B2B marketers need to look beyond the obvious when it comes to using email and other interactive marketing channels, in order to cut through the clutter.
Email is receiving something of a bad press at the moment with consumers, business people and marketers finding it increasingly difficult as a way of reaching potential prospects, although it very definitely has its place as a way of keeping existing relationships with customers alive.
Leaving aside issues of growing unhappiness with the amount of spam clogging up executives’ inboxes, marketers who insist on using email to try and reach cold prospects are facing an increasing numbers of barriers.
Firstly, there are questions of data protection and electronic privacy [see boxout opposite for further details]. Then there are the increasingly sophisticated filters that Internet service providers, email service providers and email software packages are deploying in the war against spam. These are blocking significant numbers of legitimate emails, even when they come from companies that the recipient has a previous relationship with. The more sophisticated an email, the more likely it is that it falls foul of filters, not to mention company firewalls or corporate IT department bans on running files that have not been officially checked and sanctioned for viruses or hardware/software conflicts.
Finally, if a marketer does want to send something a bit more interesting than a simple text email – with high-resolution pictures or video footage, for example – and if that email is to have the desired effect, the target recipient must have hardware and software that can handle the files being sent. This is assuming they get through filters and firewalls in the first place.
Problem solving
One way to get round these problems is not to use email – or indeed the Internet – at all. Instead, some marketers will compile an interactive presentation saved to CD Rom, DVD or memory stick, etc. then send it by mail to the potential client, hand it over at an exhibition or in a face-to-face business meeting.
Matt Butterworth, MD of creative design agency Folk, says his agency has created a number of electronic and interactive packages for clients. Recently, the agency created an electronic brochure on DVD for a client called Shop Fittings Direct (SFD) as part of an integrated push that also included a website and regular email newsletters.
The agency itself also sends out DVDs by post, Butterworth says. “When someone is promoted to marketing director, they are bombarded with emails these days. We find sending them a DVD with our credentials on is a much more effective way to reach them, as they can look at it whenever they want to. It’s good to get something physical into their hands and unlike an email, they can’t just delete it at the press of a key.”
Obviously, some marketers will restrict themselves to PowerPoint presentations or corporate videos, but the best results are likely to come from something slicker and, if possible, more interactive.
Steve McKinley, director and head of DM at Geoff Howe Marketing Communications, likes to refer to such packages as ‘electronic direct mail’ (EDM). He observes, “We want to make a distinction between EDM and email. EDM gives you all the tangible elements of a real DM piece that email can’t.” For example, an EDM piece can recreate some of the mystery and suspense that a mailer may have by showing an on-screen graphic of an envelope. When the viewer clicks on it, the envelope opens like a real envelope would and a virtual piece of paper emerges.
Alternatively, the screen could show a virtual version of a complicated folded piece of card, with elements of the marketing message presented in order as the card is ‘unfolded’. McKinley says, “It’s a version of the ‘fold or reveal’ mechanism that you can find in real DM pieces, and it allows you to tell a story while maintaining suspense and interest.”
Such packages can be distributed in a number of ways, he adds: as attachments to emails, as links to websites, or as CD Rom, DVD and USB memory sticks.
Geoff Howe Marketing Communications has created such packs for a number of its B2B clients; for example, it put one together for TDK to promote a new DAT tape system to SMEs. “They allow us much more flexibility and creativity,” says McKinley, compared with emails, which can be very restrictive because of hardware and software requirements, file sizes and firewalls and filters.
Brochureware
Many B2B marketers have been looking at converting existing hard-copy marketing collateral into an electronic form, for example, taking a product-focused sales brochure and burning it onto a CDRom or DVD.
Some people still call such offerings ‘brochureware’, but to digital marketing experts, brochureware is a four-letter word. They use it to refer to the sort of online catalogues that companies set up back at the end of the 20th Century, when this effectively involved snapshots of the paper versions of company brochures on their websites.
Today’s e-brochures are far more sophisticated. They may look exactly like the printed hard-copy version and may even incorporate a ‘page turning’ mechanism, so when viewers finish reading one page, they can move on to the next by clicking the bottom right-hand corner.
They will also be fully interactive: so, for example, an e-brochure for commercial vans might include still pictures of the different models, but if the reader clicks on one, they can then see video footage of the selected model in action, or choose different colours, add equipment such as roof-racks, lights and so on. Some sites even allow visitors to upload company names or corporate logos and see how they would look on the various vehicles.
Some brands, trying to market very high value items to small numbers of important clients have even been known to give them not just an electronic presentation, but the equipment to run it on, such as a PDA, laptop or other device. Market research agency TNS did this recently.
Complex technology
Dominic Duffey, MD of e-brochure specialists Applecart Solutions, warns that using such technology can be more complex then it first appears. “You need much more content for an interactive e-brochure than you do for a print version: there has to be something there when viewers click on an image, for example. Sourcing that extra content can be a problem, unless marketers are aware of exactly what is needed in advance and make sure they have it available.”
To return to the example of a company selling vans to SMEs, it is not enough just to have static views of each model from all sides; the marketing director would have to commission video showing the vans in action, or demonstrating cargo space by having someone fill them with boxes.
Duffey adds, “You have to tell clients what can be done, because otherwise they won’t be able to deliver content that uses interactivity to its fullest capacity.”
Richard Bush, MD at Base One, believes that there is a place for such e-brochure packages, but really only within an integrated campaign. One area his agency has been working on is systems that allow potential customers to create their own bespoke brochures from a menu of information on a website, which can then be sent out to them either in paper form or as a file (which in turn can be sent by email or on a CDRom or DVD).
Bush says, “We’ve been using this technique for Saab GB with their vehicle e-brochure downloads. The latest ones are personalised to the point where they contain your local dealer details, links to the site and a map, etc.” Many clients are requesting both a PDF version of the brochure and the hard-copy.
Bush adds that Base One has also “created desktop applications that employees, customers or prospects can download onto their desktop. Through these applications, you can stream selected relevant content.”
Paul Crabtree, marketing director of email marketing agency Adestra, observes that such mailings can work, “if people are expecting them. They shouldn’t be sent out unplanned. You have to let people know they are coming, so they will be looking out for them. You can circumvent the inbox [and potential problems with filters and firewalls] with them, but we’d argue that you should be telling targets to look out for the packages with an advance email or even a phone call.”
However, there are many digital marketing experts who do not believe there is any point to loading e-brochures or corporate presentations onto CD Roms, DVDs, etc. and mailing them out. With the phenomenal growth in broadband connections in the UK in the last year or so, and the way broadband bandwidth is increasing (up to 24 MBPS in some areas of the country), why bother putting presentations onto physical media and snail-mailing them, they ask?
Bush dismisses such applications as ‘gimmicks’ and adds, “If I want the experience of reading a magazine, I’ll buy the magazine. I think it’s a big mistake to look to replace media that can give a better experience with something electronic, just because we can.”
