Demand Gen Releases White Paper

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

It’s the last week of the month and the sales team is scrambling to get signatures on 3 deals that have been lingering for several weeks. The company needs to close the deals in order to reach its goalsbefore the quarter closes. The contracts are held up, either by legal or a new internal committee, and the scrutiny on the rest of the sales pipeline intensifies.

This scenario is becoming just as common at large, publicly-traded software companies as it is for small start-ups in verticals from technology to financial services to health care and many other sectors. According to research from Wilton-CT-based SiriusDecisions, the average selling cycle for deals
$100,000 and over is 22% longer on average than it was five years, and there are 3.5 more people involved in the decision-making process.

As the complexity of the sales process has increased, most organizations are turning to their marketing departments to drive more leads into the pipeline and also to create tools that will advance prospects through the sales funnel.

This has been challenging for marketing executives because the expanded responsibility for revenuecreation has been piled on top of their traditional branding work, and has often come without additional budget or staffing.

To help address these new business realities, leading companies have utilized solutions that have automated their demand generation processes, with goals of better measuring their marketing investments
and ultimately building stronger alignment between their sales and marketing organizations.

What these early adopters have often learned through trial and error is that each phase of the demandgeneration funnel requires a strategy for process, people and technology. In addition, most firmshave found that tuning up one component of their demand generation strategy will be limited if other parts are sputtering. Demand generation has proven to be a truly integrated, end-to-end, process and the smart companies are optimizing each phase of the process.
In this white paper we will look at some of the case studies and best practices that have been
identified in the following 5 key areas:

• Lead Generation Strategies
• Lead Management Processes
• Nurturing/Pipeline Acceleration Tactics
• Marketing Automation Tools
• Sales Enablement/Effectiveness

In each of these areas we will provide background and guidelines on how companies can compare and contrast their current strategies against the “Leaders & Laggards” in demand generation. Hopefully, this will help you examine where your company has room for improvement and help you get started on a plan to fine-tune your demand generation efforts.

LEAD GENERATION STRATEGIES:
Filling The Front-End of the Pipeline

The first step for many companies in revving up their demand generation engine is increasing the quantity and quality of the leads being fed into their sales pipeline. Given the proliferation of the media landscape, lead generation has proven to be a challenge in its own right.

In order to get through the “sales pitch” filter that many prospects have adopted, smart marketers are constantly evaluating and monitoring which efforts are driving the most qualified leads for their team. Through this analysis, a common learning has been that content-based offerings around key industry topics—such as white papers and webcasts—are generating the strongest response from prospects.

A recent report from tech search network KnowledgeStorm and research firm Marketing Sherpa, showed that nearly three quarters of research and information gathering is being conducted online. The report, titled Connecting Through Content, found 72% of respondents start a search looking to find “solutions to solve a current problem.”

While this high percentage of online research may not directly correlate to other vertical industries outside of tech, it clearly demonstrates the opportunity marketers have to drive prospects by delivering thought leadership via the web. More specific examples of how some leaders have tapped into the growth of online are available in the nurturing and marketing automation segments of this paper.

The survey found that there is still a disconnect between marketers and prospective buyers in terms of the media they are using. For example, less than one-third of tech buyers claimed to access webcasts as their most frequent information source, while almost two-thirds of the marketers surveyed sponsor or use webcasts in their marketing.

The one medium that has consistently proven to be an effective tool for both buyers and marketers, based on the study, was white papers. Finishing ahead of case studies, product literature and analyst reports, 71% of the respondents indicated they read white papers frequently. White papers also topped the list of content that respondents shared with colleagues, being passed along 57% of the time.

The report emphasized the theory that marketers should focus their content on relevant industry trends, not thinly-veiled sales sheets. The quality of the content provided is critical to tech buyers, with 85% of the respondentsstating the educational quality of the material was very important.

LEAD MANAGEMENT:
Keeping Score of Your Best Prospects

For those marketers that have successfully built a lead generation pipeline, the next phase is learning that all leads are not created equal. By developing a framework to gauge which leads should be given the highest priority, companies provide more targeted information to prospects and ultimately accelerate their buying cycle.As part of its 2007 Demand Creation Tactics Survey, SiriusDecisions found that 52% of B2B companies with sales over $100 million already have some kind of lead scoring system in place, and another 26% have a system in development.

The definition and sophistication of a lead scoring system varies greatly by company and vertical industry. Newcomers to the practice are still sorting leads with simple A, B and C grades, usually based on company size and revenue, as a means to prioritize the biggest opportunities. More advanced marketers are creating qualifying guidelines and follow-up processes based on BANT (Budget, Authority, Need & Timing) scores.

Based on its Demand Creation Tactics Survey, SiriusDecisions found BANT scores to be the most common attribute marketers are using to prioritize their leads, with more than 2/3 of companies with over $100 million in revenue currently using BANT scoring.

