Bad Examples of Social Media

You may have heard about a military mission that was jeopardized because the co-pilot 'tweeted intent.' Or the school teacher who Facebook'ed how much she hated some parents as she prepared for the PTA meeting.

A very big corporations, very senior person was asked, 'How are you focusing on Social Media?' His answer, 'To continue to strive, to meet, and to exceed my customer's expectations in a dynamic economy, with a focus on values about our core customer and recognition of evolving demographics.' Deep, profound, and hard to comprehend. This is the vision that has stalled this corporations endeavor into the next step.

Another big corporation showed me their Social Media statement, 'Our focus is to enrich our customers' personal lives and to make them more successful by bringing to market exciting and useful products & services, empowering our employees & shareholders, & stakeholders in the process.' I bobbled my head in awe!

Then, there is my favorite Tweeter who continues to amaze. Tweet 1 @ 9.31 am in the morning, 'Am on this conference call from hell, thank God for Xanax!' Tweet 2 @ 9.36 am, 'We (name of major corporation) are looking for a product manager, here is the (link to job).' Tweet 3 @ 9.41 am, 'I could spend my whole day watching videos on youtube.'

Read more >>

Effective Statistical Modeling Strategies for Your Email Marketing Program

Key metrics of email marketing programs are opens, clicks, & conversions. Opens are measured when an open pixel image is served up or the email is opened by the consumer. People open an email based on pre-established interest or preset expectations. Effective subject lines and timely emails help improve open rates. Also, opens improve over time if you continue to communicate with the consumer with relevance.

Then there is the Click - the good click & the not so good click. People may click un-subscribe and of course the marketer should seek to know why. The goal of the email should be to tell a story and drive people towards conversion by encouraging them to click through onto the landing page. Simple tips would be to create engaging content and tell the rest of the story on a subsequent landing page.

A conversion is the achievement of a goal that has been put together for a particular campaign. This could be getting the consumer to take a survey, luring them towards a landing page, getting them to open an account or book a trip or make a purchase.

Marketers need to assign values for each category and assign a score for opens, a little more for clicks, and of course a higher score for conversions. The OCC score should then be used to create segmented lists that can drive very high responses driving extraordinary conversions.

Many marketers are still in the business of mass marketing with email because of the lower costs of the campaigns. This mass marketing leads to little scoring as the marketer watches overall metrics of opens, clicks, and conversions but does not create individual scores for each customer. OCC scores should be automatically computed per consumer per campaign. This way it is easy to track an individual over a series of campaigns and not just measure single campaign results.

Opens, Clicks and Conversions are being tracked by some progressive email marketers. They assign scores to each consumer activity and then segment their list based on the points, higher scores are targeted with personalized offers, lower scores with bigger discounts.

Ideally an OCC score should be assigned to each consumer and this should be how the list is segmented, offers personalized, and messages delivered. This basically means that as marketers segment they will be targeting people with high scores with more personalized offers and continue to test things out with those with lower scores.

Read more >>

How to make the consumer covet your brand? (very quick read)

1 - Be sharp and simple – what is your core proposition?

2 – Think outside your category – look and learn and see how your consumers are engaged

3 – Be ambitious – set goals and next steps for your consumers

4 – Appeal to all factors – emotional and rational so as your seek consumer feedback – efficiency, price, and also feel good ‘stuff’

5 – Understand why consumers purchase from you – know how you fit into their life

Wishing you and your brand very successful engagement!

Read more >>

11 Ways to Rejuvenate Your Marketing Database

A visit to so many marketers shows people poring over paper reports, having meetings about the validity of the reports, and decisions being made without all the data. Here are eleven things to consider doing to rejuvenate your marketing database.

1 - Create a Roadmap - You know where you are and what you can do today. Start by listing where you would like to be and start coming up with small steps in between.

2 - Focus on the Business Needs - Put forth a list of those who use your database and ask them about what information they need and how they want to use the information. In the world of use cases, this means you are listing the actors (users) and asking them to list their use cases (tasks) on how they would use the marketing database.

