Rnordman

Marketing today is like drinking from a firehose. The rate of change in the industry is mind-numbing while the skill set continuum required expands just as quickly. Technology’s exponential growth has given rise to almost 7,000 total marketing technology solutions by 2018, as well as the increasing need to manage digital, data, and analytics. Execution-focused activities like developing new tactics and strategies go hand-in-hand with monitoring trends to address fluctuating consumer behavior. With all these changes to keep in mind, marketers face a continuously changing environment that forces them to acquire new skills and core competencies on a seemingly daily basis.

As marketers contend with copious amounts of industry information, the current transformational nature of the marketplace is having a negative impact on the perceived effectiveness of the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO). For example, CMOs are often the first to go if growth targets are not met and nearly one-third of CEOs considered firing their CMO in 2017. As such, the average tenure of CMOs in the US is only four years and still declining, the shortest of any C-Suite executive.

To exacerbate the situation further, according to Forrester’s 2018 CMO predictions, Chief Growth Officers (CGOs) will replace CMOs as the C-level executive of choice as companies seek executives who are capable of achieving growth in this new environment. Brand behemoth Coca-Cola made the switch to a CGO in 2017, a position that oversees not only global marketing but also leads corporate strategy as well as their customer and commercial leadership teams. Coca-Cola is not alone in modifying its organizational chart. Since 2014, Kellogg’s, Mondelez, Tyson, Constellation Brands, ConAgra, Coty, and Hershey have all installed CGOs, not to mention Colgate-Palmolive, who has had a CGO since 2011.

Why it’s a no-go for the CMO

Due to a highly competitive, digitally-driven marketplace, growth is no longer an obvious path. Fortune 500 firms’ topline revenues fell from 2014 to 2016 while the top 700 multinational companies’ profits fell 25% from 2012 to 2016. Large corporations no longer enjoy the competitive advantage they once held as they face increasing competition from both small and large firms. Technology has given rise to reduced product development cycles, as competitors quickly replicate offerings and disrupt channels. At the same time, newly empowered customers have increasing expectations and often demand better brand experiences.

“What we are experiencing now is a state of perpetual permutation” – Bob Inger, Disney, CEO

Traditional marketing methods and outdated approaches no longer produce the required results that allow companies to remain successful. As many CEOs have already understood, CMOs are accountable for their company’s growth strategy. And if there’s not as much growth as there should be (or the company thinks there should be), the CMO takes the blame.

How to create disruptive growth

Whether CMOs view these additional growth responsibilities as an opportunity or threat, their contributory value lies in their ability to develop new methodologies that will address the shift in market demand to attain growth. According to Kantar Consulting, growth is achieved through scale, value, and influence.

Niches are the new scale

“The 20^th-century mass production world was about dozens of markets of millions of people. The 21^st century is all about millions of markets of dozens of people.” – Joe Kraus

As consumers seek personalization and refuse to be party to a monolithic group, companies no longer have the option of scaling their businesses based on mass markets. Instead, firms will need to grow through small niches and fragmentation. While some may view this shift as a barrier to growth, opportunities will expand as companies utilize digital technology, analytics, and advanced databases to aggregate new niches that can scale into larger brands.

Value creation through experience

Nine out of ten consumers worldwide place a higher priority on experiences—defined within the parameters of convenience, control, time-efficiency, stress and health levels, and purpose—than on material possessions, according to Global MONITOR. Value is created when a company can produce a captivating customer experience through effortless brand immersion at every customer touch point. Technology like augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), live events on social platforms, and mobile entertainment can help facilitate immersive experiences. A company should view its customers’ brand interactions as equally important as the actual product or service offered.

Influence the consumer decision journey

As shown in the classic consumer journey model, large brands, due to their marketing power, were able to stay in the consideration set through purchase. Due to the increased amount of product choices and digital channels, the new consumer decision journey allows consumers to bypass the traditional sales funnel and gather information through a “pull” method of online reviews and word-of-mouth recommendations. Marketers must learn to influence decision-making at these touch points in addition to traditional “push” methods. In the future, influence will not only be aimed at the consumer, but also directed at technology through predictive analytic algorithms; this is already occurring at Spotify to determine user music selection and Amazon through smart appliances using Dash devices.

Classic consumer decision journey:

New consumer decision journey:

Even if your company decides to use a CGO, the future value of your effectiveness as a CMO will depend on your ability to drive growth through transformational demand generation strategies. Assuming you’re capable of scaling through niche markets, increasing value through experiences, or influencing the customer decision journey, you may be able to avoid being on the endangered C-level list. If you would like to learn more about how to drive transformational growth, download an exclusive preview of my book Marketing, Interrupted.

When it comes to growing your visibility in the search engines, content alone is not enough. Earning and building backlinks is key to success in organic search. While this is a critical part of SEO, many ignore it or hope it will happen naturally. But if you are serious about getting the rankings you deserve, you need quailty links. The question now is, how can you determine what a quailty link is?

Links are one of the core components of Google Algorithm. If you want your website to rank in search, you need backlinks for quality sites. Google has a few things it looks for when determining the quality of a link. In this video, I’ll walk you through the process of how Google determines the quailty of a link.

Video Transcript:

Hey, thanks so much for watching. If this is your first time watching, maybe you’ve been watching awhile and haven’t yet subscribed, we would love to have you join our community. The goal of this show is simple. It’s to help give you tools, tips, and tricks to get the most out of your digital marketing activities. Today we’re gonna be talking about links, and links are very important when it comes to organic visibility. It’s still one of the top things Google’s looking at when it’s looking to your site to see how trustworthy, how authoritative your site is, and whether or not you deserve a higher spot in the coveted 10 blue links, which is obviously not just 10 blue links, we’ve got the knowledge graph and a whole bunch of other stuff now, but still links are playing a huge role in that, and they’re not going away anytime soon.

How does Google determine how valuable link is? We know that they’ve made massive updates over the last few years and really attacked people who were not using links properly. There’s a lot of people going out and buying bulk links, sites that didn’t really make sense, they weren’t contextual, are trying to get their rankings up, but it was just a lot of junk. This was part of what we call black hat SEO or SEO spam. While you can do this short periods of time, Google does catch you and it’s going to destroy your domain, destroy your credibility. Now, this scared a lot of people away from building our link acquisition or building relationships that could lead to a link, because they thought that they might get penalized by Google. The reason is, is Google wants you to have good links. They want you to have contextual links, links that make sense pointing to your site.

They don’t mean you shouldn’t have links at all or that it shouldn’t go out and to acquire links, or you should just wait back. There’s a lot of business that wait back, and just hope that links will happen. Well, a lot of times that doesn’t happen, and that’s why your content doesn’t get visibility, is because it doesn’t have enough weight behind it. When we’re prospecting links or we’re building links or we’re even doing internal links, there’s a lot of things that we’ve got to think about before we get into the process, and we’ve got to understand how Google is going to see these links, and how they might be perceived from an authority point of view or a trust point of view.

The first thing is anchor text. Now, there was a huge push a couple of years ago to naturalize your anchor text, so instead of putting an anchor text here, they would just put like “click more”. All anchor text is, it’s the stuff that gets clicked on inside of a link. There was this push, like because people were overusing keywords, like they used to be, “Always put a keyword in your anchor text,” so if I wanted to rank for SEO, I have 20 links, 20,000 links that all had “SEO” in the anchor text. Well, Google is like, “Okay, we need to use anchor text because it gives us value, but there’s a lot of people who are using it unnaturally, so we need to find a way to penalize that,” and they have, and they do penalize is that if you overuse anchor text, but it doesn’t mean they ignore anchor text completely.

What they are looking for is a more natural patterns, so they want your brand to be linked. They want your services or the terms that you’re targeting to be linked. Yeah, they want natural links, they want a URL, like naked URL links and that sort of thing. We actually have a cool tool for this, I’m going to put a link in there and just give a shout out, because I think it’s great, so a tool called Linkio. They look at your back links and they make suggestions on how you should really structure your links. The reason why is because if you don’t plan, you might just fall into a pattern of either not caring about what’s in your anchor text or using too much of a good thing. Too much of a good thing is is a bad thing, so that’s why you really need to think about it, because anchor texts plays a role.

When Google looks at it, they’re saying, “Okay, this anchor text says ‘SEO Strategy’, and this link is going to a blog post that’s about how to build an SEO strategy. That’s a good link, we should probably push this up.” They’re also going to look at the site that it’s on, so if it’s on a site for marketing advice, Google would say, “Great link.” If it’s on a site for used car sales, they would say, “This is kind of spammy, this is not a good link.” Again, you’ve got to kind of weigh a lot of other things, and which we’re going to get into, but you still want to pay attention to your anchor text and make sure that you are using keywords where appropriate, brand names were appropriate. Sometimes you just need to have a “click more”, “read more”, that sort of thing as well, but don’t think the anchor text doesn’t matter, because it does and it plays a big role.

The second thing is relevance, so how relevant is this link? In my example before, I kind of talked about that, where if you’ve got a marketing site linking to an SEO blog about marketing strategies, that makes sense. They’re in connected or related territory, but if you had it from a marketing blog that was pointing out to a used car shop, it wouldn’t make a lot of sense because they’re not really connected. Google is looking for context, are these in related fields, are the themes kind of similar? Maybe if you own, you know let’s deal with car dealership, you want a used car dealership, and you link to a carwash place down the street, that could actually make some sense, because you say, “Hey, when you buy a car, we’ll wash it for free at this,” you know because it’s related, there’s themes there, cars and used cars, or an auto magazine or something like that, where they’re not quite the same thing, but they’re in the same field and industry.

These are the things that you want to look for when you’re building links, you know hotels, you can link out to restaurants, to public golf courses, to other attractions around you, again, because it’s in the hospitality field, so starting to kind of think more thematically when you’re building links and looking for things. That’s what Google’s doing too, and they’re saying, “Is this trustworthy? Does this make sense?” Be wary of somebody who’s coming to you saying, “Hey, we’re going to give you 1,000 links, and they’re all going to be on these really high domain sites.” Well, that could be good, but if those sites actually don’t make sense for your niche and they don’t make sense for your industry, it could actually have the reverse effect. Instead of actually helping you, it’s going to hurt you.

The other thing Google is doing is they’re looking at authority, so what’s the authority of these pages that are linking to me? The way the web works, this is like a big web, so you have this authoritative site here that’s passing links out here, and each one of these sites is carrying some of that authority because they’re close to this main authoritative site and they work in little hubs. This one here where it’s closely connected, actually going to have a lot more authority because of the way that it’s connected together. Now, authoritative would mean like, you know let’s say I wanted to grow my authority in SEO, I would go out and build relationships inside that SEO influencer sphere to try to acquire links or build relationships or build connections with those sites, so that their authority and their knowledge would then be passed to me, and it’s like, “Hey, this guy knows a little bit about what he’s talking about,” because they spend time building up the authority and credibility on their site.

Links are one way to pass that around. Now again, it’s all about relevance. These all work together and they’re not in silos, like so when Google is looking at authority, they’re also looking authority and relevance. I could have somebody really authoritative and an unknown field linked to me, it’s not going to carry as much weight or really good weight unless I had somebody like in my field, in my industry, in my theme that’s linking to me. The last thing is trust, now this isn’t the exact way that Google does it, but I got this example from The Art of SEO, a really great book if you really want to understand how it works, but it’s a good concept to understand possibly how Google’s looking at trust. As you know, there’s a lot of stuff on the internet, and there’s a lot of crap on the internet, a lot of spam on the internet, and Google knows where that spam is and they know what that spam is.

The way they could give a trust grade to a site would be how far are you from that spam. You know, if you’re hovering around that spam, it’s kind of like who you hang out with, you get associated with. If your site’s over here and you’ve got some spam links and you’re a little bit closer to the spam, your site is going to have lower trust as a site that’s a lot further away. This site’s four clicks away from the spam, this site’s one click away, when you’re in those tight relationships with bad sites, you’re going to have a lower trust score. That’s kind of something that Google’s looking for too when they’re looking at the value of these links. When you’re building, have these things in the back of your mind when you’re saying, “Okay, I need to get some links to my site, is this site going to allow me to optimize my anchor text? Is this site relevant? Does this site have authority, and is it trustworthy?”

If any of these things are red flags, you probably don’t want that link on your site, because you want to build authority and credibility on your site. This should give you a little bit better understanding of how Google is going to determine link quality, and help you make sure that you’re targeting sites that are going to help promote your brand, and give you value where it matters most. If you’ve got any questions, again, please comment below. We would love to have you join our community. If you want to hit subscribe, and until next time, happy marketing.

Over the past few years, more and more people have come to realize that the most important part of pricing is the design of the pricing model.

Yes, the pricing model is based on insights from customer segmentation, where emotional and economic value drivers were uncovered and used to frame the market opportunity. And once you have designed your pricing model, you will need to set and optimize prices. Pricing is not a once and done sort of thing but it is in the pricing model that all the parts come together. It is also where you have the most opportunity to innovate..

Pricing models are designed. They are not set or chosen, but designed. What does this mean?

"Design is the creation of a plan or convention for the construction of an object, system or measurable human interaction" (from Wikipedia, this is actually a pretty good article if you want to go deeper into how people currently think about design). So the design of your pricing model is the construction of a system that supports interactions on pricing. System and interactions are key words here. 

 

The basic material that you will use to build your pricing model from is value metrics. Value metrics are the unit of consumption by which your user gets value. That sounds a bit abstract, so let's give some examples.

Paint - the pricing metric is the surface are covered

Jet Engines - the amount of time the engine is working to power the plane 

Advertisements - the level of attention attracted or the response to the call to action

Most solutions will have more than one value metric and the first part of pricing model design is to uncover these metrics. You do this by brainstorming, conducting Jobs to be Done interviews and collecting lots of data. At the end of the day, you will only use one a few value metrics to construct your pricing metric (hopefully just one), but don't discard all those other value metrics, you still have use for them.

In most cases, you will have more than one offer so pricing design and packaging go hand in hand. You are generally trying to design packages that will appeal to different market segments (the segments where you provide the most differentiated value). There are five interacting things to consider here.

1. What segment is the package designed for? (A good segment is a group of prospective customers that get value in the the same way and buy in the same way.)
2. What functions create value for that segment that are of less value to other segments? (Packaging should help highlight segment differentiation.) 
3. What are the value metrics associated with the functions? 
4. How are the packages meant to interact? (More on this below.)
5. What pricing metric will track the value metric(s)?

There are three basic ways to think about packaging.

One can design packages that are meant to lead customers along a path from trial to adoption to expanded use. In this case, one has to track the path the customer follows and understand what drives or prevents conversions.

A second approach is to create very different packages for different needs. This is generally the best approach when different segments get value in very different ways. You see this on websites that first ask you about your business and then lead you to the most relevant offer for your needs.

The third approach is to bundle prices and packaging to capture different levels of willingness to pay. In this approach one generally has three-five tiers (including a free or trial tier and an enterprise tier. Pricing levels are set depending on one's beliefs (hopefully grounded in data) on the shape of the willingness to pay distribution (see What shapes willingness to pay?).

The design of your pricing will depend on which approach you have taken to designing your packaging. As with most pricing goals, it is important to have clarity on your design goal and not to try to two things at the same time. (See Testing the alignment of your pricing strategy.)

1. Lead customers along a conversion pathway - The pricing should encourage conversions and the fences should be designed like a fish trap, so that as one goes from one level to the next it is difficult to go back.

2. Support different segments with tailored pricing metrics - Use a different pricing metric for each package. Tie the pricing metric to the value metric that is of most importance to the segment.

3. Optimize across the willingness to pay distribution - design packages and pricing to capture the maximum willingness to pay and adjust pricing as you learn more about the shape of the distribution.

Ibbaka is an unique pricing advisory service in that we focus more on pricing design than pricing optimization. We do this by blending together expertise in market segmentation and value-based pricing with service design and design thinking. Underneath this, we have a deep data science layer that we use to understand how people understand value, when this understanding resonates, and how value is delivered. One has to follow all three of these strands to design pricing. Contact us at info@ibbaka.com to discuss how we can work with you to design your pricing.

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Monthly, I get into discussions with well intended sales managers–all are struggling, all are looking for help. They are trying to do their jobs, but in most cases they don’t understand their jobs, so it’s no wonder they are struggling.

Conversations go something like the conversation I had several weeks ago with “Bob.” Bob is a front line sales manager (FLSM) for a large technology company. He has had a successful sales career and has been a FLSM for several years.

He’s making his numbers, but barely, he laugh’s, saying, “It’s always at 11:59 PM on the last day of the fiscal year.”

He works extraordinary hours, spending a lot of time on the road and on the phone. The company, his management, also wants constant reporting and status updates.

As we started talking, I asked him, “Bob, what’s your job?”

Bob started looking at me, quizzically, I’m a consultant brought in by top management to help improve the organizational performance. I know he’s wondering, “Shouldn’t he know this stuff? Why’s he asking me such a basic question?”

Bob replied, “I’m accountable for making the numbers!”

I ask, “What’s that mean?”

Bob says, “I spend my time doing deals! I’m constantly in the field and on the phone doing deals! If I don’t do that, I won’t make the number!”

Bob talked about supporting his people, checking on what they were doing. But everything came back to doing deals, most of the time with his people, but he was actively involved in the majority of the deals they were doing. He felt if he wasn’t, he wouldn’t make his numbers.

Sound familiar?

Most conversations I have with sales managers, at least those that aren’t desk jockey’s hiding behind SFDC reports, sound exactly like this.

The problem is, they aren’t doing their jobs! They are doing the job of their sales people!

The sales manager’s job is not “doing deals.” There’s no doubt, they may need to be involved in many deals, supporting their sales people, or getting things done for their sales people. But the job isn’t doing deals.

Let’s go back to that first question/answer, Question: What’s Your Job? Answer: Making the numbers! It’s not a great answer, but it’s the most common one.

The next question is, “How do you do that? How do you invest your time in making sure you make the numbers?”

This is where the conversations start going off the rails, as with Bob, too many managers revert to their instincts as sales people–which is doing deals. If they aren’t doing deals, they don’t think they will make the numbers. But that’s really a strategy for failure–which is why so many managers are struggling.

In Sales Manager Survival Guide, I pose the scenario: Let’s say that when Bob was a top sales person, he did 10 deals a quarter, always beating his quota. He worked long hours to achieve that success. Fast forward to Bob as a sales manager. He probably has about 10 people reporting to him. Each has to do 10 deals per quarter, or Bob’s team has to do 100 deals.

Bob isn’t involved in all the deals, but let’s say he’s deeply involved in 25% of them (usually, the Bob’s of the world feel compelled to have their fingers in pieces of all the deals.) Now you can see how Bob’s model of doing things starts to break down. Even if he is only doing 50% of the work on those 25 deals, it requires much more than what he did as an individual contributor—and he doesn’t have time to do anything else!

Now pile on the demands for forecasts, endless reporting, and other management requests. You can see how Bob is drowning!

All because Bob doesn’t understand his job.

The only way a sales manager can “make the numbers,” is by maximizing the performance of each person on their team–enabling each person to make their numbers. The sales manager can’t and shouldn’t be doing it themselves.

We don’t maximize the performance of our sales people by doing the job for them—“doing deals.” We do this through:

1. Making sure we have the “right people in the right jobs.” Talent underlies everything. If we don’t have the right people in the jobs, nothing we do will enable them to perform at the level we expect. Developing rich competency models is critical to getting/developing the right talent.
2. We have to make sure our people understand performance expectations and what “good” looks like. This goes far beyond saying, “Here’s your quota, good luck and godspeed……” It’s characterizing what people who are successful in your organization do–how they spend their time, who they spend it with, how you create value, how you differentiate your offerings/company, and so on.
3. We have to make sure we provide our people the right processes, systems, tools, programs, and training to enable them to perform at the top level.
4. And most importantly, it’s constantly coaching and developing them. It’s helping them learn how to apply the processes, systems, tools, programs, and training in a way that drives success. In this process, you will be involved in helping them do the deals–but not doing it for them. Remember, “Feed a person a fish, they eat for a day. Teach a person to fish, they are never hungry.”

In summary, the FLSM’s job is getting things done through their people! Anything else cheats the people, and cheats the organization from achieving the full potential.

