Client 101: How to Write an RFP

By Sean Carton , December 5, 2001

One of the biggest disadvantages of being in the Web biz is that we're all still figuring out how things should work. Even though the business has matured somewhat over the past five or six years, the practices still aren't anywhere near as cut and dried as they are in, say, the traditional advertising industry. Nowhere is that more apparent than in the Web development request-for-proposal (RFP) process.

In the ad biz (or construction or chemical procurement or just about any other business that's been around for a while), the whole RFP process is fairly standardized. Companies looking to hire a vendor for a project (or for a long-term relationship) generally know what questions to ask so they can get the data they need to make their decisions. Vendors, knowing that they're being asked the right questions, know how to respond in such a way that the potential clients get the information they need. Sure, there are always plenty of creative showdowns, and backroom politicking is inevitably involved, but generally everybody knows what to expect. Because they know what to expect, they're free to expend their energies on being creative.

But when it comes to Web development... watch out! Because clients don't know what to ask, they often don't get the answers they need to make intelligent decisions. Because the potential vendors don't get enough information, they're forced to guess, and they come up with responses that don't help the prospect. The result? Everyone goes home unhappy, and clients end up with vendors that are too expensive, too inexperienced, too mismanaged, too big, or too small for the job. In the meantime, all the vendors who bid on the job and didn't get it wasted inordinate amounts of time responding to something they had no chance of getting.

What to do? The answer will come from understanding -- clients understanding what Web developers need to respond, and Web developers understanding the needs of their potential clients. Better understanding equals better responses equals better matches equals happier clients. It's a simple equation that equals "win" for everyone.

So, dear client, what do we developers need from you to make sure you are comparing the proverbial apples to apples (as opposed to those dreaded oranges)? Here are 10 humble suggestions that'll make everyone's life easier:

• Budget. Yes, budget. Money. As in, "How much you got?" In about 90 percent of the RFPs I get, there's no indication of how much the client wants to spend. The result is a little like playing "Battleship." The developer guesses blindly as to the client's needs. The client responds with a "Hit!" when the number is somewhere within the magical range or a "Miss." when it's too high (proposed budget numbers are rarely too low).

  Why does this happen? Many clients have the mistaken perception that since Web development doesn't involve a tangible "product," the price is infinitely variable and that, given a number, all developers will inflate their prices to reach that number. Baloney. Things take time. Software costs money. People have salaries that need to be paid. You'd be surprised at how similar most companies' rates are. The only way to have an understanding of how much stuff to propose is to know how much money the client has to spend.

• Scope. If you don't feel comfortable saying how much you have to spend, at least take the time to sketch out the scope of the project. To use the old hackneyed analogy, we're like homebuilders. If you tell us you want a house, we'd at least like to know if you want a shack or a mansion. And if you don't know the scope, that's fine, too. Make a requirements phase the first item on your wish list so that the company you pick can do some research to tell you what you need.
• Speculative creative. Yes, this has been standard operating procedure in the ad industry for years. It sucks. Let's learn from the mistakes of the past and not repeat this onerous practice. First, it degrades the value of design. Secondly, it forces the better shops (those that routinely take a more strategic focus) to create design without any knowledge of you and your customers. The result? Design for its own sake. Decisions based purely on aesthetics are usually bad ones because of their subjectivity.
• Technical requirements. If your company has a religious commitment to Microsoft products, say so. Likewise, if your company worships at the altar of Linux, be open about your preferences. If you need database integration with a certain back-end database, tell us what kind of database system you have. It doesn't do anyone any good to play the technical requirements guessing game. If you let your potential vendors know what you need, you'll be sure to get answers you can compare.
• Marketing versus IT. Which is more important? If your IT department has the upper hand in picking the vendor based on technical expertise, say so. If the marketing department is running the show and wants a more strategic focus, make sure that this is something that your potential vendor knows -- and one you know yourself. Self-knowledge about this issue is vital in putting together the short list of vendors: Don't ask systems integrators that focus on back-end issues to bid against high-end, flashy design shops. You'll have a very hard time comparing the responses.
• Content and content development. Do you plan to reuse all the content on your existing site (basically just doing a face-lift to your current site), or do you want to start from scratch? Are you looking for a Web developer that can write the content, or are you planning to do it yourself?
• Maintenance and a long-term relationship. Who's going to keep the site up and running once it's launched? If you're planning to maintain content, are you interested in a content management system? If you want an agency to work with you on a long-term basis, how do you want the relationship structured?
• Third-party software. Where do you stand on third-party software? Do you want custom applications or off-the-shelf solutions? Do you own licenses for the software you want to reuse? If you don't want custom apps, say so. It doesn't do anyone any good to guess about this. If you don't mind custom apps, do you want to own them outright or license them?
• Partnerships. Where do you stand on partnerships? Does the company you pick have to do everything in-house? Many companies these days are specializing in one aspect of development or another -- some do back-end integration work, others focus on design, some do consulting, and others may just do content development. Do you care if that's all done by the same company? If you do, please say so, and let your potential vendors know that in-house capabilities are a condition of the contract. If you don't care, make sure you find out who their partners are and who to contact if things go south. Make your primary vendor ultimately responsible.
• Know thyself. Finally, take a good hard look at your company and make sure that you communicate any idiosyncrasies that you may have. If you know that any development process will involve a lot of time in committee meetings, don't be afraid to say so. If you know that certain key dates have to be met (board meetings, conferences, etc.), lay them out so that you can get a development schedule proposal that works with your dates. You'll end up with responses that address your issues and schedules that work with your key dates.

