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“We’re duped into believing that the pretty, the pristine, and the perfect get all the perks, all the breaks, all the glory,” says Vicki Kunkel in her book Instant Appeal. In many cases, she argues, the opposite is actually true. Obvious imperfections have their benefits—whether in your personal or corporate brands.
To make her point, she showed a diverse group of survey participants a series of split-screen images—each with one attractive person and one homely person—and asked questions like:
To which of these two individuals would you feel more comfortable giving the keys to your house?
If you loaned each of these people $50, which one do you feel would be more likely to pay you back?
She found that 67 percent would give their keys to the less attractive person; a whopping 82 percent, meanwhile, considered the homely group more credit-worthy. “Apparently we trust the average-looking among us more than the swans to be moral, helpful and honest.”
According to Kunkel, the same principle applies to various aspects of corporate branding. A CEO who includes some dirty laundry in a speech will seem honest; an ugly Web site like craigslist or eBay will seem straightforward. In other words, ugly can work in your favor.
“We’re most appealing when we’re being ourselves,” says Kunkel, “warts (or moles or gapped teeth or dorkiness or oratorical clumsiness) and all. There is real power and panache in knowing and embracing our shortcomings, our flaws, and ourselves.”
Source: Instant Appeal.
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Some email marketing practices should always be avoided. “There are a hundred ways to skulk around, to collect email addresses, to write clever privacy policies or to argue about whether opt-out (‘you can always unsubscribe!’) is a valid way to build a brand,” says Seth Godin at his eponymous blog. “None of those schemes work.”
To illustrate his point, Godin contrasts some email messages he received in a single week:
- Paul McGowan of PS Audio, sent a highly anticipated newsletter filled with information, reviews and storytelling. “Because I signed up for the newsletter,” notes Godin, “I open it. Because he never abuses my trust, I trust him … When it’s time to buy the sort of thing he sells, I won’t look around much, because I’m already sold.” McGowan’s approach might not generate instant sales, but he’ll see a long-term payoff.
- Another audio company, however, sent a single unsolicited offer twice under different subject lines. Godin suspects the company harvested his address from a source like an old business card. “I get a lot of spam from non-reputable companies,” he says, “but it was surprising to get this html ad via email from a company that used to have a good reputation.” This is not the impression any business wants to create.
The second company probably had a ready argument for the legality of its email campaign, but that isn’t good enough. “[C]onsumers now have rights too,” says Godin. “The right to ignore, to distrust and to choose someone else when it comes time to spend money.”
Source: Seth Godin’s Blog. Click here for the full post
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While you know you shouldn’t measure the success of your email marketing programs against results achieved by other businesses, learning about average open, click-through and conversion rates can be a useful tool. You might identify areas for potential improvement—or get a thrill out of learning you outperform other companies in certain categories.
A short video from The 60 Second Marketer offers some guidelines:
- Though many marketers see an open rate of between 20 percent and 30 percent, there are outliers. For instance, while open rates for email from publishing companies might exceed 40 percent, those from entertainment companies might be closer to 15 percent. “Open rates increase the more you segment your opt-in email distribution list,” notes the video.
- Click-through rates often fall between four percent and five percent.
- Conversion rates can range from 0.1 percent to 1.5 percent.
Take benchmarks like these with a grain of salt. “Of course, the only real way to see if your email marketing is successful is to develop an A/B Split Test for one of your campaigns,” says Jamie Turner. “Once you’ve done one test, you’ll take the winner (i.e. the Control) and test against that one until you find a new winner.”
Source: The 60 Second Marketer. Click here for the full video.
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“Surviving or Escaping? This is a discussion I’ve been having with a lot of my friends in online lead gen and B2B sales,” reports Bill Rice in a recent Better Closer blog. “The survival attitude is definitely in the air. My theory? That is the number one killer of businesses.”
The far better tactic for B2B marketers in tough times, Rice says, is to “escape.” He explains: “Survival is about conserving resources, slowing your movement, and hoping no one notices that you are dieing. Escaping is doing something about it.” He offers a few escape routes:
Take advantage of your free Web 2.0 options. “Are you buzzing through social media? Are you writing about solutions? Are you spitting out positive messages in a ‘doomed’ world?” he asks.
