Wouldn’t it make sense that if you spent more money on email marketing than pay-per-click marketing, you’d have a reasonable explanation for that choice?

Well, according to the data discovered in Econsultancy’s 2010 Email Marketing Census, companies are spending more on email marketing (17% of online budgets) than PPC (16%) despite not fully understanding the return on investment (ROI) achieved or taking advantage of one of the most important benefits of email marketing: segmentation.

When you run PPC campaign, you attempt to segment your target audience by using different ad creative and targeted landing pages. You wouldn’t bring a “window shopper” to a landing page that displayed only one product, would you? So it’s a shock that many companies are still not using segmentation to target their email campaigns and deliver messages, or offers, that are tailored to their customers’ known interests and buying habits. Think about that. When you email your existing customers, you already know at least a little about their buying preferences, so why would you not segment them so that they receive tailored email messages?

With this ...

This is week three for me of a four-week road trip. I’m getting a little loopy, but am collecting some wonderful client experiences, lessons and stories. Here’s one from a British account executive.

“I was going to see a potential client for what could have been an important piece of business for us. Unfortunately for me, I missed the scheduled plane by minutes, and thus was delayed by an hour. I called, and they agreed to reschedule the meeting to accommodate me.

“When I arrived, a bit flustered, the team of a half-dozen clients execs had gathered downstairs, and we all then went to the lift to go upstairs to the designated conference room.

“Unfortunately the lift was made for about four people. We all crammed into the lift, and it slowly began to climb. At that point someone—how shall I put this—well, as we English say—passed gas. The lift continued its crawling pace upward. No one, of course, said a word, nor even altered their expression. There was dead silence.

“As the doors finally opened, we all rushed to get out—all at once. And all 7 of us thereby tumbled onto each other on the floor. We all picked ourselves up, even more embarrassed, and again without ... read more >>

I had a great time at the Sales 2.0 Conference in San Francisco earlier this week.  In a lot of ways it reminded me of my high school friend’s father, he was a nice enough guy, but he had a thing for the song from Casablanca “As time goes by”.  He would collect as many different renditions as possible; he had the original, the Frank Sinatra version, Tony Bennett, all the instrumentals, even the Tom Jones cover.  While I had no particular favourite, at the end they were all pretty much rooted in the original, some were more adventurous, some were straight up, but at the end they were all “As Time Goes By”, and left you wanting to heat the original by “Sam” Dooley Wilson.

There were some great ideas, great products, and in many ways a return to basics: execution.  Much of the focus on execution was aimed at lead origination, nurturing and conversion.  While some of this pointed to automation, and integration of marketing and sales, at the end the discussion always came back to execution. 

There is no denying that technology has enabled companies to think bigger and wider and achieve bigger and wider.  There is no arguing with the data ... read more >>

I put this video together on the fly for Sydney Owen and the rest of theSX Gen Y team who will be presenting their panel discussion on “Why Gen Y Wants to Work ‘With’ You, Not ‘For’ You,” at South by Southwest on Monday, March 15th.

Since I did the video in one take during my lunch break last Friday afternoon I didn’t really think much about what I was going to say. I really just let it spill off the tongue, and the result when I re-watched the video was that I don’t think Gen Y is all that different from other generations. I genuinely believe most employees would appreciate their managers taking these 5 things into consideration:

If you’re a member of Generation Y do you find that these things apply to you? If you’re an older employee how do these tips stack up in terms of importance for you? Finally, are Gen Y employees really all that different from their elders?

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5 Tips to Successfully Managing Gen Y –> http://bit.ly/bdKGKz

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• Dave Brock has written several pieces on the sales process recently. He now has launched an initiative to get some new thinking on the subject by asking “What's the Future of Buying”.
• I have seen several contributions by Sharon Drew Morgen, besides her new book 'Dirty little Secrets...', reminding us that we should stop talking about selling and trying to understand to the extent possible how people and organizations buy.
• Ardath Albee in her book “eMarketing Strategies for the Complex Sales” proposes a marketing flavored look on the buyer's journey. A particularity of her model is that it does not imply a linear process as most others do.
• Axel Schultze wrote in a recent blog post that our sales processes are old and suck.
• There is a Discussion going on on LinkedIn for several weeks now about what the right steps of a sales process are.
• Sales 2.0 Network now offers Dealmaker Genius helping to design your sales process in 15 minutes for free.
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