How to Create Marketing Demos That Sell Products

by Amy Gesenhues

One of the biggest challenges that marketing departments face is producing marketing tools that actually get used by the sales team.

If you are like many frustrated marketing professionals, you spin your wheels trying to create effective marketing communication materials that are left unused; or worse, you give up hours and hours fine-tuning your product's messaging to communicate key features and benefits, only to hear each salesperson giving a different pitch.

You want to create marketing tools that help sell products, not collateral that sits on a shelf. So how do you do it? How do you create a marketing tool that not only gets used but also can reinforce your marketing messaging so that everyone is speaking the same language?

A professionally produced product demo can do wonders for your marketing initiatives. It can accelerate your sales cycle and generate qualified leads. You can leverage it on multiple platforms and within various campaigns, from your site to your tradeshow booth, on marketing CDs and in email marketing efforts. And when done right, a great demo can get everyone speaking the same language.

Four Questions to Ask Yourself

Before you begin building your demo, you have to answer the following four questions:

1. What's your demo's objective?
2. What type of demo will best fit your needs?
3. How do you build a demo so that it gets the maximum return on investment?
4. Do you have the resources to build your demo in-house, or should you outsource it?

Producing an effective demo that gets used on a regular basis can be an overwhelming task—but it doesn't have to be. Once you go through the following four questions and corresponding answers, you'll be able to start your demo project with confidence and end up with a marketing tool that sells your product.

What's your demo's objective?

Just as with any project, a clearly defined objective is mandatory. Do you want to generate more leads from your Web site? Do you want an engaging, dynamic tool that pulls prospects into your sales cycle more quickly? If you are selling a software product, do you want to shorten your sales cycle? If you have a Web site, do you want to increase registrations?

Know your objective so that your product demo's content is aligned with your goal.

Your demo's objective will help you select the visuals that you want to use and the script that you will write.

For example, if you're a marketer for a retail Web site and your goal is to encourage more users to purchase products online, build a three-minute demo using actual screen shots of your site with a voiceover that tells users how to buy online as it shows them.

Put the demo on your homepage, provide links to it in emails and in online newsletters. Give the link to your demo to the customer service department so that they can email it whenever they take a call.

What type of demo best fits your needs?

In the world of product demos, there are two schools of thought: product-centric demos and conceptual demos. Which one you use depends on what you are selling. A product-centric demo focuses primarily on your product, offering up visuals of what it looks like and how it works. A conceptual demo is more animated and often leverages more graphics and marketing language.

If you have a product that does not immediately resonate with your prospects, then you will receive the most benefit from a product-centric demo. People don't buy what they can't see or don't understand.

Any complex product that does not render itself recognizable by name alone can be well served by a product-centric demo because it offers prospects the chance to see the product. For example, if you're selling a software product, showing prospects your software's top three key features in action does a lot more than giving them fading bullet points that tell them what your key features are.

A conceptual demo can be thought of as more creative than a product-centric demo, because you don't have to show the product. Conceptual demos work best when prospects have a profound understanding of what the product is.

For example, if you're selling a car, you can be more conceptual by using graphics and creative language that touches the buyer's soft spots when it comes to purchasing a vehicle. Obviously, you'll show pictures of the car, but you don't have to go into detail about how key features like the brakes or power-locks work.

How do you build a demo that it gets maximum return on investment?

ROI—the three-letter acronym that marketers live (and die) by. For your demo to receive maximum return on investment, you have to make it easily accessible and leverage it across the board. Live demos are great for prospects already deep into your sales cycle and ready for a 40-60-minute overview of your product.

But for prospects who are still in the research or evaluation stage, you need to offer a 3-6-minute automated demo that can be accessed from your Web site. Hit the highlights quickly, be clear and concise, and make it easy to find. Use technology with high user-adoption rates. Flash is great tool for automated demos. Whatever you do, don't rely on applications that have to be downloaded and don't force a prospect to use a plug-in.

