Posted by Rebekah Donaldson on Tue, Mar 18, 2008
Mac McIntosh recently posted about how implementing a mystery lead program can improve follow up by Sales.
McIntosh writes,
“…here are some additional ideas to encourage lead follow-up and reporting back on follow-up activity and results from your companies channel partners. A “mystery lead” program Follow-up the mystery lead, get an incentive! Randomly select a lead in every sales territory each month and designate it as the “mystery lead.” Then tell sales that if they report back on that specific lead they earn a prize or incentive…” More…
As he points out, there is every reason to think of creative ways to spur consistent follow up within the golden window. MarketingSherpa stats show how slow follow up can be worse that no follow up. Yes, following up after a certain window of time can backfire.
His insight applies particularly well to midsize companies where marketing and sales are handling higher volumes of leads and face a bigger risk of a disconnect.
Making follow up easy is hard. See how we pulled it off for one client in this mini-case study on creating B2B sales tools that really work.
There I wrote,
…B2B sales tools in hand, a new sales rep can be phone-ready in three days, make cold calls after only a week, and lead a sales presentation after only two weeks. It takes only 10 minutes to generate professional, customized communications, whether it’s a first contact or a follow-up… More…
How do you follow up with prospects — are there particular templates or tools you use? Please weigh in.
Posted by Rebekah Donaldson on Tue, Mar 11, 2008
There is a technical standard for press releases: AP style.
Newsrooms expect AP style and is the standard to which most organizations' press releases should conform.
AP says:
- Capitalize formal titles when they are used in front of a name ("President Jim Fizzbo") but not if they are set off by commas ("the division's vice president, Jim Fizzbo, was promoted"), and not if the name isn't used at all ("the president was on vacation").
- Use several letters in upper and lower case (Calif.) to identify a state, instead of two-letter post office style (CA)
As one of my team members points out, though, really though the most important thing with style is to be clear and consistent.(1)
If your organization feels strongly that it wants all the titles capitalized in a press release, it would not really hurt anything - and same for the style you prefer on state abbreviations.
To ensure consistency, if you do diverge from AP you probably do need to develop your own style sheet for press releases so that your press release writing team - whether in house or on contract - can hit the target when drafting these docs and prevent head-butting over which title words to capitalize.
Do you diverge from AP for some reason? I'd love to hear examples of making exceptions to following AP style to achieve some improved result.
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(1) Thank you to Robert Celaschi for succinctly articulating what AP says about title caps.
Posted by Rebekah Donaldson on Thu, Mar 06, 2008
Thanks to the growing popularity of eyetracking studies and heatmaps, we now have a better understanding of how readers scan a Web page or an email offer. Notice I used scan instead of read.
No one reads word for word, at least not while we're assessing value. We glance, move our eyes in a fairly uniform pattern, and then move on.
One sweep across the top, a shorter sweep mid-way down, then down the left side. If something leads us, we might scroll down. We're asking, "Is this anything I want - need? Is it worth my time?" And we're fast to decide.
What catches our eye?
- Anything in the upper left corner
- Headlines
- Bullet points
- Photos of people or products (and captions)
- Numbers and prices
- The first two words of a heading, paragraph, or bullet point
If we spot keywords important to us in these places, we're likely to read more.
Be sure to factor in scanning behavior when creating your next website, landing page, or email offer. Despite how well organized and attractive your page may be, your readers will be darting around like fruit flies.
Do we meet all the rules of best practices on this site? What about on yours? Do you find that you scan in the ways described here, or are you the black sheep and scan some other way? Please comment below.
Posted by Rebekah Donaldson on Wed, Mar 05, 2008
Just announced: Sutter Health Sacramento Sierra Region has retained Business Communications Group for B2B market research services. More...