As we run across cool companies that are trying to add value to today’s B2B sales and marketing teams  we want to be sure and share them with our B2B Lead readers.  Here’s another great idea…

Have you heard of Gist?  If not, you should check it out.  It might just be the tool your sales and telesales teams have been waiting on!

Gist is an online service that helps you build stronger relationships. By connecting your inbox to the web, you get business-critical information about key people (prospects) and companies.

Gist enables your sales team to build their ‘network’ from lists of contacts across a variety of sources from LinkedIn, salesforce.com, Outlook, Gmail (or any email service that supports IMAP), Facebook, Twitter  to any CSV file. Then, it sets up a Dashboard view of all the “news” going on within your network.  Once this is all set up your sales team can prioritize their contacts and outreach (or Gist can do it) based on companies/prospects/people you want to watch.

Something new is going up on the web every second of the day.  Can you imagine the efficiencies with just one dashboard of all of these relevant updates?

We know all know Content is King in B2B Marketing.  We use it for blogging, email campaign offers, sales support, website content, whitepapers/eBooks, social media teasers and webinars.  In a recent study by Kingfish Media they found that over 70% of marketers are using custom content to communicate with current customers and 70% use custom media to attract prospects.

We also know that it takes multiple touches to convert a lead into a prospect so using the right kinds of content in the right marketing vehicles is key.

We just recently got back from the MarketingSherpa B2B event where I sat in on a presentation by Bob Johnson from IDG Connect.  He presented some really interesting stats on using content for lead generation.  One that really stood out – “Prospects that engage in 2 touch points are 25% more likely to be in a buying cycle.”  This is huge!

Knowing that content is so important (and so often used), you’ve got to stay fresh.  Here are a few ideas to help get started on creating new enticing content to engage your prospects.

Everyone loves lists, consider creating one of these –

• Compile the top blog posts on a specific industry topic (related to what you are promoting)
• Promote five blogs in your industry (be sure to let them know, you want to make sure they know you are out there too)
• Create lists of your own; things like Top 10 things to consider when choosing a XYZ solution or Top 5 things to avoid when implementing XYZ service (give your prospects a helpful tip and chances are higher that they remember you next time you reach out)
• Create a list of interesting industry stats

Get people to act, try one of these –

• Start a contest and ask for submissions
• Create a survey and commit to sharing the results with everyone that participates
• Start a discussion in your LinkedIn groups.  (Relevance is very important here.)
• Ask a question on Twitter and blog the answers

Think TIPs, everyone is interested in information that will help them –

• Explain industry terms for either the novice or the industry veteran
• Review a recent trade show or conference
• Interview industry leaders asking the tough questions and share their responses.

Remember you can repurpose all of your content.  Here at ReachForce we take our blog tips like this one and roll them into eBooks.  These tip-based eBooks are our most popular pieces of content and for us, writing them in bite size pieces (blog posts) makes the task of creating a new eBook a breeze.

We also use these blog posts for our monthly newsletter, it’s a compilation of our best posts from the previous month.  The newsletter typically gets about a 40% open rate.  It takes us no time to put together and it’s a crowd favorite.

Got any other content ideas, please jump in and share.

David Meerman Scott is sort of the Godfather of eBooks.  Case and point, his eBook, The New Rules of Viral Marketing: How word-of-mouse spreads your ideas for free has been downloaded more than 600,000 times.  David had a great post on his blog, Web Ink Now, back in June called So you want to write an ebook? 30 tips for success

Here are some of the best tips David had to offer (be sure to read his entire article before you write your next eBook):

• You should write to solve a problem that people have.
• The ebook should be authored by a person. Don’t make it by your company. You need the personal connection with readers. An ebook by “Premium Landscape Company” will not do as well as an ebook by “Mary Smith, chief landscape architect at Premium Landscape Company.”
• Have a definite point of view.
• Do not sell your products or services in the body of the ebook.
• At the end, in the biography section, have a place where people can learn more and can contact you if they want to work with you.
• You will need a great title that intrigues people.
• Use a subtitle to say what the ebook is about.
• Add a Creative Commons license to encourage people to share.
• Tell people about the ebook, especially those in a position to talk it up.
• Invest in a great design
• Focus on the cover – the first thing people see
• You should have a permanent place to point people. It could be on your blog or site or you could even make a micro site with a unique URL

Here are some of my tips based on the success we have seen with our own eBooks:

• You don’t have to reinvent the wheel.  Our most successful eBooks are a collection of blog posts by topic.
• Take out the formality.  Add some personality.
• People love valuable content so put it out there where your customers are – could include: LinkedIn, FaceBook, Twitter, monthly newsletter, advertising, etc.

