LM Comment: Beware, this white paper is a marketing flyer for the associated conference. With that said, it contains some useful information.
March 24, 2009: summarized from PRWEB -- A surprising 64 percent of marketers are spending five or more hours weekly using social media sites like Twitter, found the just-released Social Media Marketing Industry Report: How Marketers Are Using Social Media to Grow Their Businesses.
"Social media marketing is an engagement with online communities to generate exposure, opportunity and sales," says report author Michael A. Stelzner, founder of WhitePaperSource, "and the real shocker is that experienced folks are investing more than 20 hours each week with social media."
Businesses of all sizes are leaping into the social media pool--and many are well-known brands. Computer giant Dell recently reported a million dollars in sales by issuing coupons on Twitter. Even Ford is using social media to interact directly with its customers.
However, for most marketing pros, social media marketing is a fresh new phenomenon--and it's not just for the young professional. Among the 880 marketers surveyed, 72 percent have been at it for only a few months, and the median age was 40 to 49. "This is a story nobody else is telling," explains Stelzner. "Most marketers know the future is social media, but they aren't sure how their competitors are playing the game."
The leading benefits experienced by social media marketers included:
#1: Generated exposure for the business (81%)
#2: Increased traffic and subscribers (61%)
#3: Established new business partnerships (56%)
Full story at: http://tinyurl.com/ccbzbe
Download whitepaper from: http://www.whitepapersource.com/socialmediamarketing/report/
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Why E-mail Matters More Than Ever
March 23, 2009: summarized from ClickZ -- Times are tough. Companies are cutting marketing budgets and staff; organizations are looking to do more sales with less upfront investment and fewer people. Recent statistics show that developing an effective e-mail marketing program is more important than ever. There are ways to make your e-mail marketing efforts a key part of weathering this storm.
Be Strategic
Batch-and-blast isn't an effective e-mail marketing strategy. Creating a sound plan for the channel is what will deliver results. Sending relevant e-mail missives, which requires segmenting your list and targeting content, is a key to success. Create relevance and readers will engage with you and be more likely to buy from you.
Be Tactical
Once your strategy is in place, you need to focus on the tactical. This includes frequency and creative execution (copy, design, layout, etc.). Key elements are the sender address, subject line, and snippet copy, along with the preview pane view of the e-mail. I've had some great results with clients, including significant lifts in conversions (leads or sales) as well as opens and clicks, from optimizing the tactical aspects of an e-mail.
Be Smart
Don't delegate your e-mail marketing efforts to a junior person with no e-mail experience and expect great results. Developing an effective e-mail marketing program requires specialized knowledge and skills.
Make Sure Your E-mail Is Delivered to the Inbox
Deliverability is critical to success in e-mail marketing. If some or all of your e-mail fails to reach the inbox, there's little chance those recipients will act on it. Working with a legitimate e-mail service provider (ESP) is one of the best ways to get good deliverability. Assuming your e-mail is making it to the inbox is a mistake. Being proactive will require some budget outlay, but it's well worth the cost.
Test, Test, Test
Designate between 10 and 20 percent of your overall marketing budget to testing. E-mail marketing lends itself to testing, because you can get good results in 24 to 72 hours. If your list is large enough, you can even do a pre-rollout send of test and control versions of your e-mail to a small portion of your list, then rollout to the entire list a few days later with the winner. Not every test will result in a lift in response. But even if you can improve performance only 1 or 2 percent with each test, you'll see your results gradually increase over time. Continually testing increases your odds of hitting the jackpot with a lift of 20 percent, 50 percent, or more.
E-mail is cost-effective and can return great results, but it takes some investment in time, money, and resources to get there. It's your best bet right now.
Full story at: http://tinyurl.com/c72sh4
Be Strategic
Batch-and-blast isn't an effective e-mail marketing strategy. Creating a sound plan for the channel is what will deliver results. Sending relevant e-mail missives, which requires segmenting your list and targeting content, is a key to success. Create relevance and readers will engage with you and be more likely to buy from you.
