Happy 40th Birthday, Email!
http://flic.kr/p/86P7Yw Forty years ago, engineer Ray Tomlinson sent the first electronic mail message. No one remembers now what the message said, only that it was short and difficult to compose. But whatever it said, it changed the communications picture forever. When he showed his work to a colleague, he was told firmly, “Don’t go telling anyone! That’s not what we’re supposed to be doing.” Tomlinson never profited from his pioneering work, but his story of the creation of email, and how he came to use the “@” symbol to direct messages between networks, is fascinating and available online here. Here are Read More
Why Social Media Monitoring Matters
Licensed from Cartoonstock.com. It’s Friday the 13th — so we thought a little humor was in order. This cartoon, like all good satire, has a kernel of truth we all need to remember: if we as marketing and sales professionals don’t know what’s being said about our brand in social media, we’ll soon find out that others will create an image for us, perhaps an image we don’t like much.
Putting the Sales Enablement Pieces Together
Sales enablement is the delivery of the right information to the right person in the right format to assist in moving sales opportunities forward. Sounds pretty simple, right? It isn’t. Assembling the right sales message is a complex process in a large distributed marketing organization — especially in regulated industries. Four or five distinct processes and roles are involved, and without clear planning and a smooth process built on a technology platform designed to streamline the process, it can seem nearly impossible. Marketing creates the information. Management (legal, compliance, HR) reviews it. Marketing publishes it (through a sales portal, Read More
Distributed Marketing Automation Buyer’s Checklist
Buyers searching for the best distributed marketing platform to solve the marketing automation problems that are unique to a multi-channel distributed marketing environment come at the problem from different starting points. So, while there is no “one size fits all” solution that will work for every company, there are a few items to add to every buyer’s checklist. The top four boxes to check when considering a distributed marketing platform are: Centralized, Rules-Based Compliance + Local Customization, Personalization Closed-loop Marketing Analytics “WOW” Factor: What Can You Do AFTER Purchasing That You CAN’T Do Now? Industry-Specific Integration, Performance The first two items on Read More
Every Market Is a Buyer’s Market
Industry analyst and pundit David Coursey calls this The Age of Google, and says that the Internet has transformed every market into a buyer’s market, with empowered consumers who can (and do) compare prices and offers from vendors around the globe, and then publish and share their own product reviews and experiences (good or bad) with your company. Technology, he points out, has turned the one-way marketing messages of years past into an interactive conversation that happens in a host of communications channels that didn’t exist just a few years ago. “Among younger consumers – those under 40 – even Read More
The End of the Sales Funnel: Now What?
Software and hardware vendors have learned the hard way that the traditional “sales funnel” for technology no longer involves much selling. In fact, it’s no longer a selling process at all. It’s a buying process, in which the vast majority of decision makers research products and reach out to technology vendors while screening out most attempts by technology vendors to contact them. As many as 90% of technology purchases are instigated by the buyer – not the seller – according to most estimates. Empowered customers are repeating this pattern in other industries as well, notably insurance, banking, financial services, and Read More
DAM Compliance: Using software to minimize compliance hassles
Digital marketing has forever changed the way companies communicate with employees, resellers and partners, prospects, and customers. It’s faster, more personal, and less expensive than ever before. With digital marketing assets, it’s possible for corporate marketing to create the campaign, and allow local marketing teams (franchise owners, field sales, independent agents and resellers, brokers – anyone who sells the company’s products or services) to personalize or customize it with just a few mouse clicks. That flexibility comes with a whole new set of corporate compliance headaches. Luckily, a Digital Asset Management (DAM) solution can streamline the process and enforce brand Read More
Five Simple Steps to Better Email Marketing Results
Anyone who works in insurance marketing, financial services, or health care knows that the news on email marketing has been mixed in recent months. On one hand, industry experts and news stories report that overall success rates for email marketing are down as more and more young consumers abandon email in favor of social media and mobile communications tools like FaceTime. On the other hand, email marketing remains the most cost effective rapid response tool in the marketer’s arsenal. For most of us, email is still the “killer” app for marketing — the one we use most often to generate bottom Read More
Why TV’s Mad Men Would Fail Today
The hit TV show Mad Men is TV’s look back at the world of traditional marketing. In the 1960’s, a handful of white, male ad agency executives in New York controlled nearly everything the public saw and heard in the media. They showed us glamorous images, and told us what the product was and how it was going to help us – and we responded by buying exactly what they were selling. That was then. Now, anyone foolish enough to try the same approach would fail miserably. There are three key reasons for that. To start with, consumers have choices Read More
Distributed Marketing Goes Mainstream
Keith Dawson, Senior Editor of The CMO Site, published an interesting look at distributed marketing awhile back. If you haven’t read Keith’s article, check it out here. In the article, he notes that “marketing on demand” – in which a local agent can instantly access, customize and localize corporate marketing assets – is no longer a luxury. It’s becoming a requirement in today’s fast-paced world. Dawson’s observation that it’s time for any organization with a widely scattered sales and marketing force where individual branches or agents function independently to take a close look at how they manage their distributed marketing Read More
