No marketer sits down to craft messages that will be lost, forgotten, or worse yet, completely ignored.

Yet in today’s age where information is no longer scarce, and it’s harder than ever to break through, this is precisely what happens to many of us each day.

If we are going to succeed in affecting change, and convincing our prospects that we will improve their lives, we cannot be ignored. Must not be forgotten. Memorability is mission one.

It’s nearly impossible to be memorable if your messages jump all over the map and counting on volume over value won’t do the trick. In their book “Experiences: The 7th Era of Marketing” Robert Rose and Carla Johnson explain:

“A study conducted by the Corporate Executive Board in 2012 concluded that there is no linear correlation between the number of interactions with customers and the depth of relationship with that customer. Nevertheless, most marketing strategies center on this metric: the more interactions we have, the more data we glean, then the deeper our relationship must be—and it’s simply not true… In reality, that linear relationship flattens much more quickly than most marketers think.”

For many us, when leads are down and reports are due, ramping up volume and resulting to “spray and pray” is the tactic of choice. Build a bunch of content. Fire off emails. Hope something sticks (and it rarely does).

The cure for this scattershot approach is to begin every effort by first defining a Theme.

What is a Campaign Theme?

A campaign Theme is a promise of improvement that you make to your market, one which all your messages and content will support.

It is a promise that you can own, and one that will set your company apart as unique.

Why is a Theme Important?

The market for attention, like any other market, is bound by the laws of supply and demand.

There is too much content in the world and so demand falls. For you and I, this is problematic.

We must live in our prospects mind as the one organization that is uniquely qualified to solve their problem(s). If they ignore our messages, how can we earn this coveted spot?

In the classic work, “The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing” Al Ries and Jack Trout define a solution to this challenge in Law Five: The law of Focus – the ability to own a word (or in our case a promise) in our prospects’ minds.

FedEx built their brand by owning the word overnight. Crest built it by owning the word cavities.

When the fateful moment arrives when your prospect has a problem that needs solving, what will they remember about you?

As well constructed (and well executed) theme means you are first in their mind.

The Four Key Elements of a Breakthrough Theme

At its essence, a campaign Theme is a top-level message or idea that is:

1. For a specific someone.
   A great campaign Theme must have a particular person in mind. Not just a persona, but a person. A real human who you believe would care about the promise. By beginning with a real person, you are more likely to create something memorable and human – rather than a Theme stuffed with jargon and focused on you.
2. Empathetic.
   With a real person in mind, you can then work to understand that persons thoughts, feelings, pains, aspirations and point of view. A great Theme will be based on their core desires and positioned in pursuit of improvement.
3. Impactful.
   Once you have your promise, it’s time find the market facing words – ones that will stand out, and demand your prospects, stop, click, engage. Being impactful means being bold. It means a willingness to avoid sameness and lameness.
4. Memorable.
   From the impact of your bold promise you’ll earn memorability. The resonance you need to earn the attention, mindshare, and ultimately the nod when it comes time to choose a solution.

The Benefits of a Thematic Planning Approach

The benefits of a thematic planning approach are many; however the ones we routinely see are:

1. Calm, Measured Approach
   Teams that rely on a Theme have more clarity around their purpose and mission. The whole team understands the change they are trying to make, and the position they are working to own, and always has that Theme as a guiding light.
2. Stickiness
   Websites are sticky when visitors stay long and return often. Brands are sticky when prospects recall them often and rely on them as a source of expertise. A Theme delivers the consistency you need to own a position.
3. Category Ownership
   Rather than compete with the masses, establishing a Theme allows you to break free from commodization and create a new category – a category where you are the leader versus “another XYZ provider.” Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne define this as Red Ocean vs Blue Ocean. The Red Ocean is where all your competitors play. The commoditized, occupied space. The cutthroat competition turns the ocean bloody red. The Blue Ocean is where you play – an uncontested space that you define based on your Theme.
4. Dramatically Improved Marketing Metrics
   Since your Theme is built in service of your market (remember element one of the Five Key Elements of a Campaign Theme), you attract the best to you. You become known as one apart, as an expert in a specific space. Engagement rises, and so do key marketing and business metrics.

Five Examples of Breakthrough Themes

Crafting a great Theme is a blend of art and science. The best Themes make explicit promises that can be supported by content, and focus on a promise you can own.