Be Tactical
Once your strategy is in place, you need to focus on the tactical. This includes frequency and creative execution (copy, design, layout, etc.). Key elements are the sender address, subject line, and snippet copy, along with the preview pane view of the e-mail. I've had some great results with clients, including significant lifts in conversions (leads or sales) as well as opens and clicks, from optimizing the tactical aspects of an e-mail.
Be Smart
Don't delegate your e-mail marketing efforts to a junior person with no e-mail experience and expect great results. Developing an effective e-mail marketing program requires specialized knowledge and skills.
Make Sure Your E-mail Is Delivered to the Inbox
Deliverability is critical to success in e-mail marketing. If some or all of your e-mail fails to reach the inbox, there's little chance those recipients will act on it. Working with a legitimate e-mail service provider (ESP) is one of the best ways to get good deliverability. Assuming your e-mail is making it to the inbox is a mistake. Being proactive will require some budget outlay, but it's well worth the cost.
Test, Test, Test
Designate between 10 and 20 percent of your overall marketing budget to testing. E-mail marketing lends itself to testing, because you can get good results in 24 to 72 hours. If your list is large enough, you can even do a pre-rollout send of test and control versions of your e-mail to a small portion of your list, then rollout to the entire list a few days later with the winner. Not every test will result in a lift in response. But even if you can improve performance only 1 or 2 percent with each test, you'll see your results gradually increase over time. Continually testing increases your odds of hitting the jackpot with a lift of 20 percent, 50 percent, or more.
E-mail is cost-effective and can return great results, but it takes some investment in time, money, and resources to get there. It's your best bet right now.
Full story at: http://tinyurl.com/c72sh4
Insisting On An iPhone App? Not So Fast
LM Comment: What you might want to consider before jumping into the iPhone craze.
March 27, 2009: summarized from AdAge.com -- As agencies herd their clients onto the iPhone-application bandwagon, brands are happy to climb onboard. After all, what marketer wouldn't salivate at the engagement prospects behind the 800 million games, utilities and entertainment downloaded from the App Store? And with handset makers Research In Motion and Nokia set to launch their own app storefronts in the coming weeks, app fever is sure to get more fuel. But the rush to apps has led to a backlash in some quarters, and a call for more measured thinking around branded apps.
There are reasons for marketers to exercise caution. For all the stellar numbers Apple publicizes, the data on iPhone-app usage suggest a dimmer reality. The average shelf life of an app is limited, with usage declining by almost a third in the first month after use, according to Pinch Media, which has studied iPhone-app usage based on 30 million downloads. By the company's estimate, only about 1% of downloads translate to long-term use -- not exactly welcome news for marketers looking to nurture relationships with consumers.
Plus, the App Store's growing popularity means marketers have to work harder to rise above the din. It's tough to be discovered among the growing array of apps and even harder to sustain a place among the most downloaded. An app needs momentum right out of the gate to ensure discovery. Getting a top ranking requires a lot of downloads in a narrow window that can be anywhere from 24 hours to five days, according to Pinch Media. Six months ago, 10,000 downloads earned a top-25 ranking; today it takes twice as many. (However, brands that reach top-100 rankings on average more than double their daily number of new users, according to Pinch Media.)
The success of the App Store has also focused marketers on the iPhone to the exclusion of other platforms. To be sure, iPhone users are engaged multimedia users, but published estimates put the number of iPhone users at less than 5% of the handset market, and mobile analyst Mark Lowenstein recently told a conference that the most successful apps reach just 20% of iPhone users. That's led some ardent app believers to advocate a broader approach.
Advances expected for the mobile web also have some wondering whether the app world is sustainable. Some say the limelight will return to the mobile web after the app craze levels off, particularly once its capabilities are on par with those of apps, with all their bells and whistles.
Full story at: http://tinyurl.com/crfyda
March 27, 2009: summarized from AdAge.com -- As agencies herd their clients onto the iPhone-application bandwagon, brands are happy to climb onboard. After all, what marketer wouldn't salivate at the engagement prospects behind the 800 million games, utilities and entertainment downloaded from the App Store? And with handset makers Research In Motion and Nokia set to launch their own app storefronts in the coming weeks, app fever is sure to get more fuel. But the rush to apps has led to a backlash in some quarters, and a call for more measured thinking around branded apps.