The demo needs to stream instantly and deliver your message in five minutes or less. An automated demo can be used throughout your site, looped at tradeshows, linked to in an email, and placed on laptops for your sales team to use on the road.

The more ways you can deliver your demo to your prospects, the more cost-effective it becomes.

Do you have the resources to build your in-house or should you outsource it?

You have a full marketing department: copywriters, designers, flash experts. But do you have the right resources to build an effective demo that looks professional? And does your team have the time to turn the project around quickly?

A great demo is the result of blending a well-crafted script with expertly selected visuals. Outsourcing your demo to a demo-development firm may be your best bet to create a professional demo using a minimal amount of your team's time.

If you choose to outsource the demo project, select a firm that specializes in product demos. Make sure it has a defined process and pricing structure without any hidden fees. Check out the client list and view samples before you start working with the firm.

If your budget is too tight for a demo-development firm, tools are available that allow you to create your own demo. Just remember, your demo may be a prospect's first impression of your product. You want to put your best foot forward; the more professional your demo looks, the better your product looks.

* * *

A great product demo puts your product in the best light. It gives prospects an immediate understanding of what they are buying so that they come to your sales team already interested. Not only does it serve up qualified leads, it reinforces consistent messaging by getting your internal forces on the same page.

When sales, customer service, and all else who interacts with your customers, are offered a dynamic marketing tool that gives a voice to your marketing messages, everyone starts speaking the same language. Before you know it, your product demo will become your most popular marketing tool, because it will sell your product for you (and your sales team).

Amy Gesenhues is the Director of Marketing for Autodemo LLC (www.autodemo.com), a developer of software and Web site demos. She can be reached at amy@autodemo.com.

Published on April 22, 2008

How to Make Email Marketing More Mobile-Friendly

by Andrew Osterday and Chris Lovejoy

Mobile technology continues to develop. The number of consumers with mobile devices capable of retrieving and viewing email continues to increase rapidly. The early adopters of the Blackberry have given way, in numbers at least, to those using what are fast becoming fully functional internet-ready devices.

With multiple mobile platforms on the market and mobile phone companies vying for the sale of not only the devices but also the data plans that supply the bandwidth, these "mini-messengers" are in the hands of millions of consumers.

Could your email be more mobile friendly?

Are your email messages ready for the move to mobile? They had better be: Over two-thirds of B2B emailers regularly read your emails on their mobile device.

If you haven't tested how your emails are rendering across multiple handhelds, you might be very surprised, and not in a good way.

Here some things to think about when considering email on mobile devices:

• Communications that rely on image-heavy content, special font treatments, tables, or other advanced coding will not translate well without optimizing the message for the mobile user.
• If sending mobile campaigns, be sure to be honest and very personal. Use the name of a real person if possible.
• HTML links can be used but should be used sparingly and only if the call-to-action link is also enabled for mobile devices.
• If your communication boasts a lengthy terms-and-conditions section, it may be better rendered as a mobile-formatted landing page for the user.
• Opt-out rules still apply. One-click opt-out works best.

A few basic formatting rules for mobile devices:

• Coding fonts may or may not work on the user's device. Most mobile devices allow the user to select a preferred default font. Although the link to the mobile communication is actually a web link, simple (default) font coding or basic fonts are best. Font size consideration: Keep it small. Work with your messaging provider on the appropriate size.
• Screen size is limited. Design for easy word wrap. The list should be kept short (in regards to width), as odd wrapping will occur on the smallest of screens.
• Keep the message short and keep your call to action in the top area of the communication. Being "front of mind" for users, even if they do not view the entire message, may prompt them to save the message and view the full HTML version when they get to their computer.
• Simple black text with color action links work best on smaller screens and make it easy to view and navigate.
• Images should be small and few. Depending on the connection speed of the device, images may take some time to render. Small logos for brand recognition or small but viewable images that support content should be used, if at all, sparingly.
• Do not replicate your website navigation in email. Place it at the bottom of the message if at all.
• Use full images, not sliced. Sliced images will wrap and appear jumbled.
• Design in columns and plan for content to wrap after a couple of hundred pixels.
• Include a click-to-view-online link and take users to a mobile-optimized landing page.
• Include a click-to-call link, if applicable.
• To test rendering across different handhelds, download a free tool at Opera (www.opera.com).

How to start: Use email to promote mobile marketing

So you've made your emails mobile friendly. Now lets look at marketing via SMS (short message service) and MMS (multimedia message service)—aka mobile marketing.

Using wireless networks to reach consumers on personal phones and mobile devices has come a long way over the past few years, and consumers are warming up to the emerging technology.

But how do you start?

What better way to introduce the mobile option than through an already established email relationship? Email is the perfect vehicle to introduce your audience to an alternative form of communication such as SMS or MMS.

