Social media and inbound marketing techniques have been a boon for marketers. Not only do leads generated through social and content marketing cost half as much as traditional outbound-generated leads (see below), they also close at higher rate (again, see below).

And social media isn’t just about lead generation of course. While prospective buyers are using search and social to research products and services before making purchase decisions, marketers and PR professionals can use those same tools to research buyer wants and needs. And their competition. And…even social media itself.

Which brings us to this post. Wondering which social network is most effective at generating b2b leads? What marketing technique generates leads with the highest close ratio? What the best day of the week is for Facebook posting? Which U.S. city produces the largest share of “pins”on Pinterest?

Find the answers to those questions and many, many more in this collection of 72 fascinating social media marketing facts and stats for 2012.

Social Media / Social Networking

1. The average midsize or large company (1000 employees or more) has 178 “social media assets” (Twitter handles, employee blogs, etc.)–yet only 25% of companies offer social business training to their employees. (Marketingeasy)

2. B2b marketers believe social media is critical to organic search success. Marketers rate social media as the second-most imporant factor (64%) in search, behind only strong content (82%). (BtoB Magazine)

3. Although Facebook is the most important social media lead generation tool for b2c marketers (with 77% saying they had had acquired a customer through Facebook, compared to 60% for a company blog), among B2B companies, LinkedIn was the most effective, with 65% having acquired a customer through the professional network, followed by company blogs (60%), Facebook (43%), and Twitter (40%). (Marketing Charts)

4. The best way to “go viral” is to engage millions of users, each of whom share through small networks. “Online sharing, even at viral scale, takes place through many small groups, not via the single status post or tweet of a few influencers…Content goes viral when it spreads beyond a particular sphere of influence and spreads across the social web via ordinarily people sharing with their friends…the median ratio of Facebook views to shares (is) merely 9-to-1. This means that for every Facebook share, only nine people visited the story. Even the largest stories on Facebook are the product of lots of intimate sharing—not one person sharing and hundreds of thousands of people clicking.” (Ad Age)

5. LinkedIn generates more leads for b2b companies than Facebook, Twitter or blogs. Yet only 47% of b2b marketers say they are actively using LinkedIn vs. 90% on Facebook. (Social Media B2B)

6. One-third of global b2b buyers use social media to engage with their vendors, and 75% expect to use social media in future purchases processes. (Social Media B2B)

7. “Best in class” b2b companies are significantly more likely than average firms to integrate their social media efforts with their email marketing (65% vs. 51%), SEO (61% vs. 49%) and webinars (47% vs. 31%). (MarketingProfs)

8. As for “best in class” practices, 51% of best-in-Class companies use website social sharing tools, compared to 36% of average firms while 49% use keyword-based social media monitoring, compared with 39% of their more average peers. (MarketingProfs)

9. Top executives need to be involved in social media. 77% of buyers say they are more likely to buy from a company whose CEO uses social media. 94% said C-suite social media participation enhances a brand image. And 82% of employees say they trust a company more when the CEO and leadership team communicate via social media. (eMarketer)

User Experience

Want more registrations on your website? Consider offering a social login (i.e., the ability for visitors to register at and log in to your site using one of their existing social network profiles rather than creating a new login):

10. 86% of people say they are bothered by the need to create new accounts at websites. (MarketingSherpa)

11. 77% responded that social login is “a good solution that should be offered.” (MarketingSherpa)

12. 21% of “best in class” companies use social sign-in, compared to 8% of average-performing firms. (MarketingProfs)

Lead Nurturing

13. Only 27% of B2B leads are sales-ready when first generated. This makes lead nurturing essential for capitalizing on the other 73%. But 65% of B2B marketers have not established lead nurturing campaigns. (MarketingSherpa)

14. SEO-driven leads have the highest lead-to-close rate (15%) among common lead generation sources. Paid search leads average a 7% rate, while outbound marketing leads (e.g., direct mail, telemarketing) close at a 2% rate. (Econsultancy)

Facebook

15. B2C Facebook interaction is 30% higher than average on Sundays. (Mindjumpers)

16. Though nearly every large charity and university in America has a Facebook presence, less than 60% of the Fortune 500 do. (Mindjumpers)

17. 95% of Facebook wall posts are not answered by brands. (Mindjumpers)

18. Though Facebook continues to add users, U.S. members are becoming less active there. Between mid-2009 and late 2011, “messaging friends declined 12%, searching for new contacts fell 17% and joining a group of Facebook users dropped 19% in the U.S.” (MediaPost)

19. 70% of local businesses use Facebook.The U.S. has the largest number of Facebook users. The country with the second-largest Facebook population: Indonesia.  (Jeff Bullas)

20. Facebook is the leading source of referred social media traffic to websites, at 26%. Twitter is second at 3.6%. (Pooky Shares)

21. Facebook marketing is a specialized skill. For those looking to outsource this function to a professional consultant, expect to pay $500-$1,500 for initial page setup and anywhere from $1,000 to $3,000 per month for ongoing content management and curation. (Mack Collier)

22. 52% of consumers say they have stopped following a brand on Facebook because the information it posted had become “too repetitive and boring.” (SMI)