3 - Find the Gaps - You will find that you are missing information, have duplicate information, take too long to update information, or it is really hard to find the information. Additionally, users may not be able to find the information in different places compatible with each other. You consequently need to highlight these gaps and start improving the quality of data (or put it on the roadmap).

4 - Design the Reports - Do this first as people will want to see the information in a particular format. Once you start getting people sold on the look and feel of what the reports are, you will find them much more amenable to changes that might be required later.

5 - Educate the Users - Teach them how to use the database. I usually recommend a three step approach. I ask the users to write down specific use cases on what information they need from the system. Next I ask them to point it out in the reports (step 4). Once they have done that, I encourage them to click through to find the appropriate data. These three steps can now be captured as part of the user manual and should be kept available for online support as well.

6 - Make the Database Accessible - If people can access your database to get the reports that they desire - they are more likely to use it. From a performance perspective, limit the number of power users (users who can run any query) so as to not reduce the performance of your system. Pre-run popular reports so that the information is available to those that need it. Also, work with the power users to add to the repository of reports and keep evaluating (and removing) reports that are not used.

7 - Make Reports Mobile - Allow your key users to have access to summary reports on their mobile devices. This is power messaging at its best and it really helps to rejuvenate the utility of information and your marketing database.

8 - Create a Control Group - You should create and track a control group to see how the control group performs versus the rest of your campaigns. You do this to see if your efforts are making a difference. If you do this correctly, you can make a big difference.

9 - Keep Your List Current - Remove those that have dropped off the list. This will help you to focus on those that are active and come up wtih actual strategies that will make a difference. The cost of dead weight adds up to all your campaigns - you waste money on postage, you waste money on emailing, and you add to your deliverability woes by targeting people that aren't really there.

10 - Add Social to Your CRM - You have to add two aspects of social contacts to your marketing database. First, maintain a list of social contacts of your consumers. Second, score your consumers for social activity. This way you can target those who are more active with viral campaigns.

11 - Know How Your Information is Organized - Contrary to marketing propaganda, it is tough to store all your information in one database. So be aware of where what information is stored - for two reasons - you know where to look for it and you know where to update the information.

Your database is your black book, invest in it, as it has all the information you need to drive successful interaction.

Read more >>

Email on Mobile? Where are your consumers looking?

Do you know how many of your recipients are viewing emails on a mobile device?

Is that message for mobile or email?

This number continues to increase, and your ability to engage the consumer on the mobile device is going to determine their continued (or lack of) interest in your solicitation.

If your message is mobile friendly, it will intrigue the consumer enough to either respond via the mobile device or go back to the message in their in-box.

Here are a few things that you should definitely be doing:

1 – Track the recipients that are opening your messages on mobile devices. You should take the time to segment them into a special group.

2 – Track the mobile browsers to see if it is worth creating special content for those particular browsers. Less is better on mobile with a clear call to action.

3 – Survey recipients to determine their message type preferences (HTML or text/ mobile friendly)

4 - Use multi-part (HTML and text) as your lowest common denominator, this could cover you until you are able to survey recipients

5 - Consider restating your main offer or subject line as the first line of the email’s body (before the “If you can’t see this click here.”) By doing this, your recipients will get the gist of your message without needing to see the associated image.

6 – Think hard about your subject lines. If you can get to the point quickly, you can do a better job engaging your consumer.

7 – Try to engage your consumer on social media. Consumers are more likely to engage on social media via their smart phones and don’t mind visiting your social site.

Ask them for their mobile number to build up your preference database. If you do not already have a mobile marketing program, you need to consider putting it in place and keeping it integrated with your email program.

Read more >>

21 things you should know about your consumers interaction with your site

Everyone talks about listening to consumers, paying attention to what consumers are doing on your site, and what consumers are saying about your brand. Here are some specific questions you need to ask as you try to build up your knowledge repository about your consumers.

1 – What prompted the consumer to visit your site today? Do you know what they like to look at?

2 – How often does the consumer visit your site? Also, how often do they visit your brand?

3 – What brought the consumer to your site – was it search, was it an email, was it social media?

4 – How long has the consumer known you?

5 – How would the consumer rate their prior experiences with you?

6– Would your consumer rate your site? Would they consider your site trustworthy?

7 – Does your site allow the consumer to make effective and empowered decisions?