There are reasons for marketers to exercise caution. For all the stellar numbers Apple publicizes, the data on iPhone-app usage suggest a dimmer reality. The average shelf life of an app is limited, with usage declining by almost a third in the first month after use, according to Pinch Media, which has studied iPhone-app usage based on 30 million downloads. By the company's estimate, only about 1% of downloads translate to long-term use -- not exactly welcome news for marketers looking to nurture relationships with consumers.
Plus, the App Store's growing popularity means marketers have to work harder to rise above the din. It's tough to be discovered among the growing array of apps and even harder to sustain a place among the most downloaded. An app needs momentum right out of the gate to ensure discovery. Getting a top ranking requires a lot of downloads in a narrow window that can be anywhere from 24 hours to five days, according to Pinch Media. Six months ago, 10,000 downloads earned a top-25 ranking; today it takes twice as many. (However, brands that reach top-100 rankings on average more than double their daily number of new users, according to Pinch Media.)
The success of the App Store has also focused marketers on the iPhone to the exclusion of other platforms. To be sure, iPhone users are engaged multimedia users, but published estimates put the number of iPhone users at less than 5% of the handset market, and mobile analyst Mark Lowenstein recently told a conference that the most successful apps reach just 20% of iPhone users. That's led some ardent app believers to advocate a broader approach.
Advances expected for the mobile web also have some wondering whether the app world is sustainable. Some say the limelight will return to the mobile web after the app craze levels off, particularly once its capabilities are on par with those of apps, with all their bells and whistles.
Full story at: http://tinyurl.com/crfyda
Online Casual Games Tops TV in Ad Effectiveness
LM Comment: Note the statistic that casual gamers spend an average of 44 minutes per session at multiple play sessions per week.
March 25, 2009: summarized from ADOTAS -- As marketers and advertisers decide on where to spend their money, they might want to check out the casual gaming industry. In some interesting preliminary data, advertising inside casual games prompted a 48 percent increase in brand awareness, with 61 percent increase in brand awareness with multiple game plays. (Recent studies show that television advertising provides a 9.8 percent brand uplift; Radio 8-10 percent uplift; and Banner CTR have declined to less than .20 percent.)
"If you are looking for engagement, efficiencies and high return on investment online video advertising in casual games delivers all three," said Ty Levine, NeoEdge VP of Marketing. "From the pre-survey to the actual Zappos advertising, we saw a 5x increase in unaided brand awareness where a game included a zappos.com ad in pre, mid and post-roll slots, and that's one brand immersion in the game."
Online casual games demographics include 70 percent female, between 25-54, who spend an average of 44 minutes per session and play multiple sessions each week.
Full story at: http://tinyurl.com/cj3w5f
March 25, 2009: summarized from ADOTAS -- As marketers and advertisers decide on where to spend their money, they might want to check out the casual gaming industry. In some interesting preliminary data, advertising inside casual games prompted a 48 percent increase in brand awareness, with 61 percent increase in brand awareness with multiple game plays. (Recent studies show that television advertising provides a 9.8 percent brand uplift; Radio 8-10 percent uplift; and Banner CTR have declined to less than .20 percent.)
"If you are looking for engagement, efficiencies and high return on investment online video advertising in casual games delivers all three," said Ty Levine, NeoEdge VP of Marketing. "From the pre-survey to the actual Zappos advertising, we saw a 5x increase in unaided brand awareness where a game included a zappos.com ad in pre, mid and post-roll slots, and that's one brand immersion in the game."
Online casual games demographics include 70 percent female, between 25-54, who spend an average of 44 minutes per session and play multiple sessions each week.
Full story at: http://tinyurl.com/cj3w5f
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Will Social Media Throttle Email Marketing?
LM Comment: An article spotlighting the changes facing interactive marketing, escpecially email marketing.
March 20, 2009: from econsultancy.com -- Are you getting less email these days? I am. And that can't be good news for email marketers. Is email beginning to wither on the vine?
