Crumbs from the Scone
Like most of us, Christina Kerley (a.k.a. CK) will admit that she uses her digital video recorder to whiz past commercials on recorded programs. “So when I find a commercial that I like enough to watch—enough to rewind and re-watch the spot—it warrants a post,” she says.
One campaign she makes a point of watching comes from Jimmy Dean, the maker of frozen-breakfast foods. The company’s amusing spots feature regular guys working in regular office settings—except that they’re dressed up like the moon and the sun. “[T]hey’ve successfully made an otherwise inanimate object human,” she notes, “and we humans like that because now we can relate to them.”
But CK sees plenty of missed opportunities in the Jimmy Dean campaign’s social-media follow-up:
- The Jimmy Dean Web site has a section for streamed ads, but only shows one of the commercials—not the entire series.
- The dedicated YouTube channel, likewise, looks as if it hasn’t been updated since its creation, and hosts none of the Jimmy Dean ads.
- Jimmy Dean doesn’t appear to give fans perks like the chance to see new ads before they air, or poll them on future story lines.
Your Marketing Inspiration: “When you have a hit on your hands,” says CK, “don’t miss out on cost-effective, creative ways to extend your traditional campaign into social media with efforts that engage your fans … and bring you yet more attention.”
source: marketingprofs enewsletter
Crumbs from the Scone
“One of the little secrets in email marketing is that it’s not the same people opening your emails each time,” says Mark Brownlow in a post at Email Marketing Reports. “Even if your open rate stays relatively constant, a closer look reveals that it’s (usually) different people opening each time.” This happens for various reasons, he explains.
But whether one or more subscribers didn’t like a subject line or missed a message during a busy day, a quick roundup of previous content might pique their interest a second time around. Brownlow thinks offering seconds is worth a try, and presents a case in point:
He recently added an unobtrusive “Did you miss?” notation to the bottom of his e-newsletter. The brief paragraph—with links to past topics—read like this: “The holiday special highlighted a new article on best practices for animated gifs …”
While the new feature yielded a slim click-to-open rate of just over three percent, Brownlow says, “[T]hat’s a bunch of clicks that might never have happened otherwise.”
Even if some subscribers had read the previous message, it’s a good bet that few of them minded this recap. And those who didn’t see the email the first time around had a second shot at something that could be of real value to them.
Don’t be afraid of a rehash! Consider highlighting archived issues; after all, not everybody reads every email every day.
Source: Email Marketing Reports.
Crumbs from the Scone
“I’ve often written about ‘NASCAR Blindness,'” says Alan Wolk in an intelligent post at MarketingProfs’ Daily Fix blog, “the strongly held belief that if no one in your little bubble of upscale artsy BoBo friends is into something, then clearly no one else could be either—and how it afflicts the advertising community. But there’s an equally insidious syndrome affecting the tech community: Scoble Blindness.”
Wolk defines this condition as the belief that anyone who uses social media will be utterly fascinated by the ideas of influential thinkers like Robert Scoble. When in fact, argues Wolk, his ideas are relevant primarily to those immersed in the world of Silicon Valley.
“Think of how your friends and relations outside the Silicon Valley bubble use MySpace or Facebook,” he says. “Are they putting up blog posts about how to increase site traffic? Commenting on Zappos’ brilliant use of Twitter? Or are they commenting on their friend’s pictures from their trip to Jamaica last month and posting mildly funny clips they found on YouTube?” Exactly. “So what makes you all think they’re going to act any differently on Twitter?”
In all of our excitement over social-media tools—and how they work for us—we shouldn’t forget what Twitter and Facebook mean to our customers.
While Wolk’s discussion focuses on a specific industry, his Marketing Inspiration holds true regardless of your field. “[W]e’ve got to stop listening to the chatter coming out of Silicon Valley. To remember that the people we’re marketing to have a very different view of social media, it’s [sic] values and uses.
source: marketingprofs enewsletter
Crumbs from the Scone
Because your customers will abandon online purchases if they encounter a tedious checkout process, it’s critical to make your e-commerce functionality simple and efficient. In a post at the Conversation Marketing blog, Ian Lurie offers recommendations like these:
- Never make a customer log in before checkout. “If you show any kind of form requiring a password on the first checkout page,” he says, “you’re losing customers.”
