Crumbs from the Scone
When it comes to the analyzing the data you collect at your Web site, you’re doing a great job. You know which of your customers visit most often, where they live, which keywords they use to arrive at your site and which links provide the best traffic. But are you missing out on additional information your visitors would gladly volunteer?
In a post at the Dosh Dosh blog, Maki recommends methods like these for learning more about the people who visit your site:
- Polls. They’re easy to set up and a good way to collect data gradually without seeming too intrusive. “Run a poll for two weeks and change the questions to pull in more information,” he says.
- Surveys. Since these can be lengthy and often require more effort from a visitor, it’s best to include incentives like a special offer or entry in a sweepstakes.
- Interactive features. Engaged visitors can be an excellent source of additional information. “Think strategically about what data you want and create a feature that allows users to indirectly reveal it,” says Maki, though with the caveat that this requires a clear privacy policy and an easy opt-out process.
“Instead of simply monitoring web statistics,” says Dosh Dosh’s Maki, “create opportunities for visitors to voluntarily reveal personal data and opinions.”
Source: Dosh Dosh.
Crumbs from the Scone
“Trigger-based email is when you email a message to a customer in response to certain [behavior] or preferences,” Valerie Khoo reminds us in a post at the Sydney Morning Herald’s Enterprise blog. “The email is literally triggered by something the customer says or does, or is based on other information that has been collected about a customer.” According to Eydie Cubarrubia of Mobile Storm’s Digital Marketing blog, each of these messages—whatever their content—has a central purpose: “[To] ensure that a brand remains engaged with and relevant to consumers by giving them important updates.” Reporting from this month’s Adtech conference in Sydney, Khoo outlines the key steps in a trigger-based program:
- Use creative strategies to build your database.
- Determine key triggers.
- Find the right technology.
- Enrich your data.
When done correctly, there are a number of benefits. “It’s extremely low–cost, and when you set up good systems (yes, that’s the laborious part), there is an element of ‘set and forget,'” notes Khoo.
But remember: While the technique might look simple on the surface, successful implementation requires a deft hand. “Think of trigger-based email as the master’s degree after getting a bachelor’s degree in email marketing,” says Cubarrubia.
Pull that trigger! But get some practice in first. “The rules of email marketing best practices must foremost be understood and used,” Cubarrubia says, when sending trigger-based messages.
Sources: Sydney Morning Herald and Mobile Storm.
Crumbs from the Scone
“I think one mistake many marketers make is to think of their lead management requirements too narrowly,” says Jon Miller in a recent post at Marketo. He suggests it’s time to move on up—beyond just nurturing and scoring leads—to a higher level of overall lead management.
To help show the way, Miller has offered these Top Five Lead Management Best Practices:
- Be everywhere. “Cast your marketing net wide so customers will find you no matter where they are searching,” he advises.
- Build prospect profiles. Create a lead database to manage and store all your leads, and then make sure you have a strategy in place to keep that database clean (e.g., lead de-duplication).
- Automate lead handoffs. He offers an example: “Define different lead status values to indicate whether someone is a qualified prospect but still nurturing, or a true sales-ready lead.” Then update their lead status in the CRM system.
- Provide sales-lead insight. Give the sales rep the prospect’s history, and offer insight about the “interesting moments” that caused that person to become a lead.
- Recycle leads as necessary. If your sales rep can’t follow up right away, or the prospect isn’t available, don’t let a lead just sit and turn stale. “[H]ave a process in place to reassign the lead or escalate the issue,” Miller advises.
Take more control. “[M]arketers need to move away from a mindset of ‘generating leads’ and toward a model of ‘managing leads,'” Miller concludes.
Source: Marketo.
Crumbs from the Scone
Uh-oh. Just when you thought e-commerce might survive these dreary days, a new report comes along that says online merchants didn’t do nearly as well last year as they could have done. Why, you ask? Because online shopping is just too scary for some people.
According to research results released mid-March by Javelin Strategy and Research (working with eBillMe and First Data), consumers’ fear of identity theft, and of Internet shopping in general, caused retailers to miss out on $21 billion in online sales in 2008. Ouch.
