ListEngage

Here’s more on the numbers - check out the discussion on it.

3 great tips by Alexandra to help you add innovation to your landing page testing cycle, Gaga-style:

The Good News: You found a winner! After countless variations of A/B landing page testing, you’ve finally optimized your landing pages, dramatically reduced bounce rates, increased conversions and at long last declared a landing page champion! Woo-hoo, Congratulations!

The Bad News: Your tried-and-true champion has gone unchallenged for months and results are starting to stagnate. On top of that, recent analysis shows your winning landing page’s conversion rates appear to be slowly skidding along towards a downward trajectory. Not Good.

So now what? You need to push the dial. It’s time to act fast and test something completely new – something fresh and innovative to go head-to-head against your champion. So, where do you start? Take a deep breath along with a good, long hard look at your landing pages and ask yourself one simple question….what would Lady Gaga do?

To Read More about 3 Landing Page Optimization Lessons from Lady Gaga here

 A few years ago your company could consider their first tweet, blog post, or facebook "like" a milestone. Now, you're automating messages, running contests, measuring social media engagement and tying it all back into your analytics and reporting tools like a well oiled machine. You've succeeded in what you'd set out to do in building out your social channels, and setting up an effective online marketing strategy and community.

Now what?

First of all: congrats -- this is a great problem to have. For those of you who aren't there yet (most of us,  don't worry!), there are still some great long term goals worth considering including in your online marketing mix here for you as well. 

As FastCompany outlined in their recent article "Your Company Has Social Media Nailed. Now What?" -- having a rebuttal for the "We're all done, coach" mentality can help prepare your teams for future goals, opportunities, and even unanticipated threats. Go ahead, read on here.

• 75% of small to medium-sized U.S. business websites (SMBs) lack an email link on their home page for consumers to contact the business  (BIA/Kelsey).
   
• Including the word “exclusive” in email promotional campaigns increases boosts unique open rates by 14% (Experian).
   
• Investment in email marketing is projected to grow from $1.3B in 2010 to $2B by 2014 (Forrester).

No one wants their email to end up in the junk folder, or the trash folder. It's the kiss of death for an email marketer - and frankly, the company's bottom line. Emails ending up in the trash do not equate to dollars. There are a few ways to avoid the trash, spam, or junk folder and the article linked below gives a good 10 to get you started.

Picture this scene: a prospect reading direct mail over a wastepaper basket. If your mailer doesn't give them a compelling reason to open or read on, it gets trashed in a matter of seconds. But that is nothing compared to email because discarding it takes microseconds. Prospects have their finger poised on the delete key to quickly rid themselves of unappealing marketing messages. Email is opened, scanned, and tossed at rates exceedingly faster than direct mail. The digital age has sped up everything, including the trashing of junk mail. Here are ways to ensure your marketing communications avoid the email garbage heap.

1. Welcome to short attention span theater. First, realize it's imperative that every message contains a clear, compelling call to immediate action and provides a transparent response mechanism. The time customers and prospects spend searching for a "reply" button or URL is enough to lose them. So a message's layout is critical.
    
2. Get personal. Personalization is the key to higher email response rates. Craft messages based on information known about individual recipients and segments of recipients. Although much attention is given to one-to-one marketing, email content crafted for segments can perform well, too.
    
3. Get to the point. You can't trick prospects into buying. Please, quit the cute stuff and be straightforward in the subject line. The call to action should be the backbone of your subject line, and should include words that describe the offer or reason for action.
    
4. Get real. While marketers often worry about "fatigue" in their lists, that is not only a matter of frequency of communications but also a function of being misled by a marketing message the first time the recipient encounters it. Hiding or cloaking the true message's true intention feeds fatigue and undermines confidence.

Read the rest of the list here...

Drip Campaigns 101 by Rebecca Gill of sys-con - A good introduction and a starter checklist for businesses and marketing executives who have been putting this off for another day. IT WORKS - so don’t delay this any longer. If you need help, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us.

Drip marketing campaigns are very effective for sales cycles that occur infrequently or those that take a considerable amount of time to close.   In these situations, you frequently come into contact with a prospective customer well before they are ready to make an actual purchase.  You need to stay in front of them until they are ready and the drip campaign allows you to do just that.
 
My marketing background started in enterprise software sales where a given prospect could be in the sales funnel for six to twelve months.   We would have a new visitor reach our website while they were still researching available software solutions.  Because of the extremely long sales cycle, we had to find a way to stay in front of people while they continued to investigate solutions and weight their purchase options.  Even though I was selling into a B2B tech environment, the same process would hold true for a real estate agent, mortgage broker, or financial advisor and these are all B2C businesses that sell to consumers.  The element they all share in common is that the sales cycle is long and the purchase happens infrequently.
 
Drip marketing typically refers to email related interactions.  I think that is old school and I believe drip marketing should be a multifaceted approach.  With the advent of social media, drip marketing can refer to virtually any digital marketing and includes blogging, emails, newsletters, tweets, and posts.
 
