Guest post by Ryan Deutsch, VP Emerging Channels, ThreadMarketing, a StrongMail Company

These are exciting times in interactive marketing and in particular; for email marketers.  From the social web to group buying (Groupon) to flash sales (Hautelook and Rue LA LA) online businesses are engaging the consumer in new and compelling ways.  In response to these and other trends, StrongMail has announced the acquisition of two New York-based interactive agencies, which we are combining with our existing strategic services arm to form a new email marketing and Social CRM agency called ThreadMarketing.   Why is this significant to our customers and the industry as a whole?  Here are a few key points:

It’s about conversations not messages. ..

Like it or not, the social web has changed the game.  There are now more ways for consumers to engage with a brand (and each other) than ever before.  While email sits at the center of the social web, it is not alone.  Consumers are using communities, social networks and micro blogs to start and carry on conversations with organizations, and brands need to be prepared to manage these conversations.  ThreadMarketing is not just an email agency, with deep expertise in email, social marketing, website development, community management, it will help break down silos between these channels and streamline the customer experience.

It’s about data, old and new…

StrongMail has a long history of integrating email marketing solutions with customer databases and systems.  The social web is making new data and customer insight available at a rapid pace and many of our customers have requested support in integrating this insight into the communication strategy and making it actionable.  ThreadMarketing will leverage StrongMail’s unique database integration capabilities and make social insights actionable, a key objective for interactive marketers today.

It’s about a broader communication framework…

While the traditional approach to email communication strategy has not changed, the opportunities to understand our subscribers and engage them have.  Today consumers have more than one “subscription” option.  Not only can they subscribe to email communications, but they can “Like” a brand, “Follow” a brand, “join” a community and so on and so on.  This means that a new framework is required to support relevant conversations with consumers.  ThreadMarketing has developed  such a framework: Listen, Learn, Engage and Influence.  This is not a social or email framework, it’s a framework required to drive meaningful conversations across channels.  While many companies “listen” and “learn” few leverage the data they capture to “engage” and “influence.”  ThreadMarketing will help bridge that gap.

Takeaway: Consumers are using communities, social networks and micro blogs to start and carry on conversations with organizations, and brands need to be prepared to manage these conversations.

Questions, feel free to post comments and we will respond as soon as possible.

About the Author:

Ryan Deutsch
Vice President of Emerging Media, ThreadMarketing, a StrongMail Company

An online marketing veteran and industry thought leader, Deutsch has more than 12 years of direct marketing experience across the catalog, retail and publishing industries. An addition to a bi-weekly MediaPost column, Deutsch is a regular contributor to multiple industry publications, including DM News, BtoB Magazine, and Chief Marketer.  Deutsch has been and remains a frequent speaker at industry events, including the DMA Annual, eTail, ad:tech and the MediaPost Email Insider Summit.

For a little more info on what StrongMail is all about, check out this video from Kristen Hersant, Director of Marketing for StrongMail.

Mark this in your calendar!
Tuesday August 10th @ 1 PM

Here @ The eMail Guide we are always looking for new ways to help marketers do marketing right! After a lot of thinking and planning we are now ready to launch our latest channel for The eMail Guide: eMail Radio!

What is eMail Radio?
eMail radio is about email marketing and where it intersects social, mobile, online and offline. It will cover all the mediums that touch us and we will always try to help you close the loop to build a stronger relationship with your subscribers.

Each week we’ll welcome one or more experts in email marketing to talk about the industry and take your questions live!

Email Radio debut
eMail Radio goes live on the air starting Tuesday August 10, 2010 @ 1 PM EST!
Then catch the live show every Tuesday @ 1 PM EST after that!

Each hour long show of eMail Radio features:
- Online marketing news & trends
- Online marketing expert guests
- Your calls live!

Call or Skype in with your questions and be a part of the show!
You can call in with your questions or comments and join in the conversation! We’ll have a toll free number for you to dial in on in North America and world wide access for callers via Skype for free!

Listen live or catch up with the show anytime!
The eMail Radio show archives will allow you to listen to shows at your convenience! Every live show will be available for download in the archive here @ The eMail Guide as an MP3!

