Category: Marketing Automation

Although the practices of marketing and branding have been around for centuries, the industries started to shift in the 1990s.
The digital age came about and companies began to market their brands more than their products with the goal of giving their company a personality.

As a millennial born in the early 90s, I grew up at the same time as the digital revolution. In fact, millennials have a reputation for spending all day on their phones and being lazy.
However, I’d argue that as the digital age and technology began to evolve, so did society’s work expectations. Businesses, and even employees, are expected to be a brand in and of themselves that has value and positively impacts society (instead of just selling products).
As a marketer or business owner, you might be wondering, “How can I create a brand that my audience connects with?”
In this post, we’ll discuss how to create brand pillars that clearly communicate your brand identity to your audience.
For example, brand pillars can be core values, important strengths, or aspects of a brand that support or add dimension to the core idea of “Who are you?”
Essentially, these brand pillars can be anything that your customers find important — perhaps it’s innovation, reliability, on-time delivery, etc.
Brand pillars are meant to differentiate your brand and should be valued and endorsed by your customers. When someone asks why your customers like your brand, they’ll probably be able to list off your brand pillars if you’re clearly communicating your brand well.
These pillars should be decided on strategically to provide better products or services to your customers.
I know this might sound slightly conceptual. Brand pillars can be easier to understand when we break them down into categories.
Below, let’s learn about the five brand pillar categories you can use to determine your own brand pillars.
What are the five brand pillars?
The main brand pillars are purpose, perception, identity, values, and brand experience.
1. Purpose
Purpose can be described as the mission and foundation of your company. It will answer questions like “Why did you start your company?” and “What are you hoping to achieve?”
Think about this strategically. What do you want to communicate to your audience as your purpose? What do you want to communicate to employees or potential employees? Knowing your purpose will help you hire employees who align with your mission and correctly target your audience.
Purpose can even be described as the culture of your company. For example, at HubSpot, our culture is about growth-minded individuals who have HEART (they are humble, empathetic, adaptable, remarkable, and transparent). The acronym HEART is one of our brand pillars as a company.
2. Perception
Perception is about how your customers perceive your company/brand. You’ll want to either evaluate how current customers view your brand, or if you’re a new company, write down some characteristics that you’d like customers to associate with your brand.
This could be something like hospitality or leadership. If these are your perception brand pillars, then you want customers to view you as a leader in your industry that is a trusted, good host (this makes sense for a hotel, for example).
3. Identity
This brand pillar is about who you are as a brand. A brand is something you are, it’s not something you have. It’s all about your personality as a company.
For example, an identity brand pillar could be something like “cheeky” or “bold.” This means that you want customers to see you like a cheeky personality. The reason to define this brand pillar is so you have a guiding light for how to be human and interact with your customers.
4. Values
Your values are about communicating your overall position to your audience. What’s important to you as a company? How do you want to make a difference? This could be something like valuing integrity and ownership.
5. Brand Experience
Lastly, brand experience is a pillar that will help you promote your products and services. People use products and services when they like a brand. When there are so many options to choose from these days, customers will choose to buy from companies they like. This means you need to create a positive customer experience and association with your overall brand.
By using these brand pillars as a basis, you can create a brand identity that sets you apart from your competition. Companies that fail most likely haven’t considered what their brand pillars are and how they align.
If you have a robust strategy, but you don’t have a purpose or identity, people won’t feel compelled to purchase from you. On the other hand, if you promise that you value user experience, but the perception is off, then you also won’t find success.
In the next section, let’s review how you can use these categories to define your brand pillars.
How to Determine Your Brand Pillars
To determine your brand pillars, you should ask yourself a series of questions to come up with the top characteristics that you want to communicate to your audience.
Purpose

Why did you/are you starting your company?
What do you want to accomplish?
How do you want to serve your customers?
What value do you offer to customers that support your mission and vision?

Your purpose should serve as a magnet for employees and customers who share similar values. It will also provide a hook to tell your company’s story and differentiate yourself from your competition.
Perception

What role do you play in your customer’s mind?
What do they perceive your value to be?

This pillar could be something like education. Perhaps people view you as a place they go to learn about your industry. This is completely owned by your audience and how they interpret your brand through messaging and reputation and management.
Identity

What’s your culture like?
What’s your point of view?
What kind of tone of voice do you use in communication?
What are your convictions and behaviors that define your brand?

