Companies that observe email marketing best practices often don’t think blacklisting should be on their worry list. Think again.

“Most people believe they are better than companies that get blacklisted, but it can still happen,” says Melanie Kinney, email marketing manager at GasBuddy. “It isn’t contagious, but it still happens.”

At Litmus Live, Kinney shared her story of what happened when GasBuddy suddenly found itself blacklisted, and how they got themselves unblocked and back into inboxes.

GasBuddy creates apps to help users find the best prices on gas and earn rewards. The company maintains engaged and lapsed user files. The engaged list is segmented in several ways—such as gas prices in a user’s area, or the type of vehicle they drive—to help make email marketing more targeted. “We believe in sending relevant content,” says Melanie Kinney, email marketing manager of GasBuddy.

Kinney and her team were doing a final test of a round of emails on a Monday morning. She sent out a proof and waited for feedback. When no one had responded after a few hours, she checked and found out no one had received the email. Thinking it was a Salesforce glitch, she sent them again—and found all the emails had gone into spam.

Her initial thought was that maybe a broken image resulted in the messages not getting through, but when that wasn’t the case the team feared the worst. A hold was put on all outgoing email blasts, and the team began looking at all triggered and ad hoc emails to investigate what might be happening.

Several things can land a domain on a blacklist, notes Kinney, including a sudden surge in list size, a number of bad addresses or poor links in the message itself. Human error can also be a factor.

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GasBuddy ran a spam test in Litmus, and found that it failed DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Email, which allows senders to associate a domain name with an email message) and DMARC  (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance, a protocol used to determine the authenticity of an email message).

Two other key acronyms for email marketers to consider at when something has gone awry with delivery are SORBS (Spam and Open Relay Blocking System, which uses a daemon to check all servers from which it received email to determine if an email was sent via various types of proxy and open-relay servers) and RATS (Really Annoying Trouble Spots, or non-conforming IP addresses that could be related to problems like compromised servers).

“These are not things to overlook,” Kinney says.

GasBuddy ultimately found that it had an email domain with a lapsed registration. The lapse happened over a weekend, which triggered the failed authentication, leading to the blacklisting. With this information, Salesforce was able to submit an unblock request. Forty-eight hours later, GasBuddy was off the blacklist.

“If you haven’t been on an unblock list before, getting off can take a relatively short time, but it gets harder for repeat offenders,” she notes.

Kinney offered four key tips for surviving a blacklisting:

Know who has the keys. Know who controls the email domains in your organization, so you can open the appropriate communications channels in an emergency and know who to contact quickly.

Seize the moment. If you end up on a blacklist, take the opportunity to consider putting new data hygiene strategies in place. “There might be a partner who can help in the future,” she says.

Learn from your mistakes. Again, take the time to access what happened and better understand your overall deliverability situation, to prevent the same thing happening again.

Educate yourself. No one wants to talk about being blacklisted, but it is important to know what steps to take if it happens. Before your organization finds itself blocked, educate yourself about what needs to be done if it happens to you.

The post Surviving the Blacklist: Email Tips for Getting Your Domain Unblocked appeared first on Chief Marketer.

Carly Wirkus, manager, marketing automation at Jamf, notes that her team walks through their results each month with the company’s global team, to discuss what is and isn’t working.

“Having those actual conversations can give you context for your theories,” says Wirkus, who spoke at Litmus Live in Boston this week. “It’s a great way to orient your [entire organization] around the same goals, and figure out how to carry results forward.”

Jamf is a cloud based Apple-technology management solution for businesses and educational institutions. The Minneapolis-based company has over 1,000 employees in 10 countries who help 30,000 global customers use Jamf to manage over 13 million Apple devices.

Wirkus offered several ideas for getting feedback and data to improve email marketing initiatives.

Regularly go over your results. Test regularly, and make time each month to review and record your results, to make sure they are statistically significant and support your initiatives. “Even if you are a team of one,” she says, “make sure you block off time to review your A/B tests.”