Twitter

23. There are now roughly 100 million active Twitter users (those who log in at least once per day). (Mindjumpers)

24. 34% of marketers have generated leads using Twitter, and 20% have closed deals. (Mindjumpers)

25. 40% of Twitter users rarely post anything but primarily consume content there. 55% access Twitter via a mobile device. (Mindjumpers)

26. 92% of retweets are based on “interesting content.” Only 26% are due to inclusion of “please RT!” in the tweet. (Mindjumpers)

27. Twitter now has 200 million users, including 8% of the U.S. population. About one-quarter of all users are considered “extremely active,” checking in several times per day. (Jeff Bullas)

28. 55% of all Twitter users use the service to share links to news stories, and 53% retweet others. (Jeff Bullas)

29. 77 of the world’s 100 largest companies maintain a corporate Twitter account. But media outlets are the most active users. (Jeff Bullas)

30. Most professional consultants charge $500-$1,000 to set up a Twitter account (optimized bio, custom background etc.) and $500-$1,500 per month for ongoing management (dependent on level of activity and amount of content). (Mack Collier)

Google and Google+

31. Google’s search engine is used by 85% of global Internet users every month. (MediaPost)

32. Google+ is expected to reach 400 million users by the end of 2012. It’s membership is 63% male, with the largest cohort in their mid-20s. While the largest block of users by country are in the U.S., the second largest is India. However, only 17% of users are considered “active.” (Jeff Bullas)

Pinterest

33. The image-based social network has grown 4,000% in the past six months, now boasts more than 4 million users, and keeps those users engaged: the average Pinterest user spends nearly an hour-and-a-half per month on the site, behind only Facebook and Tumblr. (Jeff Bullas)

34. 83% of Pinterest users are women. In the U.S., the most popular categories are Fashion, Desserts, Clothes and Birthdays. (MediaPost)

35. But in the U.K., the five most popular topics on Pinterest are Venture Capital, Blogging Resources, Crafts, Web Analytics and SEO/Marketing. (Pooky Shares)

36. 22% of all pins come from New York, followed by Los Angeles at 15%. A higher percentage come from Minneapolis (10%) than from San Francisco (8%)–even though Pinterest is based in Palo Alto. (MediaPost)

37. Pinterest is virtually tied with Twitter (at 3.6%) for the amount of referred social traffic it sends to websites. (Pooky Shares)

Tumblr

38. Tumblr grew 900% in 2011 and now has 90 million users. However, just 2% of members account for more than 40% of all traffic. (Jeff Bullas)

39. The five most popular tags for Tumblr posts are GIF, LOL, Fashion, Art and Vintage. The U.S. has the largest share of users, followed by Brazil. (Jeff Bullas)

Mobile Marketing

40. 4.8 billion people now own mobile phones. Just 4.2 billion own a toothbrush. (Mindjumpers)

41. One-third of smartphones globally use the Android OS. (MediaPost)

42. The number of tablets in use in the U.S. rose from 34 million in 2011 to 55 million this year and is expected to reach 108 million by 2015. (TMGmedia)

43. Mobile commerce is projected to ten-fold from 2010 ($3 billion) to 2016 ($31 billion). (TMGmedia)

44. While three-quarters of b2b marketers are aware of the growing importance of mobile devices, only 23% rate mobile search as either “important” or “critical” to their search marketing objectives. (BtoB Magazine)

45. Just 16% of b2b marketers are producing mobile-specific content as part of their content marketing efforts. (Smart Insights)

46. Although the percentage of visits to b2b websites coming from smart phones has increased nearly 50% in the past year, they still represent only about 1 out of every 24 sites visits on average. (Webbiquity)

SEO and Search Marketing

47. 57% of B2B marketers say SEO has the biggest impact on their lead generation goals. (Mindjumpers)

48. Though half of all b2b digital spending is focused on search and most websites are organically optimized, only 65% of b2b marketers have ever used pay-per-click advertising. (BtoB Magazine)

49. Search provides the highest quality leads. According to research by HubSpot, “SEO leads have a 15% close rate, on par with the close rate for direct traffic, and ahead of referrals (9%), paid search (7%), social media (4%), and outbound leads (2%).” (Marketing Charts)

Blogging

50. Social media sites and blogs reach 80% of all U.S. internet users. (Mindjumpers)

51. Social networks and blogs account for 23% of all time spent online — twice as much as gaming. (Mindjumpers)

52. “Increased frequency of blogging correlates with increased customer acquisition, according to…HubSpot. 92% of of blog users who posted multiple times a day acquired a customer through their blog, a figure that decreased to 66% for those who blogged monthly and 43% for those who posted less than monthly.” (Marketing Charts)

53. The most popular frequency for blog posting is weekly (60% of bloggers). Just 10% post daily. (Marketing Charts)

54. Blogs are the single most important inbound marketing tool. “When asked to rank the importance of the services they use, 25% of users rated their company blog as critical to their business, while a further 56% considered them either important (34%) or useful (22%)” for a total of 81%. (Marketing Charts)

55. B2B companies with blogs generate 67% more leads per month on average than non-blogging firms. (Social Media B2B)

56. For those looking to outsource, a professional consultant will generally charge $1,000-$3,000 for setting up a blog, $1,000-$3,000 per month for ongoing content development/editing, and ballpark of $200 for a single guest post. (Mack Collier)

Video and SlideShare

57. 52% of b2b marketers use video as part of their content marketing mix. (Smart Insights)

58. Video production costs vary widely, depending on length, quality, type of content and other factors. High-end animated videos can cost $20,000-$30,000, while simpler interview-type videos can be under $1,000. Common 2- to 3-minute videos with a mix of live action and simple animation typically cost $2,000-$5,000. (Mack Collier)

59. SlideShare draws 60 million visitors per month; but most importantly for b2b marketers, it attracts 3X more traffic from business owners than any other social media site. (Jeff Bullas)

Social Demographics

60. On social networking sites, men and women are about equally willing to share their real names (both about 87%), political and religious affiliation, and the brands they like (~77%), but men are far more likely than women to share their physical address (11% vs. 4%), their current location (35% vs. 20%), their phone number 15% vs. 4%), and their income level (16% vs. 5%). (AllTwitter)

61. Contrary to what you’ve probably been told, longer format video may actually drive higher engagement: “different types of content yield different sharing behaviors. Breaking down video behavior within StumbleUpon, videos viewed between two to three minutes found a spike in sharing out to social media, whereas videos viewed beyond four minutes see direct shares increase by five times. Longer, arguably more involved, content may drive viewers to more intimate sharing routes.” (Ad Age)

Inbound and Content Marketing

62. 90% of b2b marketers do some form of content marketing. 26% of b2b marketing budgets are invested in content, and 60% of b2b marketers say they plan to spend more on content marketing in the coming year. (Smart Insights)

63. The most popular content marketing tactics used by b2b marketers are article posting (used by 79% of b2b marketers), social media excluding blogs (74%), blogs (65%) and enewsletters (63%). Just 10% use virtual conferences. (Smart Insights)

64. The average cost to generate a lead through inbound marketing ($143) is about half the average for outbound marketing ($373). (Econsultancy)

65. Small businesses, on average, spend twice the share of their lead generation budget (43%) on inbound marketing as do large companies (21%). Small organiations spend more than twice as much on social media and 3X as much on blogging as their larger counterparts, while big businesses spend three times as much on trade shows and nearly twice the share of their budget on direct mail as do smaller firms. (Econsultancy)

66. More is (often at least) better. Businesses with 40+ different landing pages/offers generate 10X more leads than those with five or fewer landing pages, and those with 200 or more total blog posts generate 3.5X more leads than those whose blogs have 20 or fewer posts. (Econsultancy)

67. 84% of b2b companies are using some form of social media marketing. However, “best in class” companies generate over 3X their share of all leads (17% vs. 5%) from social media as do average performing companies. (MarketingProfs)

68. 90% of b2b marketers are doing some form of content marketing, and b2b marketers spend on average 26% of their marketing budgets on content. The most effective content marketers spend twice as much as their less effective peers on content development, and consider buying stage when developing content. (B2B Marketing Insider)

69. It shouldn’t be a surprise, but content has to be good in order to be effective. B2b buyers say that less than half of vendor content is useful–and vendors who produce such low-value content are 27% less likely to be considered and 40% less likely to win the business. “Good” content is concise, entertaining (includes stories), more educational than promotional, and is contextually personalized. (B2B Marketing Insider)

Media and Online Advertising

70. Most “national” newspapers are still quite regional: the Chicago Tribune gets socially shared at above average levels only in Illinois, the Washington Post only in Virginia, D.C. and Maryland, and the New York Times only in a clump of northeastern states and Hawaii (though the Wall Street Journal is very popular in Arizona). Fox News is most popular in the southeastern U.S. plus Nevada and Alaska, while the Huffington Compost is widely share along the Interstate 35 corridor (Minnesota to Texas), Florida, Oregon, Maine and the rustbelt. (Forbes)

71. Online CPM rates have little correlation with actual advertiser value delivered. Nearly one-third of all display ads are never seen (defined as 50% of the pixels in view for at least one second). But contrary to popular belief, “below the fold” ads don’t necessarily have lower impression rates than those placed high on the page. (MediaPost)

72. Leaderboard (728 x 90 pixels) and medium rectangle (300 x 250) ad sizes have the highest view-in rates. Coupon and directory sites have the highest ad view rates, both over 80%. In contrast, a sponsor’s ads had just a 27% likelihood of being seen on pet-oriented sites. (MediaPost)

Last year, Realtor.com and Yahoo Real Estate battled it out for the top position in the monthly real estate website rankings maintained by Web metrics firm Experian Hitwise. So far this year, Zillow has been king of the hill, having bumped Yahoo Real Estate from the top spot in March.

Jockeying for the spots below first place has also been fierce, with Trulia jumping two positions into second place on the Hitwise list in June. Trulia leapfrogged over third-place Realtor.com, bumping Yahoo Real Estate into third place in the process. AOL Real Estate, meanwhile, moved up two positions from May to June, but there were no new websites in the top 10.

The Hitwise rankings don’t tally mobile app users, an increasingly popular option among consumers conducting listing searches. But they still provide a window into who’s winning the battle for eyeballs — an important consideration for brokers and agents in deciding where to spend their marketing dollars.

According to Hitwise, the top 10 websites on the list captured 38.9 percent of all visits in the real estate category.

