 41.6% of their mobile Internet time on email, according to a new study from Nielsen. That’s up from 37.4% last year. And the percentage must be even greater for on-the-go business professionals, who conduct serious communications via their mobile devices.

In general, nothing else even comes close. Web portals get an 11.6% share of time. And social networks barely make it into the double digits with 10.5%. Yet those are in the top three. continue reading…

It must have been a more polite age. In 1923, Beacon Adjustment Co. (“Collections Everywhere”) offered a series of posterettes, poster-style stickers, for use in collecting on invoices.

One pictured a man with binoculars. The copy? “Have been looking for your payment quite a while.”

The posterettes, ten in all, were written by the “nationally famous” direct mail copywriter Louis Victor Eytinge. They came in three colors, and were bound in booklet form. continue reading…

There’s only one thing to do: Let them go.

This isn’t a guideline—it’s the law of the land. Can-Spam requires that you post an opt-out message and mechanism in a visible place, and quickly honor requests.

That said, you can improve your email performance—and build trust—by following these suggestions: continue reading…

B2B author Ruth Stevens has done it again. In a LinkedIn post titled, “Why Buying Marketing Data is Like Buying a Used Car,” she challenged the effectiveness of compiled data.

While most records are accurate, some vendors are weak in certain verticals, or do not have enough contact names, she wrote. One takeaway: Select your supplier carefully.

This created a predictable buzz. Cameron Douglas replied that “people should focus on conversion rates more than list numbers/quality.” Mike Barlow argued that “your marketing strategy should include various forms of outreach in addition to direct marketing.”

Let us add our two cents, for Ruth said something that we’ve been saying for years: Choose your vendor carefully. Go for breadth and depth.

Just what should you be looking for when buying data? continue reading…

Question: Which medium still gets the biggest slice of the average marketing budget? You’re wrong if you said television or the Web.

The answer is direct mail.

Yes, despite their growing activity online, firms still allocate 17% to postal mail. And that’s “larger than the share held by any other media,” according to a new digital marketing survey by the Direct Marketing Association.

This proves, as we’ve long maintained, that direct mail remains a key part of the media mix, especially when used with email and other channels. Don’t drop any of them. continue reading…