• 10 takeaways from Ad Age’s small agency conference
• 7 emails you should never send
• 5 outside-the-box marketing jobs!
• Hmm, advertising transparency or trickery? POM sues Minute Maid
• A game I do not get, but completely appreciate the devotion users have towards it gets branded?
• I need to get one of these accounts
• Agency reviews seen as a sign of recovery

Cheers!

One such post that exemplifies spring’s word is “Specificity and the New Business Email Conundrum.”  Here, I simply regurgitated email marketing best practices for new business; reason being that sometimes we all overlook the basics.

Today, we will quickly go over the importance of good preparation before a new business campaign kicks off (duh.) In the spirit of maintaining a low word count (and finishing early so I can go play outside), I have outlined a crucial new business agenda that should be completed before outreach leaves the office.

Part 1: The Agency Overview:

• Define agency’s capabilities, offerings, recent work and categorize agency niche and expertise for differentiation
• Define new business goals and milestones
• Take an inventory of existing new business assets currently being sent to prospects and edit according to niche and direction

Part 2: Targeting:

• Define targets and verticals based on the differentiation and direction discussed above; provide compelling argument for targets based on agency services, past work and future goals
• Create at least 3 messaging touch points for targets (html, plain text, landing pages and copy)
• Create specific messaging sequence (email 1, phone call 1, email 2, phone call 2, etc.) based on prospect interaction (e.g. if prospect opens email 1, prospect receives phone call 1; if prospect does not open email 1, prospect receives email 2 before phone call 1)
• Define additional means of outreach outside of phone and email (webcasts, agency blog, events, PR, etc.)

Part 3: Metrics and Measurement:

• Define “success” in terms of deliverables, outreach and numbers
• Define what it takes to meet goals (is it a conversation with a CMO at a company long on your agency’s hot list or is it a project on the table from the CMO?)
• Develop milestones to gauge success

Preparing for a new business campaign launch requires an intense understanding of your agency’s capabilities and personality, market feedback, necessary outreach and a clear definition of success for a given point in time.

The better prepared your team is, the easier that first meeting will be (duh.)

With that being said, let’s talk print for a sec. I am one of the few lone wolves still smudging my sticky fingers with the New York Times print edition and magazines. One particular magazine, Elle, is a favorite for many reasons: the fashion photography is beautiful, the typography is unique, the articles are aspirational (vacation home in the French countryside, please) and it just feels better than the typical women’s magazines on the newsstands today.

On a recent rainy Sunday, I curled up with the April issue of Elle and proceeded to indulge in an article devoted to women kicking ass in their respective fields. One such woman is Claudia Batten, COO of Bolder-based crowdsourcing agency Victor and Spoils. What is crowdsourcing, you might ask (I did)? Crowdsourcing is simply outsourcing advertising and marketing materials to the creative masses on behalf of corporate clients.

Victor and Spoils handles the process and “offers the strategic direction, engagement and relationship management that agencies deliver today, but one that also delivers the engagement, cultural relevance, results and return on investment that crowdsourcing {if managed and directed well} can deliver.”

Of course, we could play devil’s advocate here and write off crowdsourcing as nothing more than a group of freelancers working for one agency, or one agency outsourcing creative to reduce costs. Honestly though, I think V&S have something here. V&S don’t cloud the fact that they pay outsiders (consumers, essentially) to create the campaigns for clients; instead, V&S acknowledge the “crowdsourcing paradigm” and provide a convincing argument for allowing the agency to manage the process and align the crowdsourcing work with the strategy and brand (just like any agency would do internally.) 

It’s the sense of community that the agency invokes that really turns me on to the idea. V&S want to hear from consumers, they want outsiders to voice their opinions and, in turn, churn out some pretty amazing work for clients.

I think they’re on to something. Once again, a fashion mag proves itself relevant to the real world.

Cheers!

I’m seeing email campaigns really take off this year; a simple plain text email has turned up many meetings with just a reply and an openess to listen on the part of the marketer. Of course, these “plain” emails are quite calculated in their approach and response. The fact is that marketers in almost every industry are being bombarded with introductory capabilities requests in Q2 so yours better be good.

What I have found to be the most successful in Q1 is good old specificity in both my target verticals and my outgoing messages. What I mean by specificity (my new favorite word) in my target verticals is that I don’t just run and research data lists for a vertical and call it a day – I make damn sure to nail down the right titles and categorize companies within the vertical to match the agency’s most compelling work samples.

