‘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: Don't lose sight of the wood for the trees.

Keeping it Simple

With more and more companies adopting Marketing Automation solutions to replace repetitive and time consuming manual processes with a specially designed software solution, its often the case that end users get caught up in the complexity of what the systems can deliver and forget the big picture. Ultimately the purpose of this kind of solution is to help streamline the marketing department’s tasks, making it more scaleable and to help marry these activities with the objectives of the sales department – not to make things more difficult.

So here are Profunnel’s top tips to keep your marketing automation simple.

Understand the power of Exclusions:

For those new to marketing automation, an Exclusion List or exclusions are instructions that ensure that a specific segment or group of existing or prospective clients do not receive specific campaigns or responses based on their behaviour. For example, I’m unlikely to want to send the same offers to existing paying clients as my prospective customers. No brainer right?

But beyond this obvious exclusion, its worth considering a couple more noteworthy examples - sending webinar sign-ups more information on your upcoming webinar, or an e-brochure for those who have already downloaded said brochure is an exercise in futility. Once these obvious exclusions have been addressed, the temptation is to start getting super complicated and start excluding according to all sorts of complex metrics – trying to ensure prospects don’t get the same email twice, or excluding whole lists according to behaviour on specific triggers...the list is endless and our recommendation would be to leave this to the pro’s (e.g. your account manager )

Just remember, over-thinking or in this case over-excluding can create both unnecessary work and can impact long-term marketing strategies. Simple strategies are most effective unless you have dedicated resource to run your marketing automation platform full-time.

Don’t overdo your audience segmentation!

Segmenting prospects and customers is a hugely valuable strategy allowing you to deliver specific offerings to a targeted audience who need it the most. Some companies are happy to distinguish between clients and prospects and others create veritable libraries of different segments. For the majority, once again, the simpler the better.

What most marketers overlook when brainstorming a new and innovative way to segment their audience is that for every segment you may need to create landing pages, e-shots, call-to-actions and offers as well as tying all these into separate campaigns. These then all need refining and tweaking and you end up painting the golden gate bridge all over again. Creating compelling content for larger segments will not overburden your resource and will allow you to push on and actually ensure your campaigns are as effective as possible.

Big Picture

It’s crucial to remember that marketing automation platforms are there to help leverage existing sales and marketing capabilities, not as a tool to overburden and burn out all resources. Of course, there is a benefit in having dedicated resource from your platform in order to supply ad-hoc support or even take on a project on your behalf. However, for the majority keeping it simple is a surefire method of reaping the rewards of a marketing automation platform...don’t lose sight of the wood for the trees.

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The Evolution of Email Marketing

The evolution of email marketing

In 2012 it felt like we couldn't escape the constant reminders by journalists, bloggers, marketers and even consumers that social media had reached adolescence. Some even touted the idea that social could make email marketing obsolete; a bold and presumptuous concept when you consider that email is still the primary source of lead generation for 9 out of 10 B2B marketers. Whilst email marketing may not have received the accelerated public growth adopted by social, it has begun to evolve – so what can it offer in 2013?

The relevance of email

The aforementioned figures were revealed by Forrester and sat alongside stats declaring that 70% of marketers see email as either ‘critical’ or ‘very important’ with more than half of them using emails as a primary source of, (in descending order), lead generation/nurturing, enhancing or building brand awareness, driving sales and strengthening thought leadership.

The ultimate B2B marketing tool

Industry wide, B2B marketers reported an average deliverable rate of 84% and a further 13% average click-through rate. Not only are these figures extremely positive, but website forensics can provide marketers with hitherto unprecedented access to customer analytics and reporting which can be tied back to ROI, mainly through the process of lead-scoring; a convention still presenting teething problems for the social revolution.

“New and growing businesses are stealthy in how they embrace email. You will hear marketing automation, cloud-based marketing platforms, digital messaging, CRM, and the like, but the companies valued highly and/or raising a ton of money or being acquired, feature email front and centre’ (S.Jenkins, Clikz 2013)

So what’s next for email marketing?

More and more professionals are now using more complex email marketing systems and choosing marketing automation platforms in order to enhance email lead nurturing campaigns. Marketing automation offers more complex analytics, allowing marketers to track customer behaviour which ultimately leads to more efficient output as brands can fine tune their communications, content and daily activities by interpreting this unique data. Furthermore, these platforms can streamline the entire process with CRM integration, automation of campaigns and filtering mechanisms. What’s not to love?