Some stats: Of those surveyed, 39% believe that online stores will sell their information; 50% believe they will receive junk mail and spam if they shop online. And 12% of fraud victims report they no longer shop online at all, while 25% say that the frequency of their online purchases has decreased.
So what’s a kind and gentle marketer to do? Multichannel Merchant reports that, according to the survey results, the top-five motivating factors that would convince consumers to shop more frequently are:
- Assurance that information is secure (83%).
- Offering zero liability against identity theft (81%).
- Stronger security at the store Web site (80%).
- A guarantee that the purchase will match the quality expectations of consumers (80%).
- A guarantee for the best price online (79%).
It’s time to reach out and touch your fearful customers. Be as upfront as possible about your privacy policy, and offer satisfaction and security guarantees to help them feel safer in these uncertain times.
Source: Multichannel Merchant.
Crumbs from the Scone
“When it comes to website copywriting, design and development,” says Rick Sloboda of Webcopyplus, “simple is always better.” While an overly complex site will do nothing but confuse and frustrate many of your customers, a straightforward approach makes it easier for them to:
- Find answers for basic questions
- Absorb and digest key messages
- Accomplish what they came to do—whether finding information, making a purchase or subscribing to a newsletter
Sloboda quotes French aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupéry: “A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.” In your pursuit of this ideal, it’s important to know a few things.
Effective simplicity doesn’t just happen. Success starts with skilled designers and copywriters. “[W]hether manipulating words, images or code,” he says, “it takes knowledge, experience and time to plan and develop appealing, functional and simple websites.”
And it requires a sophisticated touch. “There’s a vast difference between communicating simply and communicating poorly,” notes Sloboda. Even if your copy aims for the 8th- or 10th-grade reading level, for instance, solid writing will still appeal to visitors who have more advanced comprehension.
“Effective web content isn’t about flashy graphics and fancy words,” says Sloboda. “It’s about communicating key messages and getting tasks completed. Simple connects.”
Source: Article submitted by Rick Sloboda of Webcopyplus
Crumbs from the Scone
“I am not going to go on a rant [about] adding a ‘share this,’ ‘follow me,’ ‘digg this,’ or another technology to your email programs in order to drive cross-channel adoption of your email strategy,” says Dylan Boyd in a post at the Email Wars blog.
Instead, he wants to know one thing: Are you loading up email messages with social media add-ons just because it’s the fashionable thing to do, or because you have a solid plan built on connecting with customers where they spend their time? He hopes it’s the latter.
According to Boyd, adoption of social media options for email is not about your tech choices, it’s about your customers’. In other words, to make the best use of social media tools, you have to determine which ones your customers are actually using. “You are not going to be the driver of new technology adoption,” he explains. “[Y]ou are going to be the one to leverage existing places that [your customers] might ‘live.'”
And as you do so, remember to keep it simple! If recipients see lots of completely unfamiliar social media icons in your emails, argues Boyd, the messages will begin to look like a NASCAR racer cluttered with advertisements—and that doesn’t achieve anything for anyone.
Downshift. “Instead of rushing to add the next new thing to your email marketing programs,” says Boyd, “take a step back. Look at your audience and see if adding these things [is] valuable to your subscribers.”
Source: Email Wars
Crumbs from the Scone
“Social media is cool!” proclaims Chris Brogan in a premium article at MarketingProfs. “Blogging and podcasts are cool! We’re so cutting edge! Twitter is like the future here today, and no one knows about it!” If you’ve noticed a certain facetious quality to his enthusiasm, his next line makes clear his disdain for the gee-whiz attitude many people take: “Yeah, whatever.”
According to Brogan, achieving success with social-media tools requires a sober analysis of their usefulness, and the smart implementation of well-reasoned strategies that complement traditional marketing efforts. Let’s say you’ve joined Twitter in a professional capacity and now have 3,000 followers. That’s great, but now what?
Reaching your business goals means leveraging that network with a solid plan—not just preening over your popularity. If you want sales, for instance, you should start by differentiating between your real-life friends and your customers. “I don’t sell to my friends,” says Brogan. “My friends sometimes bring me sales. Two totally different things.” With customers, meanwhile, you’ll want to move them gently to places like email lists where they’re more likely to convert. “Don’t let them just reside in Twitter,” he notes. “Twitter isn’t a database.”
