Interview with the B2B Agency: "B2B acquisition is mainly about lead generation

 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?

L'agence b2b is a BtoB webmarketing consultancy. 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 webmarketing action plans specific to their markets, aimed at acquiring new customers and contributing to the development of their sales.

Generally speaking, what services does Agence B2B offer (and not just emailing-related services)?

In practice, the b2b agency supports its customers on all online marketing levers at every stage of the conversion process: consulting, site and media creation, campaign management, referencing, affiliation, visibility on all channels including emailing and display.

Among these services, which ones are related to emailing?

Depending on our customers' objectives, we recommend emailing as a promotional channel, based on the affiliation model for broader targets - in this case, the advertiser pays a cost-per-lead (CPL) or percentage-of-sales (cost-per-purchase - CPA) performance fee, or even a classic CPM model for narrower targets.

We also recommend email for remarketing on shopping cart abandonment or for lead nurturing on cold leads.

Our customers also entrust us with the production of their creative and mailing kits, as we have developed expertise in conversion levers. This is mainly for lead capture, where it's important to ensure the link and continuity between the content of the email and that of the pages and mini-sites we develop.

How much of your business/revenue is dependent on emailing?

Just over half of our business is lead generation, with emailing as the main lever. We are developing other channels such as marketplaces, content sites and social networks, but email remains king.

In our sales development activity (CPA), email is marginal; the main drivers are comparators, search engines, retargeting and couponing sites.

What makes the B2B Agency unique in your market?

We have a rather unique position in France and Europe: we are both an agency and an affiliation platform, and we focus exclusively on B2B acquisition (of leads and sales). As such, we are currently the only agency member of the Collectif des Plateformes d'Affiliation (CPA) to have developed a BtoB activity. We have leveraged our expertise in BtoB performance to extend our services to new channels (such as Adexchanges and professional social networks) and innovative tactics (rich content, conversion paths, lead nurturing).

Do you think affiliation has contributed to driving down the price and quality of acquisition emailing?

Affiliation is a business model that consists in remunerating the advertiser not on the basis of a volume of mailings, but on the basis of an action carried out (contact request or online purchase). This model enables the advertiser to defer part of its commercial risk: it's the affiliate who takes the risk of routing the e-mail, but who also reaps part of the rewards. And it's the affiliate who has to keep an eye on conversion rates. For this to work, the affiliate needs to be convinced that the conversion path and the offer work (i.e. a quality mailing kit and landing page). He must also be sure that the targeting is correct and that volumes are sufficient. In this sense, it's perfectly possible to have poor-quality e-mails "shot" on large bases and not convert. This doesn't work in the long term.

On the other hand, quality offers and creative, "shot" in a reasoned way, will generate quality leads, which are therefore well-paid, and 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 about lead generation, paid on a per-lead basis. But CPLs in B2B differ from those in 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-making cycle and the type of information required also differ, and are generally more complex, which justifies agency rates but also the mechanics of recovery.

What are the 3 main challenges for the next few months in the emailing world?

In B2B, the French opt-out specificity is an important issue. We are never safe from a change of framework on these subjects, and 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 mark the beginning of the democratization of marketing automation platforms (especially given the push by the tenors: Eloqua, recently acquired by Oracle, and Marketo).

Emailing is going to have to be integrated into a whole range of channels. For us, as a lead generation player, this is an important step to take our customers beyond the basic mailing + landing page kit.

Similarly, the quality of the databases, emails, processing and, ultimately, the leads collected, will become more important than ever: for example, we increasingly recommend telephone requalification of contacts generated by emailing, and even of clickers (if the emailer has the telephone number in the database), so as to deliver only "sales-ready" leads to the sales force.

And as a bonus, to come back to your earlier question about affiliation, the move towards CPL and performance-based monetization will continue to gain momentum, because in this period of very sluggish 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 email marketing market? Has it reached maturity, or is there still room for innovation?

I recently had some fun positioning all B2B acquisition channels on a life cycle: nascent / mature / declining. For example, social networks in France are currently in this first phase - Viadeo can generate leads, as can Slideshare or Pinterest, but in low volumes. At the other extreme, as a mass medium, paper mailings are on the decline and starting to disappear from the arsenal of B2B advertisers. As for emailing, it's 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's still room for innovation: for example, we have advertisers who are not competitors, who have B2B customer bases and who could cross-promote partner offers. In addition, the enrichment of databases with behavioral data offers interesting prospects: the relaunching of openers and clickers with dedicated commercial offers based on their browsing history, relaunching via adexchanges (retargting) and nurturing using a content-based approach.

A last word to conclude?

A word to the email specialists reading this post: if you have any questions about performance-based business models, please don't hesitate to contact us! We're always interested in expanding our network of partners. Even more so if you have a very specialized knowledge of certain functions or sectors.