Smaller, Smarter Campaigns Don’t Break the Budget
Tuesday, January 13th, 2009With increasing concern over the worldwide economic situation, organizations are eagerly searching for ways to accelerate sales without impacting their budget. Compounding the problem, buyers are spending more time scrutinizing each dollar — more decision makers, longer evaluations, and definitely more hand wringing. It’s times like these when each impression counts more than ever.
One of the advantages of working for a company in the demand-generation market is you get to talk to a lot of very enthusiastic marketers who really can do more with less. Over the past six months I have seen a definite trend towards several smaller, targeted campaigns vs. broad, generic ones. Marketers are rolling up their sleeves, spending more time segmenting their databases, creatively focusing each message in an attempt to prod existing prospects down the funnel. And it works!
Response rates have increased significantly, with more targeted emails focused on “pain points” by title, combined with other variables, including product interest based on web pages viewed. And while you might suggest this is something good marketers should have been doing all along, my impression is companies are focusing less on other activities, so marketers have, and are, spending more time focused on optimizing their demand-generation programs. More than one VP of Marketing commented on how digging into the data has not only improved their conversion rates but also given them a new perspective of their database – and how to more effectively market to it.