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Don’t exist in a silo. Get out of your bubble. Do you share results with your content team? Your social team? What about your website, UX, advertising and customer success teams? If you’ve had a big win with one of your email marketing campaigns, everyone will want to know about it. “If something works for marketing, it might work for outreach,” says Wirkus. “Your success can help fuel results across channels.”

Ask other departments for help. If you’re in a large organization and have resources like a UX team that regularly conducts live research, see if they can incorporate questions about your email templates in those efforts. Other departments like customer success and product management regularly speak with customers, so don’t be shy about getting them to ask customers if they are opening your emails.

Take email into the real world. Does your organization have conferences or user events? Ask attendees what they think about your company’s email marketing communications. Are they engaging with your messaging? If the answer is no, why not? “It’s great to get real feedback from real people,” she says. Face-to-face and real time research is super important to incorporate into your program.”

The post 4 Tips for Getting Email Marketing Feedback appeared first on Chief Marketer.

According to the AgileSherpa’s State of Agile Marketing Report, about half of traditional marketing teams were looking to implement agile practices this year. But what does that really mean for marketing?

“When executives say ‘agile’ to product teams , it means ‘get six months of work done in two weeks,’” says Matt LeMay, co-founder of Sudden Compass and author of Agile for Everybody. “When product teams say it to marketing teams, it means ‘stop asking us about deadlines, because we’re agile.’”

But beyond “good and fast,” many marketers don’t really have a strong definition of what agile marketing means to their teams, he says. “It’s up to us how we define agile going forward. It can be the difference between something that breaks down silos and brings us together—or something that entrenches silos and moves us further apart.”

Agile was never about software, tools and processes. Rather, says LeMay, it is about bringing people together.

Of course, that isn’t always easy. Individuals in an organization will naturally prioritize the work that they can complete most easily within the comfort of their own team or silo. To operate in an agile way, marketers need to give up the idea that understanding the customer is the something that only marketing can accomplish.

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“We must give up the quest for personal advancement through functional empire building,” he says. “If we collaborate early and often, and reach out across functions, the work you do gets better.”

How can you get started now? At MarTech East recently, LeMay offered several tips for experimenting with agile marketing practices.

Try daily stand-up meetings. These are meeting where everyone literally keeps standing for the entire meeting—this helps keep the meetings short and focused.

Talk to other departments. Are other groups in your organization agile? See what is and isn’t working for their teams.

Show your work. Clue other teams in on what marketing is doing. Working cross-functionally will give everyone a better idea of how other teams operate.

Don’t wait until you’re finished. The natural desire is to wait until everything is done before you share it with anyone outside your team. But peeling back the layers during the process helps everyone see what does into the creative work marketing is producing.

Take the “one page, one hour” pledge. Rather than completing something and then spending additional hours creating a PowerPoint or lengthy memo to present your work to colleagues, commit to only spending one hour (or writing one page) about a deliverable before you loop in colleagues. This creates a more collaborative environment, with shared accountability.

The post 5 Tips for Creating An Agile Marketing Environment appeared first on Chief Marketer.

The digital video marketing industry has become a $135 billion industry in America alone, with the average business now spending $20k a year creating video content. It wouldn’t be uncommon to spend $10k on hiring an outside video production company to get a single two-minute corporate video, or thousands of dollars for a few Instagram clips.

Not every brand has that kind of money to play with, but marketers who embrace their inner indie filmmaker can master the art of creating great content on a budget. Here’s five tips to get those cameras rolling.

Know What You Want to Say

The first step is figuring out what you want to say and how you are going to say it. If you are doing an employee recruitment video, for example, what are the key messages you want to get across about the company? Who could you interview in the company to tell your story? What B-roll do you need to shoot, such as exterior office shots or footage of employees at work (or play)?