For any FLSM, there is an adrenalin rush in doing deals. There’s ego gratification from doing deals. If that’s your priority, go back to being a sales person.

If you are committed to being a top performer as a FLSM, make sure you know your job and execute it.

Website copy, blog copy, print copy—is there a difference? Copywriting makes me feel like Don Draper (without the bar cart and cocktails), but I’ve also been blogging since the dark ages (before blogs were “blogs”), and writing blog copy can be far less thrilling than crafting just a few perfect lines of web copy.

From the length of the copy to the goal of the copy, here is a quick look at just how different these three types of copy can be.

Website Copy

When it comes to the inbound marketing funnel, website copy is usually top-of-the-funnel (with exceptions, of course), painstakingly crafted by copywriting pros to generate leads. When someone lands on your website, you’ve got seconds to capture the visitor’s attention with concise, compelling copy.

Web copy often follows some semblance of a tried-and-true formula, such as Bob Stone’s Gem. Bob Stone was a marketing giant and pioneer who developed a direct-marketing formula that works pretty well for crafting web copy. First, copy that compels and sells should lead with your strongest benefit, expand on that benefit, and then explain exactly what the prospect will get. Next, the copy should back up the benefit statement with proof and tell the prospect what they’ll lose if they don’t act. Lastly, the copy should sum up the most important benefits and provide a call-to-action (CTA).

This is where those late-night Mad Men-style, coffee-fueled copywriting sessions come into play. A copywriter can spend hours consolidating all of that information and finessing everything into just a few lines or paragraphs of perfectly crafted, actionable web copy. For some, writing web copy can be a stressful undertaking (how do you cram so many ideas and vital components into so little copy?), but for the rest of us, writing web copy is an artful (nerdy?) undertaking.

Blog Copy

According to HubSpot, 53 percent of marketers say blog content creation is their top inbound marketing priority. Meanwhile, 81 percent of B2B brands that engage with content marketing say they support their efforts with blog posts. So how does blog copy compare to web copy? For starters, it’s a lot longer.

Blog copy tends to be focused on informing the reader about a topic with the eventual goal of spurring them to action. This softer sell features long-form content that eventually encourages the reader to contact your company, consider a product, or even download a white paper or e-book to pursue more information. Along the Buyer’s Journey, blog copy is excellent high-level Awareness Stage nourishment for your buyer personas, who are seeking educational, neutral content to decide whether their problem is solvable and what the solution requires.

Of course, blog copy can also feed visitors at the Consideration and Decision stages. The Demand Gen Report found that 47 percent of B2B buyers actually rely on blog content in the research phase and that they viewed three to five pieces of content before even engaging with a sales rep. However, chances are that the bulk of your blog copy will focus on long-form educational content geared toward positioning your company as an industry expert and leader.

The major benefit of blog copy is that—beyond the fact that it’s usually heavily optimized for search engines—it performs better precisely because it is long. And all of that blog copy pays off, because websites with a blog tend to have 434 percent more indexed pages than sites without a blog.

Print Copy

Last, but not least, is print copy. Although many marketers and businesses think print is dead, it’s actually very much alive. After all, your mailbox is still full of flyers, mailers, and the occasional piece of “real” mail, right? You also still see print copy in newspapers, magazines, bus stops, your doctor’s office, the subway station, Times Square … and basically everywhere.

Unlike long-form informational blog copy or concise, top-of-the-funnel web copy, print copy tends to embrace a direct, upfront sales pitch approach. This type of copy is short and sweet, featuring catchy one-liners or short informational blurbs that complement graphics and pictures. A focused CTA is usually the primary focus of print copy, urging the reader to contact a business, buy something, or show up at an event.

By its nature, print copy most closely resembles web copy, so it might be appealing to copy/paste your print copy into a website. Don’t! You can work in the reverse, using your web copy to populate a piece of print marketing like a postcard or flyer, but never use your print copy in place of web copy. Why? Your web copy should be optimized for search engines and geared directly toward the right personas and action items. Chances are your print copy is not as refined or curated, because print materials tend to be more mass market than geared toward carefully crafted buyer personas.

All the Copy

At the end of the day, there are several things that all inbound marketing copy should feature:

• Proper spelling, grammar, and consistency. The reality is, readers never notice when it’s right, but they’ll definitely notice when it’s wrong and call you out on it.
• Keep it simple. Avoid jargon and gobbledygook throw-away terminology that could encourage visitors to click away. Be direct, authoritative, and confident in your copy and say what you mean.
• Compel the reader to act. It doesn’t matter whether you’re writing web, blog, or print copy, your goal should always be to get the reader to do something. If you can deliver a sense of urgency in the CTA, even better.
• Make it emotional. More often than not, people act based on an emotional response to copy. Appeal to a sense of exclusivity and emotion in your copy.

Whether you love—or dread—crafting copy for your website, blog, or a special piece of print marketing, hopefully these distinctions make sense. Is there anything we missed? Let us know!

When evaluating an overall B2B marketing strategy, it’s critical to include activities and campaigns that will enable you to meet your goals and objectives. A common question we hear is: Inbound vs. Outbound campaigns – which work best for generating leads?

Although there are several exceptions, in our experience working with a variety of B2B companies, inbound marketing efforts work best for producing qualified leads that are near the conversion/closing stage. Let’s take a look at why this is (and why outbound marketing is also valuable).

Inbound Leads: Intent

Leads generated through inbound B2B marketing efforts often have demonstrated buying intent. In other words, they are looking for the products or services the company is selling or offering. Particularly in the case of inbound organic leads, where the user performed a search around a set of high-intent terms, the user is in the market for the goods or services they are searching for online. When a prospect is searching for what your company offers, you want to be sure you make it easy for them to find you and get to your website.

Inbound Leads: Effort

In terms of online research, evaluation, and browsing, you may not think it takes much effort for a prospect to get in touch with your firm. However, it does. Think about all the distractions, duties, projects, emails, presentations, webinars, and phone calls you have to deal with or manage on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis. It’s kind of a miracle that professionals are able to seek out and find new vendors at all. There is so much virtual noise.

An inbound lead, whether it came via organic search, an email newsletter, or a retargeting ad, has made an effort to click on your B2B marketing campaign and navigate back to your website. Right there, they have put out an effort. If they go through the process of finding and completing a form = more effort! The inbound lead has invested effort into contacting your company, which means they are a valuable lead and ready to talk to your sales team.

Inbound Leads: It’s Their Idea

It’s human nature. We want it to be our idea. Think about it, when is the last time you accepted a cold call from a potential vendor looking to sell you something, even if it was something you were interested in? It’s likely been a while. However, when you need something, your first inclination is to do some research. Even if the company that cold-called you is a possible vendor, you likely search out the alternatives. Right?

Inbound B2B marketing enables you to put your company’s products and services in front of the right audience, but also makes it the prospect’s choice to get in touch. As I mentioned before, to actually make contact, they need to show intent and put out effort, so it’s their idea.

Outbound Marketing: Still Relevant & Complementary

While we are champions for inbound campaigns for B2B marketing strategies, we don’t think outbound marketing campaigns are dead. In fact, outbound efforts have some great applications.

Direct mail is a great way to reach a highly-targeted list of potential prospects in a target market. Cold calling can start to build interest in a new product launch or service offering, although the lead conversion metrics will typically be low. Advertisements in industry magazines are a great way to build up brand awareness and establish credibility.

Overall, outbound marketing for B2B companies can be a great way to build brand awareness and fill the top of the sales funnel. The leads will likely be lukewarm and may take longer to convert, especially if they are locked in a vendor contract or need to procure a budget allocation.

Conclusion: Focus on Inbound

Rather than sound wishy-washy, we are taking a firm stand that inbound B2B marketing provides results in terms of generating qualified leads. If your company has limited resources, budget, or focus, inbound marketing is the best strategy. It takes time to implement and start garnering results, but the results it drives are often worth the wait.

How do B2B buyers like to be contacted by salespeople? Which types of vendor content tend to capture attention best? When should B2B salespeople engage with potential buyers? Read the full article at MarketingProfs

There’s a great book by famed golf performance psychologist, Dr. Bob Rotella, called The Golfer’s Mind. I’ve been rereading it, as I do occasionally, and keep observing so many parallels to sales and the emotional discipline it takes to truly be the best one can be, that I feel the need to write about it.

The book is all about how to stay in the moment and focus on the target. In general, it is a handbook to enable golfers, both professional and amateur alike, to improve their mental game so that their mind doesn’t get in the way of their performance.

“90% of This Game is Half Mental”

Yogi Berra’s quote was about baseball. It really can apply to Golf, too. The sport is different from most others in that the golfer alone initiates the shot. The game does not depend on the interaction of other players. There is also a lot of downtime in between shots which allows the player’s mind to enter into the game. Thoughts of past or future play can impact the golfer’s current round, preventing them from staying focused in the moment.

The mind can be dangerous when it comes to wrong thoughts. If a golfer remembers previous bad shots and what happened the last time they were in that situation, they may do the same thing in the present situation. If they think into the future, inevitably counting their score or figuring with just par or bogey on the next hole they will shoot “fill in the blank,” they lose sight of the present. The only thing that really matters is the next shot and the target of that shot. What happened in the past or could happen in the future is irrelevant.

Getting the Mind Right in Sales

In sales, as in golf, it is also critical to stay in the moment. When a salesperson dwells on the past, thinking about the last time they were in a similar situation and what that prospect said or did; or when they think into the future, about the commission they are going to make, or how “they’ve got this one” and what they will tell their boss: They are skipping over the here and now. And, as with golf, the salesperson has a lot of time to listen to these internal thoughts, rather than focusing on the prospect or customer right in front of them right now, and their problems, thoughts, hopes, and aspirations.

You see, when we get inside our own head too much, either in golf or in sales, we take our focus off the most important thing, which is external to our own head. In golf, it’s the next shot and where it needs to go. In sales, it’s our prospect and where they need to go.

More Lessons from Golf

As golfers, we’re taught to establish a repeatable pre-shot routine. The idea is to train the brain to stay focused in the present by repeating something that doesn’t require thinking, thus closing the door on distracting thoughts. The physical component of the pre-shot routine helps re-establish muscle memory to execute the correct swing. If you’re not a golfer, just check out any televised tournament and you will see this in action with every player on the tour.

I would suggest the same in sales. Establish a pre-call routine, go through it before every call and make sure to focus on the present, which is the prospect right in front of you and their dreams, hopes, and goals.

• Social isolation, which happens when a person has little or no contact with others, is a dangerous condition.
• The form of extreme self-exile has been linked to a host of debilitating health problems, like high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and smoking. 
• New research suggests social isolation can make heart failure patients three and a half times more likely to die than their well-connected peers.
• There's growing evidence that a simple, intuitive way to combat social isolation could also make just about anyone happier.

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Going without human contact for too long can literally break your heart. 

That's according to a new study of social isolation published in the Journal of the American Heart Association in May, which tracked more than 1,600 people living with heart failure. 

We've known for a while that being alone is a deadly dangerous condition. Other scholars have estimated that regardless of your heart health, social isolation can increase risk of death anywhere from 50-90%. Being socially disconnected can also up your risk of developing high blood pressure or inflammation, and make people more aggressive. 

But for the new study, researchers looked at a group of patients from rural parts of Minnesota, all dealing with heart failure. They found that those Minnesotans who described their lives as highly socially isolated, seeing virtually no one else on a daily basis, were three and a half times more likely to die than people who were suffering from some of the exact same heart problems, but who reported having enough social support and connections to others.

People who didn't have any regular human contact were also more likely to be hospitalized, made more frequent visits to their doctors, and were more likely to be rushed to the emergency room than their peers.

"It's becoming increasingly clear that socially isolated people face serious health risks," NYU sociologist Eric Klinenberg, who was not affiliated with the new study, told Business Insider. 

"We need to take their situation seriously," he said, though he cautioned there's no evidence yet that the sheer volume of socially isolated people in the US is going up.

"Americans are just about as isolated as we've always been," he said.

His own research suggests that in the US, elderly people and adult men are the two most at-risk populations for social isolation, in part, because they tend to have smaller social networks to begin with.

In addition to being more at-risk physically, there's also budding evidence that socially isolated people are changing their brain chemistry in dangerous ways. One recent study in mice found that just two weeks of "social isolation stress" caused negative behavioral changes and shifts in their brain chemistry. The finding hasn't been replicated in humans yet, but it made the mouse-studying scientists wonder if they might be able to some day use drugs to help human patients cope with the mental aspects of social isolation, and decrease their isolation-fueled aggression chemically. 

Loneliness is not the same as social isolation, but it's dangerous too

Being alone (social isolation) and feeling alone (loneliness) are not the same issue. Besides, generally speaking, people who live alone, whether they be 20 years old or 80, tend to have more social connections with others, not less, as Klinenberg has reported in the past. Loneliness isn't about how physically close we are to other people, and a person can be surrounded by others, and still feel completely alone in the world; that's loneliness at work. Like social isolation, long-term feelings of this emotional going-it-alone can make people more likely to die an early death, and research suggests the risks are on par with smoking. 

The rural Minnesotan study also measured some aspects of loneliness in socially isolated heart failure patients, by asking them how often they identified with statements like "I feel left out," and "I feel that people are around me, but not with me."

Coping with loneliness and social isolation

Klinenberg says it's important to remember that not all these feelings of loneliness are necessarily bad. Unlike a chemically-disturbed state of social isolation, or a debilitating loneliness that can last for weeks on end, a short bout of temporary loneliness won't kill you. In fact, he says it "can be a productive and healthy thing."

"It's your body's signal that you need to get off your couch and get into the world and try to build better, more meaningful social ties," he said. 

That's isolation-busting advice more scientists are getting behind.

In May a group of German researchers revealed that connecting more with others can boost how people rate their own satisfaction with life. In a study, people who spent a year making a renewed effort to help others, or spent more time with friends and family, were the only participants who measurably increased how they rated their own life satisfaction.

Other participants who focused on more self-centered life-improvement hacks, like quitting their own bad habits, showed no major change in how happy they rated their lives after a year, suggesting that adding in more time with others might be a kind of secret sauce for improving happiness.

To break out of social isolation, you have to be healthy enough to get out more in the first place — a tricky paradox for patients dealing with conditions like heart failure. Researchers in the new study suggest doctors can also be first responders in the fight against social isolation, looking for tell-tale signs by reaching out and asking a few simple questions of patients when they visit.

SEE ALSO: Scientists are figuring out why fasting helps people live longer — and they say a pill may one day trigger the same benefits

Join the conversation about this story »

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For most people, the thought of a smart device sharing their intimate conversations and sending those recordings along to their acquaintances is the stuff of dystopian nightmares. And for one family in Portland, it’s a nightmare that became all too real when their Amazon Echo sent a recording of a private conversation to a random contact in their phone book.

Mercifully, the recorded conversation was fairly banal — a chat about home renovations. But as smart home technology is swiftly being integrated into our daily lives and private spaces, it’s not difficult to imagine far worse scenarios.

Smart speakers record residents’ conversations. Thermostats equipped with motion sensors track the whereabouts of each household member, and when they leave the house. Refrigerators remember grocery lists and spending habits. One thing is clear: when residents invite smart technology into their homes, they are gambling with their privacy.

Ironically, the smart home may turn out to  be the salvation of online privacy itself. Internet companies have gotten away with hoarding people’s personal data for so long in part because of what experts call “the privacy paradox”: while most people claim to care deeply about online privacy, very few of them take action to protect it. Just look at the recent furor over Facebook’s lack of data privacy protections, which resulted in the compromise of 87 million users’ personal information. Though plenty of people tweeted they would #DeleteFacebook, how many actually permanently closed their accounts? Certainly far fewer than 87 million.

While experts disagree about why this paradox exists, at least some of the problem seems rooted in the fact that online space is virtual, whereas our privacy instincts evolved in physical space. By bringing virtual privacy incursions into the physical world—particularly into the protected private space of the home—smart home technology could short-circuit that dynamic.

The internet is intangible, and so its privacy risks appear to be too. It’s one thing to know, in the back of your mind, that Facebook has the ability to comb through your private messages. But when devices in your home are recording your spoken conversations and physical movements, it’s harder to ignore the looming threat of potentially disastrous privacy violations.

If smart fridges and smart locks get people to take online privacy as seriously as physical privacy, they could do what the Equifax hack and other high-profile data breaches could not: actually get people to change their behavior. If users vote for privacy with their feet—or their wallets—they could spur a wholesale rethinking of the online economy, away from one-sided exploitation and toward greater trust and transparency.

Privacy in virtual space

In Western culture, the home has long been recognized as a protected zone; the Talmud includes prohibitions against putting in windows in a house that directly look into a neighbor’s. When a stranger peeps through our window or listens at our door, millennia-old norms tell us we should chase them away. This desire for isolation may stem from a fundamental biological need; whether you’re a human or a possum, physical withdrawal means concealment and protection from predation, making privacy an evolutionary life-or-death matter.

But websites and apps have no physical presence in our lives. A software algorithm, no matter how malicious, doesn’t have the visceral menace of an unknown face at the glass. The internet disarms us by making our interactions feel abstract, even unreal. One 2016 study posited that this sense of unreality leads to contradictory attitudes about online privacy: while people know rationally that they should be concerned about virtual incursions, they simply don’t have a strong “gut feeling” about it intuitively. And when making decisions in the moment, gut feeling often wins out.

The problem is exacerbated by the fact that online, there is less of a clear distinction between private and public space. We use social media to communicate simultaneously with hundreds or thousands of anonymous followers and with our closest friends. Email inboxes, Slack channels, and the like are more obviously “closed” spaces, but even there it’s often unclear to users which algorithms might be listening in. Even Snapchat—known for auto-deleting users’ photos, videos, and chats to protect their privacy—announced it would allow retargeted ads in fall 2017, to relatively little backlash. It’s hard to think about protecting ourselves from the stranger peeping in the window when we’re not even sure if it’s a public or private space he or she is looking into. What’s more, many users tend to imagine online “walls” that aren’t really there.

Multiple studies have shown that the mere existence of a privacy policy on a website makes users feel more secure, even though a policy in itself is no guarantee that their data won’t be sold to third parties.

“How secure are your light bulbs?”

When the internet enters the clearly private space of the home, some of that ambiguity will to disappear. It’s telling that a November 2017 survey by Deloitte found that consumers are more cautious in general about smart home devices compared to general online activities or even other categories of IoT. Forty percent of respondents said that they felt smart home technology “reveals too much about their personal lives,” while another 40 percent said they were worried about their usage being tracked. By comparison, they were less mistrustful of other IoT applications like autonomous vehicles and smart car technology, even though they have similar tracking capabilities.

And that survey only considers peoples’ reaction to fairly abstract privacy risks. The reality is that in a smart home, security vulnerabilities and data breaches can have much more dramatic real-world impacts. On his blog Charged, developer and journalist Owen Williams recently detailed his experience trying to figure out who or what kept overriding his brightness settings for his Phillips Hue smart light bulbs. It turned out that an app he’d enabled to dim his office lights at night had taken over all the bulbs hooked up to Williams’ Hue system and was keeping them at one uniform brightness.

As Williams points out, if a malicious app accomplished the same feat, it could extort money from the user by “randomly changing the brightness or color of lights until they pay.” When a cyberattack results in lights that won’t stop flashing—or doors that won’t lock, windows that won’t close, or a fridge turns itself off and melts all your ice cream—it’s logical that people’s reactions to digital privacy incursions will become that much more extreme.

Trust is the antidote

How can internet companies thrive in the privacy-sensitive space of the home? If privacy behavior is mostly about gut feelings, they’ll need to reinforce positive ones by winning consumers’ trust.

Trust has not historically been a major factor in the adoption of complex new technologies—research into technology acceptance models on both virtual and IOT systems shows that usability has been much more important. Even heavy users of Google and Facebook probably wouldn’t say that they trust either company very deeply.

However, a look at another internet giant, Airbnb, shows how this calculus changes when users’ homes and not just their online identities are involved. Airbnb puts trust at the core of its business model. Hosts are only willing to open their homes to strangers because the company empowers them with access to information about potential guests (which the guests themselves choose to provide), including their bio, reviews, and public Facebook profile.

