Brian Jameson

Sales, and in particular B2B sales, has always been social. For decades, the cold call was the initial step to building that relationship. Following the cold call are a series of social and relationship building interactions – lunches, conferences, meetings, coffee, emails, etc.  These interactions will always exist, but the dawn of the social selling era has armed sellers (and buyers) with new insights that were previously unknown.  The growth of twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook has made it easier to identify prospect companies and target buyers by simply researching on the web.  With a couple clicks of the mouse, you can find out information on decision makers and initiate a conversation without ever talking with them.

Old School Cold Calling Doesn’t Work Anymore

Old school cold calls involve lists with names and phone numbers.  Up until about 8 to 10 years ago, the chances to get the attention of a potential buyer with a cold call were much better...

Most B2B companies engage in some form of email marketing. It is a vital sales and marketing tool to generating leads. One question that comes up frequently is how to accurately calculate email open rates. Whether it’s an email to a subscriber or a prospecting email, the rate of email opens are a leading indicator to the success of your email campaign.  Here’s how we do it:

Most email/campaign tools will give you all the information to calculate open rate. For example, if you sent out 100 emails, 20 bounced, and 10 were opened, you would have an open rate of 12.5%.

What you should know about the email open rate metric

Every time you send out an email campaign, whether you are using MailChimp, SugarCRM, or some other tool, they place a piece of code in the email that get’s triggered when the email is opened by the intended recipient. The piece of code embedded in the email is not always registered as we would like them to be. For this reason,...

At echogravity, one of the things we do is create websites for our clients. It’s sometimes surprising how much the issue of Flash comes into play. Abode Flash makes your sites, well…. more flashy with animation, video, sound, and moving images. Flash definitely scores well in the “Coolness” category and has a purpose for websites. The question you need to ask yourself is whether you want a website that is cool or you want a website that actually complements your inbound marketing strategy? Flash is not...

Is it just me, or have you also noticed Marketing’s new secret weapon, Customer Service? It’s common to hear sales teams and executives point out their company’s superb customer service as a competitive advantage, seldom translating into front line marketing/advertising messages that consumers see; until now at least.   With economic activity still relatively stagnant, and as products and services become more standardized and commoditized, companies are increasingly choosing to compete on customer service and experience-based differentiation.

Marketing communication pro’s and advertising agencies typically leverage emotion, argument, or endorsement strategies in order to elicit a reaction (Brand Awareness, Brand Purchase, Brand Recall) when conveying messages. As of late, consumers are seeing television advertisements with Customer Service messages woven into these strategies to attract customers with superior customer service claims.   Here is how some companies are...