Email Marketing Tips

I'm currently working on email marketing campaigns using Vertical Response, integrated with Salesforce, and found that it is important to remember the basics including what your purpose is for the email. From the book "Email Marketing An Hour a Day" they talk about the 5 types of emails:

 

1. Awareness
2. Consideration
3. Conversion
4. Product Usage
5. Retention and Loyalty

 

Awareness -- purpose is to ID interest -- use ad type placement in email

 

Consideration -- purpose is to accelerate interest and qualify -- use way to capture opt-in

 

Conversion -- to move from marketing to sales funnel after getting a buying signal -- use click-to-call or request demo

 

Product Usage -- purpose is to drive engagement with brand -- use cross and up-sell offers

 

Retention and Loyalty-- to deepen relationship -- use value added info (tips, e-newsletters)

 

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Remember when your approach to email is different depending upon your brand awareness.

 

70% of business emails are opened and read within 3 hours of receipt.

 

Segment as much as possible and track stats (received, opened, clicked, conversion, bounced, unsubscribe).

 

HTML or text? Depends on your audience and what they expect. Youtube generation wants design and humour; boomers want the facts. Research your audience before you email ... buy, source free online, or survey.

 

And don't forget to comply with CAN-SPAM laws 

Opportunistic trend marketing

I'm a big fan of opportunistic marketing.

I noticed one campaign this week while watching a TV ad at the gym. Nestle's Juicy Juice Immunity. It is using the H1N1 scare and back-to-school time to boost awareness and sales. Since kids are exposed to so many germs this juice promotes how the extra vitamin c and zinc will help boost the immune system. I'm sure many Mom's are going to go for this as who wants their kids to be sick let alone get H1N1. Brilliant new product and marketing IMHO !!!

http://www.juicyjuice.com/products/Immunity.aspx

Youtube http://www.youtube.com/user/juicyjuice?blend=1&ob=4

5 marketing communication tips

1. CRM system like Salesforce.com are fantastic systems for tracking leads, prospects, sales and all related communications through the funnel.
2. Email marketing programs like Vertical Response or Mail Chimp are easy to use and have templates and analytics to view %open, bounced and unsubscribe rates.
3. docmetrics provides tracking PDF tool to get stats to help with lead generation.
4. White papers are great “call to action” in direct marketing campaigns – whether email or mail. To share content there is Creative Common.
5. Leadlander gives you information about who is accessing your website.

Social media monitoring - part 2

I read this article from Glen at TrendTracker (twitter.com/TrendTracker) this morning and it has a list of social media monitoring resources. http://webanalysis.blogspot.com/2009/06/social-media-analytics-part-i.html

Some of the Social Media Analytics Tools
Radian6
WebTrends - Powered by Radian6
Techrigy - SM2
Visible Technologies
Nielsen BuzzMetrics
Biz360 Community Insights
Dow Jones Insights
Sentiment Metrics
JD Power Web Intelligence

Social media monitoring

There are many free social monitoring tools out there and here is a list of a few I’ve come across thanks to my colleague Lucian Savluc (twitter.com/LucianSavluc).

Social mention http://socialmention.com/ similar to Google Alerts but for social media.
Boardreader http://boardreader.com/ to monitor forums and blogs.
Trendr http://www.trendrr.com/home allows you to track and report and has cool graphs.
Google trends http://www.google.com/trends is interesting to see topic and conversation trends.
Backtype http://www.backtype.com/ allows you to track your comments on sites.

And here is a link to a posting about other free social monitoring resources http://takemetoyourleader.com/2009/03/24/free-social-media-monitoring-tools/

Learnings from National PR Conference

I attended this week PR National Conference here in Vancouver, BC at the Westin Bayshore hotel. I attended many sessions and helped organize the 80 fabulous volunteers.Highlights for me were ...

Brian Solis talking about social media and the new world of PR.

“Social Media is bigger than simply integrating a Blogger Relations branch to your PR strategy. It’s an opportunity to engage directly customers and peers who either purchase or recommend the decisions of others. ... The new world of influence demands customer empathy, evangelism, passion, expertise, and knowledge – everything else is disposable and takes away from your focus and potential.”

