A year ago, most of the client engagements for both our firms were what my consultant friend called “rescues” – that is, companies who purchased marketing automation software, jumped immediately into tactical campaign mode, and then needed help six or nine months later when they realized they were achieving only a fraction of the platform’s potential.

In the case of our agency, though we still get our fair share of calls from companies who find themselves saddled with what amounts to an expensive email broadcast system, a growing percentage of our engagements are with companies who have yet to even purchase the software. And that fact, I would propose, is a good sign for a maturing market. It would appear that companies are now waking up to the fact that no marketing automation software can be successful without a proper strategic foundation.

This same point was brought home by an insightful article, “Calculating the ROI of Marketing Automation Platforms,” published late last year by Sirius Decisions. In the post, author Jonathan Block makes a number of cogent points, but I would highlight two:

The bad news here is that marketing automation isn’t the magic wand that some companies apparently thought it was. The good news is that as more and more stories (and posts, and tweets) proliferate about the marketing automation experience, those companies who have yet to take the leap now do so armed with the lessons of their forebears, and are taking action to ensure that the appropriate processes, strategy, and skills are in place to ensure marketing automation makes a real difference to their organization.

Does all this mean that buying into marketing automation requires you to first hire an agency or consultant? No, not necessarily. What it does mean, I would argue, is that no matter the inevitable pressure to start generating campaigns (to quickly prove the system’s worth, presumably), marketing automation is most effective when it’s preceded by a strategy and plan that reflects clear, defined business goals and metrics for success.

The rewards from making even slight improvements to your PPC landing pages can be dramatic. Improve conversion (click to lead) rates by just a percentage point or two and you can increase lead volume (and slash Cost Per Lead) disproportionately. Here are 7 tips that can make a difference:

1. Include a clear, specific call to action. Not “learn more.” No “For more information …” Make the reward specific and tangible. Information offers (white papers, ebooks, information kits) often work best because they appeal to prospects across a broad segment of the selling cycle.

2. Sell the offer. Once you’ve decided on the right offer, sell it. Remember, it’s not the company you’re selling, or the product, it’s that white paper or video or Webinar the prospect gets when he or she fills out the form. If the offer is a video, show screen shots. If it’s a white paper, include excerpts, Amazon-type page previews, even reader reviews. The more detail, the better.

3. Write a headline that reflects the ad copy. Effective PPC campaigns start with effective, action-oriented ad copy that’s relevant to the search term. They end with an engaging, easy to navigate landing page that’s relevant to the ad copy. The goal is one seamless user experience in which every step validates and rewards the prospect’s information needs. Avoid disconnects by keeping your message consistent.

4. Keep the registration form short, and above the fold. If you have a robust, systematic lead nurturing program in place (of course you do) there’s no need to capture every morsel of information from the prospect at first touch. Every required field you add to your registration form lowers your conversion rate accordingly. Ask for the minimum information possible, and keep the form high on the page where the reader can see it (and act) immediately.

5. Don’t skimp on selling copy. PPC landing pages are different in this respect from say, an email landing page, because the reader barely knows anything yet about your company or the offer. Be sure to include sufficient selling copy to a) adequately sell the offer, b) address any anticipated concerns or objections, and c) help ensure a high quality score by offering what Google calls “relevant and original content” – i.e. content related to the offer in the ad.

6. Don’t include external links. That means no links back to your home page, and for Pete’s sake no navigation bar. The landing page should have one purpose only, and that’s getting the prospect to fill out a form. (Short anecdote: when a former client insisted on having the logo on their landing page be a live link back to their Website, we were able to show that 15% of PPC visitors were escaping through that logo.)

7. Be cautious with customer logos, award icons, and gushing quotes of praise for your company or product. Testimonials of this type can detract from the primary offer and create the aura of a sales pitch for your company that runs counter to the information of value the reader is searching for. Exceptions to this rule occur when your offer is a demo or free trial, situations in which an extra dose of credibility helps sell the offer.

For more tips on getting more from your PPC campaign, download a free copy of our white paper: “Top 10 B2B Paid Search Mistakes: Why Your Google Campaign Isn’t Working And What To Do About It.”

