I watched Moneyball last night.

It’s the true story of how baseball started to introduce statistical and scientific methods to build better teams with reduced budgets.

For over 100 years baseball scouts (usually ex-players) picked and discarded players using gut instinct. Their thinking on what makes a great player conformed: technique, grace, beauty, reputation, potential, reliability and creativity.

Scouts looked for what you might call a player’s player. And the received wisdom worked, in the sense that nobody got fired for employing it.

The Oakland Analytics
No sport is an exact science, but baseball gets closer than most. There’s a mountain of data managed by a bunch of geeks who can tell you everything you need to know about players from a numbers perspective: hits, walks, runs, steals…

And these people look at the game differently. They don’t understand potential or grace: they do understand the raw contribution every player makes to the bottom line of winning matches.

And guess what? An analyst’s player isn’t a player’s player. Not even close.

The raw data theory is simple: it says you can assemble a winning team for a fraction of the usual cost if you change focus from subjective feel to objective analysis.

But would anyone have the bottle to take on the establishment and risk their reputation and livelihood? Billy Beane and the Oakland Athletics, with one of the league’s smallest budgets, risking their reputations and livelihoods, finally went for it and recorded the longest winning streak in baseball history with their ugly team of graceless, ageing misfits. And changed the game.

Resistance is Futile
The Oakland management team realized they could only compete by focusing on direct return on investment. They stopped asking how much a player would cost to buy: they started asking how much a run, or even a win, would cost to buy.

They looked at the sport differently and, despite being lampooned by a hostile establishment with everything to lose, they changed the way baseball works.

And it’s the same in B2B marketing. Time to adapt or die. Let’s:

Quit thinking of science as a geek’s preserve and embrace a quantitative approach to marketing.

Stop caring about what our peers think and start finding out which investments actually buy us prospects, customers and revenue.

Cease wasting cash on what’s big and trendy and keep investing cash in whatever tried and tested process keeps bringing in the punters.

Lose reliance on big opinions and take control of the marketing process with big data.

End the fascination with agency beauty parades and get deep and dirty with analysts and data jockeys who truly understand what’s working.

Adjust any hiring processes that rely on portfolios that don’t show impact on the bottom line.

Scrap any marketing campaign that talks costs rather than value and revenue.

Pull creatives out the darkness and give them a fantastic platform to spin their best ideas.

Rethink the idea that growing a marketing budget is more important than delivering more than less.

I could go on. But at the end of the day it’s all about money, whether it’s ball or marketing, and we’d all better get used to it.

I’ll leave you with a quote from  “The Win Without Pitching Manifesto” by Blair Enns:

“There are greater causes by which to frame an enterprise, and there are nobler metrics by which to measure the value of effort. But we cannot escape the fact that money is both a necessity in life and the most basic scorecard of success in business. Even if it is not the validation we seek, it is the most basic of test that we must pass.”

And it’s our job as B2B marketers to make sure we pass the test every day.

© neilstoneman for Velocity Partners, 2011. | Permalink | 6 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: B2B content marketing, B2B marketing

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If there’s such a thing as a template for a B2B content marketing blog post; then it looks a bit like this:

Dear Prospective Client,

That thing you’ve been trying to do. Well, you’re not doing it right.

Here’s a reason, preferably a list of reasons, why it’s going pear-shaped.

And here’s how we can save you from yourselves.

Send your cheques to…

We call it the Helen of Troy structure because – going by my Twitter feed – it launches about a thousand posts a day.

We’ve all done it. I moaned the other week about the feeling of doom – the Ave Santini Moment – as planning starts its descent to content marketing hell.

But maybe it’s time to focus on the clients getting it right, and applaud a tangible shift toward content marketing best practices in recent months.

The Ave Maria Moment
More recent planning discussions have honed in on one of content marketing’s sweetest spots: where content production and promotion work in harmony give you one almighty return on investment.

It’s the Ave Maria Moment: the feeling of marketing ecstasy (of the old-fashioned kind) accompanied by the sound of a celestial choir making soothing music in my head as a plan starts coming together.

And this one comes together hard to put content at the fulcrum of the whole B2B marketing process:

Optimized Content Marketing
The first challenge of content marketing, as Doug recently discussed, is the creation and management of a great content development process. But the second is ensuring content rolls off the press fit for promotion from day one.

If you don’t get support from people in charge your key promotional channels then you’ll be praying for a miracle. Here are the 10 Content Marketing Commandments that will ensure your content hits the ground running from day one:

1. Ensure every piece comes with campaign support. Plan supporting plays like landing pages and blog posts for the website or emails for nurturing campaigns long before launch day.

2. Customize content to reflect each channel. Adapt content (main feature or support) to introduce, for example, references to past behaviour in nurturing or referral pages in campaigns for better results.

3. Inject keyphrases into your content. Turn simple backlinks into juicy anchor text by optimizing your content title and landing pages (at the very least) with your top researched keyphrases.

4. Remember the funnel effect. Each piece of content is part of a wider funnel. Don’t forget to cross-reference other content, particularly if it’s a step further down your funnel.

5. Research your social network. Make sure your content is aligned with big subjects already popular in your social circles and our content is likely to compel. Makes selling in these related guest posts simpler.

6. Introduce social content. Referencing the work of others using quotes, excerpts or mentions in your content will increase the chances of them engaging with your work and (if it’s good enough) promoting it.

7. Get social feedback. Take the opportunity to share early drafts with people in your social circle: they’ll get to know your work as part of the process and help to make it better.

8. Socialize your database. Don’t forget that your database has its own social network. Make it easy to share your best content with simple integration with Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn (at the minimum).

9. Introduce campaign tags. Make sure you can chart the performance of every channel and medium by adapting shared campaign tags. You won’t add them after the content is launched.

10. Integrate channel feedback. Understand the goals of every challenge and make sure every piece of content has a clear impact on promotional metrics.

© neilstoneman for Velocity Partners, 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: B2B content marketing, B2B marketing

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So what is the omen that sparks the orchestra into life? It’s a request for a specific type of content before the idea has even been discussed.

It happens every time somebody asks for “an infographic”, before they have any information; “thought leadership”, before they’ve done any thinking; or “a viral”, before they’ve done anything infectious.

The Ave Santini Moment
It’s all a bit predictable: content vehicles emerge, explode but ultimately decline when marketers start planning trendy outputs before they’ve plotted any meaningful inputs.

When Marshall McLuhan famously said that the media is the message he may have had a point; but not anymore: people want great, creative ideas presented and delivered in the best way (whatever that maybe).

The end result looks like a classic product curve: what was young and energetic, starts to look mature and tired, and begins a rapid decline accompanied with a backlash against “infocrapics” and “viral diseases” as the market gets swamped with corporate propaganda that wouldn’t look out of place in an edition of Pravda.

The graphic below illustrates the point of panic for this humble B2B marketing account director:

As you can see there’s a paradox at work here: the Ave Santini moment takes place as the putative number of experts starts exponential growth. Why? Because the experts, following the demand and the money, tend to be technical (focused on outputs) rather than creative (ideas focused).

Why it matters
And all this worries me because it makes providing the best possible service more difficult in three ways:

• Genuine creativity is overlooked. If it’s not your primary consideration then your campaign will be still born.

• Great content vehicles get commoditised too quickly. It’s annoying when tools become cheapened and discarded when there’s no obvious upgrade: we know iPhone 5 is coming with new features, but there’s no roadmap for infographic 2?

• Content marketing gets demonized. It’s harder to do great marketing when you alienate your audience with empty shells rather than useful, beautiful and actionable content.

So let’s exorcise the growing belief that vehicles are the source, rather than the vehicle, of creativity. Put the idea first then we’ll protect our profession, our campaigns, our options and, of course, my mind.

© neilstoneman for Velocity Partners, 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: B2B content marketing, B2B marketing, Thought Leadership

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The project has been our commitment to showing business value from our B2B Marketing Manifesto campaign. If you’ve been following then you’ll be familiar with the ‘warts and all’ B2B analytics case studies we’ve published along the way.

It’s been great fun but now – after a long campaign and an equivalent budget spend of £25,000 (made up of our time and a dabble of a few hundred quid in PPC experiments) – comes the definitive wrap-up post for the first six months. Did we fulfill our promise of last year? Or have we been hoist by our own petard?

Let’s find out.

Business Goals

Conversions
We set two new business targets.

Two projects from new clients
We’ve smashed this target. We’re sure the likes of Baynote and AppCentral will be happy to rubber-stamp the fact.

Three projects from existing clients
Another tick in the box. We loved welcoming Magus and Elateral back into the office for new campaigns and projects.

So what’s that in actual ROI terms? I talked to the guys huddled by the company abacus and they assured me the top line return is running at 700% plus. One of them actually smiled (rare for an abacus guy).

But what about the bottom line? Well, the figure of 175% (hat tip to the Lenskold Group) after only six months makes some pretty tidy reading.

Business Pipeline
We also set a target of fresh fuel for lead nurturing campaigns.

Gather 200 names for our database
A slam dunk. Of the thousands of new contacts, we added 392 names that meet our criteria (demographic and psychographic) to our prospect database. The others are still in our wider list of ‘people we’re happy to know’.

We expect a future ROI boost as our B2B lead nurturing campaigns work their magic and turn prospects into future sources of revenue. The pipeline’s rumbling.

So the job’s a good one and, if we’re writing a senior management report, we would probably stop here.

But if you’re keen to know the details that underpinned our success, we’re keen to share them.

Operational Goals

Site Performance
We had three main key performance indicators (KPIs) measured over six months and, when relevant, benchmarked against past performance.

Generate 1000 Manifesto downloads
Another winner. In six months the flood of downloads (1506 to be precise) means we’ve outperformed our target by over 50%. Here’s a month by month break-down.

Inspire 50 comments on the download page
A tough assignment but a success. You’ll find 87 (minus one we made ourselves) lined up on the download page, and at least a dozen more across various other parts of our site. It helped that we begged:

Drive 25% increase in thought leadership downloads
This one’s out the park. We scored an ultimate 171% uplift in downloads as the Manifesto itself became a huge source of referred traffic as visitors came, in droves, to check out our B2B content marketing library.

Search Performance

We wanted to improve our overall search performance in three ways.

Get higher up Google.com and UK index for ‘B2B Marketing’
Whoops. We’ve been up and down here (as you might expect) but finished the project down four spots in the UK and even further adrift in the US.

Increase search traffic on “B2B Marketing” stem by 50%
More like it. A 86% increase in search traffic shows why you should never forget the value of longer tail searches.

Increase search conversions on “B2B Marketing” stem by 35%
Close, but no cigar. But a 26% conversion rise is still a decent return (see the small green number under “Goal: Conversion Rate):

We also wanted to match the backlink performance of Content Marketing Workbook. The current running totals from SEOmoz (excluding internal links initially counted*) are:

We’re happy with the results for three reasons: the content marketing book is 14 months older, it’s a more instructive (rather than inspirational) read and it has benefited from campaign cross-promotion.

Social Media

We also used the Content Marketing Workbook as a benchmark for our social media results.

Increase visits from social media by 50%
Back on track. We scored a 65% spike from key social media sites like Twitter, LinkedIn, Digg, SlideShare, Reddit, Delicious and Facebook.

Increase social media conversions by 100%
I think we’ve done it. Is a 2910% rise enough? It’s almost too good to be true.**

Improve our time on site and bounce rates
Two boxes, two ticks: a 21% and 8% hike respectively – see the small green figures that compare data with the benchmark period:

Online PR

Using the Content Marketing Workbook launch as a benchmark we found.

Increase visits from Online PR by 50%
Ace! It’s an increase of 194% on our benchmark period.

Increase Online PR conversions by 100%
Whoosh! Increased by over 5000%. Almost certainly too good to be true**

Improve our time on site and bounce rates
Mixed bag. A 13% drop in time plays a 17% better bounce rate.

The Seven Cs of Strategic Analytics

So that’s the project in numbers. We’re delighted, relieved and more than a little bit wiser. It got us thinking about the role analytics play in helping B2B marketers create better campaigns. Your analytics deliver more when they’re:

1. Commercially-Focused
The first thing is to make sure you work out the impact on sales and revenue. Imagine you can prove that your work brings in the revenue (and the profits); then imagine your next review; now ask yourself why marketing analytics are so important.

2. Campaign-Driven
You can’t measure everything. And measuring the odd random statistic is pointless. That’s why campaigns with clear budgets, costs, timelines and outcomes are a great marketing focus. What’s not to measure?

3. Conversion-Based
Getting people to your site one thing, but the goal has to be to make them do things: download, play, contact, buy. These action-orientated behaviors are signs of funnel movement. And that’s what we’re paid to do.

4. Consistent (Part 1)
We’re all (most of us anyway) programmed to act consistently. The chances of us doing something increase exponentially when we publicly declare we’re going to do it. The act of writing Open Kimono significantly increased the likelihood of its success. The main point: the best analytics shape your future, they don’t just report on the past.

5. Consistent (Part 2)
And there’s the other kind of consistency. You need to stay focused from start line to finish line. We’ve tried to be consistent and report on the things we identified at the start. Sure business directions change, but shifting the project goal posts too far simply leaves you with data that makes no sense.

* We included internal links in our initial analysis. We shouldn’t have done that.

** The data looks great but reflects better goal organisation and management in our analytics more than actual performance.

6. Comparative
Only by benchmarking results against your own past projects or competitors (using tools like compete.com) can you really determine success. It’s not about how things are: it’s about how much better you can make them.

7. Continuous
This project is over, but it’s just one of a number we’ve got running at any one time.  A commitment to great analytics is a commitment to great marketing. You don’t stop one if you want to carry on doing the other.

Summing Up

So it’s time to close the Kimono and get on to our next ideas. The entire exercise has been hugely rewarding, enlightening and just plain fun. We put our money where our mouths used to be. We set out our targets, metrics and performance for all to see. And we’re really glad we did.

Campaigns for our clients have already benefited from the things we learned in this project, with measurable results. So watch this space.

Thanks for staying with us – do catch up with the rest of the project if you’ve not done it before – and don’t be shy to leave a comment below. We’d love to know what you think of this exercise.

Project Open Kimono Part 1 – the one where we commit ourselves in public (Planning)

Project Open Kimono Part 2 – the one where it all kicks off (Thinking)

Project Open Kimono Part 3 – the one where confidence starts to rise (First results)

Project Open Kimono Part 4 – the one where the trick shots start (Cross-promotion)

Project Open Kimono Part 5 – the one where we share the first month’s results (Reviewing)

Project Open Kimono Part 6 – the one where we toughen up (Soul Searching)

Project Open Kimono Part 7 – the one where we find the world’s best marketers (Segmenting)

Project Open Kimono Part 8 – the one where we show that design isn’t everything (Style v Substance)

Project Open Kimono Part 9 – the one where lead nurturing proves its worth (Marketo)

Project Open Kimono Part 10 – the one where the form fights back (Form v No Form)

Project Open Kimono Part 11 – the one about autoDMs in Twitter

Project Open Kimono Part 12 – the one about re-purposing and atomising your content

Project Open Kimono Part 13 – the one with an early peek at the outcomes

© neilstoneman for Velocity Partners, 2011. | Permalink | 3 comments | Add to del.icio.us
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Do you believe that B2B marketing has become a new Land of Accountability? Do you believe marketing is as much about bottom lines as straight lines?

If so, then let’s talk. We’re looking for a Digital Marketing Analyst who can support the planning, execution and reporting of a range of B2B digital campaigns.

You’ll be the one mining marketing gems from the growing data mountain:

- Trawling Google and social media packages for real insight.
- Turning information into great ideas, optimization campaigns and reports.
- Reminding our clients why we’re worth every penny of our fee.
- Showing the world that great marketing delivers ROI.

Is it you?
You’ll know the job’s right if you have a:

- Couple of years in the marketing or online PR industry under your belt.
- Belief that every marketing investment deserves a return.
- Unshakable feeling there just might be a better way.
- Love of a consistent improvement chart.
- Desire for a digital future.

What’s the day-to-day?
Here are the details:

- Provide regular campaign reports and insights to team and clients
- Manage and monitor progress of social media campaigns
- Manage software to drive successful social and SEO campaigns
- Optimize content from websites to eBooks
- Contribute creative campaign ideas
- Use and update project management tools
- Work closely with outside contractors
- Stay up-to-date with fast-moving social media, SEO and web analytics technologies
- Maintain documentation to chart social media and SEO campaigns successes
- Build a presence in the wider social media community
- Work with databases that underpin “lead-nurturing” marketing campaigns
- Maintain analytical reports in client-friendly manner

You’ll be working with

- Agency management
- Design team
- Outside contractors

You’ll be reporting to

- Account Director

Term of employment
Permanent

Salary
Let’s talk about it, but we’re thinking £25 to £30k

Qualifications and Skills

- A minimum of two years in B2B marketing / communications role
- A strong sense of customer service with deep attention to detail
- Good analytical, writing and communication skills
- Self starter with organizational skills capable of working across multiple projects
- Knowledge of Google tools (Analytics, Keyword Tools, Adwords)
- Knowledge of social media tools (Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook)
- Knowledge of project management tools (Excel, Basecamp, Microsoft Project)
- Knowledge of CMS technologies (WordPress)
- Some understanding of HTML and JavaScript an advantage

Interested? Then contact me (neil@velocitypartners.co.uk) with your CV and a few lines about yourself.

Find out a little bit more about Velocity here.

Sorry, troops, but no agencies this time.

© neilstoneman for Velocity Partners, 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: B2B analytics, B2B marketing, B2B marketing agency, Online PR

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I think Google Adwords should cease to exist.

And any B2B marketing organisation using it should stop immediately. It’s not Google AdWords you need to be using: it’s (insert your company name here) AdWords.

I’m no Google detractor (I’ve always accepted the Green Park pub incident wasn’t their fault) so don’t abandon the platform, just make sure you carefully and thoughtfully customize their factory settings.

It might only be a daily drip of money down the drain, but it soon adds up if the wrong traffic takes a trip to your site every day and leaves without a single commercial thought. Let’s look at the typical issues we uncover at clients who had been running the out the box settings for some time.

Keywords
Usually it’s best to avoid going for broad match keyphrases unless it’s part of a carefully controlled experiment.  You need to adapt match types to get the focused traffic typical of B2B organisations. If you want a prospective customer then go for “phrase” matching or, at least, set up your negative keyphrases.

Geography
Make sure you don’t advertise outside your target market. You need to customize your markets or end up wasting most of your impressions. And don’t be tempted to launch English language ads on the world without customizing the content. A blank box might do more good.

Display Networks
Don’t sign up to the Display Network unless you are carefully customizing your list. Under no circumstances should you go for automatic placements – it’s tantamount to chucking your daily budget out the window. If you’re working in a B2B technology business then you’re almost certainly in a niche. And a niche can be managed.

Mobile Networks
We used to have doubts over the mobile network. We’ve softened as browsing experience grows. If you want to make sure you’re doing the right thing then look at your site’s analytics to understand your users’ choice of technology.

Bidding and Budget
Start low and grow only if you see success in what you’re doing.  You can, however, consider higher bids for the right phrases as you tighten your control.

Position
Generally you want to bid for the top. Focus your budget on beating the competition on focused searches using the budget you’ve saved from irrelevant Display Network and broad match traffic.

Ad Extensions
You don’t really need to worry about this too much. It’s more useful for small businesses of the butcher, baker and candlestick maker variety (and I’d include Green Park publicans in that list). Put it on when you think of a reason.

Timings
If you do business in the UK probably best to restrict your adverts to working hours. Anyone searching on the internet at 3am is unlikely to be looking for ERP systems.

Ad Rotation
You probably do want to rotate our top performing adverts but you should also manage the process manually through your own tests.

Frequency Capping
If you do decide to test elements of the Display Network you should use this to ensure you keep control of the test. Your AdWords, your rules.

Conversions
Conversions are attractive. If you achieve enough conversions we can move from a CPC to a goals based CPA charging model.  You can then pay for users who complete goals rather than click through traffic that delivers no value. Set it up and consider customizing goals that are realistic for your traffic.

This list should get you started on settings. Google AdWords is a great tool but if you’re paying for it, you need to be customizing it.

© neilstoneman for Velocity Partners, 2011. | Permalink | 3 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: B2B Adwords, B2B marketing, B2B marketing agency

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Hello measurement fans.

If you’ve been following  Project Open Kimono you will know that one of our top targets for our B2B Marketing Manifesto has been 1000 downloads in six months.

And we’ve made it – with over 100 days or so to spare. And in true hastily-written-press-release-style: “We’re delighted!”

It may only be one target, but it’s a big one: if we didn’t have downloads, we wouldn’t have much to say about the other metrics -  the conversations, conversions, contagion, content (and all the other not quite so alliterative stuff).

But we’ve only gone and bloody done it, which means we’ve got shed-loads still to tell you. And here’s the next installment.

B2B Form Investigators
In Open Kimono 5 we started to talk about the web form dilemma – it’s a tricky night’s sleep when you love lead nurturing, which relies on gathering leads, but hate scaring off 50% of your potential fans, advocates and prospects.

So we put on our deer stalkers, lit up our pipes, and launched a three week investigation into the Yin and Yang. Here’s what we’ve found out.

That’s a 39.1% conversion uplift by taking away the form. So if you click on our B2B Marketing Manifesto landing page, what do you expect to find there now?

Surprised to see the form back? The putative loser is through our, admittedly  contrary, eyes a pretty healthy winner. Sure some people run for the hills, but the form can’t take all the blame: it’s not the hideous ogre we first feared.

For us, the data the form giveth is worth more than the awareness the form taketh away.

The fact is that 40% of our traffic just doesn’t want the content even if it’s only a pushed button and a fraction of a second away. They probably wouldn’t go for it if we offered a year’s supply of the Kool-Aid.

Well, they might, but that’s another test, for yet another issue of this seemingly endless series of blogs!  There are B2B marketing mysteries waiting to be solved everywhere we look.

But there’s no doubt about it – the form stays. We’re keeping it because it serves as the start of a B2B marketing process upon which our campaign grows in strength. The figures simply don’t support taking it down.

A Few Caveats
While we hope there are lessons for everyone here, we would warn against extrapolating our experience into all campaigns. Our form:

• Asks for the bare minimum to start nurturing leads. Downloads would drop, along with information reliability, with every additional field.
• Is aimed at marketing people: people who build forms are more likely to fill them in – our bread and butter techies are more sceptical.
• Uses other marketing elements – such as comments and testimonials – to overcome form reticence.

The key take-away is the value of testing itself; applied to your unique content, audience, timescales, next steps, resources…

We’ve solved the debate, for now, but only for this campaign. The next time the results just might be different.

Want to catch up on the rest of Kimono? Here’s the full bifter.

Project Open Kimono Part 1 – the one where we commit ourselves in public (Planning)

Project Open Kimono Part 2 – the one where it all kicks off (Thinking)

Project Open Kimono Part 3 – the one where confidence starts to rise (First results)

Project Open Kimono Part 4 – the one where the trick shots start (Cross-promotion)

Project Open Kimono Part 5 – the one where we share the first month’s results (Reviewing)

Project Open Kimono Part 6 – the one where we toughen up (Soul Searching)

Project Open Kimono Part 7 – the one where we find the world’s best marketers (Segmenting)

Project Open Kimono Part 8 – the one where we show that design isn’t everything (Style v Substance)

Project Open Kimono Part 9 – the one where lead nurturing proves its worth (Marketo)

Project Open Kimono Part 10 – the one where the form fights back (Form v No Form)

——-

Photo Credit: Gregory Wake on Flickr Creative Commons

© neilstoneman for Velocity Partners, 2010. | Permalink | 9 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: B2B analytics, B2B content marketing, B2B marketing, B2B Marketing Manifesto, Open Kimono, web analytics

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It’s Friday, it’s five o’clock..it’s measurement time.

If you’ve been following Project Open Kimono then you’re bound to be champing at the bit for an update on our B2B Marketing Manifesto campaign.

If you’ve not been following it then you’ve got no fewer than eight previous posts on which to feast your eyes and brain. These bad boys are the bodice rippers of the B2B analytics world. Or you could just stick with this for now.

We’re looking good on all our top line targets:
•    900 downloads from a target of 1000
•    4 serious new business discussions from a target of 2
•    2 new projects with existing clients from a target of 3
•    59 comments from a target of 50
•    161% rise in views of our existing content library from a target of 25%

Today, though, we want to tell you about the impact and value of Marketo, our lead nurturing tool of choice, on our outreach to our database.

If you’re a lead nurturing novice, check out Software Advice‘s Lauren Carlson’s excellent outline of the macro-drivers for lead nurturing, then come back to see the difference it can make to your own database.

Velocity’s average email click through rate (CTR) is 12% but armed with nurturing nunchakus, we predicted (with finger in the air) a 30 per cent increase to a 15.6% CTR.

But we didn’t want to stop our benchmarking there so we dipped into the UK Email Marketing Benchmark Report 2010 (Q1 & Q2), a report that analyses opt-in campaigns for the first six months of the year to snaffle some third party average response data.

I couldn’t decide if we should compare with B2B services or marketing (we’re a B2B marketing services company) so will include both. It looks pretty bleak to be honest.

Before we dig into our results, I will admit that our lead nurturing campaign is only a snapshot of what we’d do for one of our clients with an enterprise scale database, but, in many ways, that just makes it easier to focus on the core benefits lead nurturing offers.

So how did lead nurturing help us get ahead of ourselves, people like us and everybody else? We planned four steps to get our campaign just right.

Step One – Get Our Lists Right
The first thing we did was segment our Marketo database and separated out the people who downloaded our Content Marketing Workbook. Why? Because we expected, based on their past behaviour, they’d be more likely to download our ebook. So we had two lists of 544 and 182 prospects.

Step Two – Get Our Content Right
We loaded the following campaign content into Marketo. If you don’t get the content right, as Doug’s already written about in Kimono 8, then you’re just not ready for nurturing. We had:

•    Custom HTML emails for both segments of our database
•    Landing page without form (we already know these people)
•    Automatic responder to everyone who downloaded the manifesto
•    A follow up text email for everyone who failed to open the first email
•    An internal email alert to show when top prospects converted

Step Three – Get Our Flow Right
This is the clever automated bit. The bit that you couldn’t do manually if you had six MENSA test writers working full time on your database.

•    Send out our emails to our two database segments
•    Apply a score of 5 points to relevant prospects who click our mail
•    Apply a score of 20 points to relevant prospects who download the manifesto
•    Send out an auto-responder a day later inviting comments (see top metric)
•    Remove all first time click throughs from our flow.
•    Send out a follow up to all non-converts a week later

Step Four – Reporting
So what happened? Here are the top level metrics for the first custom emails, sent to our database segments.

A good response, showing the value of good content, and a lot of key prospects with a growing score moving towards what the lead nurturing industry calls the sales-ready threshold (in Velocity it’s known as stan-ready).

Then we send out the follow up mail goes out a week later to those who didn’t catch it the first time.

Again we’re performing well, moving more people along our funnel to Stan’s clutches, but the real value comes from a glance at the compound click-through rates. We can compare these with our estimate of 15.6%.

The compound Content Marketing CTR = 26.4%
The compound Database Marketing CTR = 16%
The compound Overall CTR = 18.6%

Now that’s lovely. And if that wasn’t enough, take a look at the conversion rates; they’re over 80%.

The Lead Nurturing Effect
What I love about lead nurturing is how it transforms your email campaigns from points to processes. Our campaign is only the tip of the iceberg but it has helped us smash the industry benchmarks and exceed our own expectations.

The 50% growth in our click through rates is reason enough to love it and we’re already reaping the benefits of the lead scoring that transforms our database into a real prospect engine.

What’s not to like?

Catch Up On Project Open Kimono

Project Open Kimono Part 1 – the one where we commit ourselves in public (Planning)

Project Open Kimono Part 2 – the one where it all kicks off (Thinking)

Project Open Kimono Part 3 – the one where confidence starts to rise (First results)

Project Open Kimono Part 4 – the one where the trick shots start (Cross-promotion)

Project Open Kimono Part 5 – the one where we share the first month’s results (Reviewing)

Project Open Kimono Part 6 – the one where we toughen up (Soul Searching)

Project Open Kimono Part 7 – the one where we find the world’s best marketers (Segmenting)

Project Open Kimono Part 8 – the one where we show that design isn’t everything (Style v Substance)

Project Open Kimono Part 9 – the one where lead nurturing proves its worth (Marketo)

Project Open Kimono Part 10 – the one where the form fights back (Form v No Form)

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Post tags: B2B marketing, B2B marketing agency

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We believe the people who find and download the B2B Marketing Manifesto are our kind of people. It’s not just a plea for ambition. It’s a 46 page psychographic test.

So where should we be looking? Where are the B2B marketers who are prepared to sit eyeball-to-eyeball with their sales directors and give them hell?

We’re going to use analytics to find our idea of the world’s B2B marketing hotbed.

As our traffic is roughly split between Europe and the Americas it feels like the right place to start. Let the B2B Marketing Ryder Cup begin.

Europe has delivered the most site visits since we launched the B2B Manifesto. So Europe wins, right?

In many businesses the answer would be yes. Sites are often orientated to this basic demographic. If you’ve ever heard the immortal line: “the bulk of our traffic comes from…”, then you’ll know what I’m talking about.

But this isn’t just a numbers game, it’s a psychographic test. We need to know more.

Pack away the champagne and unload the Zinfandel! You’re twice as likely to respond to the message and download the Manifesto if you hail from the New World.

But it’s still not enough. The figures need still more focus. The graphic above includes everybody – the hawkers, the spammers, the spiders – that come to our site. They’re not marketers. Why would they ever download our book?

Can extra precision offer Europe a way back?

Because we’ve tagged our campaign links we can accurately measure the response of our target audience: the B2B marketing community.

We’re really interested in their visits and downloads and, although the gap tightens a little, the conversion rate stays higher in the Americas

Game, set and match. So it’s time to say au revoir to Europe in our search for world’s B2B marketing hotbed.

It’s been 17 years since a Canadian team won ice hockey’s Stanley Cup and there’s no respite in our B2B marketing version.

The United States scores a comprehensive victory  on every metric including the one that really counts – campaign goal conversions. The quest is nearly over but we want it down to a single dot on a map.

It’s tight, but it always is at the top. If you’re looking for enlightened, ambitious and progressive B2B marketers then look no further than Chicago. The city synonymous with Al Capone, the Sears Building and the Bears can now add progressive, ambitious B2B marketing to its Hall of Fame.

If you’re a B2B marketer based in Chicago then we’d love to hear from you: you’re our kind of B2B marketer.

B2B Marketing Analytics Conclusions
You can argue that downloading the B2B Marketing Manifesto is no guarantee of professional excellence. You might be right.

But the key point here is an illustration of what you can learn if you set up and manage your campaign data properly.

Good marketing relies on effective demographic or psychographic segmentation. You make (and save) money when you tailor your campaigns, messages and offers to the right groups.

We’ve cut the odds in our favour. Our analytics have taken us from Europe (population 731,000,000), to Chicago (population 2,800,000) in our bid to find the right kind of client and reduced our wastage by 99.7 per cent.

Where will your analytics take you?

Want the full Open Kimono picture? It’s all here:

Project Open Kimono Part 1 – the one where we commit ourselves in public (Planning)

Project Open Kimono Part 2 – the one where it all kicks off (Thinking)

Project Open Kimono Part 3 – the one where confidence starts to rise (First results)

Project Open Kimono Part 4 – the one where the trick shots start (Cross-promotion)

Project Open Kimono Part 5 – the one where we share the first month’s results (Reviewing)

Project Open Kimono Part 6 – the one where we toughen up (Soul Searching)

Project Open Kimono Part 7 – the one where we find the world’s best marketers (Segmenting)

Project Open Kimono Part 8 – the one where we show that design isn’t everything (Style v Substance)

Project Open Kimono Part 9 – the one where lead nurturing proves its worth (Marketo)

Project Open Kimono Part 10 – the one where the form fights back (Form v No Form)

© neilstoneman for Velocity Partners, 2010. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: B2B marketing, B2B marketing agency, Google Analytics, web analytics

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A few people have asked us just what inspired the B2B Marketing Manifesto.

One of them, John Sweeney, of BizBuilders lead generation fame, wanted to know even more. He invited Doug for a one-to-one interview that’s just been shared with the rest of the troops at his Marketing Automation LinkedIn Group.

You can catch the interview here.

Photo credit: Antonis Papantoniou

© neilstoneman for Velocity Partners, 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: B2B marketing, B2B marketing agency

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