A look at Apple’s employee recruitment video shows they have shots of people working at a whiteboard, sit down interviews, scenes of people working at their desks, Apple’s products being manufactured, etcetera.

Not everyone is good in front of the camera, so consider who on your team is more natural on film. Prep your “actors” with the key questions you’ll ask, so they’ll have answers prepared to help convey the right message to potential employees, customers or investors.

Consider Your Brand Voice

The visual representation of your company should also be considered. Are you a young tech start-up that wants to appear hip and fun? Or, do you want to present the company as more serious and professional to get the attention of C-level execs and investors?

The legendary Fyre Festival Promotional video wanted to create an aspirational exclusive feel, which it did incredibly well. Even if the end results didn’t match the initial promise, their video got everyone wanting to go.

Figuring out your brand voice will touch everything you do—from the type of shots you take to the people you film and the music in the background. Consider creating a brand identity for your videos as early as possible so they all have the same look and feel, and provide a consistent image for your audience.

Before you even watch GoPro’s latest video you know what to expect. You know you are in for a slick action sports video that looks cool and makes you wish you were hang gliding over the Amazon. Successful Instagrammers and vloggers know how to create unique branded content that matches their personal branding. You can always learn something from the masters. Scour YouTube, Vimeo and Instagram looking for content you love and get inspired to create something with your own spin that works for your company.

Build the Right Video Team

Hiring a full-service video production company can be an expensive endeavor. But, if you assume the role of an indie film producer, you can individually hire the team members you need and get the same content done for a fraction of the cost.

A key person for creating great content is a professional cinematographer, also known as a director of photography or videographer. These professionals can help suggest creative ideas for your brand, including interesting shots and angles that will bring your product to life. Posting your job on Craigslist, ProductionHub or Mandy should get a lot of bids from local cinematographers hungry for work. Those on a microbudget can also consider college students who would do it for a minimal fee, to get the experience.

Another important consideration is sound. It is crucial to get crystal clear, good quality audio. If you can afford it, hire a separate sound person to make sure everything is loud and clear. If that isn’t in the budget, work with the cinematographer to find the best solution, which might be as guerilla style as getting an intern to record additional audio on their iPhone.

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It’s All in the Editing

It’s often said that the film is made in the editing room. When you add music, graphics and additional footage to tell your story, your video really comes to life.

While editing used to be something best left to the professionals, with the advances in technology editing software, it has become easy to do. With ready-to-use templates, anyone can be an editor. (Here’s a place you can tap into your in-house resources: In today’s social media-obsessed world, chances are high you already have someone on your team with fantastic editing skills.)

The trick with editing is to get the point as quickly as possible, in an engaging way.

Here’s what you need to incorporate in your clip:

• Intro and outro music
• Introductory graphics to introduce the purpose of the video, such as “Why you should work for us?”
• The company logo
• Captions to identify the people you interview
• A call to action

As you are editing, remember that people generally don’t like to watch the same shot for too long. When using interviews, show the subject briefly and then cutaway to shots illustrating what they are discussing, to keep the video lively. If you don’t have original footage that does the trick, sites like iStockPhoto, Pond5 and Shutterstock offer stock footage that you can incorporate into your clip.

Create a Calendar

Once you have the hang of creating your own content, you can plan for the future. Set aside filming days where you can hire your cinematographer to film content that can be used across your various online and social channels for months to come. Consider the calendar—Valentine’s Day, Independence Day, Halloween, Thanksgiving, etc.—as well as events and times of year that are relevant to your industry, and create clips specific to your brand and audience.

Like most things, there is always a learning curve, but when you get beyond that, creating video can become one of the most fun parts of a marketer’s job. And who knows? One day you could be winning awards for a video you made for under $300, beating out agencies that had 50 times the budget.

Anna Ji is director of product and growth at Clipchamp.

The post Video on a Budget: What Marketers Can Learn from Indie Filmmakers appeared first on Chief Marketer.

