insights.
Jan 24th
As 2012 begins, it’s important to review your marketing tactics to get a clearer picture of what worked and what didn’t. Technology is constantly evolving, and it’s wise to keep up with new trends.
That said, if email marketing is a part of your marketing plan, are you utilizing it the best way possible to ensure the best results?
What are we talking about, in particular? Well, let’s start with the basics:
Next steps are a little more intermediate. But we’re sure you can keep up! (And if not, you know who to call!)
And for those a little more advanced (or who are savvy enough to find folks who can help!), these tips are for you:
Email marketing doesn’t have to be intimidating, but it can be time consuming. Do it poorly, and you’re not only missing out on key customers but your time isn’t being well spent. Do it properly, and gain a great reputation, expand your brand awareness, and boost those sales and conversions!
Jan 17th
Choosing a channel was not an issue for Shakespeare in the 1600s when his only option was to dip his quill in the ink well and draft his plays on whatever writing surface was available. Marketers today have many channels in which to communicate with their customers, but the savvy marketer considers the environment AND the marketing return on the investment.
If you’re a supporter of going green off the clock, shouldn’t you be practicing what you preach on the clock? Does your company have environmental initiatives and is your marketing department being good stewards of it resources?
To save the planet, marketers can dedicate themselves to supporting resources that are sustainable. One way to do that is to reuse, recycle, and repurpose what you generate day to day in your work with paper topping the list. Paper comes from wood, which is one of the few true natural renewable resources we have.
Thanks to tree farming (the 95 million acres of forest planted and harvested for commercial purposes) the pulp and paper industry replenishes more than it takes and ensures the sustainability of our forests by planting 1.7 million trees every day – way more than is harvested.
Nearly 60 percent of all paper in the U.S. is recycled. In comparison, less than 20 percent of U.S. electronic devices are recycled.
So while emails are deemed free to send, the technology behind emails has a business and environmental cost. A study by Thomas Jackson of the Department of Information Science, at Loughborough University, reports that emails cost a business between $8,000 to $16,000 per employee based on an averaged salary of $40,000.
Email costs resulted from ambiguous unclear messages, email overload, security and privacy issues, and email interruptions. The formula accounts for time spent reading email (average read time and average number of emails per day).
McAfee, released a report in 2009 called the Carbon Foot Print of Email Spam Report. In its report McAfee cited:
A picture is worth a thousand words. Be sure to check out the great infographic from WebPageFX.
So what can you do to be more environmentally conscious while you boost business for your company? Here’s a list of ideas to become a greener marketer in 2012.
By practicing good eco-marketing, you’ll help the planet and improve customer relationships with your eco-conscious consumers.
Jan 10th
Make your mail pieces relevant and you will never be considered "Junk"
Even with the explosion of the Internet and all the different electronic and mobile marketing techniques there are today, direct mail is still a very important part of any marketing plan. Why? Because it’s direct. It speaks directly to your customer: someone you know who fits your target audience and may very well want or need your product or service.
Any good direct mail campaign must possess the following:
Using cross media (multiple advertising, marketing and PR touches) in one campaign can help reinforce your message and, thus, gain you a higher response, as people remember and respond differently to each medium. Plus, it will generate more brand awareness.
According to a survey sponsored by the Direct Marketing Association and Pitney Bowes, 39% of respondents said they tried a business for the first time because of direct mail advertising, and 70% said they renewed a business relationship because of a direct mail promotion.
The great news is, the tactics used in direct mail can not only lead your audience to other media (e.g., e-mail to a website), they can also be replicated in other marketing channels. For example, email has probably become one of the most important mediums. This is great as you can also personalize your message and customize your offer specifically for the reader. Also, just like printed direct mail, email can include variable images and text to tailor it to a specific audience.
Remember, however, that on average, customers view physical mail as “less intrusive” than telephone calls or email because they can view the messages at their own convenience. So, how do you make it relevant?
Your contact database is a great place to start. It contains all sorts of demographic statistics (or it should) that can help you tailor the right message for your audience. The effectiveness of a direct mail piece (just like the effectiveness of an email campaign) is measured by the response it generates. When using direct mail, consider using a QR code or personal URL (PURL) to enable readers to take quick action and enable you to track those specific actions.
A postcard is an ideal direct mail piece for this kind of fast, reliable and trackable method. Its size is perfect for a sales message and call to action, yet it doesn’t need to be opened for the message to be seen. If sending the reader to a landing page through a QR code or PURL, make sure to keep them there by personalizing that content, too, making your visitor feel like you truly understand their world.
