In a blog last week, I talked about some basics of email marketing which should be used in conjunction with the idea of zeroing in that I want to talk about today. When creating your messaging there are 3 key areas you should zero in on:

• Audience
• Purpose
• Message

I'm very curious as to people's opinions on using negative messaging in marketing. I generally try to avoid it at all costs but know of at least one person that really believes in it. Have you used negative messaging? Have you seen results?

I think one of my biggest issues with negative messaging isn't the message itself; it is what someone potentially takes away from it. For example, when I'm reading an email or a webpage, certain words and phrases are bound to pop out at me and then can be associated with whatever I am reading about, regardless of the actual messaging. 

For example if you're trying to sell me a software solution and mention in your messaging that many implementations fail, there's a solid 50/50 chance the word "fail" will pop out at me and my mind will automatically associate it with your software solution. Obviously this was not your message, or the goal of your message by any means, but by placing certain negative words within the copy, the reader has the ability to visualize nearly anything.

Another kind of negative marketing I see is 'consequences of inaction' marketing. For example, "If you don't buy product x, you will not achieve the same success as a person using product x." Is this effective? Perhaps it simply depends on what you are selling? What do you think?

Email marketing is common place. We are inundated with marketing type emails on a daily basis, both in our work email accounts, as well as our personal email accounts. If you're a marketer, like myself, you're also sending these marketing emails out to your prospect/customer base. Because we receive them so much, we know are very aware of what it is like to be on that end of things. This poses the never ending question, how do we get people to open our emails and take the action we want them to take? 

We have to go back to the basics, marketing 101, and keep things simple. 
Let's talk about 3 things:

• The Subject
• Call-to-Action
• Print-ability

Technology Advisors and echogravity are in the middle of hosting a 3-part series on Marketing with SugarCRM. The first webinar discussed Inbound Marketing and CRM.

What is the purpose of Inbound Marketing? Well, the purpose is to attract prospective customers, but Inbound Marketing does this specifically through valuable content. People want information when it is convenient for them, so by having our valuable content all over the internet (Social Media, Websites and Blogs), it is accessible 24/7. Not to mention that Google absolutely loves fresh content. 

It is one thing to have our content out there in the big world, but it is another thing to know who is looking at it. Once we figure that out, we must then display it in a way that all members of our organization can view. This is where CRM ties into Inbound Marketing.

Here are echogravity's 5 Keys to Implementation:

1. Integration using web-to-lead forms
2. SugarCRM dropdown fields
3. Campaign Management 
4. Segmenting data and using Nurture Marketing
5. Usage of Workflow

A couple weeks ago I blogged about The Pillars of Social CRM after listening to a discussion led by Matt Keenan, Microsoft® Dynamics CRM Director. I recently got into a discussion with some colleagues about how the process of the social world works for businesses and why patience is easily your biggest virtue, but more importantly, how patience plays a huge role in social success. 

I was immediately reminded of Matt's explanation of the social process, and although there are many steps, each step is vital to the process. By investing the time and effort in each step, your opportunities for social success should increase dramatically. 

Here's a summary of the process. Feel free to let me know how, or where, your process differs, or if we're missing anything!

1. Listen. This is how you can easily identify issues and trends. You can turn around and immediately use this vital information when it comes to shaping your own messaging. Once you know what your target audience is interested in, you can begin to provide them the kind of information they are seeking. By listening, you can talk to, and with them, opposed to at them.
   
   
2. Engage. This is best done on a one on one basis once someone has "raised their hand" and demonstrated an interest in learning more, or getting more information from you. This can kick off your sales process.
   
   
3. Amplify. Social, at its best, spreads your message and gets your solution/services widely publicized. In this step your audience does the work for you as they re-post your message to their own audience.
   
   
4. Solve.  More often than not, your audience has issues they are trying to solve. By finding the pain points your customers and prospects are experiencing, you can let them see that you understand their issues and present reasonable solutions.
   
   
5. Innovate. Social is a great place to present ideas and concepts to your audience to see how they react to them. We can often have 'light bulb' ideas but they mean very little if they are not validated by our audience. Use your audience to create a community of people who are actively engaged in making what you do better.
   
   
6. Analyze. This entire process is great but it loses a lot of steam if you don't look at your data and learn from it.  We need to be able to look forward and see what is coming. One of our goals should always be to solve problems before your customers are burdened with them.