By "less," I'm not referring to work email (if only!) or messages from marketers, but less of the type of email that added a little frisson to checking the inbox: fun, flirty, and conversational messages from friends, family, and objects of affection. That stuff is now flowing in through all sorts of other digital channels, of which email constitutes a smaller and smaller part.
It's certainly not as if I hear any less from my nearest and dearest. It just isn't necessarily via email anymore. Some friends who have had my email address for years only ping me via Facebook these days (what a freaking pain - you have to go to Facebook to reply to them - yet they persist). Or they simply update their profiles when they have something to communicate. Others prefer to stay in touch via SMS or IM, and more and more Twitter's direct message function is the channel of choice for on-the-fly communications.
Hey, who doesn't dig having options? Well, perhaps it's something email marketers should begin to question.
Since the internet began gaining in popularity, email has been the #1 online activity. It still unquestionably is, but I more than suspect other channels will make serious inroads into email's efficacy. Think about it: when your inbox holds only the promise of work, electronic invoices, bank and credit card statements and advertising, doesn't it lose value? Where's the engagement? Where's the content that impels users to cuddle up and spend quality time in the channel?
Email is becoming the equivalent of snail mail. You dip into your postal box daily to collect the handful of bills and circulars that aren't yet emailized, but when's the last time you were delighted by a postcard from a friend, or a sweet billet-doux? Yeah, that's what I thought. And you're not holding your breath for the next one, are you?
Teens and young adults were the first to disengage from email. "They just don't use it at all, " marvelled agency types as long as five or six years ago. They text. They IM. And increasingly, so do the rest of us.
Smartphones are doing their part to throttle the channel, too. HTML doesn't render on a Blackberry? Delete. It's a newsletter? OK, right - but first I have to check this text.
Dont get me wrong here. Email's not going away any time soon. But what it will have to do, and soon, is adapt to new realities. The inbox is shrinking...as other forms of messaging storm the floodgates.
Full story at: http://rs6.net/tn.jsp?t=5ldxhzcab.0.0.o7uw4wcab.0&ts=S0394&p=http%3A%2F%2Ftinyurl.com%2Fcqw893&id=preview
March 20, 2009: from econsultancy.com -- Are you getting less email these days? I am. And that can't be good news for email marketers. Is email beginning to wither on the vine?
By "less," I'm not referring to work email (if only!) or messages from marketers, but less of the type of email that added a little frisson to checking the inbox: fun, flirty, and conversational messages from friends, family, and objects of affection. That stuff is now flowing in through all sorts of other digital channels, of which email constitutes a smaller and smaller part.
It's certainly not as if I hear any less from my nearest and dearest. It just isn't necessarily via email anymore. Some friends who have had my email address for years only ping me via Facebook these days (what a freaking pain - you have to go to Facebook to reply to them - yet they persist). Or they simply update their profiles when they have something to communicate. Others prefer to stay in touch via SMS or IM, and more and more Twitter's direct message function is the channel of choice for on-the-fly communications.
Hey, who doesn't dig having options? Well, perhaps it's something email marketers should begin to question.
Since the internet began gaining in popularity, email has been the #1 online activity. It still unquestionably is, but I more than suspect other channels will make serious inroads into email's efficacy. Think about it: when your inbox holds only the promise of work, electronic invoices, bank and credit card statements and advertising, doesn't it lose value? Where's the engagement? Where's the content that impels users to cuddle up and spend quality time in the channel?
Email is becoming the equivalent of snail mail. You dip into your postal box daily to collect the handful of bills and circulars that aren't yet emailized, but when's the last time you were delighted by a postcard from a friend, or a sweet billet-doux? Yeah, that's what I thought. And you're not holding your breath for the next one, are you?
Teens and young adults were the first to disengage from email. "They just don't use it at all, " marvelled agency types as long as five or six years ago. They text. They IM. And increasingly, so do the rest of us.
Smartphones are doing their part to throttle the channel, too. HTML doesn't render on a Blackberry? Delete. It's a newsletter? OK, right - but first I have to check this text.
