Howard Sewell
Howard Sewell
Howard has worked in marketing for 25+ years, and is president of Spear Marketing Group, a full-service B2B marketing agency. Howard is a frequent speaker and contributor to marketing publications on topics that include demand generation, digital marketing, ABM, and marketing technology.
Infographic: 29 Tips to Improve B2B Email Campaign Performance
An email campaign that fails to perform up to expectations could be failing on any number of fronts. The list could be bad (in...
Is Marketing Automation Right for Every Company?
For those of us who work in and around the technology every day, it can seem like marketing automation is already pervasive. Industry data...
10 Tips for a Successful Trade Show Follow-up Campaign
Research has long suggested that the majority of leads generated by trade shows never receive follow-up by company representatives. A 2010 study concluded that...
Email Campaign Gets an “A” on Design, “F” on Offer
At first glance, the email below from security solution provider Symantec seems engaging, attractive, and well-designed. And indeed, it is all those things. From...
Forrester thinks Content Marketing Isn’t Working – They’re Half Right
Over at Forrester Research, Vice President Laura Ramos recently talked to Advertising Age (“Marketers Still Struggling to Get Results from Content Marketing“) about what...
Case Study: How One Tech Company Used Humor to Launch a New Brand
In early 2014, Sungard Availability Services (Sungard AS), a leading provider of managed IT, cloud, and recovery services, announced that it was splitting off...
5 Common Content Syndication Mistakes
Though it predates what we think of today as “content marketing,” content syndication is still a cornerstone of many B2B companies’ demand generation strategies....
But Wait, There’s More! Why Cheesy Copy Still Works.
Effective email copy is not like a letter to your grandma; unless, that is, you’re asking Grandma to sponsor you for the 5K Fun...
Is Technology Making Marketing Agencies Obsolete?
Over at the IDC Technology Marketing Blog, analyst Sam Melnick posted an article recently with the intriguing title: “Are Ad Agencies Keeping Pace with the...
If You Write B2B Copy, You Need This Blog Post
Those of you who have been subjected to sales training at some point in your careers may remember a technique called “the assumptive close.”...
Design Choices & More Sink Webinar Invitation
I wrote recently in this space about the decisions that today’s B2B email marketers are facing as they strive to ensure that their campaigns...
Infographic: Mobile-Friendly vs. Responsive Email Design
As mobile devices continue their torrid growth in the business world, B2B email marketers face a dilemma: is it enough to make emails “mobile-friendly”...
New Marketing Automation Buyer’s Guide Offers Valuable Advice
TrustRadius, an online community designed to help business software users make better product selection, implementation, and usage decisions, just released their first-ever “Buyer’s Guide...
Why is Inside Sales So Scared of Lead Nurturing?
Recent studies tell us while the adoption of marketing automation technology continues to gain momentum, fewer than 20 percent of marketing executives say that...
In Defense of Unsolicited Email
Over at marketing automation firm Marketo, CEO Phil Fernandez just wrote a full-throated rant against the evils of unsolicited email and purchased email lists...
Give Your Next Demand Gen Campaign A Reality Check
We’ve all been there. The copy is winding its way through the marketing group and is now on its fourth revision. The CEO didn’t like...
A Marketer Goes to Disneyland
A few weeks ago my wife and I took our two children to Disneyland for the first time in almost a decade. Two things...
How the Answer to One Question Can Tell You How to Market Your Technology
One of the first questions I ask any prospective technology client is the following: “Imagine your product on a spectrum. At one end of that...
Accelerating the Pace of Inbound Leads: An Interview with Paul Albright of Captora
Paul Albright boasts a 30-year track record of success in Silicon Valley, including executive roles at companies such as Marketo, SuccessFactors, NetApp, and Informatica....
Campaign Makeover: Simple Changes Increase Email Response by 25 Percent
I received an email recently from Kevin Payne, Senior Director of Field Marketing at customer service software provider 7. Kevin writes: “Below is one of...