One of the biggest challenges in e-mail marketing today is managing e-mail frequency. Each e-mail you send to the contacts on your list can represent a chance to build your brand, strengthen your position as a thought leader, or generate revenue for your company. However, a common complaint from contacts that unsubscribe is "I receive too many e-mails."

A recent article on the Silverpop blog has a good summary of options you can take to increase your e-mail frequency. One item to note is to be wary of resending an original message or sending a slightly modified version of the original message. They can work as reminder but can serve to bother recipients if they did not feel the original message had value.

We’d like to hear your thoughts on managing e-mail frequency. Do you think strategically increasing your e-mail frequency is a good approach for your business? What tactics do you use to strategically increase your e-mail frequency? Leave comment below and let us know your thoughts.

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When was the last time you were truly creative? And we're not talking about how you were able to embed your Twitter feed on a website page. When did you last have that breakthrough, new idea that became reality and helped transform the way you do business?

Most industrial marketers are probably saying, “who has the time to be that creative?” We may focus more on the day-to-day tasks – posting our blog entries to Facebook, proofreading our latest press release and scheduling our next email campaign. Often, we'll make small changes. We send our press releases at a different time to get more pick-ups, tweak our email subject lines for a higher open rate and change how we phrase of our social media entries to be more engaging.

But where is that new discovery or innovation?

Tina Seelig is the author of inGenius: A Crash Course on Creativity and holds a Ph.D. in neuroscience from Stanford University Medical School. She recently gave a brief Q&A to Dan Scawbel of Forbes and addressed the creativity issue.

Generating fresh ideas is actually quite challenging because most people find it difficult to get beyond obvious, incremental solutions. True creativity requires the ability to break new ground, opening up a world of possibilities.

The good news is that Seelig believes that you can develop your creative abilities just like you can take lessons to dance more gracefully or practice shooting a basketball more accurately. While creative skills can be mastered, Seelig says your surrounding work environment, including your colleagues, also plays a significant role.

Creativity needs to develop from the bottom up and from the top down in organizations because it is a characteristic of individuals, small teams, and large groups. Each person needs the knowledge, skills, and attitudes required to generate new ideas. And, individuals need to be embedded in teams and organizations that support, encourage, and foster creative problem solving. Without a creative culture, individual creativity withers. And, without creative individuals, a creative culture can’t thrive.

Do you feel creativity thrives in your workplace? How do you foster a creative culture at work? Read the article and let us know your thoughts in the comments section below.
 

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Many industrial manufacturers have plans to break into new markets with their products and services. A new market can take on different meanings, depending on your objectives: extending current products and services to a new geographic market (Europe, Asia), to a new customer type (chemical engineers, mechanical engineers), or into a new industrial sector (automotive, renewable energy). In all these cases, your primary need is to become relevant to a new target audience.

Typically, marketing has the responsibility to raise awareness, build brand recognition, and generate demand opportunities in this new market. Here are some tips to help you get this important strategic initiative right.

Learn the Market
Every market has its own individual characteristics. The challenges customers face may be different — yet the products and services they rely on to solve those challenges might be the same. The key benefits of your products in one market might not be exactly the same in another. The terms and language used are different. Acronyms are new. You need to learn all of this so you can speak directly to your audience in a relevant way — giving you credibility in a market where your company is the newcomer and relatively unknown.

In addition to relying on your own market research, you can learn a lot about a new market by watching what successful companies in the sector are doing and how they describe their products and services. Another great way to put your finger on the pulse of a new market is to join trade groups or online networking communities specific to that market. Read industry blogs. Subscribe to e-newsletters. Attend Webinars and other online events to get comfortable in the new industry.

Develop Content
Before breaking into a new market, you need relevant content to raise the interest of your target audience and demonstrate that you belong and are a viable vendor. Based on your research and what you’ve learned, you might be able to update and re-purpose some of your current content for this target audience.

Other content you will need to create specifically for the new initiative. You’ll probably want targeted Web pages, collateral, Webinars, white papers, advertisements, and more that directly address this new market and their needs in the market.

Work with a Media Company
As you continue to develop your plans to reach a new market, it may be a good time to interview several media companies to find out what they know about the market, how they capture the attention of the audience you want to reach, and what specific programs they offer that are targeted and help deliver quality awareness, demand, and engagement opportunities for your company.

A media partner that has expertise across the entire industrial landscape may provide you with an advantage. You can gain the opportunity to not only implement targeted programs in the new market, but also programs that serve multiple audiences and draw in potential customers from more than one market.

