E-MAIL MARKETING EXPERT ADVICE

With greater pressure on b-to-b marketers to become more accountable for revenue generation, their email deliver-ability strategies must keep pace. That doesn't mean simply sending more email; it means sending more targeted messages and offers at every stage of the buying life cycle.

Here at National Starch Food Innovation, a food ingredient manufacturer that is part of Corn Products International, we invest approximately 20% to 30% of our marketing communications dollars in trade shows.

While there are many ways to enhance the collection of user information with email signup activities and b-to-b email preference centers, I am more concerned with other types of best practices, especially those that are more user-oriented.

Determining a level of engagement that a recipient has with your email can be a difficult thing to do, especially if you have limitations in performance visibility beyond the actual email metrics themselves.

Marketers are often challenged by having to manage disparate marketing solutions. To move beyond this, they need to connect and integrate their e-mail marketing with other online efforts.

How prospective buyers interact with your content after it has been downloaded is as important as the initial download. As b-to-b marketers, we must determine where our most relevant interactions take place.

BtoB spoke with Michael Becker, North American managing director of the Mobile Marketing Association, to get his breakdown of what mobile marketing is and isn't.

How do you get more profile information for customers without asking them? There are many ways to make your e-mails relevant to recipients and, as your sophistication level grows within the e-mail channel, so should your segmentation and targeting strategies.

Of late, Forrester Research analyst Zach Hofer-Shall has been focusing his research efforts on “social intelligence,” a nifty tag for the process of taking advantage of all the customer and social media data floating around online and putting it to solid, actionable use.

Customer life cycle is a frequently overlooked factor in achieving relevance in e-mail—especially in b-to-b messaging. The type of information recipients expect to receive from your e-mail program has a direct correlation to their stage of the life cycle.

Building lists through partnerships can be a very successful list growth tactic. It is imperative, however, to carefully evaluate a partner before exploring opportunities for e-mail acquisition efforts.