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.

One of the most dangerous traps your agency can fall into is thinking that once you’ve signed a client, your job is done. This mentality is even more dangerous if you or your business development team overpromised and oversold to get the client in the first place.

In fact, signing the client is just the beginning of the work. Maintaining a high level of client satisfaction is critical — and not just for client retention. Just as employers check references and look at a candidate’s tenure with previous companies, new prospects share the same concerns when hiring an agency.

If a potential new client hears negative feedback through word-of-mouth referrals or online reviews, it immediately undermines whatever relationship you have built up to that point and discounts your agency’s credibility. To be fair, every agency is going to have at least a couple of disgruntled former clients, but if your agency is known for over promising and under delivering, or for its struggles with client retention then acquiring new business is going to be an uphill battle.

Although you can’t prevent every client from leaving, you could be chasing clients away without even realizing it. Here are three of the most common reasons why agency relationships fall apart, causing clients to walk out the door.

Allowing the Quality of Service To Slip:

Allowing your customer service to decline once you’ve secured their business is one of the top ways to ensure that you lose that client.  Your level of service and excitement should stay the same during your working relationship as it did when you were pursuing the client.  Letting the amount of attention, care, and creativity decline will lead clients to believe that they aren’t as important as they were before, which will lead to discontent with the product they are paying for, and eventually they will move to another agency.

Not Meeting Their Needs/Evolving With Them:

Don’t let them get bored with you! If a client feels that you are out of new and exciting ideas for them, what reason do they have to stay with you?  Just because a campaign has been successful, doesn’t mean that you get to stop innovating.  Successful agency/client relationships are built on an ever changing and improving flow of ideas and communications, when you stop listening to your client and anticipating their needs, the odds that you will lose their business skyrockets.  Become an expert at anticipating your clients needs, read between the lines if you have to and learn to pick up any clues that might indicate they are dissatisfied.  If they appear to be losing excitement over a campaign, chances are it’s time to come up with a new plan.

Toot Your Agency’s Horn:

If your client forgets how successful your agency is and how much quality work you crank out, what is going to keep them with you?  Remind them how successful you’ve been with their account, highlight major wins, and always keep a tight handle on their budget.  When you stop meeting their needs and either go way over budget, or way under budget, they will start to wonder what they are paying you for.

Clues Your Client Is About to Stray:

If you notice a dramatic change in these three clues, you’re client relationship is likely in big trouble.

Lack of communication – has the client stopped taking your calls or contacting you?

New and Unusual Requests – is the client asking for different or more specific methods of measurement for your service?

Sudden Micro Management – is your hands off client suddenly on top of everything you do?

Stay tuned into your client, keep the lines of communication open, and ASK them if they are satisfied with your service, or if there is something more you can do to meet their needs, doing so might save you from losing their business!

Is your agency ready for what’s ahead in 2016? The marketing world continues to evolve at a rapid pace. In 2016, it’s truer than ever. Agencies that fail to adapt to the “new normal” run the risk of being left in the dust by their competitors. While many of these changes involve technology, many others involve cultural and social shifts within our society. Familiarize yourself with the five most notable trends to watch out for in 2016 to remain as competitive as possible.

1. The Digital Transformation is Upon Us 

For a long time, agencies have kept digital technology separate from other aspects of marketing. That’s changing rapidly. In 2016, things won’t be so siloed. Creatives and others within agencies will increasingly work in a collaborative fashion. The digital revolution is done, and the post-digital world requires agencies to seamlessly incorporate digital technology into all aspects of their work.

2. Personalized Conversations 

Retailers have been tracking consumers online for some time, but now the technology exists to actually do something useful with the information. More importantly, the information is no longer only useful in the online world. Indeed, retailers will increasingly have the ability to connect directly with consumers wherever they are, whether it’s online or off. Access to free Wi-Fi and mobile is largely responsible for this particular shift. Agencies should encourage retailers to embrace omnichannel marketing to create a seamless experience.