By focusing on forging connections between hosts and guests, Airbnb builds community and reduces the uncertainty that pervades users’ relationships with so many internet companies. Airbnb is also relatively transparent about how it collects and analyzes user data, and often puts it to use in ways that increase users’ control over how they use the platform—for instance, to generate more accurate pricing suggestions for hosts. The result: it pushes users’ concerns about opening their homes or staying in others’ spaces out of the realm of gut feeling into that of a more considered, rational (and easy to ignore) concern.

If they want to thrive amid rising privacy concerns in the long term, manufacturers of smart home products, would be wise to take a page from Airbnb’s book. They should find ways to forge trust through absolute transparency, sharing with customers what data is being collected and how it’s being used. They should create new business models that don’t rely on collecting terabytes and terabytes of personal data, but on building trust – and even community – with customers.=

Companies should not only implement best practices for personal data encryption, storage, sharing, and deletion, but design their products around the customer’s ability to control their own data. If the development of IoT follows this path, the next 10 to 15 years won’t bring an inevitable erosion of privacy, but its renaissance.

Recently, I participated in a discussion on “the buyers journey.” In some ways, I suppose I should have been happy that we were at least focused on the buyer, normally we obsess about our products/solutions and how we inflict them on our customers.

Why do some customers choose your business over others? How is it that some companies get shared on social media while yours gets no love? Why do some customers refer friends while others don’t?

A new model of approaching our customer relationships may have the answers. Social currency is a way to understand the value businesses add to customers. Understanding how to develop social currency allows brands to drive higher customer loyalty. This leads to more referrals and sales.

In this post, we’ll discuss how social currency plays a role in your customer relationships. As well as how that can benefit your business. We’ll also share how you can earn more “social currency” and use this to grow your business.

What is Social Currency?

Here’s how a traditional sales funnel works:

1. Encourage potential customers to consider your product or service
2. Lead them to a purchase decision
3. Give customers a way to show loyalty by referring family and friends

In many ways, moving customers from the ‘consider-to-purchase’ phases is straightforward. But turning your customers into advocates requires adding something extra.

That “something extra” is social currency.

Social currency explains your business’s social relationship with its customers. A study published by strategy consulting firm Vivaldi Partners defined it like this: “Social currency measures the ability of brands to fit into how consumers manage their social lives in today’s digital and mobile age.”

As the Vivaldi Partners study showed, social currency helps drive brand loyalty. Brands that have earned high social currency also command premium prices.

Think about Apple, the world’s biggest company. Through building its social currency, they don’t only lead smartphone sales by volume. It also charges premium some of the highest prices for its products.

Like word-of-mouth marketing, social currency is a means to an end. You don’t just want customers to talk about your brand; you want them (and their friends) to buy.

The dimensions

Building social currency requires providing one of the following “dimensions” or levers to an audience member:

• Affiliation – Offering a sense of community among your customers.
• Conversation – Meaningfully engage in the customer conversation around your brand.
• Utility – Creating utility and value for customers while helping them become more socially relevant.
• Advocacy – Developing strong feelings of loyalty to a brand where customers recommend and even defend it.
• Information – Giving valuable and shareable information.
• Identity – Providing customers with their own identity in a group.

These dimensions have always played a role in your social strategies. Yet, their influence may not be seen to focusing on other parts of the customer relationship.

Each of your social tactics should consider one or more of these dimensions. When planning your social strategy, you may ask, “How can I add provide greater utility?” Or, “How can I give customers a sense of affiliation?”

Let’s return to the Apple example. Apple’s devices offer similar functionality as its competitors. Why can Apple charge more? They’ve invested in developing the following social currency dimensions:

• Utility: Apple doesn’t just deliver the functionality consumers want, it does so in a way that “just works” (well, most of the time).
• Conversation: Apple’s legendary product launches help build a conversation around its products.
• Identity: Apple fans rallied around it’s “Think Different” cry. Now, Apple products represent status or having what’s perceived as the best.

Each of these helps Apple customers decide to stick with that brand.

Your business may not have access to a massive ad budget like Apple. However, you can still apply the same principles to grow your word-of-mouth marketing and generate more referrals.

The Social Currency Bank Account

Understanding how to build this type of currency makes your referral marketing strategies more effective.

Imagine it as a bank account. If you want to “spend” your social currency – that is, if you want to ask something from your customers – you’ll need to have earned something first. As you know, customers who don’t have a meaningful relationship with a brand are unlikely to advocate it with others.

Each time you provide one of the six dimensions of social currency listed above, it’s like you’re making a “deposit” into your social bank account. Then you have something to use when it’s time to ask for a referral or sale.

Each customer responds to the dimensions differently. One customer follows the crowd and responds well to affiliation. Another customer is simply seeking utility and trying to find the most useful, effective product to solve a problem.

It doesn’t matter which tactics you use to drive potential customers through the consider, purchase, and loyalty phases of the sales cycle. You can always add these dimensions to further deepen the customer relationship.

How Earning Social Currency Benefits Your Business

When you’ve taken the time to earn social currency with your customers, your business benefits in several ways:

1. Greater Insight Into Your Customers

It deepens the relationship between your business and your customers. You’ll have a clearer view of what your customers want, what they don’t want, and gaps in the market your brand can address.

You’ll also know how customers perceive your brand, allowing you to actively manage your brand reputation.

2. Increased Impact

Having social currency helps your customers find more value in your product or service. This provides additional utility from your brand, which in turn increases their likelihood of becoming a brand advocate.

It’s an upward spiral of customer loyalty, value, and advocacy.

3. Larger Circle of Influence

When you’ve earned enough social currency, your brand gains the ability to take the role of influencer. This gives you greater leverage with other influencers.

4. Organic Growth

Eventually, when your social currency reaches a certain level, your business will experience a “snowball” effect. All of the work you’ve done in the past will compound. Suddenly, you might experience Metcalf’s Law – the phenomenon where audiences reach critical mass and suddenly explode in popularity.

5. Higher Customer Retention

Social currency drives loyalty beyond simply comparing offers between brands. Sure, Target and Walmart offer many of the same products. But because Target has earned social currency through its social media channels, the brand has a higher repurchase or loyalty rate over Wal-Mart.

6. Premium Prices

If you’re trying to position your brand at a premium price point, social currency helps. Deliberately building social currency gives your brand greater control over how your customers receive value. By focusing on non-price related social currency (such as identity), you can charge a premium price.

7. Better Word of Mouth

How will current customers respond to these types of investments? They’ll happily provide better recommendations about your business. They’ll be your front line in word-of-mouth marketing, promoting your business to their friends.

8. More High-Quality Leads

Ultimately, all of the above benefits add up to this final benefit: more leads. Your customers will be primed to refer their professional network to your business. This will drive a steady stream of highly-qualified leads to your sales team, helping your business grow.

Want these benefits for your business? Let’s dive into some actionable strategies you can start working on today.

Actionable Ways to Generate Social Currency and Increase Referrals

Here are several ideas you can try today to generate social currency with your customers.

Reach Influencers

When an influencer promotes your company, you’re borrowing the influencer’s social currency as well as using your own. This makes an influencer marketing strategy a powerful way to generate additional social currency.

Try to focus on finding influencers who resonate with your audience and are respected by their fans.

Social Currency Dimensions Used:

• Affiliation
• Conversation
• Advocacy

Create a Community

One of the most successful strategies is to create communities for your ideal customers. For example, say your business sells an organic cleaning spray. You might create a Facebook group for people to share natural home cleaning tips. By doing this, you’d offer affiliation and identity to your members. You’d also attract people who might be interested in organic cleaners.

Social Currency Dimensions Used:

• Affiliation
• Advocacy
• Identity

Create Explainer Videos

It’s every brand’s dream to generate the next viral video hit. While it’s hard to predict what will go viral, creating useful video content is a good place to start.

Simple explainer (or “how-to”) videos related to your audience’s interests are a great place to begin. Valuable insights or tips shared as a video provides utility and information to your customers. Thus taking the next step towards advocacy feels natural.

Social Currency Dimensions Used:

• Utility
• Information
• Advocacy

Incentivize Advocacy

Brand ambassador programs can help you grow your brand 10x faster. However, these programs need the right incentives to be successful.

RedCoach used to offer a two-sided incentive, rewarding both the customer and the referral. This generated social currency with both sides.

Consider offering coupons, vouchers, or even gift cards. Recognize your top referrers to provide an identity within your community.

Social Currency Dimensions Used:

• Utility
• Advocacy
• Conversation

Develop an Information Campaign

Creating a resource to share information with customers builds you up. Develop eLearning portals, knowledge bases, and other informational resources for customers.

Social Currency Dimensions Used:

• Information
• Conversation

Give Your Customers an Identity to Rally Around

Highlight customers within your community to help them stand out and gain a community identity. In a referral program, this may include featuring top-referring individuals and new affiliates.

Social Currency Dimensions Used:

• Identity
• Advocacy

Whether you realized it or not, the dimensions are already playing a role in your brand strategy. Actively developing social currency empowers your brand to deepen relationships with your customers.

The result? A more effective referral marketing strategy, giving you additional high-quality leads and referrals. Review your marketing strategy today to consider how you can build additional social currency with your audience.

Journalism has been battered by major changes over the past few years. If you find yourself struggling to keep up with these changes, you’re not alone. But to help you up your effectiveness, we’ve highlighted the key B2B PR trends you need to know to appeal to journalists.

Two Reports, Two Different Points of View: What It Means For You

We recently noticed two reports on the state of journalism. Cision released its 2018 Global State of the Media Report and MuckRack and The Zeno Group joined forces to create their report, The State of Journalism Today. Both of these reports shed some light on the state of journalism, with surprising, and at times seemingly contradictory, facts on journalism, public relations, and the press release.

Cision’s survey polled 1,355 journalists in different areas of the industry, from print media outlets to bloggers. On the subject of public relations, the study found an overall increase of positive sentiment toward the public relations industry. The press release, in particular, was chosen as a top content choice among journalists.

Within the Cision survey, 63% of respondents cited the press release as their most valuable piece of PR content. Another 44% said that the press release was their most trusted content for brand information.

Shifting gears to the MuckRack-Zeno survey, however, you’ll see a mirror image. Of the 520 journalists polled, just 3% said they value press releases and 49% found them worthless. Quite a disparity between these two studies!

So what gives?

The fact is that these two studies pose two different questions. The Cision survey asked about press releases in general; the MuckRack-Zeno survey asked about press release distribution services, such as PR Newswire and Business Wire.

Why is this an important difference? Press release distribution services are a commodity — a zillion flashing words that hold no personalization for a reporter. They’re issued to satisfy reporting requirements for publicly traded companies, as well as for branding and awareness for all companies.

The press release itself, however, is quite effective as a tool for journalists.

The New Use of Press Releases

It’s time to stop thinking of a press release as a media-attention vehicle, and start thinking of it as a tool to provide information.

We believe press releases refuse to die — despite all the badmouthing — because the format can be an effective way to tell a story concisely. Just the facts, ma’am, is what they deliver.

So how can you write a press release that captivates the attention of journalists and effectively conveys all the needed information?

Let’s look at what these two reports say about the state of journalism and how it affects the press release.

5 Top B2B PR Trends That Will Help You Create Press Release That Get Read

1. Journalists Want Press Releases

Let’s first address the elephant in the room. Despite a few loud comments to the contrary, the fact remains that journalists still want press releases. How do we know? Let’s look at a few figures.

The vast majority of the recent Cision study — 63% of respondents — said that the press release was their most valuable piece of content. And 44% noted it as their most trusted source of brand information. This makes the press release the most trusted form of PR content among media outlets for the third year in a row. Clearly, press releases aren’t going anywhere any time soon.

Why are press releases so important? They play a vital role in the relationship between brands and journalists.

The problem is that some aren’t updating their press release strategy to reflect the modern needs of journalism. How can you create a press release that better appeals to journalists? The report from Cision on its survey results outlines 4 principle ways:

1. Clearly state the news hook — what makes the story valuable to an audience.
2. Tell the story conversationally and avoid sinking it with industry jargon.
3. Add quality quotes that add dimension to your story and draw in the reader.
4. Include multimedia, such as images and video, to enhance your release.

Show journalists that you mean business by taking these recommendations to heart. Contrary to some past opinions on the subject, the press release is not dead. It just needs some doctoring. Update your press release strategy to reflect the latest trends.

2. A Good Hook Can Attract the Right Eyes

Some journalists thumb through hundreds of press releases on any given day. It’s safe to say that they know what makes a press release stand out. And what do they recommend? A good hook. According to the Cision survey, this was the #1 way to help journalists — 45% of respondents recommended this as a way to improve releases.

What is a hook? A hook draws in your readers, captivates them, and makes them want to learn more. It needs to be somewhere your reader’s eye will naturally land such as in your press release headline, in your subheading, and in your first paragraph.

What makes a good hook? There are a few ways to create an effective hook, including:

• Aim to create an emotional reaction, such as curiosity or incredulity.
• Use an action verb.
• Include a shocking or interesting number or fact.

In this day and age, journalists are busier than ever — and finding a good story can be a challenge. Journalists want to know at a glance whether your story is worth their time. A good hook, strategically located, is the best way to draw them into your story.

3. Multimedia Boosts Results

Multimedia in press releases can be the difference between a read or trashed release.

According to the MuckRack Zeno survey, 46% of journalists said they are more likely to look at a press release if it includes an infographic. Another 13% of respondents noted that video content would attract their attention.

This same pro-multimedia viewpoint was shared by 11% of the Cision survey participants, who said it would make a press release more effective. The key readability factor though for Cision readers was a clearly stated news hook — with 45% saying that boosts a release’s effectiveness.

These content preferences show that multimedia is appreciated by some journalists and can improve your chances of getting a release read.

4. The Fight for Trust Continues

As a result of the fake news sentiment that has crept onto the scene in recent years, journalists have to work harder than ever to gain back the trust of their audience. 59% of the Cision survey participants in the United States noted that this trend has impacted their profession.

How can you create a press release that speaks to this need for accuracy? Make sure that all the information you provide is 100% sincere, honest, and true. It might be tempting at times to add some embellishment to your story to make it more appealing — but if the smallest detail proves untrue or overly exaggerated, it could potentially cast doubt on the rest of your information.

This goes beyond the veracity of your press release or pitch. Every part of your brand — including your website, blog, and social media profiles — should be a sincere and truthful representation of your company.

Your press release also needs to provide expert sources where journalists can turn to confirm your facts and figures. Have all of your sources lined up and ready to go for journalists should they need to reach out.

5. Social Media Gains Ground

Social media as a whole is increasingly relied on by modern journalists. The MuckRack-Zeno survey shines some light on what particular networks journalists expect to use in the coming year and how exactly they use those networks.

The social media giant Facebook is losing ground for journalists with 44% noting that they expect to spend less time on the network this year — and only 13% saying they planned to spend more time on it. On the other hand, Twitter and Instagram are gaining momentum — 37% said that they expect to spend more time on Twitter and Instagram in the coming year. This is followed by LinkedIn with 26% and YouTube with 25%.

How do journalists consider social media when it comes to the stories they write? The survey revealed that 41% of journalists consider the “shareability” of a story when deciding what to write about. And 63% of journalists track how many times their stories are shared on social media.

This means that these concerns should be at the top of your mind when pitching a story. Do your research before you write your press release. How well do similar stories do on social media? Has a particular journalist had success with this particular type of story? If so, you might highlight that in your pitch.

The growing emphasis on social media also affects your media relations in another way. Because of this trend, journalists often take your social media presence and following into account when considering your story.

Communications trainer Michael Smart commented on this trend in a piece for PRsay: “Being newsworthy is often not enough. Journalists (and especially bloggers) want you to bring something else to the table: an audience.”

Remember, 44% of journalists admitted to taking the “shareability” of a story into account. This means that they may consider how much your audience will share their story as well. If they see you have a considerable social media following, it may sweeten the deal for them.

In review…

Journalism constantly evolves and grows. Even as hard times hit, it bounces back. That’s why it’s important to follow the latest PR trends and adapt to modern changes.

A while back, a blockchain startup approached me with their pitch, a decentralized social media application in which users can earn money by simply doing what they already do on other platforms, such posting updates, photos and videos.

I would have been intrigued had they sent me the message a couple of years ago. But not so much after observing the space for more several years.

Several blockchain applications profess to enable users to monetize various resources, whether it’s their unused storage and CPU power, or the tons of data they generate every day.

Regardless of whether they will succeed to deliver on their promises or not, these projects highlight one of the problems that haunts the centralized internet. Users are seldom rewarded for the great value they bring to platforms such as Facebook, Google and Amazon .

Blockchain applications suggest that decentralized alternatives to current services will give users the chance to collect their fair share of the revenue they generate with their participation in online ecosystems. It’s an enticing proposition since it doesn’t require users to do much more than what they’re already doing: send emails, browse websites, watch ads, keep the computer on…

But what exactly do you earn from monetizing your resources on the internet, and how accessible and reliable are your earning? Here’s what you need to know.

What can you sell?

A handful of blockchain platforms enable you to rent your unused storage, idle CPU cycles, and internet bandwidth with those who are in need. The premise is simple: You list your resources along with your payment terms on the application and get paid in the proprietary crypto-token of the application when others use them. Purchases are arranged, performed and paid peer-to-peer through smart contracts, bits of code that run on blockchain without the need for a centralized application server.

Examples include Golem and iExec, two decentralized marketplaces for computing power. Users can earn the platforms’ proprietary cryptocurrencies, GNT and RLC tokens respectively, by renting their CPU cycles to developers and users who want to run applications on the network. Golem and iExec aim to replace centralized cloud providers such as Amazon and Google, in which the service provider sets the rates and rakes in all the profits.

Storj and Filecoin are two distributed storage networks where users can earn cryptotokens for sharing their free hard drive space with the network. Both platforms are designed to provide infrastructure for various applications such as web hosting and streaming services. Gladius, a decentralized content delivery network (CDN) and DDoS mitigation solution, enables users to monetize their internet bandwidth to serve content from websites and services running on the network.

These applications provide a good opportunity to turn the hours that your computer sits idly in the home or office into a side income.

Other blockchain platforms enable you to monetize your data. An example is Datum, a decentralized marketplace for user data. Datum enables users to earn DAT tokens by choosing to share it with other organizations. Other players in the domain include Streamr, a real-time data-sharing platform geared toward the Internet of Things (IoT). With Streamr, users can earn DATAcoin tokens by sharing the data their connected devices generate with other devices that need it to carry out their functions and companies that use them for analytics and research.

Data is a huge market that is currently dominated by a few big players such as Google and Facebook. These companies hoard user data in their walled-garden silos and use them to make huge profits. Blockchain platforms give users the choice and power to claim their share of that market by giving them back the ownership of their data.

Matchpool is a decentralized social network that enables users to monetize their groups and online communities. Matchpool provides the decentralized equivalent of Facebook groups and provides tools for administrators to earn GUP tokens by setting fees on membership and access to content. And there’s Brave, the blockchain-based browser developed by the former CEO of Mozilla. Brave removes ads from websites and instead gives users the choice to earn Basic Attention Tokens (BAT) by opting to view ads.

How much do you earn?

It’s difficult to measure earnings on blockchain applications because most of them either haven’t launched yet or are in their early stages. Few of the companies I reached out to could provide stable numbers or average figures.

Also, the value of the resource you share on these platforms is often subject to supply-and-demand dynamics. For instance, iExec leaves it to the users to determine the price of their computational resources and doesn’t take any cut from their earnings. If there’s a large demand for decentralized CPU power, you’ll earn more from participating in the network.

Storj, the decentralized storage network, had the most accurate information to share. The platform provides a formula to calculate the monthly earnings of “farmers,” the users who share their free storage space with the network. Storj charges $0.015 per gigabyte of data stored and $0.05 per gigabyte downloaded, 60 percent of which goes to the farmers.

Several factors affect the final earnings, including whether the farmer nodes store primary or mirror copies of data, how long they participate in the network, and how well they perform in terms of up-time, bandwidth and response times. “If someone stored 1TB of data for the entire month, and that entire TB of data was downloaded once that month, they could potentially make $39,” said Philip Hutchins, CTO at Storj Labs. But the current average monthly payment for a Storj farmer node is around $2, according to the network data the company shared.

