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B2B Companies will update their Whitepapers, Guides, and Case Studies in ‘08. Have you ever noticed how so many B2B companies let their online Resource Centers get really outdated (and yes, that includes eROI for a few of our 45+ free guides, case studies, and email studies). 2008 is the year that this will change. Without fresh content, B2B companies’ marketing programs begin to die.

MarketingSherpa speaks the marketing language. MEC Labs speaks scientific analysis. MEC Labs acquired MarketingSherpa within the past 6 months and the MarketingSherpa Email Summit ‘07 is the first main opportunity for 650 email marketers to experience the difference in the culture and business model of each entity.

Anne Holland and Stefan Tornquist nailed it. They almost feel as if they are born to co-present. The audience was engaged, participated and was so focused it was great. Nice work Anne and Stefan. I would love to see more of you two up infront.

I’m impressed by MarketingSherpa’s presentation – they get it. They show instead of tell. Case studies and lessons learned sink in immediately. They use pretty pictures to tell me the Before and After and why certain marketing tactics succeeded vs. failed.

MEC Labs is trying to do the same thing, but speaks and shows formulas, science, data, mathematical graphs, and PPT slides with lots of small text on it.

Major disconnect here. So much so that I’m blogging about it during MEC Labs “Multvariable experiment.” As a former financial analyst and college graduate with a science degree, I realize that I am clearly a marketer and not a scientist after this conference.

I love the conference, but I’ve got to question: Will MarketingSherpa + MEC Labs Marriage Work? If MEC Labs has MORE of an influence on the ‘08 event, you’ll see more MarketingSherpa-type marketers tuning out.

I know it will work as MEC Labs is focused on the business, but they need Anne and Crew out infront of the world as their dynamic style resonates with this audience.

VistaPrint is a Small Business / Home Office, office supply company. First entry to company for most of its 8 million customers is Business Cards. 17 websites in 8 different countries.

Goals: Improve Net Contribution/Impression

Secondary Goals: improve deliverability. Removed non-consumers from list.

Speaker spoke so fast, I couldn’t write most of the notes needed for this blog post.

Transactional messaging expected and favorably perceived by recipients.

Sprint Before: all text emails with no cross-sell, or up-sell messaging

Sprint After: Started with shipping emails. Wanted to Keep personalization and some text. But, there was so much to improve (while still keeping legal and IT happy).

Content the same, but formatting much more professional and lively. Navigation in upper-right and cross-sell opportunities along right-side.
Conversion rate = 8x higher than base emails. Very relevant and timely.

Email is Time Sensitive – performs differently than print, for example: “Buy now, pay later” as offer performed better than “Only $1.99 now”

Members like mystery, but make sure it’s worth their click. Need to have a really strong offer on landing page.

Try new things. Creative e-postcard (with powerful image) performed far better than primarily text email with small visual interest.

Lessons Learned:
Stop Guessing. Let the customer decide.
Email does not always work in print.
Customers like mystery and personalization, but make sure it’s worth the click or it won’t perform very well from a conversion standpoint.