3. Generation Y 

By 2020, more than 50% of the workforce will be made up of workers who belong to generation Y. Born between 1981 and 1999, they are known for their desire to control their own destinies. They don’t crave the stability of long-term job commitments but are driven by their passion for what they do. Entrepreneurs and freelancers, they thrive on creativity and will rapidly change the face of marketing in the years to come.

4. Advertising and Media Merge Again 

Thanks to developments like big data and the rise of social media, marketing and media are getting cozy again. Successful marketing agencies understand this and will embrace it. Already, many brands are hiring younger, hipper agencies that understand how to effectively market to online users, as it’s a whole different ballgame than it is with other forms of media.

5. Diversity 

More than ever, gender equality and diversity in general are top concerns for both retailers and marketing agencies. Retailers understand that inclusivity is key, and agencies are taking note. The best and most successful agencies will make a concerted effort to hire more young women and to elevate women and minorities to higher positions. They will also strive to help employees achieve an optimal work-life balance, so you can expect a lot more telecommuting to happen in the months and years to come.

With any luck, you’re already at least somewhat aware of the trends to watch in 2016. Whether you are or not, make a point to embrace them however you can. In doing so, you will be well ahead of the competition.

The expanding reach of the Internet is increasing competition for clients, making it difficult to find the right marketing mix to generate new business. Fortunately, using online tools to aggregate your marketing efforts can streamline your business development initiatives and boost your gross sales. In particular, comprehensive online marketing platforms tend to be the best tools for winning new business.

Online Marketing Platforms

If you’re having a hard time managing ad campaigns, lead generation campaigns and your marketing research objectives, then online marketing platforms can make a substantive difference in your life. You can perform all of these functions and more, simply by logging into a single platform that aggregates these services for you. There is no reason to log in and out of multiple applications to win new business, when a single platform makes the process easier.

In addition to making the process more efficient, these platforms also enhance the quality of your activities and the results you generate. You’re able to generate real-time analytics that can help you optimize the way you gather leads, and who you actually gather them from. Whether its higher sales conversions and sales, lower levels of bad debt and higher repeat business, online marketing plaforms can change the dynamics of your business.

Additional Resources

In addition to online marketing platforms, online marketplaces can help you generate new business without a lot of additional marketing costs. Online marketplaces help you reduce everything from your operating expenses to your cost of sales, because the marketplace maintenance is typically handled by a third-party service provider. You can advertise your services to clients all over the world and conduct transactions is a single currency, depending on the construction of the marketplace.

There are also organizations that specialize in content marketing and online marketing strategies that can help your advertising agency generate new business. The content you put out to the world has a high impact on your ability to generate and retain business, making it one of the most important marketing factors to master.

5 of the best online tools and resources for new business development include:

1. DailyVista
2. Winmo
3. Content Marketing Institute
4. Guru.com
5. Elance.com

Winning new business is a process that requires research and effective online marketing tools that help you leverage the power of the Internet to grow your company. Be sure to use online marketing platforms to optimize your marketing campaigns and advertising strategies.

With 71% of agency new business professionals saying it’s harder to break through to prospects, and traditional channels aren’t working like they used to, it’s more important than ever to align marketing with your sales outreach. A recent Webinar we hosted entitled, “How the Most Successful Agencies Market Themselves,” discussed what a highly successful ecosystem looks like and the tools needed to support it.

Agencies who nail this start generating sales-ready leads on a more consistent basis, and most importantly – work with the clients they actually want to do business with.

To watch the full recording, view below: 

 

One of the biggest mistakes that a marketing agency can make is trying to be all things to all people. At first glance, casting a wide net seems logical. After all, isn’t it the best way to ensure that your message is seen by as many people as possible? It is, and that’s the problem. Here’s why: Most of those people would never have been interested in your offerings anyway, so your message is lost on them–and so are your efforts, time and money.

