In This Issue

Get Social with CCC

Upcoming Events

Welcome

Welcome to the latest edition of the Cross Examiner, Cross Country Computer’s quarterly newsletter designed to share the latest on our products and services as well as great tips from top leaders in the industry. We welcome your feedback and encourage you to submit articles and white papers for consideration. Enjoy!

SVP Cross Country Computer

2010: The Decade for Data Diversity

By Chris DeMartine, Director of Business Development, NextMark

There’s been a lot of talk among direct marketing industry veterans about ‘reinventing themselves’ in the digital age, followed by a crowd of social media consultants with creative concoctions for how to prosper in times of change. Buyers beware – many of these prophetic promises are backed by online activity levels that do not translate to anything more than friends and followers. While many of these experts can get you results, they may not be the results you need. Social marketing strategies often lack a responsible plan for sustainable revenue growth, and it’s difficult to apply meaningful success criteria without statistically valid conversion metrics.

So, before you decide to take a wrecking ball to your traditional direct marketing campaign strategy, consider that what you already know about profitable direct mail and email marketing can be applied to new digital media. Therefore, it may not be necessary to reinvent your marketing when all you need to do is evaluate some alternatives, test, and diversify. Here are three things to consider as you refine your plans in 2010:

	Current trends: not bad for everyone Direct mail is still the leader based on total estimated spending for 2009 of $43.7 billion, but obviously not the growth leader since it declined 16.8 percent from last year. Digital media is the only direct channel with an expected overall spending increase of 5 percent for 2009. This includes email, search engine marketing, display advertising, and mobile.1 The most recent DMA Quarterly Business Review reported survey results from 149 marketers, agencies and suppliers who responded with their average change in revenue for Q3 2009 versus Q3 2008. The total average (unweighted) decline in revenue was 6.1 percent. However, 19.5 percent of the respondents reported an average (unweighted) revenue increase of 23.8 percent, and 27.5 percent of the respondents did not report a revenue decrease.2 The takeaway is that half of these organizations performed considerably well or at least held their ground during a period of low consumer confidence and high unemployment. If you’re able to find out what they have in common, then determine whether or not it can be replicated for your business.
	Outlook: marketing services providers Some deep cost cuts were made in the first half of 2009, which delivered healthy bottom lines in the third quarter. Equity markets responded and stock prices increased accordingly. However, most top lines have not recovered and companies will be challenged to increase customer acquisition efforts in 2010. Loyal shareholders want quality earnings delivered from revenue growth, not just cost-cutting. Could this mean a rebound from attrition from media buyers? If so, then there may be good news for marketing services providers including advertising agencies, service bureaus, list brokers and managers. However, only those with diversified data solutions will capture the growth and reallocation of the 2010 marketing budgets. Just look at traditional advertising measurements like reach and frequency, apply them to the web, and you’ll see why it’s so important to have a strong presence online. The Nielsen Company published a ranking of the top ten U.S. Web Parent Companies and Search Providers for October 2009, which shows a unique audience (reach) of more than 156 million representing over 6.7 billion searches (frequency) for Google alone. Considering there is life beyond Google, the total number of searches exceeded 10.2 billion, and that’s just for October.3However, marketers still need tangible results and a favorable return-on-investment (ROI) that can be replicated, but they do not need to pursue getting tagged on Facebook or tweeted from the “Tower of Babble.” It’s important to understand that while social media utilization is on the rise, the spending in this area is not. This is primarily due to lack of knowledge regarding positive versus negative brand implications and actual ROI.
	Channel competition: countertrends and complements Don’t just look at channel costs, but consider the competition within each of them. With a compelling value proposition for digital media and the ability to capture results in real-time, there is more competition in that space. What will the countertrend be to this? Direct mail is currently delivering good results for many marketers who have not cut back during the recession. Less competition in the mail means less clutter in the mailbox, and that can improve response. Be open-minded but careful of false assumptions when you analyze response rates. Going postal (media channel) may be delivering more online buyers (response channel) and revenue than you realize.
	Lifetime value: intelligent data cards Consider the effectiveness of each new media channel as it relates to acquisition and retention. Direct mail is still a strong media channel for new customer acquisition, regardless of the response channel. You can’t beat the data card information on quality response lists when it comes to determining variables to predict lifetime value. Many experienced list brokers have access to high-definition data cards that include frequency distributions for recency, frequency, and monetary value (RFM) data. Doubling the response rate may result in half the income if you’re not tuned in to the ‘FM’ metrics on the data card for lifetime value. This information is now updated directly from certified integration partners that host files for list rental fulfillment, so you know the counts are up-to-date and accurate. There’s nothing wrong with a conservative approach that leverages technology to optimize traditional channels while testing new channels with some apprehension, as long as it leads to future diversification based on the right success criteria. Traditional direct marketers are great at quantifying results and there is no better community to succeed in the decade for data diversity. While the leading indicators (equity market indices) are positive, the road to an economic recovery is expected to be long so there’s no need to leap forward with unproven tactics. Just continue to test the waters, but don’t expect it to rain just yet.

Chris DeMartine is Director of Business Development for NextMark, a leading provider of tools and resources that help organizations to buy , sell and learn about mailing lists. Learn more about NextMark at www.NextMark.com or visit Chris on LinkedIn at http://www.linkedin.com/in/chrisdemartine.