Zillow commanded the greatest market share in June (8.61 percent), followed by Trulia (6.89 percent), Realtor.com (6.52 percent), and Yahoo Real Estate (6.06 percent). Rounding out the top 10 were Homes.com with 3.41 percent market share, MSN Real Estate (1.88 percent), Apartment Guide (1.57 percent), AOL Real Estate (1.43 percent), Rent.com (1.30 percent) and MyNewPlace (1.23 percent).

Further complicating the rankings are alliances between several of the top listing portals. Zillow powers for-sale listings on Yahoo Real Estate and sells targeted ads to real estate agents and brokers that appear on both sites. Hitwise shows Zillow and Yahoo Real Estate with a combined 14.67 percent market share.

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MSN Real Estate serves up framed Realtor.com search results — including lead forms for buyer’s agents, when those are displayed. According to Hitwise, Realtor.com and MSN Real Estate have a combined 8.4 percent market share of traffic in the real estate category (Realtor.com operator Move Inc. also supplies a separate set of listings to AOL Real Estate through a subsidiary, ListHub).

That compares to a 10.14 percent combined market share for the next 10 most popular sites on the Hitwise list: ZipRealty (1.17 percent), HomeAway (1.15 percent), Apartments.com (1.14 percent), LoopNet (1.06 percent), Re/max Real Estate (0.98 percent), ForRent.com (0.97 percent), HAR.com (0.95 percent), Rentals.com (0.95 percent), Redfin (0.93 percent), and HotPads.com (0.83 percent).

Six websites entered the top 100 last month, GetForeclosedHome.com (54th), MLSLI.com (91st), I Rent To Own (92nd), Property Shark (95th), Edina Realty (99th), and OurParents.com. Edina Realty recently made headlines for its decision to withold listings data from national third-party websites, in part to boost traffic to its own site.

The six websites leaving the top 100 in June were Rent To Own Direct (163rd), HiddenListings (117th), rentBits (128th), John L. Scott Real Estate (108th), RatePlug (114th), WhiteFence (102nd).

Top-ranked search terms were “zillow,” “realtor.com,” “trulia,” “realtor,” “zillow.com,” “remax,” “apartment finder,” “century 21,” “coldwell banker,” “har.com,” “homes.com,” “real estate,” “apartments for rent,” “re max,” “howard hanna,” “homes for sale,” “har,” “wyndham vacation resorts,” “www.zillow.com,” and “trulia.com.”

Fast-moving sites in June included Calcagni (up 449 places to 354), Tropicasa Realty (up 1,285 places to 1,089), GeoDataPlus (up 447 places to 605), RentToOwn.org (up 174 places to 239), Real Capital Analytics (up 344 places to 684), Panhandlebeachresorts.com (up 585 places to 1,284), FastHomeOffer.com (up 485 places to 1,068), gastonhomes.gastongazette.com (up 603 places to 1,316), Crystal Coast Realty (up 349 places to 871), Network Real Estate of Wilmington, N.C. (up 290 places to 757).

A decline in the international share of overall house hunters in the second quarter indicates that rising U.S. home prices may be putting off foreign buyers, according to a report from real estate search and marketing site Trulia.

The report is based on all home searches on Trulia between April 1, 2012 to June 30, 2012. The share of foreign searches on Trulia fell nearly 10 percent year over year in the second quarter, with the fastest appreciating markets seeing the biggest declines in foreign interest, according to Trulia.

After years of dropping home prices nationwide, many markets seem to have found their footing. Nationally, home prices were up only slightly in June — 0.3 percent on an annual basis.

“Foreigners attracted to real estate bargains get turned off when prices increase,” said Jed Kolko, Trulia’s chief economist, in a statement.

“Investors want to buy when prices are at their bottom, but they’ll start to lose interest when prices rise 15 percent, as they have in Miami and Phoenix. Demand by people looking to scoop up bargains can dry up quickly when prices rise.”

The share of foreign house hunters is declining even among buyers from countries that are ground zero in the European debt crisis, such as Greece, Italy, and Spain. Investors in search of a safe haven drove a rise in searches from such countries in 2011, but search activity from those countries peaked in the fourth quarter of 2011, and has fallen 15 percent since then.

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Six of the 10 metro areas with the highest share of searches from abroad were in Florida — a warm weather state that saw huge price declines during the downturn. Nonetheless, recent price increases in metros like Miami and Cape Coral-Fort Myers mean some of these metros have seen less interest from overseas house hunters in the past year, Trulia said.

Rank	U.S. metro	Share of searches by international house hunters, Q2 2012	Share of searches by international house hunters, Q2 2011	Annual price change (Trulia Price Monitor, June 2012)
1	Miami	15.7%	16.3%	16.1%
2	Los Angeles	13.7%	13.4%	-1.7%
3	Fort Lauderdale, Fla.	12.9%	14.2%	2.6%
4	Lakeland-Winter Haven, Fla.	10.9%	11.8%	3.3%
5	Orlando, Fla.	10.8%	10.7%	6.8%
6	West Palm Beach, Fla.	10.3%	12.2%	9.6%
7	Cape Coral-Fort Myers, Fla.	10.2%	11.9%	14.9%
8	Honolulu	10.1%	10.7%	2.9%
9	San Francisco	9.1%	9.5%	2.5%
10	Las Vegas	9.1%	9.4%	0.4%

Source: Trulia

The top five countries represented among international house hunters were Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, Australia, and India. For a more extensive list of popular countries of origin and U.S. cities, see the interactive graphic accompanying Trulia’s report.

