Feature Articles

A company that takes its demand generation seriously knows that making contact with a prospect’s C-level executive is akin to hooking a marlin on a fishing trip. This is the big one. But understanding the behaviors, information needs and social patterns of the big fish has proved to be challenging. A new survey shows that the proliferation of social networking and social marketing can be a profitable approach to the corner office.

“Social marketing is underutilized in BtoB marketing,” DIGO Founder and Creative Director Mark DiMassimo, whose agency surveyed 142 CFOs of Fortune 1000 companies. “If marketers look at the nature of social marketing, which is an inclusive term for all the social networks, they will find that decisions are more social than ever. Consumers are enabled by social networks with almost every purchase they make. C-level executives do the same thing. They put decisions through a social filter first. This happens much more than two or three years ago.”

Like everything else digital, email marketing is changing. As the lead generation strategy of choice for many years, it is now being reformed by the dramatic shift to social media as a real-time communication platform. For BtoB companies, the email/social synergy can be a profitable one.

New thinking and new solutions have recently sprouted around the intersection of social networking and email, most notably in a new report from email services provider ExactTarget. Although the company could be hammered by social networks and their ability for its users to bypass email, the company’s research shows the opposite effect.