• Download his entire post related to his presentation The State of PR, Marketing, and Communications: You are the Future.

Maple Leaf Food’s VP Communications Jeanette Jones had a good presentation about their listeria crisis last year. I wonder if they would have had such a positive rebound in customer purchases and reputation if they didn’t have such a great CEO spokesperson.

Lessons learned:

• Accept responsibility. Have CEO face of company.
• Lead with facts and be open. http://www.mapleleafaction.com/
• Have communication vehicles in place such as CEO weekly note, employee conference calls, external blogs (this one decreases reliance on media to disseminate info)
• Use social media such as YouTube as well as TV
• Use research to improve communications such as consumer polling
• Don’t over think communications and act immediately
• Ensure bilingual capabilities
• Leverage external experts and have relationships built now
• Maintain communication post crisis – consumers don’t want to forget and nor should the company

Three members from PR Global Alliance, Dan Tisch (Cdn), Paul Mylrea (UK) and John Paluszek (US) talked about the future of PR.

Dan’s points were that PR professionals need to:

• elevate the profession raising standards, sharing knowledge
• dig deeper in the what, why, how of mass culture and
• build business literacy
• co-create messages and content with citizens now; interact 2-way

Dan said in another panel that Canada on the global stage has reputation of the ability to listen and adapt and not do the one campaign worldwide approach (like the US has a reputation to do).

5 step plan for Social media with Maggie Fox. Her presentation style is very conversational and she has a great sense of humour. I would have liked to see more case studies but she did provide some good information about social media.

1. Listen – research the online communities and find out what they are talking about
2. Content – what content gets shared in the community and what doesn’t
3. Technology – what are they using, where are they, monitor conversations
4. Metrics – unique monthly visits to website, etc.
5. Managing risks – create a risk management plan and assign a likelihood ranking

And lastly make sure you share results formally and informally with internal teams. Common misconception that social media is free. It is not free when you consider the time needed to make it work.

the BIG idea speeches

Along with 300+ other marketers, I attended BCAMA Vision Conference this week in Vancouver, BC. The theme was to discover your next big idea. Lots of inspiration! Highlights for me were speeches by Jim Carroll, Richard Bartrem, VP West Jet and Brian Scudamore, CEO 1-800-Got-Junk.

Futurist Jim Carroll started his presentation with a cool text/sms poll (poll everwhere) asking the audience when they think the economic recovery will happen. No surprise the majority said 1-2 years. He’s a great speaker and talked about innovation and the necessity for a relentless focus on growth and continuous improvement. Here’s a quote from his website:

"Forget about the concept of innovation as simply involving the design of cool new products. In the high-velocity economy, where faster is the new fast, it's your ability to adapt, change, and evolve, through a constant flood of new ideas, that will define your potential for success." (From the opening chapter of Jim's newest book, Ready, Set, Done: How to Innovate When Faster is the New Fast) http://www.jimcarroll.com/keynotes.htm

Richard Bartrem, VP Culture and Communications WestJet, talked about the culture of care and how important using the right language is. WestJet gets it for sure!

People vs. Employees / Promises vs. Policies / Lead vs. Supervise / Guests vs. Passengers

Entrepreneur, Brian Scudamore, CEO and founder of 1-800-Got-Junk didn’t use PowerPoint (yeah!) and engaged us with his story about the journey through starting a business and growing it to $100M biz. I loved their “can you imagine” wall for employees. Such a great way to get employees engaged in the vision and dream. He recommends reading the book emyth so will have to check it out.

The last session, fireside chat style, with Yahoo Canada’s GM Kerry Munro, Professor & Author Ken Wong, Social Media Group’s CEO Maggie Fox and GREY Canada’s creative VP Clare Meridew, was full of interesting comments about marketing, social media and recessions. Ken Wong said many brilliant things, since he is a Professor, but one comment that stuck out for me is "Companies that continued spending through the recession grew at 200% post recession. Those that cut grew only 19%." [research from 1980-85 recession]

All in all an interesting conference. Thanks BCAMA.