Innovate. Instead of playing it safe, take some chances. “Let your software engineers give a few of their passionate ideas a whirl, let the marketing folks get a little edgy, call a client you think you will never land,” Rice urges his fellow B2B’ers.
Punch a hole. “Escaping is usually finding the simplest, smallest chink in the wall that can weaken the whole [status quo] fortress,” he explains.
He offers examples of escapes from previous dark periods: “Ask Bill Gates about a visual operating system … [and] Michael Dell about building custom computers.”
When times get tough, the tough get an escape route. Brainstorm these suggestions to see where your team might break through the gloom, and strike gold.
Source: Better Closer.
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In a post at Harvard Business Online, John Baldoni worries about the impact budgetary cutbacks will have on corporate meetings this winter. “I hear from colleagues in the communication business [that] meetings are being scaled back or canceled to a large degree,” he reports. “Scaling back makes sense; canceling meetings does not.” Here’s why:
- Meetings give your leadership team the chance to outline the company’s plan for the coming year—critical information for external partners like dealers, vendors and franchisees.
- They can also give your sales team an immediate sense of what to do in the short term.
“Both constituencies need to take the measure of their leaders and to discover for themselves if those at the top have the right stuff to lead,” says John Baldoni.
He recommends presentations that offer a clear vision for addressing current economic conditions; create the sense that you’re not only up to the challenge, but prepared to face it head on. Also, cultivate an interactive atmosphere that encourages participants to share their stories and offer feedback.
“Cancelling such meetings, except when there are no other alternatives, sends the message that employees and even vendors and customers are expendable,” says Baldoni. Instead, keep corporate confabs on the schedule and use them as a tool for energizing your constituents and renewing their trust.
Source: Harvard Business Online. Click here for the full post.
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Social scientists have long been intrigued by the human tendency to mimic the behavior of others. Research has shown that people automatically mimic other people’s posture, mannerisms and facial expressions as they interact. But does mimicry translate to product preferences as well? These researchers say yes.
Consumers were invited to participate in a study about ad memory. As a part of their orientation, they were shown a videotape of a “previous participant” engaged in the study. In the videotape, the “participant” (actually one of the researchers) had two bowls of snacks in front of him—animal crackers and goldfish crackers. The participants witnessed the subject snacking exclusively on either one or the other bowl of crackers.
Sure enough, participants in the goldfish cracker-only condition selected goldfish more often than they did animal crackers, when they were offered the two snacks, while participants in the animal cracker-only condition selected animal crackers.
The researchers conducted other experiments to further hone in on the effects of mimicry on preferences, and concluded that mimicry can indeed influence product consumption and appraisal. “As a result of mimicry, we consistently observed increased product preferences across a variety of … measures,” they concluded.
Words to market by: The next time you set up a product display, invite some of your best customers to stop by. Their appreciation might initiate a mimicry effect!
Imitation pays. Encourage your customers to buy based on others’ choices. You might try highlighting “best sellers,” or showcasing customer preferences.
Source: “Of Chameleons and Consumption: The Impact of Mimicry on Choice and Preferences,” by Robin J. Tanner, Rosellina Ferraro, Tanya L. Chartrand, James R. Bettman and Rick Van Baaren. Journal of Consumer Research
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While attending MarketingProfs’ Digital Marketing Mixer in Scottsdale, Karen Talavera finally understood the importance of mixing various sorts of online marketing together. Take email and social media: Each is a significant force in and of itself, but combined they become even more powerful.
Talavera’s tips for creating marketing gold through digital convergence:
- If you have an e-newsletter, she recommends tweeting a link when new editions appear. There’s a proviso, though: If your tweets rarely say anything more than “Check out the latest newsletter,” the Twitter community will start to see your participation as completely self-serving. So be an active participant—even when you’re not linking to content—and add value to link-driven tweets by including catchy tidbits from the newsletter.
- Be sure to include links to your email sign-up page in all of your social-media profiles.