¹Source: Outlook 2010: First Look at What to Expect in Direct & Digital Marketing, Winterberry Group, October 2009
²Source: DMA Quarterly Business Review, Direct Marketing Association, October 2009
³Source: http://en-us.nielsen.com/rankings/insights/rankings/internet

10 Ways to Improve Your Conversion Rate

By Jay Bower, President, Crossbow Group

Ok, you got your prospect to raise his hand. Now comes the hard part: turning him into a customer. Here are 10 ways to address the challenge in the age of accountability.

1. Acknowledge leads instantaneously and personally. In the age of the nanosecond and Instant Messaging, if you wait even days to follow up a lead, forget about it. Swiftness counts when you’re in a competitive situation. And make sure your “Thanks for your interest” has a real person’s name on it – people buy from other people more readily than they buy from corporations.
2. Let your lead generation programs do more qualifying of prospects. First, the more you target your audience, the more qualified your leads will be, and the higher your conversion rates. The kind of offer you make is a qualifier in itself. If you make it too good, you’ll attract prospects that will never convert. White Papers (and other “editorial” incentives) usually generate the right kind of response. You can ask certain questions of new prospects to qualify them without turning off the lead faucet.
3. Develop segment- and offer-specific landing pages. If you segment your lead generation advertising, carrying that segmentation through to the landing page will improve conversion results dramatically. Using the landing page to remind CFOs of the particular advantage of your service to them, to acknowledge the offer again in specific terms, and to point the way to the most relevant pages on your web site harnesses the personalization power of technology.
4. Deliver more than prospects expect to receive. The way you handle leads – from generating them, through nurturing, to conversion – tells prospects how they can expect to be treated as customers. Go overboard, especially for your best prospects. Courier material instead of putting it into the mail. Add an extra (but relevant) White Paper they didn’t request. Give them a particular insight about their industry or about a competitor.
5. Engage in a lot of testing. Most testing in lead programs involves the first step – getting people to respond. But testing after they respond can have as big an impact on the success of your program. You will want to look at the communication channels – mail, email, and phone – and when to use each. Offers for taking the next step should be evaluated. You can even look at testing how many “next steps” there should be.
6. Increase your product’s or service’s relevance as the conversion process unfolds. Even if you segment your lead generation efforts, at the beginning of the process you often have to treat prospects en masse. It is only when you begin to learn about the prospect’s unique needs that you can begin tailoring lead nurturing and moving toward a one-to-one relationship. As you discover new information about prospects, communicate additional ways your product or service is relevant.
7. Align systems and inform personnel. Make sure your phone reps and sales people know how leads come in, where they’re housed, how they’re scored and how to use CRM and/or SFM systems like Salesforce.com and Siebel. Let your entire organization know your historical conversation rates and current expectations. Get senior sales and marketing management to buy into new target.
8. Develop a lead scoring system and marketing communications streams consistent with opportunity potential and sales coverage. Not all leads are equal in value. If you model or profile how certain prospect segments converted to customers in the past, you can apply this model to current leads. “A” prospects may get six conversion efforts, including two high impact direct mail packages and two phone calls; “C” prospects might get only one or two efforts executed at minimal cost and maybe even through “Autorespond” technology. By focusing on best prospects, conversion rates will rise.
9. Invest as much in conversion creative as you do for lead generation. You’ve spent a lot of money to get the horse to water. Make sure your creative persuades them to drink. Generating leads requires less persuasion than converting them because you can employ powerful offers to get prospects to raise their hands. 10.Provide short questionnaires to determine leads’ BANT (Budget, Authority, Need and Timing) score. As prospects become more trusting and more invested in the sales process, they are more willing to answer questions and provide information. Based on the answers, build follow-on communications consistent with their level of interest.

One last thing to consider: Using an outside resource with expertise in your market or with your specific need. Your costs may increase short term, but I’d bet your cost per sale will decrease significantly if you’ve chosen well. Jay Bower is the president of Crossbow Group, a B-to-B Magazine Top Agency for the last three years. Crossbow Group is full-service direct and interactive marketing and communications agency for well known brands. Contact Jay at jbower@crossbowgroup.com to learn more.

List Managers challenged by increasing competition, lower margins and more complex demands need to find ways to improve eroding ROI by increasing gains and decreasing costs. Cross Country Computer’s turnkey List Management solution can help. Click here to learn more »

Featured Employee: Sarah Witherow

Sarah Witherow, Account Executive

Sarah is the lead List Rental Account Executive at Cross Country Computer. In this role, Sarah is the day-to-day contact on list rental accounts interacting with list brokers and clients as they schedule database updates and fulfill requests for counts and orders. Sarah QC’s every list rental file prior to it “going live” to ensure each update runs smoothly.

She will begin each new relationship with training on the client interface portion of the List Management Optimization Suite called CrossSelect. Sarah also provides Help Desk type support for any questions that may arise after training is completed. For those clients who have selected a full service model, Sarah will provide counts and fulfill orders per specification.

Sarah joined Cross Country Computer in July 2007 with a long history of direct marketing and operations experience. Prior to joining the team, Sarah worked at Advanstar Communications for 15 years in their Marketing Services Division as List Product Manager where she worked with list managers, brokers and internal management to oversee day to day operations and the support staff as well as sales for the organization.

In her free time, Sarah enjoys relaxing at the local movie theater and sampling the latest specials at local restaurants with friends. Sarah also spends time with her family and celebrates the joys of life with her granddaughter Alexis.

Sarah looks forward to a continued working relationship with our existing accounts as well as many new introductions to new clients.