Strategic Marketing Process eBook by Moderandi Inc. - HTML preview

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EMAIL MARK

A

ETING

eVentS

Email marketing has been a staple for consumer marketers since the mid-1990s. A few years later, B2B marketers

discovered its value, and email campaigns have become an important tool for businesses in all stages and industries.

Email marketing enables you to cost-effectively communicate with your market in a way that’s immediate and relevant.

With email, you can:

› Nurture leads

› Build brand awareness

› Obtain prospects

› Build customer loyalty

› Generate sales

You can usually launch a campaign and measure your results quickly, making email a great option for time-sensitive

programs. It’s easy and inexpensive to test different aspects of your campaign on a segment of your list, so you can

hone your creative and your offer to generate the best possible results.

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Here are three sample email campaigns:

Generate New Leads

Direct Sales

Build Brand Awareness

Rent a list and send a short,

Create a special offer for your

Use email to keep in touch with

compelling message to generate

current prospects and customers;

prospects and customers. Deliver

interest in your product. Drive

compel them to click to your

timely, valuable information that

prospects to a special page on your

website to learn and buy.

makes them want to read your

website to download a white paper,

messages. Add news about your

a demo or other offer. Capture basic

company, special offers, etc., but

information and follow up via phone

focus on content and information

several days later.

rather than pure sales.

Email is more editorial than advertising, and it’s powerful because it can support and even drive a sales process. Yet,

like any medium, it has its challenges. B2C email marketing to cold lists has a terrible response rate. Social media is

reducing people’s reliance on email. Businesspeople often still receive hundreds of emails (or more) each day, so B2B

marketers need to get past spam filters and give people a reason to read. You’ll also need a strong offer, valuable

editorial content, appropriate design and a good fulfillment and measurement process.

While you can reach a wide audience with email, that doesn’t mean you should. It’s most effective when you really

target so you can speak to specific needs. Think of it as a one-to-one communication—personalized, relevant and

timely—not a blast.

If you’ve used email in the past, do you see your company in one of these scenarios?

Best Case

Neutral Case

Worst Case

You have a strong email program

You perform some email marketing

You use email as a quick-fix—when

with very specific goals.

and are generally satisfied with the

you’re low on leads, you do a blast

results. You send announcements

message; if you haven’t reached out

You use technology to deliver

about products and offers; you

to customers in a while, you create

your messages effectively. Your

occasionally use email to generate

a quick newsletter.

campaigns offer strong content

leads or keep your name in front of

and messages; you create custom

existing ones.

You generally don’t target your

landing pages to convert clicks to

prospects—you blast one message

prospects.

You occasionally test a campaign

to your entire list. You don’t test

before launch, but it isn’t a major

your campaigns, and you don’t

You continually test your designs,

priority. You know that your

know how many of your messages

copy, list and offer to improve your

campaigns could be stronger, but

are actually delivered.

response. As a result, you usually

you haven’t had time to improve

meet your ROI and business goals.

them.

How Email Marketing Aligns with Strategy

Campaigns using email should support your positioning and brand strategy, contributing to the experience that you

wish to deliver and the mindshare that you wish to own. This includes your email design, copy, delivery frequency,

CAN-SPAM compliance and opt-out procedure.

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Key Concepts & Steps

Use email to meet the goals you set in your annual marketing plan; you can also use them as part of a broader marketing campaign. You’ll also need to make sure your website is strong enough to support your campaign.

Develop your campaign around specific goals

Take the time to strategize and plan your campaign:

› Develop a tangible objective—for example, to generate a specific number of leads, demo requests, meetings, or

purchases.

› Profile and target your audience.

› Create a good offer and compelling call-to-action, and present it early in your message—readers skim.

› Plan a series of emails to create an ongoing campaign—it takes multiple touches to generate response.

› Don’t forget fulfillment—if your prospects expect a phone call or email, deliver it quickly or you could lose their interest.

Invest in good content

You probably don’t want all of your emails to focus on product or service promotions. Readers will tire of them. Instead,

offer information that’s relevant to your recipients. It’s an investment to develop that content, but it’s the content that

gets people to open your messages and continue to read them over time.

Choose the right technology

If you’ve never launched an email campaign, you’ll probably need to use an email service provider (ESP), typically a

web-based service. Choose a reputable ESP to help you stay compliant with spam legislation and get your messages

to your prospects’ inboxes—a major challenge in email marketing. A good ESP can raise your delivery rate, manage

your opt-in and opt-out process, keep your email list clean and provide reports that can help you improve your results.

Be respectful and fol ow industry practices

Make sure that you’re following accepted industry practices—you’ll improve your probability of success.

› Mail to your house list regularly—even corporate emails change rapidly. The more time between campaigns, the

higher your rate of bad addresses—and those “bounces” could trigger spam alerts.

› Make sure your recipients can easily opt-out of future communications.

› If you’re buying or renting a list, make sure it’s an “opt-in” list.

Continual y test, refine and improve

It’s always wise to test before launching a campaign. If you’re working with a new ESP or list, evaluate your delivery

and response rate before you roll out. Keep testing and improving your subject lines, headlines and copy, design, offer,

landing pages, even the delivery timing. You’ll improve all your campaigns in the process.

Next Steps

As your use of email increases, keep learning about open rates, subject lines, list fatigue, and other ways to improve

your campaigns.

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Customer Retention

Strategy

ComPetitiVe PoSitioning

BranD Strategy

PriCing

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CUSTOMER RETENTION

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How much have you invested in your marketing programs over the last few years? Thousands? Tens of thousands?

Millions? Tens of millions?

Customer retention is about keeping the customers that you already spent money to acquire. And if you’re in an industry

where your customers make multiple purchases over the years, your entire team should be very focused on retaining

those customers by:

› Delivering service that’s consistent with your brand

› Cross-selling, up-selling and asking for referrals from existing customers

› Developing programs to increase customer loyalty and decrease turnover

› Knowing the lifetime value for different segments and using that data to improve your marketing

› Prioritizing retention as a major focus in your annual marketing plan

Studies show that it costs ten times more to generate a new customer than to maintain an existing one. If you have a

small number of customers, losing a few could cripple your company. Even if you have a large number of customers,

a small increase in your retention rate should dramatically increase your profits.

In his book The loyalty Effect, Fred Reichheld writes that “a 5% improvement in customer retention rates will yield

between a 25% to 100% increase in profits across a wide range of industries.”

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With strong retention marketing, it’s much easier to grow your revenue and profitability. Do you see your company in

any of these scenarios?

Best Case

Neutral Case

Worst Case

Your company is focused on

You know how important it is

You don’t formally market to your

customer retention and it has paid

to retain customers. The reps

current customers. You know that

off. Renewals are high; you put a lot

who service existing customers

your service could be better, but you

of effort into campaigns and service

are good, but you’ve lost some

haven’t had the time to develop an

for existing customers. Incentives

customers that you shouldn’t have.

improvement plan. You definitely

encourage sales and support reps

You’ve sent out some surveys

have more turnover than you’d like.

to keep customers happy, and you

but haven’t done much with the

use financial modeling and surveys

data from them. And you struggle

As a result, you’re continually

to identify problems and focus on

with the commission on sales to

investing to generate new customers.

vulnerable customers.

existing customers—some people

Your revenue and profit margins are

argue that you shouldn’t pay at all

much lower than they could be, and

Your revenue has grown

because they’re house accounts.

the churning takes its toll on your

substantially each year because

organization.

you’re adding new customers

As a result, you have to replace

without losing current ones.

numerous current customers

each year.

How Customer Retention Aligns with Strategy

Customer service, retention activities and campaigns to existing customers should support your positioning and brand

strategy, contributing to the experience that you wish to deliver and the mindshare that you wish to own.

