Buyers to Marketers: “I still don’t want you to call me”

This is definitely the stat of the day.  I was doing a little research on form questions and data accuracy, and I came across this report from Google and Tech Target on search behavior of IT buyers.

Here is a screenshot of some interesting stats on registration information:

Notice, 66% of people give you an accurate email address, 49% will tell you the budget and their role in the process, and only 21% give you the right phone number.

Moral of the story: buyers say “even though I have budget and need, I still don’t want to talk to you.”

Outwit, Outplay, Outlast, Out-market (Food Truck Edition)

I’ve been watching the Great Food Truck Race on Food Network. It is just like the other competition shows with teams, challenges and eliminations. The thing that has impressed me so far:  The Nom Nom Truck.  I have no idea is their food is any good, but their marketing strategy is spot on.

They have been rolling over the competition with a few key ideas:

Find the right partner

At a stop in Texas, they contacted a local gourmet food market.  They figured, Vietnamese sandwiches in Texas might be a hard sell, but going where the “adventurous eaters” go is where they’ll find there customer base.  The market made announcements and also helped the team out during a challenge.

In New Orleans, they parked in front of the Pinkberry store.  Considering all of the yogurt chasers that chain attracts, the customers would embrace this LA-based food truck too.

Make it work for you: find a complementary product with the same customers you have.  It is a lot harder to move upmarket or downmarket via your partners.  It is an easier sell when you are already talking to the same people

Your fans are influencers

For the first challenge, the trucks went south to San Diego.  The Nom Nom truck went to Facebook and their fans told their friends in San Diego.  Suddenly it was a trending topic among SD college students.  Sell-outs ensued.

Make it work for you: when you have news, tell your customer right away. You never know where their networks may reach.

What marketing lessons have you learned from the food truck craze?

Surprisingly Simple Ways to Increase Conversions

A few days ago I got a sales pitch on LinkedIn.  Usually I can spot those a mile away, but this time I was caught blindsided.  I had a new friend request (or connection request to use the right terminology).  In the notes area of the request: I’d like to work with you!

I don’t know about you, but any time I get a request from an unknown name, I rack my brain trying to figure out if I have met them before.  In this case I hadn’t, but I did take the time to look at the profile.  I don’t want to advocate LinkedIn spam, but using requests wisely, with an earnest pitch can be effective.  Or at least get your prospects to open the door.

Less obvious conversion number 2: a form confirmation page, literally.   You work really hard to drive traffic to your webform.  And you are happy every time someone converts.  So what if you could follow up that conversion with a second offer.  Let’s say someone downloads your white paper.  How about following that up with a webinar invite landing page or ask about their interests.  The second form is short and sweet:  email address + 1-2 more qualification questions.  Instant progressive profiling.  And the worst thing that can happen?  They close the window and decline the offer.  But you’ll likely get a 2 for 1.

The last tip is a little harder for marketers.  We like to explain things, but being direct and getting to the point right away is a lot more effective.  I’ve been reviewing the “Which Test Won” blog, and it has a ton of useful info on A/B testing and successes.  One continuous theme is really how the most direct buttons, images and wording are more effective.  That might mean putting the button at the top, clearly spelling out terms and conditions, or listing out the rewards for a registration.

To put this in practice, here are a few ideas:

• Before “You’ll learn how to improve your business”
• After: You’ll receive a 5 step checklist of areas to improve”

• Before: “Signing up will give you a free consultation”
• After: “You’ll receive a 30 minute consultation”

• Before: ” Sign up now for a discount coupon”
• After: “Sign up now to receive 20% off your first purchase”

To recap, here are 3 easy ways to improve your conversions, and be sure to share your tips in the comments:

1. Connect with your prospects, literally or find ways to stand out in the crowd of pitches with a unique come on
2. Change your landing pages into 2 for 1 offers: change your confirmation pages to secondary landing pages
3. Be direct, really direct, with your offer copy

Is this sales letter a help or hindrance?

I got this email in my inbox this week from a vendor I have worked with, or researched.  I paraphrased where necessary to keep the email anonymous [in brackets].

Subject: [Vendor] offers end of the quarter discount

If recent news reports are any indication, our country is no longer in a recession, and business should start increasing.  In fact, for many of our customers, sales are already picking up.  As a result, this is a perfect time to implement [Vendor products] or purchase additional product to help streamline your business process.

[summary of product information]

But perhaps you’re thinking about adding a [competing category of solutions] and can’t see the value to adding [vendor solution].  Prior to purchasing [competing solution type] which will have features you might never know about or use, let us show you how you can use just [vendor]‘s tools in conjunction with your existing environments and save money vs. [competing solution category].

[save money by buying vendor product].  Contact us.

The total email was about 1 page of text.  I don’t know about you, but I didn’t think this email was very effective.  It seemed to pitch-y and cliche. It definitely didn’t encourage me to buy more product before the end of the quarter.  In fact I thought it was pretty disappointing: long, not very specific, and didn’t really get to the point.