Storj has also launched partnerships with FileZilla, Microsoft and other companies to build decentralized apps on top of its network, which could increase demand for Storj space.

On Datum, the decentralized data market, users earn between $0.50 and $5 in DAT tokens for each promotional email they opt to open, according to Roger Haenni, the company’s CEO, though he did not share the details of how earnings are calculated. Currently the network supports monetizing email inboxes, but in the future, the company plans to provide users with the option to get paid for sharing various categories of data, such as the location data their phone collects, apps, services and websites they use, data that their smart gadgets collect and others.

That last bit sounds a bit invasive on user privacy. “This [data] is currently widely tracked by cookies from various ad networks,” explains Haenni. “However, the user is not asked to explicitly opt in to share this data nor does he get paid when this data is monetized.” Datum will give the chance to claim the money that’s already being made from their data.

The Datum network currently has 80,000 users, and since the launch of the Datum App in late December, users have collected 1.5 million DAT tokens, amounting to around $75,000.

Gladius, the decentralized CDN, doles out $0.03 in GLA tokens per gigabyte of bandwidth of data streamed through a node (however, the company’s website states that this is an estimate based on favorable market conditions). An internet connection with a 30 mbps upload speed shared with the network for eight hours a day could earn its owner around $49 per month.

What are the costs and risks?

In most cases, you’ve already paid for the resources you’ll be sharing on the blockchain, whether it’s your hard drive space, your CPU or your bandwidth (unless you’re on a metered connection, in which case sharing it would be unwise). However, you’ll have to factor in electricity costs of keeping your computer on, which varied depending on the region you live in.

Social and data-sharing platforms won’t have any extra costs, but you’ll be responsible for keeping the balance between sharing your data and preserving your privacy.

One of the real risks of earning cryptotokens is the constant price fluctuations. The value of what you earn today could double overnight—or drop by half in the same manner. This means you’ll have to choose between holding your tokens or cashing out. 

And there are always the risks of scams and failed projects that will absorb users’ funds and resources only to disappear and leave them out in the cold.

“Resource-sharing projects on top of the blockchain that allow users to control and profit from their own data will be the most profitable and successful projects in the future,” says Jared Tate, blockchain expert and the founder of DigiByte. However, Tate also notes that many of the current resource sharing platforms are PR projects that will never scale. 

“The majority of projects out there won’t be around in 5 years. Most of the projects don’t even have working software, just a white paper and some fancy graphics on a website,” Tate says. Some users evaluate projects by examining the market cap alone, which Tate believes is the absolute worst way to gauge a projects long term viability. “So many market caps are artificially inflated by developer pre-mines or deceptive coin counts,” he warns.

 

How do you deal with the liquidity problem?

 Another challenge users will have to overcome is what to do with the tokens they earn from monetizing their resources. For instance, if you earn Storj tokens from renting your free hard disk space, the only thing you can do with your earnings is, well, rent storage from other users, which doesn’t make sense since you already had an excess of it to begin with. 

Some platforms have multi-faceted economies that enable users to use their earned tokens for various purposes. For instance, in Flixxo, a decentralized streaming service, users can earn FLIXX tokens by sharing their free disk space and bandwidth to host content on the network. They can then use their earned tokens to consume videos published on the platform. But that is still a limited use case and might not be the problem they want to solve with their earnings.

Digital currencies and tokens have a liquidity problem. There are very few retailers and online services that accept Bitcoin as a method of payment, and even fewer that accept other cryptocurrencies. Users often must find some online exchange which matches buyers and sellers of various digital and fiat currencies. The process is slow and complicated and involves fees at different levels. 

An alternative is Bancor, a decentralized liquidity network built on top of the Ethereum blockchain. Supported by its own token, BNT, Bancor enables users to convert between tokens supported on its network without the need to find a buyer or seller. So, for instance, if you’ve earned an amount of RLC tokens from renting your idle CPU time on iExec, you can instantly trade it on Bancor for, say, MANA, the token that will let you purchase VR experiences on Decentraland. 

Bancor already lists several dozen tokens on its network and plans to add more in the future.

“The aim of this mathematic liquidity solution is to allow the long tail of tokens to emerge, by allowing any user generated currency to be viable on day one without needing to achieve massive trade volume in order to be listed and thus become liquid,” says Galia Benartzi, the co-founder of Bancor. “Great tokens will still rise, bad ones will fail, but all will have a chance to try.”

By every indicator available, ecommerce is continuing to grow at an insane speed. Although it may seem impossible to imagine with ecommerce already totaling up to 5% of overall commerce, there’s astronomical growth still to come.

Still, I’m heartbroken that some the simplest elements of ecommerce stink so much.

It is 2018—why are there still light gray below-the-fold add to cart buttons?

#youarekillingme

There are numerous subtle issues as well. One strategic issue is illustrated by Timbuk2.

Timbuk2 pays a huge margin to its resellers to sell their messenger bags. These resellers, in turn, give a bigger cut to Amazon, who then sells the Timbuk2 bag for 30% off. Yet, when I want to pay full price on www.timbuk2.com, I have to buy a minimum of $99 to get free shipping!

I understand channel conflict, Timbuk2, but this is just plain not being hungry. You could win bigger by cultivating higher more profitable direct relationships, especially when the old world order of commerce is collapsing all around you.

And I’m ignoring the extremely light gray font reviews…on a shade grayer background!

Painful.

(I really want to buy the Closer Laptop bag. The small one in Jet Black looks cool. I refused to buy it because I don’t want to reward a lack of ecommerce imagination. I am one person, I know it is not going to really hurt them, but I don’t know how else to protest a brand I love.)

Pause. Deep breath.

I do get excited about this stuff. My heart bleeds digital.

There is an ocean of opportunities when it comes to elevating ecommerce. In this post, I want to focus my passion and zero in on something that is difficult to solve for, yet immensely profitable: Inserting a sense of urgency into the shopping process.

I don’t mean: BUY IT NOW OR ELSE!

I mean developing and inserting a subtle collection of gentle nudges that can help increase the conversion rate by a statistically significant amount.

Sizing the Opportunity.

In order to have the same passion to take advantage of this magical opportunity (nudge, nudge) you’ll first want to understand how inefficient your current shopping process is.

Do two things, they’ll bring you to your knees:

1. Go look at your ecommerce conversion rate. It shows you how often you win. :) Your overall conversion rate is likely to be around 2%. You don’t need an advanced degree in math to compute that 2% winning is 98% not winning!

Do something simple. Increase current conversion rate by 25%, quantify how much increased revenue there will be. Yes, that additional $6 mil is not as hard to accomplished for an imaginative focused team – in fact you can get that from implementing half of the recommendations in this blog post.

Bonus: The best computation of conversion rate is orders divided by users (the default in your analytics tool is sessions). This will bring your conversion rate up (yea!!). Still. Big opportunity. And, yes, I did say a decade ago that you should look at the opportunity size within all your website visitors. You should. Still. The conversion headroom is massive.

2. Go to the Multi-Channel Funnels folder in Google analytics and look at two other yummy reports: Time Lag and Path Length.

They report two dimensions of speed: How long does it take for a human to convert? How many visits does it take for a human to convert?

My preferred choice is Path Length; it is rich and actionable.

This data you’ll see, the analysis you’ll do, will scare you. It will also create a sense of urgency to do something about it!

These two recommendations will help you compute the opportunity size for your management team.

Aim for quintupling revenue, obviously, but calculating just 25% improvement will give you all the budget you need from your management to insert urgency into the shopping process. Present a yummy spreadsheet that quantifies the cost of inaction, how much money you’ll lose by not delivering a 25% improvement every week. It will be heartbreaking, and now you are ready for progress!

Welcome to Nudging.

Nudging has plenty of different definitions. Mine is simple:

Another insistence of mine that you’ll note below: Nudges are based on a deep understanding of user experience. They solve for the user first, and all of the hard work is done by the company (you!).

In the long run that’ll also create a positive revenue outcome for you. Win-Win.

Below is a collection of nudges, curated from my global experiences, influenced by research and data I’ve access to.

My goal with these recommendations is to have a big impact on your ecommerce existence, and to spark your creativity as you go out and change the world.

Let’s go have some fun nudging people.

1. In-stock status.

It mildly irritates me when sites don’t use this nudge.

How many hotel rooms, cameras, seats in a theater, are left?

Only 15 left in stock. Have that right under the price.

How about: Last run! Be one of the last 9 people to own this credenza design.

OMG! Click, click, click!

Or, 1 in-stock in the REI store next to your office.

Nudge. Nudge.

I’ll admit that you need to have a well-integrated logistics platform to make these ideas work. But given the decade we are in, if you have not already done that, you are facing an existential crisis. Please stop reading this post, pull in your agency and internal teams urgently to figure out how to dig your company out of this deep hole.

If you have a well-integrated logistics platform already, then all I’m asking for is this: lock your online and offline IT folks in a nice Four Seasons suite for 72 hours with your User Researchers, and BAM! Money will start falling from the sky.

Speaking of the Four Seasons, consider how sad their nudging strategy is vs. the one that booking.com has on display:

All the data you need for this nudge… You already have. That’s what makes the Four Seasons strategy, and that of most sites, so heartbreaking.

Convert the inventory status into a conversion boosting nudge.

2. Life of current price.

It physically pains me how rarely this nudge is used.

Dynamic pricing is everywhere. Why not share that information with the shopper?

This price is guaranteed for the next 18 hours.

This price reflects the highest discount in the past 24 weeks.

Limited-time offer applied to the price you see.

Seasonal promotion! Expires Friday.

Reflects special pricing for our highest-tier Frequent Flyers.

Price has reduced by 14% since your last visit.

I’m sure you’ll find language and phrasing that works perfectly for you (see PS at the end of this post). There is a nugget tied to a unique dimension for your dynamic pricing strategy. Please find it, please use it.

Here’s an example from The Golf Warehouse:

Here’s another one from Overstock that shows two time based nudges…

You can take advantage of other dimensions related to pricing that are unique to your digital strategy.

This one comes from YouTube TV: Lock-in this monthly rate for life.

YouTube TV’s price just went up from $35 to $40 (they added more channels). Everyone who’d signed up at $35 was grandfathered at that price – until they cancel!

Yet, this incredible benefit was not a part of YouTube TV’s merchandizing strategy from day one. You can imagine that a whole bunch of additional people (me!) would have jumped on board. Instead not only do I not have YouTube TV, I am sad/upset. Double loss.

You have an entire staff of economists, financial analysts, directors and VPs spending so much time on finding the perfect price to charge an individual. Why not convert that immense hard work into a nudge that creates a sense of urgency?

3. Direct competitor comparisons.

38% cheaper than Nordstrom.

Sometimes, by using one of the multitude of price aggregators, you can have an understanding of where your pricing is at an item level. Where the match is in your favor, why not use that as a nudge?

You can have the comparison for as long as it is valid. You don’t even need to specify a time—people are familiar with FOMO.

Only at B&H, this item comes with a free LG Watch!

First, who does not like free stuff?

Second, who does not like believing they are getting a special deal?

Three, who does not freak out that if they don’t buy it right away, this “insane deal” will disappear?

Me. I did that. At B&H. :)

Again, your merchandizing team is working hard to procure these amazing bundles for your customers, so why are they not a core part of your nudge strategy?

Costco Special: Get an extra year of warranty!

Our average delivery times to California are 50% faster than Amazon.

Save $150 on installation compared to Best Buy!

Our return rates are 40% lower than Wayfair.

You catch my drift.

Here’s just one example from SugarCRM:

Here’s a comparison on Honda’s site…

No, actually it is from Toyota’s site.

They know that if their car is more expensive, with worse mileage etc., better to be upfront as the customers are looking for that information…

You can also go deeper when it comes to implementing the spirit of this nudge. Kendrick Astro Instruments has the normal table based competitor comparison, additionally they also have a detailed comparison with images to give you more detail…

This shows hunger and desire to win… Their text:

This is the text next to their competitor's image (which you can view in higher resolution):

Not all that hard to see how this nudge drives higher conversion rates.

Your employees stand up at 11:00 AM each day and sing the company song. There is a line in there about your company’s unique value proposition. Something so special, it stands out against everyone you compete with.

Why let that be your little secret? Why don’t you convert that into a nudge?

Consider how much louder your 11:00 AM company sing-a-long will be when your employees see you laying it out there and going head to head with your competitors.

4. Delivery times based on geo/IP/mobile phone location.

Amazon does this really well.

Each item’s estimated delivery time to you depends on the closest warehouse to your home address. So that Timbuk2 bag might be delivered to me the next day, but it would take two days to get to Carissa in Alabama.

Amazon shows this best delivery time for me right next to the price.

More often than not, I see that Prime One-Day or Prime Same-Day and, as if by magic, I find my mouse glide toward the Order Now button!

The closeness of the customer to your delivery environments remains an infrequently used strategy in creating an urgency nudge.

Another dimension of the delivery time nudge is order in the next 4 hours and get it tomorrow with fast shipping!

In our instant gratification culture, who can resist that?

You are $39 away from overnight shipping has been done to death. (If you are in this category, know that the last “secret” of ecommerce is that figuring out how to weaponize shipping – and free returns – is a powerful conversion increasing engine. Not easy, but your business model has to change to survive.)

But. If you are still in that world—don’t worry, I still love you—know that a behavioral shift from an emphasis on cost to an emphasis on the benefit will make a huge difference.

Add another $39 to your order and get your order 48 hours faster!

This takes advantage of the person’s location, your warehouse location, and your shipping policy, and frames it all as a positive nudge.

A couple more examples to inspire you.

Love these delicious sandals on Express. My wife thinks I’ll look prettier in the red, I think the Mustard really looks like my color. :)

I love the nudge they have built-in showing how many in my size are in stock (only one!)…

Not wanting to risk it, I click on the Find in Store link you see at the bottom of the page.

I get a interstitial that shows me availability of the sandal by geographic location…

Here’s the lovely part… I did not have to do anything. Express did a reverse lookup based on my IP Address, matched that with their stores, then checked their ERP system for inventory and got me the answer. All inside one second.

Nudge, nudge!

One more.

Dominos will now deliver a pizza to you wherever you are. Literally wherever. In a park, in the dark woods, under a bridge. They look up your mobile location (with your permission), and they’ll come find you.

Assuming you want pizza that bad.

There are still websites that ask you to choose your country when you land. In this day and age, for the sake of Zeus, I hope that is not you.  But, how inventively are you using the location nudge?

Significantly higher revenue awaits.

5. Social cues to the rescue.

The last couple of months have not been great for social networks. I’m sure something beneficial will come to the entire digital ecosystem from all this.

A minority might believe that the whole social media thing is going to die. It is not. Community and sharing are core to who we are as humans. It is not going to change. (And, you still need a place for guilty pleasures: indulging in the latest Kardashian-West clan developments!)

Stretch your imagination and it is not hard to come up with some super-clever nudges that incorporate aggregate non-PII information that is public.

People have shared this blouse 18 times in the last hour on Instagram.

80 people in California have booked this destination in the last 30 days.

1,846 Pins for this closet on Pinterest.

Our most tweeted style of underwear!

800 plusses on Google+.

Ok, so maybe not Google+ (I was genuinely excited about it, I am sad it died). But you get the idea.

Social cues (/proof) can help create a sense of urgency for a whole host of companies. Yet, I bet you’ve rarely seen the use of this aggregated information to deliver nudges.

Here’s a simple example of aggregated non-PII based social cue, from, a site you’ve seen me express adoration for in the past, ModCloth. Every product has a little heart sign, visitors to the site vote their love which helps me make more confident decisions…

ModCloth also allows their customers to contribute something you might consider PII, their photos. These make perhaps the ultimate social proof as I can see the skirt I want (mustard again FTW!) on different body sizes…

ModCloth has a whole lot of social proof strategies. They have a Style Gallery, #ModClothSquad, #MarriedinModCloth etc.

Think expansively about social proof.

Naked Wines has a lovely widget next to each of their wines that shows the would buy again rate…

And, they show you historical sales and would buy it again rates.

Checkout the Kimbao Sauvignon Blanc you can see sales and would buy it again rates since 2011. At 91%, the rate is highest this year. Sweet. Add to Basket!

Another team thinking expansively about leveraging social proof are the excellent folks at Basecamp. If you scroll to the bottom of their web pages you’ll see…

Completely non-PII based social proof, a simple cumulative trend of the number of customers. What better way to convince you to use them than this lovely up and to the right trend?

One final, massively underutilized, social proof nudge for you to consider.

Every smart ecommerce strategy has an individual-level referral program bolted on from the very start. Your current customers refer your products and services to their friends, family, and complete strangers—in exchange for a little benefit for themselves.

It is rare, however, to see the use of that referral information as a nudge.

Your friend Alex will receive $5 if you order in the next 24 hours.

The site is keeping track of the referral (to pay your friend Alex his bounty). They have all the information they need to create the above line of text. Why not use it?

Read Diana’s review of this product.

Diana, of course, referred the product to you, and that insight is in the URL you used to get to the site. The site is simply going the extra mile to surface Diana’s review, as it will likely be more meaningful to you than the other 29.

I love Patagonia; I value the brand’s ethos so deeply. And, when I say love, I mean LOVE. Two of the three pieces of clothing I’m wearing right now are from Patagonia. Yet there does not seem to be any strategy at Patagonia to help me (and you and other brand lovers) to create social cue nudges.

Humans inherently want to share, they want to show off, and they want to pass on recommendations/deals to their community. Got social nudges?

6. Personalization. Yes, from 1995!

Do you remember what I did during the last visit to your website?

No PII, just off the anonymous first-party permission-based cookie. Did you use that to change the site’s home page?

And, if you have a GDPR compliant login mechanism…Does your machine learning-powered ecommerce platform leverage the lifetime of my site experience, complaints, purchases, etc., to anticipate my activity?

Do the pages on your site wrap around my objectives, rather than your static and pimpy ones?

Is your entire sales strategy obsessed with the Do, or does it also obsess about the See, Think and Care bits of the complete human experience?

Personalization is the ultimate nudge—to create ecommerce-related urgency and to bring your brand closer to the customer over the lifetime of their experience with you.

That’s because personalization means truly caring. Personalization requires a huge investment in understanding. Personalization is translating that individual human-level understanding into anticipation. Personalization means helping. And when you do it right, personalization means you pimp with relevance—the best kind.

The desire to personalize across the complete human experiences kicks off the processes that fundamentally alter how you treat every human. The reason it works, when done right, is that deep down, we want people to care about us. And yes, we will end up doing more business with people who show that they care for us. Really care. The ultimate nudge.

So. If you own www.canada.ca or www.sainsbury.co.uk using PII or non-PII information… Does your site actively learn and then change? If not, why not?

One huge challenge we had to overcome in delivering personalization was employee capabilities. Employees are terrible at being able to imagine the expanse of possibilities when it comes being able to understand each human and being able to react to each human. Mercifully, Machine Learning (/Artificial Intelligence) will help us solve this challenge with incredible results.

Bottom-line.

You can pray that your conversion rates increase.

Alternatively, you can take advantage of the data you have access to, the permissions your users have given you, and the competitive advantages you’ve worked so hard to create and use them to create nudges that solve for delivering delight to your customers and more revenue to your company.

Your choice?

Nudging FTW!

As always, it is your turn now.

If you’ve tried one of the above six strategies to create a nudge, what was the outcome for your company? If you’ve seen a strategy for creating urgency that you love, will you please share it? What challenges have you run into in trying to personalize experiences? Nudging also works in our personal lives—have you tried it? :)

Please share your critiques, brilliant ideas and experience scars via the comments below.

PS: My doctor reminds me during every annual visit that I need to take more walks outside in the sun to make up for a vitamin deficiency. Turns out I spend too much time in my office or auditoriums. The sun is right there. I just need to take a walk. I still do it less than I should. Such is the case with A/B testing. The tools are free and abundant. You know they are the best way to win arguments with your HiPPOs or your cubicle mates. Yet, you don’t use them. I’m off to take a walk in the beautiful California sun, you go implement my recommendations for nudges as A/B tests—it is the only way to unlock the kind of imagination required to create profitable happy customer experiences.

The post Six Nudges: Creating A Sense Of Urgency For Higher Conversion Rates! appeared first on Occam's Razor by Avinash Kaushik.

