Lead Liaison

Email Open Rate: What Are Your Clients Seeing?

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Email Open RatesIf you’re familiar with email marketing, you know the average email open rate for any standard campaign is between 12-20%. This rate varies by industry – a real estate company newsletter may not do as well as a coupon retailer, for instance. It’s important to have a firm grasp on how your client base uses your content and continually provide them with what they want to see.

How do you find out what your users want? First, try asking them. As simple as it sounds, engaging your users via social media and incentive-based surveys can get them talking to you. Once you’ve shown that you’re interested and you’re paying attention, people have a tendency to start talking. It is in this engagement that you’ll be able to ask for feedback and opinions, and tailor your marketing efforts to best suit your audience.

Email Open Rate – What About Mobile?

Over the past year or so, smartphone email opens boosted at about 80%. This means it’s especially important to ensure that your emails and other content can be viewed by your readers in the format they prefer.  You might be amazed at how many small businesses don’t take the time to discover how their readers would like to receive content.

The best way to get an idea of how delivery can affect your email open rate is to view your email on different devices. Try to make it a point to open the emails you’re sending on a PC, tablet and a smartphone as well as using different email programs. Most email service providers give you a preview of what different email messages look like in different formats.

Make Sure You’re Looking

Don’t just open your emails in several different places- use email metrics tracking to get an idea of how your clients are opening them. Even if your emails are beautiful, you’re still wasting time if your emails go to a smartphone where your click through links aren’t visible on different browsers. This can cause your email open rate to plummet – once a potential client knows he or she can’t open an email from you a smartphone, they’re probably not going to give you the benefit of waiting to get in front of a computer to open your content. They’ll most likely delete your email.

It’s important to determine how your users are translating your content into something that supplements their lives – even if it’s only during the minute or two they take to open and read your email. To determine how clients are using your email marketing based on all your other marketing efforts, it’s a good idea to look into marketing automation and determine the value of your campaigns per client. The Lead Liaison team can help you do this. Contact us today for an assessment of your advertising assets so we can determine how to help you!

We also recommend Search Engine Land’s Free SEO Primer. And remember: Email open rate is important, but understanding how your users access and read your content can make all the difference!

Lead Liaison

Marketing Automation & Reputation Management Go Hand In Hand

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Marketing Automation & Reputation Management Go Hand In HandIt’s never fun or easy talking about what will happen to your business if your products or services are panned on the web somewhere – i.e., if your reputation management is on high alert because of a bad review. Let’s take Yelp reviews, for instance. If you’re a fan of the popular US version of Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares, you know how resistant some business owners can be to change.

Ramsay’s latest airings show him confronting “stuck” business owners with negative Yelp ratings. Many owners, rather than taking their customers’ complaints seriously, would rather tell themselves that “not everyone likes the food” rather than changing things they know don’t work about their businesses.

Are You Watching?

Some of us watch programs like these and think, What morons! How can these people not see their own business failings! Truthfully, even a business that’s turning a profit has failings, and reputation management is often a stumbling block for many business owners.

If you’re not watching Google, social media outlets and the news, you might be missing customer complaints. Just one unresolved customer complaint can turn into a reputation management fiasco for a company.  So, given the complexity of your current marketing campaigns and what little time we all have in a day, how can you make sure your reputation is being managed properly?

How Marketing Automation Affects Reputation Management

To succeed in today’s competitive business place – particularly if you’re monitoring your reputation – your marketing message has to be socialized. This means that the core points that make your product compelling should be laid out as part of your social media strategy. This also means you need to be watching your customers.

When you use marketing automation to maintain your brand, you have the ability to pinpoint specific users who spend time on your website. If they’re coming from a bad Yelp review by the droves, you’ll be able to set up an alert that gives you this information immediately. Social signals translate to users spending time on your site. If a customer needs to be taken care of via Facebook or Twitter, you can use socialized marketing automation tools to stay on top of resolving your customers’ complaints.

Consumers are using social media to air their grievances with business. Good reputation management is all about using the tools available to you to connect with customers and solve difficulties – sometimes even before they happen. Marketing automation can help you keep track of specific customers and integrate your marketing efforts in a way that no other marketing concepts can.

To find out more about socialized marketing tools and how reputation management is informed by marketing automation, contact Lead Liaison for a free consultation today!