1. Make the offer look like an offer. The free guide on offer is an ebook, a downloadable PDF. It is not – as the offer image might have you believe – a spiral-bound hard copy. Misleading, you say? Perhaps. But on a subconscious level, illustrating the ebook as something tangible and “real” increases the perceived value and makes it stand out in a way that a simple cover image, for example, would not. (Note the additional image at lower left showing charts and graphics.)

2. Make the reader feel confident he or she is going to learn something specific. The more specific and tangible the benefits of reading the information, the more likely people are to want it. Here, “7 Proven Strategies to Transform Your Business” is clear, concise, and promises immediate value.

3. Repeat the call to action. In a very short space, the call to action (download the guide) is repeated 4 times – 3 times as graphic icons (the subtle arrow connotes action: a nice touch) and once as a text link within the body copy. Yet, at no time do any of the calls to action seem redundant.

4. Fulfill your offer via email. As I wrote previously in this space, sending the prospect the offer via email (vs. a direct link) has numerous benefits, notably that it helps enforce valid email information and makes the offer content more easily accessible at a later date. In Infusionsoft’s case, the fulfillment email (see first thumbnail, below) continues the message, theme, and look of the main campaign, and also gives the reader the option of requesting a product demo. (Note to Infusionsoft: I think you meant to say: “complimentary” …)

5. Make lead nurturing part of your campaign plan. These days, it’s not enough to generate leads and then just throw them into some generic, one-size-fits all, lead follow-up process. Lead nurturing will always be more effective when it’s targeted, personalized, and relevant. In this case, the first follow-up email I received upon downloading the guide (see thumbnail at right) reinforces my decision to respond, provides an additional link to the content in case I misplace it, and offers up a “next step” (and the promise of more tips on how to improve my business) in the form of the Infusionsoft newsletter.

What would I change? Well, the copy needs work. In the opening to the first email, Infusionsoft breaks one of the 10 commandments of email copywriting by offering up this cliché:

“As a small business owner, it can be challenging to find time to focus on your big-picture goals and dreams …”

(Yawn.) The campaign would be more impactful if it led immediately into the offer:

“Learn how creating a clear marketing strategy for your small business can help you achieve your goals and dreams. In a free guide from Infusionsoft, …”

In addition, the bullet points selling the offer could be stronger. “Capturing, nurturing and converting leads” is a compelling topic, but it’s not a benefit. It would be better phrased as something like:

“How to capture, nurture, and convert leads more efficiently, with or without sales follow-up”

Still, when so many email campaigns include landing pages, offers, fulfillment, and nurturing emails that were clearly afterthoughts, this is a great example of a cohesive, integrated campaign, planned and designed from start to finish.

Since our agency was founded, we’ve compiled a significant store of informational content, and so, like many companies, our site’s resource center quickly grew from a single page, relatively clean and easy to browse, to a veritable laundry list of white papers, ebooks, podcasts, videos and more. (See thumbnail at right.) Even though the site as a whole continued to generate a consistent stream of leads, we knew we could do better, so we set out to redesign the resource library with the following objectives:

1. Improve the user experience by making the library easy to browse, search and navigate.
2. Promote individual content items more effectively (and improve SEO) by including short descriptions visible at first glance.
3. Increase reach by adding the capability to like, share, rate, and comment on content items.

“In developing a new layout for the resource center it was important for us to focus on organization and scalability in the design,” says Laura McInerney, Spear Art Director. “We not only wanted to accommodate the existing resources, but also the many more that are on the horizon. In order to keep the layout scalable, simple, and intuitive, we added a categorization system to help users search by content type as well as category icons and a rating system to aid in scannability.“

Significantly, the decision was made to host the resource center on WordPress, to better enable the social sharing features that were to be a key feature of the new library. Comments Steve Reinhardt, Spear’s lead Web designer: “I’m a big fan of WordPress for its consistent updates and vast library of plugins. It was the ideal choice here, allowing us to empower user interactions like commenting, resource ratings, social network sharing, as well as any future functionality.”

The difference in the new design is striking. (See thumbnail at right, or view the new library here.) Though the look and feel remains consistent with the main site, content is now more accessible than ever. Visitors can search for topics or browse by content type. Ratings and comments add a new level of interactivity and entice visitors to view content that other users found useful.

