Multichannel Marketing for B2B Marketers

Want to lose money on the Internet?

There are many ways to go about it. You can use the wrong email marketing lists or the wrong ecommerce platform. Or, you can make fundamental marketing errors. Here are five surefire revenue killers, as described by Janet Attard:

1. Your ads and your website don’t use the same terms customers do. Want to build traffic and get noticed by the search engines? Speak your customer’s language. Know the keywords that bring people to your site, determine the terms they use, and incorporate them into title tags and text, Attard advises. That’s especially important if you offer content.

2. Your online ads send customers to your homepage, not to specific product pages. That’s a surefire way to drive people away. Create dedicated landing pages or micro sites, and make sure your brand stands out on each one. And do the same for newsletter stories and other features that bring people to your site. As Attard writes, “The web visitor who found the page to order fluffy slippers may never see your home page.” Offer content and related products. And include links to other parts of your site. 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…

Ready for another gloomy update on the decline in email metrics? Open rates worldwide fell from 14% in the first half of 2007 to 11.2% in the second half of 2009, Emarketer reports.

There are many possible causes: cluttered inboxes, the use of mobile devices and the blocking of email images. But we wonder if the economy wasn’t partly to blame.

Clickthrough rates suffered an even more precipitous drop—from 2.9% to 1.6%. And most of that took place in the second half of 2009. The culprits include clutter and list fatigue.

These are depressing findings. But they’re not true for everyone. And emailers can improve their metrics by observing direct marketing basics. 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…

Want to reach the real decision makers on inhouse IT teams? Do what IBM has done: Go after the Millennials.

People in this group are young and lack buying authority. But they are tech-savvy and exert a huge influence on what gets bought, said Pamela Evans, senior marketing manager, Web marketing, Worldwide Software group for IBM. What’s more, these members of Generation Y are rapidly moving into leadership positions. Ignore them at your peril. continue reading…