More details coming!
Next week we’ll be announcing more details about the show!

Want to be on eMail Radio or have a suggestion for a topic? Leave a comment below!

*Originally posted: Jul 19, 2010 @ 14:03

I scream! You scream! We all scream for clarity!

One email, a blog post from HubSpot and hundreds and hundreds of tweets later and it seems few people bothered to actually ask Ben & Jerry’s what their actual plan regarding email marketing was…until now.

What an amazing concept, drop the PR people @ Ben & Jerry’s an email and ask them! Isn’t email just the most amazing information tool ever?

Here’s the reply from their PR Director, Sean Greenwood, which should clear up the massive confusion which has arisen since HubSpot first posted about this whole thing:

“In general, I think it’s a bit of a misunderstanding.  The announcement came from our UK team, who was basically sharing that they planned to reach out to their fans via social media moving forward.  I think they wanted to alleviate any fears from fans who previously received a newsletter style email to think that they had somehow fallen off the list.  I believe they’re still keeping email as a venue for special events/opportunities as they mentioned they might still reach out via email.

Again, this was a note from our UK team.  I believe the rest of the Ben & Jerry’s folks around the globe (including us here at the HQ in Vermont who support the U.S. and the globe) are planning to continue to use: email, social media, text messaging, augmented reality, snail mail, vanilla guerrilla marketing, grassroots Social Mission endeavors, sky writers, deep-sea divers and of course… scoop trucks on the road.”

- Sean Greenwood, Ben & Jerry’s

So, according to Sean, the email that so many people seized on as proof that Ben & Jerry’s was dropping email marketing was actually a proactive move on their U.K. group’s part to reassure their subscribers (who obviously want to communicate with Ben & Jerry’s) that they hadn’t been removed from their subscriber list!

Here’s the original Ben & Jerry’s U.K. email which started the whole thing! (Thanks to Laura Dinneen!)

The discussion this past week via email, blogs and Twitter has been more political than practical. Fueled almost entirely by at best wishful thinking and even, personal agendas. Keep this in mind the next time you see some tweet or blog post predicting the imminent death of something. That way we can all avoid brain freeze.

Oh and don’t forget to sign up for the Ben & Jerry’s email newsletter here!

Just to show their love for email, Ben & Jerry’s is giving us some free pint coupons to give away! Just leave a comment about what flavour you like best and why and we’ll pick some of the best and send the author a fee pint coupon!

Bonus points to those commenting who also tweet this story using the auto-tweetme link!

Now that’s cool!

Takeaway: Don’t believe everything you read with out doing some homework.

In the latest video from the recent CMA National Convention in Toronto, Andy Nulman of TXT-TV made his pitch about what the channel is and what marketers can do with it.

TXT-TV is an alpha-numeric cable channel where the programming centres on SMS comments/answers from viewers via their smart phones. An alpha-numeric channel simply means there is no actual motion video broadcast. Some animated images, but you won’t see much more than still images and scrolling text.

I’ve spent time watching TXT-TV and for a sometime professional lurker such as I, it was strangely hypnotic. I can see why this could be a tasty distraction and it might even keep the babysitter out of your fridge.

TXT-TV will live or die fundamentally on its ability to build a core community.  Most online communities have more lurkers than they do participants and that’s not really a problem if you still get the eyeballs on the sponsor messages. But you do need to have that core community actively participating in order to keep others lurking.

TXT-TV wants to accomplish this with a variety of shows where you can participate in a trivia game, choose the cutest pet between two uploaded photos, test your word power or even test the future of your relationship. All the while the SMS chatter continues in the background or perhaps it’s the foreground.

They also have tied the channel in with their website by smartly giving people the opportunity to create a persona via the site with unique user names and avatars.

TXT-TV broadcasts 15 minute segments – presumably to best cater to the short attention span of texters. The messaging is pretty typical stuff, much like one would expect to find in any online chat room. When I checked it out they also seemed to have full time moderators keeping an eye on things and acting as casual hosts.

