E-mail never takes a vacation. After a week out of the office, I came back to an overflowing inbox. Buried among the angry red urgent flags and endless conversation trails of my co-workers were my opt-in e-newsletters. As I began the battle against my inbox, I considered the plight of every e-mail marketer. What chance did these non-essential, preference-based communications stand among the mountain of the must-do-right-now tasks? What determined, my finger poised above the delete button, which marketer’s messages would be spared, and which ones sentenced to an unopened death?

Here are some ideas on e-marketing tactics to increase your chances of inbox survival.

Break through the clutter.
Make sure your subject line is short and demonstrates a reason to read the e-mail. The shorter and more compelling the subject line, the higher the response rate.
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More sophisticated sites offer product comparisons and tools that enable customers to better choose their own solutions. But even something as simple as a brochure, offered as a free downloadable pdf, can go a long way towards deepening the relationship between you and potential customers.

As you provide customers with tools and information, remember to instill a level of confidence. Customer testimonials are helpful, but only if they are genuine and presented well.

Validation from outside sources, like trade organizations and government agencies, also goes a long way toward instilling confidence in your company. Consider including their logos on your Web site where visitors will see them.
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Integrating your marketing 2.0 efforts cannot be overlooked nowadays. Search, social media components, email and direct mail all need to work together to help the customer along the buying process. Each element in itself does some pretty heavy lifting, but combining them to work in conjunction, you develop an assembly line of integration.

For example, some B2B companies are not only sending targeted emails to potential customers, but including blog elements into their campaigns. A simple combining of technologies not only allows them to reach and listen to their audience, but helps build a community – a community who likes to talk to each other.  They have been able to reach an audience they did not directly target and find out more than they originally expected. When you add a search element into the mix, you drive even more traffic to the community.

Following up your efforts with the correct analysis and constant realignment will have your
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I’m back in the creative seat again. I volunteered to step in and head our creative staff after we agreed Jim Everhart, my predecessor, should spearhead our hyperintegration efforts.

I’m looking at things from a slightly different perspective now – a perspective of someone with a lead “creative” title and responsibilities. As I remove my account manager hat, something strikes me. We creative folks have more tools at our disposal – blogs, podcasts, email marketing, and the list goes on. Our primary function has always been to think of new and unique ways to tell our client’s story, demonstrate a benefit and craft compelling ways to reach out to a marketer’s various constituents – engineers, channel partners, integrators, other influencers and ultimately, end-users.

Sure, we still need to apply our traditional creative skills, but we now have these new, exciting tools at our disposal.
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The deluge of postings about Facebook’s recent misstep with the implementation of Beacon’s ad platform, and Mark Zuckerberg’s apology has privacy issues on my mind.

Although the news is about controversial consumer advertising within a social networking site, the fundamental privacy issues also apply to business-to-business marketers. Privacy matters. And a failure to respect the rights and requests of your audience is a surefire way to alienate the very group with which you are trying to build loyalty.

No doubt you have a prospect database somewhere (or many unrelated sources and a swivel-chair CRM system) filled with names, E-mail addresses, and if you’re lucky, the interests and behaviors of your target audience.
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Web 2.0 has presented us with a dazzling array of new communications tactics we can use to reach B-to-B audiences. It has also added an equally impressive assortment of measurement capabilities.

Where we once may have had a handful of print ads, direct mail pieces, brochures, and press releases in an integrated program, we might now have dozens of online ads, scores of Google Adwords, and an e-mail program to thousands of recipients, all segmented by interest.

And where we had 800 number phone calls and bounce-back cards returned, we now can count impressions, clicks, open rates, delivery rates, conversions, and search ratings.

It’s not an overstatement to say that we’re in danger of being overwhelmed by all the data. John Wanamaker’s desire to know “which half works” could seem even further away than ever.

But out of this concern comes a huge opportunity for marketing.
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E-mails, E-newsletters, Blogs, Social Networks, RSS feeds, Widgets, Wikis, Wireless – there are A LOT of online applications and services for a marketer to learn and use properly.   “How do I reach the right audience, at the right time, with the right message?” looms large in the ever growing B2B-shaped world.

According to Stefan Pollard, of EmailLabs, the key is to look at these channels as just “parts” of a strategic “whole”. Focusing on any one strategy can leave you with limited options to offer and virtual holes in reaching your customers - many of whom may be using different forms of communication (including non-Web 2.0).

So how can these channels of communication help you market effectively through e-mail?

• Blogs – helpful in gauging customer feedback or as a source of marketing research for your future emails or e-newsletters.
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A recent industry newsletter uses the term “branded content” to describe what gets delivered through new media such as webcasts, podcasts and online video. That’s an interesting term. For one thing, producing “branded content” assumes a well-defined brand. One that is more than a logo or corporate ID manual, since they aren't “content.” Effective B-to-B branding has always been about more than corporate ID. Now, new technologies provide many more channels for communications with customers and prospects. More “voices” throughout a company are being empowered to communicate, not only one-to-one but more broadly through blogs and other social media. It was one thing to worry about delivering a tightly integrated brand message through your sales force. Now there are dozens or hundreds of mouthpieces in a company with the potential for direct connections to customers, prospects and “the market” as a whole.
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Sports fans know all about metrics. We call them stats. In football, fans, coaches and players immerse themselves in statistics. Average yards per pass, average yards per run, passing efficiency, third down conversions, number of plays, time of possession…and my favorite -- YAC, which means yards after catch, or yards after contact. Why track so many stats? Because every statistic tells something that will contribute to overall success. Uninformed fans may boo a boring play because it doesn't result in a score. But knowledgeable fans know it’s only one play, not the whole game. What a great metaphor for marketing metrics! It’s in vogue today to say that marketing activities that don’t generate sales, or leads, aren’t important or valuable. That's a very simplistic view of marketing. Knowledgeable marketers know that every ad or mailer or email or press release plays a part of achieving the larger objective.
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It’s Thursday night. I’m ready for activities that don’t involve work, so I head out to a concert at a local venue. I’m about to take my seat when a forty-something guy sporting the ponytail and slacker-dress of a twenty-something male, approaches me. “Do you want to register to win a pair of tickets to the Derek Trucks Band concert?  All you have to do is give us your e-mail address.” He’s a music retailer for, we'll call them Company X, and a sponsor of the concert.

Here we go again. Every one wants my e-mail address. I consider his offer. I know how this will go. I give his company my e-mail address in exchange for the statistically unlikely chance to win something that isn’t really of value to me anyway.
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