Defining your voice and brand is about strategizing how you want to speak to your audience on several platforms. The brand personality signals what employees might be like, how they behave, who your customers are, etc.
Values

What’s important to you in your interaction with your audience?
What do you value above all else, even before your own financial interests?

Again, this pillar will help define what you care about as a company.
Brand Experience

How do customers interact with you at each touchpoint?
What kind of experience do you want customers to have?
What makes your customer experience better than your competitors?

This pillar will define much of your perceived personality and reputation.
When creating your brand pillars, think about what your customers get from you. Do they get convenience, higher quality, time savings, etc.?
To determine your brand pillars, think about your brand strategy and come up with things that clearly define your personality, voice, customer experience, your purpose, and how people will perceive your brand.
Brand Pillar Examples
1. Hilton Brand Pillars
Hilton’s brand pillars are very clearly stated on its website. They value hospitality, integrity, leadership, teamwork, ownership, and now (sense of urgency).
These are stated as their values, but they’re really brand pillars that showcase how the company wants to be perceived, what their identity is, what the customer experience is like, and what they value.
2. Patagonia Brand Pillars
Patagonia is a brand that has personality and purpose. Their mission is to inspire and implement solutions to the environmental crisis (this is their purpose). Additionally, Patagonia offers a minimalistic style and values simplicity and utility (this is their personality and values).
3. Nike Brand Pillars
Since it was founded, Nike has been consistent in its brand pillars. They are all about competition and surpassing one’s limits. All the company’s advertising, messaging, and investment decisions support that personality and value.
Brand pillars are a great way to define and differentiate your company from the competition. It’s not just about making products anymore — it’s about having a voice and point of view that offers value to its customers.

By 2022, online video content is predicted to command more than 82% of all web traffic (15 times higher than it was in 2017). If you haven’t started thinking about how video fits into your long-term marketing strategy, now’s the time to start taking it seriously.
Before you dive into creating videos, it’s important to figure out where you’re going to host them. YouTube is obviously the largest video hosting platform on the web, but it might not be the best choice for every business.
To help you find the best fit for your company’s unique needs, we compared YouTube directly against the smaller, more niche platform Vimeo across a number of factors. Read on to see the results, and decide for yourself.

