Research on charity adoption of digital marketing to support fundraising and campaigning

We've just been alerted to this research on the Use of Digital Marketing by Charities. We thought we would share it since although not brand new we have many members who are not-for-profit organisations in the UK and worldwide who may not have seen it and can benchmark their approaches and challenges. Lasa researched over 300 charities across the UK were surveyed to find out how advanced they are with digital marketing and it's use to support fundraising and income generation, including the impact on the sector by not adopting digital channels. 55% felt digital has to be a 'core competency' for all staff but over half needed training to fully embrace it's full potential

These were two of the key findings - first, the majority see big potential improvements are possible.

   

What’s New in Marketing? June 2013

Did you see the new Digital Marketing Map produced by analyst Gartner? It summarises the range of digital marketing channels and tools available to reach and interact with our audiences online. It’s an impressive visual and it’s useful for a top-level gap analysis of range of digital tools available against those we do and should use, but we wonder whether our interest in tools can distract from getting the marketing fundamentals which we feature in our Strategy and Planning section.

Strategy and planning

Customer segmentation strategy - we asked Jo Taylor to outline 10 tests that your customer segmentation strategy is effective. The Future of Brand Marketing - Dan Bosomworth summarised major changes in the way we should plan brand marketing prompted by Paul Adams, author of Grouped. He continues this brand strategy theme asking what we can learn from…

An example of using of A/B Testing

Examples of A/B testing often cover landing page conversion, but a common problem, not covered so often, is how to get visitors to engage more with a key page such as a home page, product category page or resources page. In this post I will give an example of how we used A/B testing to increase engagement for a home page.

Engagement can mean different things for different sites. For some it is the pages per visit; for others it can be social shares, number of comments, or any other page activity.

For our customer, Inside Buzz, engagement meant visitors exploring the site further, beyond their homepage. It was probably this need to have active engagement that their previous homepage design provided so many options for visitors to click whichever option they are interested in.

The Top Movers report helps review how Ad ROI changes

Value/Importance: [rating=3] Recommended link: Adwords New Top Movers report Whether you manage AdWords Hands-on, or manage others internally or at an agency,  we thought this was a useful addition to AdWords. The new Top Movers Report will help you compare Volume and Cost changes for each campaign quickly. You can compare periods of 7, 14, or 28 days, so it's ideal for weekly or monthly reviews although click quality and value measures need to be accessed from elsewhere.

How to access the new Top Mover Adword report?

Select the 'Dimensions Tab' to view this report.

In brief, it provides a comparison of two consecutive periods, and shows the campaigns and ad groups with the greatest changes in that period and potential…

Learning the commercial case for creative marketing

I'm a fan of marketing that thinks, before it does. And, if I am honest, tired of "digital" marketing that focuses on channels and moving media spend without addressing the real strategic challenges, without putting the customer, and so integrated marketing, first. It's why I posted recently about meaningful marketing and brands such as Dove, I think wherever brands are seeking to genuinely connect with the consumer, commercial success will follow. If brands act in a commoditised way, expect commoditised results. Just a few weeks ago the Coca-Cola Company won 20 awards at the 2013 Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, presented with the 2013 Creative Marketer of the Year Award at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, widely considered the world’s most important award for creative excellence in brand communications. So what can other…

Facebook launches new 15 second video service on Instagram

Value/Importance: [rating=3] Recommended link: Instagram's Getting started on Video Help pages We recently showed how Instagram can be an effective marketing tool for small businesses. So the recent announcement by Mark Zuckerberg has been followed with great interest by small business marketers in particular. Increasingly free, bite-sized video is being used to support engagement through social media, whether it's through Vine,  the short 6 second looping video on Twitter, Google+ Hangouts or Youtube video being integrated across multiple channels.  Social media users are loving visual content sharing, shown by the use of vine already used by 13m iOS users by June when it was first released on Android. Now Facebook has responded by offering a video option to its  130m Instagram users.

What is…

In order to run a successful social media campaign, your offline activity matters as much as your online activity.

Whilst businesses find it relatively easy to set up social media channels, they struggle with the next step, attracting followers. And it’s not just small businesses that find it a challenge. Even major brand names have Facebook and Twitter pages that struggle to get their fan numbers beyond double figures! In this, the first in a series of posts, I'll explain some practical approaches to gain more interaction on you social channels. If you want to understand the difference between those who attract fans and those who don’t, take a quick look around you next time you travel to the shops. Look at the number of advertising billboards that include social media references. Then look at the packaging of some of the products you buy and there’s your answer. Many businesses forget to…

When to use specific subject lines (and when not)

The more people open your email, the better. So your subject line should go for maximum opens, right? Probably not, actually. Here's why...

First, take a look at your email list. Don't they look happy?

You're going to send out a standalone promotion for Widgets. The red people may want to buy one. The blue ones have no interest.

(The orange one is a competitor monitoring your emails. And the green one is an email marketer collecting creative for her swipe file.)

Should you use a specific or more general, inclusive subject line? Here's what others say:

Claude C. Hopkins wrote in Scientific Advertising in 1923 (yes, 1923!):

"Address the people you seek, and them only"

In their seminal 2008 study of subject line length Alchemy Worx concluded (my emphasis):

"Getting more people for whom the message is relevant to open the email requires a subject…

Chris Goward on building in testing to any type of business

It's simple, if you're not testing to improve results from your site, the leading companies in your sector likely are, which means you're likely to be falling behind. But how do you approach testing in a structured way? Earlier this year, I read Chris Goward's new book You Should Test That and was impressed by the way it blends advice on structured testing techniques with recommendations on how to better communicate the benefits of your products and services. So acting on requests from Smart Insights members to review and feature the latest thinking in book reviews and webcasts from invited experts, we have asked Chris to deliver a webcast on this topic. We hope you can join us this Friday! …

Get to grips with a little used but highly effective ad type

Sponsored Stories have been one of the most consistently effective ad types I use to get people to click to my Facebook Page. The reason these work so well is that they point users towards a Page or piece of content that their friends are engaging with. When someone interacts with your Page, app, or event it creates a story that their friends may see in News Feed but it's also quite easy to miss. Brands can of course pay to sponsor these stories so more people will see it when their friends have engaged with you on Facebook. Of course this brings a level of social proof or tacit recommendation which is one of the reasons Sponsored Stories are so effective. Here's a typical right hand ad created by a conventional Sponsored Story: …