• DomainTools, a cybersecurity company, promises to help companies See Threats Coming.
• FedEx built its early brand based on a clear focus on the Theme Overnight.
• The billion dollar clothing brand Bonobos promises The Perfect Fit

Some of the best Themes go beyond a promise and spark a movement. David Cummings, Co-Founder of marketing automation giant Pardot explains the benefit of being a movement-first company in his essay Product-First or Movement-First:

“Movement-first companies are on a mission greater than themselves. Everything centers around educating the market about this better way to do things… Movement-first companies are all about creating a movement.”

• Hubspot changed an entire marketplace with a focus on Inbound
• Engagio is seeking to change an entire marketplace by evangelizing Account Based Marketing

All of these Themes have a deep resonance which can be supported by compelling content and ultimately owned in the minds of their market.

Putting it Together – Building Your Content Plan to Support Your Theme

Armed with your Theme you can then begin building out your content. Plan on building content to support all elements of the buyer’s journey:

• Awareness
• Consideration
• Decision
• Loyalty

Then work to execute your roll-out in a methodical way: first building your audience, and then nurturing the engaged audience to a close.

For example, DomainTools might start with whitepapers defining the new threats facing companies. They might explore case studies of companies who have intercepted threats and how. Then they might build out product specific content that shows how their solution allows you to See Threats Coming like no one else can.

Armed with this approach, you’ll be far more organized, prepared and impactful than your competitors and have the punch you need to overcome the greatest obstacle you face: the relentless and constant noise overwhelming us all.

 

Hiten Shah, founder of QuickSprout and publisher of Product Habits, a newsletter for product creators, recently polled his readers and asked them about their most common product mistakes.

His findings boiled down to three key trends – trends which are also among the most common problems I find when consulting with clients on their marketing.

The Top 3 #B2B Marketing Mistakes

1. Insufficient prospect research. Rather than deeply research, meet with, and understand our market, we rely on stereotypes and generalizations. Without the necessary empathy, and deep understanding of pains, aspirations and day-to-day struggles, our messages fail to resonate.
2. Listening to team members’ opinions rather than testing. Rather than testing our messages/content ideas/themes/product positioning in a systematic way, we sit in meetings and debate the merits of different approaches. Usually, the person with the loudest voice (rather than the most informed opinion) wins out.Rather than relying on opinions, modern digital marketing allows us to systematically (and quickly) test and vet our assumptions in measured and highly accurate ways allowing us to hone messaging and approaches with market feedback, rather than with opinion. Take the time to do so, and you’ll avoid missed opportunities and wasted efforts.
3. Lack of focus. Too many markets/titles/products/campaigns without the resources or overarching strategy to support them. Rather than focus and segment our messages/efforts/content, we boil the ocean and reach no one.

We’d all do well to remember these mistakes to avoid making them in our own efforts. What else? What are some common mistakes you’ve encountered? 

As a rule of thumb – always less – in copy, design, and communication overall.

Strip away the excess and what you’re left with is the core – the thing you really needed to say, to make them feel, or to help them understand.

It’s not easy, it’s not fast, but in today’s overcrowded world, it’s what’s needed.

Concise, clear, direct – that’s how you break through.

This article is part of our Breakthrough Demand Generation series. Each week we’ll share a new campaign concept and learnings from recent launches. 

If marketing is the art and science of using communication to alter human behavior, then we can conclude that in general eBooks are a terrible way to do marketing. Let me explain why this matters to your demand gen email campaigns…

We know from research that best-case scenario prospects will spend 3-minutes with an eBook. This is the best case. Usually, we’re looking at less than 1 minute.

Yet, the truth is, eBooks are often essential – as they are one of the most cost-effective ways to tell a story or teach a lesson. The answer to this paradox is The “Snippet” Campaign. In this article we’ll share:

1. Why “Snippet” campaigns are so valuable
2. The key building blocks
3. When to use them
4. An Award-Winning example from Nuance Communications

About “Snippet” Campaigns

The Snippet Campaign is an ideal way to take complex ideas and break them up into easily digestible pieces.

In essence, each email merchandises a single idea. A chart, a graph, a lesson. A single piece of a large asset.

You work methodically through your asset (eBook, infographic, etc.) picking out the key points and share just a single point in each email, as well as a link to the asset itself.

