B2B Sales Trends Boost Mobile-Friendly Online Acquisition

/in , , , , , , , , , , , , , , /by

With Forrester Research forecasting steady growth in B2B e-commerce, reaching $1.2 trillion in sales, or 13.1% of all B2B sales, by 2021, smart e-commerce marketing is more essential than ever for AccuList USA’s B2B catalog and e-commerce clients. A recent bigcommerce.com blog post highlighted many important trends for B2B e-commerce, but we’ll focus on three marketing-related takeaways.

Acquisition Is the New Online Focus

The days are gone when B2B online strategy could succeed by putting up a website as a customer service portal, a place for existing account re-orders or a passive catalog display. Online selling is becoming a core part of B2B business and sales strategy, argues bigcommerce.com post author Jillian Hufford, marketing analyst at nChannel, a multi-channel integration provider. B2B marketers should start by profiling customers to better target online and offline promotions to find high-ROI traffic. Note that a robust SEO/SEM strategy, coupled with website search tools, is essential given that 74% of B2B buyers report researching at least part of their work purchases online. Easy, seamless cross-channel ordering is another basic of online customer acquisition now. Plus, an investment in online content marketing, coupled with SEO strategy, can leverage educational and expert content on the website to attract searchers and win Google rank.

Online and Print Catalogs Work in Tandem

Five years ago, more than two-thirds of B2B sellers thought they would stop mailing paper catalogs. That hasn’t happened, but many B2B merchants are using an integrated multi-channel effort to balance smaller or less frequent print catalogs with more interactive online catalogs. For success with print-plus-online, the online catalog cannot merely mimic the print version. E-commerce means investing in interactive online tools that allow customizing, sharing, distributing, ordering and tracking, all supported by integrated back-end technology.

Mobile-Friendly Means Revenue-Friendly

Ever-expanding B2B mobile use is driving big marketing changes. Google and BCG research data from 2017 shows why: 80% of B2B buyers are using mobile at work; 60% of B2B buyers report that mobile played a significant role in a recent purchase; and 60% of B2B buyers expect to continue to increase their mobile usage. B2B retailers who are dragging their feet on mobile-friendly adaptation risk dragging down their own revenues; BCG research found that brands that are “mobile leaders” earn more traffic, more leads and more revenue than “mobile laggards.”

For more B2B e-commerce trends, and examples of real-life company online successes, see Hufford’s attached blog post.

Power Up Holiday E-mail With Segmentation, Offers

/in , , , , , , , , /by

AccuList USA’s e-mail list clients, especially those in e-commerce and multi-channel retailing, are beginning their holiday e-mail campaigns. What strategies will make for optimum results?

Segment to Maximize Response, Order Value

From decades as data brokers and e-mail support providers, we can attest that targeting and smart segmentation are essential to holiday e-mail success. Of course, the house list can single out the active buyers and segment by basics such as location (no ice to Eskimos) and gender. But more sophisticated segmentation looks at purchase history in terms of product interest, in-store vs. web store, abandoned carts, purchase frequency, etc. For example, to maximize customer value, you can segment by average purchase (separating high-priced buyers from discount buyers) and send targeted e-mails with offers slightly over average order value. You can also reward and stimulate more sales from the most loyal buyers, segmented by purchase frequency or referrals etc., by e-mailing them unique holiday specials and freebies. The holiday season is also a great time to revive inactive customers, such as the previous year’s holiday buyers who haven’t been active since. Send them special offers to woo them back to the brand. Prior-holiday gift card buyers are a good sub-segment for a reminder e-mail about this convenient option. You can also target the most recent opt-ins who haven’t converted to buyers with offers and creative most likely inspire clicks. And don’t neglect to match your e-mail list to Facebook, YouTube or third-party newsletters to extend your reach via those vehicles! Although rented e-mail lists will not have the same intimate customer knowledge, you can still select by location, gender, age, product interest, and more.

Get Creative With Holiday Offers

Holiday e-mails have to grab attention in crowded inboxes, and that means you need to get creative with offers that drive opens and clicks. Constant Contact recently surveyed its small business clients and gathered 30 successful holiday e-mail ideas that may help inspire your marketing. Here are just the lucky top seven: a holiday preview sale, a campaign to drive traffic to your Cyber Monday specials, a free shipping offer, a gift card or gift certificate bonus offer, a holiday gift guide, the tried-and-true holiday coupon, a holiday sample sale (good for food and drink retail). Go to the Constant Contact post to see examples and read about all 30 holiday e-mail ideas.

Use Key Direct Marketing KPIs to Gird 2018 Plans

/in , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , /by

The busy year-end holiday season, especially for fundraisers and retailers, should not distract direct marketers from the working on the analytics they need to finalize next year’s marketing plans and ROI. A recent post by the Digital Dog Direct agency helpfully offers a checklist of basic marketing Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).

Spending and Lead Generation

Marketing ROI is about effective spending and requires tracking results by channel and campaign. KPIs use actual annual outlay for direct mail marketing (lists, print, lettershop, creative, postage), digital marketing (e-mail, SEO/SEM, landing pages, social media and creative), as well as spending on PR/events/brand/content marketing.  Marketers must keep a tally of the number of outbound leads attributed to direct mail or e-mail campaigns, as well as the inbound leads generated by efforts such as SEO, blog content or PR. Then a cost per lead acquired can be calculated by dividing annual expenditure by the number of leads generated. Since the ultimate goal is sales not merely leads, the percentage of leads that become paying customers and the dollar sales per lead are key measures.

