As a long time B2B Marketer I know I typically have to “touch” a lead 5 to 6 times before they become a prospect in my sales funnel. With that in mind, I am using multiple tactics to get suspects to raise their hand. I have a feeling direct mail is on the comeback so we are about to give it a try again. Yes, it’s still expensive and postage rates are still going up but with email boxes being filled up with spam, suspects may be more likely to act if we can figure out how to stand out in the crowd.

As Marketers, when we start to build out a campaign we spend time on the WHAT we are going to deliver, the HOW we are going to deliver our message and the WHEN the program is going to go out but when it comes to the WHO, we haven’t had many options. Our choices were either an in-house database (how old and accurate is this data really?) or to rent data from a title-based list broker. And do we know who these people are or how these names were really acquired?

So as we get ready to build out a direct mail program I’m reminded of a tragic story one of our customers told us. They had a total budget of $100,000 for a direct mail campaign. This was going to be the program of the quarter and they were very anxious to get it out the door so the responders would start rolling in. Of their total budget, they spent $5,000 on the WHO they were trying to reach. The rest of the money went to creating an elaborate piece with “exactly the right messaging”, an attractive call to action and web components for tracking. They felt good about the program and believed the number of responses would justify the cost. They dropped the piece, then waited and waited and waited. Not only did they not get the overwhelming number of responses, they only got one. Now that’s one expensive lead if you ask me.

Obviously when creating a direct mail campaign we need to create a compelling piece with a strong call to action. But the WHO is where a lot of B2B Marketers go wrong. The most successful campaigns, direct mail or otherwise, are those that are targeted at the right people in the right companies. So how do you decide what the right WHO looks like? Here’s what I’m doing –

To find the right businesses, I go straight to my sales pipeline and recent customer wins. I’m looking for where we are winning and what kinds of companies are moving through the funnel the fastest. Then I build out an initial database of other companies that match this profile. Now that I’ve identified the right companies to go after, I’m just left with finding the right contacts for my message. Lucky me, we’re in the business of building custom role based contact databases for lead generation initiatives. So I use our own role-based contact discovery service to find the right decision makers within those target companies. By paying a little more attention to WHO I’m targeting, I feel confident my upcoming direct mail campaign is going to deliver.

Just in case you’re wondering, the person who was responsible for the $100K campaign lost their job. And the person that took their place now uses ReachForce to help keep their job.

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I just read a great post by Robert Rosenthal on his Freaking Marketing blog titled It’s the Data, Stupid. In his post, Robert says:

But there’s really just one variable that consistently makes or breaks direct marketing campaigns, and that’s data.

When I was a kid in this business, a mentor shared this maxim: send a so-so presentation to a great list and you may turn a profit, but send a great presentation to a shit list and you’re automatically dead.

Someone else gets it! I have been saying this for years. I don’t know how many millions of dollars I have seen (and also have myself) wasted on brilliant marketing campaigns that saw abysmal results because no one spent any time on the data. As we have gotten more sophisticated with the delivery of our marketing messages from direct mail to email and now through integrated marketing campaigns, the data has never been more important.

If marketers are out there wondering why their expensive marketing automation tool has not delivered increased response rates, it is because they are still pouring in garbage data. Garbage in, garbage out. Targeting is key – more customers in segments where you are winning is as key as the person you are trying to reach. 100% accurate contact data for the RIGHT person is money! If these automation tools are your marketing engine (ones like Marketo, Vtrenz, Eloqua, LoopFuse, Vertical Response, Exact Target, Constant Contact, Aprimo, etc. to name a few) then you need to fuel it with high-octane data, not sludge.

We started ReachForce to solve this very problem. I hope more marketers will realize that with quality contacts at the top of the funnel, truly targeted lead generation is possible, ultimately resulting in increased revenue. I applaud salesforce.com for driving the SFA (sales force automation) aspect of it as it has created a greater awareness on measurement – now it’s time for us B2B marketers to do the same, starting with the data.

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Another great story, well a sad one really but still a jaw dropper.

One of my previous employers who shall remain nameless ran one of the most costly and ineffective marketing campaigns I have ever heard of (this was before I worked there of course). They had decided to run a big direct mail campaign sending out branded scooters. You know the razor ones that were all the rage about 5 years ago. Somewhere along the line the zip code column got moved around and it didn’t line up with the correct addresses. No one realized the problem until the scooters started coming back. They ended up paying FedEx twice, once to ship it there and once to ship it back because the zip code was wrong. So no one got the scooters and the marketing team had spent their budget on the scooters and all the shipping. Too bad – no one got a scooter.