The most sophisticated marketers are taking this prioritization beyond BANT scores and factoring in other attributes, such as how often a prospect has attended product demos or visited their website. Packaged lead scoring applications also factor in behavioral data based on prospects’ web site visits, responses to email offers, etc., including frequency and recency of activity.

While the emphasis at the front end of the pipeline is typically focused on generating as many leads as possible, companies that reach the lead scoring phase of demand generation typically end up passing along fewer leads to their sales team.

One of the biggest complaints among most sales people is that the leads they are given are unqualified, and wind up to be a waste of their time. Marketing executives that are seasoned in demand generation have addressed this by requiring that all leads are “sales ready” before they are passed along to the sales team. This process has proven to be a key step in building the confidence and participation of the sales force, and ultimately building alignment between sales and marketing.

PIPELINE ACCELERATION:
Nurturing Prospects Through The Buying Cycle

After gaining a better handle on which prospects should be given the highest priority in terms of their sales readiness, the top demand building companies have also developed strategies for keeping longer term leads engaged through each phase of the sales pipeline.

Often referred to as “sales nurturing,” this strategy typically involves identifying the biggest objections or internal hurdles a prospect must address before reaching the sales-ready stage. For example, a lead that had no budget identified for a project traditionally might have gotten filed away with no follow up.

Companies with advanced sales nurturing processes typically have a set of rules established that provide relevant and targeted deliverables to longerterm leads, designed to address each of their concerns and help move them closer to purchase.

Industry research supports that buyers are looking for different types of information based on where they are in buying cycle. For example, data shows that tools such as white papers and web seminars have been more effective with early to mid-stage leads, while offers such as ROI calculations and free trial downloads have been more effective with late stage prospects.

One of the strongest nurturing case studies we have covered recently was CenterBeam, an IT services firm which used an outside marketing firm to develop what it called a “lead farming” campaign.

In order to connect with its hard to reach CFO target audience, CenterBeam developed a multi-touch campaign designed to engage and qualify CFOs before turning them over to the sales team. The company calculated that it normally takes between 9 and 11 touches to engage a Clevel executive. Therefore, CenterBeam established a multi-media contact strategy consisting of telemarketing, voice mail, email and direct mail, often over a period of several months before a conversation with a sales person occurs.

The “lead farming” campaign has shown impressive results, producing 25% of the company’s prospects and accounting for 50% of its new sales. The campaign also helped demonstrate the value of long-term leads, with 60% of the deals CenterBeam classified as long-term leads.

MARKETING AUTOMATION:
A Jump Start for Sales Nurturing

In order for sales nurturing programs to work properly, an advanced marketing automation system is typically a requirement. These systems help companies identify leads when they take a defined action, such as attending a webcast, downloading a white paper or visiting a website.

Marketing automation tools can also help sales and marketing teams prioritize leads for follow up and ensure that they receive relevant follow-up information based on the content they have recently viewed.

For example, another case we recently covered was ShareBuilder Corp., an online provider of 401K plans for small to mid-sized businesses, has achieved impressive results with an automated nurturing program. Based on the recent web activity a prospect, ShareBuilder’s automated solution sends a realtime email designed to lead the prospect to the next topic on the site, such as case studies, articles and product demos. The brokerage credited the automated nurturing program with accelerating their best prospects (a 12% increase in deals closing in the first 30 days) and reviving older leads (250% jump in closing previously inactive leads/more than 12 months old) in the system.

Another area that has been significantly strengthened through the use of marketing automation solutions is the use of customized landing pages. These intuitive tools, which allow marketers to build targeted landing pages to offer relevant content and pre-populated forms to email recipients, have consistently helped increase registration and response rates.

Beyond these specific performance functions, analysts point out that the key deliverable for advanced marketing automation solutions is that they integrate all marketing activity back to web-based assets to that companies can have a greater accountability for all of their efforts and investments.

SALES OPTIMIZATION:
Enabling The Effective Salesforce

In addition feeding the pipeline with pre-qualified leads, another changing role for today’s demand-driven marketing organization is to provide collateral and intelligence for the sales team on key accounts. Scott Gillum, SVP for MarketBridge, a leading professional services firm that has worked with accounts such as IBM, MasterCard, Merck, SAP and Siemens, has seen the role of marketing shift dramatically at these leading companies.

“We are now seeing a lot of people come into marketing with experience in either the product or sales side, so they have more familiarity with the sales process,” Gillum said. “These teams help them build tools that will provide more about intelligence about a prospect. For example, a CRM system may tell you where a customer is in the pipeline, but it will not be able to tell you the reasons why they aren’t moving from one stage to the next.”

As part of this shift, Gillum said the sales enablement deliverables for the marketing team are often much different than the traditional branding output. “Now the sales team is looking for tools like online configurators or help organizing executive meetings in a specific region. These tools all help create access to different key points in the organization.”