Number of Users
Winner: YouTube
There’s no real competition here. YouTube commands an audience of over two billion monthly users — almost half of the entire internet-using population. Vimeo’s 240 million monthly viewers and 90 million registered users seem insignificant in contrast. For maximum reach, choose YouTube.
Search Optimization
Winner: YouTube
YouTube leaves Vimeo in the dust here. YouTube is the second largest search engine on the internet, right after parent company Google. If you’re planning to create a video tailored to a specific search query, (e.g., how to pick a font for your website), your video belongs on YouTube. Not only will it appear in search results directly on YouTube, but Google also seems to favor videos from YouTube over those posted on other platforms.
Mobile
Winner: YouTube
70% of all YouTube views come from mobile, and the YouTube mobile app is absolutely dominating the mobile streaming space — outranking even formidable competitors like Netflix, Hulu, and Twitch.
Videos uploaded to Vimeo and YouTube are both optimized automatically for mobile, but YouTube offers more opportunities for mobile discovery and reach.
Cost
Winner: YouTube
YouTube is free — even for businesses. But you might be wondering if Vimeo is as well.
Is Vimeo free to use?
Vimeo operates on a tiered pricing model, ranging from a free basic plan to a $50/month package aimed at businesses.
Vimeo Pro vs YouTube
While Vimeo does have a free basic plan, it limits you to 500MB maximum storage per week.
If you’re okay with paying some money, you can get a Vimeo Pro plan. In Vimeo Pro, you’ll have access to support, advanced analytics, and professional privacy.
On the other hand, you can have unlimited storage for free on YouTube.
Support
Winner: Vimeo
With their paid packages, Vimeo offers several levels of technical support that could be a game-changer for businesses without much video expertise. YouTube offers plenty of free help documentation and access to a (rather crowded) support community, but if you’re seeking higher-touch, personalized support on-demand, a paid Vimeo account is the better option.
Storage
Winner: YouTube
YouTube offers unlimited, free storage for all accounts, while Vimeo charges for storage on a tiered basis. The basic, free Vimeo account option gives you 500MB of storage per week. With their highest level, $50/month package, you can store 5TB total with no weekly limits.
No Pre-Roll Ads
Winner: Vimeo
If you upload your videos to YouTube, there’s a good chance a pre-roll ad will play before it, which has the potential to deter some viewers from sticking around. Vimeo currently doesn’t allow ads, and it doesn’t look like they’ll be changing this policy anytime soon.
Running Ad Campaigns
Winner: YouTube
If you’re thinking of running your own ads on a video platform, you can’t beat YouTube (You also can’t purchase ad space on Vimeo, even if you wanted to, because they don’t allow it.)
YouTube offers an advanced, user-friendly ads platform, as well as personalized support from a “YouTube Advertising Expert” when you spend $10 a day on ads.
Community
Winner: Vimeo
User numbers don’t tell the entire story. With such a massive audience on YouTube, the environment is naturally more competitive. It’s easier for your video to get drowned out by thousands of others if you aren’t planning to feature it somewhere off YouTube. Vimeo’s smaller, more community-driven platform might be a better option if you’re hoping to tap into an existing creative niche, or get featured on their hand-curated staff picks page.
Advanced Privacy Options
Winner: Vimeo
Both YouTube and Vimeo give you the option to set videos to private or public (the default setting on YouTube is public), but Vimeo offers a handful of more nuanced, specific privacy options if that serves your interests. You can add a password protection option to videos, share a video only with people who follow your account, or even hide it from the Vimeo community — which could be useful if you plan on embedding the video on your website and want it to be viewable in only one place.
Customizable Player
Winner: Vimeo
Vimeo’s sleek embedded player offers a number of useful customization options that YouTube can’t match, including hex color customization and the ability to include a custom player logo (on Business and PRO accounts). Plus, when you change the default customization options on your account, all previously embedded videos will update to reflect the changes automatically, with no need to go back and tinker with any code.
Analytics
Winner: YouTube
YouTube takes the win here because all their analytics — ranging from basic statistics like views to more advanced options — are completely free. Vimeo does also offer powerful analytics tools to evaluate performance, but you’ll have to pay to access everything but basic stats.
Video Quality
Winner: Vimeo
When it comes to video quality, Vimeo beats out YouTube. In a test done by Medium, Vimeo’s video quality was crisp, clean, and easier to read. On the other hand, the same video on YouTube was blurry, making it much harder to follow.
Audio Quality
Winner: Vimeo
Again, when it comes to quality, Vimeo comes out on top. Sound quality is higher on Vimeo because the platform supports 320Kbps. However, to enjoy higher-quality videos and audio, you’ll need to be subscribed to one of the paid plans.
Live Streaming
Winner: YouTube
Both Vimeo and YouTube have live streaming options, however, YouTube is the clear winner here because it’s free. Vimeo offers live streaming with a paid plan. However, with Vimeo, you can upload new versions of the video and keep on using the same URL and upload higher quality recorded versions of a live stream, which you can edit before posting.
Image Source
So which one should you choose?
It depends largely on what exactly you want to accomplish with your videos. If you’re looking for a creative community where you can connect with other video creators and gain some exposure in a specific niche, Vimeo is a better place to start sharing your content. If you have business goals that revolve heavily around search optimization and ads, YouTube is your best bet.

No one wants to end up on the email blacklist. If you’re struggling to reach people with your emails, there’s a small (but not insignificant) chance that you’ve somehow found your way onto a spam blacklist. These prevent your emails from ending up in your subscribers’ inboxes, which, as you might expect, is going to…
The post Is Your Email Blacklisted? Here’s How to Find Out appeared first on Benchmark Email.

This spring, I was thrilled to be named general manager for Salesforce Pardot — one of the fastest-growing marketing automation platforms in the B2B space. I’m a product person at heart, and I couldn’t be more excited about our recent innovation and planned roadmap.
Earlier in the year, we gave you a sneak peek of upcoming innovations for our account-based marketing (ABM) technology. Today, I’m excited to share more details about those innovations and other features included in our Summer ‘21 release. Together, these features will help you reach the right accounts for your business, launch ABM campaigns in seconds, deliver more compelling email messages at the right time, and much more.
Here are just a few highlights from the Summer ’21 release along with a preview of what’s ahead. For a complete view of what’s launching, review the Pardot Summer ’21 release notes or watch the Pardot Summer ‘21 release readiness webinar (number 13 in the playlist).
Generally Available Now
Einstein Send Time Optimization for Pardot
One of our most popular Marketing Cloud features is now available to Salesforce Pardot customers. Use the power of artificial intelligence (AI) to better understand your accounts and boost email engagement. Einstein evaluates open and click times so you can send email messages at the right time for every prospect on your list — whether they’re on the East coast of the U.S. checking email after dinner or just starting their day on the opposite side of the globe.
We’re so excited about this feature that we’re dedicating an entire blog post to it. Watch for it later this week.
Accounts as Campaign Members
Once you’ve identified your top accounts, you can now add them directly to a campaign — even before you’ve identified the account buyers. 
Historically, Salesforce Pardot campaigns have centered on contacts and leads. But as more organizations rally around an ABM approach to account selection and nurturing, building campaigns at the account level is more important than ever. With Accounts as Campaign Members, you can run prospecting campaigns with outbound sales reps to identify the right buyers in each target account. You can also target accounts for virtual events before you finalize the RSVP list, then automatically add new account contacts as they’re identified.
Simply put, this feature is a game changer that will empower sales reps to help marketing target the right buyers for upcoming campaigns. 

