Off-Label Uses of Marketing Automation – Part 3
Using marketing automation tools to gain leverage with customers (as detailed in Part 2) is an excellent example of an off-label use of marketing automation. But perhaps the most intriguing story I’ve heard yet is of a marketing automation specialist who lost a client to a competitor. Making use of the keen sleuthing capabilities of their marketing automation tools, the vendor was able to see that shortly after the client left, they started visiting the vendor’s website again. The vendor reached out to the ex-client with an innocuous inquiry as to how their new implementation with the competitor’s product was going, casually mentioning that they’d noticed the ex-customer’s recent visits to the site. As it turns out, the competitor’s product leaves much to be desired, and the ex-client is very dissatisfied. Several months of nurturing later, the original vendor has set up a demo with the old customer, and the prospects of winning them back look very good.
Remember: Marketing automation works great when used as prescribed, but you can maximize your ROI if you get creative with off-label uses of marketing automation tools.
Off-Label Uses of Marketing Automation – Part 2
Another off-label use of marketing automation was related to me by a salesguy at software company who had just gone through a rigorous RFP process like the kind described in the previous post (Part 1). The prospect had not yet announced the winning vendor, and although the salesguy knew his company was a finalist, he was becoming restless trying to figure out whether they’d won the contract or not. He turned to his marketing automation solution to do a little detective work and was ecstatic to find a particularly revealing tidbit: A wave of visitors to his company’s website had found it by clicking a link on the prospect’s website that announced it had chosen the software company as its vendor. Of course, the salesguy had to feign delighted surprise when the new client called with the great news, but armed with this valuable piece of information, he was able to resist requests for discounted pricing since he knew the client had already publicly committed to his solution.
This is a brilliantly out-of-the-box way to use marketing automation to your advantage. Stay tuned for Part 3.
Off-Label Uses of Marketing Automation – Part 1
Marketing automation tools are great when used as prescribed, but occasional off-label uses can be very rewarding. I’ve recently come across a few “wish-I’d-thought-of-that” ideas on some off-label uses of marketing automation tools. This is the first example in a three-part series of unconventional ways you can make marketing automation work for you.
Many software companies have long sales cycles that involve multiple decision makers and require Requests for Proposals (RFPs). The RFP process is a long one that typically includes a “quiet period” of 30 to 45 days, during which the potential client enters the evaluation phase and is supposed to have no communication whatsoever with the competing vendors. This can be frustrating for companies who want to know how they’re coming along in the deliberations. But what to do if you can’t touch base with the prospect? Marketing automation tools can show you who is visiting your website, how long they’re spending on it, and what they’re looking at while they’re there. If you suddenly see a spike in traffic from a potential client’s IP address, you can bet that your company is a serious contender. Even in a mandatory “quiet period”, you can get an edge over your competitors by using marketing automation tools to gauge a prospect’s level of interest in your product.
Stay tuned for Part 2.
Top 10 Ways to Thank Your Customers
Thanksgiving is a time where many of us are reminded of all the things we’re thankful for. But take a moment to really think about your customers — where would you be without them? Let them know how much you value their business with one or more of these ten easy ways to thank your customers:
- Send them a handwritten note telling them how much you appreciate them. We all know how quick and efficient email is, but go the extra mile and dust off your old pen and paper. Nothing communicates sincerity like a handwritten note, and your customers will appreciate the thoughtfulness. Print your logo or letterhead on blank correspondence cards for a professional touch.
- Give them the recognition they deserve. Recognition is more or less a form of free publicity, and companies always appreciate publicity. You can mention them on your website or in a publication, or Tweet about what great customers they are.
- Invite them to open houses and other special events. Make it clear that they are being invited because they are valued customers and you want to thank them by including them in these special events.
- Value their feedback. Set up an idea exchange to solicit customer feedback. Then, make sure you show that you value their feedback not just by thanking them for it, but by implementing their ideas and suggestions into future product features and letting them know about it. Also, having a designated client advocate periodically check in with customers to see how they’re doing and if they have any problems you can help solve is a great way to make your customers feel included and valued.
- Acknowledge when they are good to you, and apologize when they’re not. If your customers blog or Tweet about you, pay attention to what they are saying. If it is positive, thank them for the compliment. If it is negative, investigate the situation and be prepared to apologize and rectify whatever issue they might be having. Don’t think of negative comments as an assault on your company; rather, think of them as opportunities for improvement. Let your clients know that you hear their frustrations and are doing something about the situation.