Permission is just as important in mobile marketing as it is in email. Rather than starting from scratch or purchasing lists, build your mobile list organically: Engage your current base of email subscribers who have already requested a relationship with you. Provide a choice to receive mobile communications where it makes sense, especially for timely messages.

Mobile campaigns are great for the following:

• Same-day reminders
• Special events
• Meeting confirmations
• Product delivery confirmations
• Flight status
• Financial alerts
• Data collection

Use your primary email template when introducing the mobile option to your users. This helps maintain familiarity and instantly establishes trust. The copy should be brief and personal and should direct your customers to a landing page where they can submit their mobile phone number. You can also include the option on the registration page so they can sign up for mobile messages right from the start.

Not ready to jump head first into the mobile arena? Then optimize your email messages for handhelds, as described above. Or simply include a link at the very top of your email to "View on Handheld." Then link the user to a mobile-optimized landing page of your message. Use rich text to be safe.

There are many ways to approach the growing propensity of mobile users to engage with marketers' messages. Experiment now and find the right fit for your business.

Andrew Osterday and Chris Lovejoy: Andrew is solutions director of eMarketing at Premier Global Services (www.premiereglobal.com); Chris is eMarketing strategic services account executive.

E-mail Marketing vs. E-mail Sales

By Jeanne Jennings , March 24, 2008

Early in my career, during a job interview, I was asked to talk about the relationship between marketing and sales. After a moment's thought, I said marketing was the umbrella term for a lot of different activities, of which sales was one. Marketing was about doing things that would help grow a business in the short, mid-, and long terms; the focus of sales was closing business today, this week, and this month. The director of marketing and sales (that was his title, in that order) seemed to agree, and I got the marketing position.

In many companies the marketing team is tasked with driving leads to the sales team. This isn't a trivial thing; businesses must sign on new customers to grow. But sometimes, especially in e-mail marketing, the broader responsibilities and goals of marketing, over and above immediate sales and lead generation, seem to get lost.

Case in point: e-mail messages that are strictly promotional. Don't get me wrong; I'm not against sending these types of e-mail. But if the only thing you send your prospects is a "buy from us now" or "take a demo now" message, you aren't doing true e-mail marketing. You're doing e-mail sales or e-mail lead generation.

Why Do True E-mail Marketing?

True e-mail marketing, which would include branding, relationship-building, sales/lead generation and other efforts, will not only deliver sales or leads today, but also make it easier for you to deliver sales or leads in the future. These other efforts can be used to:

• Position your company as one that understands your prospects and their needs
  
  
• Keep your brand name top of mind so when prospects are ready to buy, they think of you
  
  
• Address common objections prospects have to taking a demo or buying your product, moving the sales process forward
  
  
• Build a relationship with prospects, increasing their comfort level about doing business with you

Could you use direct mail or an ongoing telephone campaign to your house list to accomplish these goals? Maybe. But it would be more expensive. E-mail is an affordable way to provide targeted content to a large group.

Why Don't More Companies Do True E-mail Marketing?

Many companies have made the investment in true e-mail marketing and are reaping the benefits. But just as many, if not more, haven't. Why?

One reason is that laser focus on short-term sales or lead generation. If you have even a halfway successful promotional e-mail program, it's likely that your first relationship building e-mail effort won't meet or beat the promotional e-mail's conversion rate. If a company has a strong focus on short-term results, that can be a hard sell: Why spend additional money to develop an e-mail with a mix of editorial (read: nonpromotional) and promotional content when you could just do an additional send of your promotional e-mail?

In the short term, another send of the promotional e-mail is the wiser choice. But if you're looking at the mid- to long term, the logic shifts. There comes a point of decreasing returns. If you send a promotional e-mail to your house list once a month and generate 100 leads from it, that doesn't mean that a weekly send of the promotional e-mail will garner 400 leads per month. And it's very unlikely that a daily send to that same list will bring you 3,000 leads for March.

Promotional e-mail attracts a limited audience: people who are ready to buy or are investigating buying. Relationship, branding, and other e-mail messages not strictly focused on sales or lead generation appeal to a larger group and give you the chance to frame the discussion. Success stories might cause readers who didn't know they had a problem to want to learn more about your solution. Interviews with experts in readers' industry might position you as someone who understands their business, which is always appealing in a partner. Getting a daily tip with your branding might trigger a call to your sales team when a need arises.

The key to success is your content's quality. Developing an e-mail message that isn't 100 percent promotional takes more effort than creating a single promotional e-mail. Many companies have an e-mail newsletter but find it isn't driving sales, leads, or other business goals; often it's being sent but rarely opened, read, or clicked through from. The reason is quality.