What kind of direct mail campaigns have worked for you? Share your experiences with cross media, relevance and response here.
Jan 3rd
Flash mobs are unexpected, irresistible, and often historic if they go viral on You Tube. Chief Marketing Officers should aspire for the same traits in their email campaigns.
Harper’s Magazine’s editor Bill Wasik invented flash mobs as an experiment about social conformity and people wanting to be part of the next big thing. His first flash mob failed. Abraham Lincoln said, “Success is going from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm.”
However, Wasik’s meticulously planned his second flash mob, which was held in 2003 in Macy’s Department store. It was a success with 130 mob participants. The engage email power of planning always brings better returns.
Here are five other ways flash mobs can inspire you to construct email campaigns that will be included in the 2012 next big thing list.
Grab Your Audiences Attention
Flash mob and email marketing similarities start with the person who leads the performance. The person who initiates the flash mob is the equivalent to the subject line of your email campaign. This pattern interrupt stops the busy shopper. In your case the busy prospect scanning his email. As he scans the various lines he stops at your message simply because your compelling subject line appeals to him.
Engage Them So They Stay With You
Once they click, your email message needs to engage them just as a flash mob moves into Act II of its performance. One way to engage is to be relevant by sending a message that matches the interest of your prospect. A retail shopper who buys socks, white v-neck tees and plaid boxers will engage with your sales reminder that those items are discounted this week. Personalizing your message to reflect their interests, needs, and wants indicates that you know them and increase your credibility to the shopper. You are more engaging, or rather your message is engaging.
Be Brief, Be Real
An average flash mob dance is three to five minutes. Keep your message brief because the average person spends just 15-20 seconds reading an email.
To keep your prospect from clicking the delete button, make your message conversational rather than a blatant sales pitch.
Keep it Clean
Just as a flash mob keeps its performances G-rated, keep your email list scrubbed and in good hygiene. Good list hygiene includes removing lapsed addresses (disengaged prospects) that don’t respond to win-back campaigns. Also, use deliverability tools such as feedback loops, tracking delivery by domain, and scoring content to avoid looking “spammy”.
Keep your marketing messages and images in good taste, too. CornerBarPR.com got push back from its prospects when it emailed a subscriber solicitation for its online database with a seductive bartender on it. Though the campaign was supposed to play off the company’s bar tie-in, it didn’t win any customers among conservative PR circles.
There’s more to be learned from flash mobs to inspire better email marketing in 2012. Take 30-minutes during your lunch break to watch the 10 most viewed flash mobs of all time and let us know what you plan to apply in the New Year.
Dec 27th
Over lunch my friend described the duress his associates were going through because of a switch from a fixed- to zero-based budgeting. In essence, department heads could no longer use last year’s budget adjusted for inflation. They instead had to cost justify each expenditure line item by line item. These are the signs of tighter times where ideally every dime spent brings in a return.
Regardless of which accounting system your company uses, be a good corporate citizen this year by conducting a marketing audit. December is a great month to reflect and plan given business-as-usual stalls due to the holidays, vacations, and in some cases inclement weather.
In a financial audit an accountant or analyst tears the books apart and helps the company put things back together in a more systemized order. In a marketing audit, chief marketing officers, and preferably an independent consultant, evaluate your company’s marketing assets, programs, and results. An audit answers the question, “ Have marketing goals been met?” “Why or why not?”
“Being busy does not always mean real work. The object of all work is production or accomplishment and to either of these ends there must be forethought, system, planning, intelligence, and honest purpose, as well as perspiration. Seeming to do is not doing.”
Thomas Edison
My recommendation is to secure a conference room and pin each piece of each multi-channel campaign around the room with index cards pinned beneath with the results of that campaign, advertising push, PR blitz, or cause marketing piece.
The immediate visual of seeing your work pasted on four walls will tell you:
I guarantee you will see things you missed during the campaign. Then invite some friends and colleagues in to review your work – feel free to call me, I’m happy to review your campaigns – no charge and no strings. With the help of outside perspective you will definitely gain views you can use next year. The single best way to spend wisely and increase ROI is by doing a marketing audit and revamping your 2012 budget with the lessons learned. May you have a Happy New Year filled with rocking marketing campaigns.
Dec 20th
Meaningful Customer Conversation is What It’s All About
In the beginning, there were corner grocery stores where proprietors talked face to face with their customers about their goods. Then individual stores became national chains and managed by far away corporate offices where marketing messages were scripted and passed down to be passed on unaltered.
