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Silverpop From First Click to Lifetime Customer WHITE P A P E R Silverpop Survey: Exploring the Differences and Similarities of B2C and B2B Marketing Tactics Engagement Marketing Solutions Silverpop Engagement Marketing Solutions WHITE PAPER SILVERPOP SURVEY: Exploring the Differences and Similarities of B2C and B2B Marketing Tactics B2C or B2B. It’s not so easy to be a marketer these days. It was bad enough that the dramatically rising chatter of competing messages drowned out advertising and made many marketing campaigns ineffective. Next the rise of social media led prospective customers to make up their minds, not as a result of encountering well-phrased promotional materials, but rather because the sister-in-law of a friend of a guy the neighbor works with wrote a product endorsement on a Facebook wall. And then, just to make things really interesting, the economy faltered. If you’re a B2C marketer and think the grass is greener on the B2B side, What are your top two marketing goals this year? you’d be wrong. And the view from the B2B side of the fence back over isn’t any prettier. Both sides struggle to grab attention and keep it. And Better leverage new both are seeking new ways to drive revenue and prove their worth. 31% marketing channels Silverpop recently conducted a survey of B2C and B2B marketers to learn their top challenges in the coming year. More than 1,800 marketers responded. What they told us about their challenges, the marketing tactics they think worked best and what they want to try next shows us that there are more similarities than differences between B2C and B2B marketing tactics. Both groups use email marketing as a core tactic to reach customers and prospects, though B2B marketers sometimes fail to implement some of the more sophisticated email methods that can have dramatic impacts on results. Improve analytics to strengthen campaigns Survey Findings When asked to select among six options regarding their top challenges in the coming year, B2C and B2B marketers gave divergent responses in two areas and similar ones in the remaining four. Finding more prospective customers, upselling or cross-selling to the customer base, improving analytics to strengthen campaigns and better leveraging new marketing channels are challenges both B2C and B2B marketers face. 1-866-SILVPOP (745-8767) 39% 38% 38% Increase contact database 37% 41% Increase customer loyalty 45% 27% Move prospects/leads faster through the sales pipeline Responses diverged dramatically on the perception of the importance of two marketing challenges posed in the survey. While 45 percent of B2C marketers are challenged to increase customer loyalty, only 27 percent of B2B marketers say that’s a key concern. And while half of B2B marketers want to move sales prospects through the pipeline faster, only 29 percent of B2C marketers want to speed up the time consumers take to make a purchase decision. Both B2B and B2C marketers should want to achieve conversion in the shortest time possible, because until the sale is completed, competitors can still gain a foothold, whether you’re selling backhoes or backpacks. www.silverpop.com B2B 34% Upsell or cross-sell to customer base There are other differences as well. As we review the survey findings, we think you’ll agree that B2C and B2B marketers have much they can learn from each other. Both employ tactics little used by the other that, when put into the right process, can boost results. B2C 29% 29% 51% 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% Let’s take a look at each challenge, review how marketers typically face them, and see what lessons B2C marketers can learn from their B2B counterparts, and vice versa. Challenges Faced by Both B2C and B2B Marketers Better Leverage New Marketing Channels Social is all the rage right now, and you just can’t feel like a real marketer if you’re not doing it. The pressure is on for both B2C and B2B marketers to maximize their usage of Facebook and Twitter, blogs and community forums. Yet both camps struggle with the strategy and tactics behind making social media work in real and meaningful ways. © 2010 Copyright Silverpop. All rights reserved. The Silverpop logo is a registered trademark of Silverpop Systems Inc. 2 Silverpop Engagement Marketing Solutions WHITE PAPER As in many cases, we can lay part of the blame on the recession. It’s made marketers more accountable than ever to deliver results with a high ROI. Using social media is seen as a fairly inexpensive way to go. Certainly advertisers’ social marketing budgets have remained small. Nearly infinitesimal, in fact. Forrester Research reports that more than half of online advertisers spent less than $10,000 on social media in all of 2007.1 Social media works for both because, when used correctly, it engenders engagement. Conversations occur and understanding results. Stimulating interest and insights among prospective customers helps move them through the first stages of a buying decision; that is, they learn they have a problem or need and that there exists a solution. Incorporating social media into the marketing mix is a trend more popular among B2C marketers than B2B. When asked what marketing tactic they’ve used that worked well, more than four out of 10 B2C marketers checked “including links to social network sites in emails” in Silverpop’s survey. But less than three out of 10 B2B marketers selected that option. B2C and B2B social marketing campaigns need to start out the same way. Identify recipients’ hot buttons. Find out what social networks your customers frequent and determine what will engage them to the point that they want to let others know what they know and spread your promotional messages to their friends. What email marketing tactics have you used that