Email campaigns can be valid for a host of reasons and represent an extremely cost-effective means for reaching out to your client base.

Spamming on the other hand is not only rarely effective but can also result in:

1. Legal proceedings with you and your company facing significant sanctions.
2. Your emails being blacklisted so that although they will be sent – they don’t arrive.
3. General, adverse publicity.

For further information and guidance see the recommendations made by the: Advertising Standards Authority, Information Commissioner’s Office and the Data & Marketing Association (DMA), as well as Ofcom and The Data & Marketing Commission which oversees and enforces the DMA Code.

So, do not spam!

This is not to say you cannot use email as a perfectly valid marketing tool. In addition to your own contact database, you can supplement this with lists generated from the Kompass Directory.

When you use email messaging, you will of course have to consider:

1. What specific message do you want to communicate?
2. How often do you want to communicate? (If you send out too many emails, you will find fairly soon that people will unsubscribe from your service. Not often enough and they forget who you are.)

Once you have your lists, there are a number of tools that can facilitate the management of these emails, e.g. one of the cheapest currently on the market is Sender.

Email Marketing Basics

• User a “Friendly from” name.

The 'from' or sender name is the inbox field that tells the customer who's sent them a message. If the sender is not clear or recognizable, your subscriber may dismiss it as spam. To avoid this and build trust, ensure your name is consistent and on brand.

• Try Stand Out Subject Lines.

Make sure the subject line reflects the email's contents and ensure it is engaging enough to motivate the subscriber to open it. Your email is competing against countless others in the inbox. As a result, your subject line needs to stand out from the crowd.

• Make Use of Pre-Header Text Space.

The pre-header is a short summary that follows the subject line within the inbox display, indicating the email's contents. With over 50% of emails now opened on smartphones, it is important to use the pre-header text as a tease to boost opens.

Developing an Email Campaign Program

The base outlines of an email campaign program could consist of the following.

• Welcome Program

A welcome program is the most important automation to implement; not only is it thoughtful to thank a subscriber for signing up. It is a prime opportunity to better introduce your brand and collect valuable customer data, such as click-through behaviour and preferences. Customers expect to receive a 'thank you' for signing up at the very least.

• Transactional Emails

Transactional emails are triggered off the back of a customer-initiated action, such as a purchase, but you will find that many brand examples are generic and uninspiring. A standard transactional email can disrupt the brand experience customers have had thus far. This can be easily remedied if you feed your transactional data into your email marketing automation platform to create a more personalised message.

• Post-Purchase Updates

A post-purchase program engages with the customer at a different stage of the lifecycle compared to the welcome program, however they both share similar principles. Intended to build further credibility, a post-purchase email makes the customer feel excited about the product they have just bought and brings them even closer to your brand.

• Cart Abandonment

Various factors can cause abandoned carts - from unexpected shipping costs to difficult site navigation. An effective abandoned cart program focuses on minimizing that number by addressing the reasons why your customer might have stopped before buying.

• Abandoned Browse

Customers who browse your website and then leave are not necessarily lost forever; they can be tempted back. With web-tracking behaviour tools, you can set up an effective abandoned browse program that sends customers relevant content based on their browse history.

• Product Replenishment Programs

Marketing automation is a super-effective way of increasing repeat sales and recurring revenue, particularly if your products have a short lifespan and need to be replenished.

• Recommendation and Upsell Programs

Personalizing your content around an individual customer is a proven revenue-driving technique. With a marketing automation platform that seamlessly syncs your ecommerce data, it is quick and easy to leverage your customers’ online behaviour, combine their preferences, and push smart and predictive product recommendations.

• Lost Customers

It is inevitable that some customers will stray from your brand over time. However, with the right marketing tech in place, you'll be able to re-target customers and reignite their interest before they become 'lost'.

