Business to Business Email Marketing Solutions

What's the biggest challenge facing your email marketing?

If it's the quality of your email database, you're not alone. According to a new study by Econsultancy, 50% of surveyed marketers cited database quality as the biggest troublemaker in their email marketing strategies. Even more compelling, database quality has held that position three years running. So why is database quality such a big problem? 

Much like gourmet chefs working with spoiled ingredients, marketers working with outdated or unqualified databases have their chances at success handicapped from the start. If your database...

In my last post, "Are you Leaving Money on the Table by Manually Merchandising Your Site?", I explained how retailers can take a staggered approach to migrate from manually merchandising their ecommerce site to using automated recommendations.

Also in this last post, I mentioned the importance of not relying on “free” ecommerce platform add-ons. Today we’ll take this idea a step further and focus on how sophisticated product recommendations engines incorporate real-time customer insights with merchant rules to create a truly personalized experience for your customers. 

#5 Way Retail Marketers...

October 2012 was an exciting time for ExactTarget’s partner ecosystem. Not only was the Orange Partner Network program launched at Connections, but also in front of the 4,000+ attendees, ExactTarget was excited to present the Power of ONE Reseller Partner of the Year award to our Platinum partner, C.TRAC.

C.TRAC has taken ExactTarget’s passion and unwavering commitment to client success and worked it into their own daily business practices by truly embodying ExactTarget's core values. Combined with their innovative strategy, design, integration, database management, reporting services, and...

I was doing some consulting recently for a company and they asked a great question, so I wanted to share it (and the solution, of course).

We were discussing sales enablement drip programs, and how to help sales keep up with more prospects over a long sales cycle. We discussed putting in place some very specific drip programs which would come from the sales reps. They loved the concept, but wondered what would happen if a prospect got an automated email and a "real" email from the sales rep in the same day?

This is a great question, and one that not enough marketers ask themselves. If you don't...

As a follow-up to the article I wrote for ClickZ the other day, I wanted to talk a bit more about the use of technology and the adoption of best practices in large B2B organizations.

My research for the ClickZ article looked at B2B companies on the Fortune 500* and their adoption of modern marketing tools. But when you look at the raw data, it becomes clear that there are three easy lessons for any B2B marketer.

Lesson 1: Technology is only the beginning

When adopting radical new technologies, the technology itself is often only part of the story. The other part is a shift in thinking or action....

The Positive Coaching Alliance teamed up with High Five Marketing to fulfill the mission of providing a positive youth sports experience for thousands of kids across the United States. Their success led them to be recognized as a 2012 finalist for the ExactTarget Power of One Awards at Connections 2012.

THE POSITIVE COACHING ALLIANCE STORY
Seventy percent of kids lose interest in youth sports by the time they reach age 13. Volunteer coaches often don’t know how to teach beyond the Xs and the Os of the game to keep kids motivated and engaged.

That’s where the Positive Coaching Alliance (PCA)...

Are you monitoring and engaging customers on Facebook and Twitter? Do you include an email address in the contact section of your brochure site? Then why are you telling your email subscribers not to reply?  

I am always surprised at the number of messages--and not just transactional--that include "Do Not Reply" in the from name, reply address, or both.  You have worked too hard to grow your list and create relevant content to stifle the conversation now!

A primary benefit of the email channel is to create a one-on-one dialogue with your subscriber. If the first thing your readers see is an...

During a game of trivia the other night, I decided to cheat! I pulled out my phone, and was able to find out “Silent Bob’s” real name in less than 10 seconds.

This availability of information has programmed our society to have very high expectations when it comes to the question-and-answer process. If we have a hard time finding the answer to a question, we often get frustrated and build a negative connotation with brands that make it difficult to find information we seek.  This is not a new concept, so when I went to check out some of the most prolific B2B brands, I was surprised to see how...

I'm proud to announce the release of the newest predictions guide from Australia. The guide features predictions for emerging trends across email, mobile, social, cross-channel and marketing automation from industry leaders, including Jeff Bullas, Chris Baumann and Iggy Pintado as well as thought leaders from Adobe, Direct Marketing Association, ExactTarget and Microsoft.

“The new year provides new opportunities for marketers to create innovative, customer experiences that build loyalty and deliver business results across email, mobile, social media and the Web,” said Lee Hawksley,...