Whether or not to have a form in front of your eBook  is highly debatable.  David would tell you to let your content go free and he has some very interesting stats to back this up.  I have yet to convince the higher ups to do this, so we will continue to require registration for our eBooks.  If you are going to put a form in front, try to limit the number of questions.  Also, I have seen some forms where you can choose if you want follow-up from a sales rep or not which could increase downloads.

Blogging for pay has always been a touchy subject, some people are rabidly against it, some think it’s ok…really I figure it is like any other paid endorsement, if you tell people that you blog about a product because they pay you to do it then at least I can read your article with eyes wide open.

Funny thing, you don’t typically consider blogging to fall under the purview of the federal government, but guess what, October 6, the FCC issued guidelines requiring that bloggers or other ‘word of mouth’ marketers disclose payments (in-kind or cash) that they receive to review a product.  Guess it’s like anything else, now we’ll see blog articles that are paid endorsements just like political ads or any other product endorsements.

Check out the article here.  So what’s next, is the FCC going to try and regulate reviewing white papers and eBooks for other people too?  Not technically an endoresement, but still might be some extra PR or positive spin that the FCC won’t like.

Measuring What Matters Assessment

Peter Drucker, widely regarded as the “father of modern management”, once said, “if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it”.  Now, more than ever, measurement is a fundamental part of the marketing process.  Good marketers are expected to understand marketing analytics and use marketing performance as the basis for allocating budget effectively.  As a result, marketers must measure metrics that matter; metrics that can translate to strategic actions and drive accountability.

The key to measuring marketing effectiveness lies in the ability to benchmark performance over time.  Measurement is of little value unless it can be used to assess the current state of operations and help marketers determine how to optimize performance.  Ultimately, organizations can only improve marketing effectiveness if they have a baseline to compare existing performance.  Marketers should be utilizing unique metrics to measure three areas of marketing operations:

• Budgeting and Execution:  Metrics for measuring how well the current marketing plan is tracking against budget and on-time execution.   This includes a top-down and bottom-up view of budget allocation and the ability to track performance against plan and forecast accuracy.
• Campaign Performance:  Metrics for measuring closed-loop marketing on marketing campaigns; to help link marketing spend with related performance. (For example, increase lead-to-sales conversion, increase click-throughs, increase sales for a certain product, maximize form captures, etc.)
• Operational Efficiency:  Metrics for measuring the cost of marketing operations; workflow and processes cycle time, time spent managing activities, time spent on analysis, content re-use, shipping costs, etc.

The following questions will help determine steps your organization can take to improve measurement practices.

Read each question and write down the appropriate points based on an honest assessment of the current state of your marketing operations.

Does the marketing function have a set of pre-defined metrics that are benchmarked over time?

• Yes, there’s no room for improvement – Award yourself 4 points if you are confident marketing is measuring the right metrics and using these metrics to make better decisions over time
• Yes, but we could do better- Award yourself 2 points if you feel fairly confident you are measuring some metrics over time, but there is still some room for improvement
• We need to work on this- Award yourself 0 points if you know your marketing function needs to spend some time defining which metrics to measure and how to measure them

Do you measure customer lifetime value?

• Yes- Award yourself 4 points if your organization has ever tried to measure customer lifetime value, and used this to determine the maximum cost per lead.
• No- 0 points if you are not quite sure how to calculate customer lifetime value

How confident are you in your ability to measure current performance and adjust marketing campaigns in mid-cycle?

• Confident- Award yourself 4 points if your organization can adjust marketing campaign effectiveness based on mid-cycle campaign performance
• Room for Improvement- Award yourself 2 points if your measurement activity tends to be weeks or months after a campaign is executed
• We can’t do this today- 0 points if, for whatever reason, you can’t measure marketing campaign performance

Do you have access to data required to measure marketing performance?

• Yes, and it’s timely- Award yourself 2 points if you have access to the data necessary to calculate the metrics your organization uses (or would use) to measure marketing performance
• Yes, but it’s difficult to get- Award yourself 1 point if you have access to the data necessary to calculate the metrics your organization uses (or would use) to measure marketing performance, but the time it takes to gain access impacts the ability to maximize marketing effectiveness.
• No- 0 points if the data required does not exist, or is very difficult for marketing to get their hands on

Final Score

a._____+ b._____+ c._____+ d._____=  ______

How did you score?

• 0-4 Points:  You’re falling short – A final score between 0 and 4 indicates you could increase marketing effectiveness considerably by measuring and benchmarking metrics over time.  Every organization must determine pre-defined metrics for measuring marketing performance.  Start by mapping out a few different “nice to have metrics” to measure each of the three main categories of marketing measurement: Budgeting and Execution, Campaign Performance, and Operational Efficiency.
• 5-10 Points: You’re a few inches shy – A final score between 5 and10 indicates you marketing group could use some education on marketing measurement.  Consider automation and technology to help standardize and benchmark performance over time.  If access to data is a significant barrier to effective measurement, list out the different sources of data in your organization.  Then prioritize each source and start tracking small win’s by going after the low hanging fruit.  Partial data is better than no data in the eyes of the CFO.
• 11-14 Points: You’re measuring up – A final score between 11 and 14 points indicates you have a good grasp of marketing performance.  Quality data and superior marketing execution suggest you have already used marketing measurement to optimize marketing execution and operational efficiency.

The success of any business endeavor is dependent on one thing; execution. Even the best marketing strategy will fail if the organization is incapable of executing. In the context of marketing effectiveness, execution has to do with the tactics and processes an organization utilizes to market a product or service. With limited resources and finite budget, marketers need to make sure that all marketing activities are both influencing and driving demand. While it’s critical to have access to a robust centralized marketing database, the database is of little value unless marketers use the data to increase revenue.

In order to improve marketing effectiveness, marketers need to start using the data to build more intimate relationships with prospects and customers. Research proves that mass untargeted email blasts yield an average 1-2% conversion rate.

The following questions will help determine steps your organization can take to improve marketing execution. Remember to check out the marketing automation category for more about marketing automation vendors that can help you here.

Read each question and write down the appropriate points based on an honest assessment of the current state of your marketing operations.

Do you have clearly defined segments and targets?

• Yes- Award yourself 2 points if you currently customize marketing campaigns for unique segments of prospects/customers
• Yes, but we could do a better job- Award yourself 1 point if you segment your database, but you feel you could do a better job creating customized marketing messages for these segments
• No- Award yourself 0 points if you do not currently segment or target unique segments of prospects/customers

Do you currently use any personalization in outbound marketing campaigns? Award points for each applicable answer then add up all the points at the bottom (this question could award a total of 21 points)

• Mass Email (1 Point): _______

• Segmentation and Targeting (2 Points): _______

• Personalized- Name in Salutation (4 Points): _______

• Personalized- Using other database criteria: purchase date, product purchased, etc.

(6 Points): _______

• Event Triggered- Marketing interactions are triggered by customer behavior (8 Points): _______

• Total Points:_________ (Enter in b.)

Do you have one or more lead nurturing campaigns that are designed to educate potential buyers that are not yet ready to make a purchase?

• Yes- Award yourself 2 points if you have exclusive marketing campaigns designed to nurture and educate prospects
• No- Award yourself 0 points if you do not use lead nurturing

Do you know which marketing channels result in (or influence) the highest number of leads?

• Yes- Award yourself 2 points
• No- 0 points

Can you name 3 companies that visited your website this week?

• Yes- Award yourself 2 points
• No- 0 points

Final Score

a._____+ b._____+ c._____+ d._____ +e._____ = ______

How did you score?

With the right tools and processes in place, marketing execution can be quick and painless. Without those tools and processes, it can be painful and yield poor results, possible causing you or your programs to get the ax.

• 0-6 Points: You don’t quite have the hang of it - A final score between 0 and 6 indicates you could increase marketing effectiveness considerably by increasing the use of personalized email campaigns or even basic segmentation of your marketing database. Consider lead nurturing campaigns to increase the number of sales-ready leads that are passed on to sales.
• 7-18 Points: You’re getting there, keep on hacking away - A final score between 7 and18 indicates you are using a moderate level of personalization or segmentation and probably achieve average conversion rates on outbound campaigns. Consider tracking prospect performance across multiple channels (the web, email, landing pages, keywords, etc.) By tracking prospect behavior you can more accurately predict propensity to purchase and relevant materials that will have the biggest impact on driving revenue. Automation can help deliver highly relevant marketing interactions that are triggered by prospect behavior. This increases the likelihood of delivering the right message to the right prospect at the right time.
• 19-29 Points: You’re killing it - A final score between 19 and 29 points indicates your taking full advantage of your marketing database to build more intimate, relevant, personalized relationships with prospects and customers. The question is, are you measuring performance over time to constantly improve marketing execution?