June existing home sales might be down 5.4 percent nationwide but hot weather is heating up hot markets to boiling, pushing sales to levels unseen in years and raising the specter of price bubbles.

Increased competition for the limited inventory of non-distressed property listings helped push the average home sales-to-listing price ratio to 95.6 percent in June, according to the Campbell/Inside Mortgage Finance HousingPulse Tracking Survey.

This was the first time in nearly three years this important ratio has been this high. But the HousingPulse monthly survey also found that much of June’s growth in sales-to-list price ratios was driven by brisk home purchase activity in three states – California, Arizona and Nevada.

“Strong demand, particularly in areas of California, Arizona and Nevada, are pushing up home prices very quickly in the short-term. And because many of the home purchases in these areas are cash transactions, there appears to be less braking of prices by our current appraisal system than seen in other parts of the country,” noted Thomas Popik, research director for Campbell Surveys and chief analyst for HousingPulse.

“This trend raises the distinct possibility of housing price bubbles emerging in some of these hot housing markets,” he added.

While a rise in sales-to-price ratios was one of the most visible signs of improvement in the non-distressed property sector of the housing market, the average time on market and the average sales price for non-distressed properties also registered strong improvements. In fact, closed sales prices for non-distressed properties would have increased more if it were not for tough appraisal standards placing restraints on mortgage-financed property prices.

HousingPulse results showed time on market for non-distressed listings fell sharply in June to 11.7 weeks, a drop of a full week from the May reading of 12.7 weeks. As recently as March, the non-distressed property time on market had been 14.0 weeks. The June 2012 time on market for non-distressed listings is the lowest in over two years and substantially below the June 2011 reading of 15.0 weeks.

Metrics for non-distressed properties are some of the best indications of housing market conditions, because month-to-month policy decisions of mortgage servicers on REO (real estate-owned) and short sale disposition do not bias these statistics.

The average sales price for non-distressed properties rose from $257,200 in May to $260,900 in June, an increase of 1.4 percent in only one month. Numerous real estate agents responding to the HousingPulse survey indicated that prices would be increasing more rapidly, except that appraisal standards require comparables from distressed properties. Additionally, comparables that are several months old do not match recent market values, hampering mortgage-financed buyers from placing winning bids in multiple offer situations and instead giving properties to more frugal cash-only purchasers.

In markets with a high proportion of cash sales, property prices are increasing more rapidly. Markets with a high proportion of cash sales and strong price appreciation include California and Arizona/Nevada. HousingPulse results indicated that sales-to-list price ratios in the western regions of California and Arizona/Nevada exceeded all other areas of the United States by wide margins.

The Campbell/Inside Mortgage Finance HousingPulse Tracking Survey involves approximately 2,500 real estate agents nationwide each month and provides up-to-date intelligence on home sales and mortgage usage patterns.

If you’re hip to the popular email marketing statistics, you probably know all too well that your email database slowly dies over time. In fact, 25% of your list will expire every year as readers switch jobs, email providers, or unsubscribe from your emails. As your list depreciates, it’s important to not only make sure you’re keeping your list clean, but also that you’re not throwing away active contacts. So what’s the solution? A re-engagement campaign!

What Is a Re-Engagement Campaign?

A re-engagement campaign is a systematic method for re-awakening inactive subscribers, while also identifying which email addresses in your database you should let go of. The campaign only involves your stale contacts — people who have been on your list for a long time who may or may not still be opening, reading, and clicking on your emails. The goal of a re-engagement campaign is to identify which portion of your list you should retain, and which portion you’re better off removing.

Why Is This So Important?

There are several reason why you would want to execute a re-engagement campaign:

1) You’re Emailing an Old List or Switching ESPs

A re-engagement campaign is critical if you’re going to start emailing an old list, or if you’re moving over to a new email service provider (ESP). Batch-and-blasting an old list can get you into some pretty hot water! Your email provider would likely suspend your account if you exceed a certain threshold of bounces. And once you’re suspended, most email providers will reach out and ask you about your list source in order to determine how much of a risk you are to their network. Senders with continued high bounce rates can hurt that ESP’s sending reputation, or even result in them getting added to block lists. It’s similar to borrowing the keys to your friend’s car — your buddy is going to be mighty angry with you if you crash his beloved wheels!

2) To Keep Your Domain’s Reputation Healthy

Another reason to execute a re-engagement campaign is to keep your domain’s reputation healthy. If you repeatedly email people who don’t open, read, or click on your emails, you run the risk of tarnishing the reputation of your company’s domain. Domain reputation is a big factor when it comes to getting into inboxes. And, most importantly, your domain reputation can follow you to different providers. So even if you hop from one email provider to another, you’re not fooling anyone if your domain reputation is tarnished.

