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CONTENT TYPE: Article | TOPIC: None

Everyone's looking to do more with less these days. After comparing the cost of postal mail (about a dollar apiece) with the cost of email (about a penny apiece) any B2B marketer is going to prefer using email as the medium for staying in touch with current customers and inquirers. No-brainer, right? But here's the rub: Most B2B companies have email addresses for only a fraction of their customers. And, even worse, if their privacy policies call for opt-in, only a fraction of that fraction are emailable. So, what are the options for business marketers to increase their customer coverage via email? Here are four approaches that can work.

CONTENT TYPE: Article | TOPIC: None

Effective networking is all about giving. One of the best ways to give to your network members is to help them build their personal brands. And if you help them build their brands on the Web, you demonstrate how savvy you are about the new Web 2.0 world we live in. And, for marketers, being savvy about social media is essential! Here's a list of 10 free or very low-cost Web 2.0–focused personal-branding gifts.

CONTENT TYPE: Article | TOPIC: None

There are many similarities between social-media marketing and email; but they are two distinct marketing channels, and they should be used separately to enhance or magnify, not just promote, each other. Think of it this way: Social media is for awareness; email is for retention.

CONTENT TYPE: Article | TOPIC: None

Marketers these days find themselves increasingly squeezed between a big rock and a very hard place: Their mandate is to demonstrably improve ROI, with reduced budgets, while communicating with skittish audiences that are less inclined to make purchases. Not surprisingly, people are looking for ways to change the game altogether.

CONTENT TYPE: Article | TOPIC: None

In Part 1 of this article, the author talked a little bit about the necessary components to a successful landing page: You need "bones" to hold it all together; you need to keep the message on track and motivating by maintaining a consistent theme throughout; and you need to stir emotions... pique curiosity... and so on. Once a prospect's heart (and all those emotions that go along with it) gets in the game, you're pretty much home free. Well... almost.

CONTENT TYPE: Article | TOPIC: None

For those of us who were brought up e-marketing, e-shopping, e-dating, e-gossiping—and all things e—we may feel smug that we are truly paperless (are we really?), and thus we are so green in our behavior that who would dare cast a stone at us? Well, it's time to wake up. Direct mailers can actually be very responsible environmentally—and perhaps e-marketers need to pay closer attention to the environmental life cycle of digital commerce.

CONTENT TYPE: Article | TOPIC: Social Media Marketing

Have you ever heard the expression "eat your own dog food"? It's a concept that essentially means that one is "walking the talk," or leading by example. Many companies have talked about being "customer-focused," but how many really are? Unfortunately, just saying you're committed to doing something is dramatically different from actually doing it. There is no place where this idea is truer than in the world of social media and online communities.

CONTENT TYPE: Article | TOPIC: None

Although she has been successful in promoting and extending corporate brands, the author entered into another chapter of her life a few years ago: re-energizing an acting career. Eventually, she came to see marketing herself as an actor as the same as marketing any other product or service. She revisited common-sense ideas on how to extend a brand. These common-sense ideas, usually known but put on the marketer's back burner, should always be top of mind to help you get noticed and extend your brand.

CONTENT TYPE: Article | TOPIC: None

When the latest marketing answers fail to produce the results you expect, maybe it's time to start asking different questions. You don't need me to tell you that we're in a crisis of confidence: Consumers don't believe or act on the information we give them in the ways we'd hope, so we're losing faith in the strategies and tools we use to communicate with them. We're asked questions about sales, and we reply with answers about "engagement" and conversational "buzz." Budgets are down, expectations are up, and the proliferation of new solutions for "engaging" with consumers in conversations seems inversely proportional to results that our employers and clients can value. We believe that somehow, sometime, all those efforts will coalesce—the dots will connect—and yield stunning successes, just like those celebrated in case histories and magazine articles. I have news for you: We're chasing black swans. And if we keep doing it, we're doomed.

CONTENT TYPE: Article | TOPIC: Social Media Marketing

You're a marketer who's hip to the idea of social media: You have a blog, you know Facebook inside and out, and you can Tweet with the best of them. But the big question is, Are you listening as well as talking? Here are some of the top tools for listening to and monitoring the online chatter about your brand.