Measuring Sales Performance

In addition to increased involvement from the marketing department, many demand-driven companies are also speeding up the pipeline by investing in Sales Effectiveness or Sales Productivity tools that move beyond traditional CRM/SFA systems.

Recent research from SiriusDecisions showed B2B sales people spend only 18% of their time face-to-face with prospects, while a larger amount is consumed with administrative duties and market research. A separate study from CSO Insights also supported the continued need to invest in supporting the sales effort.

According to the 2007 CSO Insights Sales Performance Optimization Report, 43 percent of reps are missing quota and 52 percent of forecasted deals result in a loss or no decision. Based on the increased complexity of closing deals as well as managing accounts, the rapidly growing choice of sales effectiveness tools are designed to enhance productivity, provide more time access to relevant news and information, strengthen presentations/communications, shorten sales cycles, and improve win rates.

Because timely information is critical in most industries, trigger-based selling solutions have been one of the most popular sales effectiveness investments. “Knowledge is the price of admission for sales people today,” says Jill Konrath, a leading sales strategist and author of Selling To Big Companies. “It is a huge competitive advantage to have timely information about your existing clients and prospects. It has really become a baseline item. You either have it or you don’t and if you don’t you can’t compete.”

Many demand-driven organizations have adopted automated trigger tools to provide sales execs with leads and insights into news and events within their territory or existing account base, which may indicate a readiness to buy.

Depending on the solution a company offers, these triggering events can include management changes, new product announcements, mergers and acquisitions, new financing, new locations, etc. The leading triggerbased tools monitor and mine large bases of business information sources and filter the information based on pre-set profiles so that only information relevant to their account base is provided. The alerts are typically delivered via email or through a web portal right to the sales person’s desktop or mobile device, utilizing
a pre-set profile.

Five Ways to Leverage E-mail in a Down Economy

Five Ways to Leverage E-mail in a Down Economy
By Al DiGuido

Few companies have escaped the turmoil of the economic crisis. And marketing budgets are usually first to take the hit.
While marketing budgets shrink, a greater portion of marketing dollars are shifting to digital media -- and for good reason. When times are tough, marketers require the ability to measure, prove ROI, and focus on the most efficient means to reach customers. E-mail, in particular, allows marketers a cost-effective way to stay close to core customers, leveraging customer data and analytics to extract greater value from their existing base.
Are today's e-mail marketers rising to the challenge? Its one thing to talk about using customer analytics to drive business and quite another to actually do it.
Too often, e-mail marketers fail to leverage what they know about their customers to drive relevant offers and content to maximize conversions and transactions. Companies that build a large list of subscribers without a concurrent analytics strategy leave 90 percent of the list's value untapped. That's a shortcoming you can't afford.
Marketers seeking the most value from their customer contact strategy without spending additional funds should work on gaining an advanced understanding of their customers through their e-mail response data. This should enable marketers to develop more targeted, relevant offers, and messaging. If you aren't putting your analytics to work, now's the time to roll up your sleeves and get started.

Go Beyond Opens and Clicks
More than 40 percent of e-mail marketers say they use only basic metrics, such as open and click rates, according to a recent Forrester Research report. While that's better than forgoing analysis entirely, it's not enough. Marketers will find much better results and achieve greater, faster ROI when they implement an advanced behavioral analysis, taking into account what consumers do on a Web site once they click in the e-mail.

Track Web Site Behavior
The goal of nearly every e-mail is to drive traffic to a Web page; yet most tracking only focuses on the e-mail. Most analytics vendor tools integrate with e-mail providers quite easily, but few companies tie together e-mail and site analytics and then on the information.
Site behavior, such as Web site categories an e-mail recipient visits or shopping cart abandonment, can drive far more relevant e-mail campaigns. Analyzing Web site behavior should be the cornerstone of any advanced e-mail campaign because it will produce more relevant e-mails without additional costs.

Increase Order Sizes, Not List Size
Over the years, marketers faced with a looming revenue target have turned to e-mail marketing to make up a shortfall. The most frequent method for hitting that goal, however, has been to increase the volume of e-mails sent to the house list.
It's easy to lean on this method because it's inexpensive and can bring needed short-term results. During a widespread slowdown, too many marketers use this as their core strategy.
The result? Consumers watch their e-mail boxes fill with untargeted messages several times a week. Neither marketers nor consumers really benefit from this unfocused, easy-way-out strategy. Rather than solely increasing list size, look to increase average order sizes and overall revenue by creating a long-term testing program while improving segmentation and targeting to your house list.