Takeaway: I can see one problem with getting your 15 minutes of fame on TXT-TV, you might end up being “type cast”.

We lead the email marketing buzz today with a post from MarketingSherpa regarding the success of the “Old Spice Guy” viral campaign. One point I’d like to mention about this kind of campaign is that you don’t have to spend oodles of dough to have a successful viral video — of course, that depends on what you consider successful. We here @ The eMail Guide are very happy with the viral success we’ve had with our “EMAPP” video campaign to stop email list selling!

The “Every time you buy an email list a puppy dies” video post has not only become our most viewed posts ever, but has also started a movement to educate email marketers about why buying lists is a very bad idea. And this puppy still has legs! We keep getting retweets and we keep getting inquiries from bloggers and ESPs about how to join EMAPP.

For us and (I think) the email marketing community, the ROI on this simple video to push a simple message, has been substantial. The key to viral is to have some fun and don’t take yourself too seriously…we never do that here @ The eMail Guide…seriously, would I kid you?

Enjoy the buzz!

MarketingSherpa

Powerful viral video from Old Spice
What started as a funny Super Bowl Ad featuring a spokesman with an over-the-top ego and a penchant for manly nonsense turned into millions of views on YouTube this winter.

Takeaway: Imaginative viral campaigns can be very effective at bringing a brand to a new generation of potential customers.

Smart Insights

How to get your emails some inbox attention
Last month I gave four reasons why the status quo isn’t good enough for your email marketing. One reason was growing email competition, so it seems sensible to review some of the things you can do to ensure it’s your email that gets attention in the inbox.

Takeaway: From the from line to the preview pane…if you want some inbox lovin, you need something relevant in the oven.

Sign-up.to

How to use Facebook ads
In this blog I will guide you through how to use Facebook ads and how to create these yourself, from design and targeting, through to pricing and return on investment.

Social Email Marketing

Corporate social media: think outside your own discipline and integrate your tactics
Ambal Balakrishnan from ClickDocuments looks with Dave Fleet of Thornley Fallis Communications, at the fact that social media goes corporate and asked Dave to share some thoughts and tips.

Email Ethics

The true danger of social marketing
One of the reasons why I never trusted social marketing was that I’ve always had that feeling that whenever something was to go wrong, the back draft would be worse than on any other marketing channel.

Takeaway: Now, when it comes to social marketing, you message can be edited, changed, and can be forwarded or broadcasted by people or organizations that can really be at the far opposite of what you want to show to the world.

Catch more of the Daily Buzz here!

My experience has always been that a catchy headline/subject will boost response. The trick in email marketing is to be eye catching and yet be representive of the content — one quick way to end up in the spam folder is to disapoint your subscribers with subject lines they consider misleading (and it’s not CAN-SPAM complient either).

Aside from segmenting your list, how does one test such possible subject lines? Christopher Penn @ Blue Sky Factory thinks he has the answer: Social media.

Enjoy the buzz!

Blue Sky Factory

How to use social media to boost email marketing open rate
Here’s an idea to try with your social media following. Assuming you have an audience in social media that strongly resembles your subscriber base, test your subject lines with them.

Takeaway: Try pre-testing your next major campaign’s subject lines with your social media audience first to weed out underperforming subject lines. Your tests will be much more focused and successful!

Bronto Blog

Segmentation: What they tell you explicitly – Preferences 101
What is the ultimate goal of email marketing? To provide relevant, valuable content to those that have asked for it at the right time. Most marketers at this point are probably saying, “Okay, great, but how do I do that?” One of the many tools you have in your arsenal to accomplish this goal is segmentation.

ClickZ

The 2012 Inbox: Grow your list now with mobile and social
When we surveyed readers for this series of columns, the biggest challenge identified for 2010 was cultivating an active list with high quality subscribers (33.3 percent of those surveyed). Looking forward, readers felt that the proliferation of mobile devices (47.4 percent) and the abandonment of email in favor of social networks (25 percent) would have the biggest impact on email marketing in the future.

