Trigger emails are great, but they have their issues

My sister calls me Eeyore, as I'm ever-ready to puncture her bubbly balloon of optimism with a pithy "I lost my tail". One of email marketing's brightest balloons is the trigger email. We can describe trigger emails as the emails you send out in response to a customer action (e.g. an order confirmation mail) or a specific piece of event-related customer data (e.g. a birthday email with a coupon inside). They've lovely beasts. Because they're customised to a tightly-defined action or piece of data, trigger emails tend to be more timely, relevant and valuable than your traditional promotional email. The results speak for themselves. For example, for every £1 VIE at home spends on refill reminder emails, it gets £190 back in sales (£243 for cart abandonment emails). So trigger emails, which vary from the lowly welcome series to emails activated by very specific website browsing behaviours, are a…

A 5 step process for creating or refreshing a business blog

Whether launching a new WordPress blog or, as in my case, relaunching an existing blog, there are many issues to consider and a number of ways to approach the project. Having recently redeveloped and redesigned a WordPress blog, to help other marketers, I thought I would share some of the considerations that we took into account. I've split the project up into two parts; this first post focuses on the objectives, planning and resource considerations. The more "hands-on" functionality and implementation considerations will follow in Part 2. To add a bit of context, 3 years ago, a brand I now work on, set up a skiing blog called Ski-buzz, run on WordPress. Set up on a free theme and with minimal amounts of additional resource or budget it started life quite slowly. Unbranded, sitting on its own (totally separate domain) and growing slowly…

A more effective way to utilise online paid media spend?

Since we're still firmly in the midst of a recession, it is still the challenge for businesses to grow and invest wisely. Hopefully this doesn't mean you have stopped testing new ideas / channels. While this post isn't covering anything amazingly new, I hope it will inspire you to consider a different way of utilising your online paid media budget. Think differently! Compared to traditional PPC and Display advertising, the targeting and ideas below can potentially generate you a better ROI.

What is Remarketing?

Remarketing is a term now associated with online display advertising since Google adopted this name when it started offering AdWords remarketing in 2011. It refers to where adverts are specifically targeted at people who have visited your website before and are tracked by an adserving service like AdWords. As a concept, remarketing can cover both prospects and customers alike, the…

Part 3 of "Life's a Pitch"

In previous posts in this series I wrote about my experiences of managing the agency to client pitch process and writing a creative brief. In the final part of the series I look at issues to consider when selecting the preferred agency. It is not uncommon for clients to go about the pitch process in a less than ideal way, with problematic outcomes including having to ask agencies to re-pitch, or even not choosing any agencies. Like many, I have experienced such issues on a number of occasions.  A recent example of this would be with a cosmetic surgery brand, who invited us to a 3-way pitch, for their new hair transplant business. We thought we'd done a good job; were told it was “the best agency pitch I’ve seen in 30 years” etc and then we waited…  And we waited…  And we waited… After 2 weeks…

Layout update offers new header image

Importance: [rating=3] Recommended link: Twitter blog announcement

Marketing implications of Twitter change

From September 18th Twitter updated their profile page layout. The most significant change relevant to marketers is that a profile image can be uploaded. Recent images uploaded have also been given more prominence. It’s a move which mirrors a similar feature on company pages for Facebook and in Google+. The layout change also appears to give more scope for updating the background image to give more information about a company. Increased horizontal space now seems to be available for this than has been possible in the last couple of years. The examples that Twitter gives of using the new header option aren’t too inspiring. Twitter’s own new profile page is limited. You can see from this example that the layout change does give more emphasis to your URL and the value proposition, you offer followers through Twitter, now placing…

A tutorial to check your LinkedIn Company Page works well with the latest LinkedIn updates

LinkedIn started in 2002 as a personal profile space where professionals could share their expertise, experience and connections. Some people naturally wanted to showcase their business and wrongly used the personal profile as a business profile. To address this need, LinkedIn created Company pages and September 2012 has seen an update in the look of company pages which more closely mirrors the Facebook company page, with a cover image at the top of the page, logo and company name above this (rather than below as on Facebook), followed by the latest news feed. Remember that the Company Activity status updates were introduced in October 2011 - are you using them yet if you're in B2B. Here’s an example of the Dell company page with…

8 reasons to invest in mobile marketing

Mobile marketing is fast becoming a mainstream activity for those companies that get it. But for every company that does, there are many more that still don’t. Whether it’s because they think it’s a passing fad, or because they don’t quite know where to start, these companies are missing out on a commercial revolution. Here then, are eight reasons why you can’t afford to ignore mobile marketing…learn more from companies already reaping the benefits of mobile presented at the upcoming Mobile marketing Live on the 1st and 2nd October at London.

Reason 1: Consumers are already there

[caption id="attachment_17212" align="alignleft" width="158" caption="Marks & Spencer mobile site"][/caption] When Marks & Spencer became the first UK retailer to launch a mobile-optimised, transactional website on 12 May 2010, its rationale came from an analysis of traffic to its website. Five per…

Using the LinkedIn Skills feature for career development or identifying influencers

Update: September 2012. LinkedIn now has 10 million users in the UK, impressive for a country with a population just shy of 60 million. LinkedIn say that's four out of 5 professionals. To celebrate, LinkedIn have produced this nice infographic we thought we'd share with a reminder to check our tutorial below for how many are in each specific business category. LinkedIn Skills will show you how many professionals share your skills and who are the major influencers in your sector. This is a relatively new feature in LinkedIn that pulls data from its now enormous user-base to create both an interesting and useful tool. In this post, I'll first take a look at how the size and growth of…

New research and examples show how the latest QR code approaches integrate with video and Ecommerce

I’ve been taking a look at some of the latest examples of integrating print with digital through ads and statistics of action code usage in the US.  You may know action codes as QR codes, but we're increasingly seeing Action codes used as a generic term for this direct response technique, since QR codes, although the dominant form of action code are technology specific and there other options such as Blippar and Microsoft Tag.

Statistics on action code usage

Nellymoser, Inc., a mobile marketing and technology services company, has some interesting insight on the use of action codes in magazine advertising. To understand how these mobile action codes are being used in magazines, Nellymoser surveyed every issue of the top 100 U.S. magazines by circulation in 2011 and the first six months of 2012. I use the term…

A small business campaign example shows which calls-to-action work best

Giulia’s family runs the popular Italian restaurant ‘Al Gatto Nero’, in Poole in the UK, and they get customer interactions with QR Codes every day.

Giulia’s goal is to spread the word about their delicious stone-baked pizzas. She decides to use QR codes to get more Facebook likes and more enewsletter sign ups. Good move! As there are several places she wants to use QR codes, Giulia decides to use the Campaigns and Sources to track which places give her the best results. She has already registered for a free account at www.freeqrcodetracker.com, so she logs in and starts by creating 2 campaigns: Campaign #1: “Facebook – get more likes” Campaign #2: “enewsletter – get more sign-ups“ Giulia now creates…