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June 4, 2008 12:30 PM
We've been running our bi-weekly webinar series since July of last year. I could do the set up with my eyes closed. Perhaps a couple of minor glitches, but overall everything just worked every time.
Except for today.
We had a record-breaking number of registrants for today's webinar, "SEO Survival Tips for Marketers". This was a brand spankin' new webinar too, so I was very excited to be presenting it with Daleth. But after almost a year of trouble-free webinars, it had to come to an end.
Today there was no audio. For about 12 minutes.
We use the same meeting room, the same laptop, the same phone, and the same process for our marketing webinars every single time to minimize the risk of something going awry. Today our conference call provider accidentally locked us out instead of putting the call in "lecture mode" as requested. Perhaps they misheard "lecture mode" as "lock mode". In any case, as we were scrambling try and sort things out, there were more and more people logging into a webinar that had no presenters or sound.
After the delay, we were still able to continue the webinar in full (and tried not to sound too frazzled). All registrants will be receiving the recording in the next day or two. Apologies to everyone and thanks to those who hung in there.
May 30, 2008 1:30 PM
I often hear fellow marketing colleagues ask about where to source out a good list. They need to do some lead generation activities, and for some that's just about buying a cold call list for their sales team to tear through. It takes some time, but one of the best lists is the one you build from your own website.
Marketers are so willing to sink tens of thousands of dollars into
trade shows while they let their website become outdated. Your website
is like your booth, and you undoubtedly have more traffic passing by it
than on the trade show floor. If your web visitors are bouncing off your site then you're letting potential leads pass you by.
So you need to capture their information. This involves two basic steps: put forms in place to gather the information and have a plan to compel people to give you their information.
There are all sorts of forms best practices, and we all know about trying to keep forms quick and easy to fill out. Since Marqui is integrated with Google Website Optimizer, our clients can easily test to determine what form works best for their audience.
People are more than willing to provide their information if:
1. The content on your website communicates your value proposition succinctly
2. They receive valuable "carrots" in return such as a demo, whitepaper, or webinar
These lists you build from your website are made of people who already know who you are, so the read rate will likely be higher as well. It's one of the best lists you'll have.
May 20, 2008 9:15 AM
I went to a volunteer orientation session last week for a not-for-profit organization that will remain unnamed. Before the orientation session, people who wish to volunteer had to fill out a form on their website. It was a bit long but straightforward. I even got an email confirmation that my form was submitted successfully. Perfect. When I showed up at the in-person session, I noticed everyone was madly filling out the hardcopy version of the form. I asked the organizer if this was necessary if we already filled in the online form because I certainly didn't want to go through the hassle of repeating myself again. Well it turns out I did have to fill out the hardcopy form again even though I had successfully filled out the online form. Why? It was sort of a convoluted explanation about how the information somehow gets "lost". Why bother having an online form at all? And how does the information manage to get lost?
I was on another site for a professional organization in the high tech sector this time. This should be a better online experience right? Not so. The "form" I needed to submit was actually just a Word doc that I had to download, fill out, and then email into the staff. It's a bit archaic but fine. Well that didn't really work out either because they didn't process all of the information that I submitted, even when it was sent in the Word doc.
There's a lot of really cool technology out there these days, so it's a
little surprising to see some organizations still struggle with
building forms. I know people will argue that these are not-for-profits, so they can't afford to have a website with proper forms. I say "poppycock" to those people. We have loads of not-for-profit clients, large and small who can create forms on their own. It doesn't take deep pockets or technical knowledge.
Watch for a new case study coming soon on the Union Gospel Mission and what they've been able to do with marketing automation. Their forms really do work.
May 16, 2008 10:30 AM
The marketing team here at Marqui have experience in sending out email campaigns with many other companies we've worked at in the past. Most times we've always tried to send out email campaigns first thing Monday morning or perhaps the Tuesday. But it really was just a gut feel. Now that we use the Marqui solution (obviously) to send out our email campaigns, we can actually see which days get a better read rate and CTR. For some reason, Fridays always get a better response than any other day of the week. Perhaps people have more time to read their emails on Friday. Not sure but now that we can actually see the results, we are doing more of our campaigns on Fridays. I'm sure there is research out there that points out which days are better for read rates and such (I think I read something about Wednesdays), but there's only one way to find out what works best for your audience. Track the analytics on your email campaigns. Fridays work for us, but it might not be the best day for you. Just don't necessarily discount a specific day for sending out your email campaigns until you see the data to prove it.
