In today’s fast-paced business-to-business (B2B) marketing landscape, balancing the frequency and relevance of communications with prospects and customers is crucial. The challenge lies in knowing when to make contact and how often, without overwhelming or alienating your audience. This delicate balance is essential to maintaining a healthy database and fostering long-term relationships.

Establishing Your Marketing Touch Policy

Establishing a marketing touch policy is a dynamic process that evolves with your organization’s needs and technological capabilities. Here are the four key phases of touch policy development:

1. Legal Obligation Only: At this basic level, the primary focus is on adhering to legal requirements, particularly opt-out requests. Organizations must ensure opt-outs are processed efficiently and track opt-out rates over time to understand the impact on their database.
2. One-Size, Rules-Based, Honor System: This phase involves implementing simple, blanket guidelines for contact frequency, such as limiting email communications to once per week. Marketers are trusted to adhere to these rules, with an emphasis on educating them about the risks of over-communicating.
3. One-Size, Rules-Based, Safeguarded: Similar to the previous phase, but with added oversight. An individual or team, such as a data steward, manages access to contacts and ensures compliance with the established guidelines. This approach helps protect the integrity of the database.
4. Multi-Dimensional, Rules-Based, Safeguarded: The most advanced phase involves sophisticated, rules-based policies that consider buyer preferences, roles, and account types. This complexity often requires marketing automation platforms (MAPs) to manage effectively, ensuring communications are tailored and relevant.

Incorporating Buyer Preferences

One of the biggest pitfalls in B2B marketing is assuming that more frequent communication will yield better results. In reality, unsolicited and irrelevant messages can lead to high opt-out rates and database decay. Conversely, infrequent communication can make a company forgettable and unreliable.

To address this, marketers should:

• Offer Frequency Options: Provide contacts with the ability to define their communication preferences, including both content and frequency, through a subscription center on your website.

• Encourage Preference Expression: Motivate contacts to set their preferences at key points in the relationship, such as when they first opt-in or when they become dormant. This can be done through targeted marketing messages that highlight new content and invite feedback.

Tracking and Measuring Impact

Once a marketing touch policy is in place, it’s crucial to monitor its effectiveness. This involves tracking both response and deliverability metrics:

• Response Measures: Evaluate whether contacts are engaging with your messages. Are they taking the desired actions?

• Deliverability Metrics: Determine if your messages are reaching recipients and if contacts are opting out. Analyze these metrics by role to identify any patterns in preference for message frequency or types.

Protect Your Database

A marketer’s database is a valuable yet fragile asset. To protect and nurture it, follow these steps:

1. Set Frequency Rules: Begin with simple guidelines and gradually move towards more sophisticated, preference-based policies.

2. Understand Buyer Needs: Tailor your communications to meet prospects’ and customers’ needs at different stages of their buying journey.

3. Encourage Preference Setting: Actively involve your contacts in defining their communication preferences to ensure your messages are both expected and relevant.

By implementing these strategies, your database can transform from a potential liability into a competitive advantage, helping your organization thrive in the complex world of B2B marketing.

Success Story

Rebranding WebCanada

As Marketing Director at WebCanada, I played a pivotal role in elevating the company’s brand visibility, enhancing market positioning, and driving significant growth in sales and customer engagement.
Read success story now.

Improve Your Marketing ROI | info@amrohadigital.com

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