Closed-loop Marketing Archives

Marketing Automation Selection Criteria

Choosing a marketing automation vendor can be challenging. Whether you are jumping into marketing automation for the first time, or are re-evaluating your current system, it can be a difficult and daunting task – especially with how many options are out there these days. Marketing Automation Selection Criteria can help.

The vendor you choose will have an enormous impact on not only your Marketing Department and marketing efforts, but could easily touch other areas as well such as Sales, Customer Service and IT. It is important to consider these other groups when evaluating various vendors, as they may have requirements, obstacles and questions that should be taken into consideration.

To help make the evaluation process a little easier and more effective, here is a recommended process to follow: Read more

November 11, 2014/0 Comments/by John Stone

7 Attributes of a Lead Scoring Model

B2B Marketing and Sales, Closed-loop Marketing, Content Marketing, CRM, Inbound Marketing, Measurement and Analytics, Revenue Architecture, Revenue Growth, Revenue Marketing, Revenue Systems, Sales Excellence

Every company will have different ways of measuring a qualified lead, yet there is a set of factors that you can use to map into a lead-scoring model. Many marketing automation solutions, such as Eloqua, Marketo, Hubspot, Pardot, ShaprSpring, and others, have built-in lead scoring algorithms and pass this information into a CRM system like Salesforce and SugarCRM.

These scores can be set up to deliver marketing-qualified leads based on certain criteria and scores, helping sales teams accept the leads (Sales Accepted Leads) and focus their energies on the top prospects.

Marketing Automation and CRM are both important. We use Sharpspring technology for our small business retainer services to deliver inbound marketing programs and integrated marketing. Sharpspring includes an integrated CRM as well as API hooks into leading CRMs so it is great for small businesses. The life of the lead is a great way to see the flow of the lead through time and the lead scoring approach helps sales focus immediately on the top inbound leads.

5 Reasons Why CRM Is Essential in Growing Your Business

Closed-loop Marketing, CRM, Inbound Marketing, Marketing Automation, Newsletter, Revenue Architecture, Revenue Growth, Revenue Systems, Technology & Websites

It’s all about the customer. Cultivating and managing your customer relationships is essential for effective marketing campaigns, sales, and repeat business. But when your contact list becomes unwieldy or you find that several people within your company are reaching out to the same contact, you know you need to get organized. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) programs enable you to respond to your customer base with timely communication, targeted marketing campaigns and strategic follow up.

My Pet Peeve: Email Threads

How often have you needed to check a customer detail that was in an email thread you received days or weeks ago? You’re hustling to get to a meeting and just can’t find that all important message.

CRMs centralize, store and organize detailed customer data and history logs for easy reference. Help your salespeople improve their effectiveness by sharing information with your team or designating members to manage a particular lead or customer.

What’s Your Integrated Digital Strategy?

Closed-loop Marketing, Content Marketing, Financial Advisor Marketing, Revenue Architecture, Revenue Strategy

An Integrated Digital Strategy clarifies how you differentiate your online presence and drive revenue with your website, mobile, social media, search, email marketing, apps and online advertising. Using analytics to capture customer insights will inform your digital strategies and tactics and keep you aligned around key performance indicators (KPIs).

As more customers ‘self-sell’ on the web, a digital strategy is increasingly important. It is about integrating digital into all facets of marketing and describing the role of different web channels, inbound marketing, content marketing, search and the role of and social media. Integration can range from adding a URL at the bottom of a print ad to having a common creative message on your home page and in banner ads to the sophisticated delivery of sequenced messaging on multiple digital media vehicles.

Source: RevenuePerform.com

Disruptive Technology Driving Digital

Four specific technology developments are driving a tectonic shift in the digital ecosystem:

Mobile. Widespread penetration and evolution of feature-rich, smart mobile devices
Social. Ubiquitous social networking and user-generated content
Cloud. On-demand, real-time access to supercomputer power and unlimited storage
Internet of Things. Convergence between the real and the virtual worlds.

