Truthfully, I’m hesitant to write this article. I have a hard time seeing the good in Black Friday. People get trampled by greedy shoppers. Family members who could be spending precious time together are independently scouring multiple stores for door-buster deals. And, the gratitude that we should be feeling at Thanksgiving seems to be pushed out the door as our society brings greed to the forefront.

So, why am I writing this? Well, I feel a duty to help small business owners navigate their way through this hectic time.

As entrepreneurs we get stuck in the middle of all the chaos. Big box retails and corporate competitors have large advertising budgets to showcase their offers. They have seemingly unlimited funds to market from all angles. Meanwhile, as we bootstrap our businesses, we’ve got to find a way to capitalize on the frenzy.

Here are a few personal thoughts and principles that must be understood:

• Loss Leaders – First, you must know what a loss leader is. A loss leader is a product or service that is sold at a loss (or given away completely) in order to get people in the door. Most door-buster items are sold as loss leaders. Why would a company purposefully lose money? Because they know that they’ll make money on subsequent purchases – either at the time of the original purchase, or later. The key here is that “they know”. Capitalizing on Black Friday with a loss leader product requires that you’ve done some work to figure out your conversion rate and average customer value on people who purchase your loss leader. You need to run some tests beforehand in order to know if the loss leader strategy will work for you. I’d suggest having some really compelling and interesting follow-up marketing that goes out to people who purchase your loss leader in order to get them to come back.
• Get Guerrilla – Hopefully you’ve read Guerrilla Marketing by Jay Conrad Levinson. In his book, Jay talks about using unorthodox tactics to get attention and drive sales. If you have a product or service that has mass appeal, there’s no one stopping you from taking advantage of the masses of people piled up in lines and traffic jams on the morning of Black Friday. For instance, you can take advantage of the sheer crowds at a Wal-Mart and buy them hot chocolate and hand out your flyers. Great way to get your message out there to a surprisingly patient crowd. Obviously, don’t get in trouble by soliciting in malls or other stores. But don’t neglect the fact there are plenty of cars piled up and lines of people in public places. The good thing is, you know they have money to spend and they are in buying mode.
• Go White on Friday – What I mean is, boycott. Advertise to your customers that you’ll be spending the day with your family because family is most important to you. Plus, if your product or service is as good as you say it is, it should be available for more than just a few hours one morning, right? Tell your customers that you’d rather spend time with your family, and you don’t want them to have to hassle with crowds and time limits and you’re making your offer available for all of the next week. Many people respond well to this type of “real” messaging. Just keep it real with your people and they’ll reward you for it.

What I really recommend is that you spend as much of the holiday season with your close friends and family. As entrepreneurs, we pour our hearts and souls into our businesses. Our families are often neglected — not because we want to neglect them — but because we’re trying to create a better life for them. When all is said and done, what will matter most are the relationships we built with our loved ones. Have a great holiday season!

[Image credit: muffet]

Some marketing thought leaders and pundits out there claim that email marketing is dying. Some have even claimed that it’s already dead. I’d argue the opposite. In fact, I think these people are being contrarian merely to get publicity about the latest social media craze or the hottest new tool they might be pushing.

The facts show overwhelmingly that email marketing is alive and well, and extremely beneficial for business. Let’s review some of these facts.

Research firm, ForeSee Results, published a study early this year that was conducted during the 2010 holiday shopping season. They asked people who made purchases online about what influenced their visit to the respective e-commerce sites.

This graph below shows that familiarity with the brand was the number one driver. Promotional Emails was second. And it far outnumbered (by over 300%) the seventh driver – social media.

Next, in an attempt to find out what people prefer, they asked the study participants how they prefer to hear about sales and promotions. The chart below shows the results:

As you can see, the overwhelming majority (64%) stated that they prefer to hear about sales and promotions through emails. Only 8% of respondents stated that they prefer to hear about sales and promotions via social media.

To dig in further on the social media front, they asked the participants which social media would be their first choice for receiving communications from the company where they made their purchase. Luckily, as you can see, they included “None” as an option. Because 47% stated they prefer to not be contacted on social media sites with promotions.

