Over time sending general emails to your entire contact list can decrease your potency as a business. Open rates begin to fall, click-through rates drop, and you begin to wonder if B2B email marketing is still a good path for your business. The answer is yes, but not in the way you are currently using email marketing.
How many times have you unsubscribed to annoying emails?
Think about it. You have probably unsubscribed to numerous lists over the past decade, but what made you decide to end contact with that company? Did they email too often, or were the messages simply irrelevant?
According to the 2015 State of Marketing report from Marketing Cloud, 41% of businesses are using email to market their products and services. Of those businesses, 68% believe it’s very effective. When you narrow the field to B2B companies, 73% of those surveyed believe email marketing is core to their business.
Now that we’ve convinced you (because you needed convincing, right?), let’s talk about how you can actually structure a B2B email for marketing. We’ve identified five basic types of messages your company can and should send to their customers. You can certainly choose one type of email and stick with it, but we recommend using more than one type of email. To send more than one type of message, you’ll want to create a schedule so your audience knows what to expect. Better yet, segment your audience based on the types of articles and messages they read and where they are in the buyer’s journey (or sales funnel).
Business owners cringe a little when I suggest they activate their sales team as part of their B2B social media marketing plan. Social updates, after all, are like a billboards out there for the whole world to see. What if their sales force posts something that makes the company look bad or spills company secrets? We've all watched some of the best employees go down in flames after posting insensitive and badly timed information online.
Let's look at the benefits of encouraging your team to support your company through social networks:Reach more people through their personal network.
Improve morale because they feel like you trust them.
Increase positive perception of your company because others see it as positive place to work.
Update: This article was originally published in 2015. A more recent article about more changes in 2018 is available here.
On April 21, Facebook announced a few new changes to users news feeds that could potentially impact business pages. The changes in a snap-shot:
As a non-profit or a church, you have specific needs with your website. It’s important to know what you need and what you want from your website before you start to search for a web developer. While you have in mind what you want, also be open to the ideas of the developer. If you choose a developer who has worked with church and nonprofit websites in the past, they may be aware of pitfalls and trends that may be helpful in your project.
On average most people spend about 3 hours per day on social media, yet we hear the same complaint from business owners all of the time. “We just don’t have time to manage our social media accounts every day!”
Ultimately, we understand every small business owner’s social plight. It is hard to make time for handling social platforms when you are running a business. Keep in mind social media allows you to connect with your customers outside of the store (and should ultimately help you make additional sales and grow your business). If you only have ten minutes a day to dedicate to social media, here’s a few times on making the most of the time.
Several years ago I had a client who routinely asked their customers where they heard about the business. Several customers started telling the company they heard about them through their television commercial. Not uncommon. Except this client wasn't running a television commercial.
In one of my college journalism classes, we talked about the importance of interviewing multiple witnesses at accident scenes because everyone sees what happened from a little different angle and a little different perspective.
It's that viewpoint that makes this whole world a fun place filled with unique people. This same viewpoint makes tracking your sales by asking "where did you hear about us?" difficult. Honestly, most of your customers can't remember where they heard about you. Many heard about you from various sources: social media, a billboard and a co-worker maybe.
How do you really know what’s working in your B2B advertising plan? More importantly, which ad or referral finally convinced them to buy?
Recently, a blog post we wrote for a client was quoted in a news story published by a national newswire. It’s good news for our client who gained some exposure. It’s also good news for us because it demonstrates to our client we’re doing our job well. I have hesitated to post about this “success” because the blog post referenced was a remembrance of one of the organization’s supporters who recently passed away. However, I think this particular post and the reference to it offers some lessons non-profit organizations can learn about blogging.