How about taking your customer journey to a whole other level? Today, we’ll dive into a strategy that creates a true multichannel conversation to drive results—the integration of direct mail and physical gifting into your lead nurturing process.

Break Through the Clutter

Engaging consumers through email is essential to driving success. However, breaking through the clutter is sometimes next to impossible with email. Hundreds of emails fill the inbox. People go on vacation. Spam blockers filter out messages. Recipients unsubscribe.

Nurtured leads produce, on average, a 20 percent increase in sales opportunities versus non-nurtured leads. – DemandGen Report

Try adding automated direct mail into the mix, which adds a second dimension to your nurture efforts. If someone isn’t responding electronically, automated direct mail lets marketers reach them in another fashion. For example, if a target account is blocking your company’s emails or if the recipient receives 1,000 messages a day, automated direct mail gets the message through a lot more effectively.

On the other hand, if the recipient is engaging with your emails, automated direct mail reinforces the message to optimize the overall results of your campaign. The dual email and direct mail approach creates a true multi-channel process to your automated marketing campaigns.

How Does Automated Direct Mail Work?

Automated direct mail is the integration of direct mail and physical gifting into your marketing automation platform.

For example, five years ago, you would have had to painfully send your list to the direct mail company to deliver the gift in a batch-n-blast approach. Or, you would have your marketing intern collect names of important leads and ship out gifts from the tchotchke closet.

Today, the sending of physical gifts is as automated as the sending of an email—trackable, measurable and automated within your marketing automation platform. Information on the item also feeds into your CRM to provide additional intelligence to your sales team.

For the techie Marketo readers, this direct mail integration is performed via a webhook that triggers the direct mail and brings back delivery information when available.

Not Your Traditional Direct Mail

“Sixty-two percent of customers are more likely to do business with brands after receiving a promotional item.”
– The Advertising Specialty Institute

Although you can still use the traditional method, I am not talking about old school direct mail pieces like postcards. I’m talking about physical gifts that make an impact when sent in conjunction with your standard nurturing emails.

Let’s dive into a few examples:

The Account Igniter

How much is your top account worth? Whether you are looking for a door opener or a deeper penetration into an account, the Account Igniter is a high-value, low-risk, high-reward automated direct mail program. This campaign is ideal for any Account Based Marketing strategy.

In this program, identify the top 5-10 contacts in your top 100 accounts.

• Send two emails to promote a demo or test drive.
• Deliver a remote control to the contact’s physical address with a call to action such as, “You have the remote, call us to schedule a test drive and we’ll send you the helicopter.”
• Set a task for the Sales rep to call upon delivery of the remote control.
• Send an email follow-up.

The Meeting Grabber

“How do we get more meetings?” is a common request in many organizations. If your organization is trying to boost meetings, The Meeting Grabber is a good template to start with.

The goal is to leverage automated direct mail along with email to generate a meeting for sales. The Meeting Grabber is an integral piece of the puzzle and allows for marketing to confidently hand-off qualified MQLs to Sales.

Offer example:

• When a leads hit MQL, send an email offering an Amazon Kindle for signing up for a demo.
• After the demo is complete, the system will automatically deliver the Amazon Kindle.

The Nurture Accelerator

Already have a lead nurturing campaign in place? Improve the conversion by seamlessly adding in automated direct mail. Build the direct mail right into existing nurture tracks to add a new dynamic to the conversation. The big benefit here is the automated direct mail is created in a “set-and-forget” process to deliver the right content at the right time.

• Touch 1: Send “Welcome” email.
• Touch 2: Send link to three-minute video tour.
• Touch 3: Deliver a postcard promoting the download.
• Touch 4: Send an email promoting the download.

The Funnel Driver

If your company has a lead lifecycle process, you are most likely measuring conversion rates between all of your major stages. If you find leads getting stuck at certain stages, try unclogging the funnel by sending automated direct mail.

• When a lead reaches a certain age in a bottom-of-the-funnel stage like SQL, send an email in attempt to push it along.
• Deliver an iPad sleeve automated direct mail with a call-to-action such as, “Purchase within 30 days, get an iPad.”
• Set a task for the sales rep to call upon delivery of the iPad sleeve.
• Send an email follow-up.

