Posted by
Bri Bauer on January 29th, 2013 at 11:26 am
Smart phones, groceries, copper and postage— just a short list of some items expected to be more expensive in 2013.
Among these, maybe the least surprising is a postage hike. According to Pitney Bowes Small Business, a price increase on postal rates of 2.75 percent went into effect on Jan. 27. If you rely on postage as an integral part of your business or use postage for marketing purposes, you will see price increases.
Small business owners can be more creative in their use of postal services to help offset the increase. Others may finally switch their print-mailed campaigns efforts to email marketing campaigns. In any case, these new increases can run into thousands of dollars for high-volume shippers.
There are three important things small business owners need to know about the 2013 postage increase:
* Low-cost shipping solutions are being eliminated.
* Retail shipping rates are rising an average of 5-10 percent.
* The Intelligent Mail barcode will give business owners and customers more power when it comes to tracking their items.
Here are details of the 2013 USPS postage increase:
New single-piece First-Class Mail pricing includes:
Postcards: 1-cent increase to 33 cents.
Letters (1 ounce or less): 1-cent increase to 46 cents.
Letters over 1 ounce: unchanged at 20... Read more
Tags: consumer engagement, Email, Postage, small business, small business email, small business marketing
Posted in Email, Emerging Platforms | 3 Comments »
This is part 3 of a series on the challenge of targeting SMB markets and how the use of buyer-based modeling and buyer-based marketing help organizations to grow their SMB customer base.
The sheer size of the SMB makes for a daunting task for any organization intent on marketing to the SMB segment. When you consider some Fortune 1000 or Global 2000 organizations can have in the 10’s or 100’s of thousands of companies in their customer bases, the expression of zeroing in on your target buyer can sound near impossible. It is a dilemma however that cannot be ignored. The U.S. Small business Administration estimates that the SMB segment accounts for better than 98% of all businesses in the United States.
In the previous article in this series, How To Get To Know The New SMB Buyer, I touched upon the means to get to know the SMB buyer. Marketing to the SMB segment and buyers should first start with visiting the segmentation issue a little deeper. There have been many means tried for SMB segmentation whether it is by size, type, vertical, products, solutions, and etc. To some degree, they have helped to... Read more
Tags: buyer behavior, buyer experience, buyer insight, buyer journey, buyer persona, buyer persona development, buyer persona marketing, buyer personas, buyer strategy, buyergraphics, buyerology, content, content marketing, Digital Marketing, small business, small business marketing, Strategy, Targeting, Tony Zambito
Posted in Creative Best Practices, Email, Emerging Platforms, Opinions, Search, Social Media, Targeting | No Comments »
This is part 2 of a series on the challenge of targeting SMB markets and how the use of buyer modeling and buyer-based marketing help organizations to grow their SMB customer base.
In the first article of this series, we visited two new realities. One, that many Fortune 1000 and Global 2000 organizations are turning a focused eye towards growing their SMB customer and revenue base. With revenue growth potential shrinking in larger strategic accounts due to budget and pricing pressures, many are dedicating attention and resources with more determination than in the past. The second reality is that they are finding a very different buyer this time around than in the past. Simply put, SMB buyers are more social, more sophisticated, more connected, and are transforming their buying behaviors at an accelerated pace. New technologies opening their world to advantages only once afforded to large enterprises.
Waking up to these new realities has set up another challenge for executive leaders. That is of how to get to know the new SMB buyer. Here’s how one sales executive put this to me recently:
“One of the things we realized is that we have got to... Read more
Tags: buyer experience, buyer modleing, buyer persona, buyer persona development, buyer persona marketing, buyer personas, buyer research, buyergraphics, buyerology, content, predictive buyer modleing, small business, small business marketing, social marketing, Tony Zambito
Posted in Creative Best Practices, Email, Emerging Platforms, Media Planning & Buying, Opinions, Search, Social Media, Targeting | No Comments »
This is part 1 of a series on the challenge of targeting SMB markets and how the use of target buyer modeling and buyer-based marketing help organizations to grow their SMB customer base.
As we continue to come out of the deep freeze over the last few years, we are beginning to see encouraging signs of an economic recovery. However, the purse strings are still drawn tight and new patterns of buying has created an atmosphere of even more exacting pricing pressures from enterprise-wide level buyers and accounts. This means less room for revenue growth to come directly from the fabled 20-30 percent of large customers who typically have made up 70-80 percent of total revenues. This is how a VP of Sales in the software industry put it to me recently in my research:
“Here is what it looks like…we are actually selling more of our product into our larger accounts than ever before….but…over the last three years we've faced stiffer competition that has driven our pricing down. So the net-net has been that we are just holding on as best we can to these larger accounts. Another words, we are not getting significant real... Read more
Tags: B2B email marketing, b2b marketing, B2B Sales, branding, buyer experience, buyer persona, buyer personas, buyer research, buyer strategy, buyergraphics, buyerology, content marketing, demand generation, marketing, Sales, selling, small business, small business marketing, Social Media, Strategy, Targeting
Posted in Creative Best Practices, Email, Emerging Platforms, Media Planning & Buying, Opinions, Search, Social Media, Targeting | No Comments »
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