Note: we made the conscious decision to continue to gate most content items behind their own individual landing pages. Since the pages are hosted in Marketo, a marketing automation platform, information on the registration forms is pre-populated for repeat visitors. Besides being able to track leads more effectively, we find that prospects will update and correct outdated contact information, allowing us to maintain the integrity of our CRM database more easily.

Since the new library just launched, it’s difficult to gauge at this stage what kind of difference the redesign has made. The hope and expectation is that it will increase lead flow significantly over time.

You can expand the appeal of content like these by packaging them into information kits. An information kit, generally speaking, is a compilation of informational content designed to appear to be more than the sum of its parts. By compiling a variety of information as one offer, you appeal to a wider spectrum of prospects for whom an individual white paper or case study may not be sufficient to generate a response.

The following is a recipe for a good information kit. Your particular market may dictate variations, naturally, but this list comprises a variety of information that seems to “cover the bases” well, and more importantly, has proven to be successful for a variety of different B2B clients:

1. A well-written, “business case”-type white paper, not necessarily written by an independent third party, but one that focuses on a particular solution, category or approach, rather than your specific product or service. (See this earlier post for recommendations on what makes an effective white paper.)

2. Some kind of third party validation of your message, preferably either a press review of your product or an analyst’s report on your product category.

3. A real-life case study or success story highlighting your product or service and the ROI your client was able to demonstrate.

4. Information on your product or service.

5. Some kind of multimedia presentation — a podcast, video, or Flash demo about your product or company, anything that helps “spice up” the offer. (Regardless of content, multimedia offers almost always improve response.)

As with white papers, the title of your information kit will serve to increase its appeal and should reflect the intended audience. For example, a more technical audience might be content to request a “Wireless Enterprise Fact Kit,” whereas a more high-level or non-technical manager might be drawn more to “An Executive’s Guide to the Wireless Enterprise.” Information kits give you the flexibility to position your content directly to the intended audience, even if no one component in that kit is tailored exactly for that same group.

This post is adapted from the Spear white paper: “How to Choose Your Carrot: Effective Lead Generation Offers for High-Technology Marketers.”

“Brilliant effort from Howard Sewell and the team at Spear Marketing. Funny, buzz-worthy, and a call to action to boot.”

In case you didn’t make the Spear mailing list this year (sorry about that), you can still view the holiday card here. Also, check out the companion holiday survey (the call to action that Matt references) on the Spear Facebook page (look for the link in the sidebar)

Happy Holidays from everyone at Spear Marketing Group!

Special shout out to Spear Art Director Laura McInerney, Creative Director Gilda Raczkowski, and Writer/Social Media Gadfly Meg Barankin for their brilliant ideas and hard work. Great job everyone!

That was then. Today, the decision of whether to rent or buy an email list isn’t quite so clear-cut. If you’re looking to integrate email into your lead generation mix in 2012, you would do well to consider list purchase as an increasingly viable option.

Say you’re marketing a new product, and inbound marketing alone (content syndication, search, social media) won’t cut it. It’s clear that you need to include more proactive outreach to the type of prospects most likely to have a need for your new solution, even if they don’t know such a solution exists. You decide that you want to email those prospects with an offer to download a white paper about the business problem your product solves. Let’s consider your options:

List Rental

List rental is the traditional (and some might say: outdated) way of acquiring marketing lists. Renting a list, as the term implies, means 1) you only get to use the emails once, and therefore only acquire contact information if the prospects actually respond to your message, and 2) you never actually see the list. Instead, you send your email creative to the list owner, and that owner broadcasts your message.

Most rented lists are opt-in, at least in the sense that the persons on that list have given their permission to the list owner to receive information from third party advertisers (that’s you.) Most list rentals make available a wide range of select criteria, enabling you to target prospects by job title, company size, etc. Rented lists can be expensive (50 cents per name and up), however, and for one-time use, it takes a very successful campaign (or a very large average deal size) to generate a respectable ROI.

Bulk Rental/Co-Branded

Bulk rental and co-branded emails are variations on list rental. A bulk rental is also a one-time, “blind” use, but typically involves broadcasting to an entire list without the use of any select criteria. Costs for bulk rental, often around 25 cents per name, can be less than traditional rental. Bulk rentals make most sense when an entire list, say a magazine list focused on a particular demographic, meets your target criteria.

