A few weeks ago, I was reading the New York Times (the online version, of course) and came across an article that made me say “Huh?” This article, “Put Ad on the Web. Count Clicks. Revise,” showcased advertising agencies that are bringing former Wall Street analysts over to Madison Avenue to help them track ROI on their marketing campaigns.

Now I don’t know about you, but I feel like this is something Online Marketers have had to prove for some time. In my role as an ROI Consultant, I know I feel pressure from clients to help show initial ROI on a regular basis. This is especially true this year, as marketing budgets have withered away and we have had to produce more results with less money. In fact, we’ve tasked ourselves with helping clients achieve ROI for some time, as evidenced by TechTarget’s foray into responding to this pain point.

Aside from congratulating ourselves on how far ahead of the curve we are, what’s next for Online Marketers? You are being asked to innovate and do more with less. As an industry, we have progressed far past click thru rates, conversions and demographics; far past traditional ROI. We need to prove more, see how our lead generation efforts are working; actually watch what our target audience is doing so we can craft content appropriately. Learn what they aren’t telling us by way of registration questions.

One way we are doing this at TechTarget is by transitioning into behavior-based email messaging. As users interact with editorial pieces, vendor-sponsored content, websites and apply for conferences, we watch them to see where they spend their time. That helps us tailor our outbound messaging based on what is important to them now. The response is incredible-but what is most interesting is what we can ascertain from this intelligence.

We are now able to identify “hyper-active” leads and show exactly what they’re touching on our network. With this information we can show “mass activity” around topics so you can be present to influence our users, make recommendations on how to reposition your next program based on hot topics, and identify leads who might be more inclined to purchase based on their activity level.

Armed with this type of information, we push past ROI and into new territory that the New York Times can report on in 2 years.

A whopping 84% of users like receiving Email from companies in which they register and close to 60% of marketers plan to grow their traditional Email marketing spend in 2009. With these great stats, why is there a perception that Email marketing is not as effective as it used to be? Email is still one of the most effective marketing tools of today. However, I’m not confident that we are all optimizing our Email campaigns for optimal performance and conversion.

After investigating further, it seems that you, the IT marketer, are looking for tips and recommendations on how to not only make your marketing dollar go further, but also make your Email marketing dollar go further. As a result, my colleague Chris Olive and I were asked to run a workshop titled “Best Tips and Common Mistakes to Avoid for Improved Email Conversion” at this month’s TechTarget Online ROI Summit. The goal of this workshop is to go back and re-visit “your roots”. Specifically revisit the roots of your Email strategy. During this workshop, we will provide insight into steps to follow to get the best performance, review real-world examples of how to increase Email performance 2X, and discuss new strategies to assist in making the most of your Email lists.

How is your Email performance? Do you think it could be better? If not, what are your strategies?

If you can’t join us live at the Online ROI Summit, be sure to come back and visit MyEducatedGuess for a recap of the session.

Budgets are tight, the need for measuring ROI of your marketing investment has never been greater, and as a technology marketer, we can use all the help we can get. With the mantra of “Doing more with less,” we need to have an approach that can not only get us through these tough times but can put us in a better position than our competition when we get to the other side. Here are a series of tips for IT marketers to help market successfully in this tough economy:

10. Monitor the competition and the market. If your competition is cutting back, consider adjusting your marketing budget and attacking the market with your message. This will provide a great opportunity to capture - and retain - market share. A recent post on the MarketingProfs blog refers to a study of 600 b-to-b companies by McGraw-Hill Research.

In this study, they found that businesses that maintained or increased their advertising expenditures during the 1981-1982 recession, averaged higher sales growth during the recession and in the three years following. By 1985, sales of aggressive recession advertisers (those that either maintained or increased spending) had risen 256% over those that cut-back on advertising. In 2001, another study found that aggressive recession advertisers increased market share 2 ½ times the average for all businesses in the post-recession economy.

Thinking post-recession maybe hard to imagine now but companies that do will reap the benefits. I found some good information from StrategicOxygen’s blog on this topic that you might find useful.

9. Focus on lead generation efforts with direct-response techniques. In email and online campaigns, use hard-hitting copy with simple benefit-oriented, convincing language, an informational offer relevant to the prospect’s topic interest, and a strong call to action. Focus on the problems that you solve for your customers and how you uniquely address them.

Lead generation is where the rubber meets the road and with this economic situation, you need to focus on the basics of the audience, your message, offer and the call to action. Getting focused so you have the right audience responding in the right way to the right offer taking the right steps will help your efficiency as well as effectiveness of your program and get you the results you want.

The mobile phone industry is growing and marketers are taking advantage of this growth with mobile adverting.

In a recent Juniper Research study, they found that 30% of mobile phone users would be interested in receiving coupons through their cell phones.  Trends predict that the market will see an increase in this demand for advertising, and spending will reach $11 billion by 2011. 

While only a few retailers can actually read coupons off a cell phone, kinks can be worked out where retailers manually enter in key codes to make this effective. As retailers try to catch up to technology - there is a great opportunity for growth in mobile marketing for consumer companies but what about B2B advertisers?

B2B advertising is very different from B2C.  This blog outlines the best practices for B2B mobile email marketing.

