Ebook Vol2 Direct Marketing

101 B2B Marketing and Sales Tips
from The B2B Lead

VOLUME TWO
Direct Marketing
Generating leads and reaching customers via email,
direct mail and more
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101 B2B Marketing and Sales Tips from The B2B Lead
25 Direct Marketing Tips for Driving Lead Generation

Today, direct marketing is the core of any integrated marketing program. There is a lot of buzz around web 2.0 and new social media tactics but direct marketing continues to be
the number one measurable lead generation source. Whether through email, direct mail or both, marketers are able to deliver their message to prospective buyers quickly and ef-
fectively using direct marketing.
In this collection of 25 direct marketing tips from The B2B Lead, you will find information on targeting and segmenting prospects, marketing copywriting, and much more. Here’s
a few of the included tips in this eBook:
• Lead Generation Using Email Marketing
• Marketing to the Entire Decision Making Unit
• Building and Measuring Lead Nurturing Programs
• How to Write and Market Whitepapers
• Tips for Writing Good Email Copy
• Six Principles of Subject Line Writing
If you like what your see here, be sure to check out theb2blead.com for more B2B Marketing and Sales tips.
Content contributed by:

Amy Hawthorne, Director of Marketing at ReachForce
Pam O’Neal Mickelson, VP of Marketing at BreakingPoint
Leigh Anne Wallace, Marketing Coordinator at ReachForce
VOLUME TWO • Direct Marketing 2

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Table of Contents
Email
1. Lead Generation Using Email Marketing
2. Avoid being called a SPAMer
3. Email Marketing in a Web 2.0 World
4. Keeping up with the Joneses: How Do Your Email Open Rates Compare?
5. Opting Out of Opt-In
6. 10 Email Pitfalls and 10 Email Power Words
Marketing Copywriting
7. Six Principles of Subject Line Writing
8. Tips for Writing Good Email Copy
9. B2B Marketing Copy – Write it Right
10. B2B Marketing Copy - Write it Right Part II
Direct Mail
11. Direct Mail on a Comeback?
12. Is Direct Mail Obsolete.com?
13. Dusting off some old direct mail ideas…wondering if they still work?
Targeting and Segmentation

14. Doing More with Less – Utilizing Segmentation
15. Going New Places – Targeting New Buyers in New Vertical Markets
16. Marketing to the Entire Decision Making Unit
More Direct Marketing Tips

17. Turn Role-based Data Into Interested Prospects With a Relevant and Enticing Call to Action
18. MarketingSherpa on B2B Technology Buyers
19. Building and Measuring Lead Nurturing Programs
20. Landing Pages 101
21. Is Dirty Data Sabotaging your Marketing Results?
22. Make Marketing Decisions by Using Surveys
23. Dust Off Your Algebra Texts to Improve Conversion Rates
24. How to Write and Market Whitepapers
25. Keeping Customers Engaged Between Sales Cycles
VOLUME TWO •Direct Marketing 3

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Lead Generation Using Email Marketing

Since this is our 100th tip I thought I would blog about something I feel like I have been asked about 100 times. I have been a lead generation marketer since before lead genera-
tion was cool and even though we are changing what we call it (demand generation) my job is still to deliver more high quality leads to sales. At ReachForce, 70% of new customers
come through marketing, so I guess we’re doing something right.
Here’s what we’re doing to drive lead generation. This isn’t rocket science, just targeting the right role-based buyers in the right kinds of companies. It’s what we talk about all the
time here so we have to be practicing it too, right? There’s no one blueprint that works for every business. There are basic principles we all subscribe to but different audiences like
to be communicated with in different ways. I will preface by saying that lead generation is all about testing and tweaking, so while this is our basic program today, we’re already in
the process of adding new tools and tactics to roll out next quarter. All with one goal in mind – Will the real leads please stand up (or out)?!
For us the obvious starting point is the data. We “eat our own dog food” here at ReachForce so I am able to consistently feed programs with fresh role-based contacts that are in
our target market sweet spot. And while the data is very important, content is key. Because I know I’m targeting the right buyers, this enables me to laser focus relevant messages
that resonate with my specific audiences. Contacts start in a program based on their department role (in our case either being in sales or marketing) and by decision making role
(decision maker, influencer or end user). Each program has tailored messaging highlighting pain points these recipients typically experience. All contacts start in a three touch
email marketing program that looks like this:
• Email 1 – Education about the pain points RF solves – since this is the first time they will receive a message from us, we want to educate them about what problem we solve
and how/why we are different from the competition
• Email 2 – Education about our space – this is an opportunity to reinforce pain points that they might be feeling (and that we solve). A whitepaper or webcast setting up the cur-
rent ‘state of the union’ is a good offer here.
• Email 3 – Offer – Now that we’ve educated them about the current market and our solutions, we offer a chance for them to see for themselves via a trial or demo.
Between each email touch, our Sales team follows up with all of the responders, those that open but didn’t respond (to offer the best practice piece from the marketing email), and
those that click through but didn’t download or fill out the form. I’m not sure having Sales involved so early makes sense for all companies but our business is relatively transactional
and a lot of times it just takes 1 hook to get them engaged.
After the email touch cycle, the non responders then move into a non-behavioral lead scoring survey, a few more good leads fall out of this program. We’re about to launch the next
piece of this tangled web next month. We’ll keep you posted on what happens next.
For more email marketing call–to-actions check out Tip #56.

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Avoid being called a SPAMer

Be Compliant
• Make sure your entire physical address is at the bottom of your marketing emails
• Make sure you offer your recipients a way to unsubscribe from your mailing list
• Ensure HTML content complies with standards
Preserve your Reputation

• Stagger your mailings
• Choose subject lines carefully
• Carefully track unsubscribes, bouncebacks and opt-ins
• Make it easy for the recipient to get in touch with you
• Use email service provider for more automation
Be Careful when Creating Content

• Make sure your not using a spam buzz word – check here
• Use capitalization sparingly
• Minimize use of “click here” or “click below”
• Watch your punctuation
• Use simple HTML, No Javascript
• Use web-safe colors only
• Reduce use of large fonts and characters
• Avoid “remove” in unsubscribe language
• Keep file size under 70K

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Email Marketing in a Web 2.0 World

I know, I know, “Web 2.0” sounds sooooo cliché but the so-called Web 2.0 world has really changed everything when it comes to marketing including those traditional activities
like Webinar marketing, email campaigns, and direct marketing. Now, Jeff Pulver posts some wonderful advice on avoiding email marketing mistakes in Marketing 103: e-mail
Marketing Mistakes to Avoid in a Web 2.0 World.
I encourage you to forgive him his “web 2.0 world” reference (we’ve all made them) and read this great post. Most of his advice is focused on formatting the email to look as if it is
personalized. But he does offer a few tips that many marketers may not have considered such as:
” - Be ONLINE and AVAILABLE.
The sender of the email marketing campaign should be plan to be online and responding to messages as they are received from people asking questions from the email they just
received. The more available the sender is, the higher the probability the success rate will be higher. Avoid going dark if you can avoid it.
– KNOW the DEVICE and Platform being used by the recipient to read their messages. This continues to be the BEST way to increase the chances your message will be seen in a
way you intended it to be seen. The information about the default device/platform used to read e-mail can have a tremendous impact on the future effectiveness of future e-mail
marketing campaigns.”
By following Jeff’s advice and investing in a great database and email automation tools, you can make your email marketing campaigns less of an intrusion and see an increase in
click throughs and conversion rates. However, I recommend you take Web 2.0 a step further and offer up a number of options for communicating with your customers. Make sure
you give them the choice of receiving an email, RSS feed, or Twitter updates. You can increase the frequency of your outreach to customers and reduce the investment you sink
into building an email marketing campaign by leveraging these social media tools to build a network of followers. At BreakingPoint, we’ve built a rapidly growing following on Twitter
that is paying off in terms of web visitors, leads, and loyal followers who help us spread word of mouth about our products. Curious about how we did it? Follow our corporate feed
at www.twitter.com/breakingpoint. Or, if you want to get updates on The B2B Lead stories follow the bloggers at www.twitter.com/poneal, www.twitter.com/lawallace and www.
twitter.com/ahawthorne.

