Email Marketing is Dead.

The death of B2B email marketing effectiveness to generate qualified leads that result in new clients can be attributed to a combination of:

1. spam,
2. the economy has caused buyers to elect for trusted brands that deliver immediate value, and
3. the rise of more effective lead generation tactics such as social media that allow for direct engagement with with early adopters and dissatisfied opportunities based on triggers.

While email is widely used and checked ALL THE TIME; its effectiveness to generate new clients is dead as leads from referrals have a 30% to 50% conversion rate while email marketing is less than a few percent.   In today’s Internet centric world, referrals and inbound marketing tactics are much more effective in generating B2B leads that result in new client sales. 

Source via the Corporate Executive Board blog.

In a buyer centric world where buyers can ask their friends on FaceBook  for a reference, review a product Group on LinkedIn, or review providers/vendor reviews from trusted 3rd party sources online, prospects no longer buy from buyers they do not know and trust. Today’s B2B buyers require information about a product or service provider to be found online easily and that the product or provider be a branded solution.

Generating B2B leads is more effective when companies realize the “consumerization or B2B buying” is here and act accordingly:

1. Engage buyers when they are searching or dissatisfied. Use research, competitive intelligence, and social media monitoring to respond to prospects and clients when they are evaluating and searching.  Don't over-automate your marketing messages or neglect to monitor social media activity on a daily basis. Be sure a real person is tracking and responding to questions and commenting in social media and are at the ready to provide the best and most appropriate content to addresses potential buyers and followers' specific needs.
2. Create targeted LinkedIn Company Product Page variations. LinkedIn Company Pages offer an awesome targeting tool that enables you to personalize the products/services a LinkedIn page visitor sees when they visit your company product page on LinkedIn. You can target based on demographic information such as industry, job function, and geographic location.
3. Online advertising and inbound marketing offers a wealth of data analytics to guide product marketing and marketing tactics. 

“Email marketing” is mostly generic, interruption oriented, pushy, and untargeted. However, when email is used by sales and in conjunction with highly targeted (personalized) sales campaigns by sales people directly the results can be outstanding. 

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