The following graph by SmarterTools doesn’t necessarily prove my point, but it is interesting data.  This graph shows that email still dominates the communication world when you look at total number of accounts and total number of messages sent (even after excluding all spam).

As Perry Marshall posted, “Email is King.”

I’m not interested in which medium has more accounts, or which one is growing faster, or which one has the hottest buzz.  My specific interest is which medium is best for converting sales. I’m sure as readers of the Infusionsoft Blog, you would be wondering the same thing.

I’m a firm believer in social media. A couple of years ago I ran an experiment where I grew an email list of 2,000 people in 2 months strictly from Twitter. I then launched an information product to that list and it sold well. Twitter was an amazing traffic source for me in that experiment; my activity there was more than profitable. I can directly associate the revenue generated back to my activities on Twitter.

But, as a business, what would I rather have?

• An opt-in email list of 1,000 people
• 1,000 Facebook fans
• 1,000 Twitter followers

I’d choose the opt-in emails all day long.

Email is still the “inner sanctum.” It’s still the place where intimate conversations happen.  It’s also the place where commerce begins for many e-commerce transactions.  Even automated email conversations can be extremely personal and relevant – enough so to develop relationships that turn into sales.

I’ll be the first to admit it if that ever changes — and it might. Social media is changing the way we communicate. But, for now, social media remains to be a great a traffic source. Businesses should at least consider using it to drive people to valuable blog posts. At the bottom of your blog posts, include a lead capture form so interested people can request more information. Follow up with them via personalized and relevant email campaigns. Nurture the relationship with email. And when the time is right, encourage the sale through email. This seems to be the winning formula to make social media profitable for small businesses.

So, is email marketing dying? Tell me what you think in the comments below.

[Image credit: rodaniel]

Marketing automation is heating up. In fact, the topic is on fire! For a while the discussion has been sheltered within the walls of marketing automation software vendors and marketers at large corporations. Now, the conversation has expanded to Internet marketers, consumers, small businesses, and tech media.

This morning, I read an extremely thoughtful post by Maureen Blandford, a self-proclaimed B2B champion. She reacted strongly to a B2B software company blurring the lines between B2B and B2C marketing tactics. I tend to agree with her stance, but here are my thoughts:

• From a strategy and a technology aspect inbound marketing and marketing automation are both very similar for B2B and B2C buyers. Create content and publish it.  Use content to build traffic and capture leads. Put those leads into an intelligent new-lead follow up sequence. Educate, nurture, drive to the sale.
• Marketing to B2B and B2C buyers differs in the tactics.  Often times B2C products and services are commoditized to the point that content and lead nurturing aren’t used in the same way – people just want a deal, not more content.
• B2B companies are more likely to employ sales teams and have established sales processes that need to be followed and coordinated with lead nurturing.  Examples of this include providing cases, benefits, personal demonstrations and ultimately guide the buyer to ink the deal.
• B2B and B2C persona development is often drastically different. B2B companies sell to multiple buyers ranging from the manager to the senior VP, to the CFO or the CEO.  Meanwhile, B2C companies will often have different personas that differ on demographics or psychographics regardless of their role in an organization.
• Messaging that comes from a B2B company should be entirely different than a B2C company. The tactics to employ that messaging vary wildly in contrast. The campaigns for B2Bs are likely to be more complex, leading to a longer sales-cycle.
• There are B2B-B2C hybrids out there. As Maureen points out, there are variations of each.  At Infusionsoft, our customers are technically B2B, but the smaller businesses we serve act much more like “consumers” than “businesses.” The game is different.

The beautiful thing about marketing automation technology is that in most cases it can be adapted so elegantly to any situation – whether it be B2B or B2C. You don’t have to look far to discover that marketing automation can be implemented successfully across B2Bs.

