Boston, USA-based marketing and competitive research consultant, Michael Levy, is an expert business intelligence products and solutions commentator, providing advice for vendors & purchasers of sales intelligence, sales engagement, and B2B DaaS products.

He joined Rhetorik’s CEO, Meredith Amdur, to learn more about the newly-launched NetFinder+, now covering 18 countries across Europe and the Middle East.

Michael summarises the NetFinder+ offering in his latest GZConsulting blog post, and puts its importance into the context of the wider market.

Given the challenges of data privacy and data protection compliance, CEO Meredith Amdur emphasizes the value of having a local, specialist vendor that understands the nuances of European regulations and markets.  “One of the challenges for these vendors is that the country called ‘Europe’ doesn’t exist.  They need a partner like Rhetorik that understands the complexities of Europe, market by market, and language by language, to help them navigate and exploit a region with enormous growth potential.  And they need a service like NetFinder+ that provides current, accurate, and compliant data related to individual IT buyers and influencers across the region to target better prospects, expand into new markets, fill the marketing funnel, and capture the attention of their next best customers.”

Read the full post from Michael Levy here.

Also check out the NetFinder+ launch announcement from Rhetorik and learn more about NetFinder+ here.

Podcasts, video, livestream and chatbots garner lots of media attention and they all have their place in the marketer’s tool kit to reach and engage customers.

But which channel follows people wherever they work? Which channel is the number one channel for engagement, and number two for conversions? Which channel generates £35 for every £1 spent?

The latest communication channels may be worth trialling, but don’t forget the humble email – one of the oldest and yet most effective messaging channels.

If you want some supporting evidence, here is a selection of email marketing statistics to demonstrate the real power of email.

B2B Email Marketing Statistics

1. 87% of B2B marketers use email as a channel to distribute content (Content Marketing Institute, 2019)
2. Organisations estimate £35.41 as the approximate return for every pound spent on email marketing (DMA, 2020)
3. 81% of B2B marketers use email newsletters (Content Marketing Institute, 2019)
4. 78% of marketers have seen an increase in email engagement over the last 12 months (HubSpot, 2019)
5. Email newsletters are the top performing content for nurturing leads (Content Marketing Institute, 2019)
6. 68% of organisations have seen an increase in email conversion rates over last year (DMA, 2020)
7. Email engagement (90%) is the #1 metric used by B2B marketers to track content performance (Content Marketing Institute, 2019)
8. 70% of organisations are able to calculate the ROI from their email marketing programmes (DMA, 2020)
9. 85% of all emails make it into the inbox. (Return Path, 2018)
10. B2B marketers say that email is the number one channel for driving engagement (eMarketer, 2020)

B2B Email Data Quality

11. 25% of users say the most annoying thing about work emails is the data the marketers has about the user is wrong (Adobe, 2019)
12. 19% of work email recipients complain that marketers mis-spell their name (Adobe, 2019)
13. After budget/resource, 42% of marketers cite Data (lack of data; data degradation; data siloes; data bias) as the most significant challenge to successfully executing email marketing programmes (DMA, 2020)

Mobile Email Marketing Statistics

14. Mobile accounts for 62 percent of all email opens (upland Adestra, 2019)
15. Gmail and Apple iPhone are the top 2 email clients accounting for 55% of all opens (Litmus, 2019)
16. 81% use a smartphone for regularly checking emails (Litmus, 2019)

Email Marketing Best Practices Statistics

17. 85% of B2B organizations use email marketing software to assist with content marketing. (Content Marketing Institute, 2019)
18. Marketers who use segmented campaigns note as much as a 760% increase in revenue. (Campaign Monitor, 2019)
19. 50% of marketers believe that arti­ficial intelligence could be used to improve subject line copy (upland Adestra, 2019)
20. 89% of marketers use name/company personalisation in their emails (Litmus, 2019)
21. Emails with personalized subject lines are 27% more likely to be opened (Experian, 2016)
22. Tuesdays see the highest open rates but also the highest unsubscribe rates (Campaign Monitor, 2020)

Downloads

Want to learn more?
Check out these other posts, or click here to explore NetFinder, Rhetorik’s international marketing database.

Coronavirus – a guide for demand-gen marketers

Email continues to dominate as preferred channel for sales engagement

Working from home does not mean businesses are not working.

But with major business events being cancelled or postponed, the huge impact that coronavirus is having on demand-gen marketers, their companies and the economy is clear for all to see – venues, organisers, sponsors and attendees are all losing out.

This situation is expected to continue for many weeks at the very least, meaning that marketers are having to consider other options to keep the marketing funnel topped up, the sales teams supplied with leads and the business moving forward.

In the absence of live events, demand gen marketers will need to get creative to match the kind of in-person engagement that can be achieved at them.

eMarketer Demand Gen report, Jan 2020

What options are available? As a recent eMarketer study showed, email is still the number one channel for driving engagement, and the number two channel for driving conversions, together with phone.

Alongside these, eMarketer also suggests direct mail – the old-fashioned kind. This might sound appealing for those organisations whose GDPR legal counsel has chosen to avoid email marketing. However, as more and more companies are moving to home working, you might find your expensive direct mail languishing in an empty office for the next few weeks or months.

Virtual events are also going to be used increasingly by marketers to replace in-person ones, but getting attendees to join such events requires access to a contacts list of suitable candidates.

So which channel follows people wherever they work? Which channel is the number one channel for engagement, and number two for conversions? Yes, email.

And how can you obtain a GDPR-compliant contacts list (with emails) of decision-makers, influencers and users of your technology at companies matching your ideal customer profile? By accessing NetFinder+, Rhetorik’s international market, account and contact intelligence platform.

Click here to learn more.

“The world’s most valuable resource is no longer oil, but data”. In the 2 years since The Economist ran this headline[1], there has been plenty of debate about whether data is the new oil or not.

What is undisputed is that raw data can be refined to add value, just like oil. And just like dirty fuel in your car, dirty data in your business will lead to poor performance, which adds to your costs.

Financial Cost

According to a Gartner survey, poor data quality is costing organizations an average of $15 million annually each.

IBM[2] estimates bad data is costing U.S companies over three trillion dollars per year.

Dirty data can also lead to GDPR compliance issues, which risk fines of up to €20 million, or 4% of annual global turnover – whichever is greater.

The financial cost of bad data is the most obvious one, but there are consequences that run much deeper.

Opportunity Cost

Accurate and complete prospect data are crucial to effective and efficient targeting of potential new clients. Opportunities will be missed if your sales and marketing team don’t even know they exist, and opportunities will not be pursued if they can’t be segmented and prioritised.

Accurate data is essential to understand what your ideal prospect looks like in order to prioritise effective marketing and drive sales.

Productivity Cost

Bad data doesn’t just affect your audience, it affects your employees as well. Salespeople waste time dealing with junk leads; service delivery people waste time correcting mistakes in customer orders; data scientists spend time cleaning data; analysts get misleading results; IT struggles to synchronise data across disparate platforms; and executives don’t trust the numbers from finance.

Keep your employees engaged by giving them the tools they need to be successful, which includes access to clean, up-to-date data.

Execution Cost

Poor data quality undermines digital initiatives, weakens competitive standing and leads to lack of customer trust. There is also a direct execution cost that comes with using bad data – wrong or sub-optimal decisions being made, wasted calls to wrong numbers, deals lost, etc.

Reputational Cost

Most businesses only learn of their dirty data when their customers and prospects tell them, not always privately.

Once the issue goes public, the internet never forgets. A mis-step driven by bad data will live on in search results, news articles and social media for years to come.

Your brand, customer and email sender reputations can all can be tainted by your (mis)use of bad data.

What to do

Rhetorik recommends a 4-step solution to address the problem of dirty data:

1. Cleanse – stop dirty data from disrupting your business. Cleansing data involves the removal of duplicate, invalid and inactive records, as well as ensuring the data in those records is accurate and up-to-date.
2. Enrich – incomplete data can be just as costly to the business as inaccurate data, so the next step would be to improve the fill rates of those fields that are most valuable to you.
3. Add – extend your reach by adding new data records. Append additional contextual data – firmographics and technographics – to aid segmentation, prioritization and messaging.
4. Repeat – B2B data decays at a rate of around 30% per year, so data cleansing should be viewed as an on-going requirement, not a one-time event.

The business impact of dirty data is considerable and addressing your data hygiene issues will mitigate its impact. Click here to learn more about how the Rhetorik DataClinik™ can help restore the health of your business data.

[1] The Economist – World’s most valuable resource

[2] IBM – infographic

Covering the UK Security Software market, Rhetorik has released its latest technology insights report.

Key findings include:

The Public Sector is under-penetrated in Endpoint Security Solutions and Unified Threat Management (ESS/UTM) – one of nine security software technologies tracked in the NetFinder^TM platform.

For ESS/UTM vendors and MSPs looking for new opportunities, the Public Sector appears ripe for growth given their relatively low penetration. Click here to get your free copy of the report.

The largest company sites are 4 times more likely to have a dedicated IT Security job function on-site, based on our analysis of more than 180,000 contacts within the NetFinder database. For Security Software marketers, the challenge is to identify the appropriate buyers as there will likely not be dedicated IT Security roles at medium and small businesses.

Education is also under-penetrated for Security & Identity Governance (SIG), as well as Wholesale, Construction & Contractors, and the Electrical & Electronic Industry.

Based on primary research, analysis of Rhetorik’s NetFinder™ database and HG Insights, this report covers key companies including:

Antivirus and Antimalware providers including the likes of AVG, Eset, F-Secure, Kaspersky, McAfee, Microsoft, Sophos, Symantec, Trend Micro and Webroot are all covered.

Endpoint Security Solutions and Enterprise Threat Management- companies include Cisco, Eset, Forcepoint, HCL, Ivanti, McAfee, Microsoft, Sophos, Symantec, Trend Micro

Security and Identity Governance – companies such as AWS, Cisco, CyberArk, IBM, McAfee, Microsoft, Oracle, OpenID, RSA Security and SailPoint make an appearance.

Get your copy of the report now.

Way back in 2009, when Microsoft released Windows 7, it promised to provide product support for 10 years.

The specific end of support day is January 14, 2020, enabling Microsoft to focus on “supporting newer technologies and great new experiences”.

Microsoft strongly recommends that you move to Windows 10 sometime before January 2020 to avoid a situation where you need service or support that is no longer available.

If you are a user, then clearly this is a wake-up call to plan your migration. And if you are in the business of delivering on those migration plans, this is great opportunity for you to drive revenues and add value for your clients.

According to Rhetorik research, more than 14,000 UK and Ireland sites (30%) of our NetFinder™ database are still using Windows 7.

Location, Location, Location
Sites in the Republic of Ireland and in Northern Ireland are most likely still to be using Windows 7, while on the mainland, sites in the Midlands, Scotland and Outer London are also relatively likely to be running the software.

Central London sites are ahead of the curve on average, but still contribute the second highest absolute number of sites running Win7, meaning there is opportunity across the country.

You can bank on it
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Public Sector (Government, Education and Healthcare) are significantly more likely than average to have machines running the older operating system. If public sector is your thing, there is good business to be had. And if it isn’t, maybe this is the chance you have been looking for to grow your revenues here.

More surprising is that Banking & Finance and Electronics & Electrical Industry sectors are also lagging the norm in upgrading to a newer system. So even if Public Sector isn’t your thing, don’t miss this opportunity to reach out to the sectors you do support.

Big is Beautiful
Perhaps you think only the smallest companies are lagging behind with Windows 10 migrations? If so, you’d wrong.

In fact, the reverse is true. Organisations with fewer than 50 employees on site are the most likely of all to have upgraded. This holds true even when Public Sector sites are removed from the equation.

The take-aways from this include:

• the migration opportunity is substantial,
• it cuts across industry sectors, with public sector lagging more than others
• it exists throughout the UK and Ireland, with the island of Ireland and the Midlands lagging the most
• larger sites are more likely still to be running Windows 7
• Rhetorik’s NetFinder database can help you identify and prioritise targets for your migration sales and marketing campaign. Click here to learn more.

The number of unique cybersecurity incidents grew 27% from 2017 to 2018, dominated by attacks on corporate infrastructure (49%) and websites (26%), according to a study from Positive Technologies[1].

Separately, the ICO recently announced two very substantial fines for failure to protect data from malicious actors, although both British Airways (£183 million)[2] and Marriott International (£99 million)[3] intend to appeal these fines.

So IT security is an ever-growing challenge for organisations of all sizes, and the cost of failure to protect those assets is also increasing.

Which means life must be easy for anyone selling cybersecurity solutions, right? If only it were that simple.

One of the main challenges for cybersecurity vendors is finding the right person to sell to. Does an organisation have a dedicated security function, is it part of another role, has it been outsourced, or does it even exist at all?

Recent research from Rhetorik found that only one quarter of head office sites (26%) have a dedicated security function on site.

A further one in three have the security function as part of another role, and this holds true for small sites with fewer than 50 employees all the way through to the largest with more than 1,000 employees.

Why? One reason may be the difficulty firms face in recruiting to IT security roles, as the past 3 years have seen ever-increasing cybersecurity skills shortages[4]. These shortages are now affecting nearly three quarters (74 percent) of organizations, as revealed in a global study of cybersecurity professionals by the Information Systems Security Association (ISSA) and independent industry analyst firm Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG).

What does this mean if you are selling cybersecurity, and how can Rhetorik help?

Firstly, focusing only on IT security professionals is a mistake, as you will be missing out on the one in three organisations that don’t have one.

Secondly, assuming every head office has an IT security function on site is also a mistake. Around a quarter of them don’t have the security function on site, so make sure you reach those security buyers based elsewhere.

Finally, Rhetorik’s NetFinder database can help with all of these challenges.

We have data on more than 45,000 sites across the UK and Ireland, of which around 40% are head office sites – so we cover head office and other sites.

We have IT security professionals and IT decision-makers – so we cover the specialists and the ones covering the function as part of a broader role.

And we have more than half a million data points on technologies present at those sites – so we can help you identify and prioritise where to focus your efforts.

What challenges do you face in reaching cybersecurity buyers?

[1] Positive Technologies – Cybersecurity threatscape 2018
[2] ICO – Intention to fine British Airways
[3] ICO – Intention to fine Marriott International, Inc
[4] ISSA & ESG – Cyber security skills shortages

Line of Business buyers are taking an increasingly important role in the enterprise technology buying process.

Sharing findings from a recent survey, Jay McBain, principal analyst global channels at Forrester, stated that “two thirds of every tech or telco decision today flows through line of business, or they’re the lead influencer on that decision. They block internal processes, and the internal IT department a third of the time.”

What is more, the direction of travel would suggest this line of business influence will continue to increase. For example, a Gartner survey back in 2016 showed that more than half of the respondents from functional areas other than IT are involved in technology purchase decisions.

These new buyers have a different idea of what value means to them, and they bring new expectations of the technology buying process. As McBain explains, these new buyers “don’t like the due diligence, don’t like the delay, the bureaucracy”.

Indeed, according to Derry Finkelday, research director at Gartner “technology and service providers that continue to target only IT departments are likely to be leaving money on the table.”

What does this mean for you? Make sure you can reach the VPs of finance, operations, marketing, sales and HR, who are making the vast majority of decisions today. They are happy to bypass traditional IT procurement methods and to move quickly.

This is both a challenge and an opportunity. Are you speaking their language? Are you marketing and messaging them the right way? Are you even reaching these people at all?

Clients of Rhetorik’s NetFinder™ database are, and they love it.

“We are using Rhetorik to rebuild our database and refill our pipeline. Our outbound marketing is much more targeted, enabling us to engage the correct person with a relevant message.”

If you’d like to learn more about executing on your LoB strategy, click here and we can walk you through the steps to add the LoB to your funnel, fill your pipeline and win at business.

If you follow much of the news in the sales and martech space, you might think that, for B2B sales professionals, social selling is the best channel to reach and engage potential buyers. But you’d be wrong.

Initial findings from a study by VanillaSoft, a leading sales engagement technology company, found that email and phone remain the preferred B2B channels – by a big margin.

The company surveyed 2,000 executives to better understand B2B buyer attitudes and preferences at three phases of the sales engagement process: the identification of need, the search for solutions, and the evaluation of alternatives. The chart reflects respondents’ channel preferences for receiving information or being contacted.

In the words of VanillaSoft CEO, David Hood, “we often read and hear about the rise and role of social selling at various points in the sales engagement process. However, as these initial findings show, more traditional channels – from email to phone to simple word-of-mouth – are actually preferred by B2B buyers.”

Even among young professionals (25 to 34) only 18 percent expressed a preference for social as a contact channel – as compared with 41 percent who said they preferred the telephone.

And while the phone channel grows in importance through the engagement stages, from 39% at the Need stage to 54% at the Evaluation stage, this is still dwarfed by executives’ preference for email, averaging 88% across the 3 stages.

Contact us here if you’d like to learn more about how Rhetorik can help with your B2B email engagement objectives.

About Rhetorik
Rhetorik provides data that sales and marketing teams can use to improve their marketing campaigns immediately and has been leading the way in marketing intelligence for enterprise technology vendors for two decades. Based in the UK, with its data science and engineering hub in Quebec Canada, Rhetorik’s sales and marketing intelligence platform offers the highest standards by combining big data, automated information handling, human curation and meticulous quality control. Rhetorik serves customers globally with UK, Europe and Asia-Pacific coverage.

1994 was a momentous year for the tech industry. Back then, just 5 percent of US households had (dial-up) internet access, 7% of the UK population had a mobile phone, and the World Wide Web was only five years old.

To mark Rhetorik’s 25^th anniversary, here are 25 fascinating facts relating to the staggering technological changes seen in our personal and professional lives since Rhetorik was founded. Firstly, a quick reminder of …

What was hot in 1994

Microsoft Windows 3.1

1. Microsoft releases Windows 3.11.
2. The Sony PlayStation arrives and changes video games for ever.
3. IBM introduces the ThinkPad 775CD, the first notebook with integrated CD-ROM.
4. The smartphone is born – the Simon Personal Communicator, also from IBM, was the first PDA to include telephony features but the battery lasts just 1 hour.
5. Marketing expert
   

   Simon Personal Communicator

   Drayton Bird publishes 10 predictions for the future of direct marketing, including:

   • Direct marketing will become pervasive. Check
   • Marketers will realise all customers are not created equal – and act accordingly. Check
   • Direct marketers will think more about quality and less about quantity. Getting there …. maybe.

With 25 years of Moore’s Law and the technological revolution at work, the impact has been considerable …..

Then and Now

6. Global IT spending has grown 800% from $455 billion[1] in 1994 to £3.7 trillion[2]
7. PCs are now 50% cheaper and 1,000x more powerful.
8. Just 28% of enterprise IT spending is now controlled by the IT department[3].
9. Clouds used to be just that, and all IT infrastructure was located on-premises. Now, the average company utilises 29 different cloud solutions[4].
10. Artificial intelligence was barely known outside of university research labs. Now, it is estimated that 37% of companies are implementing AI in some form[5].

When Rhetorik launched in 1994, we were in great company ….

Business Firsts 1994

11. Yahoo! is founded by Jerry Yang and David Filo in January 1994.
12. Netscape is founded by Marc Andreessen and James Clark on 4 April.
13. Amazon.com domain is registered on 1 November.
14. Red Hat Linux is founded
15. Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), an independent nonprofit research center is founded to focus public attention on emerging privacy issues.

We were not alone when it came to business innovation either ….

Industry Firsts 1994

16. Banking: October 1994 sees Stanford Federal Credit Union become the first financial institution to offer online internet banking services to all of its customers.
17. Media: The Daily Telegraph becomes the first UK newspaper to launch a news website.
18. 

    electronic Telegraph

    Manufacturing: The first QR code – the QR code (abbreviated from Quick Response Code) is invented in Japan by Denso Wave[11] to track vehicles during manufacturing.

19. E-commerce: NetMarket lays claim to the first secure online retail transaction on 11 August – a copy of the Sting CD Ten Summoner’s Tales for $12.48 plus postage.
20. Technology: Vice President Al Gore coins the term “Information Superhighway”.

And last but by no means least, Rhetorik launched on a wave of marketing innovation ….

Marketing Firsts 1994:

21. The first banner ad[6]– on 27 October 1994, Hotwired sells the first banner ad to AT&T and begins running the first Internet banner ad campaign.
22. The first cookie[7] – Version 0.9 of Mosaic Netscape was released on October 13, 1994 and was the first browser to support cookies
23. The first search engine[8] – WebCrawler, the first full-text web search engine is launched.
24. The first blog[9] – Justin Hall starts a web-based diary called Justin’s Links from the Underground. The term “blog” itself doesn’t appear until 1999.
25. The first commercial spam[10] – the “Green Card” spam, sent by husband-and-wife lawyers Laurence A. and Martha S. Siegel, is the first commercial spam.

Click here to learn how Rhetorik can help you innovate in B2B technology marketing.

What other events from 1994 would you include in your list? What do you think the next 25 years are going to bring?

Whatever it is, Rhetorik will be here to track it all the way.

[1] Source: OECD
[2] Source: Gartner (October 2018)
[3] Source: PWC Digital IQ Report
[4] Source: Forbes
[5] Source: Gartner CIO Agenda survey
[6] Source: The Drum
[7] Source: Wikipedia
[8] http://www.searchenginehistory.com/
[9] Web Designer Depot
[10] Source: Internet Society
[11] Source: Wikipedia