Setting the initial price for your product may be the decision that has the single biggest impact on your bottom line profitability. It also conveys signals about brand image, product quality, and even affects whether customers will consider purchasing your product at all.

Unfortunately, setting that initial price is often based on guesses and trial and error.

At thoughtbot we’ve helped our clients design, build, and launch hundreds of products. We’ve also launched some of our own. Here are some of the things we’ve learned along the way about what works, and what doesn’t, when setting the initial pricing of your product.

Pay what you want

When we first launched FormKeep we had no idea what we should charge. FormKeep provides form endpoints that you can use to back web-forms, often on static websites. This lets you accept data on your website without building a backend. We felt that the “value” of each form varied greatly, from a contact form on a personal website, to a company’s sales form that could be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue.

To attempt to resolve this, we punted on the problem and launched the service with a “pay what you want” model. We provided a slider from $1/month to $99/month and let people make their own decision.

Unfortunately, the vast majority of our customers chose the minimum price (duh). At this lowest price point, a customer would net about 68 cents after credit card processing fees. After a year of providing this person with a quality service and customer support, we’d have about 8 dollars in our bank account.

Clearly this was not the way to build a sustainable business.

Pay per project

With FormKeep, we knew we needed to adjust pricing to fix the profitability of the product, but we still wanted a pricing model that acknowledged the different value of different forms. We decided to switch to per-endpoint pricing, and ask customers to indicate whether a form was for commercial or personal use. Commercial forms were $25 per month, personal forms were $9.

When we launched Hound, a code-style guide checking service, the pricing model seemed more clear to us than with FormKeep. You enable Hound on individual GitHub repositories, so we decided to charge $12-month per private GitHub repository you hooked up to Hound (public, open-source repositories were free).

The problems we ultimately found with this model, which I’m calling “Pay per Project” for both FormKeep and Hound were similar. Paying per project was an instant deal-breaker for companies with lots of forms or GitHub repositories. These people should have been our best customers, but the price ballooned far too quickly to be feasible.

As a result, almost all customers restricted themselves to one form or GitHub repository, even though they had more. Adding a second came with the instant penalty of double the monthly cost.

Tiers of joy

Ultimately, we decided to move both FormKeep and Hound to pricing tiers. The initial pricing tiers for FormKeep looked like this:

• Up to 4 forms: $29 per month ($7.25 per form)
• Up to 10 forms: $59 per month ($5.90 per form)
• Up to 30 forms: $99 per month ($3.30 per form)
• Up to 75 forms: $199 per month ($2.65 per form)

As you can see, the price per form decreases as you go up in number of forms, but the amount of each of the tiers is a sufficient monthly cost for us to operate profitably.

A tiered pricing model makes us attractive to organizations with many forms or GitHub repositories, who are likely to be our Best Customers.

When we rolled our these changes for Hound and FormKeep, our average revenue per user began to steadily rise.

Don’t be clever

This brings us to our first important lesson. We went through a lot of changes for existing customers and our products only to arrive at what is ultimately a fairly industry-standard solution. Nearly all SaaS products you see will have a pricing model that is based on tiered pricing for various levels of usage.

In our attempt to side-step the difficult pricing choices we needed to make, we created more complicated, less efficient pricing models that ultimately customers didn’t respond well to.

Sometimes being boring and doing what everyone else is doing is a good choice. They’ve probably done their research, and it is also what customers have come to expect.

Setting the price

When setting the initial pricing for your product, you have to consider:

• Your costs.
• Competitor’s pricing.
• Other market forces or changes that affect demand.
• How much customers are willing to pay.

So setting the right initial price for your product isn’t easy. Optimizing that price considering all of the factors is complex.

There are quite a few firms out there who will use established methodologies to conduct a formal pricing study for you. However, if you’re not in a position to work with one of these firms, you can do most of it yourself.

Your costs

This one will contain a lot of guesswork at first, but is very important to consider. If your pricing isn’t setting your business up to operate profitably, it’s just not going to work (unless its specifically part of your funding strategy, which is a topic best saved for another post). A price change of a few percentage points can have a large effect on operating profits.

Make some reasonable predictions about what your major costs of doing business will be, including people, hosting, customer support, operations. Don’t forget credit card processing fees taking a percentage of your revenue. You can use 3.5% as the guide there.

SaaS businesses take some time to ramp up. If you’re launching a SaaS business, it is likely that you’ll go many months operating unprofitably. You’ll want to ask yourself at this point, how long you’re willing or able to operate unprofitably.

Finally, combine all of that information together to get your initial minimum price point needed to operate profitably. For example, if you’re expenses are $10,000 per month, and you can afford to operate unprofitably for six months, and you can reasonably expect that you will have 500 paying customers in six months time, then your minimum average monthly revenue per user is $20.

Competitor pricing

Like it or not, most customers will consider other options when making a purchasing decision. So you can’t consider your pricing in a complete vacuum. If your ideal pricing is $40/month but all of your competitors are $20/month, what will that do to your sales?

This doesn’t mean you need to match competitors pricing, but rather, you may need to figure out how will you justify this price difference. It may be that this higher price conveys signals about brand image and product quality, and therefore you need to pay particular attention to your brand and product quality, and how you position yourself so customers choose you. It may be that you decide to focus on a specific industry or market segment that that is willing to pay this higher price point.

If there aren’t any direct changes you’ll make to your pricing based on competitors, you’ll still want to keep this information in mind for the final step of determining how much customers are willing to pay, below.

Other market forces

There can be any number of things happening in your market that can affect what customers are willing to pay or what you can charge.

One such factor might be the other non-competitive services your customers are already paying for that will draw comparison. For example, when we launched Hound at $12/month per private repository, we saw several potential customers voicing their concern online about that price because they were comparing it to GitHub, which was about $9/month for the repository itself.

How much customers are willing to pay

Ultimately the price that your customers are willing to pay doesn’t come down to just one factor, but often is a combination of the above considerations plus even more variables.

There are a number of sophisticated tools and analysis methods you can use to determine pricing:

• Conjoint, MaxDiff, and discrete choice methods that measure how consumers trade off price versus other product attributes.
• Demand curve analyses that use pricing surveys to optimize pricing by projecting revenue and demand at different price points.

One common analysis method is the Van Westendorp method, also known as the Price Sensitivity Meter. In this method, potential customers are asked a version of the following four questions:

• At what price would you consider the product to be so expensive that you would not consider buying it?
• At what price would you consider the product to be priced so low that you would feel the quality couldn’t be very good?
• At what price would you consider the product starting to get expensive, so that it is not out of the question, but you would have to give some thought to buying it?
• At what price would you consider the product to be a bargain (a great buy for the money)?

In your survey, you can either have free form value entry or specific values each respondent must choose from. You can total up the number of responses for each value and plot the number of responses for each value all on the same chart. In order to get the lines to intersect, you’ll invert the values the “too cheap” and “cheap” responses.

The result will look like this:

To interpret these results, we look at the intersections of the lines:

• The crossing of “too inexpensive” (in blue) and “getting expensive” (in green) can be the lower bound of an acceptable price range.
• The intersection of the “too expensive” and “bargain” lines is the upper bound of an acceptable price range.
• The point at which the “getting expensive” line crosses the “cheap” line is known as the “indifference price point”, where equal number of customers rate that price point as either a “bargain” or “getting expensive”.
• Finally, the intersection of the “too inexpensive” (in blue) and “too expensive” (in purple) lines represents the “optimal price point”.

The optimal price point represents the point where there is an equal trade-off in extreme sensitivities to the price at both ends of the price spectrum.

There are some great things about the Van Westendorp analysis:

1. You’re talking to real customers.
2. It’s relatively easy for you to execute on and customers to respond to.
3. It feels like science so you can feel good about the choices your making.

However, there are some problems with this analysis as well:

1. It assumes that the responding customers are actually capable of envisioning a pricing landscape and responding accurately.
2. It does not ask customers to consider other factors like value or utility, only price.
3. It doesn’t take into account some of the other factors listed above, like competitive products.
4. It assumes that every product has a price below which it is so cheap that you would question its quality. This might be true for some products or services, but not all.

Our client, SPLITFIT, which allows users to book time with personal trainers, conducted a Van Westendorp analysis. The analysis allowed them to identify what reasonable pricing could look like, but in talking with customers further, they learned that the lower they could get the price for personal training, the higher demand could be. That led them change a number of factors in their business, product, and offering to allow people to invite friends, train with strangers, and introduce a robust referral model, all the split the cost with others and lower the total price, to increase demand.

Summing it all up

In my experience, as long as you don’t use the Van Westendorp analysis as the only thing you are considering, it is an excellent complement to considering all of the above and arriving at your final pricing model and values. While other, more sophisticated methods exist, the Van Westendorp analysis, combined with the other considerations outlined here is the right mix for most people who aren’t going to pay for or aren’t more equipped to do a sophisticated pricing study.

1. Keep things simple and don’t be clever. If you’re a SaaS business, your customers, competitors, and the market are probably all expecting and offering a tiered pricing model. That’s probably what you should do to.
2. Make sure you understand your costs, how long you can operate unprofitably, and ensure that your pricing is set accordingly. Remember that a price difference of only a few percentage points can have a large effect on profits.
3. Conduct a Van Westendorp analysis to identify the acceptable price range and optimal price point.
4. Compare the acceptable price range and optimal price point to competitors, other market forces, and what you need to charge to cover your costs. Determine what, if anything you will be doing to justify any deviation from what these numbers are telling you, such as brand image and product quality.

With those four points considered, you should be able to arrive at a pricing model and values that will allow you to operate profitably and attract customers.

Finally, even though you should strive to eliminate the guesswork from your initial pricing strategy, you’re probably not going to get it perfect the first time. As we demonstrated in all of the examples above, you can adjust your pricing after launch based on what you learn.

The post SaaS Pricing: Strategies, Frameworks & Lessons Learned appeared first on OpenView Labs.

Since the first email was sent in 1971, it has grown to be one of the strongest ways to reach your customers. Email is still one of the most underrated but valuable tools for any person who wants to grow their business while also nurturing potential customers.

I say underrated because many people have falsely speculated that email will die out due to new technology and the changing digital age. However, according to the DMA, emails had a median ROI of 122%, much higher than social media, paid search, and direct mail. Additionally, according to Radicati, there are 205 billion emails sent worldwide every day. This number is expected to grow to around 246 billion emails sent worldwide in 2019.

There are many other statistics, but you’re here to read about how to make your emails more compelling and ‘better’ right?

As a precaution, these are tests I’ve done during my days of sending emails and they mainly apply to the B2B market. However, my findings are easily applicable to the B2C market as well.

To make it easier to digest, I’ll separate the types of emails I send on a regular basis into the following five categories:

1. Lead Captures
2. Personal or Meeting Emails
3. Selling and Giveaways
4. Feedback and Surveys
5. Other Learnings

1. Lead Captures

Keep it simple but add an image to capture attention.

The misconception is to make the email design look complex and beautiful. By providing as much information as possible, recipients are more likely to convert, correct?

Not quite!

I had this idea when I designed email for programs in the past, but quickly learned that people have a limited attention span online. In fact, they only spend on average 11.1 seconds reading an email before they want to convert or close.

Although there are MANY blogs that state their strongest emails have been the ones with no images, I find providing one image performs much better than having no images at all, especially if it’s to encourage someone to download a report or asset. Have a clear CTA and show what report or e-book you’re giving away in the image and back it up with some content within the email.

2. Personal or Meeting Emails

If you want to set up a potential meeting or be more personal—go with all text.

This is one of the few places I would say to go with all text. It feels more personal, especially if you want to set up a meeting. No one wants to see an email full of banners and images if you’re asking them for a coffee or a conversation. Address it directly from you and always personalize.

Subject lines: Be more personal and direct, as if you’re talking to someone on a 1-on-1 basis. Example: ‘Would be lovely to catch you for a coffee <name>!’

Email Content: Similar to your subject line, keep it simple. Put a simple CTA such as ‘schedule a meeting’ through a calendar invite or ask the recipient to reply directly. You want to capture them from the email and get them to reply back to you. If you MUST get them to take an action, make it easy with a simple form, instead of something complicated like a long landing page full of content and a detailed registration form.

3. Selling and Product Giveaways

If you’re selling or doing a giveaway, it’s ok to be visual!

It might seem like I’m contradicting myself here, but emails with images have their place. In terms of giveaways or having something that is of physical value, it’s good to be visual. Even with images, you have to go straight to the point. Having a photo of the giveaway or the items you’re selling is important not only to capture attention but also to show what exactly it is.

Subject Lines: Stick to headlines that create urgency and be descriptive in your subject line. Pay attention to regional differences in language, current trends, and your organizational brand guidelines.

Email Content: Keep it straightforward with the images of the items you’re selling. Post your best specials if you’re selling and the giveaway items when you’re doing freebies.

The point of this is you don’t want to make your audience guess what’s in the giveaway or what you’re trying to sell. Give them an image so they’re tempted to convert if they’re already interested.

4. Feedback and Surveys

If you want survey feedback—be humble in your approach.

No one likes a bragger. Don’t say something like ‘Thanks for coming to the best event in the world, here’s a survey.’ Always take one step back and ask for feedback because there are always improvements that could be made to an event.

Subject Lines: Be humble and friendly and use the words feedback and advice rather than survey. Examples include: ‘We would love your feedback on our last event’ or ‘I need your help.’

Email Content: Start off with a thank you in your banner or first heading. Once again, I would avoid mentioning survey in your CTA. Instead use phrases like ‘provide feedback’ or ‘give your advice,’ which tend to work much better than ‘complete this survey.’

5. Other Learnings

The 48-Hour Rule: I have started to implement this advice from SEO expert Matthew Barby. Basically, 48 hours after sending your first email, you should send a follow-up email with a completely different subject line to those who didn’t open your email. With marketing automation software, this should be easy to adjust and implement.

Not only do you increase the number of people you get to read your emails without looking spammy, it ensures you get the maximum reach from your emails.

Test, Test, and Test: It’s pretty straightforward and obvious but reinforcing is always important. If you don’t have time to test your content, at least test subject lines. Usually, you should aim for around three email tests.

Always Personalize: According to Campaign Monitor, on average, emails with personalized subject lines are 26% more likely to be opened. Additionally, according to Aberdeen, personalized email messages improve click-through rates by an average of 14% and conversions by 10%.

Keep Content to the Landing Page: Always remember the average reading span of an email is around 11 seconds. Hence, you want to tease readers to actually click and then redirect to your landing page, with few exceptions (personal emails.) House the rest of your content on your landing page instead of your emails.

What other email tips do you have? I’d love to hear about them in the comments.

The post 5 Emails to Send to Your Customers—and How to Send Them appeared first on Marketo Marketing Blog - Best Practices and Thought Leadership.

When email first gained popularity about twenty plus years ago, the business world quickly realized its value. Sending nearly instantaneous messages to colleagues they could read at their convenience was a major time saver.

Of course, over time email systems have evolved and changed beyond just sending a simple message to someone. But as wonderful as email is, our reliance on it has brought some inefficiencies to light.

Obviously the common worker can’t do anything about what may be lacking in the email application itself. Nevertheless, if you’d like to make your emails more effective, there are ways you can.

Problem: Checking Email Too Frequently

One of the first problems to address with email inefficiency is checking email too frequently. Like other workers, you’re probably in near constant communication with others. Computers, cell phones and other electronic devices are always close by making messaging simple and convenient.

In fact, depending on your settings, email notifications may pop up every few minutes. Therefore, stopping to check each one really interferes with work flow and productivity.

Reading the email, responding, and then completing related duties takes time. But so does switching back and forth between different apps and thought processes.

Every time you pause to look at your phone or computer valuable time is wasted. This is true regardless of whether the emails are work related or personal.

Fix: Schedule Email “Breaks”

To fix the problem of checking email too frequently, you can schedule email breaks. Unless you are waiting on an urgent email, don’t check it each time you hear a notification.

As an alternative, try checking your email at periodic intervals instead. Suppose that you check your email the moment you arrive at work. Once you have addressed what needs to be handled, put your phone down until mid-morning.

After checking your phone again during a morning email break, lay it aside until lunch. Address new emails in the middle of the afternoon and again at the end of the day.

Understandably, this plan will not work for everyone. Still, taking an approach such as this makes your emails more effective and lets you get more done.

Problem: Sending Long, Unorganized Emails

Have you ever read an email from someone that was a long, repetitive, disorganized mess? Don’t let your emails mirror theirs.

When your emails are not to the point it wastes your time writing them. The person receiving them may not appreciate their length either.

On the other hand, some emails are too short and missing information. When this happens the receiver may trash your email or it could hit spam and not be seen at all.

Fix: Organize Your Thoughts

These days, time is money and being productive can mean keeping your job. Therefore, you must save time wherever you can and make sure your important emails get read.

Before sending an email to someone, take just a moment to organize your thoughts. If you need to, make it in a numbered list format with short explanations for each point.

Make sure you include a subject line and that your email address is correct. Believe it or not, taking those extra seconds or minutes will save you time in the long run. You’ll spend less time rambling or resending emails as a result.

Problem: Taking Too Much Time During Email Breaks

Taking email breaks at regular intervals, as mentioned above, can help you be more efficient. But it won’t really help if your email breaks are 30 minutes or more.

When you spend that much time sifting through emails it cuts into time needed to do more productive work. This could lead to you being labeled as a procrastinator or lazy at the very least. At the worst you could be passed over for promotions or even eventually fired.

While that may sound drastic, if emails get out of hand, other work can get pushed aside. That would turn what sounds ridiculous into a very real problem.

Fix: Set a Reminder or Timer

Do you use your calendar to its full potential? If not you may be missing out on time savings. Additionally, when it comes to email you can manage it better using your calendar.

Block 15 minutes intervals mid-morning, at lunchtime, mid-afternoon, and the end of the day. Set reminders to go off and alert you of your email appointment, so to speak. Create another reminder to get back to other tasks after the 15 minutes is up.

Another thought is to set an old fashioned timer or use your cell phone. No matter which option you choose setting up time constraints will make your emails more effective. It will also keep you moving through emails faster allowing you to be more productive.

Problem: Emails Stress You Out

For some people, hearing email notifications and not responding to them is stressful. They feel they must take care of each email immediately no matter how trivial.

But this can cause stress in other ways too. It puts you on call 24 hours a day and doesn’t allow you to truly relax during off hours.

Everyone needs to disconnect and rejuvenate so they are ready to work the next day. If not, your work will begin to suffer and you may be tired and irritable.

Fix: Turn Off Notification During Off Hours

To make your work and emails more effective turn off your notifications during off hours. This lets you get the rest you need so you can respond quickly and effectively the next day.

If you don’t give yourself downtime you run the risk of burning out at work. This won’t help you, your business or employer, or loved ones who may depend on you.

Problem: Repetitive Responses

Repeating the same responses, even if to different people, can be annoying. If you find this happening to you, typing out those emails feels like a waste of time.

There’s a reason for that: It actually is a waste of time.

Fix: Canned Email Responses

You can make your emails more effective and answer them quicker using canned email responses. Anytime you can take time to automate with email it will make emails more effective and faster.

Take the time to explore the settings and options available with your email system. You may be able to set up processes that save tons of time and get you through emails faster.

Problem: Lack of Response from Receiver

At times, waiting for a response on an email you’ve sent can be frustrating. When you need an answer quickly it’s even worse.

Waiting on other people can put a halt to projects until answers are received. But that doesn’t mean you can’t do something about it.

Fix: Send Follow-up Emails

When you aren’t getting answer to emails you send, consider sending follow-up emails. Make them attention grabbing, positive, and to the point to get a better response.

If you must send a large quantity of emails it may help you to create a tracking spreadsheet. This way you can document when and to whom emails have been sent.

Clearly emails are a popular and efficient way of communicating. That being said, there are ways to make your emails more effective so you can be successful. If you want to be the most productive and efficient worker possible, use these tips to make your emails more effective.

There’s one thing I hate about email marketing copy: You never know how it’s going to perform until the campaign goes live. What seemed like a rock-star line of copy could become the campaign’s kiss of death.

