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You know you’re on the up-and-up, and that your email messages contain legitimate offers for actual products or services. Unfortunately, though, you’re often sharing inbox space with fraudulent messages that claim to come from popular retailers and banks. Those emails are, in fact, nothing more than phishing scams designed to obtain the personal information crooks need for identity theft. Making everything more complicated, phishers have become more sophisticated over the last few years, swiping graphics taken from actual websites and spoofing URLs that appear legitimate.
Because your more savvy customers will regard any out-of-the-ordinary message with added skepticism, it’s important to avoid anything that might raise a red flag in their minds. Microsoft’s primer on phishing is a great way to identify elements that will make them nervous:
- Requests for the verification of personal information.
- Alerts that an account will be closed unless a customer responds within a certain timeframe.
- Salutations like Dear Valued Customer. “Phishing e-mail messages are usually sent out in bulk and often do not contain [a] first or last name,” notes Microsoft.
- Copy like Click the link below to gain access to your account, particularly if placing the pointer on a link reveals a different address than the one displayed.
Be trustworthy. Learn what puts your customers on guard, and use that information to design emails that heighten their trust.
Source: Microsoft.
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According to Jorge Aguilar and Andrew Pierce, the Hispanic population in the United States will surpass that of their white non-Hispanic compatriots by 2030. And, argue the pair in an article at MarketingProfs, appealing to this rapidly growing segment is not as simple as hiring a Spanish translator.
“[M]arketers need to incorporate into their perspectives how purchasing decisions are made by Hispanics,” they say. The opinions of family and friends, for instance, weigh heavily in the choices Hispanics make. For this reason, a realtor profiled on HGTV arranged for prospective home buyers to spend an evening entertaining loved ones in a house they were considering. “The family decided to purchase the house after getting positive feedback from the guests,” say Aguilar and Pierce.
They also suggest wooing first-generation customers with brand names they recognize. Colgate-Palmolive imports Suavitel, a fabric softener popular in Latin America; and Blistex has created a lip balm flavored like the ubiquitous soda Jarritos. Once you’ve penetrated the market, meanwhile, they recommend targeting your Hispanic audience with highly tailored messaging. “This likely requires new positioning to differentiate the brand from competitors while earning credibility and relevance,” they note.
One-size-fits-all solutions won’t work for this important segment, claim Aguilar and Pierce. “As the Hispanic population continues to grow larger and more affluent,” they say, “winning marketers will be those who understand brand loyalty cannot be achieved by translating advertisements into Spanish.”
Source: MarketingProfs.
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You’ve just read the first draft of a press release and you can already see where you want to make a few edits. The lede needs more punch. Your audience might not recognize that industry-specific term. You’ve noticed that your third paragraph fell victim to the passive voice. Once you fix those, you start to see other problems—and pretty soon you’re agonizing over relatively inconsequential issues, like whether to use an em-dash or a semicolon to join a pair of sentences.
According to Dave Fleet, this dogged pursuit of perfection can become counterproductive. “With each subsequent round of editing,” he notes, “the return on your time investment will likely get incrementally smaller. At some point you need to make the call to stop; to accept that it’s just not worth making more edits.”
So how can you tell when enough is enough? Fleet offers this checklist:
- Your copy starts to resemble earlier versions.
- It seems like someone’s been using a thesaurus.
- You’re fine-tuning minor wording deep in the text.
- A rising word count includes new material of questionable relevance.
Whether you’re working alone or with a team, it’s important to recognize when changes are being made for the sake of change. If further edits don’t improve the press release, says Fleet, “It might be time to put the writing to bed and move on.”
Source: Dave Fleet.
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In a post at the ExactTarget blog, Nate Romance recounts a visit with his tech-savvy mother, a woman who makes frequent online purchases through sites like Craigslist and Amazon. While scanning her email, she became annoyed with a particular message. “If they send me one more stupid email this week,” she said in exasperation, “I’m never going to buy anything from them again.”
According to Romance, his mother shops at this specialty retailer exactly once a year—to buy a birthday gift for his sister. But despite her regular-as-clockwork shopping pattern, she still receives between three and five email messages each week.
The problem, says Romance, is when companies like this place more importance on omnipresence than relevance. “One marketer actually told me that they considered an unopened, unclicked email to be a net positive for their brand,” he says. “Instead of looking at what they are gaining by sending so frequently, this company should probably be looking at what they are losing from this practice.”
He suggests a better practice: “Adjusting frequency based on previous purchase behavior shows that you understand your customers, you respect them, and you’ll be there for them when they’re ready.”
Cool it. Pay close attention to customer preferences. No one benefits from bombarding subscribers with a scattershot email strategy.
Source: ExactTarget.
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It’s always good to pause for reflection, and Mark Brownlow of Email Marketing Reports has grouped 27 questions you might ask yourself into thematic categories, along with links to insightful blog posts and articles that address each topic.
Under the heading of coping with increased competition, he poses thought-provoking queries like:
- What do your emails offer that people can’t get from any other email list?
- If a competitor started offering the same content or similar offers, why would subscribers stay with your list?
Moving along to recipient fatigue, he asks questions like these:
- Are you controlling the number of emails your subscribers get (not just from you, but from everyone in the organization)?
- Do you think declining responses are best reversed by sending more emails or by building a better email program?
Later on, under the heading of optimized metrics, he wonders:
- Have you considered the email impacts that don’t show up in standard campaign reports?
- When you get an unusually bad or good result, do you shrug and move on or do you search for the lesson and apply them to future emails?
The self-deprecating Brownlow zeroes in on the bottom line with question number 16. “Are you implementing new tactics because some Englishman in Austria with a blog said they worked or because they make intrinsic sense for your list, audience and email model, or because you tested the ideas and found them beneficial?”