Customer Advocacy Welcome Kits

When a prospect becomes a customer, it’s time to begin the process of turning that customer into an advocate.

• When the opportunity changes to a status of “won,” send the welcome kit to the primary contact in the account.
• Set a task for the Sales rep to call upon delivery of the kit to thank the new customer for the business.

Track ROI of Automated Direct Mail

Best practice organizations measure the effectiveness of their marketing programs, including automated direct mail. Ensure that every automated direct mail piece contains a call-to-action that drives the recipient to a website or phone number for further action. This will serve as your initial success metric.

Going one step further, track if that automated direct mail leads to a high-level lifecycle success. Answer questions like:

• Did the recipient respond?
• How did the automated direct mail influence the funnel?
• How many deals did the automated direct mail create?

At the 2015 Marketo Summit, PrintingForLess.com won the The LaunchPoint Innovator award for its automated direct mail technology it calls Tactile Marketing. PFL offers full integration with Marketo and Eloqua for marketers who wish to take the next step with automated direct mail.

At RevEngine Marketing, we are pretty excited about the next dimension in engagement marketing. If you have Marketo and are looking to get started with your campaign, give us a shout. As a PFL partner, we can help set you up for success.

This article originally appeared on RevEngine Insider.

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The post Step up Your Lead Nurturing Game appeared first on Relevance.

Seventy-nine percent of marketing leads never convert into sales. Lack of lead nurturing is the most common cause of this poor performance.

— MarketingSherpa

Growing up, my mom had a knack for getting the most out of our family’s meals. Tonight’s turkey dinner turned into tomorrow’s sandwich for lunch followed by tomorrow night’s soup. Each of the meals used the same basic ingredients, yet each was perfect for the occasion. Content marketing is a lot like cooking: You need to understand when (and how) to spin up different versions and repurpose content.

Marketers know that lead nurturing is important, yet many still struggle to move beyond basic nurturing to more advanced nurture strategies. The one thing holding them back? Content. “We just don’t have enough content to develop a nurture journey,” is a story I frequently hear when speaking with fellow marketers and clients.

Here are a few strategies to propel you over the content hump by reusing what you already have. You just may be a little further along than you think.

Your Content Inventory

Like many great chefs, content marketers need to know what they have already available in the kitchen. Usually, this is the “Oh, $#*!” moment when you look at your eBooks and whitepapers, and realize that you don’t have nearly enough content. Don’t worry, it’s not as bad as it seems. You’ll soon be the king or queen of content repurposing.

As part of the process, inventory all of your assets. I mean everything, as if you were cleaning out your house for a yard sale. Here is a link to a content inventory template you can use to help find the gaps.

Recently, I went through this process with a client resulting in more than 50 persona-based content pieces for utilization throughout the nurture journey. Let’s get cooking.

The Seasoning: Personas

Eighty-two percent of prospects say content targeted to their industry is more valuable.

— MarketingSherpa

While reading the below menu items, think about slightly altering the messaging of each to create different versions. The key is to sprinkle relevant information throughout the piece to give it industry or persona flavor.

All of a sudden, one best practices article turns into five by adjusting the subject line and adding in a few industry-specific stats. Of course, you can totally revamp the content, but that takes time. Judge what works best for your organization.

1. The Meat & Potatoes – Bottom of Funnel Content

Most marketers think of case studies, white papers and eBooks as their standard nurturing content. There is something about a PDF that equates to value. Many of the assets are three or more pages, which makes the content ripe for cutting up into bite-size chunks.

Bring out the knife and chop them up. For example, if your case study promotes results, use those in the subject line. Write a few paragraphs on the actual results in a short email to your audience. Separately, break out the case study to promote the actual usage. Now you have doubled your content from just one piece.

The longer the piece, the better. We recently broke out our “Six Steps to Transform Your Lifecycle into a Revenue Machine” article into two blog posts and six nurture emails.

The point is: don’t just rely on the asset itself.

2. Famous Chef – Video

Like the celebrity chef, get your products on video. If your company has anything on YouTube, grab it and promote the video in a nurture email. Studies show that adding a video to an introductory company email increases click-through rate by 96 percent.