As marketers, one of our primary goals used to be (and still is to a different extent) to get as many leads as possible. It isn't that we weren't concerned with quality previously; we were simply measured on quantity. Today's marketer has a much heavier weight placed on quality and the fact of the matter is, not all leads are created equal. 

With the emergence of content marketing and social media marketing, lead numbers are growing significantly by the day, but are they truly sales ready leads?

Should a lead that simply visits your website hold the same value as a lead that attends one of your webcasts? Now you may determine further down the line that both leads are in fact at the same stage in the sales process but from the get go, you may want to prioritize how you handle leads as they come in. In order to keep the sales and marketing relationship in good standing, it is not in marketing's best interest to immediately turn every "lead" over to the sales team. 

Here are some things to keep in mind and use when prioritizing your leads in order to hand them over to your sales team and/or when continuing to nurture.

• What content did they view?
• Did they fill out a form?
• Did they view or attend a webcast?
• Did they attend a live event?
• What level of engagement have you had with them?
• What are their demographics?
  • Title
  • Location
  • Industry

Not only is e-mail marketing exceptionally cost-effective, email-marketing has the highest Return on Investment of any form of direct marketing. Last month, Chris Gordon, Channel Manager at Swiftpage, joined Technology Advisors to talk about "The 6 Rules of E-Marketing." 

A recent statistic showed us that 74% of adults prefer marketing delivered to them via email over any other source. Give the people what they want! Here is my overview of The 6 Rules of E-Marketing:

1) Use a reputable email service provider

Using a reputable email service provider keeps you Spam compliant, gets your emails delivered, helps you easily manage opt-in/outs and duplicates, and gives you access to metrics and reports that provide feedback.

2) It all starts with the list

It is essential to build lists to maintain your database. Swiftpage actually has a survey component built into it that helps you to intelligently update your database. On your website itself, it's important to put newsletter sign-ups, or other offers, on every page of your site to assist in the building of your lists. Don't be afraid to offer incentives, just limit the amount of information you are asking from your prospects. 

3) Create a message with meaning

• Gripping subject lines - first impression is key
• Short subjects - less than 35 characters yields higher opens and click rates
• Get personal - add custom fields in the body to address individuals by name
• Short and simple - keep lengthy descriptions on your own website landing pages
• 3 second rule - show your reader in 3 seconds or less why they want to read your message
• A picture is worth a thousand words - use professional images
• Quality over quantity - shorter emails are more likely to be read completely
• Social sharing - allow your readers to share with the rest of their network

4) Provide unmistakable action 

Showcase your call-to-action multiple times. Perhaps include a linked button in the top half of your email and a text link in the bottom half. Make sure your links are placed so your readers do not have to search for them. 

5) Get ready to hit inboxes!

User spam checkers to see how your email will rate when it goes out. Swiftpage has one you can use at: www.swiftpage.com/spamcheck. Industry standard metrics are between 20-30% for open rates and 3-5% for click-through rates.

6) Metrics that matter

It is crucial to evaluate your metrics to increase your conversions. After every email blast you send out you should compare:

• Delivered vs. Opened
• Opens vs. Clicks
• Delivered vs. Sent
• Bounced
• Opt-outs

For ways to improve your metrics you can constantly test your:

• Subject line
• Call-to-action placement
• Content relevancy
• E-mail length
• E-mail timing delivery

When it comes to e-mail marketing, more often than not, the more time you spend on a particular campaign, the higher ROI your campaign will generate. It's one of the great areas of marketing that requires much more time than money. 

We've been spending a lot of time this year analyzing different Email Marketing solutions for customers and prospects. On Thursday, Mathew Sweezey, of Pardot Marketing Automation, talked to a group of us about marketing automation. 

To my surprise, Mathew took a historical approach back to 1999 when marketing automation was, more or less, just a mythical creature. In doing so, we were able to see how far marketing automation has come and the depth of where we are with it today.

10-15 years ago many businesses were just beginning to use websites, email marketing and customer relationship management (CRM) systems. It seemed a feat just to get all these technologies up and running effectively. In today's world, these technologies are common place and the challenge exists in getting them all to talk to one another, and flow seamlessly back and forth.

The advances in these technologies have actually enhanced the relationship between sales and marketing departments in many organizations. For example, back in the day I would create a call to action on our website and when a prospect filled out a form, I would immediately toss it over the wall to sales. Good luck, lead! Odds are that first form submission was not a warm lead, yielding a discouraged sales person and lackluster continued follow-up, if any additional follow-up occurred at all.