Sure, you can A/B test every element of each email all month, but taking that time means you’ll probably start losing leads. Fortunately, I’ve taken that route and want to share with you some valuable copywriting techniques that have bolstered the performance of my emails.

For 59% of surveyed B2B marketers, email is the best channel for generating revenue, likely because the majority of the audience voluntarily opted to receive the brand’s emails, indicating an interest in the company and its products or services.

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59% of surveyed B2B marketers say #email is the best channel for generating revenue via @adage. #BtoBMagazine
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Given the value of email and my experience testing what works better, here are eight email copywriting methods to help you successfully transform your prospects and leads into customers.

1. Write a minimum of 3 email versions

One of the biggest problems I’ve encountered is the inclination to create an email quickly, assume it checks all the boxes, and accept the first draft as your final draft.

Here’s how I approach writing new marketing emails:

• Write a rough draft.
• Use it to create two variations.
• Create a more refined, targeted third draft.
• Evaluate the need for additional drafts.

If you aren’t excited about the final draft, your audience won’t be either. Keep revising until you craft one you’re sure will convert prospects.

2. Start email structure with a headline

Many marketers forget that the email structure controls the flow of information – telling prospects how to read the email and interpret the information. Properly structuring the email is necessary to hold the recipients’ interest and have them view content in a desired order.

A headline at the top of the email can be the best way to grab your prospects’ attention and get them to follow through with your desired action (i.e., clicking the CTA and making a purchase).

I like to formulate headlines that intrigue and compel prospects to convert.

Always place the headline at the very top of your email. You never want to place it below a line (or several lines) of copy because your prospect will immediately read the headline and ignore the copy above. Structure your emails to mimic a natural reading flow: top-to-bottom and left-to-right.

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Always place a headline at top of your #email, says @BArailrunner. #writingtips
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Here are a few eye-catching headlines I’ve used in successful cart abandonment emails:

• Your shopping cart is lonely.
• You left some items in your cart.
• We’re holding your items for you.
• One less lonely shopping cart.
• Good news! Your shopping cart items are still available.
• Was there a problem during checkout?

3. Don’t worry about the length

Length is an irrelevant consideration when you’re creating a stellar email. What matters is the substance of your writing. If you can convey your message in two short paragraphs but spread it over seven paragraphs, that’s a problem.

Email copy needs to conform to the message, not the other way around. The message always comes first, otherwise, your recipients won’t have a clue what to do with your email.

Say enough to motivate prospects to take your desired action. The more focused your email is the better.

Sometimes prospects need a little more information and encouragement to convert. Focus on the prospect. That’s the bottom line. Forget about trimming your writing to fit above the fold. That doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is outweighing purchase hesitations with benefits that drive prospects to convert.

4. Make it about the recipient

Believe it or not, using first-, second- or third-person nouns can make a huge difference on how your prospects react.

Choose which line of email copy you would respond to the best:

• We’re always looking for ways to improve, so please don’t hesitate to contact us and let us know how we can help.
• Don’t hesitate to let us know if you have any questions or feedback we can use to improve your experience.

The first line focuses on the email sender (i.e., the company) using pronouns like “we’re” “us,” and “we.” The second line focuses on the prospect using language like “you” and “your.”

Create marketing emails that are about the prospect and not the brand.

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Create #emails about the prospect, not the brand. Use second-person language via @CampaignMonitor. #writingtips
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Some simple rules to follow:

• Use forms of second-person (i.e., you) and similar language.
• Avoid making your brand the focus by using first-person or other self-focused language.
• Use the prospect’s name when appropriate.
• Focus on being helpful.

5. Follow CTA best practices

The internet is flooded with CTA best-practice recommendations, but I’m focusing on the four most important ones:

Use only one CTA button

Don’t force your prospects to choose between two or more actions. Keep their attention focused on one thing. Just as cart abandonment emails have one purpose – to get prospects to purchase – each CTA button should have one objective – getting your prospects to click.

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Use only 1 CTA button in an #email. Don’t force prospects to choose b/n 2 actions. @BArailrunner #writingtips
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Include secondary CTAs only as linked text

There’s nothing wrong with having a secondary CTA, but it can’t be a button. Write your second CTA copy within a sentence and hyperlink. Always put the secondary CTA in a smaller font than the primary button CTA.

Focus on what the prospect is getting, not what they’re doing

Don’t use a CTA to tell prospects what they’re doing, tell them what they’re getting. Saying “Download now” is a waste of copy. Conveying a benefit or end result, such as “Increase conversions by 10%,” is more compelling.

Place the main CTA toward the end of the email

Structure every aspect of your email to encourage prospects to advance through to making a purchase. Placing your CTA at the end of your message can have the best impact because you’ve created a captivating argument in the main body that helps overcome purchase hesitations. The CTA is the final blow that pushes them to click and complete a purchase.

6. Use the bucket brigade copywriting method

Ever watch an old movie that shows a house fire? The characters form a human train, passing buckets of water person to person until the final member hurls the water onto the blaze. That’s a bucket brigade.

The bucket brigade copywriting method grabs your readers’ attention and moves the reader through the copy – it holds their attention long enough to convey a complete message.

Here’s how it works:

• Create a line of copy that grabs attention and promises a resolution.
• Provide a resolution.
• Create another attention-grabbing line of copy that again promises a resolution.
• Provide a resolution.
• Repeat.

Check out this example:

 

In this content marketing guide from Quick Sprout, you can see the bucket brigade copywriting technique in practice – a bold headline followed by a resolution, followed by another bold headline with another resolution.

Want to know a secret?

I used the bucket brigade copywriting method throughout this article. Here are some successful bucket brigade copywriting elements for your marketing emails to hold interest and move prospects further down the sales funnel:

• Use subheadings that build curiosity (questions and statements followed by a colon work well).
• Use bullets to convey interesting information that resolves your headings.
• Include images and graphics that resolve headings.

The goal is to get prospects to read your entire email and hold their interest long enough to earn a conversion. Start forming your own brigade with buckets of effective copy.

7. Create amazing subject lines

A great subject line is the most important aspect influencing your email open rates. Nailing a catchy subject line is vital to the success of your campaign.

Here are five subject-line tactics that lead to exceptional open rates:

• Avoid ho-hum messaging in favor of unique, flavorful copy.
• Personalize when appropriate.
• Think outside the box and surprise when possible.
• Length matters – stay under 65 characters.
• Create a sense of urgency or interest.

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Successful #email marketing includes subject lines under 65 characters, says @BArailrunner. #writingtips
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Generic subject lines are boring. Don’t settle for a subpar subject line. It’s safe to say I go through seven to 10 iterations before finding an appropriate subject line style and tone. Then I make another five to 10 iterations before I’ve got one I’m happy with.

Make as many new versions as you need to feel 100% satisfied with your work.

Look at these subject-line examples:

• Bad: Complete your purchase now before we run out of inventory!
• Good: Did you forget to finish your order?
• Good: Your items are still available. Complete your purchase now.

The first one sounds desperate. You might as well say, “Please come back and buy from us!” The second and third examples work for several reasons. They:

• Ask a question that makes prospects take notice
• Sound friendly and helpful
• Create a sense of urgency without being overbearing

Focus on creating subject lines that convey the meaning of your email and incorporate some sense of curiosity.

8. Phrase questions so prospects are compelled to agree

This is one of the most valuable copywriting tactics you’ll learn and it’s conveyed best through an example.

Let’s say you sell office supplies and are trying to convert prospects who loaded up their shopping carts with back-to-school supplies before abandoning your website. You’re building an email campaign that targets cart abandonments and have a list of four questions you could include in your first email:

• Do you still want your back-to-school items?
• Do you want to save money on back-to-school supplies?
• Are you ready to complete your purchase?
• Want to complete your back-to-school supply shopping in one trip?

OK, now let’s go back through each question and determine if your prospects would agree with an emphatic “yes.”

• Do you still want your back-to-school items? – no
• Do you want to save money on back-to-school supplies? – yes
• Are you ready to complete your purchase? – no
• Want to complete your back-to-school supply shopping in one trip? – yes

The first question offers no motivation for your prospect to answer yes.

The second question is a yes. Every prospect wants to save money.

The third question is another no. It doesn’t indicate any benefit for the prospect.

The final question implies convenience that most prospects would find appealing and answer with a yes.

Every time you include a question in your email copy, ask if the prospect will agree. If not, delete and start again.

If you can get prospects to agree with you once, it becomes easier to convert them. Deep down they begin to feel that you “get” them and their barriers to purchasing begin to deteriorate.

Putting it all together

That’s a lot of information. But, if you’re able to implement these methods into your next email campaign you’ll be pleasantly surprised with the results.

Just remember, never settle for the first attempt, focus on the prospect, employ smart copywriting techniques, and get prospects to agree with you and follow a predetermined flow of actions.

Hitting all those marks will result in an email marketing campaign that successfully boosts your conversion rates.

Do you want to be a better content marketer? Improve your knowledge and skills? Register for Content Marketing World and gather insight from over 100 presenters. Make plans today to be in Cleveland Sept. 4-7. Use code BLOG100 to save $100.

Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

The post 8 Copywriting Techniques to Boost Email Conversions appeared first on Content Marketing Institute.

No matter which way you skin it, an efficient sales process is what fuels the high-growth B2B companies.

Product planning, marketing funnels and sales enablement will only get you so far — after that, it’s all about scaling the sales machine. You need to reach the right prospects, fill your pipeline with quality leads, and eventually turn those folks into paying customers.

According to OpenView Partners, the fastest growing companies can attribute 51% of annual revenue to inside sales efforts, compared to just 16% from self-service:

(Source)

This is why companies obsess over building and optimizing large sales teams and processes. If done correctly, it can catapult the bottom line.

But, as you’ll see in this article, many businesses get it wrong. And, it all starts with marketing efforts that fill the top of the funnel with poor quality leads:

Or, put another way, poor lead qualification.

Every time a sales rep interacts with an unqualified lead, you’re losing money.

Sure, there are literally billions of leads out there, but only a fraction of them are qualified.

It is the responsibility of the marketing team to generate as many qualified leads as possible for the sales team.

Leads should:

• Have enough money to afford your solution
• Have the authority to say “Yes, let’s buy this”, not “Um, I’ll have to check with my boss”
• Be aware they need a solution like yours to solve their pain
• Be going to buy soon — not when they’ve raised a seed round in 2 years time

Like most things in the strange science of B2B selling, this isn’t set in stone; a lead that isn’t going to buy now could be persuaded by content or a sales demo that agitates their pain points.

A lead that’s halfway down a competitor’s funnel could be hooked into yours with a tasty piece of “bait”.

Content saturation and more educated buyers aren’t the only things making the sales process more difficult to manage. A 2016 study found that the average group size involved in B2B buying decisions is 6.8, up 25% from 5.4 just 18 months previous.

It’s essential to understand that the mindsets and business situations of individual leads evolve over time. They evolve as their business grows, as they evaluate solutions, and as they are nurtured by your content.

To visualize this dynamic, we say that buyers are on a journey. Specifically, the journey from lead prospect marketing qualified lead (MQL) sales qualified lead (SQL):

(Source)

Leads are the people behind your CRM data. The names and email addresses that made it into your database through marketing, prospecting, or otherwise. A list of leads is like a Californian river in the 1850s — mostly silt and gunk, but with chunks of pure gold. You’ve got to pan that river to find prospects.

Prospects are leads with the kind of problems/ challenges you can help with. For a lead to qualify as a prospect, you must have proof they at least have a need for your product or service. That could be directly ascertained through a sales call (making them an SQL), or if they’ve offered that information through your marketing channels (making them a MQL).

MQLs are leads that have shown direct interest in your product/service through a specific marketing channel.

Maybe someone signed up for an ebook that explains how to solve their problems with your product. Maybe they’ve been on your email list for a while, and have been nurtured by your content. It’s not certain if they’re ready to buy yet, but you have enough information to infer they are the right kind of person to target.

SQLs are the leads that have been qualified by sales. They have the budget, and they’re ready to hand it over.

The reason it’s useful to divide leads up into these categories is because you need to approach them differently depending on their stage of the buyer’s journey.

To put it simply:

• MQLs need to be nurtured. The likelihood of an MQL becoming a customer is not as high as that of an SQL; to move them through the funnel, they need content that aligns with their business pains, agitates the problem, and introduces your product as the solution. This can take a while, especially in the B2B setting.
• SQLs need to be pushed to the point of sale. An SQL is a golden opportunity — the lifeblood of your sales team. They need calls and emails from sales, invitations to bottom-funnel webinars, and access to sales enablement material like competitor comparisons, fact sheets and demos.

(Source)

The importance of qualifying a lead before they are handed off to sales

As many as 79% of all marketing leads are never converted to sales. To put that in perspective, imagine how much prep work your company did to get an MQL. And now imagine that only 21% of it was worth spending money on.

Hurts, doesn’t it?

According to Steven Tulman, 67% of your lost sales come from sales reps not qualifying leads properly before going ahead with the rest of the sales process — and even after all that wasted effort, just 27% will actually end up qualified:

(Source)

It’s no surprise, either — only 56% of companies have systems for qualifying marketing leads! If you’re part of that 56%, putting a qualification system in place instantly puts you out of reach of your competition because you’re laser-focused on the leads that will make money while they’re stuck chasing dead ends.

And when I say “stuck chasing dead ends”, I really do mean it. Teleprospecters — who work through a list of unqualified leads — make between 100 and 500 calls for every one lead they qualify. That’s a grim success rate of between 0.2% and 1%.

By making calls to qualified leads instead, your process is 10-50x more efficient.

Qualifying Leads: 7 Step to Screening out the SQLs

Understand your buyer profile

“71% of companies who exceed revenue and lead goals have documented personas vs. 37% who simply meet goals and 26% who miss them” — Cintell, Understanding B2B Buyers 2016 Benchmark Study

Your buyer profiles are a set theoretical model that represent different types of ideal customers.

Who are they? What do they want? What industry are they in, and what position? What is their pain?

(Source)

By defining your buyer personas, you can make accurate assumptions about how to approach a lead and make the qualification process much easier — if the leads you’re generating don’t match the persona, they can be disqualified without any further wasted time and money.

Here’s some of what goes into a buyer persona (depending on what you’re selling you might want more specific criteria or guidelines):

• Company size
• Job title
• Age
• Gender
• Budget
• Main challenge / goal
• How your business helps with this
• Personal values
• Fears
• Motivators
• Pet peeves
• Common objections
• Information sources

If you have documented buyer personas, check them against the MQLs and SQLs that actually end up converting — do they match?

Understand the lead scoring model

When you’re working with big lists of leads, it’s not scalable to describe how qualified they are in freeform terms — how do you search and filter without structured data? You need to be attaching metrics that signify how qualified a lead is.

(Source)

Most modern CRMs give you the ability to centralize sales and marketing data, and interpret that data for any sizes a lead may convert — these signs can be generalized into rules which form your lead scoring model.

For example:

(Source)

How to build a lead scoring model

A lead scoring model isn’t something you can knock out overnight, nor can you just grab someone else’s and apply it to your business. It needs to be built on top of historical data, such as:

• The behavior of past deals and current opportunities
• The specific interactions with your marketing material a lead had before converting
• The sales campaigns that touched your converted prospects
• An informed combination of everything above, weighted by importance

(Source)

By analyzing the patterns and common trends in behavior of your customers prior to the point of conversion, you can create a template to judge whether or not a completely different lead will also convert.

Of course, you’re making assumptions, but these assumptions are far more calculated than the leaps of faith you’d have to make without a lead scoring system in place.

A tool like MadKudu can help you turn dry data into actionable insights based on the rules you set, and predictive analysis.

For more information on creating your own lead scoring model, check out this article.

Understand Interest vs. Intent

The difference between interest and intent is the difference between a genuine opportunity and what sales would mistakenly label as an ‘opportunity’ in the CRM.

A lead could be super qualified in every other way, but if the intent to purchase isn’t there, you’re either going to need to do more work to change their motivation or disqualify them.

(Source)

As the graphic above demonstrates, a prospect with intent behaves differently to one with interest.

It could be looked at as the difference between a lead that engages with 20 pieces of top-funnel content vs. one that has visited your pricing page 5 times.

A shallow view would be that the former lead is more qualified because of the higher engagement numbers, but really all they’re doing is research and you don’t know if that’s anything to get excited about. Returning repeatedly to the pricing page, however, is a strong signal of intent to buy.

Understand whether your services or expertise can solve the problem or help a prospect reach their goals

Is whatever you’re selling a good fit for a particular company, department, or individual?

(Source)

Each layer of the onion has different motivations, goals, fears, and needs — you need a framework so you can efficiently identify a good or bad fit, and also know how to sell with regard to these factors.

This is achieved through understanding how your product solves a specific problem, and in what way.

For example, this buyer persona example from Hucace clearly outlines the goals and challenges of their ideal customer:

(Source)

With a resource like that, Hucace can instantly make the distinction between a lead that needs their product and one that could do without it. It all comes back to creating good buyer personas.

Understand the decision-making process

The increased availability of content, comparisons, and online marketplaces has loosened sales’ grip on the buyer — 57% of sales professionals report that customers are now less dependent on salespeople for decision-making than they were just 2 or 3 years ago.

(Source)

There has been a pendulum shift – the buyer now has the power in the sales process.

Forrester research indicates that 74% of business buyers conduct more than half of their research online. This emphasizes the importance of content marketing, sales enablement, and lead nurturing campaigns.

During the pre-purchase evaluation phase, B2B buyers are impacted by the following:

• Rational motivations of the company. This is how your solution aligns with the buyer’s organizational goals. Considerations include ROI and strategic importance.
• Rational motivations of the individual. This is how your solution will change the life of the individual decision-maker. Individuals want to make their job easier, and be better at it.
• Emotional motivations of the company. This is how attuned your solution is to the brand and ethos of the buyer. You wouldn’t catch The Rainforest Alliance stocking up on break room coffee that was farmed unsustainably, for example.
• Emotional motivations of the individual. This is how your solution has the potential to make the individual feel good and look good to their boss.

How many people are involved?

According to Gartner, a typical company with 100-500 employees involves an average of 7 people in buying decisions. This is corroborated by Harvard Business Review:

“The number of people involved in B2B solutions purchases has climbed from an average of 5.4 two years ago to 6.8 today, and these stakeholders come from a lengthening roster of roles, functions, and geographies.

This increased group size increases friction. Each individual has their own priorities and motivations:

(Source)

To accommodate for larger group sizes, it’s helpful to gain access to more than one contact in an organization and have a robust set of personas prepared that account for other people being involved in the buying decision.

B2B buyer cycles are much more complex — create content for every stage of the funnel

In a connected world with 2,000,000 pieces of content created daily, buyers have more information, more choice, and more complex buyer journeys than ever before.

What was once a 3, 5, or 20-horse race is now a free-for-all, with your customer’s limited attention split between more competitors and channels.

Smart businesses use this to their advantage by creating strategic content across the entire funnel, and adjusting their sales processes to account for leads at different parts of the journey (like you’re seeking to do by reading this article):

(Source)

Help your prospects realize they have a problem they need to solve by publishing awareness-generating content at the top of the funnel.

Help your prospects during the evaluation stage by providing fact sheets and competitor comparisons.

Help your prospects see the value of your product/service by providing interactive demos and tools to calculate the potential ROI.

Understand the right questions to ask

While some of lead qualification process can be done with automation, most of the work is done by salespeople getting leads on the phone and asking them questions.

Which are the right questions to ask? Here are some of the basics to consider. (Bear in mind that we’re going to look at some pre-made question frameworks later on that you can use in your business.)

• How much are you looking to spend on a solution? Companies that don’t have the budget to afford your solution should be immediately disqualified. If you’re bringing in a ton of leads that don’t have the budget, consider reevaluating the company size you are targeting in your marketing personas.
• What do you want [product] for the most? Their #1 use case will make their #1 pain point obvious, and this will tell you whether the lead is qualified or not based on whether you can meet that need or solve that pain.
• How have you tried to solve the problem so far? This question offers insight as to where they are in the buyer’s journey, further determining the need for your product. You also get insight into which other products they have evaluated.
• What happens if you do nothing about the problem? This gives you an idea as to what’s at stake. Are they burning through money with their current solution and getting low return? If the lead doesn’t seem too worried about the current state they’re in, likelihood of a sale could be low.
• Who would be the key decision-makers involved in a purchase decision like this? This question has three benefits. First, it lets you know how much friction you can expect in the sales process ahead. Second, it gives you an idea about the decision-making authority of the contact you have right now. And, importantly, it gives you a point to ask to be put in touch with others in the group.