Examples of targeted programs to reach your new market are advertisements in industry-specific e-newsletters that are delivered to opt-in subscribers. Or online events and custom Webinars directed to an invited list of attendees in your specific market.

Programs that can help you connect with engineers and other technical professionals across multiple markets, including a new one you are trying to break into, are banner ads that appear on a network of targeted industrial Web sites and searchable online catalogs and directories that will help your audience find your company when they are actively searching for the types of products and services that you offer.

A combination of broader programs and those targeted specifically at your new market will help you make better use of your marketing budget and reach your audience in their inbox, on their desktop, and through the online networks they use to connect with suppliers.

Have you marketed your company’s products or services in a new market? What tactics did you deploy and what were the results? Share your experiences in the comments section.
 

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In many companies, sales and marketing teams do not communicate well. If that’s the case in your company, it’s unfortunate, because marketing can learn a lot from sales.

So may we suggest you pull up a chair next to a salesperson, offer to buy lunch, and listen to what they have to say — much in the way they listen to customers all day. Because ultimately, a marketer’s customer is their sales team. And what you learn from sales can help you produce more effective marketing content and campaigns that drive awareness, demand, and engagement.

1. Learn more about your target audience
No one is closer to customers than salespeople. They are on the phone or in meetings or exchanging e-mails with customers every single day, whereas some marketers have never met a customer. Salespeople have insight into the minds of customers that many marketers can only dream of having.

Salespeople can help you better define your target audience for marketing campaigns. They deal not with a single customer type or persona, but in fact meet many variations of customers, particularly when engaged in a complex sales process for industrial products or services.

On the customer side of a complex sale there might be solution champions, influencers, recommenders, users, deciders, and purchasers. Each of these could be a different person, and the salesperson gets to know them all.

Salespeople can offer you insight into customers’ backgrounds, daily habits, challenges, problem-solving approaches, and information sources. They know how and when to approach customers. In addition, salespeople know the ‘language’ of their customers — the specific words they use to describe their challenges, goals, objections, and more.

If you, as marketer, had command of this information, you would be able to craft much more targeted messages and effective marketing campaigns.

2. Learn more about competitors
Salespeople often hear information from customers and prospects about your competitors. What’s good about them, what’s not so good. For example, you may learn about competitor strengths you must counter, as well as weaknesses you might be able to exploit. The kind of information you won’t glean from a competitor’s Web site, and the kind of information that can help you position your company better in the market.

3. Learn who to approach for testimonials and case studies
At some point, almost every potential customer asks who else is using your products or services. That’s when your sales team pulls out the case studies and testimonials. Salespeople are your best route to customers who might be willing to provide video testimonials or to serve as case study candidates. They know who is most satisfied, approachable, and willing to talk. And then you can turn around and give back to sales the types of content they want and need.

4. Learn what is important to your sales team
Salespeople have targets and are often measured by a few simple metrics: new contacts, pipeline, and sales. In the end, it all comes down to performance for salespeople and that’s what matters most to them. To grab the attention of your sales team, you need to understand what is important to them and show how you can help them achieve their objectives. This will make your communications with your salespeople more effective as they’ll see that you recognize their goals.

5. Learn to have a better relationship with sales
If you take the time to listen to your sales team, to learn what they know about customers and the market, to discover the messages that work well for them and the content they want as sales tools, then you as a marketer will be able to meet the needs of your customer — your sales team. You will work better together and go after the market as a team that is greater than the sum of its parts.

As an industrial marketer, what have you learned from your sales team that has made your communications to clients and prospects more effective? Share your thoughts in the comments section.
 

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The prevalence of low-cost online survey tools gives industrial marketers the opportunity to easily capture the thoughts and feedback of their customers. The results of a properly designed and targeted survey can help you make decisions about product direction, technical support policies, communication strategies with customers, and more.

To survey your customers, all you need is an objective, a customer e-mail list, and an online survey tool, such as SurveyMonkey (www.surveymonkey.com) or eSurveysPro (www.esurvesypro.com). There are a number of online survey tools out there; a quick Internet search will return many offerings.

What are the different types of surveys?
In the industrial space, there are two main types of surveys that marketing might conduct to gain valuable, actionable information.

• Market research survey — solicit customer feedback on potential new products or planned services.
• Customer satisfaction survey — this could entail satisfaction with products, services, your company, technical support, or anything else your company offers.