Instead, define a very specific target audience on which to focus your efforts. In doing so, you’ll get way more bang for your marketing buck and will set the stage for long-term growth, profitability and success.

Five Tips for Identifying the Ideal Vertical for Your Agency

With a clearly defined target audience, it will be much easier to know where, when and how to market your products and services. Keep these tips in mind to more easily define a target vertical on which to focus your marketing and branding efforts:

1. Get to Know Your Current Customers – Much of what you need to know can be found in your sales records. Who currently buys your products and services? What needs are they trying to fill by using them? What kinds of things do your current customers have in common? Consider things like age, interests, education level and the like. While you’re at it, closely examine your biggest customers. What traits do they share? This research should give you a great head-start in defining your ideal audience.
2. Scout Out the Competition – Take a look at your closest competitors. What do their customers look like? Who do they appear to be targeting with their marketing efforts? Don’t attempt to go after the same exact audience. Instead, look for niche markets that your competitors may be overlooking, as they could be your best opportunity.
3. Consider the Benefits of Your Products and Services – Painstakingly list each of the products and services that your agency provides and the benefits that they provide. Next, consider the problems that these products and services solve. Who typically experiences these problems? These are the folks who could benefit the most from your offerings.
4. Define Your Target Audience – Consider the kind of person who is most likely to buy your products and services. They should not only need to buy them but should be able to also. Jot down a list of the demographics that they share, including age, gender, income, education, marital status and occupation. Dig deeper by considering their shared interests, attitudes, values and other personality traits.
5. Assess & Grow Your Newly Defined Target Audience – Finally, make sure that marketing to the target audience that you’ve selected will help you achieve your objectives. Will these folks truly benefit from what your agency has to offer? Can they afford your offerings? Are they easily accessible? If so, which media or channels  do they typically prefer? Do you understand the motivations behind the decisions that they make?

Finding the right vertical for your agency to primarily serve is a small but crucial part of achieving long-term new business growth. With a specifically defined audience, your sales and marketing efforts will go a lot farther.

You’ve written a great introduction email and have prepared an inspiring cold-call pitch, but how do you actually get in touch with and make contact with the prospect? Calling the company’s switchboard or filling out their website “contact us” form are not efficient or effective ways to connect with senior marketing decision-makers for new business for your agency.

All too often, companies require sales reps to try to track down their prospect’s contact information on their own. If the contact data is ever even found, it is often inaccurate and incomplete. This process eats up the seller’s time and limits their sales potential. But there’s a better way.

Top agencies subscribe to database services that provide accurate, direct contact information on prospects. They build targeted lists and supplement this data with their own due diligence. This process results in richer information that is relevant, current and provides insights that can be used in prospecting email and call messaging.

Below are five important steps to build a scalable, repeatable and efficient prospecting process. Following each step of these steps on a consistent basis will result in thorough and targeted prospect lists:

1. Get A Good Database Provider

There are number of database providers available online, such as Winmo, that offer vetted and current prospect contact information for ad agencies, marketing firms and creative agencies. These sophisticated database and intelligence services often provide much more than contact information. They also can offer company financial data, agency relationships and recent news articles to help you better identify your best prospects.

When selecting a database provider, it is important to find one that employs teams of researchers to validate and refresh the data on a regular basis, at least every 3-6 months. It’s also important that the company specializes in advertising and marketing agencies so the prospects align with your target audience.

2. Focus On A Vertical

As a consultant and sales director at Catapult New Business, I pull prospect data lists on behalf of agencies multiple times each week. I typically begin by selecting a target business vertical, such as insurance companies. By being narrowly focused, the outbound messaging can be similar across all companies within the vertical, leading to more efficiency in your outreach program. Top sellers will focus on 1-3 verticals per quarter, depending on the final size of the prospect lists.