The margin for error in Marketing has become razor thin. Here are five "MegaTrends" that underscore why marketing professionals need to be at the top of their game in 2013.    

MegaTrend #1: Customers are More Informed, More Influential, and Less Patient

Today’s customers are better connected, more informed, and more technically savvy than even 3-5 years ago. They have considerably more access to information to make smarter purchase decisions. They are much less patient with brands that do not deliver the information and offers they want. And they are much more vocal in expressing satisfaction –...

At Connections this year we recognized over 30 companies as finalists for our Power of One Awards. The marketing team from Blinds.com, a leading retailer in the window blinds and shade business, was recognized as a finalist for their "Entice and Engage" campaign that generated 175% growth to their email list. Featured below is a summary of how Blinds.com went about achieving these phenomenal business results.

THE BLINDS.COM STORY

The Blinds.com team wanted to grow their email list with engaged prospects that could be reached across a number of platforms—not just email. The team knew that...

ExactTarget has a larger-than-ever team focused on leading the market in our Voice of Customer efforts. A major initiative this year is to further enhance how we "close the loop" with clients after they fill out our annual Client Success Survey. 

As a company with roots in email marketing, it may not be surprising that a large part of this strategy involves triggering targeted emails to teams across our organization when survey responses come in. These emails have proven to be instrumental in not only quickly informing about what are clients are saying, but also spurring action.

Here are some of...

At ExactTarget, we take our clients’ feedback very seriously. While we have several channels for listening to them, from beta programs to 3sixty to Twitter, our Client Success Survey is the cornerstone of our Voice of Customer initiatives.

With thousands of responses in 2012, our clients have spoken. It’s helpful to hear about things we’re doing right. Over 2/3 of respondents agree that we:

• Are easy to do business with
• Care about our customers and partners
• Are trustworthy and innovative
• Have great Sales Consultants and Relationship Managers

More importantly, we heard about what we can do to improve....

Last week we hosted over 4,000 Interactive Marketers in Indianapolis for our annual user conference Connections. We also announced key social partnership including Moontoast, a technology innovator in social marketing, social commerce, and social analytics. We sat down with, Daniel Hightower to talk about about Facebook Marketing and eCommerce.

SM: So what exactly is Moontoast? Love the name, BTW!
DH: Moontoast is a Social Activation Engine that helps brands turn their social audience into paying customers. Brands use Moontoast's library of mobile optimized apps to extend marketing and...

I had the chance to sit down with Ben Pickering, CEO of Strutta to discuss Facebook Marketing Best Practices and Strutta!

SM: So what exactly is Strutta? 
BP: Strutta is software that helps marketers create, build and launch promotions on Facebook. Our tools are self-service and allow brands to build and engage their audience through social media, identify top influencers and measure campaign effectiveness.

SM: That sounds impressive! Does your platform work with ExactTarget?
BP: We have partnered with ExactTarget and SocialPages to make it easy for customers to develop fully-branded contests and...

SM: So what exactly is Strutta? 
BP: Strutta is software that helps marketers create, build and launch promotions on Facebook. Our tools are self-service and allow brands to build and engage their audience through social media, identify top influencers and measure campaign effectiveness.

SM: That sounds impressive! Does your app work with ExactTarget?
BP: We have partnered with ExactTarget and SocialPages to make it easy for customers to develop fully-branded contests and promotions that tie together cross-channel marketing efforts.

SM: Can you share an example campaign?
BP: I can share two!...

It's Social Marketing 101!

If you are like most medium-sized business, it is likely you don’t have a dedicated social media marketing team. So, why not look around your company and recruit help from other departments? You'll be surprised how excited your corworkers will be to helo out. Once you have your new team, you'll need some tools to leverage these new resources. Here's how we can help:

Roles and Permissions:  As long as you have roles and permissions in place, virtually anyone can and should contribute.

Workgroups: Collaborate across social accounts and workgroups. For example, you could...

The difference between doing email appends right and doing them wrong involves changing one significant step… the outbound message.  Instead of the outbound message containing a link to opt-out, the outbound email marketing message should have registration as the primary call to action. This approach to email appends is called "opt-in" email append.

ExactTarget was one of the early proponents of this approach and we have now real life experience with this approach under our belts.  Opt-in email appends have been very successful in delivering highly responsive subscribers without the headaches...