Understand how to best capture the information

Interactive tools

Interactive tools like quizzes, calculators and assessments provide a great vehicle to automate part of the lead qualification process.

Think of it this way: as a user is working through an assessment, they’re providing you with a wealth of info like company size, buyer journey stage, budget, or anything you can think to ask that would help you decide if they’re a fit.

Leads can be qualified or disqualified at any stage of the funnel, and there are different kinds of interactive content you can use to facilitate the process:

Let’s look at some specific examples of interactive content that powers lead qualification at every stage of the funnel.

Top-funnel interactive campaigns

Accessible, general-interest campaigns work well for top-funnel lead qualification:

Above is an example of an interactive assessment created by Curulate on SnapApp. It’s fun to use, but in reality the user is providing vital qualifying informationo, such as whether their marketing is currently being constrained by budget, time, metrics, or their team.

The last step is a lead capture form, which sends personal information to the CRM along with a ton of information that helps qualify or disqualify them.

The company and work email fields allow the CRM to get details that enrich the lead’s profile with company size and location — all useful data points that help with qualification without explicitly requesting the fields and increasing friction.

Middle-funnel interactive campaigns

In the words of Kapost, middle-funnel campaigns seek to “align a buyer’s needs to relevant products or features, gauge a prospect’s readiness to buy, and move the right people closer to purchase”.

At this stage, interactive content that introduces product features and has questions about the lead’s budget and timeframe would be ideal.

One type of interactive content that fit this criteria is assessments:

This support benchmark assessment from Five9 — which plays on the user’s competitive curiosity — judges the lead’s readiness to buy based on their pain.

A user with a low score or disappointing metrics is more ready to do something about their problem, than one who scores well.

Bottom-funnel interactive campaigns

Bottom-funnel leads need a little push before they convert.

This ROI calculator from HubSpot is the ultimate bottom-funnel campaign, showing a convincing hard-cash argument to prospective HubSpot customers that are ready to buy:

After collecting information that can easily qualify a lead’s business (and disqualify businesses with too little income to afford the solution), HubSpot shows professional charts and hard data that relate to your exact business situation.

If you’re looking for more inspiration, here are 28 other examples of B2B companies using interactive content to streamline their lead qualification process.

Top channels

With the help of an analytics platform and some basic attribution models, you can unpack the buyer journey and analyze common paths to purchase.

(Source)

Which channels drive your most qualified leads? Which channels are most effective at nurturing them, and which act as the final touchpoint prior to conversion?

Marketing attribution is a weighty topic, explored in-depth in this article.

Automate the lead qualification process

According to Datanyze, most lead qualification is done 100% manually – 22% of salespeople still don’t know what CRM is while 40% still use informal methods like spreadsheets.

Qualifying every lead by hand is wasteful, and that waste compounds if the quality of MQLs drops.

Lead qualification can be automated with sales software, as B2B SaaS company Lengow did in this case study. In the study, Lengow uses Hull and Datanyze to add enriched data to leads that request a demo, and then send a notification to Slack for every qualified request.

This meant tat Lengow was able to close leads faster, combating the 50% drop off in response rates they found when taking longer than two hours to follow up.

You can also automate the collection of data such as company size, job title, and goals by simply including these as required fields on lead forms, like Freshbooks has for this gated ebook:

Many CRMs also allow you to automatically enrich lead data from sources like Google and LinkedIn, which can fill in the gaps automatically and save salespeople spending a lot of time on manual prospect research.

Here’s an example of that in Pipedrive:

With enriched data, you can set rules to determine what that lead is worth.

For example:

A lead with 1,000,000 employees might be super qualified for an enterprise SaaS product, but that same lead would be a waste of time for a younger product that isn’t fully compliant with enterprise restrictions — these criteria can be used to automatically disqualify leads before they have the chance to waste the salesperson’s time.

Time-Tested Lead Qualification Frameworks

While every business is unique, each buyer can be broken down to a set of data points – budget, authority, challenges, timing etc.

There are many frameworks that help salespeople extract these data points. Let’s take a look at the two big ones — BANT and MEDDIC.

BANT

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First devised by IBM sales teams, BANT stands for:

• Budget. How much is the prospect able to spend on a solution? Can they afford it?
• Authority. Does the contact have the authority to buy, or will you need to get approval?
• Needs. Do the needs of your prospect match the capabilities of your solution?
• Timeframe. How quickly do they need a solution?

While the birds-eye view of BANT makes it seem simple and rigid, each criterium can be determined with questions that match your specific business.

For example, Process Street has open-sourced the actual BANT sales process they use internally.

You can see how it can be expanded upon, and even automated:

MEDDIC

(Source)

MEDDIC was developed at Parametric Technology Corporation by the sales development team in the 90s. The firm had a reputation of one of the high tech world’s most successful sales teams, according to Sales Meddic:

After the sales teams adopted the MEDDIC qualification process, sales grew from $300 million to $1 Billion and PTC met or exceeded revenue targets every quarter for 5 straight years.

MEDDIC stands for:

• Metrics. Which metrics is the prospect looking to impact with a solution? What would constitute a successful implementation?
• Economic buyer. Does the contact have the authority to make a final “yes” or “no” decision. If not, who does?
• Decision criteria. Are there any legal, technical, compliance-related, or budgetary constraints that could get in the way of purchase?
• Decision process. What is the timeline and process from here to a sale? How many people are involved, and when can we expect events to move along?
• Identify pain. What is the consequence of doing nothing? Why did you start looking for a solution?
• Champion. Is this contact going to influence others to purchase?

According to HubSpot, MEDDIC is best suited to complex enterprise sales, while BANT is more general-purpose.

Red Flags in the Lead Qualification Process

Red flags can differ depending on your business model, but here are some real-life examples that could apply to your qualification process.

Software sales rep Yevgeny Kedrun says the #1 red flag is when a prospect doesn’t want to get on the phone.

“I never had a client with whom I didn’t have at least 5 minutes phone chat”.

Similarly, PureB2B executive president Johanna Rivard says the most common red flags can be boiled down to unreliable communication.

Dodged calls, missed meetings, and repeated reschedules are all signs the prospect simply isn’t committed enough to buy:

“When this happens, try to connect with the prospect one last time. Get feedback about why they keep canceling to try to remedy the situation. But, should they cancel again, maybe it’s time to move on. This isn’t the type of client you want to be working with.”

Another big warning sign — and one that could be fatal to the deal — is an unwillingness to discuss pricing and budget. This is likely because the lead doesn’t have the authority to decide on budget, or because the lead isn’t planning on spending anything.

Ready. Set. Close.

This crash course will have equipped you with everything you need to know to qualify leads, identify star prospects, and filter out the time-wasters.

You know the difference between SQLs and MQLs, how to decode a lead’s information to make an informed judgement, and how to automate the qualification process. That’s everything you need to improve the efficiency of your business’ sales systems.

However, the best attitude to lead qualification is one of continuous improvement.

As your business grows, your marketing strategies will evolve, and the market conditions will change — your lead scoring model will need to adapt with them.

The more your lead scoring model is informed by the data and sales reports you gather, the more time your sales team will be able to spend on the phone with the right people.

Focusing on lead qualification has compounding returns. Analyze more data, dial in the sales process, and get better results.

Sales enablement tools can improve the performance of your sales department, enhance productivity and boost your revenue.

76% of marketers responsible for content forget about the benefits of sales enablement. However, companies with strong Sales and Marketing alignment can achieve up to a 20% annual growth rate, compared to companies with a poor alignment that face 4% annual revenue loss.

If you’re ready to automate your sales processes to achieve even greater results, you need to understand your prospects and customers and be ready to implement sales enablement best practices (i.e., tools and strategy) when communicating with your customers.

In this article, let’s talk about the 7 sales enablement tools you should be using to drive significant sales results in your business.

1. Attach.io

Attach.io is a sales enablement tool that enables you to identify your most engaged leads and close more deals.

This case scenario explains how Attach.io works:

You have been talking to a prospect and they tell you to send your proposal or document over. You send it via email, excited. But then other worries set in.

Will they check your document or was it just an attempt to get you off their back? Will they pass the document on to other decision-makers in the company?

How would you like to eliminate these worries? Well, this is what Attach.io does for you. It helps you to track if your document was opened, what pages were checked, and the time spent on each page of the document.

With this, you can gain insights into how engaged they are with your proposal. You can also know if they’re checking the most important parts of the document that you want them to.

According to Marketing Sherpa, only 27% of leads are sales-ready. It’s important to detect the sales-ready leads before selling to them.

That’s not all. You can also know if your document has been passed around and to how many people. This can give you information to determine when and how to follow up with your prospects.

Base, a CRM software company uses Attach for real-time notifications; it helps them to follow up on their prospects via phone calls at the ideal time.

2. Unboxed Advisor

To help you sell your complicated products, Unboxed Advisor has five technologies that make life easier for your sales reps.

It offers interactive demos which explains the important features of your product through a simple and visual channel.

Its guided selling tool gives your sales reps recommendations about actions to take while guiding the customers through the purchase process. This makes your sales reps more effective and most importantly, improve customer satisfaction.

Below is an example of an interactive app Advisor built for Samsung to guide its sales reps.

Unboxed Advisor also has a content library which replaces the traditional brochure. This provides all the important information that sales reps may need while trying to sell to a potential customer. The library also has the important documents that a sales rep may need to share with prospects.

Its powerful reporting tool helps you track what happens during the sales process. What are the questions your customers have about your product? What other related product can you recommend to them?

It has a lightweight CRM that allows you to manage relationships with your customers.

Apart from these, Unboxed Advisor makes all these even easier as it allows you to use the tool offline. You can sync all the information you enter when you go online.

You can also use it on your mobile device. It serves as a training tool especially for new sales reps who are still inexperienced about handling customers.

Unboxed Advisor claims its tool increase your year-on-year sales by up to 60% and rep productivity by up to 40%.

Interestingly, this was the result Comcast achieved when it used the sales enablement tool.

3. Bambu

Bambu gives you a platform where your employees can share the right content for your customers at the right time to various social media channels. Employee advocacy is an important part of sales, today. That’s why 31% of high-growth firms have a plan in place to exploit it.

Why? Because an average person spends over an hour on various social media platforms daily. People are also 16 times more likely to read a post from a friend than a brand. Brand messages get reshared 24 times more when shared by employees vs when shared by brand.

This makes these platforms an opportunity for your employees to reach more of your customers. Apart from giving you brand exposure to quality leads, Bambu also improves internal communication and engage your workforce.

Through social selling, you can gain quality leads and increase conversions. You can also recruit talents for your business and improve the satisfaction of current employees by sharing engaging content via these social platforms.

Bambu has built-in tools for social engagement and gives insights through the analytics of your content on social media.

By leveraging Bambu, BlueGrace Logistics got 3 million impressions and 180%+ increase in Web traffic.

4. Atomic Reach

Atomic Reach is a powerful tool that delivers AI-empowered deep understanding of what makes your content unique, relevant, and successful, and guides you on how to perfect it.

In other words, it helps you to get the best out of your blog and social media engagement data.

The Atomic Reach writer uses machine learning software to help you write content that will convey your brand message clearly to your blog readers and social media followers.

To use this tool, write or paste your content into the editor. After this, pick your audience.

Calculate the rating of your content. If the score exceeds the atomic reach score of your target audience, you’re good to go. You can also make other changes like reducing paragraph density, changing ambiguous words, and so on.

The Scheduler uses the smart blog post sharing software to distribute your articles on social media at the right time for maximum engagement. It uses statistics about how your audience has interacted with your content in the past, to pick the best time.

Its intelligent insights dashboard helps to track post performance and use predictive analytics to make changes to your content. This helps you to get a better result from your content.

5. Sitecore

Sitecore helps you to deliver a personalized experience to your customers on your website. You can create and manage communities like forums and blogs to engage your customers more.

With details like page views per visit, bounce rate, monetary value per visit, conversion rate, etc. you can get insights into your prospect’s behavior.

Sitecore also detects your prospect’s device automatically to deliver the best experience to them on your website. You can register a campaign at its beginning and track the conversions.

This tool helps to make your website ready to convert as many prospects as possible.

When L’Oréal decided to use Sitecore as its digital platform, it had a unified, consistent digital presence across all brands and reduced page load time from 7 seconds to below 3 seconds.

6. Crazy Egg

Many times you optimize a page due to an assumption that most customers will visit the page and spend more time on it. But your assumption may be wrong and they may dwell on another page instead.

Crazy Egg takes the assumptions out of your decision-making process. With its heat map, you can see the most engaged sections of your website. This information helps you to optimize the busiest pages to convert more visitors.

You’ll also get the information of where your visitors are coming from and other information about your visitors in one report. You can perform A/B tests with elements on your website to know the ones with the best performance.

You can also record the mouse movements of visitors on your website. This gives you the insight of how visitors navigate your website. You get to know the portions of your website or post that has the highest engagement.

This helps you to analyze the content on your website and write posts that have a better chance of converting your prospects to customers.

Conversion rate experts got 25% more opt-ins through the use of CrazyEgg.

7. Agile CRM

Agile CRM has many features that can make your sales process as easy and effective as possible. These features include adding contacts for sales enablement, adding tags and filters, appointment scheduling, email sync, calendar sync, and deals.

You can add your prospect’s contact information manually or import as a CSV file or sync from another app. It’s a simple way to have prospects’ information in one place and make it easier to track.

You can also tag a single contact or a group as you need to.

With appointment scheduling, you can add your calendar to the CRM software. This helps you to track your interactions with prospects. It makes the process more organized and effective.

Right in the software, you can see your next appointment with a prospect, check for more information about your previous interactions with the prospect and what preparations you need before your next interaction.

‘Deal Tracks’ helps you to follow up with your prospects and current customers. You can easily track performance with the software. You can also add milestones to know the present stage of each prospect. The milestones include new, prospect, proposal, won, and lost. You can add other milestones if you need them.

Agile CRM also makes this information available to both sales and marketing departments — which improves your customer service.

MarketingProfs found that companies with well-aligned sales and marketing teams have 36% higher customer retention and get 38% increase in sales win-rates.

When Clicdata wanted to track prospects effectively and synchronize sales and marketing teams, they used Agile CRM. This led to 90% increase in lead follow-up and 30% increase in sales conversion.

Conclusion

To record dramatic sales consistently, you can’t depend on human instinct alone, you need data and information about your prospects. According to Forbes Insights, two-thirds of company executives are seeing new customers as a result of data-driven initiatives.

That’s why it’s vital for you to use a sales enablement tool to reach, attract, communicate, and convert prospects while leaving them satisfied with your service. I’d say it’s worth a try.

Even veteran email marketers probably feel some trepidation when they finally send the message they worked so hard to perfect. While a mistake in a single email is not likely to doom your campaign, it’s natural to worry that you might have missed something – and catastrophize about the consequences.

We’re here to ease your anxiety. If your answer to each of the questions below is “yes,” then your message is probably good go. But if you see any “no’s,” then you probably want to take another look at it. Here you go:

1. Has my message been thoroughly proofread?

“Any errors in your emails will damage the credibility and reputation of your business,” writes Mary Walton on the MailUp blog. “Proofreading can take time and it may seem long-winded to go through your content again and again but it’s vital to the success of your content. After all, would you want to buy the products or invest in the services of a business whose content was littered with mistakes?” Need help? Here’s our 14-point email copy checklist.

2. Will my subject line be noticed?

“While the subject line is often left until the last minute and doesn’t have a lot of thought put into it, almost half of all email recipients decide whether or not to open an email based on the subject line alone,” Jomel Alos writes on our blog. “That’s a 50-percent chance of your lead-building email efforts going to waste if you don’t pay attention to your subject lines. In his post, Jomel provides six tips for crafting subject lines that can’t be ignored.

3. Am I using a segmented mailing list?

“Your subscribers aren’t all the same,” writes Sam Hollis on the AWeber blog. “By segmenting, you can easily send them content they actually care about. This personalization can lead to higher open and click-through rates, lower unsubscribe rates, better deliverability and more conversions than non-segmented lists. In fact, segmented emails can drive up to 77 percent of your overall email ROI, according to the Direct Marketing Association.”

4. Is my call to action compelling, clear and obvious?

“If you want to convert more customers and earn more revenue from your email campaigns, you need to create calls to action (CTAs)that resonate with subscribers,” writes Emily Carter at Campaign Monitor. “These actions might be reading an article, browsing through an online store, or making a purchase. An effective CTA is well-designed, persuasive, specific, and in line with the rest of your sales funnel.” Want some tips for crafting effective CTAs? Here you go!

5. Have I done all I can to personalize my message?

“When asked to prioritize one capability that will be most important to marketing in the future, 33% of marketers answered ‘personalization,’ according to our friends at Campaign Monitor. “Furthermore, 74% of marketers say targeted personalization increases customer engagement, and that they see an average increase of 20% in sales when using personalized experiences.” To make sure you aren’t missing anything when it comes to personalization, check out “The Ultimate Email Marketing Personalization Checklist.”

6. Is my message optimized to be read on mobile devices?

“There’s no doubt about it: these days, your messages are most likely going to be opened on a mobile device,” we wrote. “The trend has been heading in that direction for quite a while, and it was confirmed in a study conducted by Return Path last summer of 27 billion email opens. As Email Marketing Daily reported: ‘Fifty-five percent of emails analyzed during the study period were opened on a mobile device — an increase from 29% identified in a similar study in 2012.’ Other studies have indicated the percentage is even higher.” Here are eight tips to make sure your message is mobile-ready.

7. Will anything about my message trigger spam filters?

“By keeping pesky spam emails away, spam filters increase user efficiency by sparing tedious manual sifting of legitimate messages and spam email deletion,” writes Technopedia. But the site adds that “Even the best spam filters are unable to block 100 percent of spam messages and legitimate emails are often routed to junk email, or spam folders, as spam filters often misclassify legitimate emails.” Here’s more about spam filters and how to steer clear of them.

8. Does my message bring value to the recipient?

“The art of creating added value starts with the ability to see your business through the eyes of your customers,” writes Kimber Powers on the Vertical Response blog. “Consider what’s important to your target market and how your product or service will benefit them. What problem does it solve, how will it help them overcome obstacles or do their jobs better?” Here are six tips for providing value in your next message.

With relatively few exceptions, most companies want to be seen to be focused on value, rather than price. You can understand why: in most markets there is only space for one or at most a very few “cost leaders”.

You can see the trend reflected in the number of organisations that claim to have a “value added” strategy. But these positions are often adopted without any clear understanding of how they actually create genuine value for their customers.

More often, their “value added” claims are really intended to justify why they are entitled to charge a premium for extended feature sets and capabilities, most of which only a minority of customers actually end up using.

The rest are left feeling that they are probably being asked to overpay for things that they don’t actually need…

It’s no wonder – in the absence of genuine differentiated value – that customers are so keen to negotiate the price down before they are prepared to move forwards. And it’s no wonder that so many sales people – faced with the risk of losing the sale – are tempted to cave in.

The only value that matters

We can claim that we offer value. But at the end of the day, the only party that can actually determine what is and isn’t valuable is our prospective customer. And slickly spun generic “unique value propositions” (the very concept is an oxymoron) aren’t going to help us.

We need to understand how each potential customer organisation (and often each function and each key stakeholder within that organisation) defines value in their terms, and how our solution could enable them to generate that internal value.

But before we do, and remembering Kahneman’s findings about loss aversion, we had better understand what staying with their current situation is likely to be costing them.

Given that – according to Sales Benchmark Index and other authoritative sources – losing to a decision to do nothing is now a more common outcome in complex B2B sales than losing to a traditional competitor, we had better start by understanding the negative value associated with a decision to stick with the status quo.

The four vectors of value

When it comes to determining the value of change, our customers have four key considerations:

Impact on cost

How much unnecessary expenditure will they incur if they were to decide to stick with the status quo, compared to the money they would save if they were to recognise the need for change (and, more specifically, adopt our solution)?