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Keeping up with the Joneses: How Do Your Email Open Rates Compare?
In the world of lead generation, we as marketers are constantly measuring open and conversion rates for our latest email campaigns. Here is a summary of MailerMailer’s latest
Email Marketing Metrics Report from E-consultancy.
Here are some of the high points:
• Subject lines with 35 characters or less are 28% more likely to be opened
• Email open rates are down: this is mostly due to email programs automatically blocking images (which is how opens are tracked)
• Clickthrough rates have remained constant
• Mondays and Tuesdays are the best days to send emails
• Personalization in the subject line increases opens and clickthroughs
See how your results compare and gain tips for subject lines and best times to send campaigns.
Direct Mail to No One - Marketing WTF?

Another great story, well a sad one really but still a jaw dropper.
One of my previous employers who shall remain nameless ran one of the most costly and ineffective marketing campaigns I have ever heard of (this was before
I worked there of course). They had decided to run a big direct mail campaign sending out branded scooters. You know the razor ones that were all the rage
about 5 years ago. Somewhere along the line the zip code column got moved around and it didn’t line up with the correct addresses. No one realized the prob-
lem until the scooters started coming back. They ended up paying FedEx twice, once to ship it there and once to ship it back because the zip code was wrong.
So no one got the scooters and the marketing team had spent their budget on the scooters and all the shipping. Too bad – no one got a scooter.
When I started working there over a year after the Oops, they were still trying to give those darn scooters away. In fact I think I might still have one in my ga-
rage….
These marketers were also of the mindset that if you could get 100 t-shirts for $6 a piece then getting 1000 shirts for $4 a piece is a better deal. Even though no
more than 100 people ever worked at the company. Saving money by buying in bulk is good but only if you can consume the larger amount.

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Opting Out of Opt-In

Something I have been asked about lately is opt-in emails. There seems to be a battle between what is the best marketing practice. I will be first to admit that opt-in is always best,
but for a new or growing company, building an opt-in list can be a difficult and lengthy process.
First things first, here is Wikipedia’s definition of Opt-in email:
Opt in e-mail is a term used when someone is given the option to receive “bulk” e-mail, that is, e-mail that is sent to many people at the same time. Typically, this is some sort of
mailing list, newsletter, or advertising. Obtaining permission before sending e-mail is critical because without it, the e-mail is Unsolicited Bulk Email, better known as spam.
There are several common forms of opt-in e-mail:
Unconfirmed opt-in
A new subscriber first gives his/her address to the list software (for instance, on a Web page), but no steps are taken to make sure that this address actually belongs to the person.
This can cause e-mail from the mailing list to be considered spam because simple typos of the email address can cause the email to be sent to someone else. Malicious subscrip-
tions are also possible, as are subscriptions that are due to spammers forging email addresses that are sent to the e-mail address used to subscribe to the mailing list.
Confirmed opt-in (COI)

A new subscriber asks to be subscribed to the mailing list, but unlike unconfirmed opt-in, a confirmation e-mail is sent to verify it was really them. Many believe the person must not
be added to the mailing list unless an explicit step is taken, such as clicking a special web link or sending back a reply e-mail. This ensures that no person can subscribe someone
else out of malice or error. Mail system administrators and non-spam mailing list operators refer to this as confirmed subscription or closed-loop opt-in.
I want you to repeat after me, “I cannot buy and opt-in list.” For an email list to be truly opt-in, the subscriber needs to have signed-up to receive communication from you. If a
company is selling an opt-in list, they are selling the names and emails of someone who has agreed to receive emails from affiliates. (We have all signed up for these when ordering
a magazine or joining a new website) Many recipients on these “opt-in” lists still consider these affiliate messages to be SPAM.
Some marketers think that they can only email opt-in lists to avoid being a SPAMer. When actually, you just have to include a way for recipients to opt out. There are a few other
rules you can read about on the Federal Trade Commission’s website, but currently there is no requirement for the opt-ins. If you are emailing internationally, be aware that each
country has different laws for email marketing. Some countries in Europe have much stricter laws than in the US.
Really the best way to avoid being a SPAMer is to deliver relevant content to those you are emailing. Highly targeted and segmented campaigns with compelling content that speaks
to the audience and their pain points. We have found that after we deliver new content to our prospects, they sign up for continued communication.
If you are looking to expand your opt-in list, check out Vertical Response’s Umpteen Ways to Build Your Email List.

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10 Email Pitfalls and 10 Email Power Words

I saw something recently that said it was ok to use the word free in an email subject line? So I went looking for other information to support that. We all know that spam filters love
the word free. I’m guessing we can thank the B2C marketers for that…
I ran across a MarketingProfs newsletter article, , titled Email Marketing - Top 10 Language Pitfalls and Top 10 Power Words. Although some of these are obvious, I thought it was
worth passing on as it can’t hurt to be reminded of what we should and should not say when writing our email copy.
Here’s the Top Ten Language Pitfalls in Email Marketing Messages:
10. Typos and misspellings due to poor editing

Wow. With spell check, this really happens? Surely every email automation vendor out there offers spell check, right? Slow down and take the time to make sure your spelling and
grammar are correct. You don’t want to say from when you mean form.
9. Subject lines in ALL CAPS

All caps in email is equivalent to shouting. You would never shout at your customers or prospects in person, would you?
8. Use of punctuation marks and numbers within the subject line

When I find myself needing punctuation in a subject line, I instantly think it’s too long and I’m trying to say too much. I think Eloqua says best practice is 6 words or less in a subject line.
7. ALL CAPS within the message body

Remember, no need to shout. Use other creative means such as color, different font, or buttons/banners/backgrounds for emphasis if there is an explanation, offer, or condition not
to be missed.
I agree again on the shouting. I tend to bold important phrases or link them to our call to action.
6. Excessive or unnecessary Power Word repetition; especially of power word #1

See below.
Hint – power word #1 is FREE
5. Copy written in passive rather than active voice

We need to get to the point quickly in email. Front-load sentences and paragraphs with action verbs and eye-catching benefits.
Don’t forget people also read emails in a preview pane. Make sure you are getting their attention immediately. I try to include a call-to-action link in the first 2 lines too.
4. False or inflated sense of urgency

The very nature of email implies expediency, immediacy. Your audience is already in a mindset to quickly access and process email messages. Nudge, don’t shove. In our B2B
communications, what is really all that urgent anyway?

