Email Marketing by the Numbers: How to Use the World’s Greatest Marketing Tool to Take Any Organization to the Next Level

Business-to-Business/Networking/Real World Registration

Unless you’ve been placed in an isolation chamber, I’m guessing that you and your salespeople interact with others. It may be face-to-face, or on the phone, or via email. Guess what? Each of these touch points is a chance to gain email opt-in.

For this reason, Business-to-Business (B-to-B) marketers often have a significant advantage in effective database marketing. By definition, they require some form of customer and prospect contact through direct sales representatives, telephone sales, or customer service personnel. Let’s discuss some of those interactions and what to consider in order to optimize them:

• Do you have a centralized view of customer activity? All organizations should strive to have some sort of collective database where they have a centralized view of all customer activity (it’s possible with on-demand software companies such as Salesforce.com or Microsoft CRM). When all employees have an equal view into the organization’s database, everyone is empowered to take advantage of constituent interaction and gain permission and other pertinent data.

• Are you handling trade show or networking leads appropriately? One common starting point for B-to-B and other businesses are industry trade shows or networking events. I’ll illustrate the example with a trade show.

  Prior to the show, there are attendees. Those attendees are appealing prospects because they’re likely to share some of the basic attributes that you look ...