When I started working there over a year after the Oops, they were still trying to give those darn scooters away. In fact I think I might still have one in my garage….

These marketers were also of the mindset that if you could get 100 t-shirts for $6 a piece then getting 1000 shirts for $4 a piece is a better deal. Even though no more than 100 people ever worked at the company. Saving money by buying in bulk is good but only if you can consume the larger amount.

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Marketing Profs ran a great article yesterday by Russell Kern entitled “How to Solve Direct Marketing’s Five Biggest Problems” that struck a nerve with me as a B2B direct marketer. He writes “Salespeople love to receive a nice steady flow of leads that keeps them busy, but not too busy. When that’s not what you’re giving them, they tend to become, well, verbal. So what does Sales do? It cherry-picks the best leads, letting the surplus responses fall to the floor to rot. Within 45 days, they’re yelling for “fresh” leads.”

Wow, does that ever sum up the universal B2B Direct Marketer’s challenge! It’s either too many or too few. We can never win. ReachForce’s superbly targeted B2B Marketing Oh Crap day addressed this challenge brilliantly. I know we can all relate to the effect that the holidays has on our lead flow.

If you are struggling with too many leads or too few fresh/high quality leads, then Kern advises:

• One of the fastest and least expensive methods to improve your results is to eliminate poor targets and increase the number of look-alike suspects.
• Here is a simple exercise to perform when putting together a lead generation mailing: Have your data-processing vendor run a count, by title, of your mailing list. At the same time, run a count of your customer titles.
• Now, compare the results. How many of the titles in your suspect mailing list are not in your customer file? How many titles like “administrator,” “consultant,” and, yes, even “inmate” have somehow slipped into your mailing list—people who will respond for the sake of it, but never, ever buy your product?

Once you’ve taken the important step to better target your campaigns, you should also consider a great automated scoring and lead scoring and nurturing program as we wrote about in The B2B Lead and our ebook on the topic Funnelnomics. If you have some time to sit down and study up on database marketing fundamentals this holiday season, I encourage you to take a moment to download the book and put a few of the lessons into action in 2008.

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Every B2B Marketer has struggled with the problem of bad data. As it turns out, even companies in the business of selling database technology have the same issues. One such company’s Marketing Programs group attempted a direct mail database cleanup project using the old Return to Sender trick. They were quickly inundated with stacks of returned direct mailers. In fact, they had so many returned that they had to hire a team of temps to remove all of the bad records from their marketing database. They even found one stamped “Recipient Deceased”.

Talk about hitting the wrong target market.

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Subject Lines are like first impressions. When an email comes in, most email providers are set up to show you who the message is coming from and the brief subject of the message. As you are writing subject lines for your demand generation programs, make sure your message includes the following 6 principles –

• Be Informative – Be sure to convey something important, valuable or timely
• Create Intrigue – Prompt your reader to open and act on the email immediately
• Build Trust – Be sure not to over promise or mislead your prospects
• Call to Action – Make it easy for your prospects to act on the call to action
• Understand who you are targeting – Speak to each prospect as an individual and address their pain points
• From who? – Subject lines can work with From Lines

I just recently heard a new best practice – subject lines should be no longer than 6 words. Do you think this is because so many people are getting email on mobile devices?

Are we missing anything here? Post a comment to add to the list.

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A reader of The B2B Lead Blog reports a B2B Marketer, who will go unnamed, recently confessed to a rather embarrassing and costly blunder that was a clear result of breaking the first commandment of Sales and Marketing – Know Thy Customer. Apparently, the newbie Marketer sent a very expensive Selling to VITO direct mailer to a UPS executive in a Fed Ex envelope. Doh!

Have any other embarrassing or costly mistakes to share with readers of The B2B Lead Blog? Submit a Post!

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ReachForce is the worldwide provider of OnDemand Data Solutions for CRM – Driving Marketing initiatives and Sales effectiveness. ReachForce Solutions are designed to quickly highlight target market ‘sweet spots’ based on customer wins and sales funnel analysis as well as identify the right decision making unit based on their role in the organization, not just their title. By enabling marketing and sales teams to focus their demand generation efforts on the right role-based decision makers in the right target companies for their products or services, ReachForce data is increasing demand generation effectiveness and accelerating sales cycles. ReachForce customers have increased results by 20 to 30 times for every dollar spent on marketing and sales initiatives – maximizing the value of CRM investments.

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