The marketing database plays a vital role in maximizing marketing effectiveness.  A lack of a centralized and complete marketing database impacts the marketer’s ability to both create and execute highly effective marketing strategy.

The marketing database feeds the marketing mix, it helps determine which targets and segments a company should pursue, and it ultimately allows the organization to consistently develop better products and services and market these products and services efficiently and effectively.

Most importantly, the marketing database is the lifeblood of marketing campaign execution.  The ability to deliver relevant, timely marketing messages to prospects and customers across one or more marketing channels is directly correlated to the quality of your marketing database.  As a result, marketers need to trust in their marketing database; therefore ensure that the data is accurate, complete and reliable.

Market leading organizations heavily rely on their marketing database to build intimate, relevant, personalized relationships with prospects and customers.

The following questions will help determine steps your organization can take to improve the quality of your marketing database and ultimately the ability to execute more effective marketing campaigns.

Read each question below and write down the appropriate number of points according to your answers.  Once you’re done, add up your score to determine if you are a database slacker, an average Joe database marketer, or a database jockey with the right customer and prospect data at your fingertips all day, every day.

Rate the quality of your marketing database?

• Complete- Award yourself 4 points if you are confident in the quality of the marketing database you rely on execute marketing campaigns
• Room for Improvement- Award yourself 2 points if you feel fairly confident in the quality of your marketing database but there’s still some room for improvement.
• It’s in bad shape- Award yourself 0 points if you are confident in the fact that your database marketing practices are less than desirable and leave room for significant improvement.

Do you currently have a centralized marketing database that provides one source of the truth for marketing, sales, and service?

• Yes- Award yourself 2 points if you have a centralized database that delivers a 360 view of customers across marketing, sales and service
• No- 0 points if you are still operating multiple siloed databases or worse excel spreadsheets

Do you augment your marketing database with information to enhance, authenticate, or supplement your marketing database?

• Yes- Award yourself 2 points if you enhance the quality of existing data through third party data sources or marketing database integration tools.
• No- 0 points if existing marketing database is rarely enhanced

Do you regularly scrub the database for erroneous or outdated information?

• Yes- Award yourself 4 points if you constantly monitor the quality of the data (regardless of whether it’s manual or automated)
• No- 0 points if you can’t remember the last time you acted on the quality of your marketing database.

Do you collect multi-channel information to build customer profiles?

• Yes- Award yourself 2 points if you supplement individual leads data with information from two or more marketing channels: email campaigns received, click-through history, website visits, landing page form captures, survey questions, direct mail, etc.
• Sort of- Award yourself 1 point if you supplement individual leads data with information from one marketing channel
• No- 0 points if you have yet to integrate multi-channel activity at the customer account level.

Final Score

a._____+ b._____+ c._____+ d._____+ e._____=  ______

How did you score?

• 0-5 Points: Database Slacker -  A final score between 0-5 indicates you need to spend more time focusing on your marketing database.  Your competitors and peers are utilizing marketing database techniques that will give them a competitive advantage.  Your marketing database can become outdated and erroneous rapidly; particularly with the rapid growth in digital marketing channels.  The most effective marketing creative is useless if the customer or prospect never sees it, and poor data quality in personalized campaigns can erode brand reputation.  Consider devoting organizational resources to (1) manually scrubbing the marketing database for duplicate data, erroneous data, or missing data and (2) refreshing the marketing database through a third-party marketing data provider.
• 6-12 Points: Average Joe – A final score between 6-12 indicates your marketing database is in reasonable shape, but you should consider initiatives to improve data quality.  This could include augmenting or validating the current marketing database with a third-party data purchase or assigning resources to manually scrub the database by hand.  Consider cross-checking bounced email addresses from outbound email campaigns and removing these email addresses from the database.  Likewise, make sure you are constantly offering customers an opportunity to opt-out of communications.
• 12-14 Points: Database Jockey- A final score between 12-14 points indicates your marketing database is in great shape.  The question is, what are you actually doing with this robust marketing database to improve marketing effectiveness?

What is Marketing Effectiveness?

We’ve spent the last few weeks getting to know our marketing automation partners and friends.   They all share the goal of increasing marketing effectiveness.  This got me thinking, really what IS marketing effectiveness.

