Agencies might go about generating new business differently than large ad sales teams, but it doesn’t mean they can’t take advantage of great sales techniques through marketing automation.

You’re likely spending a ton of time creating what you believe to be relevant, compelling content you hope your prospects find engaging. But, after all the time you spend researching, prospecting and crafting the perfect email copy, are you truly getting the results you expect? Is your new business development audience even big enough or segmented effectively to truly receive the results you’re looking for?

In this Webinar Matt Chollet, President of AgencySquared, discusses what a successful new business audience should look like and the tools available to help you build robust, hyper-targeted prospecting lists that drive more revenue.

If these challenges sound familiar, we encourage you to watch the recording:

• My email click through rate is embarrassingly low.
• My outreach efforts aren’t generating many leads.
• I’d like to learn how hyper-targeted prospecting lists can benefit my outreach efforts.
• I’m in need of a better way to refresh and grow my prospecting lists easier & faster.

 

How to Build Prospecting Lists That Convert from AgencySquared on Vimeo.

Any successful new business strategy starts with knowing who your target audience is. As an agency you’ve likely already homed in on your unique value proposition and are ready to start engaging with prospective clients.
A critical piece many agency new business professionals miss out on is making sure they have a broad enough target audience to sell and market to. We find that [twittee tweet=”Fuel your #marketing and #sales efforts with a targeted AND substantial audience.  via @AgencySquared” content=”the key to fueling your marketing and sales efforts is an effective, targeted AND substantial audience.” ]  

When working with our clients, we’re often asked, “How many prospect records do I need?” To get the most from your outreach, we recommend a minimum of 3,000 with the goal of having 5,000 that you can continuously engage with.
Those numbers might seem like a lot but keep in mind there are tools to help you build out your prospecting database. In fact, many of your agency peers are likely using one. According to the 2016 Mirren/RSW Mirren New Business Tools Report, 9% more agency executives are investing in list building tools (compared to 2014) to help grow their new business. Our clients typically use Winmo, however there are other resources like Hoovers, Data.com and LinkedIn to help you create hyper-targeted data sets.

The importance of audience segmentation.

As you continue to grow your prospecting audience, segmenting the data into relevant batches is very important. We often segment prospects into these three groups to help us prioritize outreach and customize content:

1) Right to Win
Right to Win clients are those that are a perfect fit for our solutions. We set parameters for what a perfect client is for our agency: what issues they have, where they are and what they specialize in. If they fit those criteria, then they HAVE to be working with us.

2) Great Fit
This will be your biggest group of prospects. They have a problem we can solve, but may fall outside our parameters on a few criteria here or there. Maybe they are a bit outside of our typical region, or they’re an industry we do not normally operate within. They still have a problem we can solve however, and that means we want to talk to them.

3) Stretch
This is may be the smallest group, as they are more of ‘passion projects’ from the team – or the ‘great white whales’ that would be incredible to land. They are probably not worth committing the majority of your new business time to chasing, but landing one could make a huge difference in morale or revenue
Keep in mind this is just one way to segment your data. Every agency has a different strategy, and how you go about slicing your sales intelligence might be very different. Some find that the easiest way to group prospects is simply by industry vertical, while others choose to base their groupings off of job titles. Taking the time to think through who you want to be working with, and more importantly, what your prospects care about, will help you determine just how your agency should be dividing your prospect target list.

Yes – broadening your audience might seem like a lot of extra work, but the payoff is well worth it. By getting your message in front of more prospects that have a need for your services, you’re more likely entice qualified conversations with the brands you want to do business with.
Go ahead, the odds are in your favor.

In the digital world in which we now live, marketing automation is perhaps the most important way to both streamline your operations and increase the effectiveness of your campaigns. According to HubSpot, the types of nurtured leads generated by marketing automation make 47% larger purchases than those who were not. More than that, a full 91% of marketers believe that their use of marketing automation is “very important” to the overall success of ALL of their efforts according to Marketo.

Making the decision to move to marketing automation isn’t as easy as flipping a light switch, however. It will take a great deal of time, effort and preparation to build the foundation necessary for your marketing automation efforts to thrive.