You likely paid a pretty penny to produce the company explainer video, so put that investment to work as part of your early stage content. Spread other video content throughout the journey. When appropriate, don’t be afraid to bring in some humor to mix up some of the corporate messaging.

3. Pasta – Blogs

Like the ziti sitting in your cabinet, every company has a blog. I love reusing blog posts because they are easy pickings for content repurposing. We use much of RevEngine’s blog content for our own nurturing and recommend that our clients do the same.

Assuming your company posts twice a month, this gives you at least twenty articles annually from which to grab content. Copy and paste excerpts from the best performing posts, write an intro and suddenly you’ve added five to ten new emails without creating anything brand new.

4. Tonight’s Specials – Grabbers

Grabbers might not be in your regular inventory, but they can be powerful to help move a prospect along the sales cycle. A grabber is a powerful stat or series of stats that grab attention. Try sprinkling a few of these short and sweet emails into your nurturing mix.

For example, when I was working in data security in a past life, I might use a grabber intro such as, “Did you know that the average cost of a data breach is $5.9 million? Here are a couple of other stats you might find useful.” This may seem small or insignificant, but it still provides value for the reader by continuing to build their knowledge base of factual, industry-specific facts.

Substitutes

While most restaurants won’t allow substitutes for their daily specials, you should be willing to make content alterations that cater to a niche whenever possible. Mix in industry stats to provide even more relevance. For example, for the health care spin, the following might make a good twist:

Did you know that Community Health Systems announced that information on 4.5 million patients was stolen in a cyber attack that may have originated in China?

5. Sprinkles on Top – Infographics

Forty percent of people respond better to visual information than text.

— Zabisco

Sprinkles make ice cream even better than it already is. Have some great stats you are using across your site or in presentations? Turn them into an infographic. Not only are you repurposing the content, but you are improving the asset itself, as infographics generally perform better than written texts.

6. Hamburger Helper – Q&A

There is nothing like a little Q&A to get prospects engaged. This content sometimes exists in Marketing, but more likely lives in Support or Sales. Talk with your Support and Sales teams to find out the top three to five questions that prospects and customers keep asking.

Build these questions within the nurture journey where appropriate and address one question per email to keep the reader focused. Use the detailed, product-related questions as late stage content when prospects are further along in the buying cycle. We recently worked with a client who integrated this content into an on-boarding email series to cut down on support costs.

7. Dessert – Webinars

This is another asset that is easy to blend into the repurpose mix. Most businesses conduct one or two live webinars a month. Grab the recording, write an excerpt and link to it.

Enhance your prospects’ journey by reusing all the great stuff you already have. Yes, it’s better to provide some content rather than no content, but creating a relevant experience is what will really take an organization to the next level.

Good luck in the kitchen.

The post 7 Content Repurposing Dishes Your Prospects Will Eat Up appeared first on Relevance.

Rule No. 1, Never Lose “Customer”
Rule No. 2, Don’t Forget Rule No. 1

– Warren Buffet (American business magnate, investor and philanthropist)

We’ve all heard the story. Your company pays big bucks for a software solution and the rep disappears faster than a Justin Verlander fastball. On the marketing side, most programs are designed for acquiring new leads, not retaining them. Keeping customers via retention-based strategies is often an afterthought.

In the high tech industry, lack of retention focus can lead to shelfware, wasted investment and a nonrenewal at renewal time. Why? New logos and acquired leads are often some of the KPIs management evaluates to measure the growth of a business.

What retention policies can your organization adopt to keep your customers coming back for more?

A Tale of Two Retail Approaches

Within two weeks after New Year’s, I took the dreaded trip to the mall to return some holiday gifts. I first went to REI and Nordstrom. Both stores have retention-based strategies that focus on the post-sale customer experience. Both took back my items without a blink.Moreover, REI has a loyalty program to promote return customers and Nordstrom is known for its liberal return policy.

My third trip was to Louis Vuitton, one of the premium brands in fashion. Not only does Louis Vuitton have a limited 14-day cash return policy, it doesn’t extend the policy for the holidays, which just about every other store does. It’s the same kind of policy I’d expect from Bill and Ted’s Discount Stereo but not from a luxury brand. Certainly, they would make an exception for a repeat customer, but subsequent requests to customer service referred back to the 14-day policy.

