Crumbs from the Scone
“Your site has hordes of visitors every day clamoring to check out the vintage comics you sell,” writes Veronica Maria Jarski at MarketingProfs Daily Fix. “But what do you know about your visitors? Are they die-hard fans of specific series? Older folks caught in childhood nostalgia? Rather than make assumptions, create personas of your users.”
Personas are profiles that represent your website’s typical visitors, and they help you to focus your energies on those who matter the most. Mark O’Brien, president of Newfangled, suggests identifying 15 of your most significant visitors and asking them 10 questions:
- What were your impressions when you got to the current website?
- Did you come back to the site? What encouraged you to return?
- How often do you visit the site and for what purpose?
- Are you familiar with our area of expertise? Are you just learning about it and our site is a research tool? Are you a competitor?
- If you do have an understanding of our area of expertise, what other sites have been good resources in this area?
- What do you dislike about those sites? Do you prefer ours?
- What do you do on the site? Do you: check press releases, sign up for newsletters, download whitepapers, etc.?
- How would you describe our site to a peer?
- “How would you like feature X?” (Use this question to bounce ideas off people about a feature that you are considering adding to the site.)
- What is the No. 1 thing we could do improve our site?
With their answers, you can develop between three and five personas—quick snapshots of your most valuable customers’ wants and needs.
Source: MarketingProfs Daily Fix.
The Shelf Chronicles
Okay… two points right off the bat. I have always been drawn to interesting, unusual people, businesses and ways of thinking. I enjoy reading business blogs that offer interesting, out-of-the-box content that gives me a glimpse into who the owner’s are as well as what the company has to offer. The occasional “what I did on my summer vacation” post is a great way to introduce some whimsical content in with the business to business postings.
With that said, I am going to revisit a thread that I had originally started back in February of 2008, the “Shelf Chronicles”. I have always enjoyed watching bonus feature material on any dvd from Pixar Studios as it typically shows employees working in there impossibly cool studios surrounded by all manner of interesting, weird, out-of-the-ordinary toys, decorations etc. I have a corner in my office which is devoted to my “muses” as I call them. They are a collection of things that have special meanings for me; from toys of my childhood to action figures and statues from tv shows, anime and movies that I have enjoyed over the years.
My Office Muses
This particular thread on my blog will be a way for me to introduce them to you and give you the opportunity to get to know the “geekier” side of Shadowbend Studios (whether or not that is a good idea, we’ll soon find out!!). Those of you who may have read my pseudo-bio on the company information page on my website will know that I am no stranger to quirky, odd ramblings 🙂
So, on to the first introductions…. perhaps we should begin with one of the more unique members of my extended family; Tybo the Carrot Man from “Lost In Space”. He was one of the first of my collection and always gets a double take from visitors.
"Tybo" The Carrot Man
Tybo is the main alien character from the Lost In Space episode “The Great Vegetable Rebellion”. For those of you are in the mood, you can view the entire episode on Hulu by following this link. Enjoy! 🙂
Crumbs from the Scone
“There are a lot of things that can go wrong with email marketing—broken links, typos, unoptimized images—the list goes on,” writes Magdalena Georgieva at the HubSpot blog. But on the other hand, she notes, marketers shouldn’t focus so intently on small technical details that they lose sight of the big picture—of customer engagement.
Keeping in mind the need to tread the thin line between email right and wrong, Georgieva discusses David Meerman Scott’s deadly sins of email marketing.
Here are four:
Bad marketing automation. The positive benefits of personalization will turn quickly negative if your message begins Dear [blank]. No subscriber thinks you sat down and wrote a personal offer—but she can reasonably expect that you’ll get her non-personal personalization correct.
Boring content. We can’t expect subscribers to share our inherent passion for our products, services and news. So tell a compelling story, and hold their interest with humor, controversy and interesting facts.
Lack of variety. No matter how much customers like a brand, they’ll lose interest if the only thing its messages ever say is please buy this thing. Mix it up with content that educates and builds relationships.
Predictable timing. If you send messages on Tuesday morning because someone said that’s when you should send a message, you’re probably missing big opportunities, Georgieva notes. Find out what works for your company by testing a variety of days and times; you might even discover success with a weekend campaign.
Think communication first. It’s important to cross your t’s and dot your i’s, but don’t get so carried away with the details that you forget to simply engage your subscribers.
Source: HubSpot.
Crumbs from the Scone
When David Greiner decided to redesign the Campaign Monitor newsletter—rather than give it a simple facelift—he first studied the advice his company gave to customers. “Turns out we were breaking a number of the recommendations we’d been advocating for so long,” he notes, “and it was time to remedy that.” In a post at the Campaign Monitor blog, Greiner offers an in-depth discussion of his four redesign must-haves. Here’s a snapshot:
The newsletter had to be readable, even with blocked images. Though the previous design already addressed this issue, Greiner took it a step further. “I moved away from the large image-based header graphic at the top of the email and kept every important bit of information as text,” he explains. With the new design—shown in a screen shot at the blog post—a recipient won’t see the image placeholder, and might not even realize that anything has been blocked.
It had to be optimized for preview panes. Again, nothing groundbreaking here, but Greiner also put a spin on this concept by dispensing with a preheader altogether and diving right into a Table of Contents. “My testing showed this key content was now visible in the preview pane of every popular email client I tested,” he says, “even at a very low resolution.”
In its inaugural week, the redesigned newsletter’s click rate improved on the old design’s average by a cool eight percent.
Designer, heal thyself! Are you breaking any of your own newsletter design rules? If so, maybe it’s time for a makeover.
Source: Campaign Monitor
Crumbs from the Scone
Successful marketing requires a strong team—whether it’s dealing with customers on the front line, writing copy for email campaigns or developing products. “One way to hire smart is to never do it in a panic,” writes Jennifer Prosek in her book, Army of Entrepreneurs. “This means creating and nurturing a constant pipeline of potential candidates.” And here’s how to do it:
Always be on the lookout for talent. Make a habit of identifying and getting to know potential candidates—even when you don’t have a specific position to fill. “Never get caught in the trap of recruiting only when you need someone to start in two weeks,” she says. “That’s when you’re vulnerable to making a mistake [or] overlooking a weak work ethic.”
Make talent-spotting part of your staff’s job description. “Too often, staffers assume that recruiting happens someplace away from the daily hum of business, in some corner of the HR department,” notes Prosek, who freely admits she isn’t her company’s best talent spotter. She highlights the importance of recruiting in the weekly blog post she writes for employees, and encourages referrals with bonuses for bringing in top talent.
Hire the right person for the right job—even in a downturn. “I have often made strategy hires that at the time raised eyebrows,” she says. “What’s she doing? Hiring this high-priced talent in this economy? But I know what I’m doing. I’m making sure we are bringing in the talent we need to be successful.”
If you want the best employees, never stop looking for them.
Source: Army of Entrepreneurs.
“Your site has hordes of visitors every day clamoring to check out the vintage comics you sell,” writes Veronica Maria Jarski at MarketingProfs Daily Fix. “But what do you know about your visitors? Are they die-hard fans of specific series? Older folks caught in childhood nostalgia? Rather than make assumptions, create personas of your users.”
