Next week, Wednesday April 23rd at 6:30pm, I am moderating a panel about B2B social media on how professionals and companies can use social media effectively. I am joined by the following esteemed panelists:

• Jeremy Toeman (President of Stage Two Consulting, Writer for EnGadget)
• Karl Long (PM of Games on Ovi www.n-gage.com)
• Adam Metz (Partner and Lead Social Web Strategist, theMIX)
• Pankaj Pradekh (Zmingo, Inc)

If you are looking to learn and network with executives that live in Marin - this is your chance. SofTECH, the organizer, is an organization with thousands of members from the North Bay which has AutoDesk and many others companies as partners/sponsors.

Please RSVP here so that the organizer knows how much food/drinks to plan for.

Oh yes, for those who never get out of the city, the venue is only 15 mins from Golden Gate Bridge, on weekdays (unlike weekends), there is no traffic to go north….;-)

Here are details of the event:

Join us for an exciting night with a panel of social media experts who are helping leading companies (Sling Media, Nokia, Wells Fargo, Sutter Home,Plantronics), organizations and individuals capitalize on social media. Most of the panelists have popular blogs (e.g. experiencecurve.com, emergence-media.com, livedigitally.com, metzmash.typepad.com) with a strong following and use social media tactics and strategies on a daily basis.

You will learn:

• What is social media, the tools, the people, the stats
• Why has social media exploded
• How is social media changing the conversations companies have with prospects, customers and partners
• How professionals can use social media for personal branding, and career development
• How B2B companies can capitalize on social media
• How social media is changing market research, PR, marketing, sales, product development, and customer support
• How social media is changing search engine optimization (SEO)

Just a quick rant about prospecting blindly via e-mail. Why? I received one of the worst email solicitations in my career, just today. I would love to mention the sales rep and the company but alas…I’ll just use them as an example of what not to do. Oh, and can I say, “Why in the h***, Mr. Sales Director, are you not working with your marketing team to craft emails that will ultimately get you appointments? Why are you letting your team write and send emails that 1) have no message, no call to action, and no way to contact your company, 2) don’t address me by name and 3) have spelling and grammar errors?” Uh…hello, Mr. Sales Director, how much time is your team wasting on sending out emails that aren’t going to deliver? And why, Mr. Sales Director, are your team members sending out emails first? Didn’t you hire them to make phone calls?

Ok, enough picking on Mr. Sales Director…for now.

In my years working with sales and marketing teams, e-mail has become a very effective tool in lead generation. Here’s the thing…you have to do it right in order to be successful. If you have the prospect’s email address and you are actually going to send them something, don’t you want to get it right? What if they actually open it and read it?

If you are going to send a prospect an email and you’ve never contacted them before, there are a few things you should know, a few things you should include AND a few steps that you should take in order to be successful.

Okay, here they are:

1. Include the prospect’s name. If you’ve done your research, found out who to contact, actually acquired their email address…why wouldn’t you personalize the email?
2. Know your target. Are you reaching the right prospect? Don’t try to sell a hairbrush to a bald man.
3. Work with marketing. They’ve probably sent out hundreds of these and have monitored their response rates for effectiveness (I said probably…but this is for another blog post at another time). Okay, let’s say that they’ve monitored effectiveness. The marketing department would LOVE to write your email. They will add the correct call to action, the right buzz words and match the offer to the kind of prospect you are mining. Come on sales…why work so much when you don’t have to! Besides, if marketing knew you were sending out your own emails, they would flip out!
4. Spell check.
5. Grammar check.
6. Ask for the reader to take action. Ask for what you want. Do you want me to call you? Then write, “Please call me at your convenience at 555-5555.”
7. Create a signature. Don’t write: “Best Regards,” then let the email template take over. It looks lazy.
8. Make sure your email has a compelling subject line, is known to be a spam word
9. For more ideas on creative and formatting, check EmailLabs’ resources section which is very comprehensive

In the example I received today, the unnamed sales rep made many mistakes. As a long time high-tech marketer, I’ve been approached by many vendors in every way imaginable. This guy obviously didn’t do his homework. He sent me an offer that I would never be interested in. He didn’t use my first name in his copy, just a “Hello-“ when it’s clear what my name is, my email address is lisa (at) e-storm.com. He capitalized three words in the subject line that didn’t need capitalization. He never mentioned the name of his company in the copy of the email. He asked me to contact him but didn’t say why and there was no email address or phone number to contact him with. Finally, he says that his company can, “…help you teach your team to sell more by working smarter—not harder.”

Ugh.

Oh and one final note: This email came from an up and coming CRM software company!!

Want more information? please don’t hesitate to contact me, I have helped with hundreds of email campaigns before…..