Multichannel Marketing for B2B Marketers

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…

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…

Are you sitting down? A new report states that people who buy industrial equipment now research their decisions online.

That wouldn’t be news in most industries, but this field has “lagged behind the general consumer market on the adoption curve of online marketing,” according to new report by consulting firm Frost & Sullivan.

“Previously, end-users engaged in a laborious method to acquire a product or service,” the report states. “After identifying a product need, they consulted with co-workers and on-hand manufacturer catalogs to research the type of product and its typical usage.” continue reading…

Event-driven marketing: That’s about targeting people on their birthdays, right?

Not quite. It also has many B2B applications, according to “Follow That Customer: The Event-Driven Marketing Handbook,” by Egbert Jan van Boel, Ed Sander and Alan Weber (Racom Communications, 2010).

The authors have discovered what they say is a central flaw in direct marketing: That most of it is based on past behavior. Event-driven marketing is about future behavior—the kind triggered by events. continue reading…

Kudos to the American Catalog Mailers Association. The group’s new white paper, “The American Catalog Experience,” hits all the right notes.

The paper reminds us, for example, that “catalogs have a low carbon footprint,” and that they drive “the largest engine of economic activity we have.” And it hails their “wide-sweeping impact on American culture.”

Here are a few of the more emotional points (with historical details):

1. Catalogs form part of our collective experience. Who doesn’t remember the childhood pleasure of paging through the often-remembered Sears Wishbook catalog?

That’s true, and it was so long before Sears came along. “The mail-order business is very nearly indigenous to America,” wrote Boris Emmet and John E. Jeuck in “Catalogues and Counters” (University of Chicago Press, 1950). There were horticultural catalogs in Colonial times, and Benjamin Franklin offered books by mail, promising faraway customers that they could “depend on the same justice as if present.” continue reading…