worked particularly well? Distributing cart abandonment messages Incorporating relational tables to enhance personalization Implementing lifecycle campaigns Behavioral targeting Triggered offers based on recipient activity Including links to social network sites in emails Including marketing promotions in transactional emails Gathering recipient information through surveys 3% 12% B2C B2B 13% 11% 28% 20% 24% 24% 31% 32% 42% 29% 38% 42% 40% 43% When Silverpop evaluated the social sharing activities of B2C and B2B marketers, it found that every social email evaluated included at least a link to Facebook. MySpace, Twitter and Digg were the next most frequently included links. While LinkedIn was a distant fifth overall, within the B2B emails analyzed, 83 percent included a link to LinkedIn. Interestingly, while links to Facebook, MySpace and Twitter were included most often in email messages, Bebo, Delicious and LinkedIn actually had a higher percentage of share link clicks among the networks.3 Improve Analytics to Strengthen Campaigns Marketers know the ability 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% to harness customer data across platforms enables B2C marketers are attracted to social media because they sell to individu- them to craft more meaningful messaging. But the enormity of the als, and social lets them join in one-to-one conversations with customers task leaves many at a loss of where to begin. While targeting and and prospects. B2B marketers need to approach social in the same way. retaining a company’s best customers is a key marketing function, Whether you’re selling cupcakes or copiers, buyers are all individuals who manipulating customer data to better inform marketing decisions can seek out others like themselves for insights and recommendations. Adding be extraordinarily difficult to do. the human element through social networking benefits both B2C and B2B Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solutions can provide marketing programs. both B2C and B2B marketers with important business intelligence, B2B marketers who use social media are finding success. With nearly sev- enabling companies to better monitor client actions and preferences en out of 10 B2B companies setting up group pages on social networks and identify commonalities among a brand’s top customers. and more than half now using Twitter to communicate with customers and Yet responses to Silverpop’s survey found that while seven out prospects, it’s clear that social media is a channel of high interest and of 10 B2B marketers use a CRM system, only 4 out of 10 B2C importance to B2B as well as B2C marketers.2 marketers do. Identifying best time to send emails www.silverpop.com 1-866-SILVPOP (745-8767) 50% 51% © 2010 Copyright Silverpop. All rights reserved. The Silverpop logo is a registered trademark of Silverpop Systems Inc. 3 Yes No 69% Silverpop Engagement Marketing Solutions WHITE PAPER Do you use a CRM solution? B2C B2B 31% 42% Yes 69% Yes 58% No Forrester Research has reported seeing an increase in marketing investments to improve companies’ customer management capabilities, with CRM technologies becoming widely adopted. In a survey of IT decisionmakers in North America and Europe, Forrester found that 70 percent said they were using or planning to use a CRM solution.4 Both B2C and B2B marketers benefit from using CRM software to systematically track and monitor customer actions. Not only do these solutions allow marketers to create lists of customer and prospect contact information, they also help record sales activity, product returns, calls to customer service and much more. Upsell or Cross-sell to Customer Base Once you have established a strong understanding of your customer base, you can better build promotional campaigns that deliver highly relevant and personalized reasons to buy. Whether it’s to a consumer audience or business purchasers, marketing campaigns created to upsell or cross-sell must deliver value at every interaction. Messaging becomes particularly important when reaching out to customers and encouraging them to spend more. You must create a holistic messaging system that provides consistent reference points across all No B2C communications channels. It confuses and dilutes a value proposition if you entice a sale with a coupon in one outreach and promote value and benefits in another. Marketers benefit from technologies that help ensure messages are sent and received when customers are most receptive to making additional purchases. The kind of timing to reach inboxes during these potentially lucrative 42% windows of time requires marketing automation solutions that help ensure promotional messaging that 58% is triggered following an action by a customerYes would indicate the potential for an upsell or cross-sell opportunity. No Fully half of all respondents to Silverpop’s survey said identifying the best time to send emails was a tactic that worked well for them. And finding the optimal time can be elusive. A study conducted by the Beta Research Corporation and sponsored by AOL found that 34 percent of U.S. Internet users check their email “throughout the day,” while 23 percent prefer to read their messages “as soon as they wake up.” Another tactic for upselling or cross-selling customers is to use promotional messages embodied in transactional messaging. Four out of 10 B2C and B2B marketers said in the Silverpop survey that including marketing promotions in transactional emails worked well for them. Silverpop’s Send Time Optimization Both B2C and B2B marketers want their messages to have high visibility when the recipient is looking at his or her inbox. Silverpop’s Send Time Optimization analyzes recipient behavior on a rolling basis to predict the ideal message delivery time for each address on the mailing list. The system then