Crumbs from the Scone
“In the holiday email season [of 2009], retailers turned up the gas on their email campaigns, hoping to salvage what was predicted to be a flat or down consumer spending season,” says Loren McDonald in an article at MarketingProfs. If handled haphazardly, that’s a risky strategy that increases the likelihood of spam complaints and unsubscribe requests. But if managed carefully, he argues, you can increase your email volume to some recipients without losing their goodwill.
GOOD email!
The trick is to think in terms of sending the right message to the right subscriber at the right time—a formula that might actually call for more than one email each week. Yes, you heard it right: increased frequency can be good customer service.
“Targeting increases relevance,” says McDonald. “With increased relevance, you can afford to send more frequently, because your chances are higher that your subscribers will welcome these emails that clearly reflect their interests, wants or needs.”
One word of warning, though: always respect pre-established preferences. “No matter when or how you offer it,” he notes, “stick to what you promised.”
“Don’t ask yourself, ‘How often should I email?'” McDonald concludes. “Instead, ask, ‘What demographics, preferences and behaviors can I use to drive a … program that maximizes the LTV of my customers?'”
Your pals like to hear from you. If you have a friendly customer relationship, relevance could trump the frequency question.
Source: MarketingProfs.
Crumbs from the Scone
Everyone likes personalized attention, and it seems that a handwritten note might be worth the time it takes to write. A post at the Neuromarketing blog cites an interesting study discussed by Robert Cialdini in the book Yes! 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive. When researchers sent a survey to busy doctors with three different cover letters, and each produced a dramatically different result:
- A printed letter generated a response rate of 36 percent.
- A printed letter with a handwritten message boosted this by one third to 48 percent.
- A printed letter with a handwritten message on a Post-it note pushed the response rate to 75 percent.
“It seems that what is causing the boost is a ‘reciprocity’ effect,” notes Neuromarketing. “The recipient recognizes that the sender apparently put some personal effort into the mailing, and is more likely to reciprocate with some effort of his own.”
Interestingly, the blog notes, responses to the survey with the personalized Post-it note were also more thorough and prompt.
“[T]he effects of personalization and apparent effort on the part of the sender have to be weighed against the desired action,” says Neuromarketing. “[But] making even difficult requests in a more personal manner can’t hurt.”
Source: Neuromarketing.
Crumbs from the Scone
“A great way to capitalize on the democratic medium of email is to put your burning questions, late-night hunches, and out-of-the-box ideas to the test with an A/B split test,” says Megan Walsh in a post at the Email Experience Council blog. Here’s some of her advice for using split testing to try out new ideas and boost results:
Focus on one variable at a time. When testing subject lines, for instance, you want to know how many subscribers opened the message. Clicks and conversions, meanwhile, matter when you’re testing calls to action. Remember that a change in one variable can have an impact on another. Always be clear about what you’re trying to test/achieve, Walsh advises.
Use a random distribution for A and B audience groups. “The sizes of the segments don’t need to be the same if the key metric you are looking to influence is expressed as a ‘rate,'” she says, “but they do need to have the same general characteristics to be a fair test.”
Take it to the next level. As you become a testing junkie, begin to explore how different segments behave. Williams-Sonoma knew that including a featured product’s price on the hero image boosted clicks and conversions. The company recently discovered, however, that the customers driving this response were those who spent more than $100 on an average purchase; customers who spent less were more likely to click on an image without a price.
Source: Email Experience Council
Crumbs from the Scone
In a post at his Be the Brand blog, Dave Saunders links to a YouTube video by Perry Belcher that takes some Twitter users to task for their seeming lack of interest in the people who follow them. (NB: The video contains some four-letter words.)
Belcher illustrates his point with the Twitter profile for one social-media bigwig who has 77,701 followers, but follows only 120 people. According to Belcher, this creates the impression that Mr. Big doesn’t like his Twitter-friends: “he doesn’t care if they exist or not, they’re just drones that follow him around.” For contrast, Belcher navigates to Guy Kawasaki’s profile, where we discover a nearly even-steven ratio; the editor of Alltop.com follows 31,933 people and has 34,701 followers. Even if you disagree with Belcher’s conclusions—and we think he makes a few leaps—his spirited discussion underscores the fact that appearances do matter in the realm of social media.
Dave Saunders adds to the discussion with his own pet peeve: the Twitter snob who never responds to @replies. “Obviously, you can’t respond to every single message that comes your way on Twitter,” he says, “and some @replies simply don’t warrant a response. However, there are people out there who ignore it all. Using the cocktail party analogy, this would be like someone staring you down in silence after you said hello.”
Your Marketing Inspiration: Whatever reasons you have for avoiding Twitter dialogue, remember that other users might ascribe your limited interaction to aloof superiority
source: marketingprofs enewsletter
Crumbs from the Scone
“To date,” writes Rob Hof in a post at BusinessWeek’s Tech Beat blog, “mobile advertising hasn’t taken off partly because it’s a hassle for advertisers to create special campaigns for mobile devices, most of which so far use stripped-down browsers that don’t display standard Web pages very well.”
This will likely change as more of your customers embrace devices like the iPhone, and as you take advantage of a new service from AdWords that removes the need to reformat ads for mobile devices.
In a short video included in the Tech Beat post, Google’s Alexandra Kenin provides a quick overview, guiding viewers to the Edit Campaign Settings page, where she scrolls to the Networks and Bidding section.
“As you can see,” she says, “I’ve put a check box next to ‘iPhones and other mobile devices with full internet browsers.'” With just a click, mobile landing pages and ads in mobile formats become unnecessary. “One of the major benefits of platform targeting,” she notes, “is that advertisers can now show their desktop ads on mobile devices and direct users to their desktop websites.”
Your Marketing Inspiration: “[I]t could position Google as one of the easy choices as advertisers realize how many people are increasingly on the Web through their smart phones instead of their computers,” says Hof.
source: marketingprofs enewsletter.
Crumbs from the Scone
If you were to talk to a sixth grader about blogs or social networks or streaming video, you’d be having a conversation with a first-generation “digital native.” While the rest of us learn new media as a second language—with varying levels of skill and comprehension—this emerging segment speaks Web 2.0 with accent-free fluency.
In an article at MarketingProfs, our content chief Ann Handley uses her 11-year-old daughter as an example of the digital native. “Caroline’s comfort with social media tools and her innate knowledge on how to use email to drive traffic surpass that of most grownups I know,” says Handley. “It even surpasses her older brother’s; just five years [her senior], he isn’t nearly as digitally fluent as she is.”
According to Handley, reaching digital natives requires what experts like David Meerman Scott call the “new rules” of marketing. They include:
- Offering or sponsoring online research tools.
- Refreshing content constantly.
- Tossing out marketing-speak and a product-centric viewpoint.
- Monitoring the conversation, and participating.
- Being completely transparent.
Handley also notes that you have to be prepared for the worst if you irk a digital native. “A ticked off customer has a larger platform, and negative feedback can send ripples excruciatingly far.”
Your Marketing Inspiration: “Rather than pushing marketing messages out to digital natives,” says Handley, “[engage] with your customers on an entirely different level.” Use the tools and social platforms they use; start a dialogue, not a monologue; and produce content they want to consume.
source: MarketingProfs enewsletter
