Marketing Automation

It’s easy to get caught up in a dog and pony show for the next great piece of technology and the fabulous ROI that it promises. But building a solid martech stack is really about finding solutions that will help you execute on your strategy, not bending your strategy to a piece of software with shiny functionality. Strategy comes first. Technology supports strategy.   In fact, the most critical element to building a marketing tech stack isn’t marketing technology. It’s the people that the technology supports. You can spend money […]

It’s Tuesday morning. You’re in the heart of the B2B Sales pit. No, you ARE the heart of the B2B Sales pit. You’re half a cup of coffee in and reviewing your pipeline when a HOT lead comes in from Marketing. Marketing assures you that this lead is qualified. They are excited. Practically bouncing on their toes excited. So excited in fact that after emailing you the information they are standing at your desk checking to see if you got their email. They also sent you a message on Slack. […]

Looking for ways to make your account-based marketing program a bit easier on your sales team? Look no further than your marketing automation platform.   Account-based marketing programs take personalization to the next level. From individualized follow-ups from your sales team to highly personal marketing touchpoints that speak to each recipient’s specific needs, the most successful account-based marketing campaigns focus on making each touch feel like your recipient is the only person in the campaign.   These programs typically start with a high-value, flashy physical item that incorporates a variable […]

When considering an email marketing or marketing automation platform, it’s easy to get analysis paralysis comparing features, promises and pricing tiers. With so many options, where do you start?   Whether you’re shopping for an alternative marketing automation platform, preparing an email or marketing automation platform RFP, or just starting to consider which platform might be right for the next level of your marketing efforts, the following questions can help you choose the right marketing automation platform for your digital marketing needs:   Be Selfish for a Minute You are, […]

If you’ve heard my position on CRM systems before, it should come as no surprise that I firmly believe marketers should have at least a 50% stake in every CRM system—and perhaps more so if you’re a B2B marketer. CRM systems are one of the most valuable repositories of data for marketers, and understanding how they work—as well as how they might work better—can help you refine your targeting strategy, improve your budget projections, prove out your ROI on marketing spend, and help you make marketing decisions based on data […]

Running successful, effective paid media strategies across Paid Search (Google/Bing), Paid Social (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, etc), and online display can be a challenging task for anyone, even marketers with tons of time. For marketers tasked with dozens of items, it becomes exponentially more difficult even for the most savvy and experienced digital marketer to keep up. Using marketing automation to enhance digital paid media campaigns can create new layers of efficiency and create a more integrated strategic approach. Here are four tricks for how you can leverage marketing automation […]

You know the stereotype: in a number of organizations, Marketing is a cost center. It’s the department of pretty pictures and branding campaigns. The department where budget goes to disappear.   But marketers, we know that’s not true. We’re measuring, we’re influencing, and we’re driving in tons of opportunity. The problem isn’t that we’re a cost center; it’s that we’re not very good at telling our impact story.   The good news is we can beat the perception of Marketing as a cost center by better using our CRM systems—all […]

Every salesperson wants things right now, whether that’s quality leads, effective marketing materials, pricing or contract concessions. Whatever is needed to close more deals, reach their goals, earn more commission.   As marketers, we know that the problem is, not every prospect or client, even if showing initial interest, is on their same timetable. They may not have a big enough need to make a purchase right now. Or maybe they’re under contract, satisfied with their current vendor, other projects are taking priority, currently have no budget—or it’s simply taking them […]

This story starts with t-shirts.   From our A/B Test t-shirts to our I Opted In to Get This Bag totes, emfluence has a long history of spinning digital marketing lingo into apparel. We like puns and we like marketing, and if we’re going to wear shirts anyway, why not have some fun with our brand? Turns out we’re not the only ones who like our shirts, and for years people have asked us: how can I get one of those shirts for myself?   So we did something a […]

On a scale of 1 to 5, how do your customers feel about your business?   That question is getting asked and answered about your business every day online. If you are not actively tuned in to this dialog, you are both putting your business at risk and missing a great opportunity to elevate your brand.   The Importance of User Reviews Online review sites started gaining traction around 2012 and since then, their growth has become exponential. Unlike a Net Promoter Score survey that you might hire an outside […]