Lead Liaison

Marketing Automation and the Latest Google Update

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Marketing Automation and the Latest Google UpdateThe latest Google update change, Hummingbird, rocked the search engine world this week. What’s most interesting about this update is that most SEO experts didn’t even see it coming. The algorithm has actually been in effect for over a month, and is Google’s largest update in years.

Small businesses are particularly nervous about the change. The Panda and Penguin programs Google rolled out in the last few years significantly damaged rankings for many businesses, literally causing small businesses to go under in some cases. This is particularly true for those that were relying on organic rankings to provide search engine traffic. If your business relies on help from the search engines to get new customers, you don’t necessarily have to worry-you just have to make sure your site is set up to provide more contextual engagement with your potential client base.

Working With the Hummingbird Update

The latest Google update ensures that not just a few keywords will rank a site – all of the keywords in a search query are important for determining search engine position. For instance, before this update someone could type in Train fares in Nova Scotia. Sites with good keyword ranking for Nova Scotia or train fares might show up, rather then search engine results that actually match with the user is looking for.

With this latest update, Google puts an emphasis on the user’s actual intent. Now, the user typing in train fares in Nova Scotia is more likely to actually get train fares rather than just general information that’s irrelevant to the query.

You can get a better idea of how your particular site is affected by checking your URL’s analytics and other metrics.

How does this affect your small business?

If your site is already rich in information and you have fairly streamlined advertising campaigns and an SEO plan, you shouldn’t necessarily worry about the latest Google update. What you should worry about is continuing to make sure that your advertising campaigns are in line with your SEO, and that the content you’re putting on your site is relevant to your users.

Marketing automation can help you here because it can allow you to identify what users are coming to your site based on keyword searches, and how to look at information about how those searches changed over the past month. Real time search results will allow you to determine your best marketing path moving forward. Once you know your results, you can change your SEO strategy to address what users are looking for, and discover how you can better get them to your site.

Plus, with the ability to flag particular users who visit your site via IP tracking, you can give your users a customized experience that other tools just can’t. To get an idea of how those customized tools can better your business, set up a consultation with an expert at Lead Liaison today!

Lead Liaison

What Makes Content King?

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What Makes Content King?In a previous blog on How to use Lead Nurturing Content to Convert More B2B Customers, I mentioned that content is king when it comes to lead conversion. I only touched on the topic briefly, but decided the subject is worthy of its own post.

Content Creates a Connection

Most marketing automation strategists focus on the sheer volume of leads and the speed of automated software when they are promoting their services to new businesses. Although these are beneficial to the success of a marketing automation campaign, they do not actually create a connection between the company and the consumer.

Lead nurturing content is a company chances to build a lasting relationship by communicating directly with the lead. It has to give the reader real value to keep them interested. Unfortunately, even clever and helpful content will still be useless if it is never read. That is why there also needs to be an emphasis on effective content marketing.

Promote Content on Discussion Boards

Content marketing will require strategic networking with other people in your industry. Spend time establishing your online authorship by posting compelling quotes and tidbits from your nurturing content on other forums and discussion boards. Make sure to create clear links back to original blog posting to encourage two-way traffic.

Content Marketing with Social Media

Millions of articles are shared every day on Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, and Twitter. Marketing automation strategist will create content worthy of being shared and then use a combination of different social media sites to distribute and promote the information online.

The techniques for approaching social media users vary depending on the site. LinkedIn and Google+ are ideal for professional business content while Facebook and Twitter should have a more entertaining or educational aspect to the article.

Understand Your Target Audience

How and where you promote your content will depend on your company’s unique target audience. Start by using website visitor tracking and lead profiling to gather valuable information on your potential leads. Look for similar interests and online behavior that will help you understand their needs and interests. This will allow you to create lead nurturing content that answers their questions and help you promote it in the places they are most likely to look.

Online consumers are aware they have an abundance of choices, which gives them higher expectations. They expect real engagement, free advice, and useful resources. Lead nurturing content is necessary for creating a more meaningful connection with potential leads and content marketing is needed to spread word of your valuable content and attract new visitors. Successfully combining these two marketing strategies will show you exactly why content is the king when it comes to lead conversion.

