B2B Marketing Blog
March 2007 Archives
CTPS [Corporate Telephone Preference Service] is having the biggest impact on direct marketing, more than anything else for a decade. With a national suppression file of near one million records of ‘by-law’, none-contactables by phone, the UK market is being artificially squeezed, killing off potential quality prospects from marketing databases. No telesales campaign can be run without the entire data source being run against the CTPS file, unless the contacts are your past customers already. Yet it seems that the market is either totally unaware of this or are suffering from apathy. I can only put it down to B2B...
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Customer Focus - Reality or Wishful Thinking?

March 18, 2007 10:39 PM | By Nick Martin
No self-respecting business leader would profess to caring about anything else more these days, other than an earnest and heartfelt focus on the customer. Entrance lobbies and reception rooms everywhere bear testament to how seriously companies take their commitment to customer focus, enshrined as it is in 'Our Corporate Values' that hang framed or engraved in metalised plaques featuring mock-vintage ornate scrolls. All the more surprising then that large organisations struggle to coordinate their efforts in communicating to customers or prospects. The problem seems largely organisational: with different divisions and teams all responsible for promoting their own products or services,...
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Where's the plan

March 10, 2007 11:32 AM | By Richard Bush
Over the last 5 years or so there has been a wave of change sweeping through the B2C world as Communications Channel Planning revolutionises how clients and their range of agency partners approach planning. It is resulting in a battle for supremacy between agencies as they compete for this all important role. It's an ugly sight, but it is resulting in more cohesive, more innovative and they would argue, more effective marketing. Why isn't B2B followig suit?...
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IDM 4th B2B Marketing Conference

March 7, 2007 1:08 PM | By Nick Martin
What a great day it was! Over 200 B2B practitioners listening to a really high quality conference programme - certainly the best I've been to in a while. If I had to pick a clear favourite, it would have to be Chris Warwick, VP of acquisition marketing at Hoovers and the queen of search  marketing and search engine optimisation (SEO). Not only was she the finest-looking speaker of the day, she was also exciting to listen to and learn from because she shared so much about Hoovers online marketing successes and challenges, warts and all. Lifting up the hem of...
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And the Golden Rule to email marketing is...

March 5, 2007 1:03 PM | By Nick Martin
...there are no Golden Rules! Sure, there are really handy tips, such as these: 10 Email Marketing Tips 1. Avoid some things Web site designers love to do: cascading style sheets, nested tables, and animation. 2. Avoid those fancy things print art directors love to do: reversed type, colored type for body copy, type smaller than 10 points, body copy justified on both sides, type wrapping around a graphic, etc. 3. Stick to the standard Web safe palette of 216 colors. (See below to a link for a list and examples of these colors.) and set the maximum width to...
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Valuing data

March 5, 2007 12:18 PM | By Nick Martin
'Dirty data will cost businesses money and time over the next two years with more than 25 per cent of all critical information used by Fortune 1000 companies having flaws', according to analyst Gartner. 'Flawed data includes information that is inaccurate, incomplete or duplicated, creating significant and unnecessary costs for companies, it said. If the quality of customer data is poor, this can lead to higher customer turnover, missed sales opportunities and excessive expenses from customer contact processes such as mailouts.' 'Business areas such as budgeting, manufacturing and distribution can also be severely affected by dirty data.' As can...
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