Dont get me wrong here. Email's not going away any time soon. But what it will have to do, and soon, is adapt to new realities. The inbox is shrinking...as other forms of messaging storm the floodgates.
Full story at: http://rs6.net/tn.jsp?t=5ldxhzcab.0.0.o7uw4wcab.0&ts=S0394&p=http%3A%2F%2Ftinyurl.com%2Fcqw893&id=preview
Online Communities Gain in Popularity
March 12, 2009: Summarized from Promo Magazine -- Online member communities have gained popularity, even outpacing e-mail. The communities, which include both social networks and blogs, are now the fourth most popular online category visited by 67% of the global online population, according to new research by Nielsen Online.
The communities are growing twice as fast as any of the other four largest sectors-search, portals, PC software and e-mail. Social networking will continue to alter not just the global online landscape, but the consumer experience at large.
Other findings include:
* One in every 11 minutes online globally is accounted for by social network and blogging sites.
* The social network and blogging audience is becoming more diverse in terms of age: the biggest increase in visitors during 2008 to member community Web sites globally came from the 35 to 49 year old age group (+11.3 million).
* Mobile is playing an increasingly important role in social networking. UK mobile Web users have the greatest propensity to visit a social network through their handset, with 23% (2 million people) doing so, compared to 19% in the US (10.6 million people). These numbers are a big increase over last year-up 249% in the UK and 156 percent in the US.
Full story at: http://tinyurl.com/df737p
The communities are growing twice as fast as any of the other four largest sectors-search, portals, PC software and e-mail. Social networking will continue to alter not just the global online landscape, but the consumer experience at large.
Other findings include:
* One in every 11 minutes online globally is accounted for by social network and blogging sites.
* The social network and blogging audience is becoming more diverse in terms of age: the biggest increase in visitors during 2008 to member community Web sites globally came from the 35 to 49 year old age group (+11.3 million).
* Mobile is playing an increasingly important role in social networking. UK mobile Web users have the greatest propensity to visit a social network through their handset, with 23% (2 million people) doing so, compared to 19% in the US (10.6 million people). These numbers are a big increase over last year-up 249% in the UK and 156 percent in the US.
Full story at: http://tinyurl.com/df737p
The Future of E-Mail: Four New Marketing Segments You Need to Know About
LM Comment: A viewpoint of email recipient segmentation. This is especially relevant as more and more casinos look to leverage email to supplement their direct mail programs.
March 16, 2009: summarized from ClicxZ -- It's said that the only constant is change. As you look around the world of marketing, you can certainly see significant change happening. One of the most exciting changes coming down the road for e-mail is how we look at segments in our e-mail databases. Historically, segments have consisted of your tried-and-true responders and non-responders. From there, sub-segments have often included new customers, high-value customers, high-transaction customers, and so on. The approach to e-mail segmentation has typically followed standard direct-marketing practices.
We live in a digitally enabled world. Consumers demand faster access to the information they want, when they want it, on whatever device they're reading it on. Even personal communications are becoming more digitally inclined. The typical person on Facebook has an average of 120 friends on the social network site. With this digital evolution, e-mail has no choice but to grow and change with the times.What does this mean for marketers? You must be smarter about your segments and find ways to make e-mail work harder for you in this digital world. That said, let's take a look at four new e-mail marketing segments you need to know about:
The Social Influencer
These are people who signed up for your e-mails, but only respond to them occasionally. It's not that they don't love your brand -- they do. They're just too busy on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and 75 other networks to click on your e-mail. Send them an e-mail that impresses them, though, and watch what happens. Nope, they still won't click through and buy, but they will post it to their groups and drive up to 412 percent more response to your campaign than you would have had with your entire list alone. Why? These people are influencers. You know, the cool kids. Get these guys to love your message and your campaign will be bigger than you had ever dreamed.
The High-value Customer
Sometimes the people in this segment are mistaken as the most important on your list. In the new world of e-mail, these are called the short-term revenue drivers. These people buy from you. But they love you so much they want you to be their best kept secret. So there's very little exposure of your e-mail to their friends and family. Think of these people as your revenue rock. They provide the base of money, while social influencers blow out your ROI.
