It’s hard to believe how fast marketing automation is evolving – and the wealth of information available about the space.  If you have a Google Alert set for “marketing automation,” you know what we mean.

With that in mind, we’d like to give a quick shout-out to a few folks that help the rest of us think about demand generation, lead nurturing and marketing automation in new, creative or fun ways.  Each person’s name is a link to his/her Twitter account for easy follow-ability.

Disclaimer: while many marketing automation vendors are posting great information and articles about these topics, we wanted to keep the list vendor-neutral and focus on individual contributors (who are listed in no particular order).

1.    Carlos Hidalgo – with over 1,700 Tweets, you just know that at least once a day, Carlos is going to share something insightful about marketing automation, especially from his clients’ perspective.
2.    Matt Heinz – his blog “Matt on Marketing” is fresh, funny and contains tons of free tips and advice about more than just marketing automation – from lead nurturing emails to print collateral tips, his posts are worth a read.
3.    Laura Ramos – her knowledge and insights about using marketing solutions and technology to cut through the noise in complex B2B sales cycles are delivered in a clean, no-nonsense style.
4.    Jep Castelein – with the promise of helping clients uncover untapped revenue in their database, Jep launched LeadSloth as a resource center with useful marketing automation tips from an unbiased viewpoint.
5.    Andrew Hunt – his Blog “From Clicked to Closed” gives readers practical inbound marketing advice in an anecdotal style that is refreshing, informative and fun to read.
6.    David Raab – an experienced analyst with a keen eye on using the latest technologies to enhance marketing, his blog “Customer Experience Matrix” provides its readers with useful information, especially during the all-important vendor selection process.
7.    Ardath Albee – her book “eMarketing Strategies for the Complex Sale” is chock full of actionable information and Ardath is a talented and savvy contributor about hot topics such as marketing automation, social media, lead nurturing and more.
8.    Craig Rosenberg – so the name the Funnelholic makes us crack a smile every time, but Craig backs up his “addiction” with great tips and strategies about B2B marketing, lead generation and lead nurturing.
9.    Mac McIntosh – with 20 years of advertising, marketing and sales experience, he helps readers and clients understand the “big picture” of lead management from pre-pipeline to a closed sale.

We picked these 9 experts because they provide great information, but we know this list is far from complete.   If you’d like to suggest your favorite demand gen or marketing automation expert, please comment below or send us a tweet @NetResults and we’ll include them in a future post.  Happy automating!

One question we hear quite often from our clients is, “How often should I be sending emails and communicating with my database of leads?”

While we wish there was a hard and fast rule on this topic, like so many other marketing questions, the answer really depends on many variables.  Take a moment to think about your database and answer the following questions… Read more

Have you ever sat down at your favorite Mexican restaurant and been so hungry that you can’t decide what to order?  From chicken enchiladas and rellenos to carne asada and shrimp ceviche, it all looks so good that you sit there…stumped.  The wait staff may have to make several extra trips because you are distracted by the choices and can’t decide.

Now think about this scenario in the context of setting up a multi-week, multi-step marketing automation campaign.  Sounds familiar, right?  You have so many decisions and moving parts to control that getting started can be overwhelming.

We suggest answering these four simple questions beforehand to make structuring your first few marketing automation campaigns a little easier…a little more digestible, if you will.

1.       Who are your leads and what is their source?  Answering this question will help determine their initial interests and how you first communicate with them.  For example, leads from outbound calling efforts should probably be segmented and receive different communications than those generated via an affiliate email program.
2.       What would you say in a 1:1 conversation – why should these leads care about your communications?  Are you offering them something of value such as a special offer, educational material, free assessment, etc?
3.       How can you support your campaign?  Content rules as a way to interact with leads so audit your existing content and determine what is relevant or can be repurposed.  White papers, case studies, testimonials, webinars and videos – you probably have more than you think!
4.       What do you want to accomplish?  Are you qualifying leads to hand off to sales or are you driving them to an online demo?  It makes sense to identify your end-goal at the beginning of the campaign because you can review every step to see if it logically supports the overall objective.

