Email Marketing for B2B companies

Over the summer I interned with Jones Lang LaSalle, one of the largest commercial real estate firms in the world. I got to work with their email marketing campaign. The first daunting task was to manage the distribution list. Let me tell you this was not the most fun, however it was highly important to the metrics of the campaign as well as it sparked my interest for email marketing.


My next task was to research metrics and what was considered successful and what was not. The first website I found was by Mail Chimp on the industry averages for open rates on emails. OPEN RATES. This surprised me at first on how low open rates are for these emails, however thinking about my own behaviors, I rarely read most of the newsletters I subscribe to. Note to self: SUBJECT LINE IS KEY!


As for research, the most interesting thing about this was the only thing I used for research was Google. I didn't look to find any books, nor did I talk to people I know in the industry. This is definitely more evidence on how times are changing and technology allows us to have any information possible at our finger tips. With the information I learned from reading hundreds of articles and blog posts, I was able to make recommendations with powerful evidence to support my claims and ideas.

The Challenges of Web Analytics

Location of visitors to megcril.blogspot.com

   Currently I have web analytics running on my blog. I figure the best way to fully understand a tool like this is to simply use it! As I look at all the information, some of it can be very deceiving. A difficult measurement is number of visitors. My favorite thing to look at is where all my visitors come from. There are a few from Russia, the United Kingdom, India, Canada and of course the US. However upon closer inspection of the reports, I notice that some visitors don't spend even a second on the blog. 

Av time on site for megcril.blogspot.com

    This is an important factor in understanding how well my website is doing. On the surface it looks like its a highly successful blog that people around the world are reading. However, upon closer inspection I can see that this is true for some of the countries, but it is not true for all. Which means I have some work to do on my blog to keep people on the site as well as I have to be critical of any of the information I receive via my analytics!
    This tid bit goes for market research in general. Don't just accept something at face value. Dig deeper and find out what they numbers are really telling you! More to come on this topic in future blog posts!

Using Social Media for Market Research

As we know or can probably guess, social media has opened the doors to a two way road between marketers and consumers. Marketers can no longer push a message on the consumers without hearing feedback as well as consumers have a much stronger voice in the online world which forces companies to be more proactive and communicate with their customers in this online Community. Below is a video I found that shows social media is an asset to another department of the marketing group: the market research folks-

  As David C Skul of Relativity an internet market firm says in the video- social media is a great way to converse with customers as well as get very detailed demographic information. A profile can tell the market researcher so much information that it helps them narrow down who to talk to, or who is talking about their products in the social media world. 
   A company might think they need to target 14-19 year old males who play video games, however through research on social media sites like FaceBook and Twitter, that company may realize their actual market is 17-24 year old males who are active members of a community. This understanding will allow companies to market to their actual audience and connect with that audience.