Marketing Automation

So why do we think Marketing Automation is critical to the longevity and survival of email marketing? Firstly, the adoption of marketing automation is expected to increase 50% by 2015 and thanks to the ease in which customers now have access to the plethora of information about your company, the average sales cycle has increased by 22% over the last 5 years - all the more reason to join the party. Moreover, to counteract this paradigm shift in buying behaviour marketers must now adopt a more sophisticated lead nurturing approach to keep up with this revolution in buying behaviour.

Evolve to prepare

So in summary, it’s safe to say that email marketing is not ‘dead’ and social certainly isn't the straw that will break the camel’s back just yet. However, to keep up with the shift in consumer behaviour email marketing has to continue its evolution to become more sophisticated and integrate with your existing end-to-end marketing efforts including web, social, CRM and offline channels.

Finally, Gartner predicts that by 2020 customers will manage 85% of their relationships with an enterprise without talking to a human. If this is the case, can you afford not to have a platform in place to ensure that you make the most of inbound leads so that your sales teams can target the right customers at the right time with the right content?

UK falls behind when it comes to customer engagement

Research by the Epson Business Council has found that small businesses in the UK are falling behind its European counterparts when considering the importance of customer engagement.

As inspiresme.co.uk reports, only 29% of the small businesses taking part in the research believe customer service is an integral factor in differentiating from competition in the current economic climate. Comparatively, 84% of Spanish and 77% of Italian small businesses rate customer service more importantly. A similar pattern is found for customer engagement as three quarters of some European countries highly regard technology as a way to engage their customers while only 49% of UK small businesses believe this.

In B2B marketing and sales, it is essential to build a rapport with prospects while making the effort to maintain relationships with existing customers.  As the results from this survey show, technology is an effective way to improve customer engagement, however UK businesses are either not aware of its benefits or the return on investment it can deliver.

Profunnel offers marketing automation solutions which allow businesses to conduct their entire marketing activity from a single platform. With this technology, companies can integrate their email marketing and set tailored, automated messages to be sent in response to website activity. Additionally, prospect and client behaviour is incorporated into the CRM, the information provided here improves communications as sales people can discuss interests with potential buyers and nurture them more closely through the entire buying cycle.

Visit Profunnel for more information on marketing automation.

Always look on the bright side

A recent survey has found that SMEs are optimistic towards investment this year, despite claims of a continuing bleak economic climate.

As bdaily.co.uk reports, more than three quarters of the 100 UK small businesses questioned said that the poor economic outlook for 2012 has not deterred their plans to invest. Over 60% of the companies are looking to spend in marketing and sales, stating that one of their main focuses will be email marketing.

Businesses of all sizes need to make careful considerations for spending this year to ensure productivity and efficiency is either maintained or improved so they can be satisfied with their investment.

Profunnel offers an email marking solution which can be tailored to suit the requirements of your business. The software can assist marketers by engaging with only the warmest leads through a variety of methods depending on the campaign strategy, such as drip emails and trigger emails based on website visitor activity. Overall B2B lead generation is improved and better relationships are built between sales and prospects, increasing the number of appointments achieved.

Visit Profunnel for more information on email marketing.

Marketers are the happiest and hardest workers

Research conduct by Mars Drinks UK shows marketers are the happiest workers within an organisation.

As reported on Marketing Week, the study included the responses of 2000 office workers from various departments including, marketing, creative, finance, IT and legal. 60% of the marketers questioned said they were happy where they worked – more than any other office sector.

Trade marketing manager for Marks Drink UK, Jenni Morgan, who commissioned the research, said: “Our results also show that we are working longer hours than ever before but this has not dented our enjoyment of the job.”

Happiness at work for marketers, whether consumer or B2B, is vital for good results. A happy marketer makes for a good marketer.

The combination of dedication and job satisfaction is good news for business owners but the productivity of B2B marketing can be increased with the support of marketing automation software. Marketers can optimise their entire online strategy through integrated, targeted email marketing. The increased level of communication by automated emails builds a rapport with prospects and enhances lead generation - creating more qualified leads and appointments, and highlighting a clearer ROI.

Visit Profunnel for more information on email marketing

Marketing Merged with Sales to Improve Business

The chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM) has published a report suggesting marketing and sales should be merged in order to protect the future of marketing.

As reported by Marketing Week, the Sales and Marketing Fusion report from the CIM believes a tighter bond combining the two departments within a company is necessary to stop the relegation of marketing which has become apparent during the recession. The report continues to suggest that by working in unison, efficiency improvements can be achieved through a mutual view of company objectives and customer satisfaction.

The report has sparked both negative and positive views from marketers across the industry, with some claiming this is an unnecessary move. However there is a common agreement that marketing and sales departments do need to work together more closely.