For example, say I want to reach out to the retail apparel industry. I have one group of marketers who, for the most part, are “newbies” in the game. The brands aren’t established by decades of legacy, and awareness and traction is more valuable to them at this point than online sales (note: I am not suggesting online sales is the second most important marketing objective – I am just stressing the importance of diving into the marketplace first.) I will tailor my emails and talking points to reflect the agency’s expertise in launching online brand channels that build upon a social networking community and allow the end-user to fully engage with the brand at multiple touch points.

If a second retail apparel group comprises legacy-driven department stores, I will stress in my outreach the agency’s success in online brand revitalization to boost e-commerce sales.

I think you get the drift here; oftentimes, email outreach seems so simple, it becomes mindless. With a little bit of planning, you can easily divide contact lists by vertical and then move contacts within that vertical into separate buckets. These buckets reflect different brand identities and values and take minutes to group; simply group by the first thought that pops into your head when looking at the company name (American Apparel’s messaging is going to vastly different from Saks Fifth Avenue messaging.)

After you have created your buckets o’ value, begin listing your agency’s strongest work around that bucket. The cutting-edge digital work your agency did for MTV might be super relevant for American Apparel while the successful e-commerce reconfiguration and design you did for Disney World may correlate better with Saks.

And take the bucket from there.

Again, this post seems like another monstrous “duh,” but honestly, I forget to do things like this all the time and end up repeating the same message to the wrong marketers and expecting different results (my definition of insanity.)

Break it down by experience. Relevance is such an overused word these days.

Cheers!

a) Do not need my client’s services and are very much satisfied with their current agency relationships and/or in-house relations, thank you very much;

b) Do not necessarily need my client’s services but are willing to take a second glance and do their due diligence and agree to a capabilities presentation;

c) Desperately need and want a new agency to develop amazing creative, brand-building campaigns and a sizzling ROI, and are therefore, salivating at the thought of meeting with my client.

Which letter do you suppose I live vicariously through most often?  If the answer is “a,” you are correct, my dear Watson’s.

My job is not to sell an undesirable product or service or to manipulate a situation so far off course that the bottom line outweighs ethics. No, my job is to build honest, hard-earned relationships with prospects and open the door to new possibilities and opportunities for both the corporate marketer and the ad agency.

With that being said, I have compiled a list of my ten new New Year’s New Business resolutions – promises I vow to keep in order to catch that pot o’ gold at the end of the rainbow.

Here are my New Year’s New Business Resolutions:

1) Step up my game and release tired voicemail lines and email introductions used in 2009.

2) Understand that it’s not personal – it’s business.

3) Realize the stranger at the other end of the line is a living, breathing, thinking, emotional human being – don’t be so intimidated!

4) Foster team building and keep my end of the deal with open, solutions-driven conversations with fellow employees.

5) Ask for help when I need it and employ as many internal resources as possible to craft compelling conversations and points of differentiation for clients.

6) Build new business day in and day out - not breathe new business day in and day out.

7) Write creatively often and with zeal.

8)  Participate in more networking events and become more involved in local Ad Club chapter.

9) Think of great talk as winning partnership and not winning business.

10) And above all else, have fun diving into all aspects of the agency world and building amazing relationships.

Most of us probably spent January working like mad men, feverishly tallying up to-do’s and to-dont’s until we were blue in the face every night at 10. More than likely we are all still super motivated this month, but sedentary old ways may have begun to creep back into our daily grind. That’s okay, but if you’re like me, you’re going to bust ass to make sure 2010 doesn’t remotely resemble the *ugly and mean step-mother* that was 2009.

What are your New Year’s New Business resolutions?

*this line directly references the children’s classic Cinderella; step-mothers are pretty cool*

•  Successful outreach requires cold calls
•  Lots of cold calls
•  Cold calls can be tough
•  Cold calls can be fun
•  Successful outreach requires emails
•  Lots of emails
• Emails can be monotonous
• Emails can be a better way to reach call screeners
• Proper outreach is the most critical component of business development

At this point, we have covered targeting, messaging, database management and now we’re ready to dive into the cold calling.  The most successful new business campaigns follow a sequence; I haven’t perfected a sequence necessarily, but I have had success with a hybrid of the following:

1. Introductory email to prospect (again, these prospects are targeted with a direct message implementing their needs and pain points and thus piquing their interest)

2. Qualification of “warm” prospects via email automation software that delivers open rates and website page visits (examples include Genius and Pardot)

3. Follow up with cold call

4. Repeat

Okay, so this might look like the most simplistic new business outreach strategy out there, but it works when you tweak each step with relevant messaging and correct contacts.  The first step, the introductory email, should lead with an opportunity for the recipient to learn something new or gain something for free (broadcast a webinar, provide research results or give them a new insight to chew).  Second, the introductory email should identify a relevant business challenge.