The key to guiding your organization through this sort of digital transformation isn’t about finding the perfect technology solutions. It isn’t about one specific business intelligence (BI) tool or platform. And it isn’t about generating an all-encompassing dashboard or report. Sure, BI tools, dashboards and reports are all facets of digital transformation. But the real key is in guiding the cultural shift at your organization.

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Step 1: Digital Transformation Starts With Culture

Spearheading the change in culture, at both the leadership level and across the broader organization, is your first priority. This should come before even selecting your technological approach to measurement. You want to ensure that leadership has the right mindset around how they’re making decisions—resources poured into measurement are worthless if leadership isn’t using data to drive business decisions. Moreover, it’s also important for your measurement/analytics team to have some knowledge of the decisions being driven by the data.

The takeaway: Before you begin thinking about specific technologies, make sure you’ve secured the proper buy-in across your organization and that your cultural is ready to handle an operational shift.

Step 2: Provide the Right Training

The next step is ensuring everyone has the proper training to understand how to implement analytics and/or garner insights from data.  This includes leadership and all employees who will view or use reports (for example, a Google Analytics report). Of course, you wouldn’t expect everyone to have the same level of expertise as your analytics team. However, everyone using a report should have at least a basic understanding of how that report was generated.

Here’s a simple, actionable way to get started: Ask everyone who will view reports to become Google Analytics certified. It only takes a few hours and will help deepen your team’s understanding of analytics in general and what’s possible to measure.

Step 3: Collectively Determine What’s Important to Measure

Before you can tackle the nuts and bolts of how you’re going to measure and collect data, you have to decide what data you’re going to collect and what metrics will be most valuable to your organization. This needs to be a collaborative decision between leadership and the analytics team. Leadership will ultimately be using the data to make business decisions. Meanwhile, the analytics team has in-depth knowledge of the full measurement process. From the start, leadership and analytics should be working collectively to determine what will be measured and what business decisions will be made based on those measurements.

Step 4: Make Sure Data Can Be Trusted

During a digital transformation, it’s possible to become overly focused on the powerful potential of analytics and miss sight of more fundamental aspects such as data validation. Be careful! It’s critical that by the time data is presented, it’s 100% trustworthy. Lack of trust in the accuracy of data is one of the top reasons why executives go back to making opinion-based decisions—they don’t believe they can trust the data. So before leaping ahead to something complex like, for instance, predictive analytics, make sure that you’ve laid the appropriate foundation and you trust the accuracy of the data you’re collecting. Focusing on Data Governance – knowing what data you’re collecting, how it’s labeled and where it’s stored, is  a great first step.

Step 5: Be Honest with Your Analytics

Finally, it’s important to use analytics honestly. Communicate data clearly both when your campaigns succeed and also when they fail. Measurement isn’t only about celebrating what’s working. It can be just as valuable to use insights to identify what’s not working and to improve the performance and return of your marketing strategy. Be honest and show what’s not working (and how you’re modifying your approach based on data). You will gain respect and trust by not only presenting the pretty angles.

Digital transformation isn’t a quick fix to a single problem. It’s an operational shift. It’s an iterative process and shouldn’t be rushed. But with the right approach, moving from opinion-based to data-driven decision making will ultimately lead to big wins where it matters — your organization’s bottom line.

Jenny Bristow is CEO of Anvil Analytics + Insights. 

The post 5 Steps to Successful Digital Transformation appeared first on Chief Marketer.

The pressure to both create and convert isn’t slowing down. According to a 2018 HubSpot survey, 75% of companies say closing more deals is their top sales priority. But, Econsultancy found that just 22 percent of businesses are satisfied with their conversion rates.

For many B2B organizations, balancing the demand for conversion and the importance of building meaningful customer relationships—and long-tail deal opportunities—is an ongoing battle. The insistence to prioritize today’s growth is at odds with the long-term growth of the business. In short, thinking about leads only for today starves the business for tomorrow.