• Special Occasion Programs

Emails triggered by dates that are meaningful to the customer - such as birthdays or anniversaries - are simple quick-wins that generate that all-important excitement factor. Delivering content that is date sensitive is not just relevant to the customer, but it also taps into their emotions and has a higher likelihood of engagement.

• Time Sensitive Promotions

Limited-time offers are one of the most useful marketing tools to drive sales.

Kompass offers the following tools and services to facilitate your Digital Marketing:

• EasyBusiness - Access the Kompass databases to discover potential Buyers (Data Capture & Analysis). (Prices start from just £1,495 plus VAT for a full 12 months access - let Kompass know that you saw their service here and you will be given a 10% discount.)
• ByPath - Analyse Big Data found online to help you find new prospects. (Providing both Driver and Data Capture & Analysis functions).

The data you generate from EasyBusiness and ByPath can then be imported into your CRM system. Kompass CRM apps and connectors are compatible with a range of different CRM platforms* such as: Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics, Hubspot, Zoho, Sugar CRM and Pipedrive:

• User-friendly. Ready-to-use. Plug and play.
• Direct business lead import into your CRM.
• Unlimited company searches.
• Quality up-to-date B2B company and contact data.

*See the video: Are you thinking of buying business data?

(For an explanation of advertising options on LinkedIn, see: Digital Advertising.)

Marketing via LinkedIn is different to advertising on LinkedIn in one key aspect – marketing is primarily conducted at a personal level. LinkedIn members are individuals and it is individuals (on behalf of their companies) who will reach out to those members.

The following provides an overall explanation as to how to use LinkedIn for digital marketing purposes. However, to see LinkedIn’s own more detailed guides see:

• The Definitive Guide for Marketing on LinkedIn.
• The Sophisticated Marketer's Crash Course in Metrics & Analytics.
• The Sophisticated Marketer's Guide to Thought Leadership.

In outline, the three Key Phases and steps in developing and implementing a LinkedIn marketing campaign are as follows:

Phase One - Preparation

Step 1 Create a company profile

A company profile helps you separate individual backgrounds from your business by creating a page that includes information about what your company does, how long you’ve been doing it, and how interested parties can contact you.

First, optimise your company page for searching. Whether your audience is searching on LinkedIn or off, a well-optimised company page can help you gain visibility among the people searching for what your company offers.

Make sure to upload a high-resolution company logo and a cover image that captures your brand and do fill out the “About us” section to provide visitors with more information. Be sure also to incorporate keywords into the company profile information, clearly representing who you are and what you do.

Step 2 Involve Members of the company’s sales and marketing teams

Ensure that their LinkedIn profiles are also optimised.

Their profiles should also include a personal; telling people who they are and less of “what” they are.

Step 3 Define target profiles

Define the profiles of those executives you would like to reach (country, company profile, department, title etc.) – and compile a list of the individuals you find on LinkedIn (using the search facilities).

Phase Two – Go live!

Step 1 Promote your LinkedIn company profile outside of LinkedIn

1. Link your LinkedIn company page from your website, blog, business cards, directory registrations, email signatures and other marketing materials.
2. Add a “Follow” button to your website. This allows your website visitors to follow your LinkedIn company page with a single click. See: Microsoft’s Follow Company Plugin Generator.

Step 2 Increase your company “reach”

Members of your sales and marketing teams should now reach out to the following asking to connect to them:

1. Any contacts they have imported from their personal contacts.
2. Those individuals that you identified (No more than 100 per day, otherwise you will have problems with LinkedIn) when carrying out your profile targeting exercise above asking to connect to them. (If you can find connections in common, then it is better to ask the existing contact to make an introduction.)

In asking to connect to them, you should consider very carefully what message you send – it will have to be interesting to convince the recipient to agree. What’s in it for them?

Phase Three – Become “Active”

Step One - Participate with LinkedIn groups

Your sales and marketing staff may already be members of several groups on LinkedIn, but they need to leverage that membership by participating in discussions. (As an added incentive, this raises their own profile as well as that of your company.)