The result. Conversations dried up. Communication became one-way, controlled, and void of all authenticity. Remote marketing officers fell into the illusion that they were managing and maintaining customer relationships. Far from it.
Then social media shifted everything back to one great big small town. A new generation of communicators stepped in insisting their companies engage customers in real-time conversations on Twitter, Facebook, Four Square, Live Chat, and more.
Thanks to social media, customer-driven relationships are back, according to Gary Vaynerchuk, author of the Thank You Economy. Good marketers talk to their customers about life and how their passions or needs are impacted by their products. Less enlightened marketers continue to try to shove products down their customers’ throats with as little to no conversation.
Social media corporate stars such as V8, NY Jets, Martell Home Builders, Zappos, Southwest Airlines are succeeding despite the economy. Lagging companies such as AT&T, Zagat, Nestle that are not adapting to Web 2.0 fast enough or are screwing up their social media as evidenced by their shrinking marketshare.
To win at social media, Print 2.0 Vaynerchuck suggests:
To humanize your company when using social media, use these five tips:
You’re on social media to listen, monitor, respond, fix problems, and build relationships with your customers. Don’t let the channel confuse you. Social media channels are just tools to get us back in pleasant conversation with our customers even though we may be continents away.
Dec 6th
Paper or plastic? Both are possible with direct mail.
First Class,standard class, or Fed X? Again all three and more are possible with direct mail, which is scalable to your budget depending on the overall strategy and of course the budget.
What’s my point? That direct mail is relevant. In fact, it’s thriving despite increases in postal rates, despite social media popularity, despite a growing number of other marketing channel choices.
In the July 2011 issue of Journal of Marketing, the results of a research project on multi-channel marketing (telephone calls, email, direct mail) for the service department of a large auto dealership was reported. Research found that customers accepted about twice as much direct mail, compared to phone calls and email, before spending levels started to decrease. The researchers hypothesized that “customers view physical mail as less intrusive than telephone calls or email—they can view such messages at their own convenience.”
We’ve pulled these facts that show direct mail is alive and being ripped open and read despite all the hype about consumers clicking and tweeting away on their digital devices instead:
It’s funny, and a reminder of staying power, to look back on some of our modern day advancements. Below are five examples of products that have become obsolete and five that have stood the test of time, including direct mail which has been around since at least 1872.
Obsolete |
Stood Test of Time |
| Beepers or Pagers | Newspapers (since 1620) |
| Car phones. Land Lines | Direct Mail (since 1872 with Montgomery Ward catalogs) |
| Camera Film | Ice Cream Trucks (1936) |
| Printed Yellow Page Directories | Parades (1924 with Macy’s Thanksgiving parade) |
| Records, VHS, CD players | Town Hall Meetings (since 1633) |
Perhaps direct mail’s staying power and sales-conversation impact is why direct mail is Google’s best-kept marketing secret. Yes the king of online, mails for sales. It regularly mails to business people to sign up new customers for its PPC (pay for click) program.
So harness the power of direct mail in 2012. It’s the best-kept secret for companies who are surveying, fundraising, launching, re-launching, expanding, moving, publishing, cataloging, and staying relevant and in the black in their business sector today.
Nov 29th
Marketers want to talk to prospects and salespeople want to talk to buyers. The courting process of moving a person from the prospect to buyer stage is called lead nurturing. Unfortunately most B2B marketers aren’t very good at it. In fact, among marketing automation adopters, only about 1 in 3 believe they have an effective lead nurturing process, according to research from Bulldog Solutions/Frost & Sullivan.
Like in a courtship, nurturing involves two-way communication. To have an effective dialogue with your customers you must watch their digital body language and listen to where they are in the purchasing process.
Too often marketers make nurturing synonymous with email drip campaigns. While this tactical effort is easy to put in place, it’s not effective in converting leads because it overly simplifies communications by making it one-way and one-size-fits-all.
“Simply delivering the same message to a broad audience (mass marketing), doesn’t allow for the 1-to-1 engagement that yields the best results,” says Carlos Hidalgo with Annuitas Group.
The graph below from Left Brain Marketing shows how good marketing communications involves listening to the prospect, then sending a message, and then waiting for a customer response before tailoring the next message.
Does a lead-nurturing program seem too methodical, time consuming, or too customized to implement or manage? The increased customer appeal and response of proper nurturing brings financial gains that make the process all worthwhile. A recent study by the Aberdeen Group showed that companies who implemented a nurture-marketing program had:
IBM lead nurtures its customers by dividing them into one of three categories depending on where they are in the buying cycle. Leads are categorized as ‘Learn’ (potential client at the initial stages of a project), ‘Scope’ (interested in case studies white papers, conducting research) or ‘Select’ (interested in comparing and engaging with vendor).