Lead Liaison

5 Marketing Automation Best Practices

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Best Practices for Marketing AutomationMarketing automation is here to stay. While we’re ecstatic that companies both large and small continue to adopt MA at a frenetic pace, we feel it is important to remember that effective marketing using an automation platform should follow some fundamental best practices. We’re delighted to present to you 5 marketing automation best practices.

1) Start small and build

Avoid deploying a huge campaign when you start out with MA. The temptation may be to run multiple campaigns as quickly as possible. But programmed marketing takes time to master – and you don’t want to risk alienating your markets. Develop a deployment strategy that includes all features but open with a few small campaigns and learn to master tactics before rolling out to a wider audience. You’ll minimize risk by starting small.

2) Create MA campaigns that build profiles and strengthen marketing practices

Effective automated marketing campaigns should qualify leads as they relate to a specific offer or opportunity, but deploying MA is also beneficial in discovering market behaviors through content consumption. The digital footprints your leads leave behind while engaged through marketing automation helps shape your customer persona. Use that data to develop stronger campaigns.

3) Don’t set to auto-pilot

It will be tempting to “set-it-and-forget-it” but campaign management is still required – especially early on. Though marketing automation creates efficiencies through automated functions, it’s important to stay on top of ongoing campaign results and tweak app settings, messaging, or other elements to maximize your results.

4) Create great content

Buyers are constantly getting targeted by content intended to attract and persuade. Having that content delivered routinely via MA is not going to instantly convert. Marketing automation, though an important and rapidly adopted technology, is but a tool. The key to effective MA campaigns is to provide content your markets want and need. A mix of formats is important. Deploy video, email, social posts, and other assets. Most importantly, project a consistent image across all your MA channels.

5) Test and test again

Not every MA campaign will achieve desired results. One of the strengths of MA is the ability to segment and target audiences. Prior to a general distribution, make sure messaging generates response for each market segment. Use A/B testing for each asset deployed through your MA platform to gauge click through, site time, conversion, and other KPIs. Marketing automation can reduce marketing costs and improve close rates but the effectiveness of the platform you use will depend on establishing best practices that work for your company. For more best practices, check out our other blog categories.

Lead Liaison

Why Marketing Automation is Essential for Lead Qualification

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Why Marketing Automation is Essential for Lead QualificationB2B lead qualification is a process of determining suitability for sales engagement, right? Actually, lead qual is just the opposite: it’s determining as quickly as possible if a lead is NOT interested in you at the moment and, furthermore, if you are NOT interested in that lead enough to devote sales resources to pursuing that lead. The way provide your sales team with the highest quality, most qualified leads is to manage leads through a marketing automation platform.

In ultra-competitive industries where 80% of leads are not worth pursuing at the first touch point, an effective lead qualification strategy manages leads in a way that delivers the hottest leads to sales first, nurtures others who may be interested in your solution until they are ready to buy, and ignores leads that appear unqualified to purchase. This allows your sales team to focus on the most likely candidates.

One of the strengths of deploying marketing automation is that the application segments and nurtures leads without directly engaging the sales team. The system can quickly indicate which leads are worth pursuing and which are just curious. Traditional practices have sales determining whether a lead is suitable to be a prospect, now marketing automation enables that process.

Marketing automation platforms, including our Lead Management Automation™ application, are designed to score leads as they engage with your brand. A lead threshold can be set that marks when a lead becomes marketing-qualified and ready to migrate to a CRM for sales engagement. The process puts the most likely buyers in front of sales. During the qualification process, leads accumulate scoring based upon demographic attributes and digital behavior. A good platform will manage leads as they become qualified at different paces.

B2B qualification these days is achieved more often by inbound marketing techniques. This allows prospects to qualify themselves. The key to merging inbound marketing and automated qualification is to translate initial interest into actionable data that sales agents can use when they engage with leads. Through MA the sales team is typically more efficient because reps aren’t chasing unqualified leads.

Inbound marketing allows you to let the prospect indicate how ready to purchase he may be. Inquiries such as ad clicks, website visits, email messages, and webinar registrations qualify leads by indicating their level of interest in your solution.

But there are two important questions that must be answered that marketing automation cannot provide. These questions must be answered during sales engagements.

