Building Brand Loyalty -- One Contact at a Time

Okay I admit it. Today I was impressed by a sales guy from a company called Vovici – and believe me when I say, I am not easily impressed.

It all started this morning when I was sorting through my in-box, finger poised over the “DELETE” key, and I noticed an email from Direct Marketing News Whitepaper of the Day. It offered a free whitepaper on ‘The Role of Feedback in Brand Loyalty.’

As a marketer I was intrigued. So I clicked on the link. Not surprising, a registration form popped up... and, like a good little soldier I filled out the form (knowing all the while that my contact information would be dumped into someone’s database for future follow up). After clicking “Submit” I reached another page with a laundry list of whitepapers.

Unfortunately, none of those whitepapers were the one advertised. Hmmm... I’m thinking. Somebody screwed up.

So I clicked on a different whitepaper (yep, still interested) but another registration box appeared. So now I’m cranky.

I find a “Contact us” link at the bottom of the page, and scribble a helpful little email note as follows:

Subject: Email Problem

You send out an email offering a whitepaper “The Role of Feedback in Brand Loyalty” – I filled out the form, but it took me to a page that there were 6 whitepapers but none by this title...

Then, when I did try to download a different whitepaper, it took me back to the registration page.

So, when you discover that your email campaign was not generating qualified leads, you now know why...

We design and develop B2B lead generation programs. When you realize this campaign effort didn’t work and you created a negative impression about Vovici, let me know. Perhaps we can help.

I hit the “Send” key and then notice an email in my IN-BOX with a link to the original whitepaper I had requested. Err...umm...

Suddenly the phone rings and my call display shows Vovici, the company I had just emailed. Wow. That took like, seconds for them to respond!

At the other end was a very friendly Vovici sales guy who patiently listened to my complaint and explained that I must have clicked past the page telling me they would email me my link and probably clicked on the link to read additional whitepapers.

But — and here’s the impressive part — he was very interested in my feedback, my user experience with the email and links, and my B2B marketing advice.

Naturally I shared a few best practice tips with him, and since he felt they were helpful, I thought I’d share them with you, too:

1. Don’t design your whitepapers (or any other downloadable document for that matter) with a heavy use of bleeds. It eats up printer toner.

2. Make sure you don’t use darker backgrounds with type over it for call-out boxes or sidebars. It turns into a big unreadable blob when it’s printed.

3. Often, to save paper, people don’t print the front cover of the document, so make sure your company’s contact information (name, phone number and email address) are on the bottom of every page. Especially since folks often just print specific pages or sections of a larger document.

4. Avoid the use of a lot of photography. Again, unless it’s adding a compelling insight to the story, it just eats up ink toner.

5. If you include charts or graphs, make sure they can print properly if the recipient prints in black and white. Don’t count on the end user to have (or want to use) their color printer.

6. If you offer a free paper/document as a lead generation device, make sure you test the user experience before you make the offer. Once I fill out a form, I don’t want to keep filling out forms to get additional documents. If your back end system can’t handle it, don’t make the offer – or provide a link with your follow-up/thank you email that carries my contact information on it so at least the form can be pre-filled for me.

Oh, and one more thing... make it someone’s responsibility to follow up on emails immediately, cranky or otherwise. It creates a GREAT brand impression.

If you build it, will they come?

In B2B marketing, decisionmakers (and influencers) are always gathering information about products before they take the next step in the sales cycle. So how do you make sure they have access to, and get, what they need and want?

Many corporate websites are chock full of product information -- but often located in disparate locations. For a cold prospect, landing on the website home page makes information gathering a daunting, time consuming task.

Instead, build a Resource Center, and organize it such that your target can find and consume it quickly and easily. If you're targeting key verticals, then organize your site by vertical industry. Then, within each vertical, organize your whitepapers, case studies, product spec sheets etc.
Use your outbound marketing efforts to drive targets to that microsite. To determine who is visiting and downloading information, "lock" your pages and require visitors to register before they can access the information. Yes, you will get a few "Mickey Mouse" registrants, but those who are most serious are happy to share who they are -- if you don't ask that pesky "how soon are you looking to purchase?" question. Of course we've all figured out that you'll be calling us first if we answer "within 1 month!".

Be sure to have a plan in place to get a list of who has been visiting your Resource Center every day -- and a plan as to how to follow up with these leads. There is NOTHING more annoying than getting a phone call that says "You downloaded a white paper last month and I'm calling to see if you want more information." My response is "I download lots of whitepapers -- I can't even remember which whitepaper you're talking about, so no, I'm not interested."

A better follow up plan is to have a real reason to follow up -- an invitation to a webinar where a professional user of the product is talking about his/her experience with the product. Or an invitation to a breakfast briefing where some C-level is going to talk about how his/her business was transformed (and the product was part of the solution).

Business leaders are always seeking ideas and ways to make their business more productive. But if you make them do all the work to find out how, or where, they may show up the first time, but they will not come back. Ever.