Profunnel realises the importance of a streamlined sales and marketing strategy – our demand generation platform can help you to improve company productivity through its various tools. Intelligent web forensics will identify warm leads to target by tracking visitor behaviour on a company’s website. This allows marketers to send emails tailored to particular interests via the available email marketing templates. The focus on warm leads develops B2B lead generation while relationships with high-value prospects allows sales to engage more effectively and build on their customer base.

Visit Profunnel for more information on demand generation marketing.

Read our whitepaper The Sales and Marketing Coalition for more information.

How to grow your business in a slow recovering economy

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) has published the latest figures for UK economic growth, confirming a growth rate of just 0.5% during the Q3 period, July to September.

According to BBC Business News online, a Treasury spokesman said the UK economy was “not immune to the turbulence in the Eurozone and its impact on British businesses”, which has become clear from the slow economic recovery that we are experiencing.

With such an uninspiring financial forecast, businesses must now focus more effort on what they can do to drive their business through these difficult financial times, and understand what they should be doing in order to accomplish this. Many companies will already be using marketing and other promotional activities to support their business, but they may not be as efficient, or effective, as they would hope.

Profunnel looks within these activities and focuses on the smaller details, to help businesses tailor their approaches in order to see effective results for their efforts. Online marketing for example, is fast becoming the preferred approach for companies due to the advanced functionality and clearer ROI delivered by activities such as personalised email marketing, social media tracking and online lead generation. However, this can be time consuming and costly when using multiple software applications.

Profunnel offers all of these services and more from just one platform, allowing companies to economically optimise targeted email marketing solutions and online marketing activity through the latest demand generation technology.

For more information on marketing for business growth, contact Profunnel.

Growing Concerns Over Personal Data Security

UK consumers are increasingly worried about data protection, according to new research.

A survey conducted by OnePoll reveals 80 per cent of respondents have reservations over organisations protecting their information. When compared to a similar survey produced last year, there has been a 17% increase in consumer worries in 2011.

Data security is a major issue for organisations and their sales and marketing teams. If they are to retain customer loyalty, while building trust with prospects, businesses must be certain that the data they use to target customers is from a bonafide source while also ensuring they are contacting people who would be interested in their services.

Profunnel’s marketing solutions provide businesses with a means to engage with customers and to build that all-important trust needed to ultimately secure a sale. The demand generation platform assists sales and marketing people with their online and email marketing. Through intelligent web forensics visitors to your site can be monitored and tracked while the lead scoring system alerts sales and marketing of warm leads, improving B2B lead generation. Having such information means companies can be confident they are focussing on relevant customers and in turn these customers are more willing to engage with the brand.

Visit Profunnel for more information on demand generation

Email Marketing is Evolving

The results from the annual Marketing Week ‘Email Attitudes Research’ survey indicate that email marketing remains a favoured method of communication for businesses. 70% of respondents said they sent more emails over the last 12 months than the previous year and 45% have seen greater click-through rates.

Consumers surveyed in 2010 found one of the biggest issues with email to be ‘information overload’, whereas this year consumers are more willing to receive email messages due to better targeting. Although for many marketers ‘targeting’ is still considered a big challenge, finding difficulties in obtaining data.

Email appears to be retaining its status as a preferred form of marketing as businesses begin to see the potential of integrating email with other marketing channels. 45% indicate they have seen traffic from other channels increase when integrated with email campaigns. However there is still concern from marketers over data capture, which would allow them to create more tailored emails.

As the results highlight, targeted email marketing is the underlying success factor for marketers and consumers. Profunnel provides integrated email marketing solutions to strengthen tailored campaigns for better results. Through web forensics, website visitor behaviour is captured and warm leads are selected and sent through to marketers, developing B2B lead generation. With this information, email messages can be composed with relevant content for individual prospects. Recipients are more likely to open these messages which will consequently create greater opportunity to generate new business.

Please visit Profunnel for more information on email marketing

Spend, Spend, Spend on New Technology

As reported on Fresh Business Thinking, a recent survey conducted by Netgear shows small businesses are planning to spend more money on innovative IT over the next 12 months.

The survey questioned 300 business owners and IT managers from SMEs and found 35% of the respondents plan to ‘make more strategic IT investments’ in comparison to last year.

Investing in new technology is crucial to businesses that want to remain current in their industry while making the company more time and cost efficient.

For businesses looking to improve the technology in their sales and marketing departments, Profunnel offers the latest lead generation software to maximise the production of new business opportunities. Profunnel’s demand generation solution integrates and automates the lead management process, meaning visitors to the website will be tracked and tagged. Sales and marketing teams are then provided with information on warm leads generated by the intelligent lead scoring system. The teams can then approach these warm leads through targeted email marketing – capitalising on the relationships they have started to build and increasing the new business brought into the company.

