4 email marketing mistakes that can sabotage revenue

Email marketing has been a mainstay of B2B marketing for more than a decade, and still greatly outperforms social media marketing and Facebook advertising – when you measure actual product sales.

In B2B marketing, email marketing often means a regular newsletter. The purpose can be quite simple – to remind prospects that you exist, and drive traffic to your website. The content often includes products offers, testimonial stories, and simple tutorial style articles.
But regardless of the specific tactics used, email marketing content can easily be personalised, and is usually one of the lowest cost methods available to reach B2B clients and prospects.
A recent 2013 study by Custora looked at 72 million e-commerce shoppers at 86 retailers, examining which forms of digital marketing had the highest impact on actual product sales at online retail sites.

Custora: Analysis of Digital Marketing activity which led to an online sale

As you can see from the graph, the study found that email marketing, organic search results, and paid search engine marketing currently achieve much higher sales conversions than any form of social media activity or Facebook advertising.
The figures are clear, and correlate with typical industry click through rates for the various media. Email marketing can be highly effective, and is able to achieve a very attractive ROI because of the modest costs involved. It should be an important part of your monthly B2B marketing mix.
If your current email marketing is performing poorly, or failing to contribute towards your pipeline of opportunities, it might be because of one of these common mistakes.

• Mistake #1: Poor quality content

If your email communications don’t offer your clients something of value, they will quickly stop reading. Hopefully they will just unsubscribe, and not mark your emails as spam.
You need to find a balance between content quality and your desire to remind people of your promotions and products.

• Mistake #2: Talking to the same old crowd

Failing to systematically recruit new email list readers can quickly lead to problems. Every database has an attrition rate, where people move jobs, or their situation simply changes. It is always important to recruit new members to your list, and build recruitment mechanisms into your routine marketing activities.
You may have great content, but you should also offer something to get the email relationship started. Incentives to sign up should be loud and clear. Don’t hide rewards for signing up in the small print.
Simple things such as free reports or whitepapers, discount coupons, or promotional items are great ways to recruit email subscribers. Just make sure the offer is relevant or worthwhile for your target audience.

• Mistake #3: Be both boring and obnoxious

Email marketing can be very personal and intrusive. Bombarding clients and prospects with too many emails can easily set back your relationship with the prospect. Even the best content in the world can cause irritation when the person receiving it just wants to get on with their job.
The rapidly rising use of smartphones for business email is important to consider. You should be careful to consider the time of day you will be sending your email.
Prospects don’t have unlimited time to listen to you, or read your marketing material. Show respect, and consider both what you say, and when.

• Mistake #4: Don’t segment your email list

Don’t send the same thing to everyone. Email databases can easily be segmented, and most email marketing systems allow simple tailoring of content based on database fields.
Maintaining several different newsletters geared towards specific customer/prospect situations can reap serious rewards. It also makes it easier to build a relationship with your subscriber, as your content has a better chance of being relevant.

http://sebastianrice.wordpress.com/2013/07/29/4-email-marketing-mistakes-that-can-sabotage-revenue/

The 7 Success Factors of Social Business Strategy

Social media has a problem and it needs to be addressed now.
The truth is that a majority of social media strategies employed by some of the best brands out there aren't linking activity to business goals and results. This practice is creating a divide within companies where social media is undervalued and largely misunderstood as a viable and formidable business tool or solution.
As a result, resources, budgets, and the ability to scale social media across the organization is incredibly hindered. More importantly, without considering business goals and priorities, strategists with the best intentions around social media may wind up creating dissonance among decision makers, making it more difficult to make the case for social in the long term.
In a comprehensive social business research study with Charlene Li, my colleague at Altimeter Group, we uncovered some pretty surprising realities about the state of social media strategy within enterprise organizations...

• Only 34% of businesses feel that their social strategy is connected to business outcomes.
• Just 28% of companies we studied feel that they have a holistic approach to social media, where lines of business and business functions work together under a common vision.
• A mere 12% are confident they have a plan that looks beyond the next year.
• Only half said that top executives were “informed, engaged and aligned with their companies’ social strategy.”