These technologies are changing the relationships between consumers and companies. Consumers have more power to gather and process information, connect, and voice opinions. And companies can leverage vast new sources of consumer information that lets them engage customers in a microtargeted way across multiple digital touch points.

What’s the State of your Integrated Digital Strategy?

To win in the digital economy, explore new approaches and learn by experimentation, while focusing on crucial capabilities and overcoming any gaps. Ask these questions:

Do we have a dynamic digital strategy that generates value and considers new business models?
Do we have deep insight into how our customers are using new digital tools?
Do we have a partnership strategy with the key technology players to enable us to respond?
Does our marketing strategy take advantage of new technologies to enhance our traditional campaigns?
Are we fully utilizing online and mobile channels as part of our go-to-market strategy?
Do we have the right talent and organization to execute our digital strategy?

Addressing these questions and formulating an integrated digital strategy will ultimately make your businesses relevant in a digital era while growing opportunities and profits, as well as scaling efficiently in the process.

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The Digital Experience Index (DXI) is based on eight interdependent dimensions: Brand, Visibility, Design, Content, Usability, Functionality, Conversion and Amplification.

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April 20, 2014/0 Comments/by Therese Byrne

3 Ways to Increase Website Conversion

B2B Marketing and Sales, Closed-loop Marketing, Content Marketing, Financial Advisor Marketing, Inbound Marketing, Marketing Automation, Revenue Architecture, Revenue Growth, Revenue Marketing, Revenue Programs, Revenue Systems, Technology & Websites

Getting a web visitor to take action is the main objective of any web page. Unfortunately, many businesses see still a website as a brochure and do not take into account the way that web usage has changed and what the real purpose is. They spend all their time on design and not enough on usability and website conversion optimization. Pretty is good but conversion grows a business.

1. Use of Strong Visuals

Images need to have a purpose not just be decoration. Derek Halpen at Social Triggers put together a great article on the effective use of images.

He pointed out the following potential reasons for using images.

-To show a key product or service feature

Derek points out how genius the image of Apple Air in the envelope is. Apple is selling the “thinness” feature and nail it with the image. If you are selling a service, a good graphic can explain your offer.

-To direct attention

Images can be used to direct the web visitor’s attention. Images of people looking at or pointing can emphasize a key headline or call-to-action like a sign up form.

-To build trust

Using pictures of real people involved in the business whether they are customers or team members builds trust. Derek points out that people want to deal with real people. Stock images just don’t cut it. Customer testimonials have a lot more credibility if they have an image of the customer with them.

2. Get the Headline Right

Another key page element is the headline. Copyblogger found 8 out of 10 people read only the headline. The promise of the headline must be compelling enough to turn a browser into a reader and then a sign up. Copyblogger offer a 11 part course to help with this. You won’t get the headline right first time. Optimizely lets you to test different headlines (and images) with no coding required. Testing should be an ongoing process.

3. Be Mobile Friendly

The big movement right now is towards responsive design. This means that a web site will reconfigure to be usable for any device from laptop ti smart phone. Website builders from Virb to Wix and Sq uarespace now offer responsive solutions. Excellent responsive themes are available for WordPress.

Despite this, only 6% of small business websites are mobile ready according to a recent survey. The same study calculated that the lack of mobile readiness is costing US small businesses $1T each year. Mobile is now 28% of all web traffic. 4 out of 5 of these visitors will leave a site if it is not mobile optimized.

Make sure your emails are mobile optimized also. 70% of users will delete an email if it does display well on their smartphone. 75% of users open emails on smart phones.

Looking for help with improving conversion. Contact us at Revenue Architects.

For more ideas, go to Revenizer for 400+ more tips on optimizing digital + real time stats on your marketing performance.

The article summary is below.

March 10, 2014/0 Comments/by Phil Rogers