Top Content from 2020 – Part 2
Welcome back to our Top 10 posts of 2020! Last week we featured the first half of our top 10, and now we share the rest. Grab your coffee and hold onto your glasses for more reading fun.
Artificial intelligence (AI) has been pushing its way into the marketing scene for the past few years, using customer data and machine learning to anticipate customer needs and improve their experience. In email marketing, AI has the ability to remove a lot of guesswork, helping to create content and assets that speak to customers, delivering higher conversions, and increasing your ROI.
We all know how important personalization and optimization have become in email marketing. Customers are looking for partners who understand their needs, and that understanding has to come across in the emails we send to them. Personalization is only as good as the data you have. In order to use customer data in field merges, dynamic content, or for deployment send time, you would need to verify, or blindly trust, that the data is available, clean, and up to date. Sending email with bad data could wind up being more detrimental than not using the personalization at all.
As consumers of products and services, we get inundated with all kinds of marketing emails. Some may seem irrelevant, while others are just what interest us. Behind every great marketing campaign is a purpose that is structurally aligned to the company’s goal. A great marketing campaign is also well thought out and will coordinate back to your sales funnel. Emails we receive in our inbox should have a specific intent and should meet us where we are in the customer journey.
To better understand the types of emails we often receive, let’s review the basic foundation and purpose of two types of campaigns. Marketers create and deploy all sorts of campaigns such as nurtures, reengagements, product launches, demo ads, and the list goes on. The core drive of these marketing campaigns is to generate demand and turn those prospects into customers. Therefore, most of these types of campaigns, if not all, can be classified into two types of campaigns: Brand Awareness and Acquisition. Let’s talk more about each one so you can learn the impact they can have on your business.
3 Nurture Campaigns you (probably) don’t have, but need
Lead nurturing is a process of delivering relevant, timely and personalized content to your customers. At every stage in the customer lifecycle there are opportunities to build stronger relationships and position your company as a trusted partner. This leads to a positive impact on your bottom line—Research has shown that companies that excel at lead nurturing generate 50% more sales ready leads at a 33% lower cost.
You may already have some successful nurture campaigns in place, but here are a few you probably don’t have, but need.
The Demystification of Data Management Platforms
Data Management Platforms (also known as DMPs) are not new, but they are still gaining traction in the modern marketing space. At one end of the spectrum, there are companies using DMPs to their fullest potential. At the other end of the spectrum, there are companies still confused by the concept of a DMP. I often hear questions such as: What is a DMP? Is that the same as a CMP or a CDP? Why do I need one? What’s the benefit of using one? Can’t I just manage without it? Will we need to consider a DMP as we grow?
The answers to these questions are not always simple. The benefits, impact, and requirements of a DMP will differ from one organization to another. However, we can certainly simplify the concepts and help you determine whether a DMP makes sense for you and your business.
4 Characteristics All Great Lead Flow Handoffs have in Common
Similar to a relay race, the lead handoff is when marketing passes the lead (or baton) to sales. The first runner, marketing in this case, has given it their all and is probably exhausted, but their job isn’t done until the handoff is complete. This final step requires focus and precision. And just like in a relay race, fumbling the baton would cause seconds to be lost in a race where every second counts.
An efficient and effective lead handoff can look different depending on your marketing and sales team size & makeup, the tech stack used to facilitate the process, or even the characteristics and preferences of your target market. That being said, there are a set of characteristics that all good lead handoffs have in common. They need to be timely and informative. They must be a joint effort and must end with a good feedback loop that kicks off the next action. Let’s explore each of these in more detail.
If you missed part one, check it out.