New Email Marketing Settings to View Mailable Prospects in a New Light 

Have you ever struggled to understand why a prospect didn’t receive your email, or how to make a prospect mailable again? To solve these types of mailability issues, we’ve upgraded Pardot’s model for qualifying prospects to receive marketing messages. 
The updated model offers more insights into a prospect’s mailability status, their Do Not Email and Opted Out settings, and bounce information; it also provides more options for editing mailability data via Pardot automations. This means you can filter out undeliverable prospects from future communications faster and prioritize opt-in preferences more easily into your compliance workflows.
The mailability upgrade is available now and must be enabled to use. It will become a permanent upgrade for all customers in the Winter ’22 release. 
Email Builder Enhancements
We’re always working to improve the user experience for Email Builder. With the Summer ’21 release, we have:

Expanded the list of default font options to help you build eye-catching messages
Improved our error handling so you can easily identify which components on the canvas have issues that need to be addressed before saving
Provided an in-app video tutorial to help acclimate new users
Added packaging capabilities for email templates so you can easily gather all related assets and save them for future use

You can also send operational emails for critical notifications using the Pardot Email Lightning experience and access a streamlined setup experience for Pardot Email, including a simplified setup page and the ability to leverage a default domain for CMS — eliminating the need for IT support.
In Beta
Einstein Key Account Identification
Don’t rely on intuition to guide your account selection strategy. Einstein Key Accounts Identification draws on the power of AI to identify accounts in your CRM with the strongest buying signals so you can spend your time on the right deals. 
Einstein will look at buyer engagement data across the account in Salesforce Pardot, along with data from your CRM, to highlight key account characteristics and buyer behaviors that indicate an account’s viability as a business opportunity. It will tier each account as an A, B, C or D — A being accounts with the greatest buying potential. Einstein will also dig deeper into the data and surface the “why” behind each account’s ranking. 
More Pardot Resources
See what’s next for Pardot by joining the June 22 webinar Pardot Product Roadmap: Powering the Next Generation of B2B Marketing.
Watch our on-demand webinar Pardot Release Highlights: ABM, Privacy, and More.

Big Idea or Enduring Question: How can users automatically follow records when the records meet specific criteria? Within Salesforce, users can Follow and Unfollow records by clicking on the Follow icon on the record’s Detail page. If you want to … Continue reading →
The post Getting Started with Salesforce Flow – Part 65 (Auto Follow Record Based on Criteria) appeared first on Automation Champion.

As creative people and marketers, we spend a lot of time thinking about the relationship between people and brand. Hours of sorting through data trying to determine if a particular ad, campaign, color, or headline was a huge success or a massive flop (or worse—totally neutral, revealing very little of value). 
We can get really obsessed, trying to get in the mind of the customer and understand them on a deeper psychological level that they don’t even understand.
I spend a lot of time reading blogs and books, or attending webinars, trying to understand why this and not that.
“Why did this button copy have a better click rate than this one?”
“Why did people seem to prefer this background color so much more than the other?”
Often, authors or webinar hosts will reference Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs when explaining the relationship between psychology and marketing.
If you’re not familiar, the Hierarchy of Needs is a framework by Abraham Maslow which theorizes that people are motivated by five basic categories of needs: physiological, safety, love, esteem, and self-actualization. It’s also, conveniently, represented in a rainbow.

