Marketing Clique

Our customers and prospects are everywhere. The trouble is they're not all in the same place at the same time. That's why we need to meet them where they're at.

Forrester Research senior VP of Idea Development Josh Bernoff recently wrote an article for AdAge. In it he discusses research that makes a case for encouraging workers to use technology to connect with customers. Josh goes on to recommend:

If your company shuts off access to sites like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, that has to stop, because you're shutting off your staff from the very places that will give them ideas of how to innovate in connecting to customers. —Josh Bernoff, Marketers Are More Likely to Innovate -- and Here's Proof

Good salespeople have traditionally been adept at meeting their prospects and customers face to face. Today, with increased adoption of technology to increase the efficiency of marketing it's become common that neither salespeople nor marketers will see their prospects during the entire nurturing process. How about once the prospect signs on as a paying customer? Sure, probably. But during the six-month sales process? Maybe not.

While lead nurturing software, like Marketo and Eloqua, allows marketers to manage a much higher volume of prospects, there's still a strong reliance on email as the central vein of outbound communication. Logic paths are carefully planned so certain emails are sent to certain people at certain times, all based on certain prospect/client activities or inactivity.

My question is, will email continue to prevail as the preferred method of communication? Moreover has email already fallen by the wayside as the best way to nurture all prospects and clients?

Don't get me wrong. Email marketing is generally effective, especially when customers and prospects have opted in and indicated it's their preferred method of contact. But relying solely on email to nurture prospects and customers may be inadequate, especially with the growing acceptance of other communication forms: SMS/text, Facebook, Twitter. And don't forget about the old school methods that many people still hold onto: face-to-face meetings, phone calls, and even snail mail! By the way, if you must send snail mail, use FedEx. It's still better at getting someone's attention. People will almost always open a FedEx overnight envelope.

The take away

Try not to accept technology for technology's sake. If you can use technology to become more efficient in some areas of marketing and sales that's great. But one software solution isn't going to take care of everything.