Pinterest to soon become the fourth largest referrer of traffic?
In February 2012 I shared data suggesting the potential of marketing using Pinterest to increase awareness and sales for companies. Shareaholic have now updated their referral report and this coincides with some interesting developments in Pinterest and our new Smarter Guide to Pinterest Marketing.
New Pinterest developments
These are the recent changes to the Pinterest platform to be aware of which are aimed at encouraging further adoption of Pinterest.
August 8th 2012: Pinterest opened registration for all; it was previously by invite only.
August 14th 2012: Pinterest introduced new apps for Android, iPhone and iPad.
June 2012 referral report
The latest data from Shareaholic shows that Pinterest referral traffic will soon overtake Yahoo! organic traffic and Pinterest will become the fourth largest traffic source in the world after Google, Direct traffic and Facebook, although significantly