MarketingSherpa Blog

While researching an upcoming consumer marketing case study about SquareTrade, a provider of extended consumer electronics warranties that tied a referral program to the release of the latest iPhone, I had the chance to speak with Angela Bandlow, Vice President Marketing, Extole, a consumer-to-consumer social marketing company that creates social referral programs. (Note: You can sign up for the Consumer Marketing newsletter to receive the case study on SquareTrade once it’s published.)

Social referral programs allow companies to tap into their customer advocates to promote their brands, products and services by getting those customers to share within their social networks. These programs then track the shares through to the conversion, whether that is a sale, an opt-in or a coupon redemption.

Extole recently conducted research on 20% of its customer base with an average data collection length of 45 weeks, and this research uncovered some interesting data points on social sharing among different companies.

What to measure when tracking social sharing

“If you think about a referral program, it’s a little different in terms of what you would measure than a standard marketing program,” Angela explains.

She offers a few areas to track with referral programs:

• How many of your customers are participating in your program? These people are called “advocates” at Extole.
• Of the people participating, how many people do they share with, and through what marketing channel — email, Facebook, Twitter, personal URL (PURL), etc.  This metric is important because it shows the “amplification” of the message or call-to-action.
• The number of social shares is the multiplication of the number of participants and the amount of sharing.
• Clicks-per-share, or in other words, the rate of clicking with the social shares from your customers.

“You see a different rate of amplification across social channels versus email,” says Angela. “Email is always going to be a one-to-one share.”

Extole’s research found in aggregate its clients get 3.49 shares per advocate. In other words, everyone participating in a referral program is sharing with almost three and a half friends. On the high end, some advocates share with as many as 12 friends.

Here is a breakdown of some of the data points across several channels:

• The largest percentage of advocate sharing is through email, and those shares get a 21% open rate, 80% clickthrough and 17% conversion (the highest conversion rate of any channel), which breaks down to .17 clicks per share.
• Facebook shares average 1.24 clicks per share, but the conversion rate is only 1.21%.
• Twitter actually averages 6.81 clicks per share, which creates the highest amplification rate of any channel.

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This research also found an overall average of 42% clickthrough rate through social referral programs and almost five friend clicks per share for highly performing programs.

Angela also offers a couple of examples from different clients:

A video rental service company gets the majority of its shares through people who get a personal URL and share it through various channels through cutting and pasting. This referral program includes an incentive offer of a free one-night rental for the customer advocate and a first night free rental for the friends.

Extole has found that amplification is improved when the effort involves an incentive.

A food delivery service gets 70% of its shares through email and another 15% via Facebook. On Twitter, that company gets almost nine clicks for each tweet.

“We’ve always known that word-of-mouth marketing was very powerful, and converted at an estimated three to five times higher rates than other channels,” states Angela. She adds this research puts some data behind the marketing power of letting your customers drive conversions through their social networks and communication channels.

Related Resources:

Email Summit: Integrating mobile, social and email marketing channels

Social Media Marketing: Social login or traditional website registration?

Social Media Marketing: A look at 2012, part 1

Social Media Marketing: A look at 2012, part 2

Social Media Marketing: Analytics are free and plentiful, so use them

Using Social Sharing to Achieve Specific Email Goals: 5 Insights

New Chart: Increasing Reach through Social Sharing

Do these facts about training for marketers surprise you?

• Training is the most important factor in retaining marketers under 30
• Three out of four marketers are not receiving the training and development they need for competence and success
• Only about a third of marketers describe their department as “highly skilled and competent”

These are just three pieces of information in the brand-new 2012 MarketingSherpa Executive Guide to Marketing Personnel.

But read a little further, and things get curiouser and curiouser (to paraphrase Alice in Wonderland). You see that turnover in the marketing department is a problem, especially in large organizations:

CHART: HOW SIGNIFICANT IS TURNOVER IN YOUR COMPANY?

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If turnover is a problem now, in an unsure economy, what is it going to be like when the economy starts picking up stream and marketers have more job options? It gets worse; the vast majority of companies have no career path for marketers. And it doesn’t matter if you are in a small company or a large one:

Read more…

B2B and other lead nurturing marketers are beset with challenges. Many are struggling to improve nurturing, scoring and alignment with the sales team, but they have a laundry list of questions.

I received 21 questions from the audience in recent a webcast for the American Marketing Association, “The One-Two Punch of Effective Lead Engagement: Accurate Lists and Powerful Content” (a replay of the webcast is posted below). Yesterday, I answered nine of the questions in a post on the B2B Lead Roundtable Blog. Today, I am answering 12 more below.

Questions on content

Q: When your sales team consists of medical reps who sell to doctors and show up at their offices twice a month, how do you nurture? Especially considering doctors aren’t Internet savvy?

A: I disagree doctors aren’t Internet savvy; there are social networks for the medical community that engage a quarter of a million physicians. That said, equip your sales team to ask for each doctor’s preferred means of communication: email, video, executive summaries, reports, etc. It could be a simple questionnaire.

Q: Should we consider paying outside subject matter experts to develop educational content?

A: Leverage internal experts first to build authority. But be sure the content you’re sharing will be valuable even if the prospect never buys. If your content doesn’t meet that standard, then you’ll want to think about using third-party experts to fill the gap.

Q: If you keep sending your contacts repurposed content (although the same information), won’t they be annoyed?  Wouldn’t they prefer fresher info?

A: Research suggests it takes at least seven to nine interactions for a message to be remembered.  If you have a complex offering, your audience will appreciate you breaking it down and presenting it in a variety of ways so they can better understand it. We have to look at our content from our customers’ point of view, not our own. Don’t be afraid of repetition — embrace it.

Q: What’s the right amount of emails with video versus straight emails?

A: You need to know your audience and how they prefer to consume content. Test and measure.

Questions on tactics

Q: My team has auto-communications that go to prospects once a week for eight weeks, and we have a team of callers that supplement this. Do you believe this will help nurture/re-engage older leads?

A: It could. Here are some thoughts and ideas:

• Nurturing is about building a relationship based on trust to continue a conversation. It’s not just about sending irrelevant information that could cause prospects to emotionally unsubscribe.

• Examine the cadence of your emails to determine if once a week is too frequent. Nurturing is a marathon, not a sprint. Nurture them at least the length of your sales cycle.

• Look at your results. How many opt-outs do you have? What are the call-to-lead conversion rates? How many opens and clickthroughs are your emails getting? The key is measurement.

• These resources will help:

Five nurturing tips to create relevant and engaging emails

How ECI Telecom Developed a Content-Marketing Program from Concept to Completion and the Surprising Results

Q: How do you know which marketing tactic attracted your customer? Email? Direct Mail? Print? TV?

A:  That’s a challenge every marketer faces in the complex sale. The answer depends on whether you’re measuring first touch or last, and if you’re focused on gathering names or closing the deal immediately.  Leverage your CRM to capture every touch point: Have they attended a webinar, downloaded a whitepaper, or registered for a newsletter? All of these actions contribute, so measure all of them. Make sure your CRM allows you to track multiple campaigns.

Q: What is the best way to treat leads from a purchased list versus inbound leads?

A:  Your answer can’t be quickly summarized, in fact, a book could be written on the topic. However, these blog posts will help:

How to Build a Quality List and Make Data Drive Leads

Lead Generation Check list – Part 5: Treat your marketing database as a valued asset

Do you expect your inside sales team to practice alchemy?

Questions related to strategy

Q: Any thoughts on lead engagement for B2C versus B2B?

A: In B2B, more people are involved in the buying decision, but, ultimately, people buy from people and the lines between these groups have blurred. MarketingSherpa will soon release its first-ever lead generation benchmark report that includes feedback from more than 1,900 B2B and B2C organizations on their lead generation challenges. In the meantime, here are some resources:

Lead-Gen: Top tactics for a crisis-proof strategy

B2B vs. B2C: What does it really mean?

Q: How does lead-nurturing ROI compare for B2C (rather than B2B)?

A:  As I mentioned above, MarketingSherpa’s 2012 Lead Generation Benchmark Report will be published soon and will have a very detailed answer. Again, reference this post: Lead-Gen: Top tactics for a crisis-proof strategy

Q: Can you set up a simple lead nurturing strategy without lead scoring, and then add scoring later, when you have data to evaluate?

A: Absolutely. In the beginning, simplicity is best.

Q: What’s a good lead score for a technology company?

A: You’re in charge of developing your score based on your requirements. There’s no industry-wide scoring system. Here are some lead scoring resources that will help:

Lead Scoring: CMOs realize a 138% lead gen ROI … and so can you

The Lament of the Inside Sales Team: Data, Data Everywhere, but Who’s Ready to Buy?

How to Use Lead Scoring to Drive the Highest Return on Your Trade-Show Investment

Funnel Optimization: Why marketers must embrace change

Q: Do you have a buying process model and a list of stages of the sales cycle?

A: Please refer to Pages 7 and 17 in my free e-book: Start With A Lead: Eight critical success factors for lead generation

A link to a replay of the webcast is included below. Do you have additional questions? Feel free to ask them in the comments.

Related Resources:

The One-Two Punch of Effective Lead Engagement: Accurate Lists and Powerful Content

How to Get the CEO to Support Your Next Marketing Plan

B2B Marketing Research: 68% of B2B marketers haven’t identified their Marketing-Sales funnel … and it shows

Lead Scoring: CMOs realize a 138% lead gen ROI … and so can you

Very few of us, especially marketers, know what next year or the year after will look like. Things are constantly changing and progressing with new approaches, better analytics and a greater level of sophistication in our industry.

The good news, while those aspects continually evolve, there are a few things you as an individual can do to ensure a productive and prosperous marketing career. They may seem obvious, but consider them carefully because your choice will mean the difference between a rewarding and frustrating career.

First and foremost, according to research I conducted for the 2012 Executive Guide to MarketingSherpa Marketing Personnel,  80% of marketers take assessments  to identify key competencies and personality traits. (An assessment is an examination, test and/or survey(s) that measures specific behaviors, values and/or skills that provide insight into an individual’s abilities and capacities.)

However, what comes next is disappointing … our study also showed that less than half of the assessments were actually used (by companies) to help ensure you are in the right marketing position. So, if you work for one of the companies not using assessments, your career satisfaction and success is entirely in your hands.

“People don’t pay for average.” — John C. Maxwell

And neither do marketing departments.

While you may enjoy multiple aspects of the marketing process, if you really want to excel in your career, you must ask yourself: “Which aspects do I enjoy the most and which am I best suited for?”

The reality is that you may be fairly competent in several areas, but no one is good at all of them — plus, each area is growing in the level of sophistication so rapidly that it is easy to quickly fall behind the learning curve. So what do you do?

• Obtain a copy of your assessments and make an appointment with your manager or HR specialist who had those tests run. Identify what you want to learn about your behaviors, strengths and weaknesses before the appointment that apply to the field of marketing you most enjoy.

• Have the individual go through the results with you thoroughly. Ask questions during the process. Yes, you will hear a lot of things you already know, but it is essential you see your competencies from another’s paradigm, not just your own. Let them identify your strengths and weaknesses based on the data.

• Use the comments you obtain from the debrief session to help you develop a plan.The plan should consist of:
  • How to use your strengths in your present position
  • How to reduce the weaknesses that might inhibit your professional growth and development
  • Try to codify what developmental resources you will need to obtain, either through or outside of company resources
  • Assign priorities and time frames, then implement your developmental process. Do not wait on a manager or  HR to do this for you. You may have to wait a long time for other’s help.

  Read more…

I recently attended an event on social media for film and video professionals. There were four panelists: two social media experts and two video pros who are very active in using social media to market their work. The crowd ranged from very green on the topic to a few power users.

What stood out to me was that when the questions got started, one of the social media experts went off on a marketing riff and threw out the term “conversion.” A hand immediately shot up and asked, “What is conversion?”

Flat out the best question of the evening.

Sometimes as marketers, we get lost in a sea of acronyms — CRM, SEO, ROI, CTR, etc. — and it only took one word to remind me that not everyone gets all of these references.

To be a truly successful marketer, you want to be as transparent as possible as well as provide clarity. If your message is anywhere in the world of insider esoterica where the audience might be confused, that message is lost. And maybe worse than just ignored, the audience might even feel left out.

What is “conversion”?

The definition in the MarketingSherpa glossary that appears in MarketingSherpa handbooks defines conversion as, “The point at which a recipient of a marketing message performs a desired action.” In other words, conversion is simply getting someone to respond to your call-to-action. Read more…

A successful email campaign is not the result of a single tactic or dumb luck. There are dozens of factors — everything from your list, to your timing. Knowing which factors matter most can greatly improve your “luck.”

Three factors are critical to successful email campaigns, says John Murphy, President, ReachMail:

Factor #1. Offer

Factor #2. Audience

Factor #3. Design

Murphy mentioned this in an interview for our latest article on email design. His comment got me thinking about how email marketers can improve in these areas.

Read more…

B2B marketing has always been complicated, and has only become more complex over the last few years thanks to evermore empowered buyers, new technologies, a difficult economy and growing international organizations that make navigating potential buyers and influencers in target companies harder by the day.

So, I sat down with Jen Doyle, Senior Research Manager, MECLABS, for a look at her recent discoveries from her 2012 B2B Marketing Benchmark Report to see what marketers are telling us about these challenges …

Here are some of the research discoveries Jen and I discussed in the video, along with the source charts: Read more…

This week’s B2B newsletter article, “B2B Marketing: 7 mobile and social media tactics,” features three industry experts providing insight into mobile and social media marketing. Although there is some overlap in practices, the complex B2B sale involves some channel techniques that don’t completely apply to consumer marketers.

But, luckily for B2C practitioners, one of the experts, Tim Hayden, Chief Marketing Officer, 44Doors, a mobile marketing solutions provider, had a few ideas for the consumer channel, too.

Here are a few quick-and-dirty ideas to hopefully improve your mobile marketing efforts. Some ideas you may have heard about before, and some might be completely new practices.

  Read more…

A steady diet of fresh data helps marketing teams invest wisely and reach the right person, with the right offer, at the right time. It’s almost like food for your strategy, giving it strength.

But like food, data needs skilled hands to process it. You cannot pull a potato out of the ground and call it dinner, and you cannot track unique visitors and call it marketing.

You need a data chef, better known as an analyst. This person will help you take the unprocessed fields of grain in your database and turn them into Fettuccini Alfredo. Big companies have been doing this for years.

Read more…

There are many valuable social media platforms for marketing: Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Google+ being the most well-known and popular. But, arguably the hottest and most talked about platform right now is Pinterest.

From its website: “Pinterest is an online pinboard. Organize and share things you love.” At least a little bit confusing from a marketer’s standpoint, right?

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I recently had the chance to speak with two self-described Pinterest “power users,” who also happen to be marketers with some ideas on how practitioners should approach the social platform.

Jessica Best, Community Director, emfluence, a digital marketing services company, and Tiffany Monhollon, Senior Manager of Content Marketing, ReachLocal , an online marketing company, provided their insight on Pinterest.

  Read more…