People are deluged with e-mail today. And they are busy. Just sending an e-mail newsletter isn't enough; you have to make sure your content is compelling to your readers. This is where many attempts at true e-mail marketing fall down. Companies are going through the motions, but they either don't have the resources or don't know how to create an e-mail newsletter that's engaging to readers and effective at forwarding the business' goals.

When done well, efforts that aren't strictly promotional can drive more sales or leads than your promotional e-mail. I've worked with clients where their e-mail newsletters, which comprise 60 percent or more editorial (read: not promotional) material, delivered sales at a higher rate than their 100 percent promotional efforts. In one instance, the relationship was two-to-one; its e-mail newsletter had double the conversion rate of its sales e-mail. This requires great quality content and some strategic placement of promotions in the e-mail newsletter, but it can be done.

The beauty of a true e-mail marketing program is that the branding and relationship-building efforts aren't replacing the promotional efforts, they're being added into the mix. So you aren't losing the 100 leads your promotional e-mail brings in every month. Instead, you'll add a different type of communication to the mix in hopes of providing a short-term lift to leads and building value over time that allows you to maintain and increase this monthly lift.

Give it a try and let me know how it goes!

Until next time,

Jeanne

Want more e-mail marketing information? ClickZ E-Mail Reference is an archive of all our e-mail columns, organized by topic.

Marketing's New 5 Ps: Turning What You Know Inside Out

by Jason McNamara

With apologies to Philip Kotler, whose four Ps—product, price, place, and promotion—have been integral to any successful product or service marketing effort of the past 50 years, today's successful marketing hinges on five new Ps.

Whereas the Ps we studied in college are all from the provider's point of view, these new Ps focus with laser-like clarity on the customer.

But customer-centricity can't be the mantra of just the marketing department. Every group, from the boardroom to product leaders to IT, must place the customer at the core of every decision it makes.

Responsibility for evangelizing within the organization rests squarely on the shoulders of the CMO. After all, if the marketing chief isn't living and breathing customer focus every minute, and encouraging others to do the same, who will believe its importance?

The CMO's office must consistently demonstrate to the rest of the enterprise the value of looking at all products, messaging, and brands through the customer's eyes. The entire organization can then get closer to the hearts and minds of their prospects and customers, with the added benefit of proving the value of every initiative that the company undertakes.

The new Ps are composed of five equally important, tightly interwoven components, designed to more tightly integrate marketing in the future.

1. People

Certainly, the audience must be at the heart of any marketing initiative. That isn't news to anyone in your department. Smart marketers have always had an instinctive sense of what their audiences would respond to. But no longer is it enough to know about your target in aggregate. Perhaps "person" might be a better heading for this P—because now it's important to know your customer intimately, as a human, emotional being.

It's one thing to know how people who generally look and act like your customer might respond. It's another to know exactly how John A. Sample has responded in the past, and what's likely to interest him next time. Why did he make his last return or exchange? What did he look at before placing an order? Has he purchased anything since his last call to customer service? What size does he wear?

Chances are, he's already told you who he is and what he wants—but were you listening?

2. Passion

Marketers are passionate about their profession. But no good marketer can function using only the right side of the brain anymore. Creativity and instinct are still important, but the anal side—the analytics side—is gaining fast.

Marketing is part of the business, and the business exists to perform. As a result, you're being held to greater accountability than ever before. Today, your passion for marketing must be driven by facts—the full view of all the data now available about customers, campaigns, and returns.

You already know that this passion for a 360-degree perspective can have an incredibly powerful effect. Being able to apply sophisticated marketing analytics to every piece of information you collect about your customers is like bringing the customers themselves in-house to tell you not just what's working and what isn't, but why. You can use this passion to your advantage, helping generate ideas, proving their relevance, and justifying the money you spend.

Still, a survey published in March by the Association of National Advertisers found that the top two concerns of senior marketing executives are integrated marketing communications and marketing accountability. Further research by the same group found that 60% of respondents had none of the necessary cross-functional involvement in their companies' development and management of marketing accountability programs to make them truly effective.

If you're like many CMOs, you've already identified the needs but may be uncertain of the solutions. Fortunately, each of these issues can be addressed by enterprisewide marketing analytics.

3. Processes

Marketing processes must become more enlightened. It's time for everyone to sing from one song sheet—instead of having discrete departments creating dissonant communications and hoarding data. Database and digital marketing, marketing operations, and customer relations all need to work in concert—a concept foreign to many companies in which other departments are often viewed as competitors rather than collaborators.

Again, the answer is a passionate, organization-wide approach to customer-centricity. If it doesn't come from the CMO, where will it begin?

Just two years ago, more than 40% of database marketers surveyed by Forrester Research lacked a complete picture of customer contact history, and one-third were missing transactional data from one or more channels.¹ That is clearly less than ideal.