As marketing professional, what are your thoughts and have you had any experience with mobile marketing in either the consumer or B2B markets?  Please share your comments and opinions.

I’m sure you have heard a difference in opinion about whether an email marketing campaign was a success or not. Funny enough, there may be good reason why these opinions vary. I stumbled on a blog article about measuring response rates on email campaigns. There seems to be a lack of standards when it comes to the way we are measuring email metrics. Also, it seems that many people don’t understand how to measure the email campaign nor are they consistent.  Here is a recent study by JupiterResearch/e-Rewards, Inc. which showed that Marketers were not consistent with the measurement used to gage success.

The stats show that many marketers are confused about email metrics and what standards to use. The conscience is that email marketing is not going away; so I guess we need some industry standards as guidelines so we as marketers can speak the same language.

A recent marketing survey, conducted by Datran Media to online marketing professionals, revealed that 80% of marketers call email the best performing online medium. The survey even has email beating out search! The survey also indicated that 82% of the marketer’s surveyed plan to increase their email marketing spends in 2008 by 82%.

In terms of success, I  have seen that one medium doesn’t necessary outperform the other -  in order to receive optimal results the two mediums need to work together. What is your company’s plan in terms of allocating budget towards email vs. search in ‘08?

Have you found that one medium outperforms  the other?

A common question I hear from our technology vendor clients is how can they get IT pros to respond to follow-up marketing efforts after they download a content asset such as a white paper, webcast or podcast.  Too often we hear that telemarketing is used as the method of follow-up and the results are less than favorable.  I always advise my clients to use the same method for re-marketing as they did to capture the prospect’s information in the first place.  The audience has already demonstrated a comfort level or preference with that method - why change it? 

This seems like marketing common sense.  So why do so many vendors still use telemarketing when the audience is in the online research phase of the buying process? Last June, Garrett Mann posted on this topic, quoting that IT buyers are twice as likely to give vendors a valid email address than a valid phone number (MarketingSherpa & KnowledgeStorm, Connecting through Content, June 2007). The point was reinforced at the TechTarget Online ROI Summit this past September where many of our panel members (IT professionals) stated that they are not likely to answer or return a marketing call from an IT vendor.  They would rather have the vendor follow up via email with another relevant offer or content piece.  IT professionals receive so many phone calls from vendors each day that they simply can not respond nor are they ready to. 

So how can marketers help move prospects through the buying cycle, past research and on to consideration?  One of our presentations at the Online ROI Summit, Selecting Content to Match the Buying Process, addressed this with some best practices for choosing content type and topic to match the various stages of the purchase cycle.  This presentation addresses:

1. Understanding the various stages of the IT buying cycle and the effectiveness of  different media types and topics at each stage
2. Mapping out a plan to have the appropriate content pieces which will move prospects through the cycle
3. Setting expectations on the number and quality of leads based on the content types and topics you are offering

In one of my previous post, I discussed the strategy of hiring email marketing experts and developing a centralized email marketing unit that manages all email marketing initiatives.  Again, Loren McDonald of J.L. Hasley takes on this topic in a recent MarketingProfs article.  McDonald reminds us that centralization will free marketers to focus exclusively on their campaign strategy and goals.  The centralized group of email marketing experts will allow expert management of email best practices, permissions, privacy, brands, email products, data, ROI reporting, research and vendor relationships.  In addition, these email marketers will be charged with managing the relationships and expectations set by the individual product marketers. 
 
McDonald also sites a JupiterResearch study that says only 38% of companies have an email communications department.  Does that seem high or low to you?  For those who have one, how did you prove the need for this type of centralization with your senior management?

Melissa recently spoke about the importance of a specialist focused on email marketing. Forrester Research survey found that 83% of marketers used e-mail — more than those who used search, behavioral targeting, rich media display ads or any other interactive format. Over and over again, we see that email marketing is a cost-effective way to acquire new customers and retain and build brand loyalty. Email marketing can create a relationship between the reader and your company. At TechTarget, we have seen that by segmenting email messages to a target audience; you will receive a higher return on investment. Doubleclick’s 2004 Consumer Email Study states that segmentation delivers on average a 7x increase in open rate and a 14x increase in click through rate.
How is your company effectively using email?

Our team had a discussion last week about some of the trends of email marketing; strategies such as micro/behavioral segmentation, personalization, and deliverability.  The more research I do on today’s email marketing strategies, the more I realize that email is much more complicated than I originally thought.  It’s not only a process of developing a successful strategy but it also requires the ability to build out a sound deployment strategy and integration plan with all the other marketing initiatives.
 
After reading Loren McDonald’s recent article in iMedia Connection, I also realize that it is up to the business owner of email marketing to prove ROI off of these sophisticated, integrated email campaigns.  He states that “deliverability, rendering and segmentation are logistical challenges that now require higher-level expertise. It takes skill to devise a forward-thinking marketing strategy that integrates email with SEM and other marketing imperatives.”  I completely agree.  Email deployment strategies have matured so much over the past couple years and there is a need for a full time email specialist to implement the complicated strategies that touch online marketing, offline marketing, user generated content, etc. 
 
Are companies investing a full time job in email marketing strategies?  If so, can you share some success stories?