Test, Test, Test
Only 23 percent of marketers say they have a comprehensive testing program, according to Forrester Research. Most marketers rely on total guesswork or occasionally test their messages prior to spending.
Because marketers are tasked with doing more while spending less, no strategy will make more of an immediate impact than introducing a comprehensive testing plan. After all, understanding the success and failure of a campaign's individual components can help achieve future triumphs more quickly. A/B tests where companies test the better of two options of a single facet of their e-mail can quickly demonstrate the value locked away in e-mails.
Start with the subject line. Test value-based messages that mention discounts or coupons. E-mail marketers with statistically relevant response volumes should work with in-house analysts or with an agency to develop multivariate tests that test multiple facets of each message (from subject line, to creative, to design) to determine the best combination of elements. Without a robust test plan, every element of your e-mail marketing program is simply guesswork.

Don't Neglect Non-responders
Even those marketers who have a sophisticated analytics program neglect a significant portion of their list: non-responders. Determining why a segment isn't responding can be extremely helpful in driving more revenue.
When budgets are tight, marketers must constantly learn and optimize based on knowledge gleaned about customers. Priority number one during the slowdown: use analytics to learn more about customer behaviors and develop a program to match relevant communications with the needs of each customer.
The key to developing the most relevant, targeted creative and messaging in your e-mail campaigns is to learn as much as possible about how your subscribers have responded to past e-mail campaigns. This can only occur after you have analyzed your customers with an eye toward the needs of each customer segment.
No company can speak to all of its customers with a single set of creative and offers. In an environment where marketers must make the most of what they have, a sophisticated customer analytics program for e-mail campaigns will unlock significant revenue.

Study: Email Strengthens Brand Image, Generates Sales

Over time, consumers who receive a retailer's permission-based email become more likely to do business with--and develop a more favorable opinion of--that company, according to new research from direct marketing agency Epsilon.

And while the deck is clearly stacked in favor of company-friendly consumers, the research still proves that email only strengthens bonds between the brand and consumer, according Kevin Mabley, Epsilon's EVP of strategic services. "These are already hand-raisers, yes--but it's still encouraging to see that email is improving the consumer-brand relationships," he said.

A full 56% of recipients of permission-based email from retail companies said they were more likely to make purchases from the sending retailers. Meanwhile, 52% said they had a more favorable opinion of the retail companies that send them email because of the communications they receive.

In addition, 48% of respondents reported feeling more loyal toward the retailers and their products as a result of receiving permission-based emails.

A clear majority--87%--of respondents who receive permission-based email from retail companies said email is a great way to learn about new products, while 63% of those who receive permission-based email from retail companies said they want to receive personalized content based on their Web site activity and past purchases.

What actions did respondents take as a result of receiving permission-based email from a retailer? About 88% reported downloading or print coupon, while 79% clicked a link in an email to learn more about a particular service, product, or promotion.

Keeping in mind the skewed consumer sample, a staggering 75% of respondents reporting purchasing a product online as a result of permission-based email, while 67% reported purchasing a product offline.

"Those are very high numbers even when you consider the test sample," Mabley noted. "To see consumers following up offline says a lot about the strength of email."

How to be a LinkedIn superstar

I'm a huge fan of LinkedIn. In fact, I am constantly professing my love for LinkedIn. However, I still encounter a lot of naysayers who argue that they don't want to add another thing to their list of things. I completely understand. I took stock the other day of all the social networks that I participate in, and it totaled more than 20. I even use the social network capabilities of sites like Netflix (to see what movies my friends are watching) and Rhapsody (to share music with them).

But I put LinkedIn in a category all its own. LinkedIn is for business -- not for catching up with friends or planning family reunions. I use it solely for connecting with people I meet and interact with in business settings.

Of course, much has been written about the opportunities that LinkedIn presents to advertisers. And indeed, it is a social channel that offers plenty of opportunities for marketers looking to build their brands. But what about your own personal brand? What about you and your company's professional reputation within your industry? Whether you're on the brand, agency, or service side, marketing is all about building relationships. And in interactive marketing especially, the people you meet and do business with expect you to be wired into their community.

In an effort to do my part to keep LinkedIn legit and help out those who fear yet another social network, let me give you my tips on how to best utilize LinkedIn for you and your business.

Let me state this up front: I don't know anyone who works at LinkedIn, and I have no financial interest tied to LinkedIn becoming the next Google. I'm just a fan of the site and, more importantly, I'm a fan of the concept of a comprehensive business social network.

It all started for me several years ago when I began getting emails from business acquaintances with the subject line: "Invitation to connect on LinkedIn." For the most part, I ignored them. I spent five minutes creating a basic account and then every time someone sent me an invite, I just hit accept and never looked at it again. There was the initial wave where I got about 50 invitations over the course of a year, and then silence. For the next two years or so, I averaged maybe one a month.

But something happened in the spring of 2007. I started getting invitations more frequently. By July, I was getting several a day. LinkedIn was catching on and starting to become a standout property. It was beginning to cross the chasm that separates websites. There are plenty of trendy concepts that get a little love from the tech blogs, but only a few transcend into the mainstream. We've seen it happen with Google, MySpace, YouTube, Facebook and, most recently, Twitter. LinkedIn is headed in that direction but hasn't completely become ubiquitous -- which is a good thing. (For the moment, the porn purveyors haven't mastered LinkedIn!)

Creating a profile for success

In order to position yourself to leverage LinkedIn for you and your business, here are the four areas on which you need to focus.

First, understand what LinkedIn means to you personally. LinkedIn is the new resume. We all know how frustrating it can be to limit our accomplishments to two lines and hopefully keep that resume to one or two pages. If used properly, LinkedIn gives you the room and breadth to help bring your resume to life. I often say that LinkedIn allows you to tell your story and not just list bullet points of your accomplishments. After a resume has cleared my HR department and made its way to me, if I like what I see, my next step is to look at that person's LinkedIn page. LinkedIn is where I go when I want to know more about what they did at a particular company.

Second, put your photo on LinkedIn. What are you afraid of? You put your photo on your MySpace and Facebook pages. You probably have a Flickr account, and maybe you've even done some online dating. You put your photo there, so put it up on your LinkedIn page. I'm looking to see that you embrace new technology and that you are using all of its capabilities. I'm not going to judge you by that photo. I just want to know that you are a social person and not going to hide in the background.

Third, connections are important. I have a rule: Everyone that works for me needs to have at least 100 connections. Don't go and audit us, please -- I'm sure there are some delinquents. (And they know who they are!) Once again, I'm looking to see that the people at my company embrace the concept of social networking and have built up a list of contacts. It shows me experience in the workplace and the impact made on others. Yes, I run a digital engagement marketing agency that specializes in using social media. But if I were on the brand side, I'd be thrilled to see that my people have an army of contacts that might become frequent customers.

The fourth and final note pertains to the recommendations element of LinkedIn. This one is a personal beef with me. If I like you, I will recommend you. If I don't do it on my own, then ask me personally. Don't send out notes to 100 people asking for recommendations. It seems desperate and, frankly, I think it is rude. The result is that you either get a fake recommendation because the person feels obligated, or you don't get anything and you end up feeling slighted. Understand that if someone gives you a recommendation, they took time out of their busy day to think of something nice to say about you.

It goes the other way too. The recommendations you write are important. Each recommendation I write takes me about 20 minutes. I have to think about someone's best characteristics and try to say it in a way that I haven't said on other people's profiles. And it has to be good. Once it's up there, it is there for good, and people will see what I've written. They'll now not only be judging that person, but they'll be judging me. And please, for the sake of mankind, if someone writes a recommendation for you, write one back. I'm getting red in the face just thinking about the countless times I've been asked to write a recommendation without reciprocation.

If you do all these things, you are miles ahead of your competition. The world hasn't caught up yet, so do this now before everyone does.

Once you've got yourself a stellar profile, then it is time to market yourself and your company on LinkedIn. There are a number of ways to do this. If you run a business or a department, then it is critical that you embrace all the different methods available to you on LinkedIn. Here are some of my hints on how to tackle a few of them.

Communication

As a marketer, your network of contacts is a valuable source of ideas and feedback. Build up your contacts, and then communicate with them. Look, it doesn't do you any good to have 500 contacts and then ignore them. You need to communicate with them. And I mean communicate, not pester. One of the things that scare people away from LinkedIn is the thought of someone inviting them into their network and then harassing them for business or to make an introduction to a contact.

Use LinkedIn to engage and inspire. Let me give you an example: Last year I moderated a panel at the Bandwidth Conference in San Francisco, where I asked a group of young people how they consumed media (music, TV, movies, video games). I could have sat down and written out a handful of questions, but I thought to myself, "Why not crowd-source questions by asking my LinkedIn connections?" I picked out 500 people I knew would understand my topic and asked them what they would ask a young person. Within a week, 100 people fed me more than 200 questions. Yes, I just helped myself out tremendously. But more importantly, I communicated with my network.

Follow-up is equally important. In the case of the above example, I wrote every individual person a thank you note, and I promised to get them an answer to their question. After the panel, I wrote a guest blog post for Ypulse summarizing the panel. I sent a note to everyone telling them to take a look at that post. A week after that, I transcribed a recording of the panel, posted the entire document on my blog, and sent a note to all of my contacts to check it out. Add to that the countless emails that I answered as a result of this one particular event, and you can see how I maximized this opportunity to engage with my network. Plus, I did it in a non-intrusive manner with relevant and trusted content -- the best kind!

Groups and Q and A

Groups
Start a group. Start a few. This is the best way to promote your company on a broad level versus the personal one that I've been explaining. If you have something to say, and you think people will want to listen, then create a group and communicate. Post your blogs, announce your press, create topics and discussions.

Make sure you invite a core group of people, including all of your employees and some of your close business associates, just to get the thing started. People will join. Trust me. Each day thousands of people search groups just looking for a source of inspiration that is relevant to them. For fun, start another group that interests you. Recently I noticed that people were starting alumni groups for their schools and their employers. So I started a group for the record company I worked at in the '90s. I have 55 members already, and I haven't done a thing to promote this yet.

Q&A
Thought leadership is incredibly important to a business. What are your specialties and what knowledge can you impart on those willing to listen? Chances are someone is asking a question that you can answer every day. Start answering. After a while, you'll become recognized as an expert. More importantly, each time you answer a question, you get your name out there and increase what's known as your "search equity" -- the opportunity for your name or company's name to come up in a search engine.

As I was writing this, I popped my name into Google. No. 1, at the top of the queue, is my LinkedIn profile, which means that anyone who wants to know about me is going to check my LinkedIn page first, so it better be good. At the end of the day, LinkedIn is a PR tool for you and your business. It is only as good as you make it. If you take some of my suggestions and explore the hundreds of other opportunities that LinkedIn offers, you'll see what I mean. You can't rest with just LinkedIn -- you need to embrace Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, Twitter, and other social networks as well. But if you have to focus on just one, LinkedIn is where you want to be.

Email's new role in digital marketing

Introduction

Old is new again, and boring is the new sexy. At least, that is what we're seeing with regard to email marketing's renewed role as a central digital communications hub during this rough-and-tumble economic time. A recent StrongMail study showed that more than half (51 percent) of the nearly 1,000 global business leaders polled plan to increase their marketing budgets in 2009 to focus on programs that yield a higher return on investment, such as email marketing and search. On the other hand, many plan to decrease spending on costly, less targeted programs like advertising and trade shows.

This is a rare opportunity for all digital marketers -- not just email marketers -- to thrive in a difficult and challenging environment. Not using this opportunity to greatly improve your email marketing program for the sake of your broader digital efforts would be short-sighted and foolish.

That said, where should you focus such efforts this year? In this article, I will discuss five ongoing shifts in the fundamentals of email marketing, as well as how these changes should influence your campaigns.

Shift 1

Email is increasingly a marriage of data and advertising.
At its best, email marketing blends art and science, and an email marketing star can wear both hats equally. True permission email marketing success occurs when a marketer delivers a relevant message on target with the audience's needs. So what does that mean?

The relevance side has to do with creating a message that speaks to what your subscribers signed up for and what they expect and want. No, a recycled offer of your newspaper ad or a cut-and-paste job of your direct mail piece in HTML form does not accomplish this. As I have said many times, most email marketing campaigns are based on a company's marketing goals, rather than what subscribers want and need. So create a list of the following:

• Business goals of the campaign
• Other marketing tactics and their approaches (how will they complement email and vice versa)
• Your past campaigns' success areas (what subscribers clicked, what they didn't)
• Key message/value proposition (try summarizing in one bullet)
• The call to action/specific value for the subscriber
• How the creative will accomplish your goal (include rendering and user experience here)
• How you will measure and define success
• What's next after this campaign?

The data side is what separates email marketing from its marketing brethren. So use it. So how do you leverage the data you have, even for databases that only capture minimal aspects of the subscribers? Compile a list of answers to these questions:

• What aspects of your campaign do you want to test (subject line, message, creative, offer)?
• How do you want to segment your campaign based on your database (gender, ZIP code, customer versus non customer)?
• How do you plan to treat your email subscribers based on their "performance" (users who clicked, users who didn't open, users who signed up in the past 30 days, etc.)?
• How will you follow up based on their "performance" (send follow-up message to those who clicked on the call-to-action but didn't convert, users who did not open or click, etc.)?
• How will you measure success?
• What's next after this campaign?

If you read closely, you will notice that determining success and performing post-campaign "autopsies" are a common thread in these two lists. These elements are among the most important -- as well as the most ignored -- aspects of any email campaign. Ensure these are on your lists; it's worth the time. If more evidence is needed, several of our clients have done this with great success. Check some case studies here.

Shift 2

Targeted messaging now requires email, mobile, and social networks.
Email marketing can no longer operate in a silo. Whether you are an email marketing manager, VP of sales and marketing, CEO, or agency- or ESP-side executive, keeping email isolated does none of us any long-term good. So where do we go from here?

While traditional advertising still serves a need for most companies, the ability to deliver and track specific custom messages to users' preferred points of receipt is what separates the potential of some digital channels from that of offline tactics. Email marketing's ability to accomplish this is well documented. So we must now address the question of how to complement email's capabilities, rather than view email marketing as an island that is ready to get overtaken by these other channels.

Mobile and social networks are the perfect complementary tools for most companies looking to offer a truly targeted messaging solution. Mobile or SMS messaging takes the email marketing concept and strips it down to achieve the same kind of messaging goals in a different format. Yes, you must take some of the creative (and some of the branding impact) out of the equation, and you must have a different call to action. But the upside in doing so it is that you can deliver the message to opt-in users who prefer another communication channel, thereby potentially targeting them one step closer to the point of sale, whatever that may be.

