In today’s market – we are constantly bombarded with more and more marketing – so much noise that we have become immune unless the message really resonates with us.

The key to really making an impact is to make the message really personal to the challenges that person is facing- It makes it relevant.

All too often, we see content that is trying to be “all things to all men” –in reality the Head of Finance has a completely different set of needs than the Head of IT, even regarding the same service offering.

If you segment your message based on the role of the person you are targeting the results are more improved because it’s about them, it’s about their pain, it’s about their challenges – ITS ALL ABOUT THEM.

And the stats show it – The email marketing benchmark guide by MarketingSherpa highlights that open rates for segmented versus non-segmented email campaigns are as much as 20% higher .

It’s not just all about the message either.

There are two fundamental building blocks to any successful campaign Data Quality and Database Segmentation.

1. Data Quality
Whilst you may have an up-to-date database of clients with opt-in email addresses, understanding how their role differentiates from their title may make a big difference in what messages you send them. Just because someone has the title of Chief Marketing Officer, doesn’t immediately flag that the person has responsibility for Sales or Product Development and would be interested in your marketing collateral surrounding those areas of your expertise. You may be missing out a whole segment of your database here. Complete and accurate records for each contact in your database will enable you to slice and dice your data like a Japanese sushi chef.

2. Database Segmentation
Beyond a database of accurate contact information, it’s fundamental for each record to be tagged accordingly based on their area of interest. Too often we see marketeers attempting to build campaign target lists based on a job title match. Ensuring your CRM system is correctly set up to capture data segmentation points such as role, gender, area of interest. No longer will your senior executives and marketeers have to troll through excel lists searching titles, but quickly report on these segmentation fields.

Has your organization adopted segmented messaging across its marketing function? Have you seen shorter relationship building times as a result? How important do you rate having a well segmented database for your sales and marketing campaigns?

-Nick

A name is just a name – right? Well, it is until you get it wrong – and this may have critical impact on your brand without you even knowing it.

We have all had mail where our name is spelt incorrectly, wrong salutation, wrong title or even worse when it was addressed to our predecessor at a company that left years ago.

How does this make you feel? How does it make you view the company that’s sending the information? It doesn’t instill much confidence does it?

The importance of getting someone’s name and title spelt correctly along with making sure that you have their gender correct is the first step in building a trusted relationship.
Sounds simple right?

You’d think so, but in far too many instances, people assume information and that can be extremely harmful when reaching out to an executive you are looking to build a strong bond with, and it’s the little things that count!!

Below are just a few examples of how things can go wrong

Jerry or Jerri – male or female– well believe it or not most people assume it’s a man, without even checking the gender.

Steven or Stephen, White or Whyte – it’s the little things that can really elevate your profile in an instant.

Many companies believe the information they find from web based research is correct – however with over 15 years experience having conducted 5,000+ business development and marketing projects, we have seen this is certainly not the case.
All too often corporate web sites are out-of-date and have miss-spellings, along with job roles and titles being inaccurate – all starting the cycle of brand and relationship damage – before it’s even started.

The most accurate way to ensure you have this information correct is by personally talking to the company in question, the next step is ensuring that your CRM system is set up to capture these data points accurately, so that it is easily accessible when conducting your marketing and business development outreach.

So if you want to build trust and credibility – the first step is getting the name right!

To find out more how ELEVATE can help you build your trust and credibiltiy with accurate contact details for all your key decision makers, visit www.thinkelevate.com/data_transformation.asp

-Nick

-Nick

We all know how to determine our target market – its simple – “we are targeting all the Fortune 1000 companies with 1bn plus turnover and we are connecting with C-suite decision makers” – right?

Correct – however in reality, when you really start to look at the information that you have – is it really complete, accurate and everyone accounted for?

Are you confident that you can touch every single company at the level you require to convey your message correctly?

Based on our experience over, most firms are missing over 37% of their total available market, in addition to this they don’t proactively update their database on a regular basis.

The impact that this has on your marketing efforts is huge – not only is the firm NOT connecting with all the relevant decision makers, the number of these decision makers are constantly diminishing – reducing even further the impact marketing has on this target market.

The key to reaching your Total Available Market is twofold.
- Firstly, identify every relevant organization and decision maker, and
- Secondly to make sure it stays that way – updated
I would be delighted to learn your experiences identifying and reaching your target available market.
If you would like to find out more how ELEVATE can help you in these goals, do not hesitate to contact me directly.

-Nick