In an organization with customer-focused processes, everyone strides toward a common goal. In a sales organization, for example, this can mean that the group which handles generating and tracking leads works closely with the sales team to contact, close, and communicate with prospects. Everyone has a hand in determining how often to communicate, how to allocate budgets, campaign lifecycles and more.

Forrester Research analysts suggest that "socializing" the customer database is a necessary change, so that everyone in the enterprise can contribute to and benefit from this tremendous asset. It's time to throw siloed systems, ideas, and processes out the window. But a sea change like this one has to start at the top.

4. Platform

An industry of ideas, marketing also now relies heavily on technology to guide contact strategies, deliver messaging, integrate information and processes, and measure performance. This takes powerful tools, only a few of which are up to the task of managing the vast data stores available across multiple channels, but they're out there.

Of course, software and technology can't solve the issues—they can only provide the platform for coordinating and accessing information, helping to apply customer-centric thinking to every initiative an organization undertakes.

Peter Kim of Forrester Research suggests that "many brand marketers don't understand IT's value beyond email and Ethernets. Conversely, many IT departments think of marketing as the 'make it pretty' department. In the best interests of the organization, marketing and IT must come together and share resources to build an experience infrastructure layer to support the customer experience. Marketers should add a high-level internal role to champion marketing technology and to manage the construction of a marketing technology backbone."²

Of course, the internal IT department may not be the answer. They have their hands full trying to satisfy new regulatory, privacy, and security demands that crop up every day. Marketing technology, however, is a specific discipline that applies technology to traditional and emerging marketing functions that can help companies deliver consistent customer experiences, integrate marketing processes, measure performance, align themselves to the needs of their businesses, and become more accountable to senior management.

5. Partners

Partners are an integral part of marketing—they always have been and always will be. The expertise they offer adds value over and above what can be achieved in-house. Consequently, CMOs must ensure that they have solid partner relationships that are part of the process and integrated more closely into the marketing department.

As marketing becomes more sophisticated, marketing service providers, agencies, and systems integrators must all be tapped to deliver on their particular areas of expertise. It's impossible to have all the skill sets in-house and do everything well and cost efficiently.

For many companies, this isn't a new idea—they already look to different providers for various types of creative, media buying, production, and more. It just becomes more critical as highly technical capabilities come into play.

Looking to the right partners means outsourcing key responsibilities to those best equipped to deliver on them, and that reduces the risk associated with investing in new infrastructure and specialist teams.

The Five Ps in Practice

When wholly, enthusiastically deployed, the new five Ps all work together—a passion for pleasing the person with whom you're doing business gives rise to new processes, the adoption of smarter platforms and value-adding partnerships that can make the promise of one-to-one marketing real.

But it has to be an enterprisewide way of thinking that comes from the top and infiltrates every member of every team. And it has to start with you.

Sources:

^1"Best Practices: Socializing The Customer Database," Forrester Research, Inc., July 23, 2007.

^2"Best Practices: Customer-Centric Marketing," Forrester Research, Inc., July 25, 2007.

Jason McNamara is chief marketing officer of Alterian (www.alterian.com).

Published on March 18, 2008

E-mail Copy Tip From a Great E-mail Copywriter

By Jeanne Jennings , February 25, 2008

Pat Friesen is an award-winning, results-oriented on- and offline copywriter, as well as a friend. Her client list includes AT&T, Century 21, Hallmark, Hasbro, Hershey's, IBM, Motorola, and many other household name brands.

Friesen is my go-to copywriter for client projects. Driving response, not just writing copy, is one of her strengths. She was kind enough to share her keys to successful e-mail copy with me for this column. I encourage you to check out her regular column in Target Marketing. Her most recent column is an interview with yours truly, discussing the similarities and differences between offline direct mail and e-mail marketing.

Be Clear on Objectives

"It's important to clearly define the e-mail's objective," said Friesen. "Do you want people to buy, fill out a lead-qualification form, or just raise their hand [click through]? The copy needs to motivate the reader to the action needed to meet the objective. The more you're asking from them, the more information you will probably need to provide."

Prepare Before You Write

I know Friesen immerses herself in projects before putting fingers to keyboard. What I didn't fully comprehend was the amount of preparation. "Although I don't charge by the hour, I do keep track of my time." Friesen told me. "On average, only 20 percent is spent writing; the other 80 percent is research. I go deep into the product or service I'm writing about, as well as the audience I'm writing to. I look at current e-mails that are working for the client, as well as competitive information.

"The more information I get from a client, the better. Performance of past e-mails, including clickstream information from the open to the conversion, helps me identify opportunities and gives me a goal to beat," she continued. "Reviewing past e-mails, especially controls, is critical. Often there's a small detail that was under emphasized or just missed. By making this detail the hero of the new piece, putting it front and center with the same offer, you can often get a lift in response."

