If You’re Worried About List Size, You’re Worried About the Wrong Thing
I get it, marketers. You’re measured on number of leads. So you do the things that worked 5-10 years ago to get them: gated ebooks, pdfs, and webinars. You craft some teaser copy that promises quality content, a slew of people download it, and you celebrate until...
...Cue the sales team: “These leads aren’t any good. We can’t close them.”
In An Unconventional Approach to Email List Building, Andre Chaperon of Tiny Little Businesses argues that using the status quo approach (above) is bound to yield lackluster results. He explains that switching from bribery (give me your email and I’ll give you a solution to your problem) to value (here’s how to solve your problem, sign up for my newsletter if you want more like this) will ensure that only quality prospects opt in.
“You see, I prefer email lists (an audience, or pocket of people) that are ultra-targeted and hyper-responsive (where I can really matter to some, as opposed to trying to matter to everyone)...”
“Email lists that have been built through attraction instead of bribery, where I have earned prospects’ trust and attention.”
When the value exchange is different, you’ll begin to attract only the people you want to do business with, he writes, and stop wasting the sales team’s time chasing down bad fit prospects.
Andre’s article is worth reading all the way through and bookmarking. He gives clear examples and shows how adding in steps to filter prospects (it reverses the traditional lead capture process) can make a small, hyper-target email list perform better than a mega list of people who don’t want what you’re selling.
It’s time to start focusing on the value of a small, engaged list. And, of course, convince your boss that measuring lead quality is more important than quantity.
Image: TinyLittleBusinesses.com
Stop Forcing Your B2B Marketing Org Structure on Your Buyer’s Journey
The challenge of building and sustaining buyer/seller relationships is especially tough at larger companies, where complex organizational structures are sometimes forced on the customer journey in detrimental ways.
Scott Vaughan addresses the issue of siloed business structures creating gaps and friction in the process in this article.
Related: 6 Tips for Crafting Effective B2B Email Newsletters
Also Related: If You Want Me to Unsubscribe From Your Marketing Emails, Try This
Do you overshare with social followers? Should you?
My Magic 8 Ball advises, “It is decidedly so.”
Not sure how to achieve authenticity for your brand? Check out Matthew Kobach of Fast’s Twitter strategy of keeping his 75,000 followers in the loop on how the brand has built its story on social in real-time, including announcements about launch-day bugs.
“We’re going to keep building for the world to see, launching for the world to see, and improving for the world to see,” the thread concluded.
Why does it work?
Consumers want authenticity, which leads to lovability.
But beware of forced personalization in your email messaging or social ads. Rives Martin of Merkle explains findings on what’s welcomed—and what’s considered invasive—from their recent Consumer Experience Sentiment Report.
Is Your Newsletter Suffering from Identity Crisis?
Kaya Ismail thinks your company should start an email newsletter—as long as your marketing team actually gets what an email newsletter should be. He asked Gilad Rom of Huan to explain the difference between email newsletters and marketing campaigns:
“Email newsletters are designed to inform the reader about industry or company-related news,” Rom said. “Email marketing campaigns are designed to inform the reader about a product or service. The difference is that email newsletters are designed to educate; email marketing is designed to sell.”
Related: The guys over at The ABM Conversations Podcast explain why email marketing is still dope.
Brian Solis’s Fast Company piece contextualizes a new generation of decision makers driven by the pandemic and provides a game plan for relearning who your customer is.
This isn’t about how B2C or B2B organizations respond in times of crisis. It’s about people-to-people interactions and how organizations learn from disruption at a human level.
Content Marketers Agree: Email Engagement is Important
According to the 2020 Annual Benchmark Report by the Content Marketing Institute, 90% of content marketers say email engagement is the top metric they track to measure content performance.
It makes sense. If your emails aren’t getting opened and read, the people on your list aren’t loving your brand.
The Email Newsletter is 2020’s MVP Format
How many times have you heard “Email marketing is dead,” lately? It’s nice to have Peter Pachal unpack exactly why that sentiment is completely untrue. The bottom line: Strategic marketers can figure out how to be successful on any channel, and email can be huge in 2020 for those who know how to do it well.
“The value of such a loyal audience is obvious, and the relative ease of creating a newsletter product has made it attainable by both publications and individuals alike (as long as they can serve up good content, that is). It’s not a new observation that receiving newsletters has become the equivalent of the print newspaper landing on the front porch, but what’s often lost in that description is what it means for the relationship between publisher and reader: trust.”