Visit Profunnel for more information on lead generation.

Businesses opt for B2B Email Marketing

Research conducted by Econsultancy has found that the chosen method for companies to communicate with their customers is through email marketing.

The findings indicate a wide range of areas for which email marketing is preferred for customer engagement. 86% of the businesses questioned choose this channel for corresponding offers, 80% for product and service news, 76% opt for email marketing when requesting feedback and 60% prefer this channel when offering customer service.

As illustrated by these statistics, the majority of companies consider email marketing to be most valuable. However it’s important to implement the correct strategy in order to generate successful communication and build relationships with customers.

By integrating email marketing solutions into their campaign, businesses can increase the effectiveness of their messages. From a single demand generation platform, Profunnel offers solutions which incorporate automatic tracking of visitors to the website and real-time alerts highlighting the interests of these visitors to the sales and marketing team. This process improves online lead generation as only warm leads are referred to the sales team. The information retrieved through Profunnel’s demand generation software can assist sales in creating tailored email messages to achieve successful engagement with customers.

Visit Profunnel for more information on email marketing.

Boost to Direct Marketing Spending

According to the latest Bellwether report, direct marketing budgets have grown. In keeping with Profunnel’s beliefs, it’s refreshing to see companies investing more in their marketing strategies.

As reported in Marketing Week, the second quarterly report from Bellwether shows that companies have increased their investment in direct marketing, including email marketing, which is one of only three channels to see a rise in spending. From April to the end of June, budgets have jumped by 2.5 per cent, compared with 1.8 per cent in the first quarter.

Mel Cruickshank, chairman of the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising’s direct marketing group, says companies are “turning to direct marketing to provide return on investment against marketing spend”.

In order to be a good investment, successful direct marketing depends greatly on forward planning, accurate targeting and up-to-date data. Integrating intelligent marketing technology can ensure companies receive this good return on investment, which Profunnel has proven time and time again.

The latest email marketing solutions from Profunnel, allow sales and marketing professionals to tailor their messages – offering a personal approach to engage their visitors – making them more attractive to potential customers. Profunnel’s targeted email marketing software incorporates a level of personalisation and flexibility derived from the results of lead scoring, which are generated by visitor activity. Based on these findings messages will be sent containing relevant information to prospects, which improves email lead generation, directing warm leads into a company’s sales inbox.

Visit Profunnel for more information on email marketing.

Businesses Must Build Trust with Customers for Successful Marketing

As reported on Fourth Source, a recent study by the Direct Marketing Association, (DMA), shows how there has been a significant drop in the number of consumers willing to offer personal details about themselves when interacting with online businesses.

The poll of over 1,000 consumers found that more than 1 in 3 are choosing to withhold identifying information, resulting in real problems for marketers and consumer data capture.

For example, in the last six months there has been a drop by approximately one third in the number of people prepared to give out their name, address or email.

Executive Director of the DMA, Chris Combemale, suggests that marketers must find alternatives in their methods to capture consumer data. 54% of the respondents believed trust in a company is paramount in deciding to disclose personal details, therefore marketers need to build trust with the customer first before proceeding to contact them for further information.

Profunnel has developed intelligent marketing software to aid marketers with trust and engagement with customers. Our demand generation software will help you to easily track and analyse visitor activity from a single platform. The tracking device will follow your visitors, highlight their interests and alert you of when and where they access your site – improving your lead generation. This information will allow you to tailor email marketing campaigns to suit these interests, forming a trusting relationship which can ultimately turn visitors into customers.

For more information on demand generation, visit Profunnel.

Companies See the Social Side to Generating New Business

As reported in The Telegraph, a study by Regus shows an increasing number of UK businesses are attracting more customers since adopting social media marketing.

The research based on responses from 17,000 managers from around the world, including 4,000 from the UK, illustrates how more than one third of companies in the UK are successfully generating new customers since incorporating social media into their business strategy.

The study highlighted a significant rise with the overall figure increasing from 33% of UK companies in 2010, to 41% this year as more and more companies employ social media as a creative way to interact with their customers. 66% of the respondents agreed that their marketing plans would not be successful without social media.

While these results underline the benefits of integrating social media into your marketing activity, it is essential to use the right strategy, in order to maximise the customer interest you receive. We have addressed this and developed intelligent B2B marketing software to assist your social media campaign.