- Send them a little something nice. A birthday card or holiday greetings are time-tested customer appreciation strategies that have become par for the course. But what would your customers do if they received something more personalized, like a gift card for their neighborhood coffee shop or a paperback book by their favorite author? These are small gestures that communicate more than just appreciation for your customers — they’re evidence that you pay attention to conversational cues and clues about them as an individual, and that you see them as more than just a number.
- Give them the inside scoop. One great way to thank clients that will also benefit your own company is by giving them the inside scoop about new features and products. Ask them to test your Beta releases so they’re the first to get to try your latest and greatest features. They feel valued, and you get crucial customer feedback while your product release is still in the developmental stages. It’s a win-win situation.
- Offer special deals, discounts, and opportunities to your most valued customers. A lot of companies give their best offers only to new customers; once they’ve got you hooked, you don’t get any more special treatment. Turn this logic on its head and start thinking of what sorts of special deals or perks you can offer to your established customers. This strategy not only thanks your clients, but in many cases it will win their continued business.
- Share helpful information with them. Best practices and white papers contain lots of valuable tips and information that most customers find quite useful. Share any and all information with clients if you feel they could benefit from it. They will appreciate it, and it’s a great excuse to touch base or stay in contact with your customer base.
- Give them special access to the experts. Thought leadership webinars, when someone who is an expert in the field or at your company gives customers advice, are a great way to do this. Another way is to get an industry expert to periodically write guest blog posts.
Happy Thanksgiving from MarketingAutomation.net!
Trade Shows and the Magic of Marketing Automation
It’s trade show season again! You set up your snazzy booth and distributed all of your punchy handouts. You networked with tons of great people and collected scads of new leads. Now it’s time to go home.
But what to do with all those fresh leads you’ve amassed?
What better way to follow up with them than by taking advantage of the magic of marketing automation? Post-show lead nurturing is easy when you use your marketing automation system to:
- Create a “trade show” campaign to track leads by source
- Associate this campaign with a dollar amount so you can see immediate ROI
- Set up a drip campaign to take care of most lead nurturing functions
- Track how many of your trade show leads become opportunities and, ultimately, new customers
All you have to do is bring home your list of names, compose a handful of emails, and decide how frequently they are to be sent out. The marketing automation system will take care of the rest, leaving you free to follow up directly with the most promising leads while allowing you to automate the lead nurturing that normally takes up so much time. It’s a win-win setup that makes a good marketing automation solution a must-have for trade show season.
Stop the Zombies!
In keeping with the Halloween spirit, and also because zombies are so “in” this year, I felt it would be both timely and relevant for me to post about one of my pet peeves: zombie marketers. As marketing guru Seth Godin and others have argued, permission-based marketing is where it’s at these days. Spamming people against their will simply doesn’t yield results, and besides, it’s rude. Zombie marketers are those unfortunate souls who have somehow missed the boat and still cling to the old habit of sending you lots of irrelevant junk that you really don’t want. It seems like no matter how many times you indicate that you’re not interested…no matter what methods you resort to in order to be removed from the list…these zombie marketers keep coming back for you over and over again, yelling “Brains! BRAAAIIINNNS!!!”
Why don’t they get it? Why do they keep bothering me? WHY CAN’T I STOP THEM???
The key to winning customers these days is permission-based marketing. Be polite and courteous with your prospects, just as you would with a valued acquaintance. Don’t just stride into their cube, lean back, and throw your feet up on their workspace. Ask permission first, and let them invite you to make yourself comfortable. Even worse, don’t stride into their cube and start (figuratively) eating their brains with a deluge of unwanted, spammy emails. Allow folks to opt-in to receive the type of messages that they actually want–Godin notes that emails should be “anticipated, personal, and relevant”–and you’re on your way to earning their trust and eventually their business.
7 Steps to More Persuasive Email Campaigns
My dad is very fond of the old adage, “If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.” The older and wiser I get, the more I realize he’s right. When I come across an outlandish claim, my first impulse is to say, “Oh yeah? Prove it!” I’m not just going to take some marketer’s word for it. Keep this in mind whenever you launch an email campaign, and make sure you offer the proof that will convince a potential customer to take the plunge.
Today’s consumers are bombarded with more advertising now than at any other time in history. Advertising through traditional media channels (TV, radio, and print ads) has expanded to pay-per-click ads and email marketing, both of which are quickly becoming the new norm for marketers. But consumers are savvier than ever and have grown increasingly wary of advertising–if it looks, sounds, or smells like an ad, they tune it out. So what’s an email marketer to do? How do you break through that wall of skepticism and reach potential customers?
