The Truth About Content Marketing: What Your Lead Gen Team Doesn't Want You to Know

Whether you call it inbound or content marketing, it's failing most B-to-B sales teams. Whether outsourced or internalized, your lead generation team doesn't want to talk about it. Talk about what?

Unattended email addresses.

Are you worried about low quality leads coming from marketing? Addressing this issue head-on, boldly, is the best way to improve lead quality and the conversion-to-sale ratio.

What Is an 'Unattended Email Address?'
An unattended email address is a temporary (expiring) or non-checked email account. These are the bogus email accounts all of us (and I mean all of us) maintain for a while now. Owners of these accounts use them for acquiring stuff from marketers we don't want to hear from.

In your life, this is that special email used for "gated content." E-books, whitepapers, videos. You name it, B-to-B marketers lock-it-up and demand an email address for it.

But consumers aren't fooled anymore. They don't want a sale reps calling on them—merely because they have an interest in solving a problem.

So they give you a bogus email.

Why Should I Care?
You should care because your lead generation database is becoming increasingly worthless over time. Explaining the benefits of subscribing doesn't matter when prospects aren't giving you their real email addresses!

Sales reps and dealers need leads who are, at least, real people!

Some marketers I'm speaking with are seeing a dramatic increase in worthless email addresses in their databases. Others are afraid to look. Some are reporting 40 percent of emails being unattended.

Yet the gating of lousy or, at best, mediocre content continues unabated. Why? Habit.

I suggest you get a flavor for how unattended email address use has become mainstream. Google "fake email generator" or "temporary email address." Take count of how many options one has to circumvent some poor marketer's plans to capture leads.