3. Identify the Best-Fit Companies

Once the vertical is selected, the company list can be narrowed by such criteria as revenue, media spend and location. By targeting only the companies that fit your buyer persona, you’re able to laser-focus sales efforts to the best-suited companies. Although the database provider I use has extensive lists of companies, I also review top business rankings lists within that vertical to ensure that I have all relevant companies included on my list.

When researching each company to determine if it fits our buyer persona, I take notes on the challenges the company is facing. These insights are later converted into talking points for email and phone outreach. If I am unable to identify challenges that we can realistically solve, I believe I have no valid reason to reach out to the prospect and remove them from the company list.

4. Identify the Best-Fit Contacts

Once I have narrowed the list down to the top 10-20 companies, I use the database to find the most relevant contacts within the companies, based on job function and rank.

Who the right contacts are will vary depending on your agency’s services. For example, a social media agency surely will want to connect with a social media director. However a branding agency likely would not.

I like to focus on C-suite, VP and director-level marketing professionals, but depending on your agency, you may also target manager-level contacts. What’s important is that you’re only targeting decision-makers or influencers. I focus on finding about 10 contacts per company, depending on the size of the prospect company and your agency’s specialty.

At this point, I download the information from the database provider into an Excel or CSV file to upload to a CRM program such as Salesforce.

But the work is not over.

5. Uncover Even More Best-Fit Contacts

Unearthing information on LinkedIn is a powerful way to gain even more contacts. By reviewing the LinkedIn profile of each contact, you can confirm that the employee is still with the company and remains in the appropriate role.

LinkedIn is also useful for mining additional contacts in the company. By reviewing the “People Also Viewed” box on a contact’s LinkedIn profile, you may find additional relevant prospects you have not found previously.

During this process I also make notes of mutual contacts, past employers, links to presentations, schools attended or other points of connection that I will use in my outreach to that contact.

You will need the email address information for these contacts found outside of the database. You can solve this by looking at the email naming conventions of the other contacts in the company; 90 percent of the time the naming convention will hold for the missing prospects. If all else fails, there are a number of online tools available to help find alternative email suggestions.

Lastly I will scour Google reading financial statements, press releases and trade articles for mentions of other relevant contacts at the companies.

Key Takeaways

Your prospect data list is the most important part in agency new business outreach. If you do not have a relevant and accurate list of prospects and an efficient way to get this data, even the best messaging will fail. If a tree falls in a forest and no one hears it, did it really fall? Using a database platform makes this scalable so business development reps can spend more time on outreach and less time trying to track down contact information. Following each step on a consistent basis will lay the critical foundation for an effective outreach program.

---

Author Bio

Christian Banach is an advertising agency new business consultant and sales director at Catapult New Business. You can connect with him on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Prospecting is time-consuming and often messy – but also vital for young companies ready to develop strong customer bases. If you aren’t finding enough leads, it’s time to invest more heavily in high-quality prospecting. Here’s what you need to know.

1. Be Organic, But Also Focus on Data

Let’s unpack this tip a bit: Prospecting is about acquiring contact information and profile data for potential leads. Because it can be time-consuming and doesn’t actually lead to revenue until leads have been turned into customers, many new companies are tempted to cheat – to buy lists of customer contact information or use contact lists from other portions of the business. Avoid this temptation – prospect data needs to be organic, gathered in the wild from real sources. This is the only way to guarantee high-quality leads with the right contact information. At the same time, these organic prospects need to be as data rich as possible so that you can start forming accurate customer personas, predict the needs of your leads, and start putting together powerful sales strategies.

2. Establish Useful Conversions

Prospecting is not too early for conversion efforts: We’re talking about basic, early conversions designed to test the efficacy of your process and gather important data. Conversions like responses to emails, fill-out forms on your website, successful referrals, and similar actions should all be fueling your prospect list. Ideally, they should also give you enough information so that you can rank your prospects based on their profitability and chances of success. Conversions this early in the process also allow you to note which channels are the most effective in picking up prospects.

