Are you a Creator, Critic, Collector, Joiner or Spectator?
If you've not seen Forrester Technographics tool before you are missing a treat. Showcased in the book Groundswell, Technographics is Forrester Research's methodology for surveying customers. Its similar to segmenting by demographics or psychographics but segments based on degree of engagement with social media - so it's a behavioural segmentation for social media and related technology.
Many reading will know this, but I thought it was worth flagging-up for those who don't, it's new to many in my classes. The tool can be really useful for setting realistic expectations of what social media can deliver amongst your non-marketing colleagues also since it shows how degree of engagement with social media and blogs varies.
Forrester divide people's online behaviour into six categories. You can see these below.
Its important for organisations to know…
Design and campaign ideas for the holiday season
Any self-respecting article on holiday email marketing needs an obligatory comment about the number of shopping days left. Or some reference to sleighs and deliverability.
Done.
It's tough thinking of new things to say about Christmas email campaigns.
It's also tough coming up with ideas to help your Christmas emails stand out from everyone else's. Sprinkling a few stars and stockings around your weekly promotion may not be enough.
Fortunately, help is at hand...here, for example, are six sets of sources to provide design and campaign inspiration for the coming weeks.
Christmas email design galleries, subject line help, campaign inspiration
1. CampaignMonitor runs an annual Christmas email design competition. See the winning designs for 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006 and 2005.
2. Beautiful Email Newsletters feature ten Christmas campaign designs, while the Email Institute's Email Gallery has another 26. Also check the…
Will the W3C browser proposals help EU businesses implement the new Privacy Directive?
Value/Importance: [rating=5]
Recommended link: W3C announcement and BBC Summary
On Smart Insights, we’ve discussed the challenge for marketers of the new laws requiring disclosure on how cookies affect privacy which come into full force in May 2012. Many marketers and site owners have hoped that a browser-based solution would stop the need for expensive and disruptive system updates to their sites. Well, if you’re in that category, this looks like good news. The World Wide Web consortium (W3C) which sets many online standards has worked together with many well known online companies to help define a solution. These include Adobe Systems; Apple Inc; Center for Democracy and Technology; Deutsche Telekom AG; Facebook; Google Inc.; IBM; Mozilla Foundation; Microsoft; Opera Software; Stanford University; The Nielsen Company; TRUSTe; and Yahoo! Inc.
The new approach released on the 14th…
A case study showing how the power of digital media can help small charities engage a passionate following
Many not-for-profit organisations have developed a compelling, inspirational web presence for their cause that has helped create a passionate social media-led community and strong interaction. When discussing good practice in digital marketing for charities, Amnesty, Cancer Research, NSPCC, Oxfam and PDSA are the usual suspects. My case study looks at how a campaigning site against Knife Crime was created from a standing start with minimal budget, but created fantastic engagement. In my post, I'll say a little about the background to the site and how it's doing and then look at how we used blogging, SEO and social media to gain awareness and engagement. I hope you find it inspiring.
The site was started after I was in a McDonalds fast food restaurant with my family one Saturday lunch time when a former…
It's not simply a case of black hat or white hat
Ethics in SEO is, as in other cases, divided into two categories: the right way and the wrong way to do things. In SEO this shades from good (White Hat) to evil (Black hat) as explained in this classic article on Shades of SEO:
In SEO, the right way means following the guidelines set down as the “bible” of the Industry, the Google Webmaster Quality Guidelines. Although all full time SEOs will know these and often discuss ethics, I’m summarising these since not all marketers are aware of them and it’s useful to know about them when discussing what is ethical and what isn’t with agencies - it’s a discussion all clients should have with their agencies, particularly when selecting them.
The Google Quality guidelines are designed to maximise the…
My tips from practical experience
What is marketing automation (originally called email marketing automation)?
It's software platforms essentially, they enable marketing (and sales) departments to increase lead conversion by letting marketing teams leverage captured data to automate the execution of advanced segmentation and communication sequences. You've probably heard of many of the main marketing automation suppliers. Or more simply put, you can do more targeted lead based marketing for a lot less effort. You get to avoid the batch-and-blast approach to email marketing. Two forms of behavioural data are typically used to score and segment leads:
Implied - consumer site behaviour, i.e frequency of visit, looking at key pages, time on site, viewing product pages
Explicit - filling in forms, requesting information, online purchase, attempting online purchase
This data is used to then score (based on propensity to purchase - how "hot" a lead it) and segment (you segment on what you think). The…
Shocking! New report shows surprisingly few companies using CRO techniques
Increasing conversion rate is a common goal for all site owners whether they’re running transactional sites or not. That’s why we review the tools available for CRO and have regular posts on techniques to improve conversion from Paul Rouke and others.
You would think that working to increase conversion is obvious; everyone would be working on it in the same way they will work on search, email or social media marketing. It seems this isn’t the case according to a new Econsultancy-Redeye Conversion Optimization report that shows where the smartest marketers are investing. There’s also a companion report from Redeye on developing a structured approach to CRO which I recommend if you’re working on boosting conversion.
In this post I’ll summarise the main implications as I see them - thanks to Redeye and Econsultancy for sharing this part of their…
How BBC Worldwide grew traffic to the Good Food website 60% + in 12 months
I recently caught up with BBC Worldwide Digital Marketing Manager, Selina Holliday, to talk through what's involved with managing a popular online publication. I’d heard about their success across multiple BBC web properties including the Good Food website, so I wanted to quiz Selina to learn how she and the wider BBC Worldwide team managed to grow one of the sites in their portfolio as much as they did (BBC Good Food). Let’s recognise that this growth is quite an achievement for a website that already receives high volumes of traffic.
So what's the secret? My takeaway was "Keep it simple and focus limited resources on getting the basics right".…
The key issues to consider when you switch email service provider
Email marketing is at the core of many transactional businesses and drives substantial amounts of revenue. The email marketing solution is quite simply a mission critical system and a break in operation can’t be afforded. Yet it's fairly common to move between Email service providers (ESPs) to gain a better deal, features or service. If you do this, there are a lot of potential issues to consider, so Dave Chaffey and I thought it would be helpful to cover these in case you're considering a change. We've called them headaches, since they may well be, particularly if they aren't considered.
Any contemplated move to a new ESP needs to be planned and executed with the mission critical nature of the system taken into account, as any false moves will directly impact revenue.
When moving to a new ESP there are many moving…
Google Launches Google+ Pages - what's your reaction?
Value/Importance: [rating=4]
Recommended link: Official Google Blog
Our commentary
In a move that will not surprise most, Google has officially launched "Google+ Pages", allowing businesses to create a presence within the new social platform. We knew that Google was doing trials with the likes of Ford and Coca Cola so it's no surprise. What is a surprise, if you haven't seen these trials, is how poor in functionality these pages are compared to Facebook where applications can be built into the page. There's really little a brand can do to engage it's audience other than the wall posts, About page and video. That said, the wall posts do work to engage Facebook users and the early example walls are engaging.
Google+ is a constantly evolving platform and is clearly high on…