You can work on your customer retention strategy at any time, and marketing campaigns to them may be an important

part of your strategy. You may also decide to increase your focus on retention when you’re writing your annual marketing plan. But if you’re losing customers, don’t hesitate to focus your energy on retention right now.

Key Concepts & Steps

Determine your retention strategy

Your positioning and brand strategy should drive your retention plan. For example, if your method for delivering value

is customer intimacy, your customers are expecting great customer service. If they’re buying on price, you’ll usually

focus more on automating service to minimize costs.

Build your team

In some B2B industries, the original sales rep is the best person to manage an existing client—for example, the account

may require ongoing selling. In other cases, it’s better to transition the customer to an account rep who focuses on

day-to-day management.

Once you’ve decided how to structure the team, determine how many people that you’ll need and start recruiting.

Pay commission for renewals and growing the business

Your current customers are your most valuable asset—if your sales reps don’t earn commission on renewals, they’ll

have more incentive to spend their time chasing new business instead.

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Market to existing customers

Put as much effort into your current customer campaigns as you put into the rest of your marketing programs. Know

your audience, grab their attention, focus on the offer, measure your results. Use campaigns to:

› Nurture your customer relationships

› Encourage customers to buy again

› Expand your relationships by cross-selling, up-selling and asking for referrals

› Identify customers who are at risk of defecting

› Continually deliver on your brand promise

Measure purchase intent and loyalty, not “satisfaction”

Customer feedback can help you improve your products and enhance your relationship with your customers. However,

it’s not effective to measure “customer satisfaction” because it’s so vague. “Satisfied” doesn’t mean they intend to

keep buying. Instead, focus on behavior: Ask whether they intend to buy again and why or why not. Ask what three

things you can improve upon and whether they’ll provide referrals. These questions provide more actionable insight

than “satisfaction.”

Use data to evaluate large groups of customers

If you don’t have personal relationships with your customers, use data to identify customers who haven’t purchased

in the normal timeframe. They may be at risk of defecting and you can launch retention campaigns and encourage

them to stay.

Next Steps

Refine and improve your customer retention strategy and execution—it may deliver the highest ROI of all of your marketing programs.

Service and manage your customer base, evaluate the effectiveness of the tools used, and focus on continually improving your tactical execution.

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Business Development

Strategy

ComPetitiVe PoSitioning

BranD Strategy

PriCing

DiStriBution CHannelS

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DeSign & CoPy

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BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT

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Organizations apply the term “business development” (a.k.a. “biz dev”) to a variety of activities.

In this section, “business development” refers to high-level partnerships that generate revenue, create better products

and/or increase efficiency. These partnerships can help you:

› Access new markets

› Increase sales to existing markets

› Improve your access to technology

› Boost your productivity

› Gain capital (human or financial)

In a true partnership, companies collaborate to achieve a common goal. It’s more than a short-term promotion, such

as a special offer or marketing to each other’s customers. Instead, it’s an agreement to do business together while

sharing responsibilities, resources, risks and rewards.

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Here are three examples of true partnerships:

To Create New Products

To Increase Efficiency

To Create New Services

A computer manufacturer enters a

A software company has a fantastic

A design firm partners with a direct

partnership with a fashion designer

new product but is inundated with

mail fulfillment firm to offer each

to create a limited-edition laptop

customer service calls that they

other’s services to their respective

and matching case.

can’t handle. They approach a

clients.

telemarketing firm that specializes in

They create a team of employees

the software industry.

Each company promotes the

from both companies to design and

partnership to new prospects and

market the product. The computer

Instead of just hiring the

existing customers. They offer

manufacturer produces the

telemarketing firm, they create a

the service with a single point of

computers, the designer creates the

partnership. The telemarketing

contact—if a design client needs

bag, and they share revenue fairly

firm provides service for a greatly

mail services, the design firm

based on their contributions and

reduced fee, then receives a

manages the implementation rather

cost structure.

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