While our research results were initially distressing, we aimed to outline a path to help strategists better understand how to not only align social strategy with business objectives but also how to transform social media into a full-scale social business initiative that evolved along Six Stages of Transformation. Charlene and I concentrated our research on the common traits of B2B and B2C companies that successfully overcame common trials and tribulations to effectively become fully "converged" social businesses where social was now a way of business.
Charlene and I proudly announce that our findings are now available in the newly released 7 Success Factors of Social Business Strategy. In 100 pages, we help you learn how to align social media strategies with business objectives to deliver real results and ROI. Additionally, you'll learn through best practices and a detailed checklist how to define an effective social strategy, create alignment across the organization, and use that strategy to support and measure overall business success.
What are the 7 Success Factors?
There's a difference between a social media and social business strategy. Social media are the channels where information and people are connected via two-way platforms. Social media strategy defines programs specific to networks and the corresponding activity within and around each. Altimeter's definition of a successful Social Business Strategy (SBS) is one that aligns with the strategic business goals and has alignment and support throughout the organization.
You don't need to get the book to learn what the most advanced companies learned to prioritize. Following are the 7 aspects each shared to successfully champion and scale social media through the organization and earn executive support along the way...
One – Define the overall business goals.
Explore how social media strategies create direct or ancillary impact on business objectives. What are you trying to accomplish and how does it communicate value to those who don’t understand social media.
Two: Establish the long-term vision.
Articulate a vision for becoming a social business and the value that will be realized internally among stakeholders and externally to customers (and shareholders).
Three: Ensure executive support.
Social media often exists in its own marketing silo. At some point, it must expand to empower the rest of the business. To scale takes the support of key executives and their interests lie in business value and priorities.
Four: Define the strategy roadmap and identify initiatives.
Once you have your vision and you’re in alignment on business goals, you need a plan that helps you bring everything to life. A strategic social business roadmap looks out three years and aligns business goals with social media initiatives across the organization.
Five: Establish governance and guidelines.
Who will take responsibility for social strategy and lead the development of an infrastructure to support it? You’ll need help. Form a ‘hub” or CoE to prioritize initiatives, tackle guidelines and processes, and assign roles and responsibilities.
Six: Secure staff, resources, and funding.
Determine where resources are best applied now and over the next three years. Think scale among agencies but also internally to continually take your strategy and company to the next level. Train staff on vision, purpose, business value creation, and metrics/reporting to ensure a uniform approach as you grow.
Seven: Invest in technology platforms that support the greater vision and objectives
Ignore shiny object syndrome. Resist significant investments until you better understand how social technology enables or optimizes your strategic roadmap.
It’s time for businesses to get serious about social and that starts by taking social, its promise and its ability to impact business outcomes and customer experiences, seriously.


http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20130717172852-2293140-the-7-success-factors-of-social-business-strategy?trk=tod-posts-art-

Starting a Business: SAYING IT vs DOING IT

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They say everyone has at least one business idea inside them but how many people actually have the conviction to follow their ambition?
Having an idea is one thing but what a successful business needs is competent execution and a receptive marketplace.
One of the reasons I am passionate about small businesses is their energy and creativity. A small, emerging company has the great advantage of being agile. It can try new ways of doing things, new ideas for delivering a service and new ways to save money. SMEs really are a breeding ground for ideas and creativity.
Once the idea for a business has hatched, it then needs testing and challenging and there is no better way than asking your potential customers what they think. The idea may be good but it will only ever be a viable business if there is strong execution and a commercial market for it.
This process is critical for your long-term business success. You can make a written business plan say anything and convince yourself that your profit will materialize – but if customers don’t like or need your service then it will fail.
What I look for is that innovative, well thought out business from a passionate entrepreneur.
Recently I was introduced to an entrepreneur who has started an online business; Really Useful Stuff. I regularly meet entrepreneurs and they will always take the opportunity to pitch their business to me. However, what I liked about this particular business and the approach was the fact that the founder Kay had thoroughly tested every aspect of the business and brand. The idea had been tested with focus groups and key stakeholders. The great thing about an online business is that you can create a beta version of the site and put it out there to gauge reaction without actually spending any money. Doing this will give you the research to improve your offer.
This brings me to the point of social media. We all know that it’s a great promotional tool, but it’s also a great source of feedback. It costs next to nothing and allows you to really grasp the opinions of your customers.
Feedback can of course be brutal as well as constructive. You may find out some truths about the business and brand that are not easy to hear, but the most important skill to have is being able to take the criticism and adapt the idea to suit the market.
It’s a competitive world, but there is always room for a great idea or adapting an existing idea that has the right mix of planning and testing.
But it’s also not enough just to expect customers to find you online – for a company to be truly successful you have to constantly think of innovative ways to engage with them and build their loyalty. Customer service must be woven into the DNA of any business.
Moving from ‘saying it’ to ‘doing it’ requires a combination of executing a great idea, willingness to adapt, passion and an appetite for challenge.

http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20130702105655-32175171-starting-a-business-saying-it-vs-doing-it?trk=cha-feed-art-title

5 Excellent Online Marketing Strategy Tips For A Tight Budget

Having a solid online marketing strategy does not have to mean that you need to spend a fortune. I often hear people hesitate when it comes to building an one for their businesses because they think it is too costly.

This could not be more false! YOU can have a strong online presence even if you are not Steve Jobs or Coca Cola.

Do you want to know how? Then keep reading…

Today I am going to share with you my top 5 favourite tips for a balanced online marketing strategy. If you implement at least ONE of these 5 elements, I am sure your company’s online presence will see an IMPROVEMENT pretty fast.

Let’s see what these tips are:

1. Content marketing

Your online marketing strategy cannot survive without content marketing. Besides being CRUCIAL for things such as SEO and Page Rank, it can also help you establish your business (or yourself) as the expert of your niche.

And let me tell you this… there is no better feeling in the WHOLE WORLD than seeing people coming to you for advice.  I know you want to help as many people as possible with your business, so trust me when I tell you this online marketing strategy is the best thing you can do for them… and for yourself.

2. Build your own list of followers

   

This is perhaps one of the most important online marketing strategy tip that I am going to share with you today. I am not kidding. Having your own, personal list of followers is damn important; all your prospects are in that list.

BUT be careful how you treat your list. You want to develop a close relationship with them… and that takes time. Befriending your audience will NEVER happen overnight; it goes a looong way, and the slightest mistake can cost you valuable sales.And if your prospects are there, it is but a matter of time until they become clients, isn’t it?

List building can be a big factor in the success of your business and it surely is a strong online marketing strategy… in the hands of those who know how to handle the job.

3. Social media

Warning! Everyone tells you it is CHEAP, EASY and FUN. After all, what can go wrong with sharing a funny pic on your official Facebook page, right?

Right… The danger of social media is that is can become super expensive and you can lose a LOT of time if you have no idea what you are doing. The worst part is that you will lose both time AND money in vain, because your actions will not bring you any results.

But let me tell you a trick I learned during my experience with social media… If you have a strategy behind your posts, if you know WHAT you want to achieve with social media, then you will NEVER have to spend a fortune on it. I mean, you will probably not have to spend a dime!

And this, my dear reader, is what makes social media such a powerful online marketing strategy tool.

4. Share killer info through webinars

Oh, how I love ‘em webinars…! There is SUCH great power behind a webinar, and it works both sides: whether you are the organiser or an attendee, all webinars will teach you something valuable about your business.

Imagine the amount of value you can offer to your audience for free in a 30 min. webinar.

Even more, imagine how they will look at you at the end of your webinar: YOU will be an expert in their eyes…

Try to envisage yourself organising a webinar each week.

I know you can do it!

Now think about the amount of amazing information you can pass on – and this information will be shared by attendees to their friends and peers.

In a very short period of time your list CAN grow unimaginably! And all this thanks to this little online marketing strategy.

5. Attitude Check

Let me rectify my error earlier: building a list of followers is not the most important factor for your online marketing strategy.

Your ATTITUDE is (and it’s also the cheapest thing to start with!).

What is your mindset about your business? What do you REALLY want to offer your audience?

If you want to become the leader of your niche, then you need to focus more on giving.

Be known as someone who shares great information – someone who does it for free.

Psssstt…this is a tweetable   Click here to share it with your friends…

I’m not saying you should tell them everything you know, but do tell them things which they don’t know; show them your potential.

Having the right attitude towards your business will definitely make the difference between success and failure.

Every online marketing strategy should begin and end with your attitude towards your actions as a business owner.

Voila…! These are my 5 tips for a killer online marketing strategy which will NOT dry your pockets out.

You now know how to use knowledge you possess and share it in a way that impacts people’s lives.

You know how to use your time wisely and what you need to do to see the change you want in your business.

http://florentinaistrati.com/online-marketing-strategy/