Break Up That Sales Funnel

If marketing automation is one of the best ways to guide your leads from one end of the sales funnel to the other, it stands to reason that the first step towards preparing yourself for this shift involves defining all stages of your sales funnel. What shape does initial contact with your lead take? After how long do you begin to deepen your relationship, investigating suitability? What is your value proposal to continue to nurture your lead over time? What does your follow up look like? These are all important questions that you need to answer as early in the process as possible.

Getting to Know Your Target Audience

If you don’t truly understand the people you’re marketing to, how can you ever expect to give them what they want or even speak their language? Who are these people? What problem do they have in their lives that only you can solve? What specific features of the product or service that you’re offering are going to attract their interest the most? What might get in the way of a sale? What are they worried about? What other products and services do they like to spend money on?

The answers to all of these questions will not only help you craft more compelling marketing materials, they’ll help provide a true focus for your efforts to guarantee the highest level of effectiveness at all times.

Match the Right Content to the Right Stages

Once you’ve made a list of all the various types of content that will appeal to your target audience (including blog posts, reports, how-to manuals, whitepapers, case studies and more), AND you’ve spent time creating the type of high value content you know they’re looking for, the next thing to do is make sure you’re getting the right content into the hands of the right person at that oh-so-perfect moment.

To do this, you’ll need to identify a few key things. Which of the pieces of content you’ve created will be valuable enough to your target audience that they’ll be willing to exchange their content information for it? What content is more practical and actionable in nature and, as a result, will be ideal for helping to guide them farther down the sales funnel? Most importantly, which of this content do you have and which do you have to create from scratch?

Once you answer all of these questions as they relate to not only your product or service but the unique audience you’re trying to attract, you’ll find that you’re more than prepared for the benefits that marketing automation brings to the table.

Looking to make the shift to marketing automation? AgencySquared works alongside your team to answer all of the above, making sure that you’re prepared to optimize your efforts and see results. Get a complimentary consultation.

 

Every agency sends emails in an effort to enhance client acquisition and grow their business. In reality, although the concept of sending emails to attract and retain clients seems promising, it is almost inevitable that your email may end up in the spam folder.

Why is this a growing problem?

Agencies may follow the rules on sending emails, but society has taken marketing efforts to an entirely different level. There are tons of emails sent every day, putting them all into the same category. In addition, ISP providers are continuously finding new ways to keep legitimate emails from reaching their destination because of simple mistakes agencies may make. There are ways to avoid going into the spam folder, but doing the due diligence is key.

To help combat this growing problem, we’ve organized 5 tips to help you avoid the spam folder, and increase overall deliverability:

1. Watch your jargon

Knowing what to say and when to say it plays an important role in how the email is viewed once it hits the sender’s box. If there are links in the email, make sure they are from reputable sites. Keep the image-to-text ratio reasonable, and make sure you use a reputable host for any images you may have in the email. Do not use risky words such as free, bonus, buy, purchase, order, prize, or use more than one exclamation point. This will keep the flags down, especially in subject lines.

2. Use Reputable URL Links

Spam filters check for the URLs you are linking to so ensuring the domain name has a good reputation is important. Avoid names that have multiple folders and 1-2 characters in their file name. For example, a domain name with www.domain.com/a/everything.html will often be picked up as spam and seen as a negative URL. In addition, keeping the complete URL in the file name, and not shortened links, will improve email delivery.

3. Certification

If you are a legitimate agency, getting certified will help you gain credibility. Also, using platforms like Return Path will guarantee your inbox is known from the major ISPs, which will help you avoid being flagged as spam.

4. Be honest

Avoid emails that come from different mailboxes. You want to be consistent to help build the credibility of your agency, and stay recognizable. When customers are familiar with your email addresses, they will take you out of the spam folder and automatically direct you to their inbox.

5. Provide relevant content to the right audience

The best way to see engagement from your email marketing, and not get pinged as spam, is to provide timely and relevant content to the right audience. First thing – make sure you’re messaging is going to the appropriate decision-makers. Successful agencies are now leveraging list building tools to help supplement their organic opt-in list. Purchasing targeted prospect lists through reputable sources (like Winmo) can immediately increase not only traffic to your site, but also disseminate your expertise to a larger group of potential buyers. It also confirms the content you’re creating is being sent to the industries and titles that you’re best fit to win business from.