The framework is simple, but the ideas here are complex. While much time has been spent diving into each of these categories, today, I’m going to spend time on that middle piece — love and belonging.
Cultivating a sense of belonging
Ever shown up to a party by yourself? It’s terrifying. If you are like me, your first move is to make a beeline towards the bar. After that, I usually find myself scanning the room for someone I know or someone who looks familiar to me. I feel instantly more comfortable in situations when I see representation. It moves me from safety needs to belonging needs. So what does this relationship look like between brands and their customers?
You have probably noticed the recent trend for brands changing their logos to the various LQBTQIA flags for pride month. LinkedIn, Spotify, Airbnb, and loads of others have jumped in on this trend.

Other brands have released rainbow limited edition products like Vans, Apple, Skittles, and Adidas. Some brands are even sponsoring pride content on streaming services like Hulu.

Don’t get me wrong, the more representation the better. But, inclusion is more than throwing up a rainbow flag for a month. Inclusion requires empathy, and empathy requires understanding.
I am welcoming of all types of inclusion, but if you are looking to create lasting relationships with certain communities, you must tap into the psychological need we all have as humans to belong and feel like equals. This level of representation is still very rare for most brands.
Watch these two commercials and tell me what is different.
Campbells:

This ad, while cute and representative, still has the punchline around being gay.
Wells Fargo:

This ad is not about being gay. It’s about being a family. You could easily swap the couple out for any gender or orientation. It was written with a couple in mind, not a gay couple. Why not just write a great script and cast people, of any kind? Why limit yourself by saying these have to be a specific way? I have always found it interesting that, as marketers, we feel like we have to write specific things for specific people rather than focusing on a great story or punchline. That’s hard enough on its own.
You need visibility and representation, but in a way that doesn’t frame the queer community as outsiders, but as people. Just like everyone else.
This is important from a human-to-human level — trying to see past stereotypes and misconceived notions of what you think a person is like, and actually getting to know them for who they are, and what is important to them. 
Belonging and love needs (from Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs) are only met when we take the extra step as marketers to see and understand that all people just want to be seen and shown as equals — not as props or checkboxes.
Small steps toward inclusivity
If you are a marketer looking for more ways to ensure you are being inclusive, here are a few things you can do:

Audit your sites and other marketing materials to ensure the photography or illustrations represent an equal balance of all people in authentic situations.
Include pronouns in profiles and signatures (if you aren’t already).

Push back on clients, managers, co-workers if there is feedback around inclusion and diversity.Tip: If you are dealing with people who want to talk numbers have them google “pink money” and the rise of LQBTQIA buying power.

Share your platform with members of the LQBTQIA community throughout the year rather than just seeking them out in the month of June. Collaborate with them on things other than LGBTQIA content, and allow them the space to speak about areas of passion or expertise. There is nothing more inspiring for a young professional than to see someone who is a badass in their career, and just happens to be out.

Above all else, check your own bias as a leader to make sure you are leading and inspiring the team around you to care about these issues.Extra Credit: Visit your local HRC branch and spend some time with people who work there. Understand what the LGBTQIA is still fighting for and what they need from local businesses in terms of support.

The post What Inclusion Really Means: Pride Month Edition appeared first on Campaign Monitor.

Next time you open Netflix, I want you to try something.
When you see your tailored suggestions, as the platform starts the video right where you left off on your iPad, stop and take note of that experience.
How do these experiences actually make you feel?
Does the device handoff give you a rush of excitement and gratitude?
Probably not.
Start over. Imagine opening Netflix again.
Your recommendations are gone, replaced with an unfiltered list of content. The list feels random, but then you’d expect at least a couple of shows to be of random interest. They’re not. That episode you’re halfway through on your iPad? You’ll have to scroll back and forth to find your place. Ultimately, you’ll probably just rewatch parts of the episode “just to be safe”.  

If you’re like me (my apologies if you are), you’ll react more to this moment of friction than the moment of seamless performance. The seamless experience is largely invisible — it’s unfelt — while the bad experience is impossible to ignore. Based on how bad it is, it’ll haunt you and sometimes make you question your life choices.
It may even push you toward Hulu or Disney +, or another platform that you trust more.

The same dynamic is at play for the digital experiences you deliver to customers.

