Intelligent Demand Generation / eTrigue Corporation

If you’ve been relying solely on email marketing, you probably know by now that a marketing automation system can make a big difference for you in terms of making those email campaigns much more targeted and efficient. But investing in a heavy, full-blown, complex marketing automation system that requires dedicated staff to implement and manage is probably out of the question.

Sure, the worst of the Great Recession seems to be behind us, and budgets are slowly relaxing – even growing – but purchasing an expensive marketing automation system, especially if it means you’ll need a dedicated person to operate it, is still a stretch for most small and medium sized businesses and units.

But must you choose? We believe you don’t. There IS a middle option between the two extremes – an easy, affordable marketing automation tool that is so easy to implement and operate, even a VP marketing can do it.

We’ve developed DemandCenter – Marketing Automation for the rest of us, because for a long time now we’ve been getting feedback from “the rest of us” – companies and units within larger companies who desperately want to enjoy the many benefits of marketing automation tools, but do not feel ready to shell out the amounts needed to implement and support one of the complex marketing automation systems out there.

“If you can’t hire a dedicated marketing automation team, just forget about it and keep sending email blasts” was not an acceptable answer to this dilemma. We wanted to develop a product that would enable ANY company, regardless of its budget, to enjoy the benefits of marketing automation.

The idea is to deliver effective demand generation marketing campaigns, using your existing resources. Achieve a high, measurable marketing ROI and a very real revenue impact with a highly intuitive, user-friendly dashboard, and with absolutely no hidden costs.

Have we succeeded? According to David Raab, we have. “eTrigue’s new product is aimed at small-to-mid size businesses who want an easier alternative to leading marketing automation systems. With mature features and a $1,000 per month starting price, the system is worth a look.”

Intrigued? More details here:
Marketing Automation for the Rest of Us

Tweet “The vendor keeps communicating with me even though I don’t want their emails anymore.”

Completely unrelated to B2B marketing, it would seem at first glance, but in fact, the tweet above is very, very relevant.

This short tweet really captures the essence of the art of email marketing: Are you sure your emails are still relevant to the particular recipient and her current situation? Are they welcome? Or have they become an annoyance, something you delete right away (best case scenario) or unsubscribe from?

The woman who tweeted this basically says, “The vendor keeps communicating with me even though I don’t want their emails anymore. They are not relevant. The vendor should have realized that its emails are not welcome anymore.”

But how can the vendor know, unless they use some sort of marketing automation? In this case, it’s fairly obvious that this particular store has an email list, which she uses to send the occasional email blast. We all get these emails – and this is the reason why most of us have a separate email account, a “junk” account that we use when we place online orders or perform any other activity that, we suspect, will generate future unwanted emails.

The result: these email blasts, that are sent month after month, with no tracking whatsoever and with no regards to whether the recipient is receptive to them or not, get lost. No one reads them anyway, heck no one even gets them into their inbox, and the few that do get them, often become annoyed to the point of unsubscribing.

As annoyed as the consumer sounds in her tweet, what are the chances that when she finally does need to buy another baby gift, she will buy it from that store? My guess is, despite the store’s “success” at staying top of mind (hey, she’s tweeting about them!), it’s not going to be the consumer’s first choice when it’s time to buy a baby shower gift.

What should the vendor do in this case? They should monitor response to their emails. Lower the frequency for those that are not responding. And drop off the list anyone who hasn’t responded at all in, say, a year. Better to have a trim, tight, responsive email list than to have a huge email list that’s cluttered with very cold, uninterested, annoyed prospects.