Not surprising – the next step is create custom content that uniquely speaks to each of these targeted audiences. Do your research to understand the personas of each vertical and then develop compelling content around each of their pain points.

Are you not seeing the leads you need from your email marketing campaigns? You could be using email the wrong way. This powerful tool can produce results, but following best practices is key. Here are some of the top proven practices heading into 2016, and how they can help your business grow!

 1. Collect More Email Addresses

It’s time for easy math: The more email addresses you collect, the more leads you can obtain. As a marketer you should be generating fresh, new email contacts regularly. Your contacts’ email addresses may become stale over time as contacts move jobs, opt-out of your email campaigns or abandon old email addresses. As a result, there are many ways for companies to increase their email leads, simply by encouraging more customers to sign up for email messages, promoting a contest or sweepstakes online, creating newsletter-only deals, or offer a birthday club to give something away on their special day.

The most useful tool in accomplishing this is to develop an automatic CTA (call to action) which appears to all website visitors. This simple pop-up form needs to be easy to understand, quick to complete, and rewarding to use.  

2. Offer Value in Exchange for CTAs

We mentioned that a call to action should be “rewarding to use” and its important to understand the value of this tactic for both CTAs and the emails you send to your customer list. People don’t like to give away their email addresses in exchange for nothing, so offer regular rewards for viewing emails and collecting lead opportunities. A classic example is sending an email with a unique link to download a discount code for a product purchase. Without that email, the consumer doesn’t get the discount. This confirms early on the value of signing up and reading emails from your brand. It opens the door for more effective conversions down the road. Also, remember to clearly show the value offered in your email headlines!

 3. Don’t Go Too Hot – or Too Cold

How many emails do you send out to customers each week? Send out too many, and customers will block your emails or leave them to languish in the “promotion” section of the email client that no one ever visits. Send out too few, and consumers will trash your emails because they don’t even recognize them when they do show up. The middle ground is important to find here. Studies indicate that one email per week is around the best rate to avoid the pitfalls.

 4. Format for Mobile and Easy Consumption

If customers can’t read your email, they won’t. If they have to go to extra effort to read your email, they won’t. Due to more and more consumers accessing email via mobile devices, it’s vital that you optimize your messages, make them responsive for mobile devices, and make them very easy to read (avoid that dreaded newsletter format if you possibly can). Ensure that your calls to action appear early in the email, are large, invoke your logo colors, and whisk consumers away to better content.

5. Personalize and Automate

We know that these are both popular buzzwords, but they are also revolutionizing email campaigns. Personalization taps into customer data about recent purchases and viewed products to make customized recommendations and offer unique deals to past customers – results that guarantee a higher number of successful repeat sales. Automation helps save a lot of time and makes sure that customers get emails when they are supposed – right after signing up, after making purchases, when the company has important news, and so on.

Remember, the best email campaigns take advantage of the strengths you already have; When in doubt, consider what already engages your customers and wins their loyalty. With the right timing and format, those things will work through email channels, too! For any additional questions or a look at the latest ways email marketing can help your business, visit AgencySquared.com

Keeping your business top-of-mind to current and prospective clients is a very repetitive job, but with marketing automation, much of the repetitive nature of the business can be replaced by software.

While it is true that marketing automation is extremely helpful and makes the job easier, it isn’t going to replace the need for human outreach, nor will it miraculously take the place of marketing specialists.  People will still need to generate leads and maintain prospecting lists.  Purchasing lists of contacts might seem like a great idea at the time, but simply purchasing cold lists and sending them one-size-fits-all mailings or emails, is likely not going to produce much revenue, let alone long-term revenue.  Automation will not and cannot take the place of cultivating relationships with potential clients.

Becoming too dependent on marketing automation can actually kill your business in the long run, so the key to being successful with marketing automation is to understand its purpose fully and utilize its tools in an intelligent, efficient way.  