Maureen made another point that I’ve been very interested in for a while: “Sales is still not respected enough within their own companies.” I agree. The age-old divide between marketing and sales has often attributed to the fact that sales reps don’t get the respect they deserve. I believe marketing automation has shifted the divide in an interesting way.

Lead nurturing can prepare leads for a sales conversation in a way that hasn’t been seen before. These tactics reach deep into the previously defined sales cycle to bridge the gap. However, another divide has been created. Marketing automation creates spoiled sales reps. Marketing automation does the qualifying, educating and even builds excitement. In the ideal situation, sales reps (even B2B sales reps), can become order takers.

I know I’m going a bit extreme here. The truth is, sales reps are now being handed leads that are already in a buying mode. Cold-calling is often a practice of the past. Now, reps get bothered if a lead isn’t warmed up to exactly 350 degrees with a nice golden brown crust.

In some cases, selling is getting closer to becoming a commoditized skill. This means less respect.

Even with this going on, it has become clear to me that good sales reps are still worth their weight in gold. Good sales reps — armed with the data from your marketing automation system — will dig into your CRM and drag golden opportunities from the depths. They still close double the number of deals that an average rep closes. They’re still the big revenue generators. And they still deserve all the respect in the world. It takes guts, determination and perseverance to do what they do.

Maureen, thanks for raising the issue and keep fighting the good fight.

[Image credit: drdul]

While researching data for our weekly webinar, I dug up some interesting data about Infusionsoft customers and how much value they receive from marketing automation software.

As it turns out, the customers that use Infusionsoft for their e-commerce transactions have processed $782,374,314 in transactions this year so far.  Those same customers have also had 19,525,449 web form submissions (into their software). If you do the math, that’s $47.05 per web form submission!

Now, don’t go all crazy on me just yet…

I know there is no way to prove a causal relationship between the web form submissions and the e-commerce transactions. And, the way I pulled the data, I did not filter by unique person in either case (the e-commerce transactions include repeat transactions by the same customers, and the web form submissions also include people who filled out more than one web form or even filled out the same web form more than once). So, the data isn’t perfect. Having been in pharmaceutical sales in a previous life, I’m very familiar with how companies can manipulate data to make a point. (It’s easier than you might think.)

So, the data is interesting to say the least. It got me thinking about the value of a lead, or in this case a web form submission.  Most small businesses have no clue what a lead is worth to them. But this is one of the essential keys to growing a business.  You can’t grow until you understand the lifetime value of your customers, the value of a new customer, the value of a lead, etc.

You can do the simple math: total number of leads divided by the total amount of revenue. And that’s a start. What about looking at other measures like web form submissions, emails, etc? The more we can understand about our leads, the more we can turn the dials to grow our businesses. Imagine if you knew how many web forms the average customer filled out before becoming a customer, and which web forms.  Or how many emails they opened and clicked, and which emails they opened and clicked.  Imagine if you know which pages of your site they typically visited and in what order and what interval.

Data is powerful. Understanding this data would help you know which calls to action to put in what order. That would increase conversions and give you multiple places to test and increase conversions more. Making money is really a geek’s game now. Those who know what questions to ask, know how to get the data and are disciplined enough to look at it, will win.

Are you interested in interesting stats like this? If so, let me know in the comments and I’ll see what I can dig up.

[Image credit: foxymoron]

I’m at the Inbound Marketing Summit in San Francisco. My flight was delayed, so I missed the first few talks – including the Director of Social Media for the San Francisco Giants. Apparently, they just let him trot around town with their World Series trophy. He had it here at the conference – barely missed it.

Anyway, the talks I did hear were full of great stuff (and some questionable stuff I’ll mention in a sec).  I’ll share the main takeaways from day one.

Marketing Automation Solves Real Life Pains!
Our very own customer, Todd Staples of Stealth Auto, presented his case study on how his use of marketing automation has grown his business in dramatic ways.  He highlighted how he’s using targeted follow-up sequences to nurture leads who show interest in specific topics.  He showed approximately a 30% conversion rate from those sequences. Amazing! The best part was, immediately after he was finished, a guy came up to me and told me this:

“Tell Todd his presentation was awesome. I’m experiencing the exact same pain he described. We’re using Salesforce.com. We’re only using it as a database. We have ConstantContact, but we’re not happy with it. We need to follow up with people the way Todd is.”