Understand the Sender

"Who is the e-mail coming from? What type of relationship does the sender have with the audience? These are critical questions to answer before you start writing." said Friesen. "E-mails come from people, not companies, so I try to work that into the copy. In some cases, the e-mail may be from a person (the director of marketing, product manager, or CEO); in other cases, it may be from a community (the company's customer service team, your friends at that company, etc.)."

Something Friesen and I agree on: there are pros and cons to using a real person's name in the sender address. If you take this route, be sure to include your company or brand name along with the person's name so you familiarize recipients with the company as well as the person sending the message.

Visualize Your Audience

Friesen says she "always has an image of who I'm writing to in my head. If the e-mail is going to mothers of little girls, I picture a woman I know and her little girl. If it's to a businessperson, I picture someone I know who's in that audience.

"I think about where they're reading the copy -- at their desk, in their home -- as well as how they are seeing it -- holding a piece of paper in their hand, viewing it on a computer screen, or scanning it on their mobile device. Also important are the distractions they may face while reading it; the copy needs to be interesting enough to gain and hold their attention."

Focus on What's in it for Readers

"The more specifics the client provides about what would motivate the audience to take the action desired, the better," said Freisen. "It's all about putting myself in the shoes of the reader. What's in it for them? Why should they open, read, click, and follow through to meet the objective?" is what Friesen focuses on. I think this is what makes her copy so highly relevant to the target audience, which is the secret of all great e-mail marketing.

Know the Features, But Talk About the Benefits

Friesen stresses the importance of knowing the different between the features of your product or service and its benefits. "A pocket is a feature; the benefit is that it can hold business cards or other things that the reader needs to keep with them," she said. "The benefit is what's in it for the reader, what's important to them, not the feature alone."

Use Violators to Highlight Key Messages

Many traditional direct marketing tactics translate beautifully to e-mail. Friesen has had success with "Johnson boxes, bursts, slashes, sidebars. These are all 'violators' which pull the key message out of the copy and give it more emphasis, so it won't be missed by the reader. Most people scan copy, rather than read it, so these techniques help you highlight the key takeaway and get your point across, even if the reader only skims."

Develop a Unique Voice and Use It Consistently

Friesen can't emphasize enough the importance of voice. "No matter what the medium, you should have a voice that you use to speak to your audience and keep it consistent throughout the relationship. E-mail tends to be more conversational, looser than copy used elsewhere. Even if you're targeting a business audience, you wouldn't want to use the type of language you find in an annual report.

"The voice you choose needs to be an accurate reflection of your brand personality. For an entertaining consumer product, it should be a fun voice; this is reflected in the vocabulary you use as well as the way the dialogue is structured. For business e-mails, you'll want to be more business-like but still conversational.

"Reading copy out loud is a great way to make sure your tone is appropriate to the audience and suitably conversational. Often I'll rewrite sentences which initially seemed good on paper but which don't work as well when I read them out loud."

Be Your Own Best Editor

"Don't say or tell too much," advised Friesen. "Hone in on the two or three things the reader needs to know to take the action you're looking for. If something in the copy isn't moving the audience toward the objective, get rid of it. If possible, step away from the copy and come back to it a few hours or a day later. Keep cutting until the message comes through loud and clear, without clutter."

Test, Test, Test

Friesen is as big a fan of testing as I am. "That's what makes it direct marketing!" is how she puts it. This is another reason she's one of my favorite copywriters to work with. It's not just about copy that reads well, it's about beating the control, lifting response rates, and creating an e-mail that's more effective than anything the client has used before. Once we get a winning e-mail, it's about tweaking it to make it even better or going back to the drawing board to create a new e-mail that will beat it.

Use Friesen's tips to write your own copy and let me know how it goes!

Until next time,

Jeanne

Want more e-mail marketing information? ClickZ E-Mail Reference is an archive of all our e-mail columns, organized by topic.

How to Create a Marketing Plan

What is a marketing plan and why is it so essential to the success of your business? Find out here, in the first section of our comprehensive guide to creating a marketing plan.


URL: http://www.entrepreneur.com/marketing/marketingbasics/marketingplan/article43018.html

Firms that are successful in marketing invariably start with a marketing plan. Large companies have plans with hundreds of pages; small companies can get by with a half-dozen sheets. Put your marketing plan in a three-ring binder. Refer to it at least quarterly, but better yet monthly. Leave a tab for putting in monthly reports on sales/manufacturing; this will allow you to track performance as you follow the plan.

The plan should cover one year. For small companies, this is often the best way to think about marketing. Things change, people leave, markets evolve, customers come and go. Later on we suggest creating a section of your plan that addresses the medium-term future--two to four years down the road. But the bulk of your plan should focus on the coming year.