Marketing automation was designed to streamline lead generation, lead scoring and lead nurturing across a customer’s lifecycle. It is a huge part of being able to create a repeatable process that keeps business development efforts running regardless of what’s going on within the agency.

So, how does this automation ensure that activity is constant within your business development process? Here’s a look at what you can expect from a successful marketing automation program:

• Capturing relevant data completed from online forms while compiling them into its own list
• Creating a variety of lists based upon your specified demographics and prospective profiles
• Nurturing your leads that have been to your website and have shown interest in your services or products
• Extending customer relationships and engagement throughout the cycle

Marketing automation can be highly successful if you use it properly.  Whether you are already generating quality leads and have a solid procedure in place to follow up with them, or your pipeline is currently dry, marketing automation could be helpful for you.  

It is essential to remember that automation marketing, just like any other tool you’d use for your business, is not a cure-all solution.  Additionally, you can’t implement it and forget it.  In order for the automation to be effective it needs to be maintained, monitored, and evaluated periodically to determine it’s effectiveness and if your business is getting an acceptable return on the investment.

Ready to start driving more qualified leads for your business? Contact us for a free demonstration or call us at 404-564-2429.

 

With the rise of social media, it’s easy to assume that email marketing is going the way of the dodo. However, nothing could be further from the truth. The fact is that people still use and rely on email for many things, so it continues to be a valuable and effective way to reach out to them. Email campaigns are inexpensive, so the ROI is often considerable. The trick, however, is handling them properly and having specific objectives in mind. Pick up a few helpful tips to build email campaigns that help your business grow.

Know How to Write Effective Emails

Before considering anything else, make sure you know how to create effective emails. First, the headline must be attention-grabbing, or it will get lost in the shuffle. Use A/B testing to see which subject headlines work well and which fall flat. Include plenty of graphics and links in your email to keep readers engaged, and send them at the right time of day. Finally, always include at least one strong call-to-action in your emails so readers know how to proceed.

Remind People of Your Brand

In today’s fast-paced digital world, it’s easier than ever for brands to get lost in the shuffle. Email marketing is an effective way to keep a brand top of mind. As long as the messages are low-key, they can remind consumers about a brand and prompt them to turn to the brand when they need a product or service. Birthday messages, holiday greetings and company newsletters are great examples of gentle reminders that you can send.

Build Lasting Relationships

Through effective email marketing, you can take a single purchase and turn it into a lasting relationship. Reaching out regularly through email shows consumers that they matter. After a customer establishes an account–even if they don’t buy anything–a welcome email is a great way to forge a bond. Later, reorder emails and “we miss you” emails can help sustain the relationship, increasing the odds of additional conversions.

Establish Authority

Email marketing also allows brands to establish and demonstrate their authority. Occasionally sending useful, informative messages is an excellent way to reach out without being abrasive or intrusive. Things like product showcases that include special tips or instructions and industry news help to spark conversation. When they’re well-written, they may even be shared, expanding the reach of your marketing even further.

Learn More About Your Prospects

Finally, email marketing gives brands an opportunity to learn more about their prospects, existing customers and leads. Through special technology, it’s possible to see how people react to emails and to track how they proceed from there. This provides valuable insight into how a consumer’s mind works and can enhance the marketing process in a big way.

Ditching email marketing for a purely online or social media approach is a mistake. It may not be hip or trendy, but email marketing is still one of the best ways to grow a business–as long as it’s performed correctly.

Despite the proliferation of channels available these days, email marketing campaigns remain a consistently reliable method to secure leads and gain new customer data (particular in the B2B world). The key is sculpting emails with clear goals in mind that get results from customers with very little attention to give: Try out these methods for sending out lead-friendly emails even in trying circumstances.

Include Your Branding Colors and Designs

A plan text email, no matter how professional your fonts are, won’t attract much interest. You need an email template that makes the email look attractive – like a page straight from your site. Make sure that you use your logo and brand colors somewhere inside the email. They don’t have to overpower your message, but they should be visible. This reminds customers (even subconsciously) where the email is from, and when creating new leads it helps link the email to the rest of the sales funnel.