Bronto Blog

Email strategy roundtable: How often should you be sending?
How often to send is a basic email question almost all marketers either ask themselves or are asked at one point or another during their career. The answer, of course, will vary with every business and audience. Figuring out the right amount of customer touches is an art that, like many other email elements, requires patience and testing.

Takeaway: Knowing your audience is first and foremost in attaining an optimal sending cadence.

Scott Writes Everything

Email no-no: sending an opt-out confirmation email
The other day, I decided I’d had enough of a company’s email campaigns. So I did the right thing and unsubscribed. Within 2 minutes, I received an email from the company confirming that I had opted out. Does there seem to be something wrong with this picture? You’re sending me an email when I asked you not to send anymore. I want your thoughts on this, but here are my thoughts…

Takeaway: Again, let’s talk about intent. What intent are you showing if you send an email to me immediately after I ask not to receive them? I don’t care if it’s a confirmation. It’s all about perspective.

Get Elastic

5 reasons you should copy Amazon
Last post I outlined 10 reasons not to copy Amazon, with a promise to follow up with reasons why you SHOULD copy Amazon. While I could easily have compiled a list of 50-100 tactical items that could improve your conversion like unusual shaped cart buttons, delivery cut-off dates, customer reviews, mobile apps, triggered email or point-of-action assurances, I chose today to focus on 5 strategic things Amazon does really well, that could make you or save you millions of dollars.

Takeaway: Amazon continually tests its designs and features, and you should too. You’re never finished learning about what works and what doesn’t.

Catch more of the Daily Buzz here!

Max Valliquette is a social media expert who helps companies understand how to communicate via this new medium. Max spoke at the recent Canadian Marketing Association Next: 2010 National Convention in Toronto recently. You can watch more great videos from the CMA National Convention here.

According to Max, social media sites are no longer destinations, but channels of access. Social is a media we do not control even if we create them. Social media to the young is their language. It’s not news that kids learn computers and technology faster and easier than adults in general. It’s almost as if this is a native language they’ve been waiting for all their lives.

Social media is a conversation which never ends.

Social media has shattered the illusion of control for brands and marketers – we no longer have total control over a brand. Young people have always pushed against authority and boundaries and thinking we can maintain control in today’s world is a misconception and a dangerous one at that. Control has shifted from creators to consumers.

Kids grow up thinking that they own their brands and they can draw Mickey and Donald, put it on their fridge and do with it as they will. Now those same kids are making mashups of TV shows, sports and movies.

We don’t even control the channels where people discuss our brands. You can’t even really control what people find when they search for your brand.

You can’t simply transplant your old marketing plan onto the web. You have to involve young consumers in the marketing process and seek their feedback or you will alienate them and they’ll hijack your branding.

Takeaway: You can try and fight this. You can hire lawyers to send cease and desist letters every time you see something negative posted on the web about your brand, but your time would be better spent engaging young consumers and involving them.

A great call by the Mashable team, with their proclamation of  June 30th as “Social Media Day”! It’s time somebody picked one day to celebrate a media which has done so much to connect people. All over the globe people will be organizing meetups to celebrate Social Media Day. In fact, right now we are well over eleven thousand attendees at events from Toronto to Tbilisi with 555 meetups happening today in 93 countries.

Live Toronto Meetup Steam

Twitter Social Media Day hash tag: #smday

Mashable has left it up to the locals to decide how they want to celebrate Social Media Day — anything from a casual GT on the patio to informal conferences and panels. I’m just loving the fact that we have people coming together from all over to celebrate in this way and it’s all promoted via social, email and the web. How big will this be? It’s going to be another interesting example of social network power. At least here, it’s damn good timing with perfect patio weather and the chaos of the G20 subsiding.

Here’s the post from Mashable with event info

In Toronto the big even is @ Madison Avenue Pub & Restaurant, 14 Madison Ave. Toronto @ 8 PM. It should be a good one with Netfirms sponsoring the bash. The organizers do plan to have a couple of speakers, but my gut instinct is that this is going to turn in to one kick butt patio party…even if the place doesn’t have a patio. You can catch all the Toronto action via a live stream as well.