Social networks provide a new set of rules and options for digital marketers. Therefore, be prepared to sink or swim. However, there are many targeted opportunities to communicate with these entrenched users at their preferred point of online engagement. Don't miss out and just go with a passive branding play in these venues. If you develop the right messaging strategy, this can be equally powerful in terms of taking your message to these folks.

The best marketing campaigns are ones combining all three elements discussed here -- email, mobile, and social networks. Such campaigns enable your customers and prospects to pick and choose, taking your marketing a step further, on their terms.

Shift 3

The consumer's preferred inbox is changing.
You may not agree that you need a messaging strategy outside of email marketing, but you must adapt to the reality that how consumers get their content, promotions, and updates has changed. Most online users don't just rely on their work and home email address for these communications anymore.

As discussed earlier, some consumers prefer to get special offers via SMS messaging, while others may ignore their Hotmail or Gmail accounts and head right to Facebook for all of their communications -- whether from their old college girlfriends or their favorite restaurants.

You may be fortunate to build what amounts to subscriber communication preference segments based on all of these, whether you know you are doing so or not. Most companies won't thrive if the only way of opting in with the company is through a website-based email signup form that captures only an email address. Establishing ways to capture preferences and points of communication is crucial as your customers' habits evolve and migrate to other digital channels. This leads us to the next item.

Shift 4

2009 is the year of the preference center.
With this sea change happening in front of us, companies that fail to offer their customers more choices will be in trouble. So this fundamental digital principle -- offering the user more choices -- is the right place to focus in 2009.

Over the years, companies have offered an email signup page and/or website registration form (albeit sometimes mutually exclusive of each other) to capture consumers' opt-ins, which are arguably one of the most valuable commodities in the digital world. Remember, these are customers and would-be customers raising their hands to say, "Yes, please market to me." That doesn't happen in all media and marketing, so elevate the value of these opt-ins within your marketing strategy.

In 2009, marketers need to offer a clear and seamless user experience through which interested parties can sign up for communications (B2C newsletters, B2B whitepapers, special offers, breaking news, etc.) You may be saying, "Yeah, we've got that." But do you provide the following?

• Ability to receive communications in multiple platforms (email, mobile, Facebook, Twitter, etc.)
• Ability to change preferences, formats, devices, languages, etc.
• Ability to choose frequency of updates
• Ability to choose types of communications and adjust as you go, as opposed to unsubscribing from all
• Ability to get a sneak peak of any offered communications
• Ability to understand how data will be treated and information on other privacy issues
• Ability to remove oneself with ease from any or all communications

Shift 5

Email is an increasingly specialized form of marketing -- now treat it as such.
Hopefully, you now see email marketing as part of a bigger digital beast. But wait, it's really its own animal. Or is it?

The email marketing landscape seems to change just as fast as email offers can pile up in your inbox. How do you keep up with these changing best practices, consumer preferences, CAN-SPAM provisions, and the 82 daily tips you can find from helpful writers, bloggers, and executives?

This speaks to a larger organizational issue for most companies in terms of where email programs and teams live within the organization. We can't expect email to succeed in the long term when most of us can't properly address what role email plays in the big picture, or what email wants to be when it grows up. All good email marketers have to keep their eyes on the ball, which can be hard if you are given a minuscule budget, insufficient team, and vague goals. So how do you redefine your email marketing role and program? Start here:

• Create a mission statement and strategic brief for your vision of your email marketing program.
• Create a set of goals and a scorecard for your email marketing success measurements.
• Document what you do on a day-to-day basis and at a broader strategic level.
• Share this information with your broader organization and related stakeholders.
• Draw up what you would need (in terms of budget, resources, partners, and anything else under the sun) to accomplish your goals and the company's goals, assuming there were no barriers in these areas.
• Revaluate your partners based on where you are, where you want to be, and where you need to be.
• Set up debriefing meetings to continually update others on how your email program is doing in terms of success.
• Define success in business terms -- not clicks, opens, and bounces.

Where I want email marketing to go is a passionate topic for me, and I have a lot of opinions -- enough that I could write a book on the topic. (Oh, wait, I did.)

Ask yourself a few more questions with regard to your email program: Does email marketing really still deserve a miniscule percentage of your overall marketing budget in this economic crunch? If email marketing is the workhorse of your marketing platforms and generating much of the revenue, do you penalize it because of its high ROI? Why not devote more to it and generate more sales, get more leads, and speak directly with your most attractive audience?

Also, think about where the majority of your budget goes: Is it in sending the email or in making the campaign better? Does most of your email marketing budget go directly to the technology infrastructure or to areas that can be optimized to improve the results and stretch your dollar and impact? If, for example, more than half of your email marketing budget goes to your ESP, you are limiting the results of what you can do with the hand you have been dealt. Most ESPs have great distribution platforms but limited services and abilities to improve your ROI. In fact, they make their money on volume, so you probably won't be told you are sending too many emails even if you helped achieve the new email volume record over the 2008 holidays. (This is a dubious accomplishment, in case you were wondering.)