Steps to Mastering Drip Marketing:

1. Pick an Email Campaign Provider – There are a ton of email software providers available today. Some are free to start and some cost money immediately upon sign up.  The important thing is to consider your requirements, document them, and then compare solution providers.  Match the providers’ features and functionality to your needs and don’t settle for just the easies solution or the cheapest.  Do you need the software to automatically send multiple emails to the same contact over time?  Do you need the software to easily integrate with WordPress or another CMS solution?  Do you need prebuilt templates or the ability to whip up your own in HTML?  Decide what you need and you’ll easily find a solution to fit.
    
2. Consider Your Personas – Who are your personas (aka target market) and what do they need?  Different target markets need different types of content, presentation, and frequency.  Know your personas and document their needs well before establishing your drip campaign plan.

View the rest of the Eight Steps to Mastering Drip Marketing

If you still have some questions and want more information, please check out some of the drip marketing campaigns ListEngage has put together for our clients. 

As a marketer, I would hope that you don't have trouble being fun and quirky - but that just may be the case. If you are plagued with "un-fun", make sure you take a look at Instagram and consider adding it to your emarketing tools. B2B marketers who have yet to find a way to take advantage of all that Instagram has to offer may be missing out on integral opportunities to gain leads, engage prospects and raise company awareness. 

What is the difference between business to business marketing and business to consumer marketing using email?  Answer: there is no difference. If you are approaching a client via email you must treat them as you would a potential consumer. This article Highlights 4 important notes that should stay fresh in the minds of all B2b marketers.

What can b2b marketers learn from the b-to-c world? A lot, according to Ryan Phelan VP-strategic services at BlueHornet Networks, an email service provider that caters to retailers and other b2b and b-to-c clients.

Phelan's company earlier this month released a new report that focuses on consumers' views of email marketing. The report, “Consumer Views of Email Marketing: A Revealing Look at How Consumers Use Email,” is based on video interviews of more than 1,000 consumers in the U.S. conducted  in February. Though it is a consumer-based survey,  many of the findings have implications for b2b marketers, he said.

“I always start a discussion about b2b marketing with a discussion about how email applies to the consumer,” he said. “That's how we all learn to be online—as consumers—and we take that behavior with us into the business world.” Here are four key takeaways from the report and how b2b marketers can use them in their campaign planning.

Read Full Article Here

Drip campaigns take the set it and forget approach - which may seem a bit counter-intuitive when it comes to being proactive with subscribers and clients, but hear us out. They are the best way to keep a subscriber engaged over time, while not worrying about how many emails you have to send out. There are however tips and tricks to having a great email drip campaign. 

I came across an interesting list of don'ts when it comes to drip marketing - and getting started. This is a list of 10 things to avoid for every excited marketer embarking on a new drip marketing journey on a newly acquired marketing automation platform. Afterall, tools are as good as processes defined and decisions made by the people behind it.

1. Don’t keep dripping the prospects who are sales ready
2. Don’t overlap the lists for different drip marketing tracks
3. Don’t over-drip a prospect to annoy him/her- don’t give a chance to hit unsubscribe
4. Don’t make the drip marketing template ‘salesy’ in content
5. Don’t drip a contact who is not even remotely interested- don’t give a chance to hit spam
6. Don’t repeat messages/themes in drip campaigns
7. Don’t repeat HTML rich emails
8. Don’t make it impersonal- as drip campaign is a series of emails, it is easy to get lost
9. Don’t make a list too long – segment your list and have multiple drip marketing tracks
10. Don’t just send a ‘Thank You’ email in drip campaign- attach interesting content to engage further

I think that the list above are great things to avoid to keep your campaign fresh, and to really use a set it and forget to your benefit. It's all about making a subscriber seem that you are genuinely interested in them - and that you actually want their business, and not just to spam them.

Check out some of the drip marketing campaigns we have put together for our clients here.

If you've got five minutes to read below then you've done your part for the day to improve your email marketing campaigns. The author promises that you can read it, master it, and implement it in five minutes.

1. Design your email to look like a “quick read”.  If they have to scroll down to see the whole message, or scroll side to side to see graphics on a mobile phone, it doesn’t look easy or quick.
2. Draw your readers in with compelling content.  That means a subject line that grabs attention without being misleading, and a first sentence that is directly relevant to your audience.
3. Make it easy for them to take the action(s) you want.  Don’t put the link at the very top – it’s like proposing marriage on the first date.  And don’t clutter the email with a dozen thumbnail images and half a dozen links.  One or two links are plenty.  One topic per email.

• 3 main paragraphs
• Simple, clean design with no more than two images (including your logo)
• 1 single-sentence paragraph, two paragraphs of different lengths, but no more than four sentences in a paragraph.
• Clear, benefits-oriented call to action at the end.
   

This month, on April 20, Fenway Park (the home of the Boston Red Sox) will turn 100 years old. Baseball has had a pretty good run since the earlier 20th century, but aside from the bats, balls, gloves, rivalries and a diamond-shaped infield, there isn’t much else that’s stayed the same around the game from 1912 to today.