Your Marketing Inspiration is to keep Web 2.0 in perspective. “Blogging and social media and all these whiz-bang tools don’t sell things,” says Brogan. “People sell things. People who know how to sell things sell things. This social media stuff [sic] is great, but it’s a set of tools, so you’ve gotta pull out of the ‘yippee! hooray!’ cloud for a bit and look at basic selling mechanisms.
source: Marketingprofs enewsletter
Crumbs from the Scone
These days, everybody’s touting the importance of engaging clients through social media. Form communities! Get talking! Create buzz! It’s all good! But is it? Can B2B companies go overboard in their quest to attain a vibrant community online? In other words, is it possible to party too much?
Well, Francois Gossieaux thinks so. His recent post at the Emergence Marketing blog presented the scary thought that, “Even with a vibrant community, you may still fail.” Uh-oh.
Gossieaux presented two main reasons why vibrant online communities might not achieve the goals they were set up to deliver:
1. You are getting the wrong ideas from your community. One trap Gossieaux identifies: the use of incentives to get client feedback. Yes, some clients who are attracted by an incentive will certainly reply, but are their responses “really the ideas that will make a difference in your new product innovation?”
2. You are getting too close to your community members. “There is such a thing as listening too closely to your customers,” he says. “In new product innovation,” he notes as an example, “there is a huge difference between what is being said and what is being meant.” He reminds us that “it is a known fact that [changes] based on direct customer feedback lead to incremental innovations at best.”
Party in moderation. While participating in social media is a great way to engage clients, remember that it’s only one part of a vital marketing mix.
Source: Emergence Marketing
Crumbs from the Scone
Even a small company can benefit from email messages tailored to a recipient’s specific wants and needs. “Using segmentation,” says Michael Clark in an article at MarketingProfs, “customers only get notified of new products, specials, and offers based on past buying patterns, knowledge of the customer and what they’ve clicked on in previous e-newsletters.” Examples include:
- A liquor merchant that invites wine drinkers to tastings, while promoting 12-pack specials to beer lovers during football season.
- A sporting goods store that sends email offers based on a knowledge of which customers ski and which play tennis.
There are a number of ways to slice and dice tasty segments to better serve your customers:
- Collect information at the first touch point. When a prospect or customer subscribes to your email list, offer a menu of special interests and ask them to check any that apply.
- Use online surveys to request additional non-critical data. Says Clark, “[Y]ou can create new lists or add to existing ones based on how respondents answered your questions.”
- Make good use of tracking reports. Paying attention to which recipients click on which links can help fine-tune your segments.
Cater to their range of tastes. “Creating different email messages for different groups is a bit more work on your part,” says Clark, “but it’s worth the extra effort when an email message hits your customer’s sweet spot.”
Source: MarketingProfs.
Crumbs from the Scone
As we continue to feel the adverse effects of a global recession, it’s only natural to feel a sense of defeat. “Giving up the ghost is a real option,” says John Baldoni at Harvard Business Online, “but if you are a manager in a declining business or even a flat lining [sic] one, defeatism can be used as a precursor to regeneration.”
To reach the best outcome, Baldoni prescribes this process:
Face the truth. Maybe your customers can no longer afford your product or service, or they’ve discovered it isn’t essential. It’s possible your business won’t regain its former glory, even when the recovery comes. Whatever your circumstances, acknowledge the facts and make a realistic assessment of the situation. “Remember the good things, as well as the good contributors,” says Baldoni. “Mourn what you have lost.”
Resolve to move forward. If you choose to stick it out, and your top leadership fails to provide specific direction, he advises, “[m]ake things happen that are consistent with organizational vision and mission.”
Think anew. Analyze your day-to-day operations and identify ways to become more efficient and effective. Says Baldoni, “Cost-cutting is not the answer; re-engineering value is.”
Don’t let defeatism get the best of you. “Rather than thinking that all is lost,” he says, “add the caveat, ‘if we keep doing what we are doing.’ That sets the stage for those who want to move forward.”
Source: Harvard Business Online.
When it comes to the analyzing the data you collect at your Web site, you’re doing a great job. You know which of your customers visit most often, where they live, which keywords they use to arrive at your site and which links provide the best traffic. But are you missing out on additional information your visitors would gladly volunteer?