IBM maintains a dialogue with those in the Learn and Scope stages as they progress through the sales cycle, using targeted collateral and promoting IBM’s solutions. Once prospects reach the Select stage, they are handed over to the IBM sales team for direct engagement.
The graph below shows how marketing and sales can work in tangent nurturing prospects during the inbound and outbound marketing process.
Your dialogue with your customers sets the tone for the relationship. Customers know that how you sell them is how you will serve them in the future. So set the tone by nurturing their needs and nurturing their trust.
If you provide valuable education and information to prospects up front and as they need it, you’ll become their trusted advisor. Then you’ll be first in line for their business when they move from the data collection phase into the purchasing mode.
With patience, ongoing dialogue, and a good lead-nurturing program, you can ensure you’re not leaving 8 out of 10 prospects on the table for your competitors.
Nov 22nd
Turn your marketing levels up to 11 by integrating digital elements with your direct mail
The stand alone direct mail letter may soon be on exhibit at your neighborhood history museum. When is the last time you received a B2C letter at home without some sort of digital embellishment printed in the letter or inserted in the piece?
It’s probably been awhile because there are too many digital applications to layer with your direct mail to boost ROI by as much as 20%.
With the advancements in technology you have ample arsenal to beef up your direct mail pieces and associated ROI. Direct mail is still the workhorse or bread that you can spread digital media on to find new customers or build increased customer loyalty.
By providing prospects or customers multiple options to respond to your direct mail campaign, you increase response and the value of those responses. The Direct Marketing Association study found that customers who buy from two channels (vs. just one) are between 20 and 60% more valuable, while triple-channel buyers are 60-125% more valuable.
For a double to triple return, use one of the six approaches below to dazzle your recipient into action.
Five Digital Elements to Amp up Your Direct Mail
Don’t depend solely on the above technologies. You still need to do the basics of creating great copy, a great headline, a great call to action, and a great mailing list. Then you can add the razzle dazzle to further strengthen your mailing campaign and reap the rewards of higher ROI for you hard work and irresistible marketing campaigns.
Nov 15th
Unclear marketing messages can look like a foreign language to your customers.
With all this talk about increasing conversion rates, let’s get back to the basics and work on our conversation skills. Your marketing messages will be tossed or deleted if they’re too one sided, filled with internal speak (jargon, unidentified acronyms, corporate phraseology) or cloudy copy that seems direction less or arbitrary to that one special customer that is reading it.
Writer beware, people can tell when they are being “messaged at.” So craft your messages and stories naturally and conversationally.
Rick Levine and the other authors of “The Cluetrain Manifesto” offer some of the best advice on how to write great direct mail, email, or web copy to bond with your highly intelligent customers today:
Stories are the currency of the social media realm. By threading good stories, not hype, throughout your marketing messages, you’ll embed richness, immediacy, and memorability that dry bullet points rarely do.
Long before bullet points came into vogue, there were extraordinary minds and copywriters. Just look through the list of the Top 100 Advertising Campaigns of the Century for a refresher course. You’ll see the top three ads were written before 1960, before email campaigns, before social media campaigns, before we overcomplicated the art of copy. In case you can’t read the copy from the Think Small campaign link, here it is. Enjoy.
Think small. Our little car isn’t so much of a novelty any more. A couple of dozen college kids don’t try to squeeze inside it. The guy at the gas station doesn’t ask where the gas goes. Nobody even stares at our shape. In fact, some people who drive our little flivver don’t even think 32 miles to the gallon is going any great guns. Our using five pints oil instead of five quarts. Our never needing anti-freeze. Or racking up 40,000 miles on a set of tires. That’s because once you get used to some of our economies, you don’t even think about them any more. Except when you squeeze into a small parking spot. Or renew your small insurance. Or pay a small repair bill. Or trade in your old VW for a new one. Think it over.
This terrific copy underscores Bill Bernbach’s 1949 manifesto that good taste, good art, and good writing can be good selling. If your messages are as true and pure, they’ll help evoke and engage people and customers to embrace your brand.
So go forth to craft and share your marketing messages like a good story vs. a bad propaganda piece. You’ll know you’ve achieved that goal when you hear people echoing your words in their voice online, in social media and on the street. Success as a communicator, copywriter, PR person, social media master, or CEO means getting back to the basics of keeping it real.
Is your copy the real thing?