Crumbs from the Scone
In a guest post at the HubSpot blog, Paul Gillin argues that women’s interest magazines like Redbook face the same basic challenge as your online properties: grabbing a distracted person’s attention and convincing her to become a regular reader. As he analyzes a sample issue swiped from his gym, he explains what you can learn from the magazine’s editors—here are a few highlights:
Tantalize readers with provocative cover lines. Gillin cites examples like: How to Ditch Your Debt For Good, The Seven Secrets to Lasting Love and The Superfood You Shouldn’t Skip. “The cover practically shouts at you that the September Redbook [sic] will make you happier, thinner, richer and better in bed,” he says. The implicit message—and one you can attempt to emulate—is that the reader will miss something important if she doesn’t take a look inside.
Create points of entry. Magazines like Redbook excel at presenting information in small, clearly defined segments, each with its own headline and images. “These same tactics can work online,” says Gillin. “Callouts, sidebars, pull-quotes, Q&As and other visual tools break up rivers of text and give readers more starting points to engage with the content.”
Speak directly to the reader. According to Gillin, these magazines are filled with personal pronouns: I, me, you, our and us. “Speaking to people in personal terms makes the content more conversational, personal and relevant,” he says. “It works.”
“While the media may be different, a lot of the tactics that the women’s magazines use to entice people in checkout lines also work online,” says Gillin. Next time you’re in the market, pick up a copy.
Source: HubSpot.
Crumbs from the Scone
Hold on to your high-quality prospects
“It probably comes as no surprise,” say Kara Trivunovic and Andrew Osterday in an article at MarketingProfs, “[that] the process of acquiring new customers comes with one of the higher price tags of any of your marketing initiatives.” This places a high priority on the cultivation of customer loyalty—and, therefore, the importance of a healthy email marketing program. Trivunovic and Osterday recommend strategies that:
Emphasize quality over quantity. “Adding 50 new and engaged customers or prospects can have a better positive net effect on your bottom line than adding 500 prospects that might not be as interested in what your organization has to offer,” they explain. They’re more likely to buy your product or service, and less likely to hit the “spam” button in annoyance.
Create a streamlined onboarding process. Keep new subscribers engaged by offering quick confirmations and keeping personal data requests to a reasonable minimum. “Collect only the information that you will use to help get the right message to the right recipient at the right time,” they say.
Keep tabs on the competition. Your customers don’t live in a vacuum, and you need to be aware of the other messages they hear. “Timely offers, [frequent testing] and clear product differentiation [encourage] your customers … to make purchase decisions quickly.”
Hold ’em close. By boosting customer loyalty with efficient, relevant emails, you’ll gain increased sales and lower costs.
Source: MarketingProfs.
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
In a guest post at the HubSpot blog, Paul Gillin argues that women’s interest magazines like Redbook face the same basic challenge as your online properties: grabbing a distracted person’s attention and convincing her to become a regular reader. As he analyzes a sample issue swiped from his gym, he explains what you can learn from the magazine’s editors—here are a few highlights:
