B2B Email Marketing, Banner & Integrated Campaign Advice

*** MarketingSherpa.com’s B-to-B MarketingBiz.com ***
Practical News & Tips for B-to-B Marketing on the Internet
August 14, 2000 - Vol. I, Issue 12

PLEASE FORWARD TO YOUR PALS -- THANKS!!!
1. News: Eventory, ReleaseNow.com, The Standard’s Ezines

2. More Headlines

3. Case Study: GeekTeam.com Doubles Consulting Clients

4. Interview: FolioZ’s Philip Mowris on What Works in B-to-B
Email Marketing, Banners & Integrated Campaigns

5. Events: Loads of Upcoming Events

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Go to http://www.b2bmarketingbiz.com
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NEWS
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Developing & Integrating Strategic Plans for eBusiness:
October 23 & 24, 2000; Chicago, IL

Attend to gain understanding from those who have been
there: John Hancock, Toyota and Lycos.
For more information call IQPC 800.882. 8684 or go to:
http://www.iqpc.com/M221A/plansforebiz. Be sure to give
priority code: M221A when registering.
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* Eventory Does Great Online Marketing Without a Marketer

One trend we’ve noticed among start-up Net market makers is
that few of them actually hire marketers right off the bat.
First they’ll hire a VP business development or sales and a
solid customer service team. Marketing is seen as
something you do when you get bigger. Eventory an
ecommerce ASP for manufacturers and distributors does an
exceptional job of this. Since they don’t have a marketing
department yet, product development, client services and
biz dev all pitched in together to write the copy for their
Web site. And came up with some of the best benefit-
orientated FAQ copy we’ve ever seen. They show they REALLY
understand their customer!

Lesson: Marketing copy should never be written in a vacuum.
Make sure everyone who meets customers on the phone or in
person (including customer service and everybody who’s ever
worked your show booth no matter how junior) has input into
the FAQs and company info on your site. Great copy isn’t
about you or your products. It’s about the customer.

Check out Eventory’s exceptional FAQs at:
http://www.eventory.com/distributors/dist_faq.html
http://www.eventory.com.buyers/buyers_faq.html

* Campaign Review: ReleaseNow.com’s Print Space Ad

Flip through any business or trade magazine and one thing
stands out. B-to-B print space ads are generally … dismal.
You’ll see big graphics that don’t directly relate to the
product, “clever” headlines with puns and such, hard-to-
read type, and the most offensive problem: a teeny weeny-
version of the advertiser’s logo stuck in the lower right
corner. No wonder trade show booths and PR pull in better
results than space advertising!

So, when we see a great B-to-B space ad, we have to cheer
about it. ReleaseNow.com’s ad on page 107 of August’s
Upside magazine is great:
- Headline: “Somebody’s going to pamper your online
business customer (make sure it’s you)”
- Body copy: black type on white background, justified left
and right, benefit-oriented.
- Logo and URL: takes up bottom ¼ of page, small but uses
white space to get noticed.
- Graphic: a white-gloved hand holding a silver platter
that the headline sits neatly on top of. Both eye-catching
and applicable to message.
http://www.releasenow.com

* Media Buy of the Week: TheStandard.com’s Ezines

Did you know The Industry Standard now publishes a total of
18 different email newsletters? Most are text-only
weeklies. Circulation is impressive, their HTML “Daily
News” has 122,740 subscribers. Two of the newer ezines,
“Food, Wine & Web” and “Wireless News” reach almost 20,000
readers. We’ve learned by talking to companies who’ve
advertised in various Standard ezines that they’ve
generally been a high performing media buy. The Standard
has stopped giving out general rates, so you have to call a
sales rep for them (yuck) but we hear the pricing is
usually around $75-100/m depending on frequency, etc. If
they publish an ezine in your industry, this is definitely
worth pursuing.
http://www.thestandard.com/about/media/

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MORE MARKETINGSHERPA.COM HEADLINES
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* Who's Who: Your Official Guide to Net Markets for
Marketers
http://www.marketingtowebmarketers.com/sample.cfm?contentID=663

* How YesMail Tripled Sales in a Single Year
http://www.marketingtowebmarketers.com/sample.cfm?contentID=667

* iVillage Banners Get 52% Click Through at Hollywood.com
http://www.emarketingtoher.com/sample.cfm?contentID=656

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CASE STUDY: GeekTeam.com
*********
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* GeekTeam.com Doubles Business By Using Web-Based Sales
Prospecting Tools

CHALLENGE
New ecommerce consulting firm Geekteam.com
wanted to grow their client base quickly. When VP
Operations, John Berry analyzed his company’s sales process
looking for ways to speed results, he found their biggest
time-suck was prospect research. In fact it took an
average of two-three hours research time per prospect for
the sales team to determine if they fit GeekTeam’s “Ideal
Customer Profile” and how to reach the best sales contact.

CAMPAIGN
Berry decided to slash sales lead qualification
time by using HotData’s e-Luminator online business
profiling service. Geekteam.com’s sales team were able to
download detailed business profile information directly to
their corporate leads database. Sales reps began to spend
their time concentrating on selling sales leads, instead of
just qualifying them.

RESULTS
GeekTeam.com doubled sales in the first month
after HotData’s e-luminator was implemented. “The return
on investment in terms of productivity for Geekteam.com has
been huge,” Berry says.

COST: HotData’s baseline price for small companies is $500
per year which includes 24/7 access to Dun & Bradstreet and
USPS records for up to 1,000 companies of your choice. (e-
Luminator integrates easily with Act!, GoldMine, Maximizer
and other online databases.)

http://www.geekteam.com
http://www.hotdata.com

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* FolioZ’s Philip Mowris on B-to-B Email Marketing, Banners
and Integrating Online and Offline Campaigns

Philip Mowris is one of the hands-on leaders in B-to-B online
marketing today. He’s Director of Interactive and Media
Services for FolioZ, the Southeast’s first technology
marketing firm; a founding member of Atlanta’s Interactive
Marketing Association; and recently served on the Board of
B2B Works. Mowris’ clients have included NetVendor,
ExecuTrain, SouthWire and Mincom.

Q: So many B-to-B companies aren’t including the Web in their
marketing plans these days. How do you recommend including
Web marketing?

Mowris: There’s a use for all media in carrying the message
out to the target audience. Once we have a pretty clear
profile of the person who’s going to be the champion or
influencer in a sale, we compile a media strategy that
reaches out to them through several points.

I like to say, “If we can know what side of bed they get
out of in the morning and which shoe they put on first, we
can insert a message into the other shoe.” The first shoe
is the one they put on without looking, the second they
pick up and look at. It’s an analogy to the different
attention points in the day, and obviously online has a
very strong place in the mix.

Q: Are your offline clients scared about going online with
their marketing dollars?

Mowris: Most B-to-B companies have seen a historical drop-off
in their marketing efforts. They are doing the same shows,
the same magazine ads but the results aren’t what they used
to be. They’re not getting the same leads or readership.

Once our clients realize, “Yes of course prospects are
online, they’re not utilizing offline the way they used
to!” they start using the new medium, plus get a lot more
targeted in their offline approach.

Our clients are spending anywhere from 10-40% of their
budget online.

Q: How do you figure out where those dollars will be spent?

Mowris: A prospect is looking to solve a problem our client
may have a solution for. The more points we can insert
into that process with our direct or brand message, the
more successful we’ll be in the campaign. The more often
we can engage them -- through direct mail, sales calls,
banners, email -- when they are actively looking for
solutions, the better the chances of success. The approach
we take is to look at it from end to end. From the first
exposure down the road to the sale. Whatever mediums
they’re approaching at certain points in the process. So
we couple the Internet with offline activities. We package
a campaign together so it works in multiple layers, several
tiers.

Q: Let’s talk specifics. What are your recommendations for
email marketing?

Mowris: We’ve used it in two ways, sponsorship insertions
and direct marketing email. We’ve had success in both but
have noticed a drop-off from opt-in solicitation lists
recently. The main reason for that I think is just the
deluge. Your typical business executive is deluged with
email messages these days. Especially in the B-to-B
environment. So, commercial messages are the first to be
ignored.

Q: If opt-in results are down, what is working in email
marketing?

Mowris: What we’ve seen the most success with are not
necessarily a direct response oriented campaigns. Instead
they are very specific content-oriented emails. You need
to sponsor the right email newsletter or set up your own
through partnerships with specific publications.

We engineered a partnership with IndustryWeek magazine for
NetVendor to publish the IWValueChain.com Web site and
email newsletter. All the content is written by
IndustryWeek editors specific to value chain management.
The newsletter is solely sponsored by NetVendor. Since it
went live March 13th the newsletter’s circulation has gone
up in the thousands.

