The concept for the webinar is straightforward enough: a live interview on April 13 of leading sales and marketing executives on their innovative approaches to outbound sales and marketing.

The live webinar is entitled:  The Outbound Renaissance – How Faster and Smarter Prospecting is Dramatically Improving B2B Demand Generation.

I made the fateful decision to choose an image from the Renaissance period to which I take full responsibility.

We are overwhelmed by the puzzling reception to our email.

Without disrupting our testing, I can confirm the following:

• Swirling rumors of the uncanny resemblance of the image to Umberto Milletti, CEO & Founder of InsideView.
• Excessive clicking on one of the registration links caused disruption to our server farm.
• Extraordinary landing page visits that can be construed as outright gawking.

To preserve the integrity of our test and in the name of marketing science, I would ask that you please do not sensationalize our webinar but rather, recommend to your colleagues the webinar based on the educational content alone.

Ask your colleagues to responsibly click on one of the registration buttons and register for our webinar in an unemotional and unbiased manner.

The results of our test will be presented at the webinar.

I hope that this blog post will help to rectify this situation and preserve the integrity of our test.

The value proposition resonates, the offer is tempting and the graphic design is pleasing to the eye.

Your reaction: disappointment and frustration.

Why?  You are already a customer and have been spammed by your vendor.

An example: a data provider to my organization sent an email to me with an offer to upgrade our solution.   However we had already upgraded.

Another data provider sent an email with an offer to me with no recognition that we had recently downgraded our subscription nor that we were already a customer on the basic version.

In both cases it was a data provider who sent a Batch & Blast email to the same email address that I had used to register our subscription.  Clearly, the data providers did not run their email list against a suppression file of customers.   In an earlier post on Batch & Blast email, I describe how the market is moving away from this approach.

It’s ironic that both data providers who promote the quality of their data, do not take the extra step of treating customers differently that prospects.   Neither are small vendors.

Second, if email is widely recognized as more beneficial for retention than acquisition, why are customers not treated with distinct messaging?

When I read a recent post from Adam Needles on taking email segmentation to the next level, I can’t help but feel that the next level is a quantum leap for many B2B marketers whose email marketing is at the rudimentary Batch & Blast stage.

You know – a humongous email broadcast – the digital equivalent of a large mail drop.

Otherwise known as Batch & Blast email, B2B marketers have viewed this type of email as best for retention marketing, rather than acquiring customers.

In the early days of email marketing, two powerful types of email were unavailable to B2B marketers:

But all that is changing as…

1) Multi-Function Email Suites dominate B2B email marketing.
2) Retention email marketing takes a back seat to acquisition marketing.
3) Marketing automation vendors are extending their applications.
4) The marketing automation and email vendors consolidate.

Multi-Function Email Suites dominate B2B email marketing
Although no one (except me, ahem) labels these applications ‘multi-function email suites’, I am using the term to describe multi-faceted marketing applications that include the functionality of the three types of email marketing that I have noted above: Batch & Blast, 1to1 Sales emails and Trigger emails. Of course, the functionality of these applications goes well beyond email marketing to include content management, web analytics, CRM integration etc.

When we surveyed 249 B2B marketers last year, we were surprised to find that marketing automation suites (or multi-function email suites) dominated the rankings of email applications.

Upshot: if you are not yet using or at least looking at these multi-function suites, you may be lagging the market.

Retention email marketing takes a back seat to acquisition marketing
With the widespread use of email filters and the need for recipients to opt-in to email communications, retention marketing has been the primary goal for email marketing.

1to1 Sales email and Trigger emails provide a level of personalization, immediacy and relevance that Batch & Blast emails cannot deliver allowing B2B marketers to target prospects, rather than just customers, with compelling emails.

The broad market acceptance of lead management and sales enablement applications is paving the way for the widespread use of 1to1 Sales emails and Trigger emails for lead generation, lead nurture and conversion.

Upshot: Marketers and sales reps now have robust email marketing tools available for lead generation.

Marketing automation vendors are extending their applications
As vendors push to increase their scale, the competition is intensifying.

Recently, Genius launched a lead management application to complement their leading sales enablement solution. While Eloqua and Marketo have launched a broadside to Genius by moving into the sales enablement space from lead management.

For a terrific overview of this standoff, read Laura Ramos’ recent post on her blog. Laura is VP / Principal Analyst, Forrester Research.

Upshot: enhanced competition should provide more attractive options for buyers to buy full application suites.

The marketing automation and email vendors will consolidate
I asked Jon Miller, VP of Marketing, Marketo about how buyers will look at evaluating marketing applications:

Q: Will B2B sales or marketing teams stop buying one-dimensional email applications? i.e. Batch & Blast applications only

A: I definitely think this is true; people don’t have time or energy to cobble together piece part solutions.

As marketing automation vendors scramble to extend their applications into other types of email marketing, two analysts see the market consolidating.