To hear more B2B marketing tips from Wayne Silverman, join us at
LeadsCon’s Connect to Convert 2019 in Boston, Sept. 25-27

The good news is that B2B organizations can implement a lead generation mindset and framework that capitalizes on the opportunity to secure leads throughout each stage of the funnel. Here are three practical tips for how marketers can drive leads, conversion rates, and bottom-line growth.

1.) Fundamentals still matter.
Your website is more than just your online billboard; it is your opportunity to educate prospects on what you can offer and provoke enough interest to convert. Invest in this medium and optimize it for success by thinking like your end user—remember it’s not about you, it’s about them.

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2.) Be patient.
Yes, marketers (and the C-Suite they answer to) don’t have time to waste. But, profitable leads take time to nurture and convert. The journey is never linear for prospects, so instead marketers should focus on what they can control—content and response times. By delivering relevant content and connecting with prospects as quickly as possible, leads have a better chance to convert.

3.) Make the case for more dollars.
The adage “you have to spend money to make money” comes to mind. For marketers to be successful at building leads throughout every stage of the funnel, they need the tools and the resources to execute. Making a solid business case for the investment required is job number one, but bear in mind the executive team also needs to give control over to marketing to make that happen. Competitive comparisons are also helpful to spur action and open up budget dollars.

Generating leads throughout the entire sales funnel is important to business growth. It all starts with a mindset intent on the long view. Taking the time today to set up your lead generation function for future success will yield the results everyone is after—profitable customer relationships and a steady stream of new leads.

Wayne Silverman is CRO of Business.com.

The post Avoiding Funnel Failure: 3 Tips for Lead Generation & Conversion appeared first on Chief Marketer.

Video an incredibly powerful tool for B2B businesses. YouTube has approximately 2 billion monthly active users. Aberdeen Group reports that video marketers generate 66% more qualified leads than marketers who don’t use video. And according to Wyzowl, 83% of marketers say that video gives them a significant ROI.

But it isn’t enough to simply create videos. You need to create videos that will make your brand stand out from the crowd. Here’s five ways to make that happen.

Using Video to Personalize ABM

Creating customized or personalized videos as part of an account based marketing campaign can be incredibly effective to help generate leads and land new customers. This is especially the case when you create a one-off video for a target company or individual.

For example, let’s say that you sell IP detection software for businesses. You could create a personalized video for a prospect, walking them through an initial analysis you’ve done on the company’s actual website traffic, with tips for how to respond to different types of site visitors based on the behavior displayed.

Shooting videos that are specifically directed at a company or person is a powerful way to grab their attention and get them to engage with you. It’s also an effective way to differentiate yourself and your brand from competitors.

To hear more B2B marketing tips from Tom Shapiro, join us at LeadsCon’s Connect to Convert 2019 in Boston, Sept. 25-27

Increasing LinkedIn Engagement

Like most social media platforms, LinkedIn has been giving more exposure to videos of late. Additionally, 84% of marketers who have created videos for LinkedIn have found the channel to be a highly effective strategy for generating results. This presents a unique opportunity for marketers.

Sharing videos is one of the most effective ways to cut through all the noise on LinkedIn. Dave Gerhardt, VP of marketing at Drift, is a great example. Typically, he will generate hundreds or thousands of engagement events for a single LinkedIn video. For our clients here at Stratabeat, we notice 3X – 5X engagement on social posts featuring video.

Highlighting Customer Stories

We all know that social proof is critical when it comes to building your brand and landing new clients. Getting clients to tell their stories is one of the most powerful forms of social proof your brand can deliver, especially when it’s on film.

But get creative when getting your clients to tell their story. Don’t simply have a talking head giving a simple testimonial.

HubSpot created an outstanding customer success story around their work for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. They crafted a highly engaging success story, featuring a rock soundtrack in the background, MTV-style quick-changing shots, brief interviews, lots of zooming in and out, etc. The result is powerful and compelling.