You should allow yourself a couple of months to write the plan, even if it's only a few pages long. Developing the plan is the "heavy lifting" of marketing. While executing the plan has its challenges, deciding what to do and how to do it is marketing's greatest challenge. Most marketing plans kick off with the first of the year or with the opening of your fiscal year if it's different.

Who should see your plan? All the players in the company. Firms typically keep their marketing plans very, very private for one of two very different reasons: Either they're too skimpy and management would be embarrassed to have them see the light of day, or they're solid and packed with information . . . which would make them extremely valuable to the competition.

You can't do a marketing plan without getting many people involved. No matter what your size, get feedback from all parts of your company: finance, manufacturing, personnel, supply and so on--in addition to marketing itself. This is especially important because it will take all aspects of your company to make your marketing plan work. Your key people can provide realistic input on what's achievable and how your goals can be reached, and they can share any insights they have on any potential, as-yet-unrealized marketing opportunities, adding another dimension to your plan. If you're essentially a one-person management operation, you'll have to wear all your hats at one time--but at least the meetings will be short!

What's the relationship between your marketing plan and your business plan or vision statement? Your business plan spells out what your business is about--what you do and don't do, and what your ultimate goals are. It encompasses more than marketing; it can include discussions of locations, staffing, financing, strategic alliances and so on. It includes "the vision thing," the resounding words that spell out the glorious purpose of your company in stirring language. Your business plan is the U.S. Constitution of your business: If you want to do something that's outside the business plan, you need to either change your mind or change the plan. Your company's business plan provides the environment in which your marketing plan must flourish. The two documents must be consistent.

A marketing plan, on the other hand, is plump with meaning. It provides you with several major benefits. Let's review them.

* Rallying point: Your marketing plan gives your troops something to rally behind. You want them to feel confident that the captain of the vessel has the charts in order, knows how to run the ship, and has a port of destination in mind. Companies often undervalue the impact of a "marketing plan" on their own people, who want to feel part of a team engaged in an exciting and complicated joint endeavor. If you want your employees to feel committed to your company, it's important to share with them your vision of where the company is headed in the years to come. People don't always understand financial projections, but they can get excited about a well-written and well-thought-out marketing plan. You should consider releasing your marketing plan--perhaps in an abridged version--companywide. Do it with some fanfare and generate some excitement for the adventures to come. Your workers will appreciate being involved.

* Chart to success: We all know that plans are imperfect things. How can you possibly know what's going to happen 12 months or five years from now? Isn't putting together a marketing plan an exercise in futility . . . a waste of time better spent meeting with customers or fine-tuning production? Yes, possibly but only in the narrowest sense. If you don't plan, you're doomed, and an inaccurate plan is far better than no plan at all. To stay with our sea captain analogy, it's better to be 5 or even 10 degrees off your destination port than to have no destination in mind at all. The point of sailing, after all, is to get somewhere, and without a marketing plan, you'll wander the seas aimlessly, sometimes finding dry land but more often than not floundering in a vast ocean. Sea captains without a chart are rarely remembered for discovering anything but the ocean floor.

* Company operational instructions: Your child's first bike and your new VCR came with a set of instructions, and your company is far more complicated to put together and run than either of them. Your marketing plan is a step-by-step guide for your company's success. It's more important than a vision statement. To put together a genuine marketing plan, you have to assess your company from top to bottom and make sure all the pieces are working together in the best way. What do you want to do with this enterprise you call the company in the coming year? Consider it a to-do list on a grand scale. It assigns specific tasks for the year.

* Captured thinking: You don't allow your financial people to keep their numbers in their heads. Financial reports are the lifeblood of the numbers side of any business, no matter what size. It should be no different with marketing. Your written document lays out your game plan. If people leave, if new people arrive, if memories falter, if events bring pressure to alter the givens, the information in the written marketing plan stays intact to remind you of what you'd agreed on.

* Top-level reflection: In the daily hurly-burly of competitive business, it's hard to turn your attention to the big picture, especially those parts that aren't directly related to the daily operations. You need to take time periodically to really think about your business--whether it's providing you and your employees with what you want, whether there aren't some innovative wrinkles you can add, whether you're getting all you can out of your products, your sales staff and your markets. Writing your marketing plan is the best time to do this high-level thinking. Some companies send their top marketing people away to a retreat. Others go to the home of a principal. Some do marketing plan development at a local motel, away from phones and fax machines, so they can devote themselves solely to thinking hard and drawing the most accurate sketches they can of the immediate future of the business.

Ideally, after writing marketing plans for a few years, you can sit back and review a series of them, year after year, and check the progress of your company. Of course, sometimes this is hard to make time for (there is that annoying real world to deal with), but it can provide an unparalleled objective view of what you've been doing with your business life over a number of years.

Source: The Small Business Encyclopedia and Knock-Out Marketing.