Get all the Toronto meetup details here!

The eMail Guide team plans to be there and we hope you’ll join us too! If you can’t join us here in TO, find the local meetup in your area and head on down! Head to a beach, have a Pina Colada @ Trader Vic’s — whatever makes you feel social.

Get all the Toronto meetup details here!

If you are heading down, drop a comment and let us know!

Having Howie Mandel speak at the CMA National Convention was a brilliant move on the part of the organizers. Not only did his frenetic personality totally light up the room, but his witty and insightful remarks on branding and marketing were pure gold. What Howie managed to do was take the subject matter and reduce it down into human everyday experiences that everyone in the audience could relate to. No pie charts, no Power Point slides, just great conversation and a lifetime of intuitive wisdom.

Howie Mandel speaking about your personal brand

From start to finish, Howie had the audience of marketing professionals in the palm of his hand. Oddly enough one got the impression that he wasn’t even trying. He was just being that same frantic funny man we’ve come to love. The real trait which shone through was his genuine sincerity and down to earth manor.

In the first of our videos from the Canadian Marketing Association Convention featuring Howie (there’s more to come from him), He speaks about his early career years and how throughout his life he’s tried to turn challenges into opportunities. He also talks about his natural ability to constantly rebrand himself and marketing his talents. This is a man who understands the most important brand is your own personal one.

Howie mentions how important it is to know what is going on around you and adjusting to that. According to him, people develop a system as they age which they follow all their lives — they lose their peripheral vision. On the other hand, if you continue to be aware of what’s going on around you and you go with that flow, your life will change. People should be open to new thinking and new ways of doing things.

Howie’s career is a great example of going with the flow and finding new opportunities. He’s changed his brand from carpet salesman to comedian to actor to game show host and producer.

Takeaway: Keep aware of what’s going on around you and be open to new possibilities which change presents.

A question that is asked on many surveys and during other contact moments between companies and (potential) clients. The organizations would like to know how you first got to know them, so they’re able to measure to some extent the quality and result (ROI) of their marketing channels. Some channels have better facilities in place to measure that result though: email marketing is quite measurable and so are some of the other online marketing channels.

However word of mouth is one that is hard to measure because so many factors are involved: who promoted the company, when did this happen, why, how does that person use the product or services of the company, and so on. However, word of mouth is one of a company’s most valuable types of promotion: all it needs to get going is a good quality of service you deliver and enthusiastic employees who are passionate about their job.

From xkcd:

The title tag (mouseover) of the image says: “There are a lot of books on marketing out there. I wonder if you’re safest just buying the most popular one”. It’s of course a jab at marketing itself: the one company which has the biggest and best configured marketing drum kit reaches the most potential and existing customers. When you actually deliver a great product or service  it does help for word of mouth: you’re on top of anyone’s mind who get asked for suggestions. Wouldn’t it be nice if your company and product is named? It takes some effort, but will pay out big.

Tips for promoting word of mouth can be found here on Hubpages: they include giving your customers something special that is worth talking about with others: be it a (special) gift, a certain service for free or something else that makes you stand out from the gray mass. A real life example of word of mouth is what Groupon does: they give you $10 for referring a friend: a direct, clear reward for word of mouth activity. Not all businesses can engage in such tactics, but rewarding or promoting word of mouth with your customers can make a huge difference with brand recognition and promotion.

Takeaway: Word of mouth is hard to measure as a lead source, but is very much worth the effort of delivering great service and telling your customers to spread the word about how great it actually is. Make sure there’s a process in place to actively promote word of mouth.

What are you doing with word of mouth? Leave us a comment!

About the Author
Remy Bergsma is a professionally trained multimedia producer turned email marketing specialist, having 4 years of experience in the Dutch email marketing business working at an ESP (Blinker). Areas of interest include email design, end user experience and campaign management. Very community and people minded. Personally sports, photography, music and movies keep me busy.