In a webinar earlier this year, Alexander Drobik, Managing VP Gartner Research simply states:

In the current era of economic uncertainty and increasing IT productivity, users will congregate their IT software spend in megavendors and their ecosystems.

(For free access to the Gartner webinar slides, click here.)

David Raab, a consultant specializing in marketing technology and analysis, noted in a well-written review of Marketo Sales Insight, that the revenue opportunity on sales enablement tools will be very attractive to sales automation vendors (i.e. CRM vendors) and those vendors will ‘take the business for themselves’.

Upshot: B2B marketers may find standalone, Batch & Blast vendors to be a dying breed as robust sales & marketing automation suites dominate the market. Our research shows that of the Batch & Blast vendors, it was mostly the budget-friendly vendors, who held significant market share.

(Image copyright – Fox Media. The resemblance to the author is purely accidental.)

Just this past week, Ruth and co-author Bernice Grossman, president of DMRS Group, a marketing consultancy, released an interesting study of major online sources of B-to-B data (Thanks to Ruth for acknowledging in the appendix my modest contribution).

As discussed in this comparative analysis of B2B data providers, the Internet has spawned new competitors like Jigsaw and Zoominfo and enabled self-service list procurement and instant download.

Ruth and Bernice asked fifteen compiled list providers to participate in the analysis and ten responded. The list providers were requested to provide counts across a variety of industries and asked to match data to ten real-world contacts that shared their contact information.

The ten providers included: Demandbase, idExec, Jigsaw, Lead411, NetProspex, OneSource, SalesGenie, Selectory, Zapdata and ZoomInfo.

Ruth and Bernice provided some observations and recommendations:

• The data quantity and quality varied widely, even between providers that were subsidiaries of the same parent.
• Run a test by providing a file to a number of vendors for data append.
• Be aware that some vendors may be strong in some industries but weak in others.

We have experienced first-hand the differences between data providers. My organization, Direct Impact Marketing, maintains a strict privacy policy: no lists are shared between clients, so we often rent lists and then conduct lead generation programs.

I would like to share some insight that we have on working with data providers:

A breakthrough on minimum order sizes – With the advent of online data providers, B2B marketers can now order small quantities without penalty.

The temptation of batch-and-blast email – Just because you can now order or append email addresses, doesn’t imply that you will be well-served by blasting out emails to prospects. Most of our clients are disappointed with this tactic. A more rewarding approach is to call the prospect and then send a 1to1 sales-style email that is personalized to the prospect.

One size rarely fits all – We have found that it is difficult to find one list provider that meets all of our client needs. Sometimes one data provider can provide very accurate information at the account level but the number of contacts is sparse. This is especially true when we try and target mid-level contacts. We often will merge two lists to get the best of both worlds.

Centralized vs. decentralized authority – A critical consideration is whether you are targeting centralized locations (i.e. headquarters) versus decentralized locations (i.e. branches). Should you wish to focus on decentralized locations, a response or subscription list may be a better choice, given the demonstrated affinity or interests of the contacts.

Watch out for list hustlers – If the price sounds too good to be true, then it probably is. Check out the scoop on this data provider.

Just say no – Rental lists can be highly addictive. I have spoken with many marketers who would rather rent than invest the time in their house file. Once your list is of a reasonable size, you will be best served by focusing on marketing to your house file and growing that list organically.

Size vs. list criteria – Sometimes larger lists will offer fewer selection criteria. Make sure that you have prioritized your selection criteria to ensure that you get a list that fits your needs. It may make sense to pay for more selection criteria and fewer records if the list is a better match to your target market.

Ask your data provider to stop using the term ‘sales leads’ – A data provider is in the business of selling suspect records, accounts or contacts but not leads. For a data provider to refer to the data as ‘sales leads’ is mis-using a key B2B term and over promising on their product. A sales-ready, qualified lead is very different than an unqualified name on a list.

Resources:

Online Sources of B2B Data – March 2010 – update

In June, BtoB and the ANA interviewed 326 B2B and B2C marketers from their respective house files.

The research confirmed a number of tiers of new media tools. The top tier includes proprietary Web sites, e-mail marketing, online ads, search engine optimization, search engine marketing and webinars. The middle tier includes blogs, RSS feeds, podcasts and video on demand. The bottom tier consists of wikis, mobile, viral video, social networks and Second Life.

It was found that B2B marketers allocate a significantly higher proportion of their budget to new media than B2C marketers. While B2C marketers view new media as best suited for brand building, B2B marketers look to new media for demand generation.

As far as I see it, the irony for B2B marketers is that although their solutions require extensive communication (often through a sales force), the budgets and tools at their disposal for marketing are often inadequate. The opposite is true for B2C: humongous budgets to communicate simple messages.

With new media tools and in particular Web 2.0 tools, B2B marketers are bolstered by tools where the cost of entry is the development of content, rather than price of the tools or cost of the marketing medium.

For more details and a PowerPoint summary of the BtoB/ANA research, follow this link to the BtoB website.