Utilizing Viral Campaigns for Customer Acquisition

Our friend Jeff Greene spoke at Marketing Sherpa in Miami, yesterday on how to use viral campaigns to acquire customers. I’ve taken the liberty to list the five killer email secrets that he shared with his audience… and added one more for good measure.

1) Integrate across channels and don’t be afraid to be creative in offering a reward for a desired action. Email is a push channel, but you have to learn to ask for email IDs. You have to do it consistently and be creative in how you coax the reader to provide you with an email address. It is not a requirement but needs to be sold.

2) Be authentic, personalize everything and don’t keep your subscribers from considering your other products/ services. The more you know, the more you can ask. But better still is showing that you can connect, they are more likely to connect with you.

3) Keep things unpredictable. People get tired of reading the same old stuff all the time; without going overboard, put forth a plan to mix up your communiqués to keep your users engaged.

4) Use sexy headlines and lead sentences to your advantage. Do not forget that your users are real people; they like to read interesting things and are more prone to read a well worded commercial instead of a white paper.

5) Don’t be afraid to test and solicit advice from peers and loyal subscribers. These are your friends, and they are going to help you with your online campaigns. Keep asking them about how you are doing it will help you improve.

6) Read Cosmo, or at least learn their style – it’s Intriguing, Inquisitive and Insightful.

NCDM 2007: Creating Interactive Conversations

The Yogi spoke this morning at the National Center for Database Marketing (NCDM) conference, focusing on Creating Interactive Conversations. He highlighted a number of our customer’s successes including:

AEG – The Yogi talked about the preference gathering this group does, their tracking that allows them know which types of offers to extend – concerts, sporting events, kid’s shows etc. He even worked in the Spice Girls’ (playing at the Mandalay Bay tonight) song letting attendees know that these techniques help you determine what your customers really, really want.

1154 LILL Studio – Lilly (their chief blogger) will be pleased to know that her blog was on display this morning. He even showcased the Yogi Bag that he uses as a messenger bag and talked about the group’s ability to personalize the creation experience in addition to the bag itself.

Dog.com – Following Lilly’s intro, he moved on to talk about the online community that the folks at Dog.com have formulated (Community.Dog.com). He mentioned their work with blending blogs, videos and dog profiles together for phenomenal success.

King Arthur Flour – The Yogi shared their SweetStakes and survey tactics to help grow your email list, he also referenced their success with F2F (a previous blog post on this site).

Paul Fredrick – He focused on their email collection process, referencing their reasons to sign up and shared their Why Sign Up campaign.

Overstock.com – He talked about their work with segmentation, making offers to the recipient based on click and purchase history. The example shared was for their recent bedding campaign, where recipients received bedding based on bed size.

SmileMakers – The Yogi shared info on how this SC-company arms their call center reps with special campaigns and offers to help grow their list and send callers an instant email – a strategy that has proven very successful for them.

Read more about the Yogi and other NCDM speakers on the NCDM Blog. In the spirit of Vegas, there may even be a chance to win something.

Go Yogi, Go!

It’s not everyday that the Yogi gets to present to such a large crowd – thank you to everyone who was able to attend the Email Yogi’s session, Creating Interactive Conversations.

The Email Yogi secured one of the closing day sessions at the Teradata Partners user-group conference in Las Vegas. To capitalize on his insider tips and tricks – contact us, we’ll gladly send you a copy of the presentation shared. Be sure to visit our other sites:

Service In Action – Monthly Call on eMarketing best practices, our next call is October 19
Panel of Peers – Workshop series focused on eMarketing best practices, our next workshop is October 14, in Chicago.

Creating Interactive Conversations

Teradata Partners Attendees:
Yes, we know Hootie & The Blowfish will be playing this evening – but tomorrow is your chance to see a real celebrity!

The Email Yogi is presenting in Mandalay K; his presentation will focus on creating Interactive Conversations. Join us tomorrow morning at 10:00 AM (PST).

The Yogi’s Long Journey

Congratulations to Dave from Minnesota; he correctly guessed the Yogi’s location – we’re in fabulous Las Vegas, NV, home this week to Teradata Partners. For more information on the 2007 Teradata User’s Group, visit their program site.

We’ll be in touch soon Dave.

The Yogi’s Long Journey

First City, First Clue…
Ready for your first picture clue? The Yogi and I walked through this place last evening.

