If you're like most business owners, you're always looking for ways to improve your company's performance. You may have heard of OKRs and are wondering what they are and whether your business needs them. OKRs stand for Objectives and Key…
Your customers and prospects are as individually different as the colors in a rainbow. If you understand how to target and communicate to them based on those differences, your response rates will be just as beautiful. If you try to mix your messages for the masses, the colors will run together and you’ll have a less-than-beautiful muddy mess.
Last week I fired off a post suggestion that we should all be looking at data segmentation in our lists to improve response rates. I had some great feedback on the post from readers wanting more detail, including this email from a friend:
I completely agree that segmentation will improve response rates. What do you suggest we look at as segments?
So here are some thoughts to get you going.
I’m surprised how many companies take their databases for granted.
They did a good job at one point collecting leads from purchased lists, trade show badge swipes, web hits and referrals. But then the data starts to suffer from a lack of attention, no new investment of resources or energy and just some poor data management. A lot of companies never clean the data and most companies just copy the data from a hodge podge of lists randomly into their CRM system or their email marketing program.
But a lot of the literature shows that companies who invest time and money into deduping their lists and segmenting their prospects into groups like industry verticals, job titles, job functions (which are often different than titles), associations and the like see much better response rates.
Customer surveys are hard to implement and if you do it wrong, you don’t end up with actionable data. Sure, it may be nice from a PR perspective that 95% of your customers get what they expect out of your support line; however, that doesn’t mean they feel any loyalty toward you at all. Giving them what they expect just means you didn’t upset them enough to leave.
Surveys fail for any number of reasons.
Synchronicity.
For some reason, I’ve had five conversations in the last few weeks with clients about marketing as a percentage of X, where X might be revenue, EBITDA, new sales, or another measure.
So if you’re wondering about this, I thought I’d share my rules of thumb.
Are you tired of all those prospects sneaking around on your website without the courtesy to even fill out a landing page conversion form? What exactly are those anonymous visitors from domains like “sbcglobal” and “roadrunner” and “verizon” doing on your site? Who are these mysterious e-vagrants?
Our Nuturama process includes a new process that identifies prospects on your website even if they don’t fill out a prospecting form. Here is a taste of what our program can do to reveal your prospects’ hidden site-surfing secrets.
I’ll make you a bet. The next time you see a “Target Market” slide in an investor pitch deck or a marketing overview that has more than 50,000 companies or users or prospects, you buy me an iced Americano at your favorite coffee shop. If the number is less than 50,000 then I’ll buy.
Why is 50,000 the magic number?
I can now scan my breakfast fruit.
You can scan my business card as well. At the risk of sounding quite shallow, the main reason I added a QR code to my card is because it is a cool conversation piece. I get a lot of comments when I hand them out; however, there are a lot of great reasons to add QR codes to your campaigns and collateral as well.
Here are 10 of my favorite and most compelling ways to use QR codes.
A while ago I was playing a mens doubles tennis match against a duo that was collectively 150 pounds heavier than my partner and me. The points on our side of the net were won with a lot of running, tight angles, drop shots and finesse. The points on their side of the net were won with blistering forehands aimed right at our faces. I think I still have a mark on my forehead that says “ProPenn 4.”
At the end of the very close match–each set went to a tie break–one of their players said, “That was like a battle of the piano players versus the piano movers.”
That’s kind of like lead nurturing.