My letter would have been more like:

Subject: Use [vendor] to save [XXX] on [business process] tools

Are you looking for [competing solution category]?  Did you know you can improve [insert business process] with [vendor name]‘s tools, and save [xxx]%.  I’d like to schedule a chat with you to give you more details, and we are running a promo through [xx/xx/xxxx] for [$XXX] off our products and services.

Check out this [insert content link] on how to use our tools to solve [business challenge].

What’s your opinion? How would you have rewritten this sales email?

Marketing Automation Roundup

Check out the Reachforce blog for marketing automation vendor profiles.  Each profile, provided by the vendors, gives a great overview on what they do, and how their system works.  Check it out!

Here are links to a few of the posts:

• What is Eloqua?
• What is Genius.com?
• What is Marketbright?
• What is Marketo?
• What is Manticore?
• What is Loopfuse?
• What is Pardot?
• What is Market2Lead?
• What is Silverpop Engage B2B?

Source:  Reachforce’s marketing automation posts

How to lose a customer (or a few) in 3 easy steps

OK, I have been neglecting my blog a bit.  It has been a busy summer.  Transitioning into a new position and a lot of fun over the summer.  Look for more regular posts from me, and I hope to return to 1X/week posts.

I wanted to recount my coworkers experience, over the past week, with Dell.  This was so egregious, I felt is was appropriate to name names.

My coworker has a Dell notebook that is a couple years old.  It has been super slow and flaky lately.  We aren’t really sure why it is misbehaving, but the battery is completely dead right now, and it could be causing a few of the issues.

He decided to contact Dell to order a replacement battery.  He calls Dell support, sits on hold (typical) and eventually places an order for a replacement battery.  His computer was no longer under warranty, so he had to pay for the battery with his credit card.  The customer service representative said “we’ll ship this overnight, so you should have it tomorrow.”  My coworker was happy, because it looked like the resolution was on the way.  This was last Thursday.

On Monday he comes into the office, no battery arrived on Friday or over the weekend.  He calls the Dell team to check on his battery. This time around customer service wasn’t so friendly:

• My coworker: Hi, I called last week and ordered a battery, the service rep told me to expect it in 24 hours.  It has been three days and it is not here.
• Dell customer “care”:  Please check with UPS, here is the tracking number.  [End Call]

My coworker calls UPS to find out where his package is:

• UPS customer service:  Dell did not use overnight shipping.  The package is currently in IL, and there is nothing we can do to expedite this, it will arrive on Thursday.

Organization design: functional or phase based departments?

So I was pondering the other day about how organizations are sectioned off.  Most organizations are  grouped by department: sales, marketing, finance, engineering, and operations.  This is convenient for the organizations, less so for the customer.   As social media emerges as a primary vehicle for communications: for marketing, sales and customer service, organizations are struggling to build a communications group, for all stages of the customer lifecycle.

Some companies assign a team to a customer.  So they’ll interface with one account manager, one service person and so on throughout their relationship with the organization.  This is a great customer friendly model, but for smaller organizations, it is pretty impossible to implement while you have limited resources.

For most organizations, the primary goal is to find customers, engage them and keep them as long as possible.  Why aren’t our organizations structured around these phases of the customer relationship?  What if instead we organized our business around stages in the customer lifecycle.  Some roles would have more representation in one stage or another, but the metrics for the organization would be based on performance in the stage?

Here’s a basic lifecycle:

lifecycle

Identification:  finding new prospects, potential customers. Nurturing them until they are ready to progress the relationship with a purchasing cycle.  In this “department” staff would be weighted around communicators.  In a tech company this would include conventional marketing and communications people.  Perhaps pre-sales technical resources.  A market researcher. And a lead qualification team.  The market researcher would pass feedback to the product development team on what prospective customers are looking for.  This team would be graded on the number of prospects they find, and perhaps brand awareness.  This team would be focused on though leadership and making the brand feel “warm and fuzzy.” A key metric would be related to conversion rates between this stage to Acquisition. They’d also focus on understanding the market and the target customer.

List-building tactics to avoid and one way to look less shady

Here are a few good tips on list building from BtoB Magazine, and an example how to add without looking like a spammer.

The bad ideas:

1. Pre-check the opt-in box
2. Add old prospects, customers to your mailing list
3. Down play co-marketing (wow this happens to me all of the time).  I.E. list rentals
4. Harvesting email addresses to add to your list (customer support, contact us forms)

Source: 4 shady list-building tactics to avoid :: BtoB Magazine.

Here’s a better way:

I got this email last week.  No clue how they acquired my email address.  But for unsolicited mail, this is a pretty good way to handle it.  Did it work?  Only the marketing team knows.

Your information has been provided by one or more partners for participation in our network. We ask that you take one minute to learn about our services and notify us if you do not want to be included.

We provides services to help businesses solve problems.