Step Two - Share relevant content

When you publish updates from your company page they also appear on your public page, allowing your content to be indexed by Google. The more frequently you share content, the higher your company page will appear in search results.

Step Three – Publish white papers and industry relevant commentary

Try not to only publish information about your products. The more often you can stimulate industry discussion and establish yourself as a thought leader, the better.

Step Four - Create a LinkedIn group

Create a company-branded group for your clients and/or colleagues to facilitate discussion about your industry. A collaboration-based group, created and managed by your company, can be an excellent way to get your company name recognised.

Phase Four – Analyse your results and adapt

It is important to track and analyse the results of your LinkedIn marketing campaign – and adapt, refine and improve accordingly.

Phase Five – Upgrade your access to LinkedIn?

The activities described above can be undertaken (in the main) by using the free access to LinkedIn. However, there are two services you may like to consider – depending upon your requirements. More information on these two services can be found on LinkedIn.

LinkedIn Premium Business

Research and evaluate business opportunities with exclusive access to unique and timely data about companies that interest you e.g. growth and functional trends.

LinkedIn Sales Navigator

Designed for sales professionals, LinkedIn Sales Navigator helps you focus on the right people and companies, stay up-to-date on what’s happening with your accounts, and build trust with your prospects and customers.

Newsletters are different to email campaigns in that they are regular communications between you and you actual and potential clients (rather than one-off single issue email campaigns). Nonetheless, many of the construction and content considerations are similar,

Most newsletter service providers include the detailed statistics covering the numbers of:

• Email sent.
• Emails received.
• Emails opened.
• Clickthroughs from the newsletter.

These can give you valuable insights into recipients' interests and level of engagement with your company. However, these statistics are not always reliable. Therefore, we would suggest that you read the TTS eGuide to Newsletter Stats to understand the problems you may face and with some suggestions how you can manage these.

Watch the introduction video to find out more about Spotler’s Automated Marketing Tools & Services.

Spotler provides an AI Powered Marketing Automation Platform i.e. a complete B2B inbound and outbound marketing software suite. This ensures your marketing and sales teams get more leads from website traffic, convert more visitors into Marketing-Qualified Leads (MQLs) and run complete marketing campaigns. The Communigator suite integrates easily with CRM systems.

Marketing automation technology is critical in the customer journey mapping process. Without it, it becomes virtually impossible to create a complete, consistent, and personalized customer journey.

The key features are as follows:

• Marketing Automation - Grow your leads, nurture your prospects, attribute marketing channel success and prove ROI.

1. Automatically re-market to companies on your website.
2. Drive targeted traffic to key landing pages and get higher conversions.
3. Convert more visitors into qualified leads.
4. Drive more website engagement with PopUps.
5. Gain more reach and leads from Social Media.
6. Let AI predict your CTR and suggest improvements.

• Lead Generation - See who is on your website and turn your website traffic into Leads.

1. Get more leads from PPC campaigns and increase the ROI.
2. Track companies and individuals on your website.
3. Sales Alerts – Never miss another lead.
4. Allow Sales to send tracked & personalised emails from Outlook.
5. Prioritise leads based on their engagement score.

• Email Marketing - Inbound or outbound – Engage your audience with email marketing.

1. Utilise data providers and send emails to purchased data.
2. Check emails against current spam and improve your email reputation.
3. Easily build emails using a Drag’n’Drop Editor.
4. Send hyper personalised email using dynamic content.
5. Take advantage of A/B testing and bot detection to increase your CTRs.

See the video: The Advanced Event Tool Solution (1 hour 19 minutes).

See here for full pricing details.

Register for Spotler's Lead Generation Freemium (Get a ‘free for life’ version of GatorLeads and see the companies on your website and turn them into leads. You’ll get a list of the top 10 leads each day for free.)