Email campaigns are only as effective as their tone and content. Sales-y sounding emails get ignored; informational, conversational messages get results. The winning formula? Change your tone accordingly and offer them the proof they’re looking for. Here are seven ways you can make your email campaigns more persuasive:
- Avoid meaningless superlatives. Insisting that your product or service is the best, greatest, or most effective may in fact be true, but to potential customers, this language sounds empty and meaningless. Instead of throwing in standard-issue descriptors, try to demonstrate why your product is so great with concrete examples or hard data (more about this later). If you do a good job, then you won’t need to say best, greatest, or most effective — it will already be patently obvious.
- Eschew platitudes. Don’t just tell me that your product will solve all my problems or multiply my ROI. Consumers have become so skeptical that they simply don’t believe such claims at face value. Show me how it solves my problems (and you’d better know what those problems are, or run the risk of getting tuned out–more about this in a moment). Give me data that proves it will increase my ROI. If you can’t back up your claims with evidence, they become platitudes.
- Know your audience. You should really know your audience, from their needs and wants to the kind of language they use. What are their problems? How can you offer solutions? Blanket emails targeted at generic problems are a turn-off because they suggest that you haven’t taken the time to really get to know your customers and their needs. Every customer wants to feel as if you understand them and their problems and have their best interests at heart. The bottom line is, you need to be able to convincingly express the value of your product in terms that apply specifically to that individual and his or her problems and needs.
- Build a relationship. People tune out marketers, but they listen to friends and advisors. Don’t sound like you’re selling a product; offer helpful information that is convincing enough to make a sale on its own. Think about that guy Tom Shane (owner of The Shane Company) who comes on the radio talking about diamond engagement rings. His folksy, down-to-earth tone makes him sound like an old family friend, and as you listen to him talk about his passion for diamonds, you find yourself fully believing his reassuring tagline: “Now you have a friend in the diamond business.” You don’t feel like the guy’s trying to sell you diamonds; you’re convinced that he happens to be a trustworthy diamond expert that would be pleased to do business with you. Building rapport in this way is crucial to having successful contact with prospects. Once you’ve built a good relationship with a prospect, they will trust you to give them good advice, and conversion will be easier.
- K.I.S.S. OK…”Keep it simple, stupid” sounds a bit harsh. Let’s revise this memorable acronym’s meaning to say, “Keep it simple and straightforward.” Prospects don’t want long-winded messages that seem to harbor an ulterior motive. They want a simple, straightforward message without a lot of marketing mumbo-jumbo. They don’t open your email thinking, “Wow, I wonder what the special offer could be?!” What they’re actually thinking is, “OK, what’s the catch?” It’s important to get right to the point and say what you mean. However…
- Don’t insult their intelligence. Keep it simple and straightforward (see K.I.S.S., above), but always with the understanding that you and your prospect are on the same level intellectually. Don’t patronize or dumb down your message, and definitely don’t make blatantly exaggerated or unsubstantiated claims. Use the same conversational tone you would use with a respected friend or colleague, making sure to balance formality with familiarity.
- Cut the hype. Your product or service should speak for itself. You shouldn’t have to hype it to potential buyers. Plus, consumers can see right through the hype, and more often than not, they interpret hypey advertising as a smokescreen for an insubstantial product. Think of those TV infomercials with the outrageous claims and over-the-top testimonials. The featured items come off more like bogus potions peddled by a snake oil salesman than quality products sold by a credible company. Is that the sort of impression you want prospects to get?
The cardinal rule of persuasive writing is being able to back up your argument with evidence. It follows that a successful marketer should be able to provide examples or data to support the claims they make. Ultimately, you want your emails to be persuasive enough to get a conversion, and the best way to persuade is to give ‘em the proof they’re looking for.
Prospect Tracking: With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility
Marketing automation software allows you to track a prospect’s online interactions, including links clicked, how long they spent on each page on your site, which forms they filled out – and which they abandoned (you can even capture that abandoned data) and which emails they opened. This information all comes together to help the sales team form a powerful pitch that is perfectly tailored to the prospect’s needs. Were they interested in widget A or widget B? Which white papers did they download and what does that tell you about the unique challenges they are seeking a solution for?
In addition to this tracking information, users are also getting email alerts when their prospects take action, reports detailing unidentified visitors in the past 24 hours and using new advancements like desktop alerts and mobile applications to keep tabs on their prospects 24-7. All of this data at your fingertips means you know much more about your prospect than they probably know about you. This puts you in a powerful position – one you’re going to use to your advantage during the sales process.
It is important to use this information wisely. Though most people are aware of the ability to track activities online, some people may still be adverse to the idea of being tracked. The first time you call a prospect within a few minutes of them visiting your website, they may brush it off as a coincidence. If you call them within a few minutes every single time they visit your website, they may be a little bit intimidated. It is important to make sure you and your sales team are on the same page about how much is too much.