May 9, 2008 10:30 AM
Jesse (our product manager at Marqui) and I delivered our first webinar on drip marketing this past Wednesday. We actually crammed a lot of information into those 30 minutes. We ran through what drip marketing was, the importance of nurturing leads, how you go about planning your drip marketing campaign, had some tips and industry examples. If any of you missed it, we'll be running it again sometime soon. Most of the webinar attendees had little experience with drip marketing but all seemed keen to start. Overall, I think it was an interesting and informative webinar. After all, we didn't get any heckling (although we did mute the line....). The attendees are from various B2B and B2C businesses, and it would be really neat to learn what type of drip marketing campaigns they crafted after walking away from this webinar. Drop us a line at webinars@marqui.com to share your drip marketing campaigns. Enquiring marketers want to know.
The show's not over yet. Hold on tight for our "Hot or not? Find hot leads with lead scoring" webinar on Wednesday, May 21. That will be my colleague Richard's first webinar at Marqui, and I will surely be heckling him. Register for Richard's lead scoring webinar here.
April 25, 2008 5:00 PM
Last week I was down in Portland presenting at Innotech Oregon, which bills itself as the region's premier business and technology innovation conference and expo. My topic was called “Optimize the Customer Funnel for More Sales-Ready Leads” and was part of the e-marketing summit. If I was to summarize the presentation in a couple of sentences:
- Think about demand generation as a single process – the customer funnel from first interaction right through to closed deal
- Prioritize sales-ready leads by lead scoring to improve campaign results
- Systematically nurture leads to generate more sales-ready leads
I’ll be saying more on each of those topic in future blog posts, but if you just can’t wait you can get a copy of the presentation you can get the PDF here.
It was fun presenting to “real” people for a change. Marqui delivers frequent webinars and even through you know 300 folks have logged in to listen and watch, it’s very much a one-way format. You can’t beat looking into the whites of the audiences eyes to get a sense how engaged or otherwise they actually are.
Based on a quick show of hands, the vast majority of the audience were marketers – probably 90% of the estimated 150 attendees. That’s not surprising. However only three people admitted to currently scoring leads before passing them off to sales. Given the tech-savvy bunch we had in the room that’s pretty shocking.
It was also good to see several of our local clients at the event including the Software Association of Oregon, Ethicspoint and Centerstance. All in all a great event and one I look forward to participating in next year.
March 9, 2008 9:00 PM
I was reading a number of articles on the language used by marketing professionals and it made me think. Can a simple change of words result in effective communication? and can using words that resonate with your audience increase the conversion rates and response rates of your communication and email campaigns?
Quote from one of the articles:
"The difference between marketing language and real language is that people don't think in marketing-speak. That is, their actual thought processes don't include the words found in marketing language."
The following examples were some talked about in the articles I read:
- Think about your audience as opposed to verticals or markets
- Think user experience as opposed to features and functions
- Think memories as opposed to promotions
- Think of creating a lasting impression as opposed to generating interest
- Think of telling a relevant success story as opposed to listing testimonials
- Use real language instead of marketing language
My lesson to be learned from reading the articles is to take a moment to think every time you are adding content to your website. If there is a better choice of words or messaging that is more relevant to your target audience it could potentially increase the overall length of time a visitor is on your site, increase email campaign conversion rates, and generate leads for your company.
The best way to succeed is to test, adapt, and refine. Multivariate testing can be used to test multiple combinations of elements on a landing page. So you can swap about picture-1 with headline-2 and button-3 and see how it works against picture-2 with headline-4 and button-2, etc. Its basically just testing a bunch of different variables and see which combo is the most effective (e.g., yields highest conversion rate)
The answer to the title "Can a simple change of words result in effective communication?" is Y-E-S. Even a 1% increase in conversions can substantially increase revenue.
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