Thursday, January 7, 2016

Digital Lead Gen Forecast to Dominate Sales Funnel

Marketers consistently say quality lead generation is their top challenge, but the path to success can get lost in today's complex multichannel environment. A 2016 marketing forecast by Salesforce Principal of Marketing Insights, Matthew Sweezy, opines that marketers should recognize a fundamental sales funnel shift: 60% at the middle of the sales funnel must now be devoted to digital rapport-building and lead generation, leaving 20% of the funnel for traditional marketing at the top and 20% for sales acquisition at the bottom. The new sales funnel reflects today's overconnected, multichannel marketing challenge. By 2020, there will be seven connected devices for every person on earth (Gartner Research) and the average person already sees 5,000 ads a day from all channels, not counting social (Yankelovich). Bombarded by digital marketing messages, 18% of the U.S. audience already uses digital ad blockers, per PageFair and Adobe, undermining paid ad strategies. Consumers are also disturbed by big-data privacy concerns, with a third of customers abandoning a brand after a data breach, per The Economist research, so reluctance to provide personal information threatens data-gathering and targeting. The key, says Sweezy, is to give digital customers what they want, which is useful information and trust-building self-discovery (it's made Google is No, 1 in search), noting that 73% of consumers say that getting useful information is the most important factor in selecting a brand. Personalized targeting with behavioral, psychographic and internal data is key, and automation is a useful engagement system, but marketers must work smart. Retargeting ads for a product after purchase of the product just makes customers four times less likely to purchase again. And engagement must be swift, with the average consumer taking only 0.05 seconds to determine content value and 70% switching sites/apps if they are judged too slow. To capture the new digital middle of the funnel, companies need to improve the customer digital experience and close gaps by making frequent, small and socially interactive gestures that keep the brand in front of potential buyers and build trust and engagement, concludes Sweezy. For the whole presentation, go to Salesforce's Pardot blog: http://www.pardot.com/blog/future-marketing-2016-slideshare/

Tuesday, January 5, 2016

Use These E-Mail Tactics to Breach Inbox Barriers

E-mail deliverability will remain a key marketing hurdle in 2016. So here are three basic tactics to drive up open and click rates and help overcome inbox filtering, courtesy of a BrandViews blog post by CRM software firm Marketo. First, use html buttons instead of image buttons for your e-mail call-to-action (CTA), advises the article. That way, when the e-mail is opened, the recipient won't have to wait for images to download; the html-coded button appears upon open and looks the same as an image-based button. Marketo reports that switching from image to html buttons delivered a 5% lift in open rate, a 15% lift in click-to-open rate and a 20% lift in click-through rate in its tests. Next, with 50% of e-mails opened on mobile phones and 65% of consumers starting the purchasing cycle on a mobile device, mobile-responsive e-mail design is clearly a must. A successful mobile e-mail version needs to include these components, per the post: the right breakpoints via media queries in the tag; larger text for readability on a small screen; and a CTA "above the fold" of the mobile screen. Marketo reports a 28% increase in click-through and a 31% boost in click-to-open rates thanks to improved mobile templates. Finally, with over 20% of e-mails landing in junk/spam folders, bouncing or blocked per Return Path, deliverability measures are clearly required. Marketo highlights these deliverability tips: retiring e-mail addresses after one hard bounce; lowering the soft-bounce threshold for retiring e-mail; and list hygiene to cull inactive and bad e-mail addresses. The goal is to only send e-mails to subscribers who want them. For design examples and resource links, read the full article at http://www.business2community.com/brandviews/marketo/3-email-marketing-must-haves-tackle-evolving-inbox-01409706#vt1T9WKppDor0isK.97