To summarize, two of the above brands focus on the customer experience after the sale while one doesn’t. Side note: To be fair, support via Louis Vuitton’s Twitter account is fast.

Five Strategies for Retaining Customers

Companies focus on acquisition more than customer retention, even though it can cost 7x more to acquire new customers.

– Get Satisfaction Infographic

If your organization doesn’t have a retention-based strategy and focus, consider adopting one. At the highest level, always provide value after the sale from both a marketing and sales perspective. Make retention a goal and measure it.

Here are a couple of strategies to try your hand at. After six months of adopting some of the below strategies, I saw one company’s renewal rates jump from the 70s to the 90s.

1) Change the Conversation

Top B2B organizations utilize content that is specific towards its customers to help educate users and executives on the benefits and uses of the existing solution. Remember, customers have already purchased the solution so “why to buy” eBooks are no longer relevant. Instead, deliver content that helps your customers leverage their existing investment.

For companies with web personalization technologies like Marketo Real-Time Personalization orDemandBase, change the experience for customers when they visit your site. Instead of offering trial offers, switch the conversation to best practice case studies.

2) Develop a Retention-Based Marketing Approach

63% of marketers felt that new customer acquisition is the most important advertising goal.

– Get Satisfaction

Educate with an On-boarding Strategy

Offer content to transition the journey from prospect to customer. One example is an on-boarding strategy. Deliver key content weekly for the first three months that provides top usage tips. As a double benefit, these communications should also reduce the drain on your customer support team.

One of our clients saw big gains in this area when it took top support questions and rolled them into a post-sale best practices series.

Make the Renewal a Formality

When the time comes for the renewal, make sure your customers can easily justify the extension. Consider creating a renewal nurture stream that kicks off 90 days prior to the expiration of the software. Use surveys and other content to ensure that the customer is leveraging the solution. And if it isn’t, offer best practices to help the customer show a return on investment.

3) Create a Community and Customer Advocacy Program

There is nothing better than turning your customers into advocates. I won’t go into detail in this article, but know that customer advocacy is a key component of retention. Hank Barnes from Gartner recently covered this topic in a blog post.

Companies like Influitive, NextBee and Amplifinity are a few players in the space.

The number one source for understanding the differentiation of a technology provider was peers of the same size in their industry (60%).

– Gartner

4) Develop a Post Sale Role

Change the language of your post sale roles to build brand loyalty and become a trusted adviser. Your reps are no longer Sales Managers; they become Success Managers and On-boarding Experts. Their focus is to ensure a smooth experience throughout ownership.

The efforts of the Success Manager should run parallel with the above marketing retention efforts.

For example, while marketing is sending the on-boarding emails weekly, the Success Manager should call the customer leveraging the same on-boarding language. Businesses should use the same process when the 90-day renewal email hits.

5) Become the Trusted Adviser and Provide Value

Don’t call the customer one month before the renewal and expect success. Don’t just rely on your website to do the work. Make sure to position yourself as a thought leader throughout the year and provide value. If you don’t, your competitors will.

The biggest challenge for salespeople isn’t that the Internet creates greater value. The biggest challenge is that their competitors have greater business acumen and situational knowledge, and that these salespeople can create greater value for their clients throughout the entire buying process.

– Anthony Iannarino – TheSalesBlog.com

A great example is a company that I used to work for in the database security space. Whenever there was a major breach or vulnerability found, our marketing team would drop everything and put on a special webinar to educate our customers on the latest threat. Additionally, the Success Team would call in tandem to offer real value to customer. The end result was an improved customer relationship which helped improve retention rates.

To summarize, top organizations recognize the importance of retention-based marketing. Don’t just think about the initial sale, think about the lifetime value of the customer. A happy customer is much more likely to purchase from you in the future.

And if you are going to drop big bucks on a designer purse or bag during the holidays, know the return policies.

This article originally appeared on RevEngine Marketing.

The post 5 Strategies to Boost Customer Retention with Content appeared first on Relevance.