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Are you looking at e-mail open rates as a success metric? Well, it’s time to get past that. While this measure does provide some indication of interest in your newsletter, it still doesn’t get the recipient into the sales cycle … and that’s what matters most! Of course, there is still some value to open rate, as it helps gauge interest in your message, but it’s only a first step, and you need to track the entire set of results.

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We all know that B2B and B2C are totally different animals. What works for selling toilet paper doesn’t really translate to virtual desktop infrastructures. In e-mail marketing, content reigns supreme … which is why we expect corporate blogs to increase in influence through the end of the year and beyond.

According to recent research by MarketingSherpa, 67 percent of B2B marketing professionals use e-mail to deliver “content relevant to segment,” compared to only 61 percent of B2C e-mail marketers.

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Telemarketing is a crucial aspect of IT channel demand generation — there’s no doubt about it. Even in a world where we have Facebook pages, Twitter accounts and e-mail campaigns, there’s definitely a place for having a bunch of guys work the phones … effectively. The problem with most telemarketing efforts is that they are basically random. Even if you buy or rent a list, you know very little about the names on it except company, title and telephone number. Fill your telemarketing campaign with actionable sales intelligence, and you’ll get better results.

Our approach is that telemarketing is best paired with something else — like a steak that’s screaming out to be joined by a glass of cabernet. Each on its own can be good, but together, they create an unbeatable taste. So, we tend to use telemarketing as part of an integrated program that includes direct mail and online surveys. The result is that our telemarketing team is able to focus on prospects who have already opted into the sales cycle. They’ve told us exactly what interests them about a particular IT challenge or solution set. In the end, we’re able to drive higher quality appointments for IT solution providers.

Telemarketing without other marketing tools lacks substance. Pour some intelligence into a vacuous telemarketing campaign, and you’ll get more than just calls: you’ll get results.

Has your faith in e-mail marketing been shaken? It’s tough, to say the least. You’re competing for eyeballs in the inbox — and a lot of companies are, too. E-mail is easy to develop, cheap to execute and fantastic for tracking, but the crowds realizing this have led to degraded results — and frustrated IT solution provider marketers. The problem isn’t in the medium … it’s in the method. As with any other marketing technique, how you execute plays a significant role in the results you realize.

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Most companies could be much more aggressive with their e-mail marketing initiatives. A new report from MarketingSherpa shows that customer retention is by far the top priority, with objectives around new opportunities not gaining nearly as much attention. Listen to this message from the market, and you’ll hear the whisper: “It’s time to make your move.”

When I saw the latest chart published by MarketingSherpa, I was shocked. Eighty-eight percent of respondents called “retain[ing] existing customers” a very important objective for e-mail marketing. Only 78 percent ascribed this level of importance to “generat[ing] new sales leads,” and “increase web traffic,” “build brand and educate market” and “drive offline sales” each was considered “very important” by only 56 percent of respondents.

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For internet marketers, nothing compares in value to the house list. It’s gold. You know that you can blast an e-mail and count on a certain conversion rate, yielding a comfortable predictability to your revenue stream. Yet, there are limits to e-mail marketing. After a while, you have to limit your campaigns, for fear of winding up in a spam folder or seeing the unsubscribes tick up. You’re ability to interact with your most likely buyers, therefore, is inherently constrained. Social media platforms can cut the ties that bind, however, and bring new flexibility to your internet marketing efforts.

Doubtless, direct pitches to your fan base will eventually meet with the same malaise triggered by e-mail saturation. So, keep your blasts to a minimum. Instead, use other methods to attract the attention of your fans or followers — which is effectively your social media “house list” — and you can stimulate buying activity much more often.

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There’s more to online marketing than banner and text ads. The latest study from MarketingSherpa estimates that paid search is good for 21 percent of online marketing spending and is topped only by the company budget, which picks up 27 percent on average. Social media is clearly no longer the object of dabbling, securing 11 percent of the online marketing budget: beating out search engine optimization (SEO) at 10 percent, online display advertising at 6 percent and other online marketing at 6 percent. But, social media marketing still hasn’t caught up with e-mail marketing, which claims 19 percent of the marketing budget.

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[Source: MarketingSherpa]