The exception to this, of course, is when someone requests immediate follow-up, as with a support form or a contact form. In these cases, a fast response time can been seen as impressive. For those moments, marketing automation give you a leg-up by sending you alerts. Some marketing automation systems even incorporate web-to-phone technology that can instantly connect sales and service representatives to incoming prospects by phone as soon as a request is submitted.
As a general rule, simply keep in mind that when calling on prospects you should use your insider knowledge to wow them with a personalized pitch, not scare them by coming on too strong.
Top Five Ways to Be a Marketing Automation Control Freak
Take control of your email campaigns to ensure maximum deliverability. Don’t leave everything to your Email Service Provider (ESP); in fact, your ESP really only controls a small aspect of deliverability. The rest is up to you. You can and should exert a high degree of control over the content and configuration of your emails. Good content and smart design will in turn lead to higher deliverability rates. George Bilbrey of Return Path offers some excellent tips in a recent article:
1. Get the fundamentals right. Poorly configured email servers reek of spam. This is the one area where your ESP does have a lot to do with deliverability. But it’s only what you make of it. Make sure your ESP is maintaining a good infrastructure that doesn’t render your outgoing emails spam-like. Bilbrey notes that ensuring that you have a dedicated IP address is the most crucial aspect here.
2. Avoid complaints. Let recipients opt-in to receive mailings, and make sure those messages are relevant. You should be sending emails frequently enough to stay at the top of your customers’ minds, but not so much as to annoy them. Three emails per year is probably not enough; three per day is definitely too many. The bottom line? You don’t want recipients to grow so frustrated that they automatically hit the “This Is Spam” button every time they get an email from you.
3. Bring out your dead! Practice good list hygiene and periodically weed out all of the dead or nonperforming email addresses on your list. When someone signs up for your list, send out a welcome email to check for bounces. As Bilbrey points out, a high proportion of emails sent to “unknown users” is strongly suggestive of a spammer. Make sure you don’t give the wrong impression by keeping your list free of bogus addresses.
4. Resist the honey pot! Spam traps, also known as “honey pots”, are dormant email addresses used to apprehend spammers. These spam-trap addresses get mixed in with lists of legitimate recipients, usually when you’re emailing infrequently (and hence getting older, inactive addresses) or sending emails to a very old list that has not been updated. Sending to these spam-trap addresses can get you blacklisted; all the more reason for maintaining good list hygiene (see #3).
5. Unclutter your content. Bilbrey cites content as a less common but still important factor in ensuring email deliverability. He emphasizes that, while reputation (as determined by the above factors) is absolutely key to deliverability, there are certainly systems that filter for content, so it is something to keep in mind as well. If the content of your emails is complicated, cluttered, or otherwise spammy-looking, you may encounter problems with deliverability.
Touching on this last point, we’ve all heard the phrase “Content is king.” Take this to heart. While Bilbrey and many others cite good content as less essential to deliverability than all the other factors discussed here, I would argue that it deserves perhaps the most attention, as it is the area where you have the most control. You control 100% of the content and design of your emails, so it follows that you can make the most impact by focusing your efforts on cleaning up your content, improving your design, and writing with your desired audience in mind. Go ahead, be a control freak!
I Don’t Need Marketing Automation, I Have a CRM
Because marketing automation is a relatively new technology, our team often encounters people who are prime candidates to benefit from this type of tool, but don’t fully understand what it is. Often people mistakenly believe that they if they already use a CRM, such as salesforce.com, then there is nothing they need in a marketing automation system. In reality, marketing automation is designed to aggregate data and enhance, not replace, other sales tools, like a CRM or a paid search platform.
How is marketing automation different from a CRM?
Marketing automation is a database of your prospects, much like a CRM. However, it also offers an entire suite of marketing tools to help manage these prospects. While some CRM systems offer similar tools, most of them don’t do so with the ease and sophistication of a marketing automation system. Examples of these features include the following: large-scale email management, drip nurturing programs, lead scoring and grading, micro-level activity tracking of both anonymous and identified visitors, ROI reporting, database deduplication, file hosting and simple form and landing page builders.
Through bi-directional syncing, the systems work together to keep all data up-to-date, and even provide a single sign-on to make the collaboration a breeze for sales users. Using the systems together allows the strong points of each one to shine, making the marketer’s life easier.
So, wait, do I need a CRM to use marketing automation?
No, a marketing automation system is a stand-alone tool. While it nicely compliments a CRM system for higher-volume users, it can also be used independently to manage a prospect database.
