• by Brian Ellefritz , November 9, 2006

Last week, Austin Bliss wrote about how typos can negatively impact your email programs and ROI. This week we take a different spin, looking at how the right offer can have the same significant impact on your program.

Here are five key tips that every good marketer should consider when selecting the right sales offer (especially in the B2B community).

1. Understand the buying process for your product. I'm often shocked by how naïve program owners can be about how their products are shopped and purchased. Knowing what your demand generation funnel looks like, from awareness through purchase, is key to moving to the next step. Secure detailed research on the buying process as your first step in order to ensure your offer will help motivate people.

2. Know your target audience. Keep your audience/offer pairings narrow and targeted.Don't be sucked in by temptations to do too much in a campaign ("I want to do awareness AND lead generation" is a frequent claim here). Design a program that effectively fulfills one goal--and build off that success for future emails.

3. Know how your offer will be used and measured. If your sales team is willing to take abundant responses and invest time in the qualification process to weed out the buyers from those who simply wanted the T-shirt or iPod premium, you might settle for offers that have broad appeal to large audiences.

If you want to focus on getting highly qualified leads and near-term revenue, focus on delivering content or offers that are valued mainly by those in the closing phase of their purchase exploration--like ROI tools, and calculators, or purchase incentives like discounts or bundled training.) Not sure what your buyers need as they near their purchase? Go back to step 1.

4. Understand your practical realities. We dream up tons of attractive offers that the field can't execute. Many markets don't have the budget to execute the beautiful fulfillment kits our agency designs. A beautiful Web-based ROI tool developed in Flash might not work in Australia's Web infrastructure. You can't "dumb down" your offers for the worst-case scenario, but maybe a tiered set of offerings will help you meet local needs better.

5. Build an offer reuse strategy. Don't treat offers like Kleenex. Since it takes real work and scarce dollars to come up with a good offer, make sure you get your money's worth. Overprint your fulfillment kit and let the sales team and partners use it in field seminars or trade shows. Have a "reuse strategy" for premium content: provide it first to your relationship marketing or community members, then use it in your direct marketing efforts, and finally post to your Web site for broader access. It means a bit more budget and planning up front, but a lot more ROI in the long run.

It may not be a simple process, but pays off in the end. These five tips have been validated over and over to help build offers that work.

Looking for more insights? Visit the EEC site or participate in my EEC Roundtable, "Building Commitment to Email in the C-Suite."