The Wannabes
This is 80 percent of your list -- people who like your brand, but who need your help. They love the offers and the deals. What are they looking for? For you to tell them how to best work with you. E-mail people in this segment with ways to leverage your Web site, access deals, and just plain be more engaged. They want to be high value or social -- they just need your help.
The "This is Spam" Clickers or UnsubscribersThese people are often forgotten in the olden days of e-mail. If your unsubscribe rate is less than 1 percent, generally you're happy. But what about people who no longer want your e-mail? Do they matter anymore? Yes they do. These are people who felt your message wasn't relevant to them. Some were so uninspired they couldn't even find the time to look for the unsubscribe link -- they just clicked, "this is spam" to get you out of their inbox. Beware! These people are really social influencers in disguise. One unsubscribe or "this is spam" click can equate to 10 people hearing about how bad your e-mail is. In the new world of e-mail, these people should be targeted in different ways. Woo them back before they cause brand damage.
Full story at: http://rs6.net/tn.jsp?t=5ldxhzcab.0.0.o7uw4wcab.0&ts=S0394&p=http%3A%2F%2Ftinyurl.com%2Fcm6w2w&id=preview
March 16, 2009: summarized from ClicxZ -- It's said that the only constant is change. As you look around the world of marketing, you can certainly see significant change happening. One of the most exciting changes coming down the road for e-mail is how we look at segments in our e-mail databases. Historically, segments have consisted of your tried-and-true responders and non-responders. From there, sub-segments have often included new customers, high-value customers, high-transaction customers, and so on. The approach to e-mail segmentation has typically followed standard direct-marketing practices.
We live in a digitally enabled world. Consumers demand faster access to the information they want, when they want it, on whatever device they're reading it on. Even personal communications are becoming more digitally inclined. The typical person on Facebook has an average of 120 friends on the social network site. With this digital evolution, e-mail has no choice but to grow and change with the times.What does this mean for marketers? You must be smarter about your segments and find ways to make e-mail work harder for you in this digital world. That said, let's take a look at four new e-mail marketing segments you need to know about:
The Social Influencer
These are people who signed up for your e-mails, but only respond to them occasionally. It's not that they don't love your brand -- they do. They're just too busy on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and 75 other networks to click on your e-mail. Send them an e-mail that impresses them, though, and watch what happens. Nope, they still won't click through and buy, but they will post it to their groups and drive up to 412 percent more response to your campaign than you would have had with your entire list alone. Why? These people are influencers. You know, the cool kids. Get these guys to love your message and your campaign will be bigger than you had ever dreamed.
The High-value Customer
Sometimes the people in this segment are mistaken as the most important on your list. In the new world of e-mail, these are called the short-term revenue drivers. These people buy from you. But they love you so much they want you to be their best kept secret. So there's very little exposure of your e-mail to their friends and family. Think of these people as your revenue rock. They provide the base of money, while social influencers blow out your ROI.
The Wannabes
This is 80 percent of your list -- people who like your brand, but who need your help. They love the offers and the deals. What are they looking for? For you to tell them how to best work with you. E-mail people in this segment with ways to leverage your Web site, access deals, and just plain be more engaged. They want to be high value or social -- they just need your help.
The "This is Spam" Clickers or UnsubscribersThese people are often forgotten in the olden days of e-mail. If your unsubscribe rate is less than 1 percent, generally you're happy. But what about people who no longer want your e-mail? Do they matter anymore? Yes they do. These are people who felt your message wasn't relevant to them. Some were so uninspired they couldn't even find the time to look for the unsubscribe link -- they just clicked, "this is spam" to get you out of their inbox. Beware! These people are really social influencers in disguise. One unsubscribe or "this is spam" click can equate to 10 people hearing about how bad your e-mail is. In the new world of e-mail, these people should be targeted in different ways. Woo them back before they cause brand damage.
Full story at: http://rs6.net/tn.jsp?t=5ldxhzcab.0.0.o7uw4wcab.0&ts=S0394&p=http%3A%2F%2Ftinyurl.com%2Fcm6w2w&id=preview
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