8 – Does your consumer consider your site easy to navigate?

9 – If the consumer knew what they were looking for, does your site allow the consumer to navigate quickly to the information that they need?

10 – If the consumer wasn’t sure what they were looking for, does your site allow the consumer to navigate quickly to the information that they need?

11 – Does your site encourage the consumer to return?

12 – Would your consumer refer you to others?

13 – Does your site meet, or exceed consumer expectations?

14 – Does your site have content that is relevant?

15 – Does your site give the consumer the detail they need or do they have to one of your other channels to find more information?

16 – Does your site present the information clearly leaving no ambiguity?

17 – Is your site easy to read?

18 – Does your site allow your consumer to help themselves?

19 – Does your site have effective interactive tools?

20 – Does the consumer get what they wanted after each visit?

21 – Do you (marketing manager) like your site?

Read more >>

Seven Ways to Make Your Shipping Packages Work Harder

Every time you ship something (direct mail or a box) to your consumer you have an opportunity to make a future sale. Most companies simply insert a copy of the last ‘product catalog’ or ‘prior mailing’ hoping that it will inspire a future sale. Here are some ideas to add some zing to your package.

1 – Highlight useful information about the product; include references to online forums where the consumer can go to find more information.

2 – Offer a partially completed warranty page. If you want the consumer to register the product, you can offer them an electronic link to a partially completed page where all they have to do is enter the ‘rest’ of the information. This way you can make it easy for them to interact with you.

3 – Leverage the packing slip by putting useful information on the packing slip. Many companies tend to send a bill and a separate packing slip – why not combine the two and make it useful by perhaps talking about ‘points earned on purchase.’ If the consumer is part of your loyalty program they will appreciate this, if they are not members this might inspire them to go check out your frequent buyer program.

4 – Your shipping box shouldn’t just be a piece of indiscriminate cardboard. If it is hard to personalize the entire box, think about putting a sticker on the box that shows who is sending it and some kind of branding about your company.

5 – Tell the consumer what else they should expect from you. Include a letter (or you can personalize this on the invoice / packing slip) that says what the consumer might get next – perhaps an email survey that solicits their feedback. Sell the advantage of why the consumer should pay attention to the next campaign.

6 – Think about including something ‘else’ like samples of other products or partner product package inserts that could help the consumer.

7 – Don’t forget to say thank you to the consumer – put in a sincere note thanking them for the purchase and if you can personalize it, that goes a long way to building relationships.

Read more >>

List Growth Case Studies that Work(ed)

You have to focus on growing your list. Remember you will keep churning names off your list, so to continue to build your program - list growth should be a primary digital tactic. Here are four case studies from different organizations that you could apply to your own programs.

Credit Union Example

A credit union I work with came up with a unique way to engage local youth during the summer, they told their members (in credit union lingo customers = members) to give their kids a special summer writing project. To participate, they had to submit an essay describing what they would do with $250K as the mayor of the city, charged with creating summer youth programs.

Parents submitted the essays and included the child’s age, education goals, etc. as part of the entry form. All this information was maintained in a database that allowed the CU to market education, insurance and car loan products to the member’s for their kids. All members were asked to judge – so everyone was involved.

Banking Example

Another financial institution I work with sent an email campaign with the subject lines (split testing) What if you won the Lottery? and What if you won a Million Bucks? The campaign was used to launch a dream giveaway – recipients were asked to tell what they would do with the winnings.

Obviously the email got attention; there were many click-throughs to the landing page designed to capture the responder’s lifestyle choices/ products – things they could buy or do if they had a million dollars. The landing page also included a calculator, to help the customer learn how much they would have to save to reach their financial goal(s.) They tried to make the interactivity as real as possible – asking for more and more detail from the customer and showing them the steps to attain their financial goals. All information fed the bank’s marketing database and used today to create personalized marketing programs for each customer.

In both of these examples, the CU and Bank made connections with their customers – they created conversations and fueled their marketing efforts for years to come.

The Registry

Many big department stores have bridal registries, it’s a very simple concept – couples come in, register and select items they’d like to receive. This one store allowed couples to announce their wedding via email and give those recipients the option to congratulate the couple via personalized email messages and browse through their registry.