To play be the first to email (RT185035@ncr.com) or post a comment with your guess. Happy reading – there will be three winners… one for each city. No NCR entries allowed!

Mine & Shine

I ate breakfast this morning with Spiro from Medco; we were among the first people and got a chance to chat. Spiro recounted an experience that would make most marketers cringe. He reached Vegas last night with over two hours to check in, register for the conference and go to the welcome reception. Sadly it took him more than three hours to check in to the hotel! It wasn’t the hotels fault – it was his credit card company and it really wasn’t their fault… they were trying to protect him.

Spiro spent a few weeks in Greece last month, he used his credit card there and was now attempting to use here. Apparently the scoring system for this credit card company worked to perfection – i.e. use a card internationally, then use it in “this city” (and if you are not a traveler) you will be flagged.

Poor Spiro spent a lot of time with different people trying to resolve the situation. The credit card company shouldn’t be blamed for blocking the original transaction – they should be held accountable for the aftermath. Not till he got the right representative from the credit card company with the hotel check in clerk – were they able to resolve the situation effectively.

We have so much information on our customers, their profile, their transactions and even profiles of people with similar preferences so we can customize the information. Yet this information sits in different silos and typically NOT in customer service.

To counter, you have to create a series of conversations with your customers, this will help you succeed and let your customers need to know you care. You need to do this across multiple channels. And if your human channel is touched – you need to arm your reps with the best possible information – so they can win the customer (serve them and sell them more). Instead, data is housed in disparate systems with very little being made available to people who talk to people.

I am attending a user conference that facilitates data into actionable information – a solutions that supplies the insight to serve customers and allow you to deliver on your promises. So the lesson to be learned – mine your data well and you will shine.

Spiro, thank you for sharing your story & hope you have a great conference.

Internet Retailer Conference & Exhibition (IRCE)

I should probably start this with the disclaimer that I’m a long-time reader, first-time blogger… so please forgive me if the Corporate Communications background makes my first attempt kinda stale – I’m used to stifling creativity and focusing on strictly facts…

The McEnery Convention Center could have been anywhere in America, it’s your standard format with the florescent lighting and tin-can echo, but I really enjoyed that it was in sunny San Jose – a charming town once you’ve spent 12-hours shaking hands and running your elevator speech (more on that later.)

Attendance for the 2007 IRCE was over 3,000, many of our booth visitors were in the start-up phase or had been around a for a while but wanted to move their web-business to another level. Although we’re still compiling the results, we should have about a half-dozen possible leads in the retail and catalogue industries.

One of the nicest benefits of this conference was that a number of our existing customers were attended and often brought a prospect to our booth following a session, there’s nothing better than the third-party endorsement… so a special thanks goes out to Reid and Daryl.

As far as exhibitors, the big names were in attendance – Google, Yahoo and Pay Pal were in full force with some of the most elaborate booth displays ever. There was also a ton of money devoted to SWAG – ranging from an A-level prize of a paid vacation, Mercedes or jet ski, it’s hard to compete when you’re offering an iPod and pens. Looking back, I think we’re much better off, we were across from a company offering a trip give-away, I would be interested to see how many leads they generated in comparison to the number of trip entries…

Outside of the tradeshow hall, I managed to see a few San Francisco/ San Jose attractions (if only from a distance), have dinner at the Il Fornaio Cucina and see a ton of tall palm trees (ala 90210) – this almost made up for the jet-lag, long hours on the tradeshow floor and three-hour time change. Next year we’re in Chicago and I’ve gotta plan for a Cubs game.

NCR eCommerce at Internet Retailer 2007

Sundeep will be at Internet Retailer in San Jose, CA, June 4-7. He'll be at booth 1434, so stop by and say hello!

Annual Conference for Catalog & Multichannel Merchants (ACCM) 2007

Boston, MA: It’s easy to take for granted the amount of work that goes into a catalog – if you’re like me, you typically thumb through one while sorting through your mail or waiting for a favorite TV show.

The 2007 ACCM helped me realize all the elements that are needed to make the industry successful – from database management companies, software programs (who build catalogs), to printers – not to mention email, web, store, customer service and all other marketing channels that are needed to support a publication I only half-way read...

If you’re in the industry or would like to enter, the ACCM has everything under one roof. Vendors aside, there are tons of opportunities to network and sessions to help create the ultimate marketing mix and master the art of multichannel marketing.

Next year’s event is in Orlando, May 18-21… maybe I’ll see you there.