A co-branded email is so-named because the email will be “from” the list owner (typically a publisher) but 100% of the email content itself will be the advertiser’s. (This is a creative route around opt-in requirements because technically every recipient is already a subscriber.) Like bulk rentals, co-branded emails also typically involve broadcasting to every name on a list, and are less expensive than straight rental.

One downside to the co-branded option is that list owners need to control the frequency with which they email the subscribers (to avoid oversaturation), so co-branded emails can often require a lead time while you wait for a space to open up on the publisher’s broadcast calendar.

List Purchase

In recent years, a number of long-time business database companies (InfoUSA, Hoovers, Dun & Bradstreet) have been joined in the list market by so-called “crowd sourced” databases like Data.com (formerly Jigsaw), InsideView, and others. When you purchase contacts (including email addresses) from any of these vendors, you’ll get of many of the same select criteria as you would through via list rental, with the distinct advantage that you own the data and can therefore (in theory) broadcast to those lists on an unlimited basis.

One vendor with whom we work frequently at Spear has compiled and de-duped many of the more well-known databases, will allow us to de-dupe their list against a client’s existing database, and guarantees their broadcasts against hard bounces. Cost is around 65-70 cents per name.

The clear downside to purchased lists is that these are not opt-in names, not by any stretch. Quite beyond the ethical considerations, the risk to using lists that aren’t opted-in can mean that you put your email reputation, and that of your IP address, in jeopardy. Personally, I’m of the opinion that these risks can be minimized by keeping your emails professional, informational, and infrequent.

Purchased lists also generate lower response rates, all things being equal, compared to rented lists, in part because (the theory goes) if someone has given their permission to receive ANY kind of email, as in the case of rented files, that individual is more inclined to respond to your campaign.

The argument in favor of purchased lists, then, is purely economic. It’s simply far more cost-effective to purchase someone’s email address and market to that individual, in drip fashion, over a period of time. Furthermore, a multi-step, drip approach eliminates the accident of timing that must occur in order for a rented list to be successful – that is: at the very moment someone receives your email they happen to be of the mindset on that given day to show interest in your product. Emailing to that individual multiple times over a period of weeks or months increases the chances dramatically of reaching someone at a time when he or she may feel a need for your solution.

If yours is a relatively finite audience – say, one confined to a specific vertical market, or job title, or company size, or all of the above, then purchased lists may be the way to go. In essence, you’ll be building a database of potential prospects, all of whom meet your target demographic, that you can then nurture, educate, and market to over time.

At minimum, a well-crafted newsletter serves to break up what would otherwise be an unending sequence of more offer-oriented emails peddling white papers, Webinars and the like. Newsletters also serve as a convenient vehicle for announcements, news bites, tips and techniques that might not otherwise merit their own dedicated message.

For all their benefits, however, newsletters are a royal pain to produce. They commit the publisher to a critical mass of content on an overly aggressive schedule, content that in turn depends on multiple contributors who never seem to share your same sense of urgency. In my experience, most corporate email newsletters have a relatively short lifespan. They launch with great fanfare and optimism, only to gradually diminish in frequency until they die on the proverbial vine altogether.

Here then are a few lessons learned to help your e-newsletter succeed and prosper:

1. Plan your newsletter with a specific goal and audience in mind.

A newsletter cannot be all things to all people. It cannot cater to customers and prospects and press/analysts and be in any way cohesive and effective. It’s far preferable to focus your newsletter on one, specific audience (say, existing customers) and a corresponding goal (say, reducing churn and increasing upsell opportunities.) Working with a specific target audience and goal helps to focus the content in a way that will resonate with the intended readers.

2. Create an editorial calendar and identify contributors.

Brainstorm all possible topics for the newsletter (keeping in mind the audience and goal, as above) and then whittle that list down into 4 or 5 categories. Examples could be Case Studies, Best Practices, Industry News, Opinion/Analysis, etc. Then assign those categories to specific contributors, aligned by subject matter expertise. Make the requirements simple: say, a 200-300 word article every 6 weeks. Use Google Alerts, social media, and your PR agency to help spot potential topics. Give yourself “breathing room” so that if one contributor fails to deliver on time, it doesn’t doom that issue.