2020 and 2021 accelerated digital transformation across industries, creating a new set of expectations in your customers’ personal and professional lives.
For them, being delighted isn’t a capstone to their experience as your customer; it’s the cornerstone your relationship is built on. Today’s buyers have more options, and disruptors are acquiring — and retaining — new business through the experience they provide their customers.
These new expectations present huge opportunities for those who are willing to rethink their digital experiences and a huge risk for those who are not.
So, why are so many businesses failing to meet these expectations?
Is it because they just don’t care about the customers’ experience? Sometimes — but not usually. A vast majority of businesses would love to deliver a delightful experience.
The reason they don’t is mostly because cobbled-together point solutions can’t deliver a clear view of the customer.
After all, scaling companies are in a constant state of adaptation. As new needs and opportunities arise, companies introduce a network of individual solutions that solve discrete problems: a CRM to manage customer data, a CMS to build their website, and marketing automation to scale their efforts.
Over time, as you add more solutions, your company’s tech stack grows so unwieldy it becomes a barrier between you and your customers instead of a bridge. It keeps you from the agile reporting you need and makes automation way more complicated than it should be. It makes personalization unreliable and messaging fragmented.
Since the dawn of the digital age, the status quo has been to rely on a separate CRM, CMS and automation tool. It’s what many marketing leaders have accepted as a necessary evil — despite the friction it causes for customers.
So, how do today’s companies win?
By delivering a best-in-class, unified digital experience that exceeds customer expectations. Doing this requires two foundational elements.
1. Information
Any marketing based on assumptions is doomed to failure. To get the digital experience right for every individual customer at scale requires reliable, organized and actionable data.
Not just ‘who are your customers?’ but ‘who is this customer?’ How and where have they interacted with you digitally? What do they need from you right now, and more importantly, what will they need from you next?
At HubSpot, we built the Customer Code with this philosophy in mind: Use the data you have access to, don’t abuse it. But in order to leverage the data you gather to create better digital experiences, all of your customer-facing teams need a single source of truth for that data — a key ingredient that’s beyond the reach of companies that still use cobbled-together solutions. That’s where centralization comes in.
2. Centralization

Providing a seamless experience across touchpoints is really a matter of shifting from ad hoc point solutions to a crafted, unified platform that provides a single view of the customer. When a CMS sits alongside key sales, services, and marketing tools in a centralized system, every customer-facing team knows how customers are interacting with their business and — more importantly — how they can help.
And this is the key: if you want your marketing, sales and service teams to deliver a great experience, you have to give them a fighting chance. You do this by having the systems and data they use aligned and unified.
For example, consider a repeat visitor to your pricing page. If both marketing and sales can see this activity, the marketing team can send a discount code or helpful resources that contextualize your pricing while sales can reach out to offer guidance or a product demo.
With this centralized platform and toolset, you can see and anticipate customer needs and take action immediately. You can tailor digital experiences on an individual level, across touchpoints, using the most up-to-date insights on customer needs, questions or interests — just like they expect you to.
The CRM for Today’s Customer Expectations
The answer to these business challenges isn’t just to use a CRM. You probably already have one of those. If you’re really unlucky, maybe even two. It probably doesn’t allow you to easily do any of what I just described, and it likely can’t deliver the seamless experiences your customers expect.
Instead, you need a CRM platform that has been designed specifically to meet today’s sky-high customer expectations; one that you can adapt to changing customer expectations, align your teams around, and adopt without an uphill change management battle. (And no, there are no change management battles that are downhill).
To pull off this digital experience at scale, you need to rethink the underlying components of the experience itself.
The customer-facing pieces — your website, email content, advertising, member portals — are front and center. But only touchpoints that are powered by a modern, purpose-built CRM provide the personalization and timeliness that distinguish an average digital interaction from an elite one.
And whether it’s Netflix, HubSpot or your corner cafe, delivering elite customer experiences is the key to navigating uncertain times, thriving in the digital-first era, and ultimately, growing better.

A steady stream of leads is vital for any small business. It allows you to grow your email list, customer base, and increase revenue year over year. But without a lead generation strategy, you’ll lose valuable market share to those that have refined this process. The good news is there is more potential than ever…
The post 5 Best Lead Generation Techniques for Small Businesses appeared first on Benchmark Email.

I just started with a small-ish business recently. They’ve been around for 30+ years, but they were big on the “let’s send an email blast by manually entering our clients’ emails” approach. For reference, I was given a lead spreadsheet on Friday with 20,000+ names. I was asked to bring them into the 21st century, basically. The only issue is that, apparently, our monthly budget is pretty tight. I pitched some automation program options–I’m SharpSpring certified, so I tried to push it–and was told my budget was $50-100 a month. Yikes, right? My question is: is there any program that does automated lead tracking for an affordable price? I want to do as much as I can, just to prove that automation should be a part of the monthly budget in a big way.
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