I just read a great post by Robert Rosenthal on his Freaking Marketing blog titled It’s the Data, Stupid. In his post, Robert says:

But there’s really just one variable that consistently makes or breaks direct marketing campaigns, and that’s data.

When I was a kid in this business, a mentor shared this maxim: send a so-so presentation to a great list and you may turn a profit, but send a great presentation to a shit list and you’re automatically dead.

Someone else gets it! I have been saying this for years. I don’t know how many millions of dollars I have seen (and also have myself) wasted on brilliant marketing campaigns that saw abysmal results because no one spent any time on the data. As we have gotten more sophisticated with the delivery of our marketing messages from direct mail to email and now through integrated marketing campaigns, the data has never been more important.

If marketers are out there wondering why their expensive marketing automation tool has not delivered increased response rates, it is because they are still pouring in garbage data. Garbage in, garbage out. Targeting is key – more customers in segments where you are winning is as key as the person you are trying to reach. 100% accurate contact data for the RIGHT person is money! If these automation tools are your marketing engine (ones like Marketo, Vtrenz, Eloqua, LoopFuse, Vertical Response, Exact Target, Constant Contact, Aprimo, etc. to name a few) then you need to fuel it with high-octane data, not sludge.

We started ReachForce to solve this very problem. I hope more marketers will realize that with quality contacts at the top of the funnel, truly targeted lead generation is possible, ultimately resulting in increased revenue. I applaud salesforce.com for driving the SFA (sales force automation) aspect of it as it has created a greater awareness on measurement – now it’s time for us B2B marketers to do the same, starting with the data.

There’s a lot buzz around social media moving into our world of B2B Marketing and how are we going to leverage it for our own agendas. Almost every day now I hear of a new social media platform or tool, a viral success story, or a frustrated Marketer trying to figure out how to make it ‘work’ for their business. Just today my friend, Jennifer Horton, a fellow B2B Marketer and a Best Practice consultant at Eloqua, also intrigued and inspired by this new social media world, forwarded me a GREAT blog post from Brian Solis I wanted to share with all of you.

Check it out, there are lots of good thoughts here.
http://www.briansolis.com/2007/06/future-of-communications-manifesto-for.html

Need a little entertainment with your SEO tutorial? Check out this little ditty by the Poetic Prophet (AKA The SEO Rapper). Poetic, or should I call him Prophet, raps about how web design affects the ranking and conversion of web pages. Yo MTV raps SEO and shares these bits of wisdom “use a clear call to action to cause da temptation.” “Design and code right man, can’t you get wid it?”

Twitter is such an awesome app for driving readers to your blog and keeping friends posted about your activities. But, sometimes the posts simply blow my mind. This is one for the TMI files http://twitter.com/chrisheuer. Now, on the Gallup Strengths Finder scale (http://www.bemyastrologer.com/strengthsfinder.html), I’m a Relator, so I totally get sharing lots of details about your life with others. Maybe that’s why I blog. But, man oh man, nothing like sharing these intimate details with 1500 of your closest friends.

Seriously, we’re all glad the tests came back negative, Chris.

In case you haven’t already figured it out, we played a little April Fools joke today. Google is not partnering with Second Life (unless we had some sort of unknown psychic premonition, or maybe we just gave them a great idea).  We hope you enjoyed us having a little fun.  We are always up for trying something new to drive more blog traffic.

In a bold move designed to fortify itself as THE King of All Advertising in both the real world and the virtual world, rumor has it Google will be announcing an exclusive agreement with Linden Research, Inc. (aka Linden Lab), the creators of the wildly popular online world Second Life, to become the premiere advertising medium within the virtual world. Code-named “Narnia”, the agreement details a two-pronged advertising strategy that will enable Google’s PPC-based AdWords technology to be ascribed to any assets within Second Life, including the Avatars themselves. The second and most interesting component of the agreement provides for the ability to “bridge” PPC advertisements and landing page interactivity between the “real world” and Second Life. Imagine an Adwords-enabled billboard in Second Life promoting a new sports car that, when clicked on, draws the user back onto the advertiser’s web site on the Internet, and vice versa.

What’s next? Is salesforce.com going to start tracking virtual leads? Are marketing automation vendors like Eloqua, Marketo, Vtrenz, and LoopFuse going to start allowing you to track virtual marketing campaigns to Second Life Avatars? If so, how will all of this integrate with our tracking and social media tools?

This is perfect timing for ReachForce, as we just announced our Convert software-as-a-service enabling businesses to turn web visitors into active leads, whether traditional or virtual.