Wikipedia defines marketing effectiveness as the quality of how marketers go to market with the goal of optimizing their spending to achieve good results for both the short-term and long-term.  So essentially, effective marketing must grow top line revenue while minimizing the impact on bottom line cost.

There are three fundamental ways marketers can influence marketing effectiveness:

• Marketing Strategy: How you will engage customers, prospects, and competitors in the market.  This includes the marketing mix, product development, positioning and segmentation / targeting.
• Marketing Execution: The people, process and technology that enable effective execution of marketing strategy and highly impactful creative.  Successful execution of a superior marketing strategy increases marketing effectiveness.
• Marketing Measurement: Good marketers are expected to understand marketing analytics and use marketing performance as the basis for allocating budget effectively.  As a result, marketers must measure metrics that matter; metrics that can translate to strategic actions and drive accountability.

At its core, marketing effectiveness is about increasing revenue.    Higher returns on marketing investments are a byproduct of effective marketing. However, calculating a true return on marketing investment is no easy task.  With today’s multi-channel marketing strategies, it’s difficult to accurately allocate measurable returns to marketing spend.

By scoring best practices across these three areas, organizations can rapidly measure and identify immediate opportunities to improve marketing effectiveness.  But, remember the effectiveness of marketing is tied to marketing and sales agreeing on WHAT is handed off and at what stage. If this definition and agreement are NOT in place, marketing effectiveness and overall marketing ROI can go quickly to zero.

Interested in how you measure up?

Be sure to stop back here next week for a few quick assessment quizzes to identify areas of improvement and the overall ability for your organization to maximize marketing effectiveness.

This post comes to us from one of our friends at ExactTarget, Joel Book.

Having observed how email has become the backbone of successful one-to-one marketing solutions, I have 3 guidelines that will help you use personalization for more effective B-to-B email.

1. Remember that People buy from People.

With all due respect to brand marketers, creative directors, and copywriters, it’s important to remember that nothing is more important in selling than the customer’s relationship with the person with whom she is doing business. That person may be a dealer, an agent, or a field sales representative.

When you send email, send it on behalf of the “relationship owner” and include that person’s photo and contact information so it’s easy for the customer to contact him. This type of personalization dramatically improves email marketing campaign performance.

2. Serve. Don’t Sell.

Customers don’t want to be sold. But they do want to be helped in making their buying decision. That’s why using email to deliver information and offers that aid the customer’s decision-making process is the best way to support – and accelerate – the buying process.

Once a person has been attracted to your web site, use email to engage with and move the prospect through the consideration and evaluation stages . . . all the way to purchase. Serve your subscribers well, and they will reward you with their business. In fact, Forrester Research reports that “those who buy products marketed through email spend 138% more than non-readers of email.”

3. Put the Customer in Control.

One of the smartest things you can do to maximize email marketing performance is to personalize email content to the subscriber’s needs. When a new subscriber opts in to receive email from you, invite her to go to your preference center where she can check off her needs and topics of interest relevant to the products or services you offer. Then, use the Dynamic Content feature in ExactTarget to deliver content that’s relevant and timely. This is the essence of ExactTarget’s Subscribers Rule mantra.

If you haven’t noticed by now, we think of Mashable as THE source for all things social media (and generally cool tech stuff).  I came across an interesting article on Mashable by Ben Parr yesterday, Twitter’s Value: 5 Eye-Popping Stats.  Check these out:

1. According to PEDC’s numbers, the price of a single share of Twitter has increased by 239,619%, from a measly $0.00667 per share to a much stronger $15.9824.

2. Twitter’s $100 million round is over 1025 times the amount of money they raised in its very first round of funding. In July of 2007, Twitter raised $97,500.

3. In five rounds of funding, Twitter has raised an estimated $153 million (some peg it a few million dollars higher). Since the day of its initial round of funding, Twitter has been given an average of $187,356 per day by its investors.

4. Using that same time frame and its current $1 billion valuation, Twitter’s worth has grown by $1,223,990 per day. If you start with the day of Twitter’s inception (the first tweet from Twitter’s Inventor and Chairman, Jack Dorsey), then Twitter’s worth has grown by around $772,797 per day.

5. Twitter has yet to make a single cent in profit. We’ll let you be the judge of what that means.

Having worked for more than my fair share of start-ups, these are some incredible stats.  The most unbelievable is the last; they have yet to make a dime.  Lots of Twitter Apps are profiting, so if I am an investor in Twitter, I would be saying “Show me the money!” very soon.  And if their investors are not asking that, then wtf?