So take your budget to where you can make an impact and raise the level of your specialized program through added strategic expertise. Testing, new creative, strategic assessments, and optimizing other areas of your program (like transactional emails) deserve more of your budget than the commodity-driven send button.

Conclusion
Every January, I return from the holidays to find hope, inspiration, and great people with excellent ideas -- all within this little email marketing community in which we live and work. We need to raise it up a notch, and now is our opportunity. If anything, test some of these ideas (or your own creative solutions). The email marketing world is far from perfect, but we can advance it one message at a time with the right approach.

Businesses to Increase Marketing Budgets in 2009 on Programs that Yield High Levels of Return Such as Email and Search Marketing

New survey by StrongMail Systems finds that despite recession half of businesses plan to increase marketing budgets in the New Year

Redwood City, Calif., December 15, 2008 – Despite economic concerns, businesses will continue to invest in key marketing programs in the coming year, according to a 2009 Marketing Outlook survey released today by StrongMail Systems, Inc., the leading provider of commercial-grade solutions for marketing and transactional email. Results show that more than half (51 percent) of the nearly 1,000 global business leaders polled plan to increase their marketing budgets in 2009 to focus on programs that yield a higher return on investment (ROI), such as email marketing and search, while many will decrease spending on costly, less targeted programs like advertising and trade shows.

StrongMail’s 2009 Marketing Outlook survey found that only 37 percent of those polled expect to see a decrease in sales in 2009 due to current economic conditions; 22 percent believe their customers will spend about the same in 2009 as in 2008; and 19 percent think their customers will spend more next year.

Respondents across industries, with strong representation in retail, financial services, technology, and media and entertainment sectors, indicate that they plan to direct marketing budget towards more personalized programs that will enable them to compete more effectively for customer dollars. As such, nearly three-quarters (73 percent) of companies that plan to increase marketing budgets in 2009 will bolster email marketing programs, while 44 percent will add dollars to their search marketing campaigns. Those professionals decreasing budgets in 2009 will cut spend on marketing programs that don’t typically generate as lucrative a return, such as advertising (29 percent) and trade shows (19 percent). Only four percent of companies surveyed plan to cut email marketing budget.

“Despite additional campaign costs, relevant campaigns increase net profits by an average of 18 times more than do broadcast mailings,” writes JupiterResearch vice president and research director David Daniels in the ‘The ROI of E-Mail Relevance Report’ (2005). “In addition, the use of Web analytics to target email campaigns improves revenue by nine times more than does the use of broadcast mailings.”

According to the StrongMail poll, nearly all businesses (81 percent) will either use the information available to them via customer databases, analytics tools or other resources to send more relevant emails to customers and prospects in 2009, or are currently considering tools to help them do so. Additionally, a significant number of organizations plan to experiment with new programs in 2009 to raise visibility and increase sales, like offering free-trials, promoting product giveaways and integrating social media strategies.

“We concur with the survey and plan to continue to drive sales for and awareness of our company through email marketing and other efficient endeavors including targeted media relations,” said Chuck Casto, head of communications for CSN Stores LLC (www.csnstores.com). “All of our outreach, along with our expansion efforts, has helped us to grow, and we plan to do even more in 2009 to build the CSN Stores brand.”

“It’s telling that in this tough economic climate, a majority of marketers are actually planning to increase their spend on email marketing,” said Bill Wagner, executive vice president of business operations at StrongMail Systems. “Most of businesses we speak to these days have put email at the top of their priority list for driving sales.”

Survey Methodology
The StrongMail “2009 Marketing Outlook” survey was conducted online by Zoomerang on behalf of StrongMail Systems. The poll, which gathered feedback from 949 marketing, IT, e-commerce, sales and executive management representatives in a wide range of industries (90 percent of which are U.S.-based), was conducted in December, 2008.

About StrongMail Systems, Inc.
StrongMail Systems provides businesses with commercial-grade, on-premise solutions for marketing and transactional email. StrongMail integrates its proven email delivery, tracking and campaign management software on high-performance servers that are optimized for maximum deliverability. In addition to providing superior control, security and integration capabilities, StrongMail's in-house approach offers companies a more powerful and cost-effective alternative to homegrown or outsourced solutions. Hundreds of companies worldwide rely on StrongMail's solutions to power their mission-critical customer communications. A Silicon Valley company, StrongMail is headquartered in Redwood City, CA, and is funded by Sequoia Capital, Evercore Partners, Globespan Capital Partners and DAG Ventures. To learn more about StrongMail Systems, visit www.strongmail.com.

StrongMail Systems Contact
Andrea Cousens
Eastwick Communications
650-480-4040
Email: strongmail@eastwick.com