Golden Leads

I’m on the plane home from a B2B marketing conference sponsored by Penn State’s ISBM – Institute for the Study of Business Markets.  The topic on the conference was moving from Best Practices to Next Practices.  The two day event in Tampa uncovered some innovative concepts, but the common thread that was woven through most of the sessions was how you communicate with your customers on an emotional level.  Specifically, how does your product or brand make your customer feel about themselves when they use or interact with your product. 

In the near term I’m going to be challenging email marketers to face the challenge of relevancy by not only providing their subscribers with relevant content but content that reaches them on an emotional level.  It’s my view that emotional content is a next practice of email marketing.  Segmentation, personalization and context (right message at the right time) will help to get there but understanding customer needs will be foremost.

Two recommended links:

Rick Short – B2B marketer extrodonaire
Lou Carbone – Experience Engineering pioneer and author

Thanks to Email Marketing Blog for this great article.