At that rate, why would sales care for marketing at all? At the root of it, marketing is the 1st step in the sales process; therefore, the relationship between the two is of great importance. 

With the birth of marketing automation, this relationship was immediately strengthened. From a marketing perspective, we now have the ability properly nurture a prospect for a great length of time (if necessary) before passing the prospect off to our sales team. 

At a time when a great portion of business and research is done online, allowing prospects to search for what they truly find important to them, we need to take a stronger behavioral marketing approach and marketing automation is key. 

Nurture marketing is one way to attack a big, or little, prospect list. Nurturing is behavior based and has the ability to be very engaging. Once you uncover a prospect's interest, you have the ability to talk to them about what they want to be talked to and potentially, when, and how, they want to be talked to. Here's an example of a Pardot nurture marketing workflow:

You now have the ability to send prospects specific emails, at intervals you choose, depending on what they click on in the previous email. You can also add them to non-email lists. For example, if you have a call-to-action on an email that indicates the lead would be a hot lead, you can immediately add them to a call list for your sales team to reach out to.

Another great thing about marketing automation is behavioral tracking, in essence, scoring. Within your email marketing tool you have a scoring system, allowing you to assign specific scores to links, downloads, etc. For example, if a prospect clicks on a specific link they get a certain score, if they visit a certain webpage they get another score and if they download a white paper they get an additional score. You can set it up so that when the prospect score reaches a certain number, workflow will alert your sales team to call into them. This omits the entire issue of throwing potentially very cold leads over the wall to your sales team, allowing them to spend more time concentrating on warmer leads. This generally makes sales happier, in turn making marketing happier, creating a more effective team. 

With the arrival of 2012, our Marketing goals have been set and now it is time to get down to business. One of our major goals for 2012 is to have 12 webinars, which will be a major feat considering we only had 2 in 2011! Why 12 webinars? We figure one a month will be plenty to swallow. One of our biggest struggles to having webinars was just having a formula in place.

As I have been reading and planning, I ran across this great article: Webinar Promotion that Delivers: Use Email, Social, Viral Referrals and Video to Boost Attendance, Drive Lead Gen.

This article was great because it showed...

• The ability to measure traffic
• Advertising webinars using banner ads on your own site
• The creation of a "Webinar Alert" mailing list which had an average open rate of 42.6% and accounted for 39% of registrations
• The "Refer a Friend" promotion in registration confirmations
    The page includes 4 fields:
  
  •      Registrant's name
  •      Registrant's email address
  •      Friend's email address
  •      Text box to write a personal note about the event
• The importance of removing registered users from the promotions for the same event - this may be evident but many companies mess this up and just keep promoting and banging people in the head
• Automated event reminders - both one day and one hour before
• Webinar exit polls - Love these!
• The posting of newsletters to your website to continue to drive traffic

Entrepreneur.com has an article up on 5 Simple Ways to Show Customers You Care:

1. Share Your Knowledge
2. Ask, Listen, Respond, Adapt
3. Reward Customers
4. Hold a Customer Appreciation Event
5. Do Good

It's a great article and I recommend you check out. Here is my take on how you can apply these points to your own business.

1. Sharing Your Knowledge.  Social CRM is here.  As has always been the case, with it you can manage your e-mail newsletters.  You can now also manage your incoming and outgoing Social CRM communications with applications such as Twitter or Facebook.

2. Ask, Listen, Respond, Adapt.  Without a CRM application, how will you be able to keep track of all of your correspondence with your customers.  Newer CRM packages have the ability to integrate with all forms of communications.  Fax, Email, Snail Mail, Twitter, Facebook, Linked In, etc.

3. Reward Customers.  With the proper CRM application you can track Campaigns where you use Coupons, Gifts, Events, Targeted Mailers, Phone Calls, Social Media, etc.

4. Hold a Customer Appreciation Event.  Customer Appreciate Events or User Groups are a great way to keep your name in a customers mind.  With CRM you are able to invite your customers or potential customers to the events, track registrations and report on attendance and survey results.

5. Do Good.  Doing good is a great thing, but how will your customers know about it if you aren't able to track and effectively communicate your "good."

Using newer CRM products goes far beyond just a giant electronic Rolodex of names and phone numbers.  With a properly setup CRM application and trained user base, you should be able to manage your complete customer experience from prospect to repeat business.  And then some.