  • Do they NEED your solution? People search online often with the desire to buy but may not have the need. It can often be more challenging to sales to convince a prospect of need when she realizes that a purchase fulifills only a desire to acquire your solution. Typically, these cases involve frequent and repeated objections.
  • If they need your solution, can they USE it? Does yoru prospect have the capability of implementing your solution or will implementation require investment in other areas? Often, a purchase makes sense in a standalone situation but if there are capital requirements beyond the purchase, a sale may actually move the customer to hold your brand in a negative view if money was wasted because a solution cannot be implemented without costly investment.

Lead qualification can take weeks or months. Without a marketing automation platform, lead qual will continue to be costly if handled by your sales team.

Lead Liaison

How to “Spark” a B2B Conversion

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How to "Spark" a B2B ConversionThat first touch. That first look. That first sound. That spark! We often remember first impressions when something significant happens. It’s no different for business-to-business sales. In this case, though, we’re not talking about attributes like a snazzy website or a funny TV ad, we’re talking about timing, response, and good old-fashioned value. That first impression can come from how quickly you respond to a sales lead and what you deliver when they inquire about your brand.

We’ve created the spark that can transform the curious to the converted and can help you spark a b2b conversion.

A Spark is a real-time event trigger in the Lead Management Automation™ (LMA) application. What events can be triggered, you ask? Anything from adding the lead to a contact list to creating a CRM task in Salesforce.com. The value in automating these events is in the rapid response you can provide each sales lead.

What constitutes a Spark? A Spark happens when a visitor to your website uses a specific search term to reach you, has visited multiple pages on your site, or other activities. The Spark can be the start of a long-term relationship with that lead through a nurturing process. By quickly responding to an “inquiry” (a user-defined request), you provide value that can lead to a conversion from prospect to customer.

Here are some examples that are used as sparks:

  • A prospect submits a web form, which triggers an email sent to the prospect with more information and distributes the lead to your sales team
  • A link within an email is clicked, which triggers and alert to the lead owner and creates a task in your CRM for that lead owner
  • A hot prospect (measured by lead score) visits your pricing page, which triggers an email to the lead owner.
  • A lead is converted in your CRM from Lead to Contact, which updates the fields and status in your CRM

A Spark can trigger multiple activities, reducing redundant processes and increasing your spectrum of response. Research has shown that prompt response and value delivery rank high among reasons buyers purchase from a vendor. Using Sparks to trigger events in response to inbound activity shows your leads that your brand acknowledges their interest and wants to provide value in their customer experience.

Lead Liaison

How Economy Changes Affect Your Sales Funnel

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How Economy Changes Affect Your Sales FunnelAs a small business owner, being able to define and understand your own sales funnel is key to a streamlined sales process. That isn’t all – your sales funnel can change fairly drastically over time, so it’s important to anticipate changes and be ready for them.

One of the best examples is a recession. Let’s look at PPC in particular. When our general market is good and people are able to buy and spend as needed, there’s far less pressure on sales to perform. Higher ticket items tend to go a little faster and without hesitation. For instance, a $1000-1500 ticket item might go out the door within minutes when the economy is doing well.

Recession Changes Everything

As we’ve seen in the last few years, nothing good necessarily lasts forever. The last US recession left the seller’s market vulnerable. Whereas a high-ticket item might move quickly in 2006, 2008 was a totally different story. $1000+ items might require a much deeper sales funnel on the part of the seller to guarantee an actual purchase.

The recession sent many sellers out of business who weren’t ready for a deeper sales funnel. Some business owners just weren’t prepared for:

  • The need to establish quicker lead response times
  • Implementing a social media or email marketing strategy to ‘convince’ people to buy
  • Changing or optimizing web pages for deeper visits
  • The need to better track the progress of leads through a deeper sales funnel

Business owners who were willing to gather their resources and think about good lead intelligence and new sales funnel strategies had a better chance of surviving the recession.

Sales Funnel Strategy via Marketing Automation

Being prepared for what may come as a business owner is all about developing your funnel – and these days, automating it. Marketing automation allows business owners a better system for tracking leads that works hand-in-hand with a well-defined funnel. The result is a process you can understand, data you can read and a strategy you can execute on.

When you use marketing automation, you’ll find that each step of your sales funnel becomes easy to execute. The specific information you’re able to retain from each customer becomes useful in terms of how the lead approaches your next step, or how he or she will be sold in the future.

If you haven’t tried out marketing automation tools for use with your sales funnel, now is a better time than ever. Talk to one of us here at Lead Liaison about how marketing automation can fill out your funnel and do the hard work for you.