Website: http://www.blinker.nl
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/remybergsma
LinkedIn: http://nl.linkedin.com/in/remybergsma

Editor’s note: I’m very pleased to welcome Spencer Kollas of StrongMail as a guest poster with us here @ The eMail Guide!

Have you ever found yourself defending the use of social marketing to your friends? This past weekend I had a couple of friends over for dinner and after we were done we started talking about our jobs. As usual the conversation progressed in the same way it does every time I am with friends talking about work and having a few adult beverages. They ask me how my job is going; I tell them it is great. After that people usually fall into two different camps, the one camp that loves and understand digital marketing and the other that just doesn’t get it, or flat out doesn’t like it. Well this weekend I was sitting there with two friends from the latter group. Not only do they think of the word spam once you say email marketing, they don’t see any value in social marketing whatsoever. So after I tell them about some of the projects I have been working on they immediately start into a speech about how social media is just a craze and there is no real business value.

As they start their speech I can almost recite it word for word. I have never been on FaceBook or Twitter but I just don’t understand how it can be used for business. As far as they are concerned all social networking sites are for, is to let people know what you are doing at any point in time of your day. While there is some truth to that fact, there is so much more to be these sites that businesses can truly gain value from.

I thought it would be fun today to go through some of their arguments, as well as my rebuttals so that I could then get your opinions on who is right and who is wrong.

Argument #1: “I have never been on Twitter, someone in my company created an account for me when I was at a tradeshow but I have never logged on. That person tweeted for me 2 times over a year ago and now somehow I have over 500 followers.”

• Rebuttal #1: First and foremost, those numbers seem a bit inflated. (After checking the next day the real number was only 98 but he was also somehow following 91 people himself) Secondly, it doesn’t matter what marketing avenue you look at, there are going to be some people that are not the target you are trying to reach. When it comes to social media, these are usually the people that sign up to follow you on Twitter just to get your to sign up and follow them, then they un-follow you because they think it makes them look more important.

• Rebuttal #2: Maybe it is a situation where many of these people were doing a search for people like you, in your industry and they found you. Or maybe these people have met you previously and decided that you’re someone that has a lot of knowledge and they are interested in hearing your thoughts.

Argument #2: “I don’t have time for it—I have a day job you know.”

• Rebuttal: Trust me I was the first person that thought they didn’t have time for one more thing on my plate each day. The problem is that just because you don’t think you have time in your day doesn’t mean that is true. If you think about all the 5 minutes “time-wasters” you have in your day, you could be using that time to productively engage in social media in some form or fashion. A couple of months ago I wrote an article about how effectively using Social Media Marketing for just 10 minutes a day can pay off.

Argument #3: “People don’t care what I am doing every minute of the day—and I don’t care what everyone else is doing every minute of the day for that matter”

• Rebuttal: This is one that I always find interesting because it is the media and the high profile celebrities that give Twitter this reputation. I remember watching an episode of “The Big Bang Theory” and one of the characters Sheldon asked—“doesn’t he look at twitter—he should know that I am in the bathroom every morning at 8am”. This is exactly why people think that that is all people and businesses do on Twitter and FaceBook, simple streams of consciousness. However, this if far from the truth. As a professional tool, I have been able to gain a lot of knowledge through the use of these social media sites, be it from reading articles I would have never been exposed to in any other way, or getting questions answered by a range of people I might not have encountered before.

Argument #4: “Social Networks are for kids to play around on—I don’t see any value in them for my professional life”

• Rebuttal #1: The first thing I ask whenever someone gives me this response is—“Are you on LinkedIn?” Almost always they say yes. So, I then ask them if they think that is a social network, this is usually where the backpedalling and stuttering begins.

• Rebuttal #2: Industry and trade organizations have been around as long as most of us can remember. Many times these same folks are members of these organizations—but aren’t most people members of these organizations to network with others in the same industry and understand the latest trends, a lot of the same things you can get through social networking sites.

After a number of back and forth’s with my friends this past weekend I finally was able to help them understand that there is a lot of value in social media, the problem is that you can’t just go into it without a plan. Too often people try to go after the latest thing with no plan and they start to spin in circles because they aren’t able to get anything truly valuable accomplished but, if they would be willing to sit back and do some planning on the front end, they would see a lot of value on the back end.