Why ask THAT question?
When conducting a customer survey, the first thing to do is define the reason you are surveying customers, what you expect (hope) to discover, and — perhaps most importantly — how you will use the survey results.

The reason this last item is so important is that you can use it as a litmus test for every question you ask in a survey. For example, let’s say your company manufactures ball bearings. You might ask this question: Which of the following types of bearings do you anticipate purchasing in the next year (check all that apply):

• Radial Ball Bearing
• Angular Contact Ball Bearing
• Mast Guide Bearing
• Thrust Bearing
• Slewing Ring/Turntable Bearing

Before including that question in your survey, ask yourself how the results will help you make an informed decision. If you discover from the answers that most customers anticipate needs for thrust bearings and radial ball bearings, will that information influence product or production decisions? If you don’t think you can use the results of a question to help make a decision, you probably don’t need it in your survey.

What questions have value?
The more you can gather quantifiable data from a survey, the more analysis you can perform on the results. Two types of effective questions that provide quantifiable data are a forced ranking question or a multiple-choice grid that allows only one answer per row.

Let’s say you make centrifugal pumps. You could ask a customer to rank the importance, on a scale of 1-7, of the following pump benefits:

• High Efficiency
• Low Maintenance
• Gentle Product Handling
• Low NPSH Requirements
• Long Seal Life
• Quiet Operation
• Reliability and Durability

In this question, your customer weighs the benefits in relation to each other and in that way prioritizes them. You might discover that the top two benefits are ‘Reliability and Durability’ and ‘High Efficiency.’ You can then evaluate your products against these benefits or highlight these features in your marketing communications.

Another way to present a question like this is in multiple-choice grid style, with each benefit its own row, and columns across the top with a ranking scale from, for example, ‘not important’ to ‘important’ or the 1-7 scale. In this way, each attribute gets ranked on its own, rather than in relation to other attributes.

How long should a survey be?
There is no set length for a customer survey, although ten minutes seems to be a magic number. Anything less and you might not capture enough information to make the survey worthwhile. Anything more and customers might not finish the survey. You should be able to create a 15-question survey that can be completed in ten minutes or less.

Consider it a best practice to tell customers at the beginning how long the survey should take to complete. And you will know how long it takes because you’ve tested and revised and tested again and again. A status bar showing the percentage of the survey completed is a nice touch. Most survey tools will offer this.

Your survey should be made up of multiple choice questions to help your customers quickly respond. You could include some questions like “Please provide additional information you would like to share about our products,” which require an open-ended response. However, you may not want to require a response to those questions, which brings us to...

Should we require an answer on all questions?
Probably. This comes under the thinking that if you don’t need an answer, you don’t need the question. The usual reason to make a question optional is that the survey taker may not be qualified to answer a question or may not know the answer, despite your effort at creating a relevant survey for a targeted list. Therefore, they might just choose any answer, which compromises the validity of your data. A way around this issue is to offer ‘N/A’ (not applicable) answer choices, or ‘Don’t Know.’

Do we need to offer an incentive?
The short answer is yes. An incentive for completing the survey, such as entering their name into a drawing for a cool electronic gadget or giving every customer who completes the survey a discount on their next order, can help you in several ways. First, it will increase your response rate. Second, it will demonstrate that you know your customer’s time is valuable and you are willing to reward them for their time.

How do we get the word out for customers to take the survey?
Since you’re offering an online survey, e-mail may be the best way to inform your customers that you’d like their input. You can send a separate e-mail to your mailing list or include it in a regular communication like a newsletter. Another idea is to have the e-mail come from the client’s customer service or sales rep or some other familiar name to make the e-mail more personal. You may need to also send a reminder depending on your response rate. Don’t forget to let your clients know it’s a quick survey and include your incentive in the e-mail.

What if my customers are concerned about privacy?
You should let them know up front that you take their privacy seriously and they can take the survey anonymously. If they wish to participate in the incentive, they may need to provide an e-mail address or other contact info but that, in no way, will be linked to their responses. Asking for general demographic information such as industry, job title, and company size is common but you really don’t need to ask for any personally identifiable information to create a successful survey.

How do we analyze the results?
Most online survey tools provide a wealth of analytic features, including the graphing of answers and the ability to create pivots that provide different views of the data. For example, you might have a question that asks about the size of your customer’s company. Then, while analyzing results, you might create a view that shows only the answers for companies of a specific size.

Have you conducted successful customer surveys? What were the keys to your success? What best practices would you like to share with other industrial marketers? Please leave your thoughts in the comments section below.
 

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