Our social media tracking platform allows you to direct all inbound traffic from the various social media sites to one single dashboard – the system will support your lead generation by tracking any warm leads from the sites and delivering their interests to your sales team. You can also create blogs within the software, which will enable you to observe their effectiveness and help you to tailor the blogs to your target market.

Find out more about our social media services and how we can help your organisation.

More Focus on Targeted Marketing with Inflation Rates Remaining High

It has been reported in The Telegraph that inflation rates for May have remained at a two-year high of 4.5 pc.

As the economy remains highly competitive, a strong focus should be placed on maintaining the customers you have as well as bringing in new business in order to drive your company forward. To achieve this you need to understand those you are selling to and establish the most effective way of communicating with them.

For marketing and sales this is a key aspect of the role– being able to identify customers’ interests and target prospects with relevant information. Our demand generation software enables visitor activity to your website to be monitored – delivering a valuable insight into what attracts your customers and indicates when and where they visit. The behaviour of visitors activates personalised email marketing – only sending out information relevant to your customers, ultimately improving your lead generation.

Visit Profunnel to find out more about demand generation

Time is of the Essence for SME’s

It has been suggested by knowthenet.org.uk that small businesses must re-evaluate their communication strategies with prospects in order to maximise engagement.

The internet advice site believes that integrated email and social marketing is paramount to interacting with prospective clients, and has highlighted that ‘timing’ is a crucial element to encourage and retain loyalty to the company. Online marketing is vital for small businesses, but it is all too easy to go unrecognised on the web - losing out to larger organisations - if online marketing is not fully-integrated. Additionally, acting on client activity at the right time is greatly beneficial to small companies but can often be viewed as being too time consuming.

Profunnel offers a wide range of intelligent online marketing services available from just one platform. Our tailored B2B lead generation products, incorporating email marketing and social media, will follow your website visitors from their first visit - keeping track of how often they visit and the course of their time spent on the site. The information will allow you to engage with warm leads on a deeper level and, as a result, will optimise your demand generation and increase your company’s productivity.

Visit Profunnel’s website for more information on B2B lead generation and the importance of timing.

The Right Sales Team – Essential To Success

Profunnel have recently expanded the business with two new additions to the sales team. The new members will help to support the growing sales force, taking on responsibility for new business across the UK.

Generating new business is crucial for any organisation and having the right sales team is key in supporting this growth. It is also important to integrate a system whereby the sales team can work alongside the marketing department to optimise potential opportunities.

Profunnel offers B2B lead generation technology that minimises the challenges of cold calling while enabling companies to improve the quality and increase the amount of warm leads. The intelligent email marketing solutions are implemented to target potential customers by identifying and alerting the sales team of their specific interests when visiting a company’s website. This then provides companies with the ability to focus resources on the most attractive prospects, significantly increasing business growth and ROI.

Please visit Profunnel’s website for more information on email marketing and lead generation.

Email Marketing a Must

The Centre for Economic and Business Research (cebr) has discovered how small businesses are failing to realise the potential of email marketing.

The study illustrates how online channels generate just 2.4 per cent of small organisations’ turnover, suggesting that they are not taking advantage of the web and need to integrate email marketing more readily into their marketing strategies.

According to cebr, companies with fifty employees or less together shared a total Internet revenue of £36 billion in 2010. Comparatively, companies with 250 employees or more turned over a cumulative online income of £394 billion. The figures conclude that larger organisations are more conscious of online benefits including email marketing.

Presence on the web is paramount to maximising your company’s possibilities of profit. Profunnel offer email marketing solutions, tailored to your specific requirements - ensuring that you capitalise on your investment. Our software will increase your B2B lead generation by directing more people into your sales inbox. Additionally our demand generation solution will allow you to conduct your marketing processes simply via a single platform, increasing the efficiency of your business and your ROI.

Find out more about our targeted email marketing services and how we can help your organisation.

Turning Data Into Business

The recent “The state of Marketing 2011” survey by IBM has highlighted how the marketing industry needs better analytics to turn data into business.

Representing 300 online and direct marketing organisations, the key priority for marketers appears to be a call for more in-depth analytical tools to help increase results. Although they acknowledge that social and mobile marketing are growing – the popularity does not match business productivity.

Additionally, almost 90% of respondents showed interest in integrating technology into their marketing strategy, believing that it is a vital factor in establishing a successful output.

We at Profunnel deliver services that identify and target these issues through our lead generation software. Offering the latest products in demand generation, you can efficiently track online visitor activity allowing your sales people to focus on warm leads. By this, they can observe the interests of potential customers and tailor communication through effective targeted email marketing.

More information on our demand generation software can be found at www.profunnel.co.uk