| Good morning, Marketer, and I’m shouting out to email marketers again. Actually, all marketers, because who doesn’t have an email strategy these days? Mark Kosoglow, VP of Sales at Outreach, told me in an interview that growing your volume of emails is a losing game: “Now the world is flooded with emails, you could be hurting yourselves, getting more and more lost in the noise.” What’s important about email, then, is doing it right. Yes, that means looking at deliverability and click-through rates. But there are so many other things to take into consideration, including compliance with new regulations, innovation with new features (interactive elements for example), as well as all the things which can go wrong. We’re coming to the rescue with the 2021 Email Marketing Periodic Table. Check it out on MarTech later today. Not only is it packed with organized and actionable advice, the design is kind of fun too. Let us know what you think. Kim Davis
Editorial Director |
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| | | Management | | | | | The Real Story on MarTech: Apply design thinking to select the right vendor | | | | Any discussion of buying marketing technology right has to start with the idea that you are not looking for the “best” solution, but the best-fitting solution for your particular circumstances: your requirements, capabilities, resources, risk tolerance, and specific business objectives. Notions of “fit” become liberating, since you dispense with the impossible job of finding some universally ideal solution. “Fit” is also empowering, since it gives you a natural approach to vetting solutions. That approach is design thinking, a methodology grounded in empathy, ideation, and testing. Design thinking tells us to follow a five-step path of Empathize > Define > Ideate > Prototype > Test. It turns out this works very well for selecting marketing technology, with perhaps a greater emphasis on testing throughout. Following an adaptive process, you filter through a range of solutions via testing to find the right fit for your needs. But that begs the question: what exactly do you test? Too often we see selection teams overly focused on features rather than use cases. Design thinking means centering your solicitation on user stories. These are real-life narratives that describe your information, your processes, your anticipated business results, and above all, the people — your prospects, customers, and employees interacting with the system. User stories become the backbone of a process-centered in empathy, bounded by healthy skepticism, and open to ideation. Always test any solution hands-on with real people, before inking any contract. Ideally, you do this via a competitive bake-off. We regularly see large enterprises license a solution without ever trying it themselves. That’s like watching a car salesperson drive a vehicle around the dealer’s lot and deciding you want to buy it! Read more here. |
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| | | | How automation can help your sellers sell more (and your marketers market better) | | While many back-office tools such as ERP and supply chain management have already adopted AI-driven automation, the front office (sales, marketing and service) remains the last bastion of non-automated processes. Why? Sales and marketing people have dug in on the idea that their roles are more art than science. And they’ve clung jealously to the idea that their intuition and creativity are what differentiate them – which is true, only not in the ways they think. Read more » |
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| | | Events | | | | | When presenting and showcasing your expertise, less is more | | Speakers have different reasons for presenting at industry events. Many people like public speaking or do it to improve their presentation skills. Others enjoy teaching and giving back to an industry they love. However, more often than not, at least part of the reason someone is presenting is to promote their brand or gather leads. This is where less is more comes in. Stay with me here because this is going to sound counterintuitive. Less is more concept #1: Many speakers think that they have to go into detail about who they are and what their company does in order to be seen as a thought leader or prove they have authority to speak on the presentation topic. Yet attendees are there to get solutions to their problems through your presentation content, not to find out who your clients are. Keep your introduction to a minimum and jump into your great content. It’s the content that will allow you to shine as a thought leader. Less is more concept #2: Your logo doesn’t need to be on every slide in order for people to remember you or your company. What attendees will remember is what they get out of the presentation and if you had solid actionable content. Keep your logos to a minimum. Only put them on the first and last slide. Again, if you provide that terrific content and help someone solve a problem or improve their work life. They will remember you and often seek you out on social media. Less is more concept #3: Don’t sell your services or product features. Unless the presentation is specifically meant to be a product demonstration in a direct sales situation, any reference to your services or product during the presentation will diminish the quality of the content in your presentation. One sentence about your company and how to contact you at the end of the presentation is enough. Once again, let the quality of your content speak for you. I know this is easy to say and hard to do when you’re hoping for some solid business leads, but speakers who deliver the promised content get satisfied attendees seeking them out and good feedback. While those who sell often get lower scores and negative feedback. Questions or comments? Feel free to reach out to me at kbushman@thirddoormedia.com. |
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| | | | 2021 Guide to Marketing Automation Software | | Marketing automation platforms form the backbone of marketing operations, increasingly serving as sophisticated marketing orchestration platforms. MarTech Today’s “B2B Marketing Automation Platforms: A Marketer’s Guide” examines the market for B2B marketing automation software platforms. This report includes profiles of 13 leading B2B marketing automation vendors, capabilities comparisons, pricing information, and recommended steps for evaluating and purchasing. There's still time to register! » |
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| | | Experience | | | | | Mindtickle launches conversation intelligence for sales | | Mindtickle, the sales readiness and enablement platform, has announced the availability of Call AI, a conversation intelligence solution tailored for sales leaders. Call AI is aimed at helping identify behaviors that drive revenue growth (or gaps in the sales process that hinder it). Layered over Mindtickle’s existing offerings of training, reinforcement and practice for sales professionals, Call AI will highlight the impact of those efforts on individual performance and provide increased visibility into sales reps’ strengths and weaknesses. The solution will analyze live conversations and provide AI-based call scores to be integrated with the rest of the platform’s analytics. Why we care. This week’s news that Invoca had acquired DialogTech drew attention to the significance of AI-driven conversation intelligence for the marketing and customer service teams, but Invoca CEO Gregg Johnson also spoke about the opportunities for using the capabilities for revenue growth. Mindtickle here launches a conversation intelligence solution aimed squarely at that challenge. |
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| | | Performance | | | | | Retailers pivot to drive in-store traffic | | Retailers are responding to the lifting of Covid-19 restrictions by increasing spend on channels and messaging that drive foot traffic, according to a new survey of 175 digital marketers, conducted by geofencing ad and marketing platform Reveal Mobile. Marketers probably have in mind projections like eMarketer’s that say brick-and-mortar retail sales will rise 2.2% this year, after declining 0.2% in 2020. How are marketers taking advantage of the shift? Here are the numbers: 71% of marketers surveyed are using ads that drive foot traffic, and 46% are promoting BOPIS (buy online, pickup in-store); 85% are also advertising digital sales; 55% plan to increase their current spend to drive foot traffic in the next 30 to 60 days; 15% are already doing that now; another 28% plan to increase their budget in the next three to six months; and less than 10% said they won’t increase their spend to boost in-store sales, or didn’t reduce their spend in 2020. Why we care. With many in-store experiences becoming more digital during the pandemic, with contactless payments and pre-arranged appointments for visits, both online sales and in-store transactions are part of a connected digital marketing strategy. Of those surveyed, 55% say they’ll up their use of campaign data and analytics this year, and 47% say they’ll increase their use of precious third-party data. The majority of marketers don’t want a lackluster digital strategy to be the reason they miss opportunities during the retail rebound they see on the horizon. |
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| | | Quote of the day | | | | | | | “While many business leaders are drawn to vaccine passports as a solution to bring their workforces back to the office full-time, Forrester predicts that 70% of US and European companies will pivot to a hybrid work model post-pandemic. In a hybrid model, at least some employees can work anywhere they want for two or more days a week while coming into the office on the remaining workdays.” Shweta Agarwal, Director, Global Communications, Forrester |
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