If you would like to learn more about us or remove your information from our list, please select the appropriate link below:
> Learn More
> Privacy Policy
> Unsubscribe

Thank you!

So ask before adding.   If you think your  customers are interested in receiving your mailings, send then a note with a link to subscribe.  Instead of subscribing without permission.  Now only if everyone else agreed that asking permission is the way to go…..

Google SMS directions require someone sitting shotgun

When I first heard about Google Mobile, and Google SMS, I was really excited.  Text for yellow page listings.  Text for directions.  You ask, and you shall receive.  But it doesn’t really work when I need it.

One day I was looking for the phone number for a restaurant I know has been open for over a year.  ‘Wichcraft.  I sent a text to Google Mobile.  And waited.  It said we have no such listing.  Thought I spelled it wrong.  Nope.  Had the city right too s it wasn’t user error.  After a few botched attempts, I made it to the restaurant.  Walking for about 1 mile.  But if I search Google from my computer, the address pops up fine.  Huh?

But the worst is really the directions.  (No I don’t have a GPS and I don’t have GPS enabled on my phone via the Sprint monthly service.  I need directions 2-4X per month.  Not worth it to me.)  Here’s a screenshot.  On a Palm phone.  (This like mine!)

In this image it is the 1 of 2 texts.  What they forget to tell you is that your texts will arrive in any order.  Typically it takes 4-5 texts for my directions to work.  Nothing’s more annoying than getting these texts in this order: 5,2,4,1, 3.  So let’s pretend you want directions to where you are driving.  And texting behind the wheel is illegal in CA.  How are you supposed to follow the directions?  Have someone in the shotgun seat.  Because clearly it isn’t safe to navigate 5 out of order text messages on your phone.  No matter how nice the SMS UI is.

Google can you please improves these services, so they work better when you are mobile.  Thanks.  I’d like to stay hands-free and paper-free.

Note to product development teams.  Don’t forget to take into account how, when and  where your product will be used.

– Jame Ervin

When website visitor stalking goes horribly wrong…

So as you know, I am a supporter of marketing automation tools (and getting as much insight as possible on your web visitors and suspects).  And of course, as a marketer, I am always trying to learn more about what other markters are doing and best practices.  Etc, etc.  I read white papers, of solutions I have, solutions I’d love to have and stuff I’d never want.  You never know where the good tip will come from.

A few days/weeks ago I went to a website, and downloaded a white paper.  I filled out a webform, and went on my merry way.  Typically if I don’t want a phone call, I use a fake number.  I always use a real email address, but it might be a gmail address that forwards into my primary account, a personal account if it is more general info, or use a primary email account.  Last week I received a call from that vendor.

Here is a transcript:

Hi this is Joe Smith from Acme.  I am calling because someone from your company visited several pages on our website a few days ago.  They must have been looking for information on our technology and services.  Was hoping to talk to you to see who it was in your company looking for this info.  Hopefully you can point me in the right direction towards that person or maybe it was you.  I wanted to see what you were looking for.  Please call or email me, we can help you!

And then I got an email.  To an address I didn’t use to fill in the webform.  So this sales rep actually went out of his way on jigsaw or whatever other source to get my contact info.  And he could have just emailed me at the webform address.  Here is the email:

To follow-up on the phone call, someone from your company hit our site the other day - four pages – so I thought you might like a personal contact.

We specialize in solutions for other similar B2B companies. Our services help people like you do their jobs (just paraphrasing here).

If you would like to review what’s working for other companies in B2B technology, please see our blog (below), or visit the Resource Library on our Web site.   If you would like to talk about your ’09 plans, please don’t hesitate to contact me personally.

I hear this company actually uses an automation tool.  Similar to my choice, Pardot.  So knowing that this person clear uses a tool that could sync up my web history to filling out a form and my downloads, but he didn’t actually use this information.  ANd let’s pretend this intelligence wasn’t available to him (clearly it wasn’t), he could have cold called me in a completely different way with more success.  Instead he looked like a desperate stalker.

Here are my tips to using website visitor lists more effectively:

• Don’t specifically mention that you saw someone in our organization was viewing your site
• Don’t assume because someone was viewing your site they are asking for a phone call right away
• Don’t start the call with “someone from your company visited many pages on my website”
• Assume that if the visitor didn’t leave a clear way to contact them, they aren’t really ready for a hardcore pitch
• Mention that similar organizations to mine (the prospect) use this tool for XYZ, and you (the cold caller) thought you’d would be interested in: an upcoming webinar, white paper, subcription to RSS feed or whatever.  Something low risk, low commitment.
• Offer to send me information (even if it is the same info I already checked out) and schedule a follow up call.  You already know the prospect viewed it, so you’ll either get shot down because of lack of interest or the prospect will be interested and ready to move to the next step

What happened after this call and email, I just started laughing and decided to blog about it.  I probably won’t look into or investigate their services if I am in the market.  Clueless sales reps.