Tamara over at the BeRelevant! Email marketing blog was a woman after my own heart when she wrote a post this week that advices marketers not to purchase lists. At Pardot, we’ve always shared this sentiment – in fact, it is actually against our Terms of Use to send blasts to purchased lists through our system (which is also the case with most major email marketing tools).

First, let’s review the distinction between buying lists and renting lists.

Renting a list means you pay a sponsorship-type fee to a third party for the right to send a set number of emails to their opted-in subscribers. These subscribers have let the vendor know that they are open to receiving relevant offers from the vendor’s network of partners. Typically, you will provide creative to the vendor and the actual list of email addresses will never be in your hands. You can, of course, then drive the recipients to a landing page where they can convert and become prospects in your system as a part of your house list. This is an acceptable marketing tactic.

Buying a list means that you’ve paid a one-time fee to receive an actual, physical list of people’s email addresses. This would be a list that you could import in to your system and use as many times as you want, just as you would an organically developed house list.

So what’s wrong with buying a list?

When it boils down to it, the people on that list did not opt-in to receiving your communication. They also did not give permission to receive email from a trusted partner, as in the case of the third-party list rental. When you don’t know where the names came from, you run a much higher risk of being reported as a spammer by the recipients. This can permanently damage your sender reputation and hurt your delieverablilty for years to come. Another thing to keep in mind is that these lists are not typically well maintained. It may look like a great value to purchase thousands of email addresses for a low fee, but the “value” is cut in half when you have a 50% bounce rate.

The bottom line is stay away from purchased lists. If it seems too easy, it probably is. Consider the long term repercussions rather than the short term appeal.

Pardot is moving on up – ten floors up, to be exact. Earlier this month we settled in to our new penthouse office on the 34th floor, setting up shop in a space almost twice as large as our previous office. We now have an entire floor to our name, complete with breathtaking panoramic views of Atlanta.

We still enjoy the “motivation enhancers” of our previous location, including the ping pong table and pinball machine in our game room. Our Segway and razor scooters are getting more mileage on them, too, as interoffice trips now involve traversing longer distances. The breadth of our snack room is now complemented with a new Keurig coffee machine in a jump kitchen, as we go from being fueled by plain old coffee to Mocha Nut Fudge and Vanilla Bean Bang!

The move has definitely been an inspiring change for Pardot, as our enhanced working environment matches our ambitions of becoming bigger and better in 2009. We look forward to showing you our new space at our next open house, but in the mean time, enjoy a sneak peek in the photos below!

I was reading a case study on MarketingSherpa about a company called INTTRA who took a new approach to forms – a voluntary approach. This ties in nicely with the idea of having some content freely available on your website, while other materials may be “locked down” with forms.

In the case of INTTRA, they were dealing with a very traditional industry segment and they weren’t sure their prospects would be very open to filling out a form in order to view a product demo. Instead of requiring registration, they allowed anyone to view the demo, but still provided a form in a sidebar for those who wanted more information.

They ended up with a pretty decent conversion rate. 23% of those who view the demo filled out the form. Those who converted were sent an autoresponder email that included additional resources and then passed on to the sales team, as appropriate.

If I had to guess, I’d bet those leads were pretty qualified since they were actively seeking information. Pardot uses a similar technique on our website – after viewing the free demo (with no registration required), you can click a “Test Drive” button which will take you to a conversion form. If you have content on your site that isn’t behind a form, this could be a good approach to ensure that you are capturing the maximum amount of qualified leads and making the process pain-free for your prospects.

Read about INTTRA at Marketing Sherpa.

Last week I blogged about developing high conversion content and had some follow-up questions about what kind of collateral marketers should have on hand. Luckily, I ran across a piece from BtoB Online that discusses this exact issue – developing the best collateral mix for your sales process.

Use the following tips to help build and improve your collateral collection:

• Plan to do a regular review of all your collateral materials.
• Focus on filling in gaps with topics you haven’t already covered. Think quality over quantity.
• Get the sales team involved. Work together to develop buying scenarios and determine how your materials can help make a sale. I recently met with our sales team here at Pardot to assess their needs and begin this process.
• 88% of buyers still rate white papers are the most influential collateral.
• Product brochures and data sheets ranked as the most highly consumed – but the least influential in the buying process.
• No one is printing anymore – most buyers view content digitally, so create content with this in mind.
• Make content easy to view and download. The Pardot team always recommends using simple, short forms to reduce abandonment. We also choose to offer some items on our own site, like case studies and a flash demo, with no registration required.

Read the full article at BtoB Online.

MarketingDaily posted some tips on cost-free ways to gain insight in to the mind of your customers. This can be a great way to discover common pain points and learn what happens on the journey to purchase. It is also an important way to learn more about your product lifecyle, develop product improvements and identify opportunities to up-sell your customers.

Two of the suggestions that really stood out to me are:

Tap in to your salesforce: Your sales team is on the front line every day, talking to prospects and chatting with current customers. If anyone has the insider take on what prospects are looking for, its them. Of course, historically, marketing and sales have had a bit of sibling rivalry going on, but it is important to start building an internal plan that takes in to account the unique perspective sales can contribute.

Monitor blogs: Monitor your own blogs. Monitor your competitors blogs. Monitor industry blogs. Listen to what people are saying – and what they are asking for. This is another great way to tailor your content to what’s going on in the industry and hit home with topics that are truly applicable to what consumers need.

One more I would add, in the vein of monitoring blogs, is to monitor your company name and key industry terms on Twitter. It is another great way to keep up with what’s going on in your space, connect with current customers and help educate the market.

Following up on the promise to focus on great content this year, I ran across a piece on MarketingSherpa featuring some highlights from their recent webinar on creatinghigh conversion content. From their five key questions, here are some valuable takeaways:

• Develop content for each stage of the buying cycle.
• White papers can work for any stage of the buying cycle.
• Create content for diversified audiences, targeting IT decision makers and financial decision makers in addition to offering general industry overviews.
• Think about ebooks in addition to white papers. Ebooks are longer than white papers, cover a broader scope and often feature an executive or identified industry expert as the author.
• Visual marketing tools like product tours or videos can help effectively explain complex products
• Sharing links to third-party articles is totally legal, as long as you link to the original article, rather than re-purposing it as your own thoughts. Use these articles to help educate your prospects on industry trends and news.

Read the full Q&A session at MarketingSherpa.

MarketingSherpa recently published a case study on Rudder, a small B2B start-up that used testing to optimize their website. As a marketer, you work hard to get prospects to your landing pages and you want to do everything you can to encourage conversion. Using multivariate testing, you can direct traffic to two different landing pages in a random order and gauge which page has a higher conversion rate. This can help you fine-tune your design and offer to promote conversions.

In the MarketingSherpa study, Rudder took the following steps to maximize conversions:

• Analyze the existing website (or landing page)
• Make multiple versions of the same landing page using different styles and layouts
• Test different headlines
• Create a powerful, above-the-fold call to action (no scrolling required!)
• Set up a mutlivariate test for a defined period of time
• Watch your results and keep the best of the best

You may go through several stages of testing, manipulating different elements at different times to pinpoint the best headline, the most attractive layout and the most compelling call to action. Though testing may take time, the payoff can be huge – Rudder saw increased conversions across all versions of their page and created the perfect blend for boosted monthly conversions.

Read the full study at MarketingSherpa.