Impact on revenue

How much potential revenue might they lose if they were to do nothing, compared to the incremental revenue they could expect to generate if they were to agree to change?

Impact on risk

What avoidable risks might they be exposed to if they were to carry on as they are today, compared to the risk factors they could reduce or eliminate by adopting our proposed solution?

Impact on goals

What corporate, departmental, functional and personal goals could be compromised if they refuse to change, compared to their ability to achieve these goals faster and more reliably if they were to approve our project?

Rational and emotional considerations

Many of these value factors can be expressed logically – and most investment cases require a rational justification – but many of them have an emotional dimension as well, and this can have a significant impact on decision-making.

Not value-added, but value-aligned

I think it’s time to ditch the “value-added” mindset – at least when it comes to its current most common use in justifying unnecessary solution complexity – and think instead about being value-aligned.

This, of course, requires that we deeply understand what our customers and the key stakeholders that drive their decisions regard as being truly valuable. And it requires that we understand and help to expose the costs, risks and limitations associated with their current situation.

It requires that we selectively align the most valuable aspects of our purpose, approach and capabilities with the things that our customer – individually and collectively – regards as being most valuable to them.

Valuing your proposals

If you’re at all concerned about whether your sales organisation is as effective as it could be in communicating genuine value, you need look no further than a cross-section of your latest sales proposals.

Do they all clearly articulate what the prospect has agreed are the inevitable costs and risks of inaction, were they to decide to stick with the status quo? And do they clearly and credibly articulate how the prospect has agreed that your proposed solution will enable them to reduce cost, increase revenue, eliminate risk and enable them to achieve their goals?

If not, both your proposal and the customer’s project are at risk. Maybe the proposed project is genuinely of little value, in which case you should have qualified out far earlier. Or maybe the value of the project is being undersold, in which case you run the risk of losing (to no decision, or a smarter competitor) an opportunity you should have won.

And all because your sales people failed to align the business value of what they were offering with the critical business needs and priorities of the customer. I can’t think of a better reason to get focused on the only value that matters – the things that your customer finds most valuable.

The size of a business can be a defining characteristic for any interaction. When it comes to sales, they will approach and speak with you differently based on how many employees and offices you have. With this said, customer support interactions and expectations also vary based on what growth stage a company is currently in. So, how should your company approach customer support at each unique stage of growth and what’s the best technology for you (both now and in the future)? Let’s break down the different growth stages and what you should be looking for in your customer support software solution…

Start-up (less than 10 employees) – The phrase “all hands on deck” never felt more appropriate than when it comes to customer support at a start-up company. Every single employee, including the CEO, is a part of daily customer support efforts and communication.

Look for… Ticket Management, Ticket Tagging, Cloud-based Software

Money is likely tight which means, although certainly not advised, customer communication is often tracked via email, spreadsheets, or other documents. Stop this habit before it becomes problematic. Happy customers are the key to business growth, so opt for cloud-based software to start organizing your tickets more efficiently.

Small (11-50 employees) – Companies this size likely have an individual or small team dedicated to customer support. Making the jump from start-up not only means your employee headcount may have double or tripled, but also your customer base.

Look for… Customer Tracking, Software Integrations, Ticket Automation

With an influx of new business, making sense of all the additional support inquiries can be a nightmare. Ensure your software organizes tickets not just by contact but also by customer to stay organized. Working smarter also becomes a higher priority, meaning a system with strong integration and ticket automation capabilities is a must.

Mid-size (51-100 employees) – Approaching the triple digit mark with employees means diversifying and optimizing as a business. This is when every employee isn’t on a first name basis anymore and keeping communication tight is crucial. It’s also when companies truly begin planning for “what’s next” to keep the growth going.

Look for… Internal Communication Tools, Support Reporting, Products and Inventory

Internal communication tools, such as a general conversation area within software that users can ask questions for the larger team, is a great way to eliminate guesswork. Companies of this size also need to really start looking at their products and why they are successful. Focusing on key products with good support metrics helps to plan for the future.

Large (100+ employees) – Reaching triple digits as a company means it’s time to let go of some power in the customer support relationship (both internally and externally). You’ll have more “specialists” than ever before, and it’s important to make efficient use of their time. It’s also essential to evolve with your growing customer base by empowering them to help themselves while still being there when they need you.

Look for… Task Management, Customer Hub, SLA Management

Support software with a task management solution built in can be fantastic for larger teams as it allows multiple employees to work on different areas of one ticket at the same time. Launching a full-scale customer hub (with a Knowledge Base of information as its backbone) gives customers 24/7 access to answers, while managing SLAs directly within your support software boosts retention by ensuring critical issues aren’t missed.

Extra-Large (1000+ employees) – Companies this size are few and far between, yet there is still support software out there that adds value to their business. Finding a way to “group” employees internally is essential, and so is leveraging the huge customer base they’ve built over the years to create support content.

Look for… Internal Groups, Community, Customization

Creating different groups (by department or location) in customer support software is a must to keep issues localized and ensure the correct employees are responding. Adding solutions such as a community forum can take the concept of 24/7 knowledge even further by enabling your own customers to assist their industry peers. This “crowd sourcing” saves extra-large companies both time and money in the long run, and can also boost your brand.

We hope this stage-by-stage growth guide to customer support software features was helpful. At the end of the day, regardless of the size of your company, keeping the customer as the top priority is the most important aspect of support. Staying organized and working efficiently as a support team will go a long way in improving satisfaction and the impact support has on customer retention.

I am continually tagged in Linked posts where someone writes that cold calling is dead and others rush to defend the telephone. As of late, the way some get attention is to write something negative about cold calling and suggesting that it has been replaced by “social selling,” some posting what is essentially the same tired trope every week. And while I am not anti-social tools (having personally won a $1M client using a LinkedIn InMail), I am most vociferously opposed to social-only as a strategy for prospecting.

The Phone As Straw Man

When the social tools were first used for business, the concept was called “social media marketing,” because of the great value they offered that endeavor. Some believed that the tools had value for salespeople, and the more entrepreneurial recognized the value of the tools, believing that salespeople could use the opportunity to teach and train salespeople what eventually became “social selling.”

The very combination of the words “social” and “selling” is a bit ironic, since the rules that were laid out were generally: 1) connect with your client, 2) try to create value for them, 3) don’t try to sell. How one sells by trying not to sell is a mystery, as if one believes they sell by not selling, they are indeed selling, that being their intention.

But old mediums don’t easily die. In fact, the longer that something has been around, the longer it is likely to be around. The phone was not going to go down easy.

To sell the idea of “social selling,” the “cold call” was set up as the straw man. Cold calling became a terrible thing for a salesperson to do. It was rude to interrupt people, and that was why cold calling was so hard. No one likes to be interrupted. By taking this approach, social-only proponents preyed on the hapless salesperson who was struggling to be effective using the telephone. They suggested that the salesperson was a good person and hard worker, it was just the choice of prospecting method and their Jurassic sales managers that were the real root of their challenges. Anyone who suggested otherwise was to be attacked for being old, out of touch, and unaware of what’s what.

Suspect Statistics and Other Lies

The social only proponents used statistics to make their case. They cited research from CEB (now Gartner), suggesting that the fact that buyer is 57 percent through their buying process before contacting a salesperson is evidence that a salesperson needs to spend their time on social, framing any effort to do anything between 0 and 57 percent as futile.

They also stated bunk statistics published in reputable sources, such as 84 percent  of buyers begin the process with a warm referral. I have yet to see a pipeline of opportunities that is made up of 84 percent referrals, which you would expect were this statistic actually true. When you think of the implications of such a statistic, it would mean that all pipelines are made up of 84 percent warm referrals—or it would mean that almost none of the 84 percent  resulted in a sale to the company referred. The statistic is provided, always without the backing data.

The Truth About the Phone and Social Tools

Let me tell you the truth about cold calling. That truth is that it is still the fastest and most effective way to generate new opportunities. While some point to the success of the social tools, a look at the pipelines of B2B sales organizations provides a dose of truth: the deals are coming from outbound prospecting.

Social Tools are above the funnel. And they are increasingly important. First, there is no better way to get real and actionable information on your prospects and clients. When people type their information in themselves, you can’t get better information. They are very literally providing you with what they want you to know about them.

Second, the social tools provide massive value when it comes to nurturing relationships. The content your company creates can be used to nurture relationships between attempts to call and schedule an appointment, and they can help you capture mindshare. Not playing here is to forfeit capturing mindshare, and that is now a recipe for failure when is comes to pursuing your dream clients, that being the longest of long games.

The social tools are useful, but they are not a substitute for traditional methods. They are not a replacement; they are additive, and they should be integrated.

The Final Word

I have most recently been tagged in a LinkedIn post, the author of which believes that his survey asking salespeople if they like cold calling and buyers if they like receiving cold calls is proof positive that cold calling is dead. While opinion surveys have value, as they elicit someone’s subjective view, they are not objective truth.

The question as to is cold calling dead would require that one look at pipelines to see what prospecting method resulted in the creation of an opportunity (which I believe will vary wildly by industry and target verticals). That would give you some indication of its effectiveness and value now. You would also have to look at won deals to determine whether or not the buyer said yes to a deal that was generated through a cold call, comparing that with other prospecting methods.

Anyone honest is going to tell you that you should use every method of prospecting available in your overall client acquisition plan, provided it is effective in your industry.

Those of us who have been omnichannel forever, have never said not to use the social tools, and those who have suggested a “social only” approach have always insisted there is nothing else (even though many have had a change of heart as of late).

It is not necessary for the phone to no longer be a useful prospecting method for the social tools to have value.

The post The Cold Call Is Alive and Well appeared first on The Sales Blog.

Discounts work. If you are a regular reader of this blog you will know that I often write about the value of special pricing, promotions, offers, and sales to drive interest and boost purchases.

However, there is an opposing view. And it would be unfair of us to ignore it entirely. Because as much as it’s true that discounts can work to increase revenue over certain time periods, over the long term they can (not always but in some cases) also have a negative impact on your business.

The following is an attempt to explain why – not to advise against the practice, but to spread awareness about the potential dangers of discounting strategies so that you know what to look for and when to change course.

Discounts and Your Brand

Use of discounts can affect your brand – that is, the impression that consumers have of your company. Some companies use discounts quite frequently. Others can afford never to offer discounted pricing.

Whether or not you use discounts does not determine what people think of your brand. However, when you use discounts often, you are signaling two things:

1. The value your products or services provide may be less than one would assume at full price
2. Consumers should never buy at full price because they can always wait for a bigger discount

Apple Never Discounts

When we think of consumer brands that do not discount, Apple is the first one that comes to mind. Apple has been able to build their success as more of a luxury brand. They have sustained a higher price point in the marketplace than most of their competitors.

One might argues that Apple would grow their dominance if they started offering lower prices. They might bring in more customers, and generate more revenue, with discounts and other promotions.

But Apple has made the active decision not to do this. Most likely, that is because they are afraid what that strategy might do to the brand that they have spent so long crafting. Price is not a part of the Apple value proposition. Instead, they are focused on creating quality products that are easy to use.

Walmart vs. JC Penney

Walmart and JC Penney are two brands that consumers will generally associate with low prices. Unlike Apple, these two retailers have actively chosen to compete on price. Price is a key part of each of their value proposition.

But, they each have a different strategy for offering lower prices. JC Penney uses a discount strategy, offering frequent sales to drive people into stores. Whereas Walmart offers what they call “Everyday Low Prices” – a way to distinguish themselves as offering the lowest prices, all the time.

In fact, in 2017 JC Penney’s new CEO chose to deploy a new pricing model which more resembled Walmart’s. Rather than offering frequent sales, they told their customers that they would now be offering the lowest prices available, all the time.

What happened? Consumers revolted, sales slumped, and the CEO was fired. And they have since gone back to the original, sales-driven model.

This demonstrates points #1 and 2 up top – when you use discounts to meet your sales goals, consumers will associate your brand with discounted pricing. This creates an expectation that will be difficult to break from.

Should You Offer Discounts?

To repeat, all of the above is not a reason not to offer discounts. But it is something that you have to consider when you start making discounting a part of your pricing strategy.

Discounts and other promotions can drive increased interest, traffic, and sales. But just like anything else, if you become too reliant on discounted pricing to grow your business, you run the risk of negative brand impact in the long term.

You’ve just added 100 new names to your list. You’re pumped! Your list is growing and you have plans to turn those new contacts into loyal customers.

Email is 40 times more effective at acquiring new customers than Facebook or Twitter, but this influx of contacts might not be as fruitful as you expect.

Wait, what? Isn’t email a great way to generate new leads?

Yes, it is, but too many marketers focus on quantity over quality. In other words, marketers work to fill the sales pipeline full of new leads, focusing more on the number of leads rather than the quality of them.

It’s better to add 20 engaged subscribers to your email address list than it is to add 100 unengaged subscribers. Put even simpler: a quality email address list = engaged subscribers.

A growing number of marketers see the value of a quality list. Campaign Monitor conducted a survey with 245 marketing influencers and found 66% of small businesses see ‘increased email list quality’ as their top priority. Here’s how the priorities stack up:

To help marketers focus on a quality email address list, we’ll go over why engaged subscribers are better than a lot of subscribers, tips to build a quality list, and metrics that do and don’t measure engagement

Why engaged subscribers are best

Engaged customers are more valuable than you might think. Here’s why focusing on an email address list that’s full of engaged subscribers is beneficial:

Engaged subscribers buy more

Research shows engaged customers are more loyal to a brand, and as a result, will spend 66% more than average customers, according to Accenture.

Engaged subscribers are more likely to refer you to others

Fifty-five percent of engaged customers recommend your business to family and friends, and 12% will publicly defend your company on social media, according to Accenture.

Engaged subscribers are the future

Customer engagement is quickly becoming a priority to consumers. By 2020, customer engagement will overtake price and product as the top reasons a customer chooses to shop with a business, according to a report from Walker.

Tips to build a quality email address list

Ready to build a killer list full of engaged contacts? Here are four tips to get started:

Improve sign up forms

To keep subscribers engaged, consider updating your sign up forms. Ask for customer information that you can use later on. For example, ask subscribers to provide their birthday, hometown, or job title so you can use the data to personalize messages in the future.

You don’t want to add too many fields to your sign up form, or you’ll risk losing subscribers. However, you can still collect information without making the form too cumbersome.

For example, Seafolly, a Campaign Monitor customer, uses this simple form on the bottom of its website to collect both an email address and a birthday for its new subscribers.

With this information, Seafolly can send a birthday email with a celebratory discount and age-related content that’s of interest to the subscriber.

Personalize every message

To keep subscribers engaged, you have to work for their attention. Another run-of-the-mill email campaign that’s trying to sell a product won’t work. You need to create content that’s personalized.
Need proof? Eighty percent of customers say they’re more likely to do business with a company that personalizes their messages, according to Epsilon.

Try these personalization tactics to increase engagement:

• • Add a piece of personal information to every email, like a subscriber’s first name, city or company name. It’s easy to do as a Campaign Monitor customer, just use these instructions for adding custom fields to an email. Flight Centre, a Campaign Monitor customer, addresses the subscriber right away in this message:

• Segment your email address list and create content for each segment. Break contacts up by gender, location or buying behavior, for example, and send relevant emails to each niche. Use this email personalization guide for more specific tips.
• Send email campaigns to subscribers when they’re most engaged. Using metrics, you can see when subscribers are most likely to open your emails and send emails during that window of time. Campaign Monitor can automate this process through Send Time Optimization.

Access your list and remove unengaged subscribers

To keep a healthy list of engaged subscribers, you should do routine list maintenance and remove unengaged subscribers. While it’s tough to remove any subscriber from your email address list, it’s the best way to ensure your focus is on engaged subscribers only. Again, quality over quantity is the goal.

At what point should you remove subscribers? If a subscriber hasn’t opened an email in 6-12 months, it’s a good time to say goodbye. Campaign Monitor has a great post on handling inactive, unengaged subscribers that provides more details.

Use integrations to ease your workload

Creating engaging content can be time-consuming, but not if you’re using integrations that can automate parts of the process for you. Campaign Monitor has integrations with Salesforce, Zapier, Sage, Shopify, Facebook, Eventbrite – just to name a few.

By using integrations you won’t duplicate your efforts in multiple platforms and can do things like schedule emails to send, sync customer data files, and funnel new contacts from sign up forms directly into your email account.

Metrics that do and don’t measure engagement

Marketers have access to dozens of metrics. If you’ve integrated your email marketing service with Google Analytics, you have even more charts, graphs, and stats at your disposal, but which ones measure engagement and which ones don’t?

Metrics that do measure engagement

• Open rate. An engaged email address list has stable or increasing open rates over time.
• Click-through rate. Subscribers that click on links in your emails are engaged with your messages.
• Revenue generated. Email campaigns that lead to sales is a sign of a highly engaged list.
• Social share. If subscribers open your email and love it enough to share it, your subscribers are engaged.

Metrics that don’t measure engagement

• Current subscriber count. Having a large number of subscribers is nice, but if they’re not engaging with your emails, it’s not a viable way to promote or sell products.
• List growth. You want your email address list to grow, but collecting a bunch of names and emails isn’t effective. You need the right people – potential customers – to join your list.
• Rate of growth. Every company wants to grow their email address list quickly, but again, it’s better to gain a few quality leads than it is to gain a hundred cold leads.

Wrap up

Working to collect and maintain an engaged email address list that puts quality over quantity should be the goal of every marketer. Using the tips above, you can shift your focus to engagement and make every effort possible to build lasting relationships with subscribers.

Most anyone in business agrees that automated marketing and CRM (customer relationship management) can significantly improve a company’s bottom line. It allows for the incorporation of a human touch into automation that boosts sales and improves customer satisfaction. But did you know that it also has the power to target the coveted Millennial market?

Understanding the Millennial Market

The age group that was between 20 and 35 years old in 2016 makes up a demographic that is 71 million people strong. As noted by the Pew Research Center, this generation is slated to overtake the Baby Boomer population by 2019. One defining factor in the equation is the influx of immigrants that fall into this demographic. Any company that wants to grow its business must actively market to Millennials. Automated marketing and CRM can play a significant role in this effort.

Top 3 Automated Marketing Techniques that Appeal to Millennials

Marketing to Millennials calls for a multi-tiered effort. This generation thrives on online connectivity. Smartphones, tablets, and – to a lesser extent – computers and televisions provide input opportunities. Social media influencers hold sway and easily overrule television commercials and their messages.

Your automated marketing and CRM efforts must reflect this reality.

1. Offer engagement opportunities across the platforms. Brand loyalty is quickly becoming outdated. The latest flavor widget is what the Millennial consumer is after. However, do not rely on an ad or single-focus social media campaign to get the point across. Instead, create a campaign that leverages multiple social media platforms as well as traditional means of engaging the consumer. Examples include emails and opt-in newsletters.

2. Count on mobile marketing to convert leads. Social media and mobile marketing work together to turn shoppers into buyers. But you have to conduct your advertising campaigns in accordance with this understanding. For example, you might create a number of email messages that target former, current, and new Millennial customers. Next, you connect the email content to targeted social media campaigns. Adding social media icons to your automated emails is a snap.

3. Emphasize shared values. Marketing experts refer to this step as branding. It highlights the values that your business and the consumer share in common. Millennials are an idealistic generation. They will not compromise on quality but may have some price flexibility if a product, its manufacturer, or the retailer shows social responsibility. It is not enough to issue a brand statement. Instead, highlight different facets through a series of automated emails and social media posts.

Online Marketing is a Must to Connect with Generation Y

Online reputation management of your company is another key component for reaching this demographic. Spending even just a few minutes online quickly shows business-specific memes and messages with questionable veracity content. You can get in front of this type of virtual bad press by consistently presenting your brand and underscoring its authenticity. Doing so by hand would be a full-time job even for a small or mid-sized business.

For a larger company, it could quickly take up the workforce of a department. However, because you can largely automate these marketing messages across a multitude of platforms, your staff can engage with the consumer in a more meaningful manner. Cases in point are personal sales calls, presentations, and active customer service.

Getting Started with Effective Marketing Automation Today

Automated marketing and CRM are not just for the big companies. In fact, even start-ups can hit the ground running by building their platforms and allowing them to grow alongside the revenues of the business.