Once upon a time, community banks and credit unions cornered the market on personalized communications and a neighbor-to-neighbor experience for their customers. But now, with the help of marketing automation platforms, big banks are poised to take back the customer experience. If community banks and credit unions hope to challenge those big banks, they’ll need a strong content strategy and an engine to deliver useful content to their customers. A great place to start is by building a user generated content guide for community banks or for your credit union. […]

There’s nothing that makes us happier than hearing from happy emfluence Marketing Platform users, which is why we’re excited to share the Spring 2018 G2 Crowd Report results with you.   G2 Crowd is a business solution review platform with a robust (and busy) marketing automation platform category. Each quarter, G2 Crowd releases reports to help buyers understand how software users feel about business software solutions, like the emfluence Marketing Platform. Rankings in each report are based on the data provided by actual users, which are averaged for the category—in […]

There’s hidden revenue potential in your existing customer base, and you can upsell using CRM data to find it.   Welcome to the art of upselling techniques: upselling is a way of encouraging existing, happy customers to spend more with you. On average, anywhere between 70 to 95% of revenue generated at B2B companies in a given year comes from upsells and renewals. For ecommerce and B2C companies, there’s a 30% chance a customer will make a second purchase, and a 50% chance that customer will make a third purchase. […]

Call it customer retention, customer loyalty, or brand affinity: what we’re really after as marketers boils down to one word, and that word is love. There’s nothing so powerful in marketing as the love of a customer, but fostering that kind of love takes patience, time, and maybe a little automation.   How to Build and Promote a Customer Loyalty Program Using a Marketing Automation Platform Your marketing automation platform isn’t just a lead nurture platform. If you want to improve customer loyalty, you can apply the same principles and […]

Are you subscribed to a regular or daily roundup email of some kind? Office Snapshots has been a favorite of mine since before we moved offices, for example.   One of our clients, YRC Worldwide, is a North American authority on shipping and is in the position to lead awareness of news coverage and recent industry developments. They started a daily news briefing email and it took off. The only problem was that the emails were cumbersome to build.   Extending the marketing stack with a daily roundup email This […]

If you’re talking about a CRM system, love isn’t usually the first word that comes to mind. It’s not uncommon for CRM to be a source of conflict for sales and marketing teams, and I’ve heard members of both teams question why we spend so much time worrying about our CRM systems.   In an ideal world, Marketing deserves at least a 50% stake in every organization’s CRM system. It’s our source of truth—it’s where everything we need to create a custom experience for our prospects lives. We deserve a […]

An engaged alumni base can help higher education marketers tap into a network of advocates that can refer future students, share stories about their experiences, and fundraise for future initiatives they care about. But first, you’ll have to create an alumni relations experience that’s worth engaging with.   How to Use an Alumni Email Series to Engage Post Graduates If you want to truly engage your alumni base with email, you’ll need to ditch the batch-and-blast approach. We’ve pulled together six of the best alumni email series campaigns that can […]

Ah, the holidays—the perfect time of year to cuddle up with an inbox full of offers from your favorite brands.   Thanks to email marketers, holiday shopping has become less stressful and the deals are just as good. This year alone, Black Friday online retail sales pulled in $5.03 billion, which is up almost 17% from last year’s online Black Friday sales. Online retail sales for the 2017 holiday shopping season are expected to break $100 billion.   For digital marketers, these numbers are nothing but good news. The only […]

Now more than ever, marketing and sales strategies and communications need to be aligned in order to create an effective growth strategy. The path and singular focus of these two historically siloed business units continues to move closer together into a unified vision. I believe that inbound marketing will be the centerpiece of this unification because of the focus on pipeline growth and nurturing.   An inbound strategy, in the broadest terms, is a marketing strategy which is focused on demand generation, lead acquisition, and lead nurturing. Traditionally, the line […]

By now it’s no secret that email marketing is a must-have in every marketer’s toolbox.   More than 82% of companies—big and small alike—are using email marketing in some capacity to drive leads and sales, and they’re using it for good effect. Recent studies show that marketers rank email as the most effective channel for acquiring new leads and holding on to existing clients, and more than three quarters of marketers are happy with the ROI of email marketing.   But here’s the thing: even though the vast majority of […]