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The Truth About B2B Email Marketing Online 

9/21/2016

2 Comments

 
Between Google searches, Facebook likes, Blog posts, Podcast Shows and Youtube Views, it can be pretty tricky to figure out which online media is the best one to invest your time, energy and money focus towards.


If your business primarily caters to providing products and services to other businesses then your problems most likely feel 10 times greater, which is quite understandable.

Most corporate business owners and their C-level executives are often so busy in their day to day dealings, they often don’t have time to be “hangin’ out” online. They’re working. So the thought of engaging them online via Social Media though possible is really quite difficult.

According to Forrester Research, 90% of email gets delivered to the intended recipient’s inbox, whereas only 2% of your Facebook fans see your posts in their News Feed.

Though it seems more likely you have a better shot of getting in front of your intended b2b audience via Linkedin, the metrics aren’t much better over there, unless of course, you’re looking for a job.

Most decision makers aren’t spending a great deal of recreational time on Linkedin or Facebook. As has been stated already, they’re usually extremely busy working.

Not only that, but the layer of corporate bureaucracy is usually so thick, it can be VERY difficult to get in front of the person you need to that can actually make decisions about whether or not they’ll do business with you.

Go ahead and try getting an audience with decision makers in person. You’ll be lucky to have any self worth left after all the dismissals and rejections you’ll have heard after that excursion.

How about cold calling via phone?

Typically, phone calls are thwarted by the first, well trained, level of defense...the corporate secretary.

These folks are trained assassins. They can smell a sales call a mile away and are loathe to give cold call sales people any courtesy or time of day.

If you call in thinking you’re gonna small talk and schmooze your way past these gatekeepers, you’ll quickly discover they have the ability to rip out your sales confidence, while simultaneously hanging up so hard in your ear that your eardrums will ring.

It’s brutal.

Trying to get a hold of executive b2b decision makers by phone is not fun and should be left to those masochists who enjoy hardship and abuse in sales and who would rather make their selling careers unenjoyable.

Though content marketing has it’s merits, the front loaded cost associated with creating the correct content, disseminating that content and waiting for it to attract inbound queries for what you provide often proves to be too long cycled for most corporate campaigns to fare.

The effectiveness of content marketing is unquestionable, for certain, however, it’s more of a long term strategy.

So, then, what does that leave us with?

According to a number of sources, email marketing is still one of the BEST ways to market your business online...even in the B2B space.

An online Inc. Magazine article states:

“Email marketing has been described as the highest-ROI online marketing strategy, when implemented properly, with 67 percent of businesses listing it as their highest earner.”

(source: http://www.inc.com/jayson-demers/which-online-marketing-strategy-has-the-best-roi.html)

Another article points out that some individuals have experienced as much as a 3800% return on investment, the highest return ever, by marketing via email. That means for every $1 invested they’d typically get back at least $38 in return.

(source: http://www.emailmonday.com/dma-national-client-email-report-2015)

Not only that but the average order value via email is typically at least 3 times higher than from a social media ad.

(source: http://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/marketing-and-sales/our-insights/why-marketers-should-keep-sending-you-emails)

It shouldn’t be terribly surprising to know that although most corporate execs don’t always have the time nor inclination to visit their social media accounts, Facebook, Linkedin, etc, on a daily basis, they do, however, visit their email inboxes at least once a day (more than half of these folks).

(source: http://www.pewinternet.org/2011/08/09/search-and-email-still-top-the-list-of-most-popular-online-activities/)

That same research study shows that email use is actually fairly important to internal business communication for most executives, as it’s a fairly integral part of how they relay information, even to each other.

At 1.47 million emails sent per month, US companies send more emails than the global average of 1.38 million

(source: http://marketingland.com/report-u-s-companies-send-emails-global-average-1-47-million-sent-per-month-114180)


​So, with all that being said, why isn’t there more emphasis and proaction from companies that market b2b to use email marketing in their day to day marketing activities?