- Display shipping costs on the same page as shipping options. There’s almost nothing more frustrating than getting to the confirmation page and discovering the two-day option costs much more than anticipated. A surprised customer might abandon the purchase, rather than going to the trouble of choosing a cheaper alternative.
- Request information you actually need. “Don’t need their phone number?” says Lurie. “Don’t ask for it. Don’t need their full ZIP+4 code? Don’t ask for it! Are 99% of your customers in the USA? Have that pre-selected in the billing and shipping form.”
- Make it quick. Small conveniences count—for instance, let customers check a box if billing and shipping addresses match, and make any edit from the order confirmation page.
“If your developer says they can’t make these changes, or even tries to bill you for it after swearing they could build a great site for you,” says a tongue-in-cheek Lurie, “slap them. When they fall down, kick them. When they stop crying, tell them to fix the damned site.”
Source: Conversation Marketing. Click here for the full post
Crumbs from the Scone
Ah, chocolate. Who doesn’t love it? Short of an ice cream cone, nothing produces an instant state of bliss better than a good chunk of the sweet stuff. Now, a new research study presents chocolate as a product that can virtually sell itself—better than any marketer can, anyway.
These researchers invited two sets of consumers to test a “new” brand of chocolate. One set was given vague information (just a brief description of ingredients), while the other set was given more precise information (ingredients, nutritional value). Each participant then indulged in the taste test, and was asked to rate the sample.
The consumers who rated the samples highest (more favorable on its positive attributes and less unfavorable on any negative attributes) were those who received vague information prior to sampling. In other words, those marketers who just offered customers the treat without wasting time with too much info got a happier response. The researchers dubbed this phenomenon the Blissful Ignorance Effect.
The message? Shut up and get out of the way! At least with yummy-factor products, try offering a bit of information, a sample, and then let your customers do the word-of-mouth marketing for you. “It would behoove marketers to capitalize on the enhanced optimism of the BIE as part of their ‘buzz’ marketing campaigns,” these researchers conclude.
Some products really can sell themselves. If you have a product with a yummy factor, try talking less, offering samples and encouraging post-sample buzz.
Source: “The Blissful Ignorance Effect: Pre- versus Post-action Effects on Outcome Expectancies Arising from Precise and Vague Information,” by Himanshu Mishra, Baba Shiv and Dhananjay Nayakankuppam. Journal of Consumer Research.
Crumbs from the Scone
When your subscribers cut back on spending, you might be tempted to compensate for lost revenue by stepping up your email campaigns. But be forewarned: It’s a potentially hazardous strategy. “Instead of being financially rewarded for emailing more,” says Barton Schaefer, PhD in an article at MarketingProfs, “you may be punished by a slackened or even negative response, and find that your revenue plummets while your email languishes in spam filters.”
He offers this advice for ensuring optimal deliverability:
Consider email marketing as a privilege, not a right. Make yourself a welcome guest in a subscriber’s inbox by sending relevant, timely offers based on their preferences and needs—not the product or service you’re trying to move off your shelf.
Plan ahead with time-sensitive messages. “You should expect rate limiting and network factors to prevent high-speed delivery on occasion,” notes Schaefer. “If you must mail … last-minute, remember that some customers won’t see your email until it’s too late.”
Cultivate a relationship with your ESP. Your service provider can be your partner in maintaining best practices and avoiding trouble before it begins. Start to ask more questions.
Don’t let an uncertain economy scare you into strategies that won’t do you any favors. Says Schaefer, “Practices that sound good around your company’s conference table may lower your email deliverability, which will only undermine your company in the long run.”
Source: MarketingProfs.
Crumbs from the Scone
When you have a great idea—a true light-bulb moment—you don’t want to be bothered with pesky marketing research that tells you it won’t work. “People who really, really want to believe, will believe,” says Steve Cuno in an article at MarketingProfs, “regardless of where the evidence points.” But to avoid potentially costly mistakes, he has this advice:
Conduct a valid predictive test. “The trick is to quit asking people to tell you their behavior,” says Kuno, “and discreetly watch it instead.” Send out a pair of identical offers that differ only in their headline, for instance, to see which works best; then retest to validate your findings. “If you get the same results, the evidence is that you’re on solid ground.”
Make unemotional decisions. “Your objective is to sell widgets, not to bolster your ego,” he notes. “As you design a valid test, resolve in advance to accept the results, even if they fail to support your hunches.”