We’ve also done text ads in others’ newsletters with some
success. We had a very nice response to ExecuTrain’s
sponsorship in ComptuerWorld’s Career newsletter. It
rolled out over a nine-week period, rotating three
different ads week over week.

Q: Got any specific creative tips for email marketing?

Mowris: For text newsletter ads, keep it short and utilize
the space. You don’t need to put the whole message into
six lines. If you can cram it into three lines and utilize
the white space it will work much better. Most people just
put a paragraph with a link after it. The more you can get
readers to pay attention to your ads, and give them a clear
path from your headline to the pay-off, the better.

For direct marketing email, the most critical element is
the subject line. DON’T trick them! And if they open the
email, don’t’ try to sell them in it. You want to engage
them, help them take the next step -- pick up the phone to
request a brochure, clickthrough to the Web site. You
have to realize this person isn’t ready to be sold yet, but
they might be curious enough to want to find out more.
Make them an active participant in doing that.

Q: Got any banner tips?

Mowris: Banners and buttons can be very, very effective.
We’ve seen click-though about 12% for some of our clients.
Most other people’s banner media buying is being done on
demographics -- but online’s a psychographic buy. It’s
about behavior, not about age, marital status or income.

You have to pay attention to the audience that’s receiving
the creative. I want banner ads placed only where I know
they’re going to resonate with a prospect. In most cases
forget run of network, forget run of site, forget a lot of
package deals. I want to sift and winnow it down to get to
that spot where it’s absolutely targeted. If that means
I’m paying more CPM and getting less of audience, so be it.
I’m getting to the people I want.

Very often you get so targeted you’re not paying on CPM
anyway, you’re paying a flat-fee sponsorship which can be a
lot more cost effective. For some areas I’ve paid as
little as $500-$1,500 for very targeted and very interested
audiences. The difficulty is reaching new people. You
should only run for a few months, take a break, and then
come back. But if it churns a lot, for instance a hot jobs
site, you’re reaching a new audience every month.

The primary thing for us is to see if we can get inside the
target prospect’s head and see how they are using the
different media. What sites are they going to? What
online publications do they rely on and trust? And more
importantly, how are they using them? If we can couple our
marketing efforts to match their mindset and usage, then we
have a much stronger chance of communicating our message!

Q: How do you figure out your audience’s mindset?

Mowris: We utilize the various research services --
Intelliquest stuff, Cyberatlas, Millward Brown -- and do
extensive internally to client’s customers, past customers
and prospects. There’s quite a bit of what you might call
old-line account planning. It starts with talking with
prospects. We’ve done our own surveys online at 3rd party
sites.

It takes all the different sources to really pull together
a composite -- and it’s that composite profile we’re after.
If it’s just based on one source it’s going to be skewed
and we’re not going to be effective.

The Web is also a test and retest medium. You continually
optimize and drop what’s not working. You do that upfront
research to step out with your best foot forward and from
then on it’s continual optimization.

http://www.folioz.com

******
EVENTS
******

Hope or Hype: What's Really Working in B-to-B ?
August 22 6:00 pm - 9:30 pm
San Francisco Commonwealth Club of California
http://www.evite.com/tim@stencilgroup.com/sfnmm

B2BBasics - Net Market Makers
Aug - Oct 2000, 2 day events
Various cities
http://www.netmarketmakers.com/events/b2basics/index.asp

B2B email Strategies: ClickZ
Sept. 13-14, 2000
New York City: Millenium Broadway Hotel
http://www.clickzconference.com/ny2000sept/index.html

DMA’s Direct Marketing to Business
Sept. 13-15
Chicago: Palmer House Hilton
http://www.dmbshow.com

eB2BMarketplaceWorld
Sept. 18-20, 2000
San Francisco Marriott
http://www.eb2bmarketplaceworld.com

DotCEO Conference
Sept. 20-21, 2000
New York City: Millennium Broadway
http://www.dotceo.com

e=B2 Forum
Oct 1-3, 2000
Boston Sheraton
http://www.upsideevents.com/eb2

e-Strategy2000 Conference
Oct 17-18, 2000
San Franscisco Grand Hyatt Union Sq.
http://www.wbresearch.com/estrategy/

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