Virtual Events offer most of the features of a physical event and a number of significant improvements (cheaper, easier to attend, more flexibility, better event statistics) – and therefore are destined to become an increasingly important facet of digital marketing. Expect even established physical events to become hybrid in the future – the virtual event supporting the physical.

The following is a brief overview of Virtual Events.

Virtual events (some are hybrid) range from:

1. Single discussion\topic webinars; to
2. Multiple, simultaneous workshops; to
3. Full blown trade fairs and industry exhibitions.

They are being used for:

1. Product Launches.
2. Recruitment.
3. Sales Kickoff Meetings.
4. Tradeshows.
5. Training.
6. User Conferences.

Their main characteristics are described in more detail below. However, they all build on the same concepts of:

1. Mirroring, and, where possible, improving on comparable physical events.
2. Generating measurable results.
3. Delivering value.
4. Driving action.

Whether you organise or simply attend these events, they will require you to think carefully how you can benefit from the features they offer – and there are lots of benefits they can bring:

• They are cheaper to hold.
• They are cheaper to attend.
• They mirror most of the characteristics of a physical event.
• They make a major contribution to reducing your carbon footprint.
• Elements can be pre-recorded – reducing the risks of “problems on the day”.
• The session analytics can be extremely detailed and delivered in near-real time – providing unrivalled marketing information.
• They offer secure connections that are fully GDPR compliant.
• They provide areas for round table discussions and webinars with the ability for delegates to ask questions and exchange text messages; both privately and publicly.
• Customised registration and payment pages.
• Customised email confirmation and reminders.
• Open APIs to integrate with 3rd party software (such as CRMs).
• Surveys\polls.
• Video, chat, social media, web page, skype\zoom links.
• 24/7 availability.

Webinars\Group Sessions\Single Workshops

A webinar is simply a group meeting conducted over the Internet. They are particularly effective when having pre-sales discussions with groups[1] of potential clients and\or managing user groups:

1. You can share screens.
2. You can bring in members of your company to cover specific topics.
3. You can see your counterparties – which helps you establish personal contact.
4. They are easy and relatively quick to set up.

From thought-leadership panel discussions to weekly live demos, webinars are an effective way to move prospects from product awareness to closed deals.

If you use webinars, you should then consider developing a webinar hub\YouTube channel with:

• On-demand recordings of all webinars.
• Calendar with past and future webinars.
• Supplemented where appropriate with straightforward video presentations.

Trade Missions, Trade Fairs and Industry Exhibitions

These are platforms which mirror the visual experience of attending a trade mission, a trade fair or industry exhibition – complete with entrance hall and company stands. If you have not experienced one of these, then check out this short demo video from Virtual Tradeshow Hosting.

In addition to the benefits listed above, virtual trade fairs and industry exhibition typically offer these additional features:

• Welcome\Entrance Hall.
• Exhibition Hall with personalised exhibitor stands.
• The option of having a Welcome Entrance Hall.
• The options to create virtual, customised stands.
• The ability to book private appointments with delegates at their stands.
• A meeting area where you can meet other delegates for private or public chats.
• Simultaneous translations\interpreters.
• Prize give-aways.
• They can be temporary or permanent. -

Revenue Generation Possibilities

If the event is one that needs to generate revenue, the main sources of potential revenue are similar to those for physical events:

1. Entrance tickets.
2. Exhibition fees (for company stands).
3. Sponsorships and advertising.

According to InEvent, the ROI for events average 24% - 34%; stands are typically charged out at $500+ with sponsorships with B2B companies spending $20,000 on average sponsoring an event (although these do range from about $200 to much, much more depending upon the event and the sponsorship packages offered).

A word or two of caution. Given the clear benefits and their relatively low cost, it is reasonable to expect an explosion of virtual events. At that point, there is the challenge of attention overload. For your events to be successful – they must be significantly interesting and useful – otherwise they will simply get lost in the digital fog.