I have a secret that I want to share with you…but I can’t.  The truth is, my approach to B2B email marketing is pretty darned effective.  If I share it here then whole world will know and I’ll have to get another job.  Plus, it won’t be as effective.

At some point businesses are going to catch onto this and it will be overused.  But, I have not seen it yet and I’ve been doing this for a few different companies for at least 5 years.

I stumbled upon this method 5 years ago when I was working a sales job.  I was frustrated and overworking myself with prospecting for new business.  I would spend most of my time prospecting and fitting in actual work between calls.  How many times have you sat down with goal of making 80 calls a day?  I was there.  I had to make 80 calls to reach five executives I’ve targeted.  Of those five people maybe one or two would want to even entertain a discussion at a later time.

Wow, I was getting burned out.  But, I had to put food on the table so I kept working.  I was working 75 hours a week.  I showed up at to the office at 5am every weekday so I could call on east coast businesses when they showed up for work at.  Sometimes I would come in earlier if I knew the executive I wanted to speak with was likely in the office and wouldn’t have a gatekeeper to intercept me.  Then I was sending an email and had an epiphany.

I stumbled upon the power of laser-focused email marketing on a larger scale.  It sounds crazy but it’s true.  I created a system that generated enough leads to keep me busy working on deals instead of prospecting most of the day.

Here’s what happened.  I got too busy!  I couldn’t keep up with all the leads so I had to start giving deals out to other people on the sales floor and told them to just take care of me when it closed.  After I figured out that sales people are rats and didn’t “take care of me” when the deal closed, I formed a sales-team within the company, (it was like the wild west…we could do just about anything).  My team benefited from my lead generation efforts and I didn’t have to sell anymore.

That situation worked well.  Then I got a call from a sales-manager at another company, (he previously worked for the company I was working for).  Of course, he wanted me to come work for them and he would pay me more…so I did.  It was an easy transition since all I did was bring my entire sales-team with me.

Unfortunately, that company fell apart 3 weeks after we got there.  I felt bad so called the owners of the old company and begged for our jobs back.  Everyone was ok to come back accept for me.  Ok, my mistake; I shouldn’t have left in the first place and taken my team with me.  But, at least the rest of the team got their jobs back.

I checked around in the same industry but couldn’t find anything I liked so called a buddy of mine that does his own marketing and we both got curious as to what I might be able to do with his database.  We set up a trial run and it was successful.  Very successful!  Those results were typical for me but he was flat out astonished.  But, again, he was a little too busy to follow up on all the new business so he thanked me and said he would call when got caught up.

So, he called me but it was a month later.  In the mean time I went to work for another company and told him I would have to do it on the side, which worked out well for him too since the campaigns are very effective.  To make a long-story a not-as-long-as-it-could-be story, I have been using this secret formula for about 5 years.  It works extremely well because of the laser-beam focus.

The problem with the campaigns is that they are far more effective than other programs that base their success on branding or volume or both.  The laser approach works me out of a job, (at least temporarily), every time.  I suppose that’s why I’m writing this post.  I’m looking for companies that have 10-20 employees to keep busy.  I don’t shy away from money so if you have more or less, we can talk about it.  But, I think 10-20 a sweet-spot for my formula.  Any more than that and we have to hire another person; any less than that and we get overburdened with new leads that we don’t have time to close.

I kept an office of 8 people super-busy for a year while worked on other stuff…like learning the rest of Internet marketing.  I got so bored with that job that I left to go try out my formula at a mortgage company.  BIG mistake!

This formula does not work for Business-to-consumer.  I won’t go into details but let’s jst say I was back to working 70+ hours a week trying to apply the formula to the mortgage industry.  It does not work because there simply too many records with bad data to a market that is completely saturated.  I mean, ask yourself, how many email addresses do you have?  Do you use the same email address for everything or do you have accounts you use when you think you might be spammed?  Do you have accounts you use when you want to maintain your privacy?  How about your business email?  Do you use that for everything; or do you use your business email for business?

Simply put, there are too many variable to put together a good B2C campaign with my formula.  Now, I have other formulas that work for B2C but they take longer to build because they require proper data acquisition methods.

Ok, jumping off the soap-box.

Here’s what I do, (not how I do it…that’s part of my secret):

• Build separate database from your current prospect or recapture list.
• Add to the database, (if necessary).
• Scrub data to make sure it’s a clean campaign.
• Compose the messages.
• Administer the campaigns.

There’s a lot more but it’s all in the details of formula application.

Some questions and answers that might help:

Who uses the system?
Business’s that market to corporate executives for business services.

Can I use this system for business-to-consumer marketing.
No, sorry.  I’ve tried it a few times each time thinking I’ve fixed it somehow.  I don’t want you to have a bad experience.  However, I have several other services you can take advantage of.

Can we pay the setup fee in installments?
Yes.  I’ll break it up for you.  1/3 + 2% on commitment, 1/3 + 2% on implementation, 1/3 + 2% when the first campaign goes out.

How much do you charge?
It depends on the size and goals of your organization but my minimum fee is a $5,000 engagement.  It’s not a lot of money but it’s not chicken feed either.

To reach me, click on the banner to the right of this page and complete the form.  Otherwise, you can contact me here: david (at) ocwebmarketing (dot) net

Please comment if you have any questions.

Thanks,

David