Takeaway: Understanding the value of social marketing is important! Don’t  judge Social media until you try it!

About the Author:
Spencer Kollas is the director of Delivery Services for StrongMail Systems. In this role, Spencer is responsible for defining and implementing cutting-edge service programs to help StrongMail’s customers continue to maximize their email deliverability rates. Spencer actively works with clients directly to optimize their marketing programs. Prior to StrongMail Spencer was the Director of Deliverability at Premiere Global Services, where he had the opportunity to work with Fortune 500 and Fortune 1000 organizations structuring a variety of custom email education programs, conceptualizing and implementing new and innovative email programs, optimizing contact strategies, and effectively increasing his clients delivery rates and overall ROI. Spencer is an active member in several industry organizations, including the Email Sender & Provider Coalition (ESPC), Messaging Anti-Abuse Work Group (MAAWG), Email Experience Council (EEC) and the Anti-Phishing Work Group (APWG).

Rahaf Harfoush is an expert on technology’s impact on business, education, and government. In 2008, she was a part of the Obama campaign’s social media team. Recently, Harfoush is the Associate Director of the Global Cooperation Initiative at the World Economic Forum.

Rahaf is a new media specialist and has worked with numerous corporations and projects. She worked on the booked Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything and authored her own book about working on the Obama campaign titled, Yes We Did: An Inside Look at How Social Media Built the Obama Brand.

Rahaf’s presentation at the recent CMA National Convention, focused on how the Obama campaign leveraged social and email marketing to gain support for their candidate. Specifically, she speaks about the importance of spurring real world action/activity via the virtual world. As she points out, making the connection with people online is great but, that connection still has to translate into action (conversion) to be effective. Getting people together online supporting Obama is great but, getting them out to the polls is the important goal.

Ms. Harfoush relates how personalized email signed off by Obama really made an impression on people, some even perceiving them as coming directly from the candidate and replying to thank him for taking time from a busy schedule to update them. It was an effective way to build relationships with voters.

She also speaks about what the campaign email team called “hyper-segmentation”. The Obama campaign sent out 1 billion emails over the course of the campaign but, they were tightly targeted depending on the person’s location and the issues they had indicated were important to them.  People were much more likely to become involved offline if they were being motivated by issues they felt strongly about. They also segmented based on donation history to ensure that people who had donated one day would not get a solicitation for funds the next.

Takeaway: Hyper-segmenting based on location and interests can convert online support into real world actions.

Social media and social marketing are the first topics in our videos from the recent Canadian Marketing Association National Convention, featuring social media author, Tara Hunt. We’ll be posting more videos from the CMA 2010: Next daily! We’ve got a lot to share from this great convention!

Tara Hunt is well known in the social media and social marketing circles. She’s the author of:  The Power of Social Networking (formerly titled: The Wuffie Factor) and a sought after speaker on social media and social marketing. At the recent Canadian Marketing Association Next: 2010 national convention, she spoke passionately about how many companies seem to perceive social media and social marketing as some kind of band aid solution to be used as a short term fix for other customer service shortcomings.

It’s a good point. I would imagine there’s more than a few VPs out there who think that social media tools such as twitter give them a perfect way to treat the symptoms of a problem (with the high visibility of social media and social marketing), rather than having to actually improve their service.

See someone say something negative about you on Twitter or other social media? Have a staffer using social media monitoring tools reply quickly to the person offering help. Yep, that’s going to play well to some but, it doesn’t really fix the problem that caused the negative tweet in the first place does it?

Tara tells a story of how she got a call from a Rogers Communications phone bot telling her she should call a specific number regarding an important matter (if it’s important shouldn’t  Rogers have a live person call?) so, Tara called the number and got, yes you guessed it, another bot! This bot told her the number had changed and gave her a new number to call which led Tara to yet another phone bot! It gets better kids! This time the bot asked her to press 8 for English and after she did so, proceeded with instructions in French – you just can’t make up this kind of stuff.