Calls to Action

An email sent without a call to action is essentially a wasted effort. It may help with brand engagement, but how will you know? A CTA turns the email from a shot in the dark to content with a purpose – and with an excellent way to measures its efficacy. The CTA doesn’t need to be complicated and certainly doesn’t need to result in a sale: Many effective CTAs in emails simply ask viewers to download a report, fill out survey, or visit a product page. Remember, to create a lead you need to take the reader to the next step.

Targeting and Personalization

Targeting is more difficult when focusing purely on lead generation. After all, customer data on leads tends to be thin, which makes targeting with specific products or services challenging. However, more general targeting is possible and advisable: Good lead management provides a number of details about the type of person you are trying to reach. Use your customer personas and demographics information to personalize emails as much as possible by identifying unique needs and offering specific solutions.

Centered Idea

Don’t try to say too much in lead generation emails. If necessary, use newsletters for that kind of thing. Keep the email focused on a single idea or value offering. If you look at the more impressive email marketing campaigns, you’ll notice that (in addition to following some of our previous advice) they all limit themselves to very simple ideas – a new tool to try, a new deal, a press release, etc. Emulate this method.

Something New

Try to give leads something they haven’t heard before. Remember, they will be getting marketing emails every day, filled with promises and deals and “Do you have a problem with this?” messages. Avoid getting lost in the clutter by crafting more innovative subject lines and introductions that show clearly what sets your company apart. If this is problematic, then you need to do some competitor analysis first.

Sales Reward

Promise something to really win a lead’s interest. Use a special code or link to provide a discount that only the email recipient can access: This is a great way to get people involved in the email and lead them straight to your call to action.

Establishing and executing an effective email marketing campaign is about more than consistently being in touch with contacts from your mailing lists. Without routinely gauging the results of your campaigns, you’ll end up spinning your tires and wasting copious amounts of time, energy and money. In other words, consistent analytics are crucial to the long-term success of any email marketing strategy.

Even if you already check analytics on a consistent basis, you could very well be focusing on the wrong metrics–or omitting ones that could propel your campaign from being just so-so to simply spectacular. With these points in mind, familiarize yourself with some of the most important metrics that might be missing from your email marketing strategy. If any of them sound familiar, take steps to remedy the situation and to ensure that your campaigns deliver the best ROI possible.

Lifecycle Metrics

All too often, email marketing campaigns start out with a bang and then slowly but inevitably fizzle out until virtually no one on the list is paying attention anymore. Just because a campaign produces exciting results in the early stages doesn’t mean it will continue to do so for extended periods of time. For this to happen, careful attention must be paid to metrics that reflect user engagement. This means consistently and regularly checking metrics for things like opens, clicks and conversions on a daily, weekly and monthly basis.

By considering user engagement across various periods of time, you will get a better sense for how well your campaigns are designed to deliver results over the long haul. This also gives you an opportunity to see when and where users appear to lose interest, so you can take steps to remedy the situation.

While you’re at it, track metrics for first-, second- and third-time buyers as a percentage of total purchases versus established benchmarks. This will demonstrate whether people are coming back for more or abandoning your emails and brand after certain periods of time.

Quality Metrics

Your email marketing strategy will go nowhere without a high-quality mailing list. Therefore, you must routinely analyze metrics relating to your list if you want consistent, effective results. Most notably, are the addresses on your list even active? How often are they checked?

If they’re not used very often, they’re essentially useless to you. On a regular basis, check the overall quality of your list. As new addresses are added, assess their quality by considering their source. Make a point of checking the percentage of addresses that serve as “primary” addresses too as well as the percentage of addresses that are strong buyers of your particular product or service.

Mailbox Type

Finally, perform a regular analysis of how email addresses that are linked to different mailbox types or domains appear to fare in your marketing efforts. This can help you understand your target demographic better and give you a strong idea of which direction to go in moving forward. Even if most of your addresses aren’t very high in quality, it could be that certain mailbox types or domains perform well.

If you’re not already strict about assessing the quality of your email marketing strategy, it’s time to get on board. Prioritize the aforementioned metrics to make your analyses all the more effective.