Source: Email Marketing Reports
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In a video post at the Church of the Customer Blog, Jackie Huba and Ben McConnell use the example of a goat-milk carton (that’s right: a goat-milk carton!) to underscore the importance of listening to your customers.
“One thing you have to know about goat’s milk,” explains Huba,” is that the milk solids do go to the bottom and every time you drink it you’ve got to shake it up.” There was, for Huba, only one problem with this procedure—her favored brand used old-fashioned cartons without a screw top, and vigorous shaking sometimes sent milk spraying all over the kitchen. On her last visit to the supermarket, however, she discovered that the dairy not only updated its cartons to the screw top style, it added two words to the packaging: Customer Requested.
“They are basically saying, ‘Hey, we heard you,'” says Huba. “The key is to take those two words, put in on the packaging, and [send the message that] this is a company that really listens to customers.”
According to Huba, there are two ways to listen:
- Passively. This means providing customers with easy ways to give you feedback.
- Actively, by paying attention to what they say in online venues like blogs, forums and tweets.
“Listening is a risk-free strategy overall,” says McConnell in a neat summation of this Marketing Inspiration. “I mean, nothing can harm you by actively listening to what people are saying and feeding that back into the company.”
source: marketingprofs enewsletter
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B
arack Obama wowed the nation with his social media savvy when he won the bid for President on November 4—but he surprised us again when he didn’t stop there.
Just weeks after scoring the title of POTUS (President of the United States, for those who didn’t take poli sci in college), he started airing weekly fireside chats on YouTube, addressing viewers like they were friends in his living room. Then—cherry on the cake—his administration launched Change.gov, a site that lets ordinary citizens tap into the pulse of government.
Following the inauguration, Change.gov began redirecting to WhiteHouse.gov, but quick perusal will prove this ain’t your ordinary government website. It’s updated regularly to keep people abreast of the Administration’s agenda, a separate blog is updated at least once a day, and every week you can watch Obama’s weekly address, filmed in an intimate setting—and hosted by YouTube.
Far from leaning too heavily on its social media roots, WhiteHouse.gov also aspires to demystify the gov. White House 101 is splattered with fun historical trivia, like “First Pets” and presidential bios. And the Contact page makes calling the Administration arguably easier than ringing your local ISP.
Want proof the Obama approach works? Look no further. The President used Change.gov to keep the nation apprised of his transition to President. When last asked, over 80% of citizens polled felt the transition was managed transparently and well: just one indication that keeping a dialogue open with your customers—in this case, the American people—reaps rewards aplenty.
Don’t be afraid to engage your constituency—er, customers—in a two-way conversation. Even the biggest critics can be won over when they realize someone’s listening.
source: marketingprofs enewsletter
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The Shadowbend Studios blog hit 3000 visitors this morning. Thank you to everyone who has dropped by, commented and shared your thoughts and business tips with me.
I hope my posts have been educational, inspirational and/or informative. I look forward to many more interesting posts and even MORE interesting visitors! 🙂
Thank you all once again for your support.
Take care,
Skip
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“[M]any companies hesitate to launch customer case studies because they worry about imposing on their best customers,” say Barbara Bix and Olga Taylor in an article at MarketingProfs. “To their delight, however, companies often discover that decision-makers are happy to discuss their experiences and look forward to being featured in an article that positions them as a leader in their industry.”
If a belief that case studies impose on clients has prevented you from showcasing your best work in public, you’re missing out on a host of benefits that could speed a sale along. These include:
Associating your brand with those of high-profile customers.
Attracting reporters hungry for substantive narratives and sources willing to speak on the record.
Enticing prospects who discover case studies in Google searches.
Bix and Taylor recommend providing at least one case study for each product or service you offer in each industry you serve. “Each satisfied customer is a key to several others who are similar, want to be similar, or simply know of your customers,” they say. “Can you afford to have them keep their story to themselves?”
“Customer success stories work by matching your prospects’ goals, titles, problems, company characteristics, industry buzzwords, and so on to those of your successful customers,” say Bix and Taylor. “That’s because customers believe that their situations are relevant to companies that are just like them.”
Source: MarketingProfs. Click here for the full article.
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Oh, the dreaded negative customer review: shoppers love to read it, and marketers live in fear of it. Marketing teams across the land have been trying to develop strategies for dealing with this new reality. Well, take heart: a recent Forrester Research report called “Myths and Truths About Online Consumer Reviews” offers some good news about the actual impact of negative reviews on customer buying behavior. According to the research, as reported at Internet Retailer:
Consumers consider reviews to be “valuable” when shopping for all kinds of products.
A full 81% of respondents said they do indeed read them.
But here’s where the results get interesting:
- Only 14% of the survey respondents said they always trust a negative review.
- Close to 50% of online shoppers said they have purchased a product despite reading a negative review.
- And 37% said that after reading a negative review, they then turned to “professionally” written reviews.
The lesson for marketers here? While online shoppers will certainly be reading reviews about your products, when it comes down to making a buying decision, they will think for themselves. In other words, a negative review is not a deal-breaker; it’s just a factor in a shopper’s overall consideration of your product.
The decision to buy is personal. While online reviews are a factor in that decision, they won’t necessarily have a stronger impact than your own copy on consumer choice. Keep on writing!
Source: Internet Retailer. Read the full article here.
You know you’re on the up-and-up, and that your email messages contain legitimate offers for actual products or services. Unfortunately, though, you’re often sharing inbox space with fraudulent messages that claim to come from popular retailers and banks. Those emails are, in fact, nothing more than phishing scams designed to obtain the personal information crooks need for identity theft. Making everything more complicated, phishers have become more sophisticated over the last few years, swiping graphics taken from actual websites and spoofing URLs that appear legitimate.