After the wedding, the newly married couple received an email offering an exclusive three-day sale. Simply bring in your list – items you didn't receive from your registry may qualify for their discount (couples often receive cash.) All purchase information was recorded for future marketing – maybe their china is being discontinued, a lamp they liked is now on sale etc. Their marketing possibilities were endless and all offers were completed targeted.

The Contest

Not everyone is in the wedding business, but you can collect preferences other ways. In early 2000, I was consulting for a home décor company; they sold window treatments, carpets and other home furnishings. They had a lot of traffic at their website – it seemed that people loved to browse through their site. As a result, we tried something unique, offering a $5,000 shopping spree. To win, you had to write about your home and tell how you would spend the money.

They awarded a grand prize and gave discounts to everyone else for the items on their wish lists. Most importantly, they were able to personalize offers to their prospects and customers going forward, resulting in higher opens and clicks.

In Conclusion

If I was to list five critical factors for your success, email list growth is going to be a key item. Also, don't forget to leverage other engagement touchpoints like mobile, self-service, social media, and direct marketing to add to your email list. You have to keep fine tuning your approaches to list growth as you to continue to grow your base, engage your base, and create interactive conversations with those you serve.

Read more >>

How to Accumulate Social Capital to Drive Engagement

You can build up your social media program through an engaged group of consumers. You need to invest in your consumers and your program to build it up, so you can drive effective engagement. Accumulating social capital will go a long way to drive success.

Use these seven steps to help plan your strategy and build up social capital so your consumers (or fans) flock to you.

1 – Think about branding your program with a name – don’t just call it your social media program. Instead give your program a name and then invite your consumers to come join that program.

2 – Offer your consumers some relevant reasons to sign up for your ‘Named’ social media program. Your reasons should reflect your brand and are ideal if they match what your consumers expect.

3 – Leverage the reasons to get your consumers to be part of your social sphere of influence. Begin the solicitation process by advertising the reasons across multiple channels.

4 – Think about the first few messages after sign up. Once your consumer joins your program, think about putting together a welcome stream of messages for that consumer.

5 – Pay attention to what the consumer is saying and try to learn from the dialogue that is taking place in the social sphere. The easiest way to get input is to ask for it – so offer a link to a survey.

6 – Respond to consumers by answering their questions. Converse with them and keep the dialogue going, don’t be the only one starting conversations – join other conversations.

7 – Find your brand champions or brand advocates and endorse them. You can do this in a few ways. First, if someone is leading the dialogue (appropriately), thank them. Second, if this person continues doing good things – list them as a brand ambassador. Third, if they continue to talk about your brand, think about offering them ‘samples’ or ‘service experiences’ to evaluate and write about for the rest of your fan base.

The goal here is to continue to build up social capital by doing things that are relevant to the consumer and help you build relationships with that consumer. All of this adds up to help you stay engaged, and continue to serve your consumer.

Read more >>

AB Testing Strategies Simplified

Ask any email marketer and they’ll likely agree that testing subject lines is a good practice… but ask them if they are running split tests and you’ll probably end up with a number of good excuses – our list is too small, it’s hard enough to come up with one good subject line, there’s not enough time, we’re not sure it’s really worth it or they simply don't know how.

A good friend of mine had those same thoughts, but then he learned that a simple A/B split test could lead to additional ticket sales. He was marketing tickets for Friday events; his average open rate was 14% and he mailed three times a week. Then started testing his offers – two small groups would get the same offer but a slightly different subject line. The better performing subject line drove the rest of the email list; over the course of ten weeks he has sold 7,200 extra tickets due to the slight increase – average of 3% per send.

Keep these suggestions in mind when it comes to choosing a subject line – Don't wait until the end to come up with a subject line for your campaign, start with a concept and post it so that your team (co-workers) can give input. Take their suggestions and start narrowing down the top two or three possibilities. Even if your list is too small to do a split test, choose a few subject lines and have your team bet on their favorite one, by keeping others engaged (especially your front-line) you’ll build interest and solicit their best input.