3. Host the newsletter as a blog.

There are countless reasons to host your newsletter on a blog platform like WordPress. It allows you to post content on a more timely basis, so that news items aren’t always weeks old by the time someone reads them in newsletter form. It permits comments, likes, social sharing, and other interactive functionality that you don’t get with a simple email newsletter. It allows for greater flexibility in how people choose to subscribe: via email, Twitter, RSS, or Facebook. And perhaps most importantly, it extends the shelf life of newsletter content well beyond the inbox, by allowing it to live on in search results where it can continue to generate traffic, subscribers, and sales leads.

4. Make it look good.

A well-designed newsletter increases open rates, readership, sharing, and new subscribers. It also creates a consistent flagship for your brand, serving to maintain awareness for your company and your solution. To the right is a recent “newsletter makeover” our agency conducted for Microfinance Information Exchange (MIX), the premier source for microfinance performance data and analysis. Spear Art Director Laura McInerney describes the change:

I’ve written previously in this space about how corporate social media initiatives are so often in the hands of people, notably PR agencies, for whom lead generation is neither a priority nor a core competency. (Put a PR agency in charge of social media, and I can pretty much guarantee you’ll generate PR, not leads.) Regardless of who’s in the driver’s seat, however, there’s absolutely no reason, no excuse, for a company’s social media efforts not to be generating leads, and lots of them.

For example, take this blog our agency designed more than a year ago for Navicure, a leading online medical claims clearinghouse. The blog generated more than 500 leads in its first 9 months alone, and this from a target audience (billing managers at small- to mid-sized medical practices) that can hardly be described as the Facebook crowd. At last report, the program was generating a 400 percent ROI based on revenue generated that could be attributed directly to, or influenced by, leads that came directly from the blog. (Navicure uses Marketo and Salesforce.com to track marketing ROI.)

Why then are so many companies failing miserably to generate measurable leads from social media? I, for one, don’t think the reasons are that complex. Here they are, in a nutshell:

1. Lead generation needs to be a stated goal of a company’s social media program. Lead generation will not happen by accident or as a byproduct of other goals like awareness, “outreach” (whatever that is) and branding. Simply put, too many companies design their social media programs with other objectives in mind and then expect leads to just happen. Good luck with that.

2. Blogs need to be designed and optimized for lead generation. I marvel at the sheer number of corporate blogs, some of them with a wealth of great content, that nonetheless make it virtually impossible to engage with that company. Ask yourself: if someone actually wanted to be a sales lead upon arriving at your blog, how would that happen? Are there multiple options to subscribe, via email, RSS, Twitter, and Facebook? Is the sidebar littered with the usual default widgets like categories and tag clouds, or are there links to downloadable material like white papers and Webinars, all gated behind landing pages? Remember: lead generation, in all its forms, relies on making it quick and easy for potential prospects to respond.

3. Calls to action need to appear in content. For some social media purists, this breaks the unwritten rule of what social media content is supposed to be and what it’s not (i.e. promotional). But if you’ve made the decision to use social media for lead generation (see #1, above) there are simple ways to make your content more responsive without it sounding like a brochure for your company. For one, link sections of text within blog posts to associated pages on your Website or to landing pages that host relevant content. Secondly, offer up additional resources (with links) at the end of the post, e.g. “For more information on this same topic, download our free white paper on [insert topic here].”

Over at Silicon Angle, Klint Finley calls customer acquisition “the big prize” in social media, surpassing other applications like customer support, branding and PR. I agree. What’s more, generating measurable leads from social media doesn’t require special technology or even a wholesale restructuring of your current initiatives. All that’s required is purpose, design, and a willingness to ask for the lead.

In under one hour, you’ll learn:

• creative solutions to a lack of lead nurturing content …
• the top 5 questions to ask about your current lead management process …
• how to integrate social media into your lead nurturing strategy …

along with specific, practical tips and ideas on email frequency, segmentation, offer strategy, fulfillment, and creative execution, all illustrated by real-life B2B campaigns.

Top 10 Tips for Lead Nurturing Success
Wednesday, December 7, 2011
2:00 PM – 3:00 PM ET

The Webinar is free of charge to DMA members ($29 to non-members). Register online at the DMA site.