The Benefits of “Snippet” Campaigns

The benefit of this approach is not only the ability to deliver more messages, in a more relevant fashion, while feeding your audience key ideas iin easily digestible chunks.

Rather than send a single email pushing downloads – then crossing your fingers and hoping that the person reads the asset – you drip the information out piece by piece.

As an example, Sumo would do well to build Snippet Campaigns for their massive marketing guides. Marketo for their Definitive Guides. (We’ll share a full example in a moment).

The guides are too large to digest at a glance. And research shows people are no longer willing to spend the time to read them deeply. The “Snippet” campaign gives you the opportunity to share the key pieces that will affect downstream demand for your product/solution.

When to Launch a “Snippet” Campaign

We recommend using this type of campaign when you’re looking to:

• Nurture newly acquired leads (after they download the asset, for example)
• Re-engage stagnant leads
• Transform contacts to MQLs to SALs

Keys for Success

A Snippet Campaign will succeed when you have:

• A strategically positioned asset. Your asset should work as a demonstrative sales piece for your solution (especially if your goal is MQL –> SQL conversions). We’ll elaborate on this more below.
• Strong, related social proof. The asset will do much of your heavy lifting; however, driving next-steps will mean “de-risking” the proposition for your champion. Having brand name social proof “de-risks” next steps, as whoever engages with your campaign will need to share you with their boss and other internal constituents. Not required, but strong social proof will do wonders for your cause.
• “Plain text” email templates.  See the article  “How to Create High-Performance Email and Landing Page Templates for Act-On” for more details. As you’ll see in the example, these campaigns work best when sent from a person (versus marketing@acmeco.com for example) and Plain Text email templates will dramatically increase your effectiveness.

AMA Award-Winning Example: Nuance Communication’s “5 Imperatives” Campaign

Rather than stick to hypotheticals let’s walk through the planning, and execution, of a Snippet Campaign from a few years back.

Example Campaign Summary – Nuance Communications

• Audience. Customer experience executives at large companies – the campaign was launched across many verticals (financial services, healthcare, government, telecom, etc.).
• Timing. Emails were sent approximately once every 5-days, including weekends.
• Strategy. See the detailed write-up below.
• Behavioral triggers and campaign flow. All contacts received all emails. Those who engaged received an additional, automated trigger email, from the company’s SDR, as follow-up which merchandised a case study. Calls also went out to those who engaged. “Engaged” was defined as an asset download which was done via blind-form submit (no landing page).

Example Campaign – The Strategy

The “5 Imperatives” campaign used a problem-solution format promoting Nuance’s “Proactive Engagement” solution. The ins and outs of the solution aren’t the important for our discussion here. The important thing is the structure.

The overarching structure of the eBook (aside from introduction and conclusion) was:

• Problem/New Reality #1: Share some data or tell a story to illustrate a problem or a new reality.
• Solution to Problem/New Reality #1: Show how the solution solves for it, ideally using story, demonstrative examples, and visuals.
• Problem/New Reality #2: Share some data or tell a story to illustrate a problem or a new reality.
• Solution to Problem/New Reality #2: Show how the solution solves for it, ideally using story, demonstrative examples, and visuals.

Etc. We did this for each of the 5 Imperatives that we identified. Emails then covered a single imperative in each.

Now rather than send a single email, we had 6-weeks’ worth of emails (from a single asset), each telling a piece of a larger story. This is a structure you can (and should) replicate in your own assets.

Example Email

Emails highlighted one key point each and were simple and to the point.

Goals and Result Metrics

• KPI Goal: 300 MQLs, 62 SALs
• Stretch Goal: 500 MQLs, 125 SALs
• Actual: 946 MQLs, 139 SALs

The campaign exceeded expectations – both top-of-funnel and bottom-of-funnel – because Nuance was able to influence change rather than simply drive awareness – an important distinction.

As we said up front, if you’re lucky people will spend 3-minutes with your eBook. Usually less than one.

Less than a single minute.

Driving downloads is a useful way to aggregate attention (as you drove someone to click – thus they are at least aware of the asset) but it’s an ineffective way to get them to actually think deeply and decide to make a change (engage with your company, recommend a solution, take a risk by changing).

Snippet campaigns break down complex ideas into bite-sized segments so that you can drive the change that you seek.

If you’d like to get to work crafting your own Snippet Campaign, drop us a line here.