3. Use All Available Channels

Speaking of channels, how many are you using? You should tap into all channels possible for your industry and target audience: Social media, blogs, forums, email, trade shows, calls to past clients, buddies at the local pub, old friends now working for another business…cast a wide net when first building your customer base. Not only will this help you find more prospects, but it will also help you sharpen up your sales pitches and marketing content before you start dealing more directly with your leads.

4. Specialize in the Right People and Tools

When we say “specialize” we are talking about two important steps in the prospecting process. First, specialize in demographics that are indeed interested in what you are selling. Don’t waste your energy gathering prospect information for people that have no interest in your products (people who live in apartments don’t buy lawnmowers, etc.). Second, specialize on prospecting within your company. There are several reasons to avoid having your salespeople find prospects. A better solution is to assign someone temporarily or permanently to dig up prospects and do nothing else: Follow up by giving these people the right sales tools to maximize productivity and narrow down/rank prospects efficiently.

5. Stay in Communication and Predict Needs

If you have followed our other tips and have a roster of high-quality leads to pursue, don’t give up on them. Keep trying different approaches, offer different solutions, seek out new decision-makers, try for different meeting times, send more emails, and so on. Prospects that may seem dead on arrival today could be a new client tomorrow. One of the most important steps in turning prospects into successful leads is to correctly forecast their needs before anyone else (including the prospects themselves). Keep a finger on the pulse of your industry, watch trends, and start making predictions about what your target audience is going to need before anyone else is thinking about it.

One of the greatest challenges in the agency world is entering a growth phase…when you aren’t seeing much growth. In a perfect world, business growth would happen naturally in easy-to-predict stages, but that isn’t this world – chances are good that instead you need to grow, but aren’t seeing it happen. Here are the three top reasons it happens to agencies like yours, and what you need to make real growth happen.

1. Financial Management Issues

This sounds like a broad topic, because it really is – financial management stretches from day-to-day profits all the way to major capital and investment decisions. However, financial planning and consistent new business growth play integral roles when it comes to company growth.

This can take many forms. Perhaps poor cash flow management is holding your company back – you may struggle with accounting for where your cash comes from and where it goes at the proper time, a problem many new businesses encounter. As a result, agencies like yours quickly find themselves without cash on hand to cover supplies and overhead, and emergencies quickly dig into valuable reserves so there really isn’t much time to think about expansion at all.

Another common financial management deals with revenue and credit. If your credit policies and accounts receivable turnover are poor, you will probably never have enough capital to expand. Creating purchase strategies that get revenue into your hands in a timely manner can be a challenge for many companies. You want customers to have the ability to purchase your goods, but you can’t give them too much credit leeway or too many discounts, which will dig into your profits.

What do these problems add up to? A business without cash reserves that simply does not look very impressive on paper. And this is where we reach the investor problem: Business growth requires money, typically via business loans or perhaps a capital group. Banks and investors alike pay a lot of attention to financial statements, which means poor financial management – even in the small things – can keep you from getting the capital that you need.

2. Adaptation to Market Changes

This point is a bit more intangible, but still just as important when looking for reasons why your business isn’t seeing the growth you want: You aren’t watching the market closely enough, and you aren’t responding to it properly.

Part of this is an entrepreneurial issue: New business leaders tend to have a lot of energy and willpower focused in one direction, which means it can be difficult for these leaders to see related issues – and to change. Stubbornness has kept many a business from expanding properly.

Part of this problem is also simple business evolution: If your target demographic, preferred purchasing method, or the communication tools in your industry have changed, you absolutely have to change with them to find new growth.

3. Client Creep and Time Management

This is a subtler problem related to agencies that interact a lot with their customers and typically take on large client projects. Clients are your lifeblood…but they can also choke your own vision for your business. If you and your employees are spending too much time attending to client needs and tackling their complex projects, you may not have any time left to think about your own business and growth strategies. Pay attention to time management, and be sure to make time for nurturing and developing new business opportunities outside of your referral network.