Your subject lines should be persuasive and have some intrigue (without being deceptive.) If you’re selling, numbers work very well – include the price (lowest possible) or the number of seats remaining. Make it timely – include a deadline, sell-out date etc. to create a sense of urgency.

There are times you have to rush to get a message out, leaving you no time to test. You could remedy this by running a test amongst friends, maintain a list of first responders – people who give you feedback on your offers, send it to them first or simply ask them for their opinion.

Read more >>

Marketing Lessons We Can Learn From Charities

Charities need donations to survive – they need this to both support their cause and also to keep themselves in business. They have to be efficient in how the money is spent, and they have to work really hard in keeping the money flowing in.

Charities measure three types of ROI - real ROI talks about how much money they have been able to earn because of a promotion; absolute ROI is even less than ‘real’ because that is how they get the budget to focus on the next campaign; and soft ROI is what they ‘think’ or ‘anticipate’ they may earn from a donor.

Soft ROI helps us engage with a consumer – it is not just about getting a consumer but keeping a consumer. Not just immediate earning but future earnings – this means long term thinking in terms of how valuable that donor could be to your organization. Charities focus on thanking the first time donor profusely and keeping them up to date on what is going on. This way the donor gets engaged and tries to regularly contribute to the charity.

Charities also believe that there are no secrets in marketing strategies because people change jobs and with the social web it is very easy to keep in touch with what others are doing. The key to success lies in quick execution and creating an inner circle of advisors who tell us what to do.

Charities believe in two good principles – the principle of doing ‘good’ without expecting a return and the principle of reciprocity. The first principle is going to be hard to emulate but it is the charities secret to getting referrals – ‘the true measure of a man is t how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good.’ So think about serving everyone well, hoping that that good karma will pay off.

The principle of reciprocity works with the charity sending you a gift – the donor looks at the gift and this usually prompts the donor to make a donation. Charities also offer a suggested donation amount – they call it the mid price rule, the same concept can be applied to traditional marketing.

Read more >>

A Seven Step Mantra for Every Marketer

Here are seven simple suggestions that should be part of your digital marketing strategy - email, mobile, social, & converged channel too.

1 – Keep looking for new consumers so you can continue to grow your list

2 – Be inquisitive so you can know about your consumers

3 – Earn your consumers trust so you can become their friend

4 – Leverage your interactions and insight with your consumer, so you can become more relevant

5 – Build up a repository of content so you can engage with your consumer

6 – Don’t engage on just the web, perfect engagement with your consumer is across channel

7 – Keep listening to your consumer, keep learning from your consumer, and keep adjusting your campaigns to connect & engage with your consumer

Read more >>

Five Ways to Truly Spruce Up Your Campaigns Now

You Must Send Transactional Messages – Your brand should put out a transactional receipt to the consumer. The consumer expects a receipt for their transaction and you should give the consumer not only a choice about whether or not they want their receipt but also the ability to get this receipt across different channels – email, mobile, print, or even by logging in to your web portal.

You Need Probing Campaigns – Do you know who reads your messages? How well do you know your consumers? Do you know what channels they prefer? Do you know what type of devices they use to view your campaigns? Do you know what they click on within your campaigns? Do you know how much time they spend on each article? Do you track the time of day they prefer reading your campaigns? The art of ‘ask’ should be incorporated into every one of your campaigns, and you should also consider having special campaigns to stay in the know.

You Need Some Spice – Every now and then you have people who stop paying attention to your campaigns because they get tired of your basic communiqués. You need to think about re-engaging those that have dropped off and try to keep things interesting so people pay attention to what you are sending. I prefer to keep a couple of ‘rainy-day’ campaigns to try and liven things up every now and then.

You Need to Zone In – One to one messaging is perfect. But it takes effort to reach that stage of perfection. Spend your time creating segments by leveraging recipient feedback, and their behavior to group your recipients into specific segments. Then there are those that you know and those that you seek to know – keep up your efforts to zone in, because that is going to help you drive personalization.

You Need to Engage via Social Media – Social media is not a fad and should certainly not be a gimmick for your business. Consumers express themselves on your social sites and you should not only listen but also leverage that content into all of your marketing. The voice of the consumer is important and is what can help you build your list, improve engagement, and resolve many service issues.