individually delivers messages to recipients at the precise day and time they’re most likely to be in their inboxes. Scheduling delivery at the optimized time also solves international mailing challenges. With a single send, messages are delivered at the optimal time, worldwide, eliminating the need to schedule multiple sends across time zones. Mint.com is the nation’s leading online personal finance service. The company tested Silverpop’s Send Time Optimization feature by splitting its recipient list, sending half of the list an email at a specific time in the regular manner and the other half with Send Time Optimization enabled. The email with Send Time Optimization enabled generated 10 percent more clicks than the other message. www.silverpop.com 1-866-SILVPOP (745-8767) © 2010 Copyright Silverpop. All rights reserved. The Silverpop logo is a registered trademark of Silverpop Systems Inc. 4 Silverpop Engagement Marketing Solutions WHITE PAPER Emails Go Viral with Share-to-Social The Silverpop Engage Share-to-Social feature can help you spread your marketing message and promote your brand through word of mouth on social media networks, ultimately making your marketing messages more effective and meaningful than ever. East Coast trains is a franchise operated by National Express Group, one of the world’s leading international public transport groups. Through Silverpop’s Share-to-Social feature, East Coast trains was able to significantly bolster its viral marketing activities and engage new customers. An email campaign for one-way fares led hundreds of customers to share the offer on social networking pages. Of those who posted the link, 17 percent had at least one open of the post, and 33 percent who opened a post then clicked. While commercial emails are increasingly ignored or considered spam, recipients say transactional messages are the type most worth reading. And six out of 10 consumers state they don’t mind receiving marketing messages included within transactional emails.5 Yet far too many marketers fail to maximize the marketing potential of this powerful channel. They ignore the revenue-generating possibilities of improved branding, crosssell and upsell opportunities afforded by this communications channel. loyalty. The trick to sending the most consistently engaging marketing messages lies in developing a solid understanding of customer likes, dislikes, preferences and even, in some cases, secret yearnings. Having such a mix of customer insights to draw from enables marketers to better send relevant campaigns. By implementing a program to survey customers about likes and dislikes, needs and desires, you’ll be better able to deliver what they want, when they want it. Forrester Research recently found that just 14 percent of email marketing executives plan to begin placing offers in their transactional messages.6 Transactional emails can be a powerful tool for marketers. By taking advantage of the high open rates of transactional messages and establishing brand loyalty at the time customers are most likely thinking about the company, top online retailers strengthen relationships with customers and drive revenue growth. People love to be asked for their opinion. Don’t forget to ask your customers for theirs. Mechanisms for customer feedback are important to help ensure they feel engaged with your company. B2B marketers have long recognized the importance of customer feedback, and conduct surveys and develop community forums to continually delve into issues of importance to their clientele. B2C marketers can also gather important customer insights through surveys. Increase Your Contact Database Who, in this day and age, isn’t looking for more warm bodies to sell to? It’s how you grow a business. Thirty-seven percent of B2C and 41 percent of B2B respondents to Silverpop’s survey identified increasing their prospect database as a key challenge in the coming year. Building customer loyalty is about keeping customers, not selling more to them. Especially when business is tough and customers are increasingly cautious with their spending, it’s tempting to move the focus on revenue generation to current customers. And while it’s OK to try to sell them more, it’s not OK to pat them on the back for their loyalty with one hand while you try to remove their wallet with the other. Marketers will only be successful at attracting prospects to their messaging by developing a highly nuanced picture of the customer. You have to know what excites them and what turns them cold. Know where they shop and what media they use. You have to do your homework to ensure you speak the right language at the right time and use the right channels to reach them. If you want to grab their attention to give you a shot at making the sale, you have to give them ample reason to listen to you and be sure the information you’re providing is not only relevant but uniquely personalized for each individual’s circumstances. Different Challenges Faced by B2C and B2B Marketers Increase Customer Loyalty The true power of sophisticated email marketing lies in its ability to create personalized relationships with customers and prospects that drive brand Recognize that truly engaged customers are valuable assets that must be nurtured and protected. Even those folks who don’t buy a lot but talk a lot about how much they love your products can prove to be supremely valuable to your bottom line. In the world of social media, people who promote your offerings are called influencers. Whether they just purchased a bag of diapers from you and were delirious with the absorbency, or received a salary bonus because the fan belts they ordered came in on time and under budget, don’t pass up the opportunity to connect with them in real and transparent ways. Recognize that individuals who willingly or eagerly