Once you identify those prospects who might have the most to gain from the initial cold call (those who opened the email, signed up for the webinar, or visited your site), place a call to discuss the outreach piece and solution options to their business challenge.  You must demonstrate relevance, value and trust with the prospect.

Successful outreach campaigns require multiple ongoing touch points consisting of emails, phone calls, conversations, voicemails and follow-ups before an opportunity is seriously sitting on the table.

I realize this post is short and sweet (and hopefully to the point), and if you would like to learn more, Catapult New Business offers quick, 30-minute webinars all the time. Best to the leave the granular to discussion vs. this blog post.

Happy hunting!

We’re covering insights into successful new business campaigns and the tools that drive them, including:

• Integrated media use in planning new business campaign sequences
• On and off-page web optimization
• Inbound marketing tools
• Required outbound touch-point metrics and analytics

Sign up here and if you can’t make this one, don’t fret - there are plenty more to come. 

Cheers!

Planning is all about preparing the outreach strategy and accompanying assets. Your messaging strategy must revolve around an actionable insight to stand out from the clutter (for more tips on messaging strategy, click here).

Once you have determined a niche and insight to bring to a particular category and audience (CPG, automotive, retail, QSR, etc.), you can begin to populate a contact database.

There are generally two approaches to contact list generation: paid and unpaid.  For those agencies that may not have much time or energy to hunt, scour and mine contact info, purchasing a database from a provider may be the best solution.

For those who already have a robust, working database and/or lack of funds may be better off developing contact lists. If you fall into the latter, a few contact research tips:

1) Carefully comb over your current database; check for redundancy and remove contacts with irrelevant titles.  Expect a quarter of your contacts to be outdated, no longer with the company or incorrect.

2) Create a free contact generation strategy and timeline.  A few ways to identify and create fresh contacts on the spot:

• Trade Publications
• Newspapers and Newswires
• Job Search Sites
• Company websites and blogs
• Professional associations
• Attendee lists

Once you have secured new contacts, you might need to verify contact information, which definitely takes time.  If you have even one email address for a contact at a company, you can easily manipulate the address format to apply to all the employees.

For example if you have Sarah Smith at ABC Company’s email address as sarah.smith@abccompany.com, you can pretty much guarantee that the CMO, Tim Thompson, is going to follow the same email format.  Google searches and calls to the operator often yield desirable results as well.  Keep in mind that if you are going to find contacts on your own, you’re going to have view it as an experiment and get a little creative.

And if all else fails and you don’t have enough contacts in categories to last for at least 3 months, purchase a list.  The cost will probably outweigh the frustration and time consumed.

Next up in Asset Land: Number Three – Outreach.

It’s worth a look.

Cheers.

1) Make a call

2) Build a relationship

3) Uncover an opportunity

4) Lose opportunity

5) Begin again

6) Onward and upward

7) Uncover opportunity

Traditional new business is cyclical, nerve-wracking, a numbers game and ultimately, a game of luck and chance, of being in the right place at the right time. Now, we have two choices in new business: we can either sit back and wait it out (via referrals, word of mouth, networking, search consultants) or we can proactively seek new business (via a plan, research and dedicated outreach).

Here’s the thing about proactive new business: your competitors are already doing it, and if you aren’t actively controlling business development initiatives, the cyclical nature of biz dev will ultimately control you.  Without targeted outreach and strict measurement, you won’t have the ability to predict growth or when extra outreach is necessary to make up for the financial lull of the times.

In a nutshell, here is the first of five agency must-haves for new business:

1) Planning: Planning is all about getting to an actionable insight that your agency can tote in outreach.  Like the previous post regarding messaging  strategy, in order to maximize your efforts, your agency should evaluate your capabilities and strengths and stake a claim as a thought leader in a market (example: we specialize in marketing to males ages 16-24, who are thought leaders and influencers among their peers).  Make sure to have the category research, insight and experience to back up your niche messaging.  Fresh perspectives and insights lead to corporate marketing opportunities.

Your insight must be unique.

Your insight must speak to a problem that the marketer has not been able to solve.

Your insight must be specific.

Getting to the insight requires taking a good look at the internal assets your agency already has: research, studies, experience.  I promise, among everything you do and have ever done, you have an actionable insight or two to take to a target segment.  The specific, actionable insight and ensuing expertise is often what leads to an unexpected project.

Next up in Asset Land: Number Two – Research.  In the meantime, best of luck in obtaining that insight.