- Give customers incentives to share your content, and make it easy to pass around. According to Talavera, “More people would rather share once with a network than forward-to-a-friend via email, especially since Facebook, MySpace, Flickr and LinkedIn have gone mainstream and the average user can reach a significant percentage of colleagues, friends and family in these environments.”
Just like the alchemists of old, finding the right digital formula takes some trial and error. “Really,” says Talavera, “the only way to understand fusion is to be willing to mix, mash and experiment a bit.”
Source: MarketingProfs. View the full article here.
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Most of us would agree that the entire point of a press release is getting media outlets to report on its contents. The more coverage, the better. So imagine David Meerman Scott’s bemusement when he received a release accompanied by a sternly worded—and counterintuitive—legal notice that forbade its dissemination: “This electronic mail transmission,” it began, “contains confidential information intended only for the person(s) named. Any use, distribution, copying or disclosure by any other person is strictly prohibited. If you received this transmission in error, please notify the sender by reply e-mail and then destroy the message.” Huh?
Scott also highlights a 361-word press release from a major oil company that reads very nicely until it terminates in a 519-word disclaimer parsing the definition of several words that weren’t even used in this particular announcement. It’s but one, he says, of the thousands he could cite.
Yes, lawyers sometimes insist on CYA language, but its heavy-handed presence sends exactly the wrong message. “By including these statements,” argues Scott, “the press release says don’t believe a word we’re saying. This is what happens when lawyers get in the way of PR.”
Scott distills our Marketing Inspiration into a quote from David Henderson’s The Media Savvy Leader: “Always tell the truth and you won’t need to hide behind an attorney or safe harbor.”
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In a post at the Emma blog, Jim Hitch tells the story of two emails he received within 20 minutes of each other. “They’re similar at first glance,” he says. “Almost identical, really. Both are very image-heavy, both came from brand-name clothing retailers, both include simple calls to action, both drive traffic to an online store, on and on I could go.”
So, what set these twins apart? Hitch discovered a key difference when he took a look “under the hood” to see how each handled blocked images. Here’s what he found:
One email displayed only the small blue boxes that indicate an image hasn’t loaded.
The other added text that echoed the message each blocked image contained.
“That backup plan is known to the html-savvy as the alt tag,” he says, “the alternate text that shows when the images don’t load.” Because of this, the second email was still able to tout free shipping and invite subscribers to apply for a credit card.
According to Hitch, since many email programs block images by default, an alt tag workaround insures that recipients still get the gist of your message—making them more likely to enable images or click through to explore your offer.
Tag ’em. “Next time you create a campaign,” advises Hitch, “be sure to think about your own backup plan. The general rule is to set an alt tag for all of your images.”
Source: The Emma Blog. Read the full post here
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In a wide-ranging video interview with BNET, strategist RJ Talyor of ExactTarget discusses a range of email marketing issues, and provides insight on the best way to handle messages sent to subscribers, whether they’re reading email at their desk or on the go.
Says Talyor, “You need to develop an email that renders in some way on a BlackBerry—or a device that only displays maybe text or a mangled version of the HTML—in such a way that it’s going to get the subscriber not to delete your email but instead flag it for follow-up when they get back to their laptop or desktop.”
These days, you don’t face an either/or decision when it comes to the various ways recipients can read your message. With multipart MIME, the recipient’s device or computer selects text or HMTL, depending on its capabilities.
“For example,” Talyor notes, “I have a Motorola Q … [that] displays only text. But when I go back to my inbox on my regular laptop … it displays the HTML version.”
Multipart MIME doesn’t just sound good; based on substantial research, ExactTarget found that the versatile approach that MIME enables produced significant statistical advantages.
Massage that MIME. “Ultimately,” says Talyor, “you see a higher open, click-through and … conversion percentage going forward with that strategy than [with] straight text.”
Source: Marketing Technology Blog. View the full video here
“We’re duped into believing that the pretty, the pristine, and the perfect get all the perks, all the breaks, all the glory,” says Vicki Kunkel in her book Instant Appeal. In many cases, she argues, the opposite is actually true. Obvious imperfections have their benefits—whether in your personal or corporate brands.
