Article marketing, blogging, pay-per-click advertising, banner ads, search engine marketing and optimization, social media, web design and development- These ideas and strategies that were meaningless 10 years ago were the hot topics at the Direct Marketing Association conference in San Diego this year. Net-Results showcased their state of the art intelligent email marketing and lead management automation tools in the exhibit hall amongst the industry’s latest in technology, services, and strategy providers including conglomerates like Google, Experian, and Kodak. Read more

Email marketing is an extremely cost effective and efficient way to promote your business. Unfortunately, many small businesses are reluctant to engage in email marketing for fear of legal implications surrounding the practice. This post is intended to clearly spell out what elements should be included in your email marketing campaigns (and what should not). Read more

This post is the 2nd in a series that explains the world of website visitor identification and tracking.  The first post laid out what’s not possible when trying to identify website visitors.  Now we get into what is possible in a business to business environment (the next post will discuss B2C and more on the B2B side).

Certain B2B sales and marketing organizations have a leg up when it comes to using a visitor tracking system to identify website visitors.  Why? Because in a lot of cases it’s possible to instantly identify the companies that visit your website using just an IP address.  The website visitor doesn’t even have to fill out a web form or otherwise identify himself at all. The instant a visitor comes to your site that visitor’s IP address is available to you.  Many IP addresses are easily associated with a company name and location.  Professional visitor tracking systems make that association for you and go much further, detailing exactly which pages were viewed by that visitor, the search engine they used, even the exact search phrase they typed so that you know exactly what they were looking for (this allows you to easily identify qualified vs. non-qualified prospects). Read more

The Net-Results website gets a lot of traffic from people who would like to identify individual website visitors.  Search phrases such as “identify website visitors” and “track individual web site visitors” bring traffic to us on a daily basis.  We find that many people are searching for a solution that will tell them the email addresses (or names & phone numbers) of each person that visits their website.

This post is the first in a series that will explain exactly what is and is not possible when it comes to identifying and tracking visitors to your website. Having personally built popular software for identifying website visitors I have at least one truckload of experience in this area, maybe more depending on the size of your truck. Read more

I met with a client this morning who currently uses Net-Results to track website visitors and identify companies coming to her site. When she sees one who could be a good prospect, she picks up the phone and attempts to call the person who came to her site. She doesn’t always get to the right person, but she does typically make contact with someone in the organization and has a good initial prospecting call. When I asked her how she normally follows up with those prospects, she said she generally handwrites notes and mails them. I thought that was a great idea – very few people do that because email is just easier – so it really makes her standout. But, I felt that the combination of handwritten notes and automated lead nurturing could further enhance her follow-up strategy and give her greater insight into the actual interest level of her prospects. Read more

As Net-Results made its debut trade show appearance at ad:tech Chicago, 2009, we were extremely pleased and excited at the turnout and fantastic response to us and the growing response to Marketing Automation. Although ad:tech Chicago is regarded as the least attended in the ad:tech conference series, we were pleasantly surprised at the amount of attendees that had their hands on the latest in marketing technology strategies, tactics and tools. Read more

Anyone who knows me will tell you that I am frugal (or possibly even cheap) most of the time. I hate spending money on things that aren’t necessary and I always look for the best deal. I was at a networking even last night and I asked a new acquaintance if he ever exhibited at tradeshows – his response was that he tried it one time and it was so expensive and intensive to plan that they didn’t get a good return on their investment. I suspect that he didn’t go about it in the same way I do, using the tools and tricks to get the most for your money and then maximizing the result at the show. The following are my tips and tricks for getting the most out of your tradeshow dollars: Read more

The term marketing automation has been around for some years now, and many (like us) in the industry believe this term to be pretty commonplace.  Truthfully, however, I can’t tell you the number of times we get blank stares or bits of awkward pauses when we say ‘marketing automation’ with prospective customers, and even prospective channel partners. Then I will say something like “What if you could identify the real prospects who are visiting your site, the things they are interested in, and how often they are visiting? Then you could follow up with an integrated email campaign targeted at a variety of segments based on their interests, behaviors and feedback? And provide scoring and nurturing of these leads within your system, all the while tying it into your CRM system and passing it on to salespeople to turn that information into revenue?” Read more

I am excited to be a part of the Net-Results team. I look forward to sharing my thoughts on marketing automation, SaaS, online communities and a host of other (hopefully) relevant topics.

Recently, I have read a few blog posts decrying SaaS vendors offering free trials. One of the main thoughts being it eliminates a large number of potential customers at the outset because they don’t want to go through the hassle of downloading, installing and evaluating a potential solution to their pain point. Really? With all due respect I would hardly qualify the person or organization as a ‘potential customer’ if they did not want to go through a (assuming)simple (and free) process to investigate a vendor’s solution to their needs before making an investment that may be disastrous. How many times have people signed up for a new software solution, only to see the integration, implementation and rollout of the product take exponentially longer and cost more than originally quoted? Many, many times. With a SaaS solution, you can see results almost instantly with most free trials. Read more