What’s Working in Marketing

Just came across this post by eMarketer about a new report on online lead generation…
Based on the quantity and quality of leads generated, companies said email was their best lead generation program, followed by live events, website registrations and webinars. The effectiveness of online channels, coupled with the fact that prospects [...]

We won’t know how well our marketing programs are working unless we track results. Here is an interesting resource on e-mail response rates from the Marketing Online wiki. These numbers jive with other sources we’ve seen.
Your campaigns should be producing results close to these…or better. If not, reengineer the campaign to improve performance.
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Spam filters, time of day, HTML formatting…there’s a lot to worry about in an e-mail marketing program. What tactics work best? In an excerpt from MarketingSherpa’s new Email Marketing Benchmark Report, we see relevant content leading the list.
The business buying process is usually long and complex. So it is important to target your marketing, matching [...]

A wealth of new research is out to help us fine tune our e-marketing programs, from the web site (the cornerstone of any e-marketing program) to search marketing to e-mail marketing to social media. How does your implementation compare with these best practices?
• All important calls to action need to stay above the fold [...]

Today, Nielsen Business Media announced they are shuttering Sales & Marketing Magazine. Yet another case of a print publication unable to adapt to the Internet era. With all the upheaval in the world of publishing, one of the hot topics is monetization of digital properties — how do publishers make money from the Internet?
A [...]

I was on a conference call Friday afternoon when the phrase came up again around marketers “have lost control of the message.” (Hat tip to our dear friend Walt Boyes)…but Walt went further and described the “Wac-a-mole” scenario which made laugh…then cry.   Actually, I thought it was a pretty accurate depiction of the state of [...]

2009 was a turbulent year, to say the least. Manufacturing and high tech took a good hit. Not quite as dramatic as 2001, but painful nonetheless. For marketers, this turbulence means more attention is being paid to tighter and tighter budgets. The pressure is on to make each dollar, each click, each conversion targeted and [...]

We are big fans of building internal e-mail lists, and often recommend this strategy with our clients. Homegrown email lists  trump any bought list of any kind, and we continually see good business opportunities come out of well managed, consistent email newsletter programs.  Even our own, “What’s Working in Marketing” e-newsletter has been a big [...]

We’re still recovering from the ISA Marketing & Sales Summit in Boston last week. It was the 4th annual event and, I think, the best ever. We had a great group of speakers from the automation industry, and engaged senior-level attendees from marketing and sales. It was 3 days of interesting conversations and idea exchange. [...]

A quick add-on to Juliann’s post about the test e-mail open and click-through rates. The Epsilon study breaks down rates by industries.

General financial services e-mails were opened most frequently, followed by general business products and services (that would include the technology markets).

Click-through rates in January through March 2009 were highest for consumer packaged [...]