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3. Vague calls-to-action
“Click here” or “visit our Web site” are too general; they don’t reinforce the subject of your message or your offer. Nor do they instill confidence in where a responder will land. Be
specific, such as “download your free white paper” or “see the movie preview” instead.
This is also why I use key messages as links. It stands out and reinforces my offer.
2. Exaggerated Modifiers
Like “Amazing,” “Revolutionary,” “Great,” “All New,” (when just “new” would suffice) and even “Special” and “Important,” especially when used in the subject line, can land your
email in the junk folder. Hype is a hallmark of spam and is unnecessary when your messages are targeted and relevant.
Fluff. That’s what these words are. Everyone looks past them so I think you’re wasting your time and valuable real estate if you’re opening with these words.
And the number-one pitfall:
1. Including the word “spam” in your message (such as “this is not spam”)
The very existence of written justification that your email is ethical calls its legitimacy into question. I can’t think of a more self-defeating proposition than stating your message is
NOT what you fear it will be.
Really? Surely this is a B2C thing, right?
Top Ten Power Words
Here are the top ten power words for your email advertising and communications:
10. New - Appeals to our basic human curiosity to seek novelty.
9. Save - We all love a bargain.
8. Safety - Connotes reliability; appeals to basic human needs.
7. Proven - Justifies your claim, removes fear of the unknown.
6. Love - An all-time favorite.
5. Guarantee - If you have one, state it. It iron-clads your offer.
4. Immediate (Now, or Instant) - Instant gratification is the expectation online. If it can’t be found, completed, or received almost immediately, you’re offer is in the wrong channel.
3. Results - Provides rationalization for instant conversion.
2. You - Remember WIIFM? Your audience wants to hear about what’s in it for them, not you. Articulate your benefits in personal, conversational terms.
And the number one Power Word:
1. Free - Surprised? Probably not. Because this is the time-honored, most potent motivator in direct response, be particularly vigilant of overuse. Just a dash’ll do. Strive to optimize
placement, and test if necessary. So Free is back in. And not just back in but listed as the #1 Power Word.
Are you using it? Have any metrics to prove it’s ok and working?
***These great tips were contributed by Karen Talavera, president and founder, of Synchronicity Marketing

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Six Principles of Subject Line Writing

Subject Lines are like first impressions. When an email comes in, most email providers are set up to show you who the message is coming from and the brief subject of the mes-
sage. As you are writing subject lines for your demand generation programs, make sure your message includes the following 6 principles –
• Be Informative – Be sure to convey something important, valuable or timely
• Create Intrigue – Prompt your reader to open and act on the email immediately
• Build Trust – Be sure not to over promise or mislead your prospects
• Call to Action – Make it easy for your prospects to act on the call to action
• Understand who you are targeting – Speak to each prospect as an individual and address their pain points
• From who? – Subject lines can work with From Lines
I just recently heard a new best practice – subject lines should be no longer than 6 words. Do you think this is because so many people are getting email on mobile devices?
Are we missing anything here? Post a comment to add to the list.

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Tips for Writing Good Email Copy

• Consider what your prospect or customer wants to hear, not what you want to tell them.
• Don’t beat around the bush – get to the point in 100 words or less
• Make sure call to action is above the fold (and in the preview pane)
• Be sure your offer or call to action are related to the content
• Get to the point – use 1 idea per sentence and make sentences punchy and easy to scan
• Do not use catch phrases, clichés – use real data to make key points
• Ask yourself – So what? – this will help you get to the real message

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B2B Marketing Copy – Write it Right

When I review B2B Marketing copy, I can always tell when a Marketer doesn’t fully understand his/her customer or product. You can tell because, generally, the copy is chock full
of product features, hype and Marketing buzzwords. To easily create high impact B2B Marketing copy that stimulates buyers to action, follow these two guidelines:
1. Know your customer - Never, never, never begin writing a brochure, email, web page or other customer-facing document before you have a thorough understanding of your target
audience. It’s not enough to know your product or service inside and out, and then start putting words on paper without even considering the customer. Understand their role, pain
points, decision drivers, emotional drivers, and motivation for addressing that pain point. Then focus on those and how your product or service enables them to achieve their goals.
2. Follow this B2B Marketing Copy Recipe and you’ll quickly crank out short, concise and compelling copy that gets better results. Use the following outline as a template for devel-
oping your next brochure or email.
A. Customer Pain Point or Goal
B. Impact or Costs of Not Addressing Pain/Or the Benefits of Meeting Goal
C. Solution or Product Description
D. Requirements for Adequately Addressing Pain or Achieving Goal
E. Your Unique Ability to Alleviate the Pain or Enable Customer to Achieve Goal
F. The Advantages and/or Benefits You Deliver
G. Call to Action
H. Credibility Builders
I. Contact Information

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B2B Marketing Copy - Write it Right Part II

Here on The B2B Lead Blog, we are obsessed with great B2B Marketing copy. Here are a few new tips for crafting high impact copy:
• Get to the point quickly. Start with pain points, goals, or the most important reason that the reader should care. Put yourself in the buyers’ shoes. Why would you spend money
or spend valuable time to read the document? To get to the real pain, ask “why” three times.
• Remember your audience - what do they care about? Lead with the most important value proposition, what’s most likely to sell first.
• Provide a full explanation of the concept, but remember: less is more. Do not use too many words to say something. Do not say the same thing several different ways before get-
ting to the point.
• The reader should be able to scan the headline and subheads throughout the piece and get the basic story. Each subhead should tell a significant piece of the story. Make
ample use of bulleted lists for readability.
• Effectively use call out boxes or highlighted quotes.
• Ensure there is clear linkage from one concept to the next, and one paragraph to the next.
• Use short punchy sentences and bulleted lists that are easy to read quickly.
• Repeat brand names and key messages to reinforce branding.
• Don’t use buzzwords or hype.
• Tie the theme of the headline to the copy. Weave the headline into the copy to reinforce.
• Use action words. Speak to customer needs with benefit-oriented statements. Avoid overly cute or cliché language.
• Always include a compelling call to action and a fast, easy way to contact you.

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Direct Mail on a Comeback?

As a long time B2B Marketer I know I typically have to “touch” a lead 5 to 6 times before they become a prospect in my sales funnel. With that in mind, I am using multiple tactics
to get suspects to raise their hand. I have a feeling direct mail is on the comeback so we are about to give it a try again. Yes, it’s still expensive and postage rates are still going up
but with email boxes being filled up with spam, suspects may be more likely to act if we can figure out how to stand out in the crowd.
As Marketers, when we start to build out a campaign we spend time on the WHAT we are going to deliver, the HOW we are going to deliver our message and the WHEN the program
is going to go out but when it comes to the WHO, we haven’t had many options. Our choices were either an in-house database (how old and accurate is this data really?) or to rent
data from a title-based list broker. And do we know who these people are or how these names were really acquired?
So as we get ready to build out a direct mail program I’m reminded of a tragic story one of our customers told us. They had a total budget of $100,000 for a direct mail campaign.
This was going to be the program of the quarter and they were very anxious to get it out the door so the responders would start rolling in. Of their total budget, they spent $5,000 on
the WHO they were trying to reach. The rest of the money went to creating an elaborate piece with “exactly the right messaging”, an attractive call to action and web components
for tracking. They felt good about the program and believed the number of responses would justify the cost. They dropped the piece, then waited and waited and waited. Not only
did they not get the overwhelming number of responses, they only got one. Now that’s one expensive lead if you ask me.
Obviously when creating a direct mail campaign we need to create a compelling piece with a strong call to action. But the WHO is where a lot of B2B Marketers go wrong. The most
successful campaigns, direct mail or otherwise, are those that are targeted at the right people in the right companies. So how do you decide what the right WHO looks like? Here’s
what I’m doing –
To find the right businesses, I go straight to my sales pipeline and recent customer wins. I’m looking for where we are winning and what kinds of companies are moving through the
funnel the fastest. Then I build out an initial database of other companies that match this profile. Now that I’ve identified the right companies to go after, I’m just left with finding the
right contacts for my message. Lucky me, we’re in the business of building custom role based contact databases for lead generation initiatives. So I use our own role-based contact
discovery service to find the right decision makers within those target companies. By paying a little more attention to WHO I’m targeting, I feel confident my upcoming direct mail
campaign is going to deliver.
Just in case you’re wondering, the person who was responsible for the $100K campaign lost their job. And the person that took their place now uses ReachForce to help keep their job.

