Schooling Your Leads with Effective Grading

Posted on May 16, 2012 by in Lead Nurturing

Finding qualified leads is a challenge that all B2B marketers face. Passing only the warmest, most sales-ready leads on to your sales team is an even bigger challenge.

In today’s marketing arena, prospects can appear very early in the sales process, oftentimes when they are still in the research phase and nowhere near ready to make a purchase decision. Ignoring these leads means they could turn to your competitors, while passing them over to your sales team too early is a waste of time.

There are several things you can do to help grade your leads and segment them accordingly, ensuring that you hit them with the most targeted message at the most opportune time. Each segment should be set up with a drip campaign that caters to their specific wants and needs. Tailored messages focused on particular ‘personas’ in your sales cycle are a surefire way to improve your email response rates.

Defining the Perfect Lead

The first step to determining your grading strategy, is defining your perfect lead. You can define your most qualified leads in any number of ways – according to demographic, company size, job title, type of company, even company location. You probably already have an idea of what your perfect lead looks like, but officially defining it will help your organization align goals and expectations.

For the sake of this exercise, let’s think of an education analogy for 3 unique personas that are in different stages of the sales cycle:

The Freshman is brand new to your industry and product line. He or she may have found you through one of your marketing or lead gen campaigns, but isn’t quite sure what your product offers. The best messages to this persona would start with softer introductory emails that are informative but general — without being burdensome. Industry white papers, helpful blog posts, and articles are great content ideas for this level of interest.

The Junior is familiar with your company and industry but isn’t quite warm enough to get passed over to your sales team. He or she is experienced enough to know the right questions to ask, and is ready to be nudged in your product’s direction. This is a great time to separate yourself from your competitors and remind your prospect why you are the industry leader with powerful information about your product’s strengths (your client services response time, your latest features, ways your product can make their lives easier, etc.)

The Senior is ready to actually buy. Seniors have done their homework, are finished with exams and ready to graduate into a full-fledged customer. The best content for this segment is content that offers pricing information, free trials and demos and compares your product with what competitors offer. These are the leads that your sales team really want, and are most likely to close.

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Webinar: Marketing Metrics – Making the Difference for Modern-Day Marketers

Posted on May 15, 2012 by in Blog, Webinars

In the modern-day marketer’s world, metrics are key to getting a deep-down, full-view picture of a marketing team’s efforts, campaigns and costs. Marketing metrics help us pinpoint exactly which campaigns are performing and which campaigns are not. They give us clues as to what can be adjusted to make a campaign more effective and more successful. Join Zach Bailey, Vice President of Products at Pardot, for this 1/2 hour webinar to learn more about:

  • Marketing metrics, ROI and KPI’s – what are they?
  • Metrics all marketers should reference
  • How marketing metrics can help improve your campaign efforts

Sign up now for the webinar:

Marketing Metrics – Making the Difference for Modern-Day Marketers [Click here to Register]
Date: Thursday, May 17, 2012
Time: 2:00 PM EDT

Speaker:
Zach Bailey, Vice President of Products, Pardot

Register for Marketing Metrics - Making the Difference for Modern-Day Marketers

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June 2012 Toronto Users Group Meetings

Posted on May 15, 2012 by in Events, Users Groups

Two in Q2! Calling all clients and partners in the Toronto area! We are excited to invite you to the June 2012 Toronto Users’ Group meeting, to be held June 5th, 2012. Adam Blitzer (Pardot’s COO) will be on location and presenting. The meeting will be from 12pm – 2pm EDT, and lunch will be provided. Seating is limited, so please reserve your free ticket now. These meetings are great opportunities to:

  • Learn about the latest in Pardot features and functionality
  • See how fellow users are implementing and using Pardot
  • Participate in relevant round-table group discussions on audience-chosen topics

Looking forward to seeing you there!

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Email Marketing: Timing is Everything

Posted on May 15, 2012 by in Email

If you use email in your marketing strategy, you put a great deal of effort into tweaking your emails to maximize open and click-through rates. You experiment, test, and retest adjustments to copy, content, subject line and a hundred other variables, just to see that uptick in your key metrics.

However, even the most finely tuned email may not get opened if it is sent at the wrong time.

While the ideal email send time changes based on a number of variables (industry, content, segment, etc.), the email genome project over at MailChimp has given us a much clearer picture of larger email trends. After analyzing over a billion emails, they’ve found a few trends you can safely act on:

Send in the Middle of the Week…
The highest volume of opens occurs on Thursdays, with Tuesday and Wednesday close behind. Sending your emails during the middle of the week rather than Monday or Friday should give you higher open rates on your emails.

…And in early afternoon
MailChimp’s analysis indicates that the best time to send an email may not be first thing in the morning as previously thought. Open rates are at their highest in early afternoon, around 1:30PM. Sending your emails right after lunch may produce higher open rates than emails sent first thing in the morning.

 

We’ve come a long way in understanding the nuances and variables of email open rates, but there still is no one-size fits all solution. The best way to optimize sending time is still through A/B testing of various send times.

Pardot provides full featured analytics that allow you to easily view campaign reports and compare open rates. Finding the times that work best for your segments will help you improve open rates and the overall effectiveness of your email marketing campaigns.

*Images courtesy of MailChimp

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The Secret to More Traffic: Lobby Like Facebook

Posted on May 14, 2012 by in Blog, Quick Tips

In a recent article on inc.com, Bill Murphy detailed the the strategy behind Facebook’s Washington lobbying operation. With its IPO on the horizon, the social network has been hedging its bets by making sure Washington will continue to stay off its back on issues like privacy and security.

Facebook has sunk considerable amounts of capital and resources into this political strategy, and while most companies may not have the means to attempt such an expensive endeavor,  this approach has some lessons for any company looking to increase the visibility of their brand and content online. The strategy of lobbying for political advantage can easily be applied to the process of seeking out your industry’s influencers and asking for coverage of your brand or content.

So let’s take a look at how Facebook’s Washington shop would handle your content distribution strategy:

Build an Influential Network
Facebook has recruited some heavy hitters for its lobbying operation. Their roster boasts two former Chiefs of Staff and several other presidential staffers. This lends instant credibility to the social network in even the highest political circles.

Lobbying Lesson: When seeking out potential channels for your content, seek out your industry’s top influencers. Creating a relationship with these well-known names and sharing your content on their sites will elevate your credibility and increase the influence you wield in your industry. This will also increase your exposure on other sites and channels that may develop into additional opportunities for coverage.

Don’t Play Favorites
Like almost all lobbying operations, Facebook can’t afford to pick political sides. The organization has made contributions to President Barack Obama, presumptive GOP nominee Mitt Romney and congressman Ron Paul.

Lobbying Lesson: Just like a political lobbyist, you can’t risk putting all of your eggs into one basket. Don’t focus solely on your industry blogs to drive traffic to your content. Build relationships with influencers in related industries or blogs that focus on general industry trends (ex: Mashable).

Have something to offer
Facebook has the enviable lobbying position of being an indispensable service for a majority of the people it is lobbying. Could you imagine trying to run a political campaign without Facebook? The social network has deepened this dependence by hosting and broadcasting political events from its headquarters around the country. A valuable asset to any politician.

Lobbying Lesson: So your product or service is probably not going to become indispensable to those you are lobbying anytime soon, but that doesn’t mean you can’t do your best to increase the value you can provide. Create content that other sites will want to share on their site. Don’t be afraid to write a blog post or create a graphic tailored to a specific site and their audience. Writers and influencers know their audience, so the more excited you can get those you are lobbying, the more they will promote, share and praise your content.

The expected quality of content continues to rise and the resources available to you for creating that content are improving each day. However, the quality of your content will never matter unless you have an audience to see it!

So put on your American flag pin, get out there and lobby like a pro!

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A TV Schedule for Marketers

Posted on May 11, 2012 by in Blog, Ideas

As marketers, we work hard. There’s no doubt about it. We put in the long hours, do the work, and we love it. But once we leave the office, we need to relax.

Many of us have our own routines, but after we are finished with our evening run, playing with the kids or preparing dinner, most of us wind down in the same place — in front of the TV.

After a day spent writing, worrying, strategizing and planning, television is a welcome break. We can let the information and entertainment wash over us without having to actively engage. We are just passive participants in an incredibly diverse set of evening options.

However, this doesn’t mean we can’t benefit from our evening routines. There are several shows on the air now that not only play into our interests as marketers, but also have valuable lessons for us to learn. So sit back, relax and take a look at a few shows you may want to check out:

Mad Men


This is probably the most obvious pick for this list so I figured we should just get it out of the way. Despite being based in the 50’s and 60’s, Mad Men still exhibits many of the fundamentals of marketing that will never change. Don Draper and company are always striving to be original and create advertising that truly resonates with their audience. You should be doing the same everyday with your marketing.

The Pitch


If you could look inside some of the world’s most innovative agencies once a week and learn how they operate and generate breakthrough ideas, you would right? Well that’s what AMC offers with their show, The Pitch. In the new show, two agencies compete to win a new client by going head-to-head in a cut-throat, winner-takes-all showdown. It’s a surefire way to get your creative juices flowing and get excited to take your marketing to the next level.

TechStars


Created by Bloomberg, TechStars allows you to watch the grueling process of building a business from the ground up in an elite startup boot camp. Guided by top names in tech (Google, Microsoft, Twitter and more), startups are judged every step of the way. Even if you don’t work for a startup, the lessons learned by contestants and the wisdom imparted by the judges each week resonate with all marketers.

Shark Tank


ABC’s Shark Tank continues to grow in popularity as startups and entrepreneurs become the rockstars of the business world. The show focuses on entrepreneurs looking to attract venture capitalists and investors for equity in their company. It is a great way to tune into disruptive ideas, overcoming obstacles and marketing a product in the current market.

So next time you spend an evening relaxing in front of the TV, don’t feel guilty. You can learn valuable marketing lessons or find inspiration for that project you’ve been stuck on- you just need to watch the right shows.

Did we miss your favorite show? Something you think should be added to this list? Let us know! We’d love to hear about it (and watch it!).

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