Watch the video and you’ll see how Tara reacted, how Rogers attempted to react via social media and how that attempt failed.

Takeaway: Social media is not a band aid solution for other customer service shortcomings.

Last week we attended the MarketingExperiment’s Online ROI Tour when it passed through Toronto.  We came away with a lot of  online marketing wisdom, especially where landing page optimization is concerned. The takeaways below should help you dramatically improve your conversion rates on your landing pages and your online marketing efforts in general. As well, the social media takeaways will help you stay on track and avoid doing social just because everyone else is.

Now, on with the tips from the Online Marketing ROI Tour 2010!

Landing Pages

• Offer multiple options on a landing page but, only one call to action – use radio buttons for this.
• Sales anxiety can be lethal to the conversion process. You can mitigate this anxiety by revising words such as “free” to “risk free”.
• Testing is not an event. It’s a culture and a process.
• Best practices are a guide and cannot substitute for actual testing.
• Understand how people think and what they want when they come to your site.
• Good marketing is much like dating. First you introduce yourself, offer a compliment perhaps and then initiate a conversation.
• To guide someone to a destination, first meet them where they are and lead them via conversation.
• On your landing page, answer these three questions in 5 seconds or less:

Where am I?
What can I do here?
Why should I do it?

• Keep your landing page simple and avoid conflicting calls to action and too many steps. People think sequentially.
• Don’t use questions such as: “Why buy from us?” – They are already asking this question. Tell them why they should buy.
• Use less chunks of text and more bullet form.
• Stay away from broad or vague terminology. Use specific numbers/terms and stats if you have them.
• Try changing actions calls such as “subscribe now” to “activate subscription”. Button text and action calls should emphasize receiving and not taking.
• Is your value proposition good? Do you believe it? If so, low conversions on your landing page may simply be a result of how you are presenting it.
• Don’t try to survive on an adequate value proposition. Yours has to be the best. If you aren’t the best, you don’t deserve to win.
• Before you spend money on paid search make sure you have a great value proposition and a great landing page.
• A value proposition is discovered – it grows out of need.
• If  you are not the best choice in the digital world, you are surviving on pockets of ignorance.
• Ask for credit card info to activate a free trial right on the landing page signup but, be sure you tell them it’s RISK FREE (no charges will be made during trial). Don’t bother asking for address and other info just to activate the trial, you can get that later in the process.
• Don’t interrupt the visitor’s thought flow with multiple invitations to convert via such things as carrousels and flash slides.
• Try using a top (1o or 5 etc) list of reasons to convert.
• It should take 3 clicks or less for someone to do what you want them to do.
• Your landing page should NOT resemble a direct mail piece.
• Ask yourself: if you could ask your visitor to do only one thing, what would that be?
• Your homepage can be up to 80% of your SEO power. Make sure you have keyword rich text on that home page which expresses your value proposition.
• Bulleted text or decision matrixes make it easier for people to scan and decide.
• Be specific with your action calls. “Download our free whitepaper” is too vague.
• Client testimonials are powerful on a landing page.
• Any statements of claim should be verifiable. Don’t claim it if you can’t prove it because people will check — always good to state sources for claims.
• Keep your facts qualitive and not quantitive and keep the language conversational and common.
• The framework for testing is having a repeatable process roadmap.

Bonus time! Here’s some tips we came away with regarding social media from the event:

Social Media

• Social media is NOT cheap. It requires a great deal of human resources.
• Have a goal and a plan to get there.
• Think strategically and don’t get bogged down in the tactical.
• Don’t get so lost in exploring social media that you forget to have a compass with you and be aware that if you do get lost, there are emerging methodologies and technology which can help.
• Use social media monitoring tools such as Socialmention to know who’s tweeting about you and how they feel about your brand.

Online Marketing ROI Tour

MarketingSherpa, MarktingExperiments and intouch are bringing the Online Marketing ROI Tour 2010 to Toronto on June 10th!

The eMail Guide is giving you the chance to be there FREE! Just leave a comment below and tell us why you should win your way in!

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