The point is, Todd’s story resonated with existing pains people have. The marketing automation era has arrived and Infusionsoft is leading the pack for small business.

Traditional Advertising Still Works!
Jen Grant, VP of Marketing at Box.net gave a great talk on brand marketing.  She shared a story about advertising with billboards that was very clever. As they talked to VC’s about Box.net, they realized that the VC’s all had the idea in their head that Box.net was about online storage – that’s it. No matter how hard they tried, they couldn’t help them see that their solution was much more than storage. So, they put up a billboard in a strategic location, right off the 101 freeway, where all the VC’s pass by on their way to work. The main headline on the billboard was “Box.net vs. Sharepoint”. Almost immediately, they had VC’s talking to them about the big game they were in and how Box.net was so much more than online storage. Clever. Takeaway: Don’t discount traditional advertising, but remain targeted and strategic with it.

Go Mobile or Go Home!
Tim Hayden, CMO for 44Doors, talked in detail about QR codes, mobile apps and location-based marketing.  It was super insightful.  I got the impression that he was saying “Go Mobile or Go Home”.  He didn’t say it, but that was the feeling I got.  I always cringe when experts push a particular tactic, tool, or medium. Those listening are prone to go chase that new shiny thing without first figuring out how it fits into their strategy. Today, I’m giving a talk that will focus on strategy and help people figure out how to apply tactics and tools that actually achieve the goals of the strategy.

Psychographics and More
The day ended with a very insightful discussion between Chris Brogan and Colin Bower.  Part of the discussion was around the idea of using psychographics in marketing.  It’s a beautiful idea, but many are struggling with implementation. This is were I smile really big inside when I think of Infusionsoft.  Infusionsoft’s proprietary tagging system and lead source tracking allows us to track all behaviors. Behavior tracking is essentially the manifestation of the target’s psychographics. No need to go do any fancy and expensive psychographic research – just start tracking how your visitors, leads and customers respond to different messages. Combine that with tracking where they came from (lead source) and you’ve got the formula for figuring how where to get more customers and what to say to them to get them to convert.

Chris Brogan made an unrelated statement that was spot on.  Brogan said, “Small business owners are like a guy with a medical ailment.”  Even when the medical ailment is pointed out, guys (with all their bravado) will always respond “I’m fine”.  When you ask small business owners how their business is (even when there is an obvious problem) they always say things are great.  In my opinion, this is a necessary trait of any entrepreneur – optimism.  The key is to combine it with the ability to face the brutal facts of the current reality and work to overcome them.

This year IMS did an experiment with a “pay your own price” pricing model. There was no set price to come to the event. You could pay whatever you thought the conference was worth. You could even decide to pay later – after you’ve experienced it – in order to pay what you thought it was worth.  In social circles, this kind of stuff is the new way.  Here are a few thoughts of mine that might be helpful if you’re considering something like this:

• Kids Eat Free.  This kind of pricing model is similar to a “kids eat free” promo at a restaurant.  The restaurant knows that they can still make money on the parents if they feed the kids for free.  I’m sure the IMS conference is able to cover costs with sponsorships – paid tickets are just gravy.  So, they use this pricing model to create goodwill and be cutting edge. So, the key is, make sure you’re not putting your entire financial model at risk.
• Consumables & Feeder Products.  This seems to work well with consumable products and products that feed into more expensive products. Panera Bread restaurants have been successful with a “pay what you can” model.  It’s important to realize that they didn’t do this with all their stores.  They only have a handful of stores doing it. They’ve protected their bottom line. They’ve also tied this effort to a local charitable cause – thus spurring philanthropy as people determine their own price.
• Test, test, test. Never do anything like messing with the financial health of your company without testing first.

It’s been a great conference so far.  You can follow it on Twitter at #IMS11.

–Tyler