Part of it probably has to do with the idea that it takes a great deal of time and money in advance building up a sizable list large enough and targeted enough, that can provide a business with any real significant return on investment.

Not only that, but most of the leading email marketing companies out there typically won’t allow you to import a list you’ve procured yourself through some other means, whether you grew the list using a competing service or if you collected the information manually.

Also, email deliverability has been an issue as of late with the added obstacles of spam filtering, blacklisting domains and other technological hurdles, which has made email less appealing as a marketing medium than it once was in the past.

That’s good news and bad news.

The bad news is that it is tougher than ever to get email marketing to work as it seems to be more of a deferred gratuity medium. One that takes time to cultivate and prosper from, but that’s only if you’re not sure of what you’re doing.

The good news is that this makes it all the more lucrative for the savvy business to business companies to learn how to harness effectively.

Ways to do that are by working with email marketing service providers that are specifically geared and focused on working with the b2b sector.

Will they allow you to import a list?

Do they have counter measures capable of effectively dealing with spam filtration and black listing traps?

Can they guarantee deliverability?

How can they best serve you and what makes them worth their often higher fees than other designated providers?

Why should you work with them?

These are all useful questions to ask when dealing with these types of companies. The bottom line is:” What can they do for you?” Right?

Armed with the data you now have, knowing the right questions to ask and knowing what you now know about email marketing, isn’t it time you go out there and start getting the returns you know you should be getting by properly using email marketing?

Go do it, today.

Ready to add effective email marketing to your b2b lead generation strategy?


-------> CLICK HERE ​
2 Comments

Twitter's Cautious IPO

11/15/2013

 
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Twitter’s IPO price was set at $26 per share, valuing the company at $18.34 billion. Trading began on November 7th with the price rising to a high of $50, then closing at $44.90. At the end of the first day of trading, Twitter was valued at $25 billion! Keep in mind, this is a company that has never turned a profit and posted a loss of nearly $65 million for its most recent quarter. 


Twitter has become part of the global culture with 230 million users tweeting, retweeting, following and lurking. How often do you hear a respected news anchor report on a tweet from a politician, celebrity, or even the Pope? And the hashtags—some people actually write and speak in hashtags! Whether we actively use the service or not, Twitter affects us. 

Mark Mahaney, an analyst at RBC Capital Markets said, “When people use Twitter they are following certain people, they’re searching for specific information. There are powerful marketing signals that are almost Google-esque, something that Facebook doesn’t really have.” Google-esque?? We’ll see if Twitter joins the ranks of Google, in terms of profitability. In an interview with CNBC, Twitter CEO Dick Costolo said, “There’s nothing structural about Twitter that prevents us from having the kind of margin profiles of our peer group.” Read the interview for more on Twitter’s plans for the future. 

Click here to learn how to use Twitter’s new custom-timeline feature and click here to read about advertising opportunities on Twitter.


Keep Your Google+ Local Reviews From Being Deleted!  

3/9/2013

0 Comments

 
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Due to a recent Google update, the number of reviews appearing on some Google+ Local pages are likely to increase, for better or for worse. Google has issued advice to help you keep your legitimate Google+ Local reviews from being deleted. (Potential customers look at these reviews! Wouldn’t that stink if helpful reviews that vouch for your services were mistaken for spam and poof...deleted!?) Business owners should take great care to follow Google’s advice on how to avoid this internet marketing catastrophe.




Most notable advice:

  • Encourage customers to write reviews for your business. This is not as hard as you think. Send reminder e-mails asking customers to please review your business on Google+ Local. Get creative.
  • Bad reviews happen. The best way to make up for bad reviews is to get as many good reviews as possible.

Evading all of the pitfalls caused by Google’s constant algorithm changes can make Local SEO confusing. Let us keep up with the trends and news for you--find out how you can ramp up yours or your clients’ local presence.


