Reel in your Prospects, Hook, Line and Sinker
January 17, 2008 Leave a Comment
Prospects are people too. Sometimes that’s hard to remember when you’ve sent out multiple emails with no response or tried to set a meeting when they always seem to busy. In the world of B2B, marketers don’t spend nearly as much time studying the psychology of our customers as our B2C counterparts. Keeping that in mind, examining prospects responses to your marketing initiatives can help you understand what works and what doesn’t.
Get To the Point…
Keep the clutter to a minimum. A recent study conducted by JupiterResearch shows that emails containing all pictures had a very low success rate with prospects - in fact, most readers prefer easy to read text and most email servers don’t automatically load graphics. So skip all the fancy colors and flash and just tell the prospect what he needs to know.
And Do It Quickly.
The old newspaper adage is just as true with email marketing - keep it above the fold! Studies have found that emails containing a call-to-action message in the first screen shot the reader sees have a significantly higher click-through rate than those that are text or image heavy with your key message hidden at the bottom. Prospects are busy, especially in the B2B world, they don’t have time to scroll down.
Ok, You’ve Got Them - Do Your Landing Pages Help You Keep Them?
Once you’ve got the attention of a visitor, you have only a few seconds to entice them with your landing page. Even with their email address already in your system, engaging your prospects further can help remind them of your product and nudge them along in the sales cycle. Tracking their activity can also give you valuable insight in to their interests and their readiness to buy.
To make the most of those valuable seconds, make sure you’re following best practices with your landing pages:
- Keep forms short and sweet to increase conversion
- Keep navigation and links to a minimum so prospects can’t “wander off”
- Maintain the look and feel of your campaign or corporate website
- Test multiple landing page designs to see which elicits the best response from prospects