Another example is a Slack and Sandwich Video collaboration that highlights the power of Slack. The video is presented as a story, with many funny cuts to employees providing their commentary. Not only is the video enjoyable to watch, but it also shows why Slack is such an effective tool for businesses. And with more than 1.1 million views, the video has generated a good amount of visibility and social proof for Slack.

Leveraging Influencers

B2B businesses are increasingly seeing the value of working with influencers, but it’s still new enough in the B2B space that it may enable you to jump ahead of your competitors. A good example of a B2B business using video and influencers is the robotics company Kuka. In an effort to promote a new product launch, Kuka lent the popular robotics influencer Simone Giertz the company’s new industrial robot arm. With it, Giertz created a hilarious video in which she programs the robotic arm to help her write 2,000 holiday cards.

Was it worth it? The creative video garnered over 1.4 million views, more than 11X higher than any videos published by Kuka itself.

Showcasing Your Personality

Video is also a highly effective way to turn something mundane, such as an out of office message, into something truly magical. Andy Freed of Virtual, Inc. created an epic, 27-minute video to tell people that he was out of the office and would return soon.

Not only does this highlight Virtual’s creativity, but it shows off the brand in a way that is entertaining and fun. It shows that the company can take even the most mundane things and turn them into something magical.

On top of this, videos like the one created by Virtual also have the potential to go viral, which will give even more exposure to the brand.

Tom Shapiro is CEO of Stratabeat.

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The post 5 Ideas for Innovative B2B Video Marketing appeared first on Chief Marketer.

Get everyone on board. Launching a big initiative? Makes sure as many internal decision makers and influencers as possible are in the loop. When Relation Insurance went through a renaming process, a naming committee was created that included folks from all facets of the business, including everyone from senior leaders to entry level employees in marketing, IT, legal and HR.

A planning task force for the rebrand oversaw two phases of the rollout, a soft announcement and a hard launch. “We wanted to be super transparent and keep everyone in the loop, and we also needed to build momentum and excitement,” says Natalie Zensius, SVP of marketing communications at Relation. “And, we wanted to buy ourselves some time to put all the pieces in place—we knew everything wouldn’t go to plan, so a phased rollout let us drip things out as they became available to keep people’s interest.”

Get personal. Expect far more granular personalization in account-based marketing moving forward, says Tom Shapiro, CEO of Stratabeat. Although targeting and customization is at the heart of ABM programs, many companies are still targeting at the industry or account level. The majority of ABM marketers (65 percent) believe that their personalization efforts are merely average or below average, according to Evergage, revealing a major area of ABM that is underutilized.

“Personalization does not necessarily need to be at the individual stakeholder level, either,” Shapiro notes. “Beyond account-based customization, you can conduct “One-to-Few” ABM, where you keep the bulk of the approach (say, 80 percent) the same, while customizing 20 percent per target.”

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Create a sense of urgency. Will you get a computer virus? Are your co-workers going to quit? We’re all human, and the threat of something bad will get people to pay attention. Create a sense of urgency in your B2B marketing creative. But don’t go overboard, warns content marketing pro Mary Hart. Is your email really the last chance someone has to sign up for something? Or, will there be 10 more “last chance” emails coming the recipient’s way? Don’t cry wolf—if you say this is a last chance offer, follow through and give them an incentive to take advantage.

Listen and learn. To learn the language of IT pros, power management solution Eaton took to the IT social network Spiceworks. Rather than trying to hard sell there, it listened, asking opinions and engaging in real conversations to get to know people. “Social media watering holes have been very useful to get to know them on a one-on-one basis,” says Molly Miller, digital demand and campaign manager.

Eaton knew if it wanted IT pros to engage with the brand and fill out forms to download a whitepaper or a brochure, it needed to be worth the effort. Through on-site visits with prospects, they saw again and again that IT pros decked out their workspaces with toys. So the brand rolled out a campaign whose central element was a series of desk toys. Each campaign element gave the toys personalities and make them the voice of the brand across multiple channels, in banner ads, print, gamified experiences, social media, email and even at trade shows.

