‘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.

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

Is Christmas really over?

With the madness that  was the week leading up to Christmas over and businesses ready to shut down for a week and a half (two weeks for some lucky individuals) and employees ready to fill themselves with Turkey and chocolates many people will feel that the New Year brings with it a new start. 

In theory this is correct but you would be missing out on crucial previous customer engagements if your Christmas build up is not part of your New Year marketing strategy. The phase strike while the iron is hot has never been more applicable than it is here. 

You have worked so hard to get your prospects and customers to interact with you and many of them have, as they looked to take advantage of the offers you have available – so why would you not take advantage of them and target your marketing accordingly?

A simple email is all it takes

Hi Karl, 

Thank you for your recent custom. We hope you had a great Christmas and New Year.

I’m sure by now you are back into the swing of work and I wanted to let you know how Profunnel can really help you start 2014 well!

This would make me take notice – you have recognised that we have done business previously but you are also helping me further, it feels that you have my best interest at heart. 

As I am sure you are aware making the connection with your prospects is key and you have a great opportunity to do this now and really start your 2014 well.

Here are Profunnel we are big advocates of personalisation and planning your marketing accordingly – we would love to discuss this further and highlight how we can help you so do not hesitate to get in touch. 

Karl
Account Manager

‘Just because someone has landed on my website does not mean they are ready to buy from me’

This is completely correct and something that I wholeheartedly agree with. One visit to your website definitely does not mean that the visitor is someone that you want to be picking up the phone to.

The really exciting thing that Marketing Automation looks at is when one of your prospects is making multiple visits to your site and spending longer amounts of time on there. This is the time when your prospects are displaying those buying behaviours that signal when you should be picking up the phone to them or making contact. 

What you are also able to do is decide on what next best action will be triggered based on their visits to your website. If they have landed on a particular product page you can enter them into a segmentation list to ensure all further communication sent to them is relevant to them, or an alert can be sent to the most appropriate sales person for that particular product.

Don’t make the mistake of thinking that once they start displaying these behaviours that they will pick up the phone to you themselves. Think how many times you have been the buyer and you have been about to make a purchase but something has come up, the phone rang or you had to dash off to a meeting. 

Marketing Automation provides you with the invaluable tools to gain the visibility of those prospects that are frequently engaging with you online but not making any direct contact. It allows you to get in contact with those prospects at EXACTLY the right time when they are most likely to buy from your company. What this then does is bring in more sales for your business and provides you with a higher ROI of your online marketing activities.

Marketing Automation - The Next Logical Step to PPC and SEO.

Last time I spoke about one of the main objections that I hear around marketing automation is that people are already using Google Analytics, the next most common objection that I come across is that people are already spending large amounts of money on SEO and PPC.

Of course there are benefits to PPC and SEO and I would never dream of telling a prospect to stop their activities in these areas, however what I would say is that marketing automation is the next logical step on from these. 

SEO and PPC drive large amounts of visitors to a company’s website and marketing automation gives companies the visibility of WHO those people are once they are there and when they return. What is the point in spending all of this money on driving people to your website if you have no idea who they are once they are there? Surely anything that enhances the value of SEO and PPC would be of benefit to a business?

Essentially Marketing Automation provides your organisation with proof of your SEO and PPC ROI.

Why People Think They Don't Need Marketing Automation

One of the biggest barriers that I come across when speaking to people is that they do not understand why they would need to use Marketing Automation. Over my next few blog posts I will look into some of the different reasons and misconceptions that people have about marketing automation and why they don’t need it.

One of the most common that I come across is that people are already using Google Analytics so therefore only need a mass email marketing platform.

To this I would say that, yes, Google Analytics is massively beneficial and the majority of our clients continue to use it once they have begun using Marketing Automation and we would never tell them to stop this.

However does it enable them to IDENTIFY their prospects through their email marketing? 
Does it enable them to build up a SCORE for their prospects, giving them the ability to decide on the next best action?
Then from that do they have the ability to TRIGGER an ALERT to a sales person to notify them to contact a prospect when they are ready to buy?

If the answer is no, this is why a company will benefit from marketing automation and this is why Profunnel will be of greater benefit than just using a mass email application. Yes Profunnel will provide this service, but through detailed reporting, analysis and account management it also gives a visibility of where future sales will come from.

THIS is why companies WILL benefit from Marketing Automation.

A* Content - The basics to seeing the return you deserve

The task of blogging is proving to be a daunting one. The biggest problem is what to write and making sure that it covers the basic requirements, it needs to be informative, interesting and that something that relevant. As I was thinking about this it made me realise that this is a topic to talk about!

One area that I focus on heavily in my role at Profunnel is content of campaigns and how you portray this message to get the return you deserve.

The content needs to be relevant to the people that are going to be reading your message. The need to identify the pain points that your audience feel on a regular basis is crucial and to really hammer the message home, here at Profunnel we encourage you to link back to a potential problem that your audience experience on a day to day basis in their life. By doing this you will quickly establish that you are aware of what your audience is going through and so they will be much more likely to engage with you in the long run. 

Once you have established the pain points what next? 

Your Call to Actions in the content need to be clear and stand out to make sure that your audience is crystal clear of what you want them to do. But how to do this without turning your audience off? There is always the more obvious direct instruction:

Download our whitepaper here

Find out how we can help you by reading our latest whitepaper – Fishing for Leads

However I have been reading a lot about getting your audience to think about a problem you are proposing and as such, to find out the answer they click through:

How can you get more Leads?

How can Profunnel increase the efficiency of you Lead Generation?

At this point there is no right or wrong answer as to how to portray you Call to Actions from the results we have seen, but for me personally I am more likely to engage with a question that is making me think rather than a direct instruction. What would work best for you? Put yourself in the mind-set of your audience.

One thing I would like to flag up however is that you have just spent all the time focusing on producing A* content but it needs to be relevant to the audience that you are targeting. 

The message that you send to a Managing Director of a company may need to be substantially different to the message that you send an IT Director or to a Marketing Executive within the same organisation. Moving away from different roles within the same industry, the message that you are sending to different industries may need to vary also. The content and design of your correspondence to a Design Company possibly will need to be different to that of a Fleet Management company for example.  As such understanding your audience is so crucial and without carefully planning your marketing campaigns and having a clear communication plan in place as to how and when you are going to contact your prospects, 

you will not see the return that you deserve. 

Here at Profunnel we strongly believe that a communication plan is a marketing teams bread and butter. Having a clear plan over a 3 month period of what you are sending, who you are sending to and when you will send it really helps to focus your efforts and prevents ad hoc campaigns that may not be as thought out as you may have wanted. The proof of the pudding is in the tasting and the success that Sungard saw from a zombie themed campaign really shows the potential. A great read if you haven’t already heard about this. Click here to read more.

This is something that we are passionate about here at Profunnel and we would love to discuss this more with you so please feel free to get in touch. 

Karl
Account Manager