Read more >>

How to make postcard marketing work for you

Even though direct mail is hard to track, (more) expensive to send, and can be thrown in the trash by the consumer; one thing is for sure - the consumer is going to look at it. Your opportunity now is to convert that fleeting glance into a connection.

Here are some suggestions on how to do it correctly and how best to leverage this opportunity to connect with your consumer:

A postcard is a good way to cleanse or clean your house file. If for some reason your consumer has unsubscribed from your digital campaigns, or if their email bounces, or you are simply trying to (re)connect with them – think about designing something that is useful and tells a story. The important thing is that your story should drive the consumer back to your web site.

Successful postcards don’t offer too many options. You should try to focus in one or two main points. Your basic elements of a postcard include a headline, a few supporting facts, an offer, a call to action, your phone number, and a link to your site. And if you are promoting social media by postcards, don’t ask your people to follow you on social media – give them a reason to connect with you.

Your offer is important and should be coupled with an explicit call to action. When you think about putting your offer into a postcard your formula should be to grab attention + show a sense of urgency + use a ‘source-code’ to measure the impact of your mailing. The last part of the formula is vital as it will help you quantify the impact of your mailing.

Leverage both sides of the postcard, especially the side with the address because that is the first thing that the consumer pays attention to. You should think about putting enough useful information on that side to get the consumer to flip the postcard over. This is where you should have the details listed.

Read more >>

How to pass the ultimate litmus test in marketing

Put your consumers first – think about their experiences with your brand and make it easier for them to transact with you. Would you be recommended? Is your consumer happy with you? Were you able to meet their needs – before the transaction, during the transaction, and after the transaction?

As businesses we do pulse surveys to stay in touch with our customers – the idea is to see how well we are doing and how effective each one of our departments might be as we try to service the consumer.

While some brands are more successful than others in getting the consumer to complete the ‘survey,’ what do you think the actual value of that interaction is? Is the purpose of the feedback to give yourself a score or is it to create a genuine ‘fan?’

Why not think about getting your brand to engage with your consumer one on one – put your person to person skills to the test and talk to the consumer about their experiences. Conducting a survey is not about statistics; it is about making friends out of our customers.

Put your customer through the ultimate test – have your prospects talk to your customers. Ask them if they would act as referrals for your brand?

Now, would the consumer say something good about you or your brand when you are not looking?

Read more >>

How to prioritize your digital marketing

You need to start by elevating the importance of your digital channels – email, mobile, and social. Don’t go digital only because it is cheaper than other channels, do it because you can track, adjust, and respond swiftly.

In most companies there is an imbalance of resources – there are more people assigned to support offline initiatives and so much more is expected from digital. You need to assign resources to support your digital endeavors.

You have to focus on transactional messaging – it is important and the consumer expects it in real time.

‘You sent it; did they receive it?’ Don’t gauge your success on sending messages, you should measure your success based on messages received by your consumer.

Leverage social media to listen, learn, and find. Grow your list, grow your influence, and stay engaged.

Optimize your messages by looking at what you are sending, by segmenting, by testing, and by writing good copy. If it is one to one - make every message count!

(Many thanks to Ashraf Arafeh for sharing the picture of his pet camel :)

Read more >>

Three important things you must include in every email

Your email to your consumer is not a brochure; it should be a personalized letter that speaks to the consumer. Since it can be tracked – you can even make things interactive. The key thing is that you should consider making it easy – highlighting the value of the communiqué that is being sent.

You can do this by highlighting three things –

First, call out what is in the current newsletter – highlight the key offers within the newsletter or email marketing campaign. This makes it easy for the consumer to find what you have included. It shows them that you are organized.

Second, talk about what is coming in the next newsletter – you don’t have to highlight everything; think about highlighting one to three key features of the next communiqué. This helps build anticipation.

Third, think about including comments you may have received for the last campaign that you put out. This way you can highlight the value of your last emails key features, perhaps previous products that were sold, or even word of mouth from your consumer base. This shows people that your content is useful.

Email is an important way to communicate with clients and prospects – you need to raise the bar by organizing your communiqués well and also showcasing the value of what you are putting out to consumers.

Read more >>