Pom Perspective: Getting Your Inactive Email Audience Members Back in the Game
Wednesday, February 2nd, 2011When was the last time you reviewed your email audience list for inactive subscribers? If you have idle audience members and haven’t made an effort to reach out to them with a re-engagement campaign, you may be missing out on an opportunity to get them back in the game.
So how do you launch a re-engagement campaign?
Define what ‘Inactive’ means: Depending on the frequency of your emails, inactive can mean difference things to different folks. You’ll need to review your audience list and identify members who have not taken action (open/click/convert) in a specified period of time. A typical inactive time-period is the past three to six months.
Create an opportunity for action: When attempting to re-engage an inactive audience member, your primary objective should not be to sell them something. Instead, consider alternative ways for them to take action. Ask them to participate in a survey to find out what is top of mind – what do they think or want to hear. While you have their attention, be sure to ask them how often they’d like to hear from you and if they’re still interested in receiving emails from you at all.
Remind them why they wanted to hear from you in the first place: Cite the values and benefits they receive just by being an active member of your audience. What will they learn? What will they get? There has to be something in it for them to keep your audience members coming back for more.
Remember to say Thank You: Once an audience member decides that they want to hear from you (or not) remember thank them for their time. Consider sending a re-engaged audience member some form of compensation for sticking with you: whitepapers, articles, discounts. If your inactive audience member decides to opt-out completely, say thank you and let them know that you’ll remove them from your list (and be sure to do it)!
Go get ‘em!
Pom Perspective: Targeting C-Level Executives?
Tuesday, January 18th, 2011Spend More, Personalize and Optimize
IT Insider polled 47 C-Level executives in technology companies throughout the Mid-Atlantic region to find out how to capture their attention in today’s information overload world. Here’s a recap of the findings and tips on how to get in front of these tough-to-reach prospects:
Get past the assistants: All of the C-level execs surveyed said that they rely heavily on their assistants to parse through the deluge of communication that comes their way. Consider sending two pieces of collateral — one targeted to the assistant and the other to the executive.
Do your homework: To standout with C-suite executives, you have to fully understand their roles, responsibilities and concerns. The C-level execs surveyed said this is where most people miss the mark. To get their attention, make sure you do your homework and understand their business enough to truly know if your product will fulfill their needs.
Be hyper personal: Generic mailings like postcards and letters result in a one-way ticket to the recycle bin when it comes to the C-suite. Use dimensional mailers — something that isn’t flat, like a box or tube — that are more eye-catching and hard to ignore. Incorporate personalized URLs that drive them to a personal landing page.
Be a thought leader: CEOs surveyed say that they rely heavily on word-of-mouth (WOM) recommendations via their network of other CEOs. Leveraging personalized and peer-to-peer marketing opportunities in combination is the most effective path to influencing the influential. Often, WOM is spurred by thought leadership — truly outstanding and provocative content packaged and distributed through direct channels, webinars, conference events, speaking engagements and so on.
Ask The Marketing Coach: Is Telemarketing A Good Strategy For Generating Leads?
Friday, March 12th, 2010Dear Marketing Coach,
Our company needs to get some leads in our pipeline pronto. We’re contemplating hiring a telemarketing person to do cold calling for us. Is this a worthwhile investment?
Here’s the short answer to your question: dialing for dollars doesn’t work.
Think about it. How often do you actually answer your phone at work? Be honest. Don’t you let it roll into voice mail more often than not? And, if you do answer it, don’t you want to ring the person’s neck if they’re a sales call? I know I do. Once in a while, I’ll be nice but mostly I find them to be a big annoyance.
Now with this said, there is a place for the telephone as a part of your integrated lead generation mix. Note the word “integrated”. It is key for success. Here’s a brief summary of how integrated lead generation works:
1. Make sure you have a targeted list of suspects that fit the criteria of your ideal customer. If you don’t have a list, get one. Do research on the Internet. Use a database service like Hoovers.com. The best lists are the ones that are built from scratch. It’s not easy — especially finding email addresses — but it works.
2. Know your audience’s pain points and address them. Why should your target audience give you the time of day? What problem(s) are you going to solve for them better than anyone else can?
2. Define your goal. What do you want from your target audience? While we would all like a signed contract upon hello, it’s not reality. Do you want a meeting? A call? Do you want them to attend an event? Be clear about the outcome that you want.
3. Once you know your goal, you need to figure out what you’re willing to give to get. You need to give something of value — especially these days. Is it a whitepaper about your product? A case study? Some sort of complimentary evaluation? You need to figure out a way to prove yourself.
4. Now you’re ready to get busy. Craft a series of three or so emails that you can customize with the recipient’s name and company name. Keep your subject lines simple. Have the content of the emails build upon one another. Hit your pain points. You can send the emails using an e-marketing tool so that many can be sent at one time but use an all-text, simple format. Simple is better.
5. Ideally, link to a page within your website that also includes a form where the recipient can review more information and respond to your request.
6. Between emails, leave a voice mail or two. Keep these simple and not annoying. Tie your message into the same messaging you’re using in your emails. Maybe you’ll even get lucky and land an actual, live person. If you do, you’ll have something of substance to say to them and something to give so you’ll be in good shape.
7. The ultimate key to success is mixing it up. No one thing works better than another but it all works better together — much better than dialing for dollars.
If you’re inspired by what you’ve just read but can’t fathom doing all of this yourself, learn more about Pomerantz’s Lead Generation Services. We’ll do all of this for you…and more.
Your Website is Snowmageddon-Proof
Tuesday, February 16th, 2010If you live in the Mid-Atlantic region, especially anywhere near Baltimore and Washington, D.C., you’re likely trying to shake off the disoriented haze that has taken over the region. Life literally came to a stop as we had a ton of snow dropped on us within a four-day period. You know the creed of the U.S. Postal Service — “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds”? Not true anymore. Most people and businesses haven’t received mail in over a week.
And while business has gone on thanks to conference calls and email (if you had power), if you happened to be a company that had some of your biggest business-driving events in the last week, you are out of luck— big time. It turns out this was the situation for one of our clients. They had not one but four events scheduled within the last week. All four have a proven track record of bringing in new business. All four were cancelled. Needless to say, they are bummed.
We learned about this because we had a conference call with them yesterday to discuss the plan for revamping their website, optimizing it from top to bottom and getting a program in place to use all of the tools that are now available to transform their site into the lead generation machine it’s meant to be. They are committed to this project and the philosophy behind it like never before. They see the value in investing in their website and using it as the hub of their marketing strategy. Even when it snows four or five feet within a four-day period and they can’t get out to fill their sales pipeline the way they know it needs to be filled, they will be able to count on their website to reach out and bring them leads. Maybe there needs to be a creed for the Internet now. Hmmm.