offer their opinions and perspective are of greater value to you than those who merely passively purchase your products. Treat them accordingly. Want to Know What Customers Are Thinking? Ask Them! The Georgia Aquarium uses Silverpop Engage’s Survey offering to get customer feedback. The findings help generate market research and improve customer satisfaction. Aquarium marketers use surveys to better understand how guests perceive sponsors, how satisfied annual pass holders are, and as follow-up to event attendees. Because they integrate promotional offerings with the surveys, response rates are as high as 50 percent. www.silverpop.com 1-866-SILVPOP (745-8767) © 2010 Copyright Silverpop. All rights reserved. The Silverpop logo is a registered trademark of Silverpop Systems Inc. 5 Silverpop Engagement Marketing Solutions WHITE PAPER Do You Know Which Contacts on Your List Are Most Engaged? Silverpop Engage offers unique contact scoring tools that help you automatically identify hot contacts in your database based on demographic information or their interactions with your marketing efforts. For email marketers, this allows you to automatically create buckets of your most or least engaged contacts, and for B2B marketers, your hot leads are automatically funneled to sales, while earlier-stage leads are sent to your nurturing programs. Move Prospects/Leads Faster Through the Sales Pipeline Remember the old saying, “You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink”? The same goes for prospects. They may have found your Web site, and they may have even downloaded your latest white paper or searched your site for a new pair of shoes or a recipe using your cake mix. That doesn’t mean they won’t buy from someone else. Or will buy at all. Marketers benefit from nurturing potential customers along the pathway to a purchase decision. B2B marketers frequently utilize lead-nurturing programs to maintain ongoing contact with prospects that are interested but not yet ready to make a purchase. Such efforts can benefit B2C marketers as well. By implementing marketing programs that gather information about where potential new customers are in the buying cycle and moving them along in that process while favorably influencing them toward the company and its products, marketers are better able to influence results. Strong marketing programs that move potential customers from interest to conversion incorporate automated, timed communications designed to build trust and keep B2B your company top-of-mind. Lead-nurturing communications can include educational emails, newsletters, product information, industry news and more. A prime element of moving prospects from interest to 49% where they are in the buy51% conversion is understanding ing process. While more prominent in the B2B Yes world, ranking or scoring prospective customers on their perceived readiness to buyB2B can help all marketersNo better communicate the right messages at the right times. B2B Not surprisingly, B2C and B2B marketers that rank or score prospects use different criteria. B2C marketers evaluate geography, opens and click rates, household income and gender. B2B marketers are more likely to score prospects based on their industry, the expressed time to make a purchase and corporate revenue. A solid approach to identifying prospective customers with a high propensity to buy not only helps you better market to them, it can help you build a more powerful and accountable marketing organization. By tagging individual opportunities with a “propensity to buy” score, better tactical decisions on handling prospects can drive significant improvement in both marketing and revenue results. If you rank or score prospective customers, what criteria do you use? Household income 6% Gender 6% 40% Geography 29% 26% Pages viewed on Web site Opens/clicks of emails 22% 35% 16% Corporate Revenue 41% 31% 51% 49% 0% 53% 26% B2C Yes 42% 33% Content downloaded from Web site B2B 45% 24% Expressed time to make a purchase 49% B2B 31% Industry 51% B2C 10% 20% 30% 57% 40% 50% 60% NoYes No B2C 36% 64% B2C Yes B2C No Do you rank or score prospective customers on likelihood to purchase? www.silverpop.com 1-866-SILVPOP (745-8767) 64% 36% © 2010 Copyright Silverpop. All rights reserved. The Silverpop logo is a registered trademark of Silverpop Systems Inc. Yes 64% 36% 6 Silverpop Engagement Marketing Solutions Conclusion Are there important differences between B2C and B2B marketing practices? Yes, of course there are. But both require well-defined processes and a willingness to let prospects and customers lead a bit more than they follow. Both audiences require information to make decisions and desire the respect that allows them the time to make these decisions. B2C marketers can improve results by nurturing potential customers along the path to a purchase decision. And B2B marketers can take a hint from their consumer-oriented counterparts by creating loyalty programs that generate brand ambassadors. WHITE PAPER FOOTNOTES 1. “Social Marketing Scorecard,” Forrester Research, July, 2008 2. “Rethinking The B2B Tech Marketing Mix In The Digital Age,” Forrester Research, March, 2010 3. “Emails Gone Viral: ’Share to Social’ Performance,” Silverpop, 2009 4. “Eight Ways to Mine Value from Your CRM Systems,” Forrester Research, May 2009 5. “E-Mail Marketing: How to Improve ROI,” eMarketer, May 2005 6. “US Email Marketing Forecast, 2009 To 2014,” Forrester Research, June 2009 To find out more about Silverpop’s Engage platform and how it can benefit your company, please contact us toll-free at 1-866-SILVPOP (745-8767) or email us at [email protected]. Visit us at www.silverpop.com www.silverpop.com 1-866-SILVPOP (745-8767) © 2010 Copyright Silverpop. All rights reserved. The Silverpop logo is a registered trademark of Silverpop Systems Inc. 7