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Is Direct Mail Obsolete.com?

I’ve been thinking a lot about direct mail lately, pondering whether it could possible work again, or if it has simply become an unforgivable sin against the environment. You see, us-
ing email for acquisition just seems awfully risky these days with increasingly stringent CAN-SPAM laws. And, I’m just not comfortable blasting out an email to an unscrubbed list.
Before I would ever feel comfortable sending out a direct mail or email campaign, I would have to come up with a killer creative idea and offer that would compel my target audi-
ence to take action. And, I would need a precision database to ensure high response rates and minimal waste. But that’s another post.
And, I confess, I’m at a loss for inspiration. The last creative direct mail campaign I saw was at least 4 months ago, and it wasn’t even addressed to me. I was in my boss’s office
and I spotted an unusual relic sitting on top of a stack of papers. No, the relic wasn’t just a direct mail brochure, it was a floppy disk!!! Can you imagine? I had not seen one of these
since I was, erh, merely an infant.
Anyway, the floppy disk was imprinted with a custom URL based on the primary domain of www.areyouobsolete.com. Wow! It was the perfect combination of incredibly creative,
environmentally friendly (recycling old floppies), and it sparked a curiosity so strong that I was compelled to run back to my office to type in the URL. And, to blog about it.
When I reached my office and typed in the URL, I was greeted with a “We’re Sorry, we do not recognize the URL” message because I had not typed in the personalized URL. Sadly,
the folks at Progress Software who designed this ingenious campaign, had neglected to consider that the campaign might just be so clever that it would stimulate strong Word of
Mouth and intrigue other possible buyers to visit and learn. A simple catch-all page at www.areyouobsolete.com would have been very helpful.
As a potential prospect for Progress, I might also suggest that they build out a database with all of the buyers in the buying process and send the floppies to each of them. You see,
my boss had no interest in following up and he didn’t have time to indulge his curiosity. By sending the mailer to each member of the team, they would increase their odds of suc-
cess.
Got any great direct mail success stories to share with The B2B Lead? Use the comments field to brag about your recent successes. I’m in dire need of inspiration.

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Dusting off some old direct mail ideas…wondering if they still work?
I’m constantly trying to add new things to our marketing mix. I feel like I’ve talked a lot about direct mail on The B2B Lead but we still haven’t given it a shot here at ReachForce.
Before email marketing, direct mail and events were our only options to directly reach a prospect. I’m wondering… is everything done online only now? Do people even pay atten-
tion to or read physical mail anymore? I’m not sure, anyone done a B2B direct mail program lately? Did you get the ROI you were hoping for?
We all know physical mail costs more than communicating online but is it possible to stand out in the crowd? As I went back to a box of old ideas, I ran across a few ideas I pulled
out and thought about giving another try.
• Got an event invite? – Try sending your invite attached to a helium balloon and put the whole thing in a FedEx box. I haven’t tried it myself but I think this is a great idea. Helium
balloons last a couple of days. This ensures your invite sticks around for awhile not to mention it will literally jump out of the box when they open it.
• Mailing to a small group or a very targeted high impact program? Try handwriting the address instead of printing it. There are services/people out there that will do this for you.
You might also consider using stamps instead of metered mail.
• Send or use something useful – I got a wine bottle opener from an advertising agency with a tag attached that said ‘OPEN’ on one side and on the other side they reinforced the
‘OPEN’ theme by listing a series of things like –“We’re open to the most innovative and effective approaches to building companies and brands.”
• And there’s still always the hook of “I’m sending you half of something. To get the other half you have to contact me.” We actually just did a small test batch of these just re-
cently. We sent ReachForce branded remote control cars and motorcycles to the VP of Sales and the VP of Marketing in a few target companies. We mixed up the remotes so
they had to chat about them to switch the remotes back. We are now following up with these people with an “everyone benefits if you work together” message. We’ll see how it
works out…..
Anyone got any other good direct mail ideas? Is direct mail part of your marketing mix or is it considered old school now? Jump in and share…
Marketing WTF? - I See Dead People – In My Database

Every B2B Marketer has struggled with the problem of bad data. As it turns out, even companies in the business of selling database technology have the same
issues. One such company’s Marketing Programs group attempted a direct mail database cleanup project using the old Return to Sender trick. They were
quickly inundated with stacks of returned direct mailers. In fact, they had so many returned that they had to hire a team of temps to remove all of the bad
records from their marketing database. They even found one stamped “Recipient Deceased”.
Talk about hitting the wrong target market.

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Doing More with Less - Utilizing Segmentation

It only makes sense that if we are able to get the right message to the right buyers in the right kinds of companies we will increase Marketing ROI and accelerate Sales cycles. So
why don’t we actually do just that?
By segmenting our leads database into smaller groups with similar characteristics, we are able to create very targeted programs that enable us to highlight exact pain points and
specific solutions for those points. These more focused groups also enable us to very direct with our content and offers. We no longer have to generalize or discuss issues from
10,000 ft up.
Also, consider this – wouldn’t you consider a responder to a very direct message a more qualified lead than one that bites on a general offer? Also, wouldn’t your Sales team prefer
fewer, more qualified leads to buckets of names of people who you don’t know what they do on a day to day basis?
Here are a couple of different ways I segment our leads for targeted programs here at ReachForce.
We slice leads by:

• Geography
• Industry
• Prospect title
• Prospect role (i.e. end user, decision maker, key influencer, etc.)
• Special interest group (i.e. event attendees, customers of salesforce.com, etc)
• Company size
• Company revenue
• Product line offerings
• Customers’ competitors
• People who acted on a specific call to action
• People who downloaded Product/Service Info.
• People who took a demo
• People in the sales pipeline that are stuck
Can you think of anymore?

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Going New Places – Targeting New Buyers in New Vertical Markets

As B2B Marketers we can be faced with the challenge of branching into new and untested markets. Environments where we have no marketing history, no means to set expecta-
tions, no sales pipeline predictability. Below are a few best practices we are using here at ReachForce as we look to make our next move. This is our approach to being more delib-
erate about targeting new buyers in new vertical markets.
Step 1. Customer Profiling

• Produce a profile of top customers in best performing markets.
• Identify universal characteristics and apply to new market to select top priority prospect companies.
Example – If you are currently seeing success selling into larger companies vs. smaller or companies that have many divisions or branches. These characteristics carry over multiple
verticals. It’s a good place to start when venturing into a new space.
Step 2. Prospect Matching and Research

• Apply profile to companies in new vertical market to identify those with highest propensity to purchase.
• Find out where decision-makers, recommenders and influencers from these companies hang out. What associations do they belong to? What events do they attend? What
newsletters or magazines do they subscribe to?
• Phone screen sample base to map the Decision Making Unit and understand unique vertical market needs, decision drivers, and pain points.
Step 3. Prospect Discovery

• Map profile to existing database to determine what contacts you already have
• Identify what companies and contacts you are missing
• Augment what your marketing database with role-based contacts, this enables more targeted lead generation programs.
Step 4. Marketing Campaign Execution

• Execute multi-modal Marketing Campaign to contacts focusing on key vertical pain points
• Leverage independent analyst reports, vertical customer case studies, testimonials, or awards to establish credibility in a new market when available
• Support Direct Marketing efforts with New Media, Search Engine Marketing, and PR programs
• Harvest responders, further qualify
• Funnel sales ready leads to Sales team
Step 5. Lead Nurturing

• Support Sales cycle by periodically reaching out to prospects.
• Provide information/offers to stay top of mind and encourage engagement.
For best results be sure to engage with sales before launching the new program and ensure they are on board to provide guidance and feedback throughout the process.
Before starting to explore your new world of buyers remember your dollars and sense. To execute a healthy ROI generating program it’s important to map out each step of the build-
ing process taking into consideration your budget, timing and appropriate follow up activity.
Click here for a template to help you build out your own vertical focused lead generation programs.

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Marketing to the Entire Decision Making Unit

In most, if not all B2B sales, there is more than one person involved in the buying decision. It could be any number of people that serve any number of roles within the organization.
Getting everyone on the same page can be challenging.
Each member is involved for different reasons therefore they need to be marketed to differently. Your message to each of them should be tailored to respond to their specific pain.
For example, an executive involved may care about how this new product is going to increase efficiencies while the actual end user may care more about ease of use and if it inte-
grates well with other solutions already being used.
Here’s a direct mail campaign I did that delivered an 80% (marketing to sales) conversion rate.
BACKGROUND: At the time I worked for a content management platform company. We were looking to partner with about a dozen strategic partners and needed a high impact
program to get their attention. The goal was to get a meeting with the CEO, the CTO and the VP of Strategic Alliances, one meeting with all 3 people in attendance. These compa-
nies didn’t know us so I needed to do something to stand out among all other marketing attempts.
ACTION PLAN: Mission Impossible 2 was about to come out on DVD and advertising had kicked up for the upcoming release date. I decided to leverage this hype and build a
campaign around the movie.
I wanted to get the attention of the key executives and get them to accept a meeting with our executives. My copies of the MI2 DVD arrived on the release date, I then turned
around and sent them to the potential partner executives in a metal briefcase with a message attached. The message read - “This package has also been sent to Jason Morio, CTO
and Suaad Sait, CEO. Whichever one of you logs into this site (PURL), accepts a meeting with us and ensures all 3 of you are in attendance will get a portable DVD player. (I’m
about to date myself here but oh well, portable DVD players had just come out and were running anywhere from $600 - $1200 each.) If I were doing something like this today I
might offer the cool new iPhone.
Of the 12 companies that we targeted with this first piece, 6 companies took the meeting. We were very excited with the results. (DISCLAIMER: I feel like I need to say this before
we go on any further. I’m sure most of them took the meeting just for the DVD player, but even so, we got our shot at the table with the decision making unit for a partnership.) My
job as a Marketer was done. I opened the door and set up a meeting with the right decision makers.
There were still 6 more companies we wanted to talk to that didn’t respond. For those that didn’t respond to the DVD, we sent a follow up piece. This time, a rocket with sunglasses
and message inside. (If you remember the movie, it begins with Tom Cruise climbing a mountain and a rocket is fired into the mountain with a message.) I mailed the rocket with a
piece of rock attached to it with different messaging this time. Still trying to spark an internal competition but this time with different solution messaging. We thought maybe with a
little tweaking of the value proposition we could land a few more meetings. It worked! Three more potential partners took meetings.
So of the 12 originally targeted prospects, we got the attention of 9 and were able to present our value proposition as well as a joint value proposition.
Tips to remember when building a program for the entire decision making unit:
• Leverage what is already happening around you
• Make the most of your first impression
• Tailor messages to the each member of the decision making unit
• Don’t depend on someone else to champion you, create awareness with the entire decision making unit
• Everyone loves a competition and especially one where there is a high percentage chance of winning
• If it doesn’t work for everyone, continue testing and tweaking

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Turn Role-based Data Into Interested Prospects With a Relevant and Enticing Call to Action
Attention Conservation Notice: The following post provides a list of offers that B2B Marketers can use to improve campaign results.
OK, it’s a new year. Now what? If you found yourself busy reacting to end of year crises and didn’t greet the New Year with a properly planned, integrated lead generation campaign,
you can still juice your Sales pipeline with a well written email and a strong call to action.
Unfortunately, for most B2B marketers, therein lies the challenge. What to offer? Where can I find a fresh and compelling white paper to serve up, because, well, every B2B mar-
keter knows that a white paper is the number one offer in our arsenal. But if your product marketing group is as busy as mine, it’s not always easy to get your hands on new content
to support your latest campaign.
Don’t be tempted to resort to a Sweepstakes offer like “enter to win an iPod.” Most will respond for the wrong reasons or avoid responding entirely because the offer is “too good to
be true.” Aim for something that is relevant to the prospects’ daily job. Here are a few quick ideas:
1. Free Books: Identify a new business or technology book that is related to your prospects’ responsibilities and your product or service and give away 10 to the first respondents.
2. Webinar: Recruit a spokesperson and schedule an educational Web cast.
3. Newsletter: Offer a subscription to your newsletter with tips and case studies.
4. Video Tutorial: Grab your Flipcam, an expert, and a white board and shoot a mini-tutorial.
5. Podcast: Think video tutorial with a voice recorder instead.
6. Expert Guide: Ask an all-star group of experts to send you their best advice or anecdotes, package it up into a “guide” and publish.
7. Quick Assessment: Provide a list of questions that can be used to assess a problem.
8. Free Resources: Pull together a few free online tools, previously published white papers and articles, then offer access to the compendium.
Got any other creative ideas? Share them with us.

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MarketingSherpa on B2B Technology Buyers

The experts at MarketingSherpa recently presented the findings of their annual survey of B2B Technology Marketers and B2B Technology Buyers. The B2B Lead Blog shares a few
of the findings here for those of you didn’t have time to attend.
1. Survey Result: Enterprise Buying Committees are Getting Bigger – there are more and more people involved in the buying process and as your target company gets larger, so
does the size of the buying committee.
Lesson: Set your white paper PDFs free, if the lead comes back, it is really a lead. Let your PDFs go viral by removing the barriers to your content. That way it is more likely
that your materials will be forwarded to all of the members of a buying committee. But, make sure you’ve included a call to action at the end of the white paper.
2. Survey Result: B2B Decision-makers attend more webinars than Contributors aka End-users.
Lesson: Managers, Directors and VPs are more likely to attend your webinars, than end-users who tend to prefer white papers. Target your offers accordingly.
3. Survey Result: 80% of your prospects think they found you.
Lesson: Make yourself more visible. Make sure you are there when B2B buyers are shopping. Capture or append their contact information when you can and then launch a
systematic multi-modal Marketing Communications campaign.
For the complete B2B Marketing survey results, purchase the full report at http://www.sherpastore.com/b2bbenchmark08.html and stay tuned to The B2B Lead Blog for more in-
sights.

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Building and Measuring Lead Nurturing Programs

As we acquire new leads and market to them we quickly see leads move into smaller, more segmented groups. Some take the hook you’ve put out there and ask for more, there’s
some that act interested but don’t commit to anything, and there’s those that are radio silent and give you no indication of real life.
Each group now needs a different kind of follow up. The first group is ready for another targeted marketing program offering them another opportunity to engage. And those that
didn’t respond might be ready for a slower moving nurture program. Maybe your message missed with these people, a nurture program is a good place to test messaging. Or maybe
you are targeting the wrong person and they don’t care what you have to say or what we you are offering. (You’re wasting your time with these people but you don’t know it yet. )
Here are a few tips to building and measuring segmented lead nurturing programs.
(If you’re lost, don’t worry there’s marketing automation folks like Vtrenz, Eloqua, Marketo and Manticore that can help you automate the execution of all of these different pro-
grams.)
1. Make sure Marketing and Sales have a clear understanding of what a lead is and what a sales-ready lead is. You have to start here. Marketing needs to know what they are
looking for and Sales wants to know what they are getting.
2. Divide your marketing database into 2 initial groups, active leads (people who have responded or engaged in the past) and inactive leads (people that have never responded
to any outreach communication from your company). If you are an Eloqua customer, they have a report that will give you this information. Understand if there are any patterns
among those that are active, if so, be sure to consider this when building out your nurture programs. Remember the goal of nurturing is to move currently active leads to the
top of the sales funnel and move inactive leads to an active status.
3. Measure and track movement in the nurturing cycles. As leads/prospects respond, use this data to determine next steps. You can confirm interest by reaching out to them
again with a similar message and different offer or call to action. If they respond again, they might be ready for the next step in your nurturing cycle. If they don’t respond,
continue to try different offers or messaging.
4. Develop a scoring system that enables you to determine when leads are sales ready. Assign different values to each kind of touch. For example, a conversation had by tele-
marketing that better qualifies a lead might get a score of 10 while an opened email might get a 3. Once a lead reaches a score agreed upon by Sales, then the lead is ready
to be passed on.
5. Don’t forget about the ones that have moved on. Sometimes a prospect gives off all the right signals that they are ready to engage on a different level but once handed over to
Sales they clam up. Make sure these people don’t get lost in the shuffle. It’s ok for a lead/prospect to move back and forth between Sales and Marketing.
6. Determine when it’s time to throw in the towel. There are people in every marketing database that continue to hang around for no reason. What are we holding on to here?
Before completely throwing these people out, try and determine why they aren’t responding to you.
• Are they the right buyer for your product or service?

• How long ago was this lead created? Has the person possibly moved up or on?
• Are they not a good fit for your offering?
Remember - keeping your nurturing programs focused on the most suitable prospects will help to ensure the success of your program.

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Landing Pages 101

As I was getting ready to start building out a few landing pages for some newsletter advertising I decided to Google landing page best practices. As expected, lots of both organic
and paid options came up. I noticed Marketo had an ad out there, so I clicked on it. I’ve seen their stuff before and was very impressed, so I thought I’d start here with my landing
page inquiry. After a few clicks I got to an eBook – “Building Effective Landing Pages”. This eBook had some great tips that were B2B Lead worthy so I wanted to share and give
Marketo a shout out too. You can get this great eBook as well as others at http://www.marketo.com/b2b-marketing-resources/best-practices.php. For now, here’s a few tips that
really stood out:
1. Focus on a single call to action, such as a download or a demo. Distractions kill conversions.
This is really important; offering too much information muddies the waters. You want your call-to-action to stand out. Remember we are not trying to complete a sale via an email
program. We are educating our prospects and highlighting pain points in bite size chunks. Warming leads up to better qualify them for Sales.
2. Content – Give it to them straight.
• Make it clear and to the point, but give your prospect a reason to give you his information.
• Setup the problem
• Talk about the solution (your offer)
• Deliver the goods (such as a white paper, video demo or webinar registration)
• And use bullet points - they are easier to read
Emails seem to be most effective when they are 2-3 short paragraphs with a link to a landing page/offer as close to the top as possible. Remember a lot of people view emails in a
preview pane. This may be your only opportunity to present your message, so make sure you get straight to the point.
3. Call to Action – Forms – Remember not to ask too many questions up front.
You don’t need everything they first time a prospect engages with you. Remember you are building a relationship. Collect more information as the prospect continues on the journey
with you.
4. Confirmation/ Thank Yous - It’s just plain good manners to say thank you. Do you have something else they might be interested in? Make another offer.
I think this might be one of the most important tips on the list. Saying Thank You never goes out of style. And, I agree with Marketo, put another offer out there, see if they bite. Tak-
ing you up on a second offer could be a sign of a cold lead moving to warm.
5. Page URLs - The name of the page, along with the rest of the URL path, is weighed fairly heavily. You can use 1024 characters, so you don’t have to be stingy. And use dashes
between words, not underscores – search engines like that better.
Marketo example: www.marketo.com/building-effective-landing-pages.html
Don’t forget your Google juice with every landing page you build. Remember to use your PPC keywords here too.
Again, thanks to Marketo for the list of landing page tips. Don’t forget to check out the rest of the list at Marketo’s B2B Marketing Best Practices.

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Is Dirty Data Sabotaging your Marketing Results?

Dirty data—whether purchased, gathered via download offers or aged and stored in your internal database—costs companies billions every year in wasted resources and lost productivity.
Today’s mobile workforce is changing jobs faster than ever before. According to Gartner, 30 million of the 138 million workers in the US will switch jobs in the next 12 months. Now
add that to the number of businesses that move or get acquired every month. It’s easy to see how they dirty data piles up and piles up fast.
Feeding dirty contact data into a marketing automation or CRM system has a multiplier effect that can derail success by:
• Delivering the wrong message to the wrong person
• Annoying customers and prospects with redundant messages
• Losing credibility due to botched attempts at personalized communications
• Failing to leverage multi-modal marketing capabilities
• Misinterpreting campaign success metrics
• Creating more Sales inefficiencies
Even with so much at stake, tackling data cleanup issues is a daunting proposition. Most Marketers are overwhelmed by a customer or prospect database with hundreds of thou-
sands of duplicate entries, old data, inaccurate contact details and countless records in myriad states of completeness. This existing data has likely been gathered by many different
individuals over multiple years. It is often too difficult to know where to begin.
Before you undertake any data cleaning, segmentation, or augmentation initiative, be sure to map out your plan. Here’s an outline to get you started.
Targeting the Right Companies–
Use what you already have access to first – your CRM data and your web site visitor logs
CRM data
• Profile your top performing market segments – where are you winning?
• Identify your best target markets – what kinds of deals close the fastest?
• Determine key qualifying company characteristics and buyer roles.
Website visitor logs/Unknown visitor logs
• Look for visitor patterns – ex. are there lots of healthcare companies visiting you that you haven’t directly targeted?
• Are companies visiting already currently in your database, if so, are you recording these page visits?
• Your online marketing and PPC advertising is driving lookers, just because they don’t announce themselves doesn’t mean they aren’t potential leads.
This analysis will help you determine where to find your target market “sweet spot”.
Once you’ve built a profile of common denominators or qualifying criteria for your target market “sweet spot,” now you’re ready to identify your decision making unit. The decision
making consists of everyone involved in the buying decision of your product or service.

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Start with a decision making unit profile to identify the types of buyers involved in the buying process and the roles of these buyers both in the buying cycle and their role within the
organization. It is vital to understand the responsibilities for each of your buyers. With this information, you will be able to refine your data augmentation program and standardize
data collection requirements for more targeted marketing programs.
Now that you have your buying unit profiled, pull a list of pre-existing contacts that correspond to your Target Accounts so you can begin the process of de-duping, identifying
missing fields such as addresses or contact details, and identifying gaps such as key buyers, roles and other relevant details.
After your de-duping process, you now know what you have and what you need to fill in. When filling in the gaps, remember to look for role-based contact resources, like
ReachForce. Shameless promotion I know…but remember the title-based lists we’re all used to using are still delivering a less than 3% response rate. Isn’t it worth the risk of trying
something new?
A few extra data hygiene tips from our Marketing Ops Guru, Lauren, here at ReachForce –
• Mark all records that are included in your current target market, you don’t necessarily want to delete the data you aren’t using but you want to be able to pull your new target
market data easily. You’ll be thankful you did this, I promise.
• Add a ‘born on’ date field to the record and once you’ve refreshed it, add the date, everyone touching the record will be happy you did this.
• As you are filling in gaps and building out contact data for new roles, consider other segmenting options. While you’re updating you should go ahead and do this too. This will
enable you to laser target your message at these prospects.
Marketing WTF? - Know Thy Customer

A reader of The B2B Lead Blog reports a B2B Marketer, who will go unnamed, recently confessed to a rather embarrassing and costly blunder that was a clear
result of breaking the first commandment of Sales and Marketing – Know Thy Customer. Apparently, the newbie Marketer sent a very expensive Selling to VITO
direct mailer to a UPS executive in a Fed Ex envelope. Doh!
Have any other embarrassing or costly mistakes to share with readers of The B2B Lead Blog? Submit a Post!

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Make Marketing Decisions by Using Surveys

On the B2B Lead we have discussed using surveys to score leads but surveys are also a useful tool for getting to know your prospective buyers. Do you really know your target mar-
ket? Are there shifting trends you don’t know about but should? By understanding a prospect’s business environment and specific business initiatives, marketing and sales teams
can further refine their approach for targeting them. Surveys can be especially useful when launching a new product or entering a new market.
As B2B marketers are increasing their spend on social media, a survey may be an opportunity to find out where your customers and prospects are going online. If all of your
customers/prospects are either on Facebook or LinkedIn, don’t bother with creating a MySpace page (on a side note, it seems to be fairly unanimous that MySpace is pretty much
worthless for B2B).
As marketing budgets are being tightened, costly events are being cut. It can be difficult to decide which events to keep and which to drop especially if your product has a long
sales cycle so ROI cannot be measured before it is time to sign a contract again. A show may be timed poorly this year, like on Election Day (sorry, I am calling you out salesforce.
com), which could cause lower attendance. Ask your prospects which events they will be attending.
Things to consider when creating surveys:
How long?
• Shorter is always better
• Ask only what you need to know
• Try to keep it to 5 minutes or less
To offer an incentive or not?
• If you are doing a longer survey, a incentive is a must
• If you are offering a incentive tell the participant upfront
• Could the information you are gathering be useful to the participants. If the answer is yes, have the incentive be to give them the info you gathered. Remember people love
reports on industry trends.
Types of questions
• Multiple choice are the easiest and fastest to answer
• Free response may give you more qualitative info but is more difficult to get participants to fill out
Once you have completed surveying your prospects, use this information to segment your contact database and create different targeted messages for each segment. You may also
find that different segments respond to different marketing mediums. If you are entering a new industry, be sure to find out if prospects are better reached by email, direct mail,
events, etc.
Some good online survey tools include SurveyMonkey and Zoomerang. These are both free for basic functionality and are easy to use. I have used both. I personally liked the re-
porting better through Zommerang but SurveyMonkey offered better functionality in designing the survey questions. I haven’t used it yet, but VerticalResponse also recently added
surveys to their offering.

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Dust Off Your Algebra Texts to Improve Conversion Rates

MarketingExperiments.com (MEC) has the equation for boosting your email and landing page conversion rates. They call it the MEC conversion index:
C = 4M + 3V + 2(I-F) – 2A
“The probability of conversion (C) is a function of the buyer’s motivation (M), how strong our value proposition (V) is, and the combination of friction (F) and incentive (I) elements
that make up our registration process, further mitigated by any anxiety (A) experienced by the customer during the process.”
I attended a really intriguing MarketingExperiments.com webinar last week called “Landing Page Optimization: How Businesses Achieve Breakthrough Conversion by Synchronizing
Value Proposition and Page Design” where they discussed this formula and critiqued a number of landing pages to illustrate their points.
Big Takeaways: You can boost your landing page conversion rates substantially by highlighting a concise value proposition that clearly communicates why your ideal prospect
should buy from you versus your competition. And, include a very compelling call to action that is consistent with that value proposition. What’s more, you can reduce friction or
anxiety—a leading cause of site flow disruption—by ensuring every aspect of your landing page makes sense and supports your value proposition. That means your graphics,
photographs, copy, flow, and anything else on the page should all work together to inspire the confidence of your visitor and not disrupt him/her by triggering anxiety. For example,
if you are promoting a free trial of a security product, make sure your landing page is designed to communicate that your company is a secure, stable, trustworthy organization and
don’t highlight graphics of payment methods which is incongruous with the “free trial” offer.

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How to Write and Market Whitepapers

I saw a great presentation earlier this summer at the MarketingProfs B2B Forum by Michael Stelzner titled “Attracting Quality Leads with White Papers.” Michael has generated
60,000 qualified leads with his program, so I thought I would share some of his ideas.
Here are Michael’s 6 mistakes Marketers make in regards to whitepapers:

1. Product Marketing Curse - Using a technical document for lead gen.
2. Marketing the Wrong Content - used car salesman approach, highly focused on company and product.
3. Post and Hope Syndrome - You need to drive prospects to the content, “If you build it, they will come” only works for Kevin Costner.
4. Brief Landing Pages - long form with little content
5. Immediate Access to Excellent Content - No registration, no follow-up emails
6. Not Integrated with Other marketing Efforts - Not promoted through email or direct mail campaigns, left out of newsletters and blogs
Michael gave some compelling reasons why whitepapers should be a part of your marketing mix. To get to the point, they are a proven lead gen tool, help educate your buyers and
position your company as a thought leader.
Here are Michael’s tips for writing and publishing whitepapers:

• When you sit down to write the whitepaper, you first need to determine which type of problem you are going to solve: People problems, Process problems, Quality problems or
Absent problems. Then lead with the challenges faced by the ideal reader.
• Discuss the solution is generic terms. People need to think that they need a solution like yours before you can sell them your specific solution.
• Include a “what to look for” list - This is your silver bullet where you create a condition where only your product or service can succeed. Be sure to call out points where you
deliver over your competition.
• Only at the end of the whitepaper do you mention your company and the product or service you are promoting. Do be sure to have your branding on every page as well as the
landing page.
• Save the call to action for the very last sentence - make it compelling, actionable, and measurable
• Think of the first page of your whitepaper as a movie trailer - show them enough for them to be willing to pay (fill out a form) for the rest.
• Identify the ideal reader, summarize the challenge, summarize the solution, state the goal of the paper
• AVOID: detailed explanation of the solution and features, introduction of your company, humor
• When developing a title, keep in mind “what’s in it for me?” and the 3 U’s:
• Ultra-specific
• Unique
• Useful to readers

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• Test the title with current customers, they will be the best judges.
• Have long landing pages (this is against a lot of what we are hearing right now, but Michael has the results to prove that it works)
• Provide a significant amount of content at the top of the landing page with a very short form (Michael suggests just name and email) at the bottom.
This way readers are already hooked by the time they get to the form and more likely to fill out the form to get the rest of the whitepaper.
• It is also great for SEO
• Don’t allow immediate access to the whitepaper. Wait 30 minutes to send the pdf directly to the email address given. This does two things. First, it provides a sense of anticipa-
tion. Secondly, this is a way for you to verify that they gave you a valid email address, not mickeymouse@mickeymouse.com.
I am working on implementing some of Michael’s ideas. He shares a lot more in his book, Writing White Papers. Do you have any suggestions for what works in writing and promot-
ing whitepapers?

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Keeping Customers Engaged Between Sales Cycles

When I first started at ReachForce, we were still in start-up mode and all marketing was focused on acquiring new customers. Because we run on a subscription model, I saw an
opportunity for continued customer marketing to help increase our renewals. I developed a fully integrated program which you may have seen on the blog, the ReachForce Book
Club. Throughout the year we are sending great Marketing books to our customers. For about 2 months after we send the book, we discuss it here on The B2B Lead.
Here are the steps we take:
• We hand write a short note in each book to help tell them why we chose this book and to make the exchange more personal.
• We also put a little notecard in the book to tell them a little more about the book and direct them to The B2B Lead to join in the conversation.
• I send an email to all of our customers about a week after mailing the books to tell them to expect the book to arrive shortly. This email also links to The B2B Lead where I have
posted about the new book and which chapters we will be reading the next week.
• Every week two of us from the marketing department blog about the chapters we are reading.
• I email the author to let them know what we are doing and invite them to join the conversation. These are often busy people but they are usually happy to help promote their
book.
A book club isn’t ideal for every customer base but you should have a current customer program in place, even if your sales model is not subscription based. You of course always
want to keep your customers happy for referrals, case studies, as well as cross-selling and up-selling opportunities.
When you begin a current customer program, start small. We started with Thanksgiving cards. Be sure to clean up your database to make sure that all of your contacts are still
there and that you have correct contact information. According to MarketingSherpa, in house databases go bad at a rate of 2% per month, but who knows which 2%.
So far, we have had a great response from our customers and we hope to continue to grow the program to really create a community for smart marketers.

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About ReachForce
ReachForce delivers software (SaaS) and data services that enable B2B companies to laser target their lead generation programs. ReachForce solutions allow marketing and sales
teams to target market ‘sweet spots’ using CRM and website visitor data then reach the right buyers in these companies using role-based contact discovery services.
ReachForce was created to ensure Marketers, keep their seat at the table. As a team of long time Marketers we decided we were tired of it being ok to be wrong 97% of the time.
With marketing response rate industry averages being less than 3%, there is something fundamentally wrong with the way we as B2B Marketers have been driving lead generation
initiatives. Response rates don’t equal leads and leads don’t always mean qualified buyers.
At ReachForce, we don’t care about or measure response rates, we drive and measure revenue delivered to the business from lead generation initiatives. By addressing the founda-
tion of any marketing program, the data - or “The WHO” as we call it, ReachForce was founded with one goal in mind: to provide businesses with revolutionary, high quality, cost-
effective data to fuel their marketing and sales lead generation initiatives.
About The B2B Lead

We’ve designed The B2B Lead blog to deliver real world, practical B2B Sales and Marketing Tips to help you capture more qualified buyers and convert them into profitable
customer relationships. Each week, we will deliver snack-size how-to’s and thought-provoking commentary from B2B Marketers for B2B Marketers. ReachForce customers–who
include Directors of Marketing Communications, Sales Professionals, Marketing Programs Managers–and other guest writers will share techniques that help you take a more delib-
erate and predictable approach to increasing the velocity and efficiency of the Marketing and Sales funnel.
If you want to share ideas while learning from your peers, subscribe to our B2B Marketing RSS feed now. We hope you will make it your go-to resource for techniques to succeed in
the new world of metrics-driven Marketing.
This is the second of a five volume collection of B2B Marketing and Sales Tips from The B2B Lead. Below are the past and upcoming volumes. To download all 101 B2B
Marketing and Sales Tips, check back in the coming weeks.
Volume One: Online Marketing
Volume Two: Direct Marketing
Volume Three: Event Marketing
Volume Four: Marketing and Sales Alignment
Volume Five: More Marketing and Sales Tips

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101 B2B Marketing and Sales Tips

from The B2B Lead

25 Direct Marketing Tips for Driving Lead Generation

• Lead Generation Using Email Marketing

• Marketing to the Entire Decision Making Unit

• Building and Measuring Lead Nurturing Programs

• How to Write and Market Whitepapers

• Tips for Writing Good Email Copy

• Six Principles of Subject Line Writing

Content contributed by:

VOLUME TWO • Direct Marketing 2

Targeting and Segmentation

More Direct Marketing Tips

VOLUME TWO •Direct Marketing 3

Lead Generation Using Email Marketing

For more email marketing call–to-actions check out Tip #56.

VOLUME TWO •Direct Marketing 4

Avoid being called a SPAMer

Preserve your Reputation

Be Careful when Creating Content

VOLUME TWO •Direct Marketing 5

Email Marketing in a Web 2.0 World

” - Be ONLINE and AVAILABLE.

VOLUME TWO •Direct Marketing 6

Here are some of the high points:

• Clickthrough rates have remained constant

• Mondays and Tuesdays are the best days to send emails

• Personalization in the subject line increases opens and clickthroughs

Direct Mail to No One - Marketing WTF?

VOLUME TWO •Direct Marketing 7

Opting Out of Opt-In

First things first, here is Wikipedia’s definition of Opt-in email:

There are several common forms of opt-in e-mail:

Confirmed opt-in (COI)

VOLUME TWO •Direct Marketing 8

10 Email Pitfalls and 10 Email Power Words

Here’s the Top Ten Language Pitfalls in Email Marketing Messages:

10. Typos and misspellings due to poor editing

9. Subject lines in ALL CAPS

8. Use of punctuation marks and numbers within the subject line

7. ALL CAPS within the message body

6. Excessive or unnecessary Power Word repetition; especially of power word #1

5. Copy written in passive rather than active voice

4. False or inflated sense of urgency

VOLUME TWO •Direct Marketing 9

Really? Surely this is a B2C thing, right?

Top Ten Power Words

VOLUME TWO •Direct Marketing 10

Six Principles of Subject Line Writing

• Be Informative – Be sure to convey something important, valuable or timely

• Build Trust – Be sure not to over promise or mislead your prospects

• From who? – Subject lines can work with From Lines

Are we missing anything here? Post a comment to add to the list.

VOLUME TWO •Direct Marketing 11

Tips for Writing Good Email Copy

• Be sure your offer or call to action are related to the content

VOLUME TWO •Direct Marketing 12

B2B Marketing Copy – Write it Right

A. Customer Pain Point or Goal

B. Impact or Costs of Not Addressing Pain/Or the Benefits of Meeting Goal

C. Solution or Product Description

D. Requirements for Adequately Addressing Pain or Achieving Goal

F. The Advantages and/or Benefits You Deliver