In modern marketing, speed-to-execution and efficient use of resources are often what separate winning departments from spinning departments. These winning teams have a relentless focus on ideation -> creation -> testing -> learning -> optimizing.

No piece of infrastructure fast tracks this process quite like High-Performance Act-On Templates.

Getting your templates right allows you to:

• Launch campaigns faster
• Using fewer resources
• At higher degree of quality
• With more consistent results

Over hundreds of iterations, we’ve nailed down some best practices that we’d like to pass on to you.

In this article, we’ll share the best practice and then share examples from a recent built to bring each principle to life.

If you’d like to skip the reading and fast track your own templates, get in touch here.

High Conversion Act-On Landing Page Best Practices

1. Build Modular Content Blocks for a Variety of Use Cases

When you build out your templates, make sure to design content blocks to accommodate all your common use cases. This allows you to create templates once then quickly repurpose when it comes time to launch a new campaign. Among the use cases we consider critical:

• Gated content downloads
• Ungated content downloads
• Webinar registration
• Sign-up campaigns (if relevant to your business)
• On-demand webinars registration (featuring timestamps for quick navigation)
• General opt-in pages

The key here is to plan for all contingencies and then adapt. Since your template will feature modular blocks, you use only the sections you need for an individual promotion.

Ungated Example – Blue Colorway

This ungated example follows all the best practices we’ll cover here. CTAs up high. Modular blocks (which can be easily added or subtracted in the Act-On Composer) for a variety of use cases – content blocks for videos, content downloads, on-demand webinars with timestamp links, etc. – social proof in the form of logos and testimonials and more.

Blocks can be quickly duplicated or stripped away as needed fast-tracking any campaign.

2. Build Using Multiple Brand Colorways

Different promotions utilize different aesthetics. We always build at least two functionally identical, yet aesthetically different, versions of our landing page templates. This allows you to keep your promotions on brand, while varying your aesthetic for different audiences and use cases. As an example, when client’s are servicing multiple industries, we’ll often coordinate colors to be industry specific.

Gated Example – Black Colorway

Same as above but with forms added, this time in a complementary black colorway.

3. Include Calls to Action (CTAs) Above the Fold

Where conversions are a concern (and aren’t they always) make sure your CTAs fall “above the fold”, meaning, they are visible without scrolling. For longer landing pages (which sometimes outperform shorter versions depending on the use case BTW), make sure to sprinkle your CTAs throughout. You never want the next step to be hard to find.

Example

Using the top content block from above, see how the call-to-action is prominently featured – no scrolling required to take an action.

4. Ensure Templates are Fully Responsive and Mobile Optimized

Like anything built on the web today, your landing pages should be mobile responsive. When building out individual blocks, take care to ensure that they stack naturally as many people will view your landing pages on mobile.

Example of Mobile Optimized Landing Page

High Conversion Act-On Email Best Practices

When it comes to email, you’ll want to do all of the above, but also take a few extra precautions and build a few additional formats.

1. Build a Plain Text Version & Forward Version

Plain text emails, and the Power Forward (as we lovingly call it), are two of the most underutilized yet powerful email formats. When used properly, they drive more conversions than their heavily designed counterparts. We won’t get into the full strategy of how and when to use these emails formats here – but we’ll show you a couple examples of templates for reference.

Plain Text Email Example

Notice how this example appears as though this is a personal email from a salesperson. This is how you do personal outreach at scale.

Power Forward Email Example

The Power Forward is, well, exactly what it sounds – a “Forward” of a previous email sent out from Act-On. We call it “The Power Forward” because it’s such a powerful tactic. In fact, this technique often drives 60-75% of our total webinar registrations.

Notice how we take care to populate the header of the “forwarded” email with relevant sender details. This makes it feel personal. A powerful way to use this format is to forward an HTML email, for example, a webinar invitation, from a salesperson with a personal note on top. Then it feels like personal outreach.

2. Litmus Test Everything

Litmus is a tool that allows you to see screenshots of all your emails across 70+ apps and devices to ensure compatibility in all environments. Often a template that looks great on your screen, or in the preview mode of the composer, will break down in other email clients or on other devices.

Make sure your templates are tested and vetted to avoid dumping dollars down the drain.

This final step will ensure your emails always render properly, and you get the largest ROI on your investment.

Want to fast-track your own High-Performance Act-On templates? Contact us here.