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How to Choose the Right Domain Name

1/28/2013

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So your need a fresh domain name for your website, what do you do!  Well you have a few choices, you can brand a domain creatively and find a domain like Zynga.com, yahoo.com, readit.com or you can spend a huge amount money and get a premium domain. 

However before you go and give all your hard earned money away, here is a few things to consider.

Top 4 most common types of domains for review sites:


1. Keyword rich domains (Example: besteyecreams.com, eyeserum.com) 
2. Brandable, stylish domains (Zanga.com, readit.co, yahoo.com)
3. Short single word domains (mostly all taken or seriously expensive!)
4. 2-letter or 3-letter combinations (all are taken now)

If you have a few moments, listen to Google’s Matt Cutts explain the difference between keyword-rich domains and brandable domains:

As Matt suggests Google will soon be changing how they rank key word rich domains to let everyone have a shot at creating decent traffic to your site.  Pick a domain you’ll be comfortable with long-term and if you can get a few keywords in the name all the better. 

The easiest route will be to get your domain name from GoDaddy! 

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Credit Card Expiration Dates Are Obsolete - Good or Bad?

1/25/2013

1 Comment

 
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Most consumers think their credit card expiration dates -- the month and year in which their cards are supposed to be renewed -- are a sacrosant security feature, without which a business can't process a payment.In fact, big players in the U.S. consumer-sales industry have developed informal agreements with credit-card issuers that allow charges to be made to consumers' credit cards without specifying the expiry month and year. This procedure works even after an individual's card has expired and been re-issued with a new expiration date.

Most surprisingly, this end run around expiration dates is little known by most businesses. The procedure is so new it isn't written down anywhere in credit-card 



regulations. The process exists only as an understanding between card issuers and a few companies that know how the system works.

Why Expiration Dates No Longer Matter

Is the ability to charge credit cards without an expiration date a security risk for consumers? After investigating the new, informal procedures, I believe it is not.

Many consumers genuinely want to use "recurring billing" -- an automatic credit-card charge to pay for a utility or some other service. The ability of an individual to pay for a service automatically can be desirable, ensuring continuity of service.

For businesses that accept credit cards for ongoing services, the new, looser regulations can make a big difference in the percentage of billings that are actually collected.

In fact, it appears that giant Internet service providers and other sources of online content took the initiative, cajoling credit-card issuers into the new procedures. Since more transactions succeed when expiration dates aren't required, the issuers make more money, too.

Pressure Builds to Ignore Expiration Dates

The growth in recurring credit-card charges, and the difficulties in collecting payments from cards that periodically change their expiry dates, were forces behind the new procedures. Paul Larsen, a payments and operations consultant in Fishkill, N.Y., provided me with the following examples of the problem:

• Credit-card breakage. About 40 percent of the recurring credit-card charges handled by Larsen's 35-odd business clients in 2004 were being declined within a 12-month period. This "breakage" was largely due to cards passing their expiration date or having new numbers issued because of bank mergers or identity-theft concerns. The figure was up from approximately 15 percent breakage in 1996.

• Ever-changing card numbers. Bank mergers and acquisitions, which can result in millions of consumers being given new card numbers, potentially affected about 50 million credit-card accounts in 2004. All of these accounts were not given new card numbers, of course. But the scale of the potential change was far higher than in earlier years. Only 10 million accounts were affected by M&A in 2001, for example.

• Maxed-out consumers. Recurring charges can also fail because an individual has exceeded the credit limit on a particular card. About 30 percent to 40 percent of credit-card holders in the U.S. are within 5 percent of their credit limit at any given time, according to an article by Steve Mott, a former MasterCard executive, in Digital Transactions, a credit industry publication. But a charge that fails on one day may succeed if resubmitted a few days later.

• Need for stability. Payments made via recurring credit-card charges grew an estimated 33 percent in 2005. As more and more companies take advantage of the predictability of recurring charges, pressure built for a way to ensure these charges continue whether or not a card's expiration date had come and gone.

All of these factors resulted in a procedure that is now accepted in the U.S. by Visa, MasterCard, American Express, and other credit-card issuers. The process isn't yet being widely honored in Europe -- but the American experience may be a forerunner of looser procedures to come on the continent, as well.

"You'll not find anything in writing officially regarding no-expiration-date policies," Larsen tells me. "The card-not-present recurring industry's best practices are at least two years ahead of the written rules."

A Blank Expiry Date Works Like a Real One

An example of the effectiveness of the new method was provided by ConsumerLab.com, a provider of health-care ratings, in a presentation at the 6th annual Internet Content Summit in New York City on May 9. The summit is sponsored each year by MarketingSherpa.com, a research firm for the marketing industry. (Full disclosure: I received an unrelated award at this summit.)

In the presentation, Tod Cooperman, president of ConsumerLab and a Larsen client, explained the benefits of ignoring credit-card expiration dates:

• Loss rates were high. ConsumerLab has approximately 25,000 paying subscribers to its ongoing series of health-care product reviews. These payments are dependent on recurring credit-card charges that the subscribers agree can take place every 12 months. In 2004, however, only 40 percent of ConsumerLab's annual credit-card renewal payments were going through, leading to a high loss rate of subscribers.

• Adding the "recurring flag." For cards that had been declined, the firm started omitting the expiration dates and running the charges again. This time, a "recurring flag" was set in the transaction data. This flag is a byte indicating that the consumer authorized the charge to continue indefinitely. ConsumerLab also used "account updater" services. These services are provided by credit-card issuers to advise merchants of account-number changes due to M&A and similar activity.

• Dramatic increase in auto-renewals. This procedure now results in the company successfully auto-renewing about 65 percent of its subscribers for an additional year of service. This is an improvement of approximately 60 percent over the previous year's auto-renew rate. In combination with other improvements, ConsumerLab expects to achieve an 80 percent overall renewal rate, which is extremely high for any kind of consumer subscription service.

Cooperman estimates that, had his company used the new procedures when its subscription service began in 2001, it would enjoy double the number of paying subscribers it has today. A dramatically smaller number of subscribers would have been lost.

The Internet Content Summit attracted about 300 savvy marketers from big names in consumer subscriptions, such as Reuters.com and Match.com. But the majority of attendees I interviewed after ConsumerLabs' presentation said they knew little or nothing about the new credit-card procedures that had just been described.

Using Recurring Credit-Card Charges in Your Business

If consumers are properly informed of the terms -- and give their full consent to recurring credit-card charges -- auto-renewal methods can benefit both the individuals and the businesses involved. Since credit-card issuers have a great deal to gain from these auto-renewal arrangement, promotions of the recurring-charge concept can be found on the Web sites of Visa, MasterCard, and American Express, among others.

But the secret of getting these auto-payments to be honored -- even when a customers' expiration date or primary account number has changed -- has eluded most businesses that have tried recurring billing. Until the "recurring flag" is better documented, many legitimate companies will remain in the dark and be disappointed in the reliability of auto-renew methods.

Some additional information on the procedure is available in a presentation involving Visa, MasterCard, and American Express speakers, moderated by Larsen, at the 2005 Direct Response Forum, a marketing industry gathering. Visit the organization's 2005 conference page, select "Recurring Billing Panel Discussion" from the Outline and Presentations lists, and download the two relevant PDF files shown there.

Disclaimer
**This post was not written by Direct Aim, article originally written by Brian Livingston


1 Comment

Diversify and Grow

12/21/2012

3 Comments

 
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The Google algorithm for organizing websites on Search Engine Results Pages (SERP) is always changing, as are the rules and guidelines to follow. An article on SEOMoz, an industry authority, makes the point that there is a fine line between being too paranoid about frequent Google updates and being too skeptical about their impact. The moral of the story is to not obsess over the algorithm and worry over every little change. We believe you should have a balanced approach to your online marketing with a focus on quality content.


Our advice: Do not put all your eggs in one basket. Call us and we will help you diversify your online marketing strategy.


3 Comments

Email Marketing - King of ROI

10/15/2012

2 Comments

 
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According to the Direct Marketing Association, the average ROI for email 
marketing investment is $40.56 for every dollar invested. Email marketing 
is still the most cost-effective form of digital marketing. While email may 
not be as trendy as Facebook, Twitter and other online social communities, 
it remains large and in charge with 3 times as many email accounts as 
Twitter & Facebook accounts combined. Not only do many people use email, 
but they use email often. So very often. 72% of people check their email 6 
or more times per day! 


How can you effectively market to all of this frantic email-checking? Follow email marketing best practices:

  • Organize your prospects and customers into segmented lists
  • Nurture customers and prospects with useful, relevant, and targeted content
  • Create multi-day auto-responders that tell a story. Make each one count!
  • Use aesthetically pleasing templates
  • Write catchy and concise subject lines
  • Offer an easy option to unsubscribe
  • Measure results, adapt and change

Do not miss an opportunity to effortlessly nurture your prospects and customers and earn more.  

Click Here to find out more about our Email Marketing Platforms 


2 Comments

Twitter Rolls out New Profile Page Layout

9/25/2012

1 Comment

 
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Twitter Gets Fancy
There's ALWAYS something new in social media! 

This month Twitter CEO Dick Costolo announced a svelte new look for Twitter profile pages. Now, you can plaster a large image that represents your company across the top of your Twitter page. The new feature hasn't been rolled out to everyone just yet, but should eventually be available for all profiles. 

In addition, your avatar has been promoted from its subtle spot in the corner to smack dab in the center of your page. The photo stream has been moved up too, and will now be accessible on the new mobile apps. 

Twitter's new layout let's people and brands express more about themselves. A well designed background and header image let's prospective followers know that you are a credible company committed to communicating with its customers on social media networks. 

How To Create Your Twitter Header Image: 

1) Click “Edit Profile” under the settings icon on the top right of your screen. 
2) Select “Design” on your left menu bar 
3) Scroll down to “Customize Your Own” and select “Change Header” 
4) Choose either “Take Photo” or “Choose Existing Photo” (“Take Photo” will allow you to take a new photo via your computer's/phone's camera. “Choose Existing Photo” has you select from your image library.) 
5) Move and scale your image to your heart's content (Original image size cannot exceed 1252×626 pixels. We recommend you go no smaller than 640 pixels wide.) 
6) Ta-dah! You now have a new header image. 

Feeling overwhelmed by the evolution of social media? Call us and we'll manage your social media platforms. Our proprietary technology allows us to effectively monitor your online reputation and engage followers in social networks. Don't let the opportunity to talk with consumers directly fall by the wayside.



1 Comment

Who's more likely to be your Next Customer?

7/27/2012

0 Comments

 
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The person who has already bought your products and services! And one of the best ways to 
bring that customer back is an email marketing program. Make your customers repeat customers by nurturing them with an email marketing campaign. It's easy to do if you sign up for our 
email marketing service. We can create a campaign for your business and customize content for your customers so they'll keep coming back. We can also create a targeted campaign for your prospects. Data from your email campaigns will be reported on your dashboard, alongside data from your other online marketing campaigns. 
 
A survey by ExactTarget showed that more than 50% of consumers make purchases as a direct outcome of email. And, according to Direct Marketers Association, email marketing garners an average ROI of $43.52 for every dollar spent. That’s expected to reach $44.25 in early 2012. Email marketing works. Give us a call or drop us an email for more information about on our email marketing service.



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Excellent for SEO Newbies & Sites under 50 pages

7/17/2012

1 Comment

 
Maile Ohye, Developer Programs Tech Lead at Google, takes about SEO techniques for your web site. It is targeted specifically at sites with under 50 pages and great for newbies learning about about and page rankings and keyword search.

Here is that video:

1 Comment
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