Maintain control groups as a matter of policy. Without a representative selection of customers who haven’t been exposed to a particular campaign, there’s no way to know whether a spike in sales was driven by the offer or coincidence.
Finally, resist the urge to jump to conclusions. Even after a valid test, you might want to read the data in a way that favors the result you wanted. Don’t guide the evidence; let it guide you.
“The more you train yourself to eschew unwarranted leaps and instead approach marketing from a sober, rational standpoint, the more you will find yourself creating and refining campaigns that are demonstrably and measurably successful.”
Source: MarketingProfs.
Crumbs from the Scone
If you’ve made some recent improvements—whether to your product, service or customer experience—now is the time to trumpet those changes! A new year, with consumers anxious for a new start, is a great time to tell your subscribers what they can expect on their next visit to your site. In a post at the Retail Email Blog, Chad White highlights an example from Saks Fifth Avenue with the headline “8 Great New Reasons to Shop Saks.com.” The list readers saw includes these innovations:
- Hello Canada! We’re now shipping to our northern neighbor with an extra bonus of FREE Shipping.
- More is more. View more items on a single page, no need to click through pages and pages to see entire assortments.
- Get the whole picture. Roll over a look you love to get an instant back or side view. Also, get a look INSIDE our handbags and see how the size suits you.
- Search and enjoy. We’ve made searching easier. Looking for cashmere? Simply type in “cas” … and we’ll figure out the rest.
According to White, “This is similar to Walmart’s New Year’s email, which listed several new services and features.”
And even if—somehow—none of the new features holds special appeal for a recipient, the email’s copy still leaves the impression of user-friendly functionality at the Saks Fifth Avenue site.
Blow your own horn! “[The] New Year … is certainly [an] occasion to remind subscribers of improvements,” White reports.
Source: Retail Email Blog.
Crumbs from the Scone
In a post at her Conversation Agent blog, Valeria Maltoni recounts how a Skype call to her family in Italy went horribly wrong on Christmas day. “My account is set up to auto-recharge when it dips below a certain amount so that I do not need to worry about interrupting a call to recharge—and worse, having to wait until the transfer is approved,” she explains.
But after her account inexplicably failed to replenish itself, she scrambled to implement a manual recharge during the call—a short-term fix that ran out before she could speak with her mother.
Maltoni made online inquiries about the glitch, and a Skype representative contacted her via Twitter to offer help. Oddly, though, he took a day to follow up on her immediate response. The billing issue created by the manual recharge went unresolved for three days, and then the rep finally sent Maltoni another tweet promising to investigate the cause of the problem.
The sluggish response times left Maltoni unimpressed. “[W]hen you reach out to me in an immediate channel that is free to you,” she says, “you’ve got to come through with the same degree of immediacy. Show me you have a sense of urgency.”
Your Marketing Inspiration: If you’re going to use Twitter for customer service, you must respond in real time. “It is no longer efficient or worth it to fight a company over service when one can easily find another company hungry and willing to take its place and deliver,” says Maltoni.
source: marketingprofs enewsletter
Crumbs from the Scone
If you read blogs on a regular basis, you’ve seen comment spam. There are the obvious offenders (those people, for instance, who work their way around the blogosphere leaving generic cut-and-paste lines like, “I love your blog, check mine out”). Then there are those who rub other readers the wrong way by couching their self-promotion in a superficially relevant—though not particularly insightful—comment.
Use the power of comments wisely
In a post at his blog, Jim Connolly discusses why comment spam doesn’t work, and offers some guidelines for avoiding the practice:
Refrain from commenting unless you can add to the discussion. Online forums become hostile to someone who looks like nothing more than a self-promoter.
Remember the long arm of Google. Assume your customers and your boss will see everything you write.
Don’t include a link to your Web site or blog in your comment; it’s not only redundant—since you can hyperlink with your name—but looks desperate.
“I believe that if a comment spammer could see themselves the way you and I see them,” he notes, “they would stop instantly.”
“There are many ways to professionally position a person and/or a business as a valuable must have for one’s target market,” says Connolly. “Comment spam is not one of them.”
Source: Jim’s Marketing Blog.
Like most of us, Christina Kerley (a.k.a. CK) will admit that she uses her digital video recorder to whiz past commercials on recorded programs. “So when I find a commercial that I like enough to watch—enough to rewind and re-watch the spot—it warrants a post,” she says.