Multi-channel Performance Rates

Beyond evaluating general performance, marketing planners should use measurement to fine-tune future marketing plans and budgets. This means identifying the response rates and conversion rates for each channel, for each direct mail and digital campaign, and for tests of creative, timing, frequency, lists and segments. Performance rates should be measured not only for campaigns to acquire new leads/customers but also targeting of existing customers and reactivation of dormant customers. Website traffic reports from Google Analytics can not only show online ad and SEM effectiveness but also track spikes around direct mail or e-mail promotions to give a fuller picture of response. A simple ratio of the annual return on marketing investment, or ROI by channel and campaign, can be calculated by adding up incremental sales from marketing and subtracting marketing amount spent, and then dividing the result by amount spent on marketing.

Long-term Growth of High-Value Customers

But remember that a focus on annual or campaign results can be myopic since these do not necessarily deliver long-term growth–for example if attrition is high so more customers are lost than added. Marketers need to look at customer and prospect databases to make sure they are growing year-over-year. Because acquiring a single sale per lead also is less profitable long-term than acquiring a repeat customer, measuring average customer lifetime value is a vital KPI and is calculated by multiplying average dollar sale per customer by the average number of purchases per year and the average retention time in years.

See the full article for the KPI checklist.

 

Study: How Consumer E-mail Behavior Varies by Market Vertical

/in , , , , , , , , , /by

AccuList USA works with e-mail list and marketing clients on optimizing consumer response for variables that range from list targeting to subject lines to consumer behavior that differs by market vertical. So Movable Ink’s “US Consumer Device Preference Report: Q1 2017” offers valuable guidance on how opens, conversions, engagement and even order values are affected by market vertical and device preferences.

Smartphones Rule E-mail Opens

For all industries studied—retail, travel and hospitality, financial services, and media/publishing and entertainment—the report found most e-mails are opened on a smartphone as opposed to a tablet or desktop. Smartphone e-mail opens have especially jumped for financial services, up 7% from the fourth quarter of 2016 to reach 70% of opens in the first quarter of this year. Financial e-mail opens on smartphones actually peak at 74% on Saturdays, so financial services marketers should plan to reach consumers on the go. However, retail is not far behind, with 61% smartphone opens for apparel and 57% for non-apparel e-mails. While smartphones still led opens, the more content-heavy media, publishing and entertainment vertical also has a good portion of desktop e-mail opens at 32%, followed by travel and hospitality with 29% desktop opens. Tablet opens are also stronger for media and publishing at 18%, higher than any other industry.

Desktops Lead Retail Conversions, Order Values

Mobile optimization is clearly key for open rates, but retailers should not neglect desktop design because that’s where the orders are racked up. Non-apparel retailer e-mails attribute 73% of conversions to desktop use, for example, with 51% of conversions on desktop for apparel retailing. Smartphones are catching up, however, with 40% of conversions snagged by smartphones for apparel retailers, the highest of any vertical. Desktops also deliver the highest average order value for retailers: $171.04 for apparel and $138.57 for non-apparel sales. However, tablet users also score good orders in apparel retailing, with an average order value of $169.69 in the first quarter, up from $126.13 in the fourth quarter.

Read-Time Engagement Prize Goes to iPhones

When it comes to e-mail reading time, the study generally found that iPhones are able to capture more attention than Android mobile phones, Android tablets, desktop computers, or iPads. The finance industry had the longest read lengths on iPhones, with 68% of subscribers spending 15 or more seconds reading their e-mail thanks to the Apple devices. This was followed by desktop computers, where 58% of subscribers read financial e-mail messages for 15 seconds or more. Media, publishing and entertainment e-mails also garnered high iPhone read time, with 61% reading e-mail for 15 seconds or more.

For more data, see the report summary and handy infographics at https://movableink.com/blog/consumer-device-preference-report-q1-2017/

 

 

 

 

Ready for the Holiday Retail Season? Don’t Miss Out on Mail Power

/in , /by

As retailers head into the holiday sales season and balance their offline-online marketing mix, there’s solid recent evidence to support direct mail investment, even by digital-first marketers. It’s why AccuList USA continues updating mailing list research to hone response for a wide variety of multichannel retail campaigns in popular seasonal categories like gourmet and food gifts, health/beauty, hobbies/collectibles, and pets.

Holiday Shopping Survey Shows Direct Mail Power

Among the findings of global marketing firm Epsilon’s just released 2016 holiday shopping survey is shoppers’ clear propensity to respond to mail, for example. In fact, 77% of respondents said they feel advertisements received by mail will have at least “some influence” on their buying decisions this holiday shopping season. Compare that number to the just 41% of respondents who said that banner advertisements when searching online will have at least “some influence” on buying decisions. According to the survey respondents, they are influenced by direct mail because it usually contains an offer or discount and the format allows for leisurely review time. No surprises there.

Even Digital-First Marketers Embrace Mail

If any digital-first marketers are unconvinced, they should take a look at some real-life mail examples from digital market leaders, cited in a recent article for Target Marketing magazine by Paul Bobnak, director of Who’s Mailing What!. Bobnak shares five mail examples that are helping digital-first marketers stand out from their online competition: a Zulily postcard for the women/family-oriented shopping site, an informative Angie’s List magazine to build loyalty for the consumer review site, a discount promo mailer for pet products from chewy.com, a Handy.com home cleaning service piece that leverages its social media reviews in print, and a very small direct mail piece by Airbnb for simple and direct vacation property  recruiting.

To take a look at the mail pieces, go to http://www.targetmarketingmag.com/post/5-good-things-digital-mail/