Want to hear more tips on B2B marketing trends, lead gen, improving marketing ROI, digital marketing and more? Join us at LeadsCon’s Connect to Convert 2019 in Boston, Sept. 25-27!

Break down the silos. B2B marketing pros have to work extremely closely with sales and let them know the message they need to be selling, says Kenneth Kinney, host of the marketing podcast “A Shark’s Prospective” and VP of marketing and digital strategy at Ai Media Group.

“There can be a little bit of a fiefdom issue—you’ve got to work extremely closely and let sales know the message they need to be selling,” says Kinney. “The sales team might want to claim a sale, but so will marketing. You need to work together. Sales people need to understand where a lead is coming from and that they’re not all going to be ‘Glengarry’ leads, so they might have to work harder. Customers don’t live in silos so make certain that your marketing, advertising and sales/marketing integration align.”

The post Better B2B Marketing: 5 Tips for Improving Engagement (and ROI) appeared first on Chief Marketer.

Marketers are constantly shifting dollars toward digital channels, but don’t count direct mail out just yet. The USPS reports that 77.3 billion pieces of marketing mail were sent in 2018, proving that many brands are still integrating direct mail into their strategies.

Direct mail can be an expensive channel, but when done right it can drive awareness and engagement at multiple points in the marketing funnel. Here’s seven tips to improve your luck in the mailbox.

Get to the point. One of the mistakes many people make is wanting to fill every bit of white space, says Nancy Harhut, chief creative officer of HBT Marketing. “They want to get their postage stamp’s worth, and figure people will find what is interesting to them. But you need to stay focused. If you’ve got something to say, say it. Don’t have a long wind-up.” Marketers with multiple messages to relay should consider multiple mailings, or cross-marketing with other channels. “Cramming everything into one piece is not a good idea. It’s a rookie mistake.”

Don’t be afraid to think big. In B2B direct mail, dimensional pieces can cut through the clutter and create a “wow” factor that can open the door for future communications and engagement. Think about how you can “surprise and delight” recipients with pieces that they will show or pass along to other people in their office, either with something fun (like a personalized Coca-Cola can) or valuable (a report on industry research). “When something shows up in an overnight envelope, it can look like the recipient would be passing up on something important if they don’t open it,” Harhut says.

Want to hear more tips from Nancy Harhut and John Sisson on improving your direct mail strategy? Join us at LeadsCon’s Connect to Convert 2019 in Boston, Sept. 25-27

Make your list and check it twice. Sending the right message to the right audience is crucial, notes John Sisson, president of HBT Marketing. Take the time to make sure your list is clean and targeted to the prospects and/or customers you really want to engage. “Otherwise, it’s a wasted effort.”

One size does not fit all. When it comes to targeting individuals for healthcare coverage, direct mail is a key component in BCBS of Michigan’s marketing strategy. The insurer works with PFL and Salesforce Marketing Cloud to help score its membership based on various criteria to see what buckets they fall into and where a direct mail piece might be appropriate to drive engagement. “We used to have a scattershot approach, but now we use variable content within each of our pieces, depending on certain audience demographics or psychographic attributes,” says Angela Dunbar, manager, individual business marketing at BCBS of MI.

Take the time to test. Because of the cost of mailing, some brands might want to skimp here. But testing offers and creative elements is extremely important, especially if your brand is new to the world of direct mail. “We encourage people to test,” says Sisson. “You want to know right out of the gate that you’re headed in the right direction.”

Make sure you can track the ROI. As with all marketing techniques, attribution in direct mail is essential. No one tactic exists in a vacuum these days, and most direct mail campaigns are part of multichannel strategies. Before you mail, says Sisson, consider how you will gauge the ROI, such as visits to a unique URL, dedicated 800 number or other call to action.