Armed with the answers to the above questions, the next step is to actually hit the whiteboard, Visio or old-fashioned pen and paper to map out the decision-tree and possible outcomes.  The few minutes that spent answering these four questions will have a huge pay-off as you become familiar with developing and structuring your marketing automation campaigns.  Be prepared for delicious results!

E-mail marketing is powerful and effective, and a targeted e-mail-marketing campaign can drive traffic to your site, put your name in front of qualified prospects, and turn leads into sales — for much less than a traditional direct-marketing campaign. However, building your email list of prospects and potential customers can be difficult and cumbersome, but there are some options and strategies to simplify and improve the process. Read more

1. Fraud Control

With the increase in credit card fraud and ID theft, any additional mechanism to detect and capture fraud attempts increases your ability to prevent further fraud while decreasing your chance of losing money. One of the lesser known ways to accomplish this goal is to use Net-Results to determine whether an individual is attempting transactions with more than one credit card. When an individual uses a credit card and then continues multiple transaction attempts with other cards, you may have an instance of attempted credit card fraud.  You can configure a notification within Net-Results to let you know that the same IP address has returned to the credit card transaction landing page a seemingly excessive number of times.

2. Return Customer Coupon and Item Referral

When a customer makes a purchase on your website, personalizing his/her experience moving forward can increase the likelihood of future purchases.  You can use the Net-Results platform to help by setting up a campaign that is triggered when a visitor, who has purchased a certain product in the past, returns to your site. Based on the visitor’s activity and previous purchase patterns, you can send coupons, promotions, new product offerings, etc.  There is really no limit to how much communication you can automate with Net-Results!

3. Promotional Drip Campaign After Purchase

Additionally, when a customer makes a purchase on your website, you can also configure Net-Results to send reminder emails to buyers about future events, sales, promotions, etc. by setting up a drip campaign with the trigger of a completed purchase. You can customize the drip campaign even further by including information about the item purchased, similar products, etc.

4. Outbound Calling Tracking and Reporting

It’s often hard to know when prospects that have been cold called actually come to your site to learn more about the product or service you are promoting.  You can use Net-Results to make the process automated and simple.  Have your sales team perform cold calls with the objective of obtaining an email address and permission to email the person.  You can then set up an email campaign using those email addresses and track the recipients’ interaction with the campaign.  Now, when any of the recipients of the email visit your website, you’ll be able to view the visit in detail plus set alerts to have this intelligence sent to you or your callers’ inbox.  Sales can now follow up with these prospects at the height of engagement for better close rates.

5. Triggered Auto-Responders When Someone Logs In

For websites that require or request a log in, Net-Results can be configured to automatically send the user an email detailing any new product or service, updates or offering. A good example of this functionality is a software provider where updates are inevitable.  Instead of making your customers peruse the website or customer portal to locate information, you can send an auto responder containing updates and any associated information.  Not only does auto responder strategy provide customers with go-to information at their fingertips, but also it can decrease the strain on your resources for customer service calls and inquiries.

6. Remove Non-Responsive Contacts

As spam increases tenfold, so does the rigidity of your recipients’ spam filters which makes it increasingly important to make your lists as clean as possible. New spam filter technology is beginning to rely on interaction with your campaigns.  It follows that if your recipients are continuously non-responsive, but do not unsubscribe from your campaigns, this lack of interaction can damage the integrity of your list and of your domain in general.  By utilizing the statistics reporting in Net-Results, you can create a segment that identifies any recipients who receive your emails but are non-responsive. By removing them from your list, you will keep your list current and fresh—and engaged.  The improved “interactivity” metrics will help keep you white-listed as a company and decrease chances of getting caught in spam filters or marked as junk mail.

At Net-Results, we’re all about helping our partners and customers shine.  With that in mind, we ask that you provide us with feedback about what you like, don’t like, and would like to see in the future.

As a result of your feedback, we will be adding some pretty cool product integrations. The first is our “sweet” integration with Sugar CRM. Horrible pun intended! The integration really is very useful and will drastically increase production and efficiency for those users of Sugar CRM.  Additionally, by popular demand, we are integrating with Outlook.  We’re psyched about this one because you can send one-off emails from your Outlook plugin AND have all of the tracking and intel of Net-Results.  Pretty smart, eh?  As always, the purpose of these integrations is to seamlessly interact with the databases you already have and use AND to make using Net-Results easier and more productive.

With all of the opportunities for lead generation out there, one of the easiest and most effective ways to capture your potential customer’s contact information is through your web forms. These forms are valuable tools that let you collect crucial data so that, once qualified, you can funnel those prospects into the sales pipeline. Not only do these forms provide invaluable information to you and your sales team, they are also key players in achieving sales success with the Net-Results Marketing Automation platform. Once a visitor has done you the favor of filling in their coveted contact information, Net-Results can then identify that customer down to their company name, first name, last name, phone number and email address each and every time they come back. Not only when they come back, but how long they are on your site, what products and services they are interested in, and what their navigation through your site is.

So, all you need to do is just build a few simple HTML “Contact Us” forms on your website and the leads will just start flowing in, right? Wrong. As technology continues to advance, so do threats of SPAM, ID theft, and email address selling, making visitors to your website more hesitant than ever to just hand over their contact information. Because of this SPAM fear that has been deeply instilled in your prospects, you must use your forms to barter with your prospects for their information, provide something they can’t get elsewhere, and something that is more than worth their email address. You want your prospects to come in, check out what you have to offer, be amazed and intrigued by those offerings, and gladly give up a few pieces of personal data in exchange for the obvious benefits your site and company provides.

There are a few simple ways to ensure your visitors will WANT to fill out your forms and WANT you to contact them-

Create A Need

Give your customers a taste of your offerings, without exposing everything. Giving them a bit of very useful information, and asking them to register for the rest, shows them that you do have credibility, but you want to establish a personal relationship with them before discussing the rest. This sample creates a need for the end of the story. Providing a few paragraphs of a white paper or informational document can be intriguing enough for a visitor to submit their email address to finish the piece.

Trade Up

Everyone likes free stuff, and if you say you don’t, you’re lying.  Creating an offer with a promotional price, coupon or free item in exchange for personal data provides the customer something that they didn’t really have to work that hard to get. Your visitors will be a bit more willing to exchange their email address when there’s a free donut at stake.

Make A Deadline

We’ve all given up our email address in exchange for an offer that ends today, tomorrow or in 3 weeks. We absolutely know the offer will still be available next month, but we do it anyways. Giving your customer a deadline to get information, get a promotional price, or get insight into future exclusive events, adds a sense of urgency and exclusivity.

Members Only

Making visitors part of a “cool kids only club” to get insider information on product releases, events or updates, provides another sort of barter for information. You’ve let them into an exclusive club where they will get the best deals, have access to the best information, and get invited to the best parties. (Well maybe not the last one, but you get it)

Breaking your website visitors of their commitment phobia (or at least web form phobia) will not only help you to better utilize the power of the Net-Results platform to increase your revenue and marketing ROI, but also give your potential customers a better idea of your credibility and insight into the important products and services you can provide to them.

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

Marketing tactics are hot and cold as time passes, but no matter what business or industry, one thing remains consistent: Customers love to save money, and free is still the best word in marketing. Thanks to a growing number of Americans online (more than 70% of the population), consumers are utilizing online coupons as a quick and easy alternative to spending hours clipping them from the newspaper (If they even ever did it before). Read more

There are certainly benefits to sending both TEXT-Only and HTML emails when launching an email campaign. HTML emails are of course attractive when well-designed, allow you to insert images which help you determine an open rate, can be more compelling to click through, and convey multiple messages in an organized format. On the other hand, text emails can have a better deliverability rate, look more personalized, and are generally less likely to be confused with spam (although many spammers these days have caught on to that notion). So which one is right for your campaign? Well, it all depends on what message you are sending to what audience. Read more