We continue our cycle ofinterviews of emailing providers with " The B2B Agency" . It is Guillaume RigalThe Director of the B2B Agency answers our questions. If you have an opinion about the B2B Agency, don't hesitate to share it in the comments.
Can you give us a brief history of the B2B Agency? When was the company founded, by whom, has the business model evolved since the beginning of the adventure?
The b2b agency is a BtoB webmarketing consulting agency. The agency was created in September 2009 by the 3 founders of Effiliation, François Deltour, Sylvestre Kranjcevic and Christophe Bosquet. It represents the BtoB expertise of Effiliation, an affiliation consulting agency specialized in the implementation of
implementation of performance-based e-marketing strategies.
The b2b agency works with BtoB companies to advise, design, deploy and monitor web marketing action plans specific to their markets, aimed at acquiring new customers and thus contributing to the development of their sales.
In general, what services does the B2B Agency offer (and not only services related to emailing)?
In practice, the b2b agency assists its clients on all the online marketing levers during each stage of the conversion process: consulting, creation of sites and media, campaign management, referencing, affiliation, visibility on all channels including emailing and display.
Among these services, which ones are related to emailing?
Depending on the objectives of our clients, we recommend emailing as a promotional channel, based on the affiliation model for large targets - in this case, the advertiser pays a cost per lead (CPL) or a percentage of sales (cost per purchase - CPA), or even on a classic CPM model to reach fine targets
We also recommend email for remarketing on shopping cart abandonment or for lead nurturing on cold leads.
Our clients also entrust us with the realization of their creations and mailing kits, insofar as we have developed an expertise on the conversion levers. This, mainly on lead capture where it is important to ensure the link and continuity between the content of the email and that of the pages and mini-sites that we develop.
How much of your business/revenue is dependent on emailing?
A little more than half of our activity is on lead generation whose main lever is emailing. We are developing other channels such as marketplaces, content sites and social networks, but email remains king.
On our sales development activity (CPA), email is marginal; the main drivers are comparison sites, search engines, retargeting and couponing sites.
What makes the B2B Agency unique in your market?
We have a rather unique position in France and in Europe: we are both an agency and an affiliation platform and we focus on acquisition (of leads and sales) exclusively in B2B. We are the only agency member of the Collectif des Plateformes d'Affiliation (CPA) that has developed a BtoB activity. We have used this expertise in BtoB performance to expand our services to new channels (such as Adexchanges and professional social networks) or with innovative tactics (rich content, conversion path, lead nurturing).
Do you think that affiliate marketing has contributed to driving down the price and quality of email marketing?
Affiliation is an economic model which consists in remunerating not on a volume of sending but on an action carried out (request for contact or online purchase). This model mainly allows the advertiser to defer part of its commercial risk: it is the affiliate who takes the risk of routing the email but who therefore also reaps part of the rewards. And it is the affiliate who has to watch over the conversion rates. For this to work, the affiliate must be convinced that the conversion path and the offer work (i.e. a good mailing kit and landing page). He must also be sure that the targeting is correct and that the volumes are sufficient. In this sense, it is possible to have poor quality emails "shot" on large bases and that do not convert. This does not work in the long term.
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On the other hand, quality offers and creatives, shot in a well thought-out way, will generate quality leads, which are therefore well paid, and are in line with what our advertisers want. This is the approach we are pushing in partnership with our email affiliates.
What is the specificity of the B2B email acquisition market?
For us, acquisition is mainly through lead generation paid per lead. But CPLs in B2B are different from B2C, ranging from 10 € for a white paper on a generic target, to 80 € and more on highly qualified hot leads. This is a crucial point.
The decision cycle and the type of information required also differ and are generally more complex, which justifies higher fees but also dunning mechanisms.
What are the 3 main challenges for the next few months in the emailing world?
In B2B, the French specificity on opt-out is an important issue. We are never safe from a change in the framework on these subjects and an alignment with the most fussy European markets would compromise the current ecosystem.
Another challenge is the integration of marketing processes and channels. I believe that 2013 will be the year that will mark the beginning of the democratization of marketing automation platforms (especially given the push of the tenors: Eloqua recently acquired by Oracle and Marketo).
Emailing is going to have to be integrated into a set of channels. For us, as a lead generation player, this is an important step to take for our clients: the basic mailing + landing page kit is outdated.
Similarly, the quality of the databases, emails, processing and ultimately the leads collected, will become more important than ever: for example, we recommend more and more the telephone requalification of contacts generated by emailing, or even of clickers (if the emailer has the telephone number in the database) in order to deliver only "sales ready" leads to the sales force
And as a bonus, to go back to your earlier question about affiliate marketing, the movement towards CPL and performance-based monetization will continue to gain momentum because in this period of very slow or even declining growth, advertisers want to increase the reach of their message while only paying for what delivers.
What do you think of the French emailing market? Is it mature or is there still room for innovation?
I recently had fun positioning all B2B acquisition channels on a life cycle: emerging / mature / declining. For example, social networks in France are now in the first phase - Viadeo can generate leads, Slideshare and Pinterest can also generate leads, but in low volumes. At the other end of the spectrum, as a mass medium, paper mailings are on the decline and are starting to disappear from the arsenal of B2B advertisers. Emailing is in its mature phase and still has many years to go before content marketing and social media are at comparable levels for the average advertiser. But for us the question of complementing emailing and balancing the channels arises. It's a classic case of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts!
And there is also room for innovation: for example, we have advertisers who are not competitors, who have B2B customer bases and who could cross-push partner offers. In addition, enriching databases with behavioral data offers interesting perspectives: the follow-up of openers and clickers with dedicated commercial offers according to their browsing history, follow-up via adexchanges (retargting) and nurturing using a content approach.
A last word to conclude?
A quick note to the email marketers reading this post: if you have any questions about performance-based business models, don't hesitate to contact us! We are always interested in expanding our partner network. And this is even more true if you have a very specific background on certain functions or sectors.