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Decide where direct mail fits into your branding strategy. There’s no hard and fast rule as to how direct mail should tie into other branding efforts. Harhut advises looking at other campaigns from other parts of the organization, including digital and TV, to makes sure any direct mail pieces are part of consistent cross-channel branding initiatives.

The post Direct Mail: 7 Tips for Making the Most of the Post appeared first on Chief Marketer.

“Good inventors and designers deeply understand their customer. They spend tremendous energy developing that intuition. They study and understand many anecdotes rather than only the averages you’ll find on surveys. They live with the design.” – Jeff Bezos, in a 2016 letter to shareholders.

This quote is a perfect description of the importance of customer experience—something Bezos clearly understands how to harness.

As the unprecedented availability of information, resources and choices through digital channels shifts power from brands to buyers, we’ve entered a golden age of the customer. Across every industry, customer empathy—something that may have sounded like a platitude in the past—is now the competitive differentiator.

A Forrester report last year found that companies offering superior customer experience consistently outperform laggards in stock price and total returns.

In today’s world, it’s all about forging memorably positive emotional connections with customers—and that requires human insight and observing with empathy to recognize and relate to their motivations, needs, desires, likes, and dislikes.

At a time when customers can switch loyalties in an instant with a few taps or clicks, businesses have no choice but to be adroit at putting themselves in buyers’ shoes at every step of the customer experience.

But a major gap exists between companies’ perceptions of how well they’re doing and those of customers. According to a Capgemini study, while 75 percent of companies believe themselves to be customer-centric, only 30 percent of customers would agree.

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To bridge this chasm, organizations must become obsessed with customer empathy. Here are five ways how:

1. Make “everyone owns customer experience” a central cultural tenet.

Companies should cultivate human experience as a core value. Everyone in the company should be able to see, hear, and feel the customer experience—not just a select few whose “job” it is.

Companies should measure employees’ customer “exposure hours” in non-customer-facing roles. Those who fall below a baseline of, say, two hours every month should be exposed to customers by talking to users, taking support calls, or watching people use the product.

2. Break the data addiction.

Data-driven insight has become standard practice as a way to assess various aspects of the customer journey. While data indeed has great value in enabling businesses to identify key trends and patterns in buyer behavior, it can’t replace seeing, hearing, and talking to customers first-hand to gain insights into their motivations, preferences and decisions.

Interaction with real customers must be synthesized into companies’ data-centric digital processes and personas, and inform every aspect of product design, creation and support.

3. Avoid the “knowledge curse.”

Knowledge is great, except for when it leads to a cognitive bias (first identified 30 years ago this year) that occurs when a person knows so much about a subject that they incorrectly assume others have the background to understand it equally well. The knowledge curse can play out in a company when the developers get too close to an offering and lose objectivity over how it will play with customers out in the wild.

This can lead to every company’s worst nightmare – discovering after a product is built that it falls short of user expectations. By instilling independent human insight throughout the development process, organizations can break this curse.

4. Empower product managers with human insight.

Product managers are always on the hot seat, responsible for many of the dynamics that decide a product’s success or failure. By making a relatively small investment of time and money in human insight, product managers can validate decisions before spending cycles in development.

This should include live customer interviews before design starts, quick validation of prototypes and sketches, continuous verification during development to validate decisions and reveal problem areas, and post-launch gathering of human insight to act as an insurance policy against any issues with the product that weren’t uncovered earlier.

5. Take advantage of technology.

Businesses should leverage technology—video, live interviews, and other research studies—to continually interact with customers. This feedback loop should become part of the brand’s lifeblood. Think of it as a virtuous circle in which one desirable outcome from human insights leads to another and drives continuous improvement of the customer experience.

By following these five steps, companies can make sure they’re doing everything possible to truly empathize with customers. Remember: You can’t delight them if you don’t understand them. Empathy is everything.

Andy MacMillan is CEO of UserTesting.

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