So, I suppose it’s not too surprising that in 2012, major league teams are no longer just judged by their ability to impress the crowds on the field –but are now measured by their ability to win hearts on the web as well:

During the 2011-2012 baseball offseason, social media agency Banyan Bunch actually measured and analyzed what Major League teams and players are the most socially influential on the web – and published their results in this detailed infograph. In somewhat predictable (and ironic) fashion, right now the Yankees dominate the social waves, with the Red Sox nipping at their heels (sound familiar?) and all other organizations’ followings paling in comparison to these two attention hogs.

Most valuable tweeter? Nick Swisher of the Yanks.
Most active team on Twitter? Head straight to the source – San Francisco Giants (and home of Twitter!)

Hope you enjoy: read full article

In email marketing, a platform that offers list segmentation, thorough analytics, as well as cross channel marketing capabilities is a must for your daily business needs.

Whether you are promoting your own brand, are an offline merchant with an internet presence, or you are selling your services to offline merchants, taking advantage of all possible marketing channels is a must!

The most essential marketing channel in this day and age is email marketing.

Even though some industry insiders state email is out dated, the ROI for small business's is much higher through its implementation.

For most merchants, list segmentation is a profitable step that they simply haven't considered yet. Analytics and cross channel integration are essential to successful marketing efforts, as well. Here is why:

List Segmentation in Your Email Marketing System

List segmentation is important in any email marketing system for several different reasons. It is especially important if your list includes both active consumers and leads you have yet to convert into buyers.
 
Buyers, having already bought from you, are more likely to buy again (as long as they are satisfied with their purchases). You can pitch sales to them a little more often than your yet-to-be-converted leads – these you must gently coax along your sales funnel.

Email Marketing System and Analytics of Your Email Subscriber List

There are other reasons to set up your email marketing system to track different segments of the same email subscriber list – especially if you are using your email marketing system to complement an offline business. You may want to keep track of subscribers you gained from Facebook and see how their activity differs from those who signed up for your list at a business location.

Read more about Why Segmentation, Analytics, and Integration are Essential -

If it is like most B2B marketing campaigns, it’s uninspiring. 

Lionel Knight of Upshot ask, “Why are business-to-business (B2B) marketing communications so dull?  Check your office junk mail folder for B2B sales emails, I think you’ll agree that the standards are dreadful.”

I agree with Knight when he goes on to say, “Why is this? The common answer is that business people (apparently unlike “normal” people) are totally rational and can’t be influenced by anything as squishy as “emotion” in sales or marketing pitches. I just don’t buy that. People don’t change how they react to marketing when they’re at work,”

Here one study Upshot did of to see the impact of a depressing message versus an inspiring message.  The results are worth noting:

http://www.upshot.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Upshot_B2B_Emotion.pdf

The study concludes, “You can (and should) work to affect emotions in your messaging and visual stimuli. Emotion is a powerful tool and deeply affects the way business decision makers react to marketing communications.”

I agree with this and only wish to add… This is what List Engage can help you with.  It’s in our DNA to have email campaigns that inspire, that pop and lift up emotions.  Ask us about the difference we feel when we are challenged to make it inspiring – we love it!

Released by Justin Foster, REEL SEO

image http://www.reelseo.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/video-email-marketing-200x186.jpg

I usually am here giving you advice regarding your emails, and best practices, but offline I am a fantatical Boston Bruins supporter, and so this post is dedicated to some of favorite things coming together: Social Media and Bruins Hockey. The Boston Bruins have been my favorite team for as long as I have been around, and they just continue to get better. In recent history, the Bruins have been on the cutting edge of social media and technology when it came to fan involvement - but this endeavor takes the cake!

In the past month Bruins have developed and released their own app that really shows other NHL teams how much they have to learn about fan interaction and social media. Bruins DEN is an app/website that combines television, ticket info, with a wide range of social media contacts and sources.

via MobileSportsReport:

If you are anything like me, you can tell if you want to open an email within 2 seconds of looking at it in your imbox - if it's from Facebook, you know you are curious, but if it's from a company other than Groupon, you are probably going to actually read the subject line before you open it. The email marketing experts are getting better at catching your attention. 

The subject line is one of the most significant ingredients of a successful email marketing message, and can be one of the most important emarketing tools. It determines whether the email gets opened or is destined for the reject bin. The email marketing subject line also directs recipients’ attention to specific content when they do open the email.

Image: digitalart / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

As a B2B online marketer, how often do you struggle to find great content that is actually relevant to your specific B2B challenges? If you’re reading the leading online marketing blogs and websites, it’s probably a daily struggle to find valuable content! Don’t worry, we know exactly how you feel.

Without further ado, here are the blogs they had to share:

B2B Bloggers

B2B Marketing Zone

Social Media B2B (a personal favorite)

B2B Marketing Blog

B2B Marketing Open for Business

Do you have any other blogs or websites that you go to for up-to-date online B2B marketing, B2B social media marketing, drip campaigns or perhaps just B2B digital marketing tips, tricks, and advice? Let us know in the comments section – or Tweet Us your thoughts!