Dan McDade

I recently caught up with Dan McDade, a longtime B2B practitioner in lead qualification and nurturing. I’ve been a fan of his for years. Here, we talk about prospect experience marketing.

Business marketers are always complaining about their customer data. “It’s pretty bad,” they’ll say. “It’s a mess.” But our latest study shows that prospecting data is surprisingly accurate — well over 90 percent.

With a tip of the hat to Barbara Walters, I’d like to introduce the 10 most fascinating people who brought new ideas and energy to B-to-B marketing last year.

Since the earliest days of direct marketing—and brand marketing, for that matter—efforts have been measured in the pseudo-military terminology of "the campaign." You have an objective, a plan, the resources to implement it, and you attack. The campaign succeeds or fails, then you go back to the drawing board to work on your next campaign.

One of the biggest advantages of direct marketing has always been that it's highly accountable. You spend the money to create a campaign (whether via direct mail, email, telephone, pay-per-click ads, or what have you), and you can see clearly how that converts and how those conversions lead to sales, revenue and an impact on your bottom line.

In our fast-changing marketing world, a smart B-to-B practitioner keeps up to date by learning from thought leaders. While this used to mean reading business books and magazines, today it means blogs. We've all heard the stats about blog proliferation. A new blog launched every six seconds—or whatever. And there is no dearth of blogs on B-to-B marketing. So I would like to share my favorites, the blogs where I find inspiration, new ideas, and provocative stories, to keep the gray matter humming.