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Thursday 16 January 2014

‘If they are in my database, I already have their information anyway’.

This is an objection to Marketing Automation that I can completely understand and if all you are looking for is a lead generation tool, then possibly marketing automation is not right for you at this time.

Data capture is a big part of what Marketing Automation can add to your business. Through utilising landing pages and forms on your website this is a great way to gain visibility of WHO those unknown visitors to your website are. Yes not every person is going to fill out a form when they are on your website but you are still gaining more information than you were before as once they fill in that form and provide you with their name and email address, that is when they become tagged and you can see their digital behaviour with you.

The value it brings to the people that are already in your database is not through gaining their contact details, but through tagging them and being able to see what they viewed on your website previously, in their current visit and whenever they return. Imagine the value that would bring you, being able to see what everyone in your database is looking at on your website?

Therefore this is where the value is for those prospects that you already have the contact information for, if you data base size is 50 thousand email addresses, how valuable would it be if you could see what those fifty thousand people are looking at and therefore being able to tell when they are ready to buy.

Monday 13 January 2014

Make your message travel further!

What does 2014 have in store for your company and your marketing strategy? Recent research from multiple organisations shows that social media and blogging should be a key component of any of your plans. But this does not mean that email marketing should be ignored – far from it!

With such high levels of competition in so many different industries, how to get your voice heard and your product and services in the faces of your prospects is a real head scratcher.

We know that social media has caused content go ‘viral’ and brought fame and fortune to many individuals. A stand out example is ‘Charlie bit me’ which due to its popularity and sharing was the 6th highest viewed YouTube clip of all time with over 615 million views as of December 2013.

What would you do to get that level of exposure?

Now we at Profunnel are not saying that we expect companies to replicate the success of a dog chasing a heard of deer in Richmond Park using B2B or B2C services but we fully believe that you can maximise and eke out every last drop from your campaigns.

Firstly, the important thing to consider is the content that you plan to use. Planning is key and ensuring that you are delivering thought provoking material that captures the attention of your audience is important. The best marketing campaigns are the ones that get people talking and that are relevant to them. This may mean that you have different content for different prospects – what may resonate fantastically well with a Marketing Director may sink like a lead balloon with a Sales Director – each individual is motivated differently by different drivers, identifying these are crucial.

So you have your plans in place and are ready to deliver – you run a successful campaign and see good results but how could it be better? You want to be able to spread this message further but with minimal effort from yourselves. This is where sharing comes into play.

Firstly social sharing, as discussed above can create a huge buzz and really get people talking. Within the SalesFUSION platform you have the ability to launch and track social media and also give the sharing options on your emails and ecasts so that your prospects share your content on their timeline, wall or feed for their connections to then see. If we consider Facebook for a moment, the average number of friends people have is 130. This would mean an additional 130 people get the visibility of your content. If your content drives traffic to your site or prompts the prospect to make contact this is invaluable free marketing that can potentially lead to more business.

When we look at ‘Forward to a Friend’ within the emails, how often do you forward an email to someone that you know it would be of interest to?

Although it is not as often as many marketers would hope, it does happen. The benefits being you now have a new connection to engage with.  Unfortunately if your prospect clicks the ‘forward’ tab within outlook, Hotmail or any other email provider they may be using this is not registered within SalesFUSION and any clicks or opens that may occur will be registered to the original recipient, missing out on the opportunity to engage with a new prospect and also creating an unrealistic scoring profile. This is due to cross cookieing.

Profunnel's SalesFUSION software has the functionality to prevent this by creating a ‘Forward to a Friend’ link within the email – a call to action. The benefit is that this counts as a click and so you tag your original prospect but also the new one that receives the forwarded message.

How do you word this very important call to action though?

It all depends on your audience and what would make them tick. Examples include:

e.g. ‘Forward to Family’ or ‘Do you know someone that will benefit from this offer’

Profunnel would encourage testing via A/B testing within the system will allow you to establish how to get the most out of the functionality, whether it is the position of the call to action, the number of times you include the call to action or the wording.

We would love to discuss this further with you so feel free to contact us.

Karl
Account Manager

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