3) To Stay Budget-Conscious

Lastly, executing a re-engagement campaign will enable you to make sure you’re not wasting your money. As your list gets older, you’ll end up getting less bang for your buck if you don’t clean out the stale contacts. A re-engagement campaign will ensure that you’re not wasting precious marketing budget on email sends to dead addresses.

How to Launch a Re-Engagement Campaign, Step by Step

Ready to launch your first re-engagement email campaign? Follow these 5 steps, and you’ll reap the benefits of a successful email re-awakening!

Step 1: Give Each of Your Contacts an Age 

First, establish a way to assign an age to each of your contacts. There are several ways you can do this, depending on what data is accessible. For example, you could either use the date the contact became a subscriber, the last interaction date, the date of the contact’s source, or any other indicator of age.

Step 2: Decide When Contacts Become Unengaged

Once you’ve established an age for each of your contacts, select a cutoff point where you suspect your list starts to become unengaged. Your cutoff can start anywhere between 3 and 6 months old.

Step 3: Segment Your List

Choose how granular you want to be about segmentation. The more granular you are, the more value you’re likely to get out of this campaign. That is, you can pinpoint your “dead” contacts more accurately if you group your list in 3-month segments versus 6-month segments. The idea is that there’s a cliff — i.e. there’s a certain point in which all contacts beyond a certain age are too cold to continue emailing. The question you want to answer is, at what point does the number of bounces, SPAM complaints, and dead addresses outweigh the benefits of the emails sent? The more refined your segmentation is, the better you’ll be able to pinpoint that age.

(For example, HubSpot’s revamped Email tool, which is currently rolling out to our customers, includes a sleek list segmentation tool that offers a simple way of doing this. You can quickly create cohorts of your database based on demographics, interests, and behaviors.)

When building your segments, you should aim to keep them around 5,000 contacts or fewer. This number is based on the fact that aside from bounce rate, the actual volume of bounces matters too. Depending on your ESP, it may be okay to have a high bounce rate if the volume of bounces isn’t too high.

Step 4: Design Your Emails and Craft Their Copy

The next step is to design your emails and develop the copy for the campaign. Create one email for each segment you’re trying to reawaken. You can either send the same email to each segment, or if you’ve decided to segment more granularly using other variables in addition to just age, you can choose to cater the content/offer and copy within that email to the interests of that particular segment of contacts. The one key component you can’t afford to ignore is that you should be offering something your unengaged contacts will think is highly valuable. Consider this to be your last chance to engage these stale contacts before you cut them loose. And ultimately, your goal is to try to get them to interact with the message. A good method for choosing the content/offer to include in your emails is to analyze the performance of past email sends, and choose something that you know already performs well.

Engagement is critical, because it’s a metric used by email providers to evalute whether or not to deliver email into an inbox. They’re actually looking at what subscribers are doing; for example, in the Gmail client, how many people archived your email without reading it? If they did open it, did they spend time reading it? Actions, like clicking “Reply,” signal positive engagement to email services, and strengthen your sender reputation as a result.

Step 5: Systematically Send Your Emails

Once you have your segments and emails prepared, start by sending your email to the youngest segment. Wait 24 hours, and then check your success metrics. These include: (1) bounce rate (2) complaint rate and (3) click and opens rates. If all of these numbers look healthy, proceed to send the email to your next segment. Repeat this process until the numbers start to look dicey.

You’re probably wondering, “What qualifies as dicey?” Here is a rundown of what you should be keeping an eye out for:

1) Bounce rates over 5% are cause for concern, as anything over 5% can get your account shut off by some ESPs. For more info on what an acceptable bounce rate is, you should check with your ESP. Most ESPs publish such information in their acceptable use policy.

2) SPAM compliant rates should be 0.1% or lower, although the actual threshold that most ISPs publish is 0.3%. Anything over 0.3% would likely result in a chat with your ESP’s abuse desk. In addition to the bounce rate, HubSpot’s own Email tool, for example, makes the SPAM complaint rate of every email easy to access:

3) Open and click-through rates are more subjective. The best way to determine a threshold for these is to think in terms of dollars. That is, ask yourself, “Is it worth it to continue spending money and time to email these people?” If you’re not getting a suitable conversion rate from a given segment, it’s time to let them go.

That’s all there is to it! Once you notice that your metrics are reporting some pretty dismal numbers, it’s safe to assume that any segment of contacts who are older than that should be removed from your list.

Last week, HubSpot teamed up with LinkedIn to host part 1 of a 3-part workshop series on how to master LinkedIn for marketing. The first webinar, hosted by Director of Online Marketing at LinkedIn Scott Engelman and HubSpot CMO Mike Volpe, went into detail on how companies can leverage LinkedIn Groups and Company Pages for inbound marketing success.

During the webinar, we had loads of excellent questions come in on Twitter and through the webinar chat page. So many, in fact, that we could not possibly answer all of them in one short Q&A session. That’s why we wanted to take the opportunity to answer the most frequently asked questions from the first workshop session below. Get ready to stuff your head with even more LinkedIn marketing knowledge!

The 7 Most Asked Questions About LinkedIn Company Pages and Groups

1) How does interaction on LinkedIn differ from interaction on Facebook?

People use LinkedIn to learn more about their industry and keep in touch with professional connections. When you’re on LinkedIn, you expect to come across articles and resources you could send to your boss or team members. Facebook, on the other hand, is used for fun, entertainment, and social interaction with personal connections. When you’re on Facebook, you expect to come across interesting or entertaining images you could share with your friends. Think of Facebook as your best friend, dressed-down and ready to party at a rock concert, while LinkedIn is your potential future business partner, suited up and ready to learn about industry success at a business expo.

Bearing this in mind, when you’re marketing on Facebook or LinkedIn, you want to make sure you’re speaking to each audience in the proper tone. You should feel comfortable speaking to your Facebook network in a more casual way, while your tone on LinkedIn will be more professional. For example, at HubSpot we post photos, cartoons, and memes on Facebook, but stick to articles, ebooks, and webinars on LinkedIn. The right content with the right tone for each network!

2) Have you seen B2C companies be successful with LinkedIn Company Pages?

B2B companies naturally thrive on LinkedIn, just as B2C companies tend to find it simple to thrive on Pinterest. But that doesn’t mean B2C companies can’t play on LinkedIn (and hey, if you’re B2B, don’t be afraid of Pinterest, either!) On LinkedIn, B2C companies can be very successful by leveraging the platform not just for job opportunities, but also showcasing their company culture … and growing a following based on their company as a brand, not just as a product or service.

For example, Starbucks uses LinkedIn as an opportunity to showcase the brand’s personality through the banner at the top of the “Careers” section, but then dives deeper into what careers at Starbucks might actually look like. If you’re a B2C company where culture is an important piece of your brand, it’s not a bad idea to provide visuals on LinkedIn that encompass why someone would choose to work for you over some other company.

 

Retail store Urban Outfitters uses LinkedIn to post job openings in their update stream. By including an image of the people behind the brand a company can showcase culture, personality, and the mindset you’ll need to have in order to work there.

 

3) Can I participate in LinkedIn Groups as my company?

As of right now, LinkedIn only allows you to join a discussion or manage a group via your personal profile. However, this doesn’t mean you should stay away from using groups for marketing! If your audience is the right fit for your product or service, LinkedIn Groups can generate some serious leads for your business. For instance, posting a link to a webinar about how to do inbound marketing on LinkedIn does really well in a LinkedIn Group of inbound marketing professionals. It almost makes too much sense.

 

When you send a LinkedIn Announcement to a group you manage, the message is sent as you, the professional, not as your company. Remember this and tailor your messaging so it sounds like a human and not a corporation. People like communicating with other people. After all, isn’t that how this whole social media phenomenon started to begin with?

Are you worried about being the sole voice of your entire company in a LinkedIn Group? Don’t fret! LinkedIn allows group managers to share their responsibilities with others. You can appoint individuals on your team, employees, or your most influential group members to join you in running your group. It might even be valuable for you to have certain members play as the experts for different discussion topics. For instance, if you’re running a marketing group, have one manager be the email marketing voice, one the social media voice, and another your SEO voice. Your group members will begin to identify with certain managers and understand which discussions to follow based on topic of interest.

Don’t own a group? Engage in other groups! There are tons of excellent communities that already exist on LinkedIn. All you need to do is find one that matches your company’s outlook and start adding some value there. If you are looking for more information, check out these 7 Ways Marketers Can Participate in LinkedIn Groups.

4) Is collecting LinkedIn recommendations useful?

Absolutely! Not only are recommendations great to have for personal profiles on LinkedIn, but they act as excellent customer success case studies. Do you trust your friends and family members when they give you recommendations on products or services? More so than you trust, say, a paid ad? Precisely.

For example, marketers want to know how to be more efficient, effective, and produce better results for their company’s marketing program. So where do they find the answers? They ask fellow marketers and trusted thought leaders to offer up suggestions and secrets via social media. Suddenly, recommendations are flying left and right across the social-sphere, but companies don’t know where to contain them. That’s where LinkedIn comes in.

 

With LinkedIn’s Recommendations, you can bucket all these awesome compliments on your very own Company Page. You’ll see how many impressions the recommendation got, the level of engagement, and exactly which of your products come most recommended. LinkedIn’s handy “Recommend” and “Share” buttons make it even easier to grow your reach while helping users share what they love quickly and easily.

5) During a week, how many hours are typically devoted to maintaining a LinkedIn Company Page and engaging the audience?

Once your page is developed, maintaining it takes very little time. It’s not like Twitter where you have to post constant updates and pull up multiple streams to monitor and keep the conversation going; posting once a day is just fine for LinkedIn. In fact, if you exceed 3 posts in a day, you’re probably posting too often. Instead, focus on posting valuable content that is helpful to your audience. If you post one invaluable piece of information per day, your audience will be much more engaged and appreciative than if you post six boring, useless pieces of content.

Posting, monitoring, responding to comments, and analyzing page statistics should take you no more than 10 minutes a day. If you have all your posts planned out ahead of time, you’ve just cut those 10 minutes down to 5. That’s right, only 5 minutes a day. Do you think you can do it?

6) What’s the best way to find potential customers on LinkedIn?

Groups are your best bet, especially if you consider your business to be relatively niche. In a group, you can establish yourself as an industry expert very quickly through discussions and announcements. In general, groups are very engaging and allow for great communication between professionals interested in the same topic. So if your company sells guitars, joining or creating a group for guitar players makes a lot of sense. If someone has a question or problem with their current instrument, you will be the first one there to hop into the conversation and solve their problem.

LinkedIn Groups are your starting point to built trust and create awareness around your brand. Once group members trust you as a professional and understand what your company does, you might be wise to invite them to follow your LinkedIn Company Page for more updates.

7) For HubSpot’s case, do you think LinkedIn prospects are higher quality leads (compared to other social networks)?

Since HubSpot is a B2B company selling inbound marketing software, the prospects coming from LinkedIn do tend to be of a higher quality than those that come from other social channels. This is because we’re communicating with marketers at all sorts of different companies, but with one common goal in mind: making their company’s marketing better.

This is the case not only because HubSpot is a B2B company, but because we spend time in LinkedIn Groups that are specifically meant for our industry. Our group, “Inbound Marketing – For Marketing Professionals” is loaded with precisely the types of people that want to learn more about inbound marketing, enjoy receiving our content, and will eventually turn into customers.

After extensive renovation and re-opening to the public, the true beauty of Château de la Cazine has been recognised by an on-line reporter as one of ’30 of the most beautiful castles in Europe’.

Website Neatdesgisn has selected Castles from the likes of France, the UK, Germany, Romania and Italy, with some castles built in the Middle Ages, others were built in the 18^th or 19^th Centuries.

The website receives 50,000 unique visitors each month, so thousands have already read of and seen Château de a Cazine’s beauty.  The Château is recognised as number 26 in Europe’s top 30 most beautiful castles.

Click on the link below for more information:

http://neatdesigns.net/30-of-the-most-beautiful-castles-in-europe/

About Barrasford & Bird Worldwide.

Industry professionals since 2003, AIPP Founding Members Barrasford & Bird Worldwide have successfully handed over more than 2500 properties to their customers in a wide variety of countries, from Bulgaria to the Caribbean. Barrasford & Bird now builds and manages its own luxury resorts in a selection of destinations including Greece and France.

Contact Information

Barrasford & Bird Worldwide, 14 Plymouth Road, Tavistock, Devon, PL19 8AY, UK

Freephone 0800 1 303 101

Landline 00 44 (0)1822 611 116

Email: info@bandbw.co.uk

Web: www.bandbw.co.uk

FOR SAME DAY COMMENTS, QUOTES AND CASE STUDIES PLEASE CONTACT NICOLA RICKARD AT BARRASFORD AND BIRD WORLDWIDE ON 01822 613 200  OR nicola.rickard@bandbw.co.uk

Spain has overtaken France and the USA as the UK nation’s favourite place to buy an overseas property, according to The Overseas Guides Company (OGC).

OGC report that 22% of all enquiries that it received between April and June this year were for property in Spain, which represents a staggering 37.5% increase on the first quarter of 2012 when the country’s share of enquiries was just 16%. Property in France pulled in the second highest share with 21%, followed by property in USA with 14%, each dropping just 1% compared to the first quarter. OGC provides free Buying Guides and resources for all key destinations popular with British property-buyers. 

Encouragingly, the total number of enquiries received by OGC for its country specific Buying Guides grew by 3.7% quarter-on-quarter, namely from 6,468 in Q1 2012 to 6,707 in Q2 2012. Positively, year-on-year growth for the last quarter was up 50 per cent, from 4,459 in Q2 2011.

OGC – Leads into OGC per Country – 2012 – % Share per Country
	Jan	Feb	Mar	Q1	Apr	May	Jun	Q2
America	13%	18%	17%	15%	15%	14%	12%	14%
Australia	11%	9%	6%	9%	6%	5%	4%	5%
Canada	10%	6%	5%	7%	5%	4%	4%	4%
Cyprus	3%	4%	4%	4%	4%	4%	5%	4%
France	23%	20%	21%	22%	22%	20%	21%	21%
Greece	2%	3%	3%	2%	4%	4%	5%	4%
Italy	5%	5%	6%	5%	7%	7%	7%	7%
New Zealand	2%	3%	3%	3%	3%	4%	4%	3%
Others	8%	6%	5%	6%	3%	2%	3%	3%
Portugal	5%	6%	7%	6%	6%	7%	7%	7%
Spain	14%	19%	18%	16%	21%	23%	23%	22%
Turkey	3%	3%	5%	4%	4%	6%	4%	5%
	100%	100%	100%	100%	100%	100%	100%	100%
Total Leads	2,731	2,041	1,696	6,468	2,113	2,325	2,269	6,707

Richard Way, editor of The Overseas Guides Company, commented: “Spain has always been a favourite with British buyers but clearly there has been a surge in interest in the last few months. Our recommended agent on the Costa Blanca, HomeEspana, reports a 20 per cent rise in British clients in the last three months. Interest for higher-valued properties in towns like Moraira, as well as more traditional destinations like Torrevieja and Cabo Roig, has returned. Part of the reason could be that the coastal regions most sought after by foreign buyers are ahead of the curve in terms of falling prices, while much uncertainty still remains in inland developments. The stronger pound will be luring buyers back to the market too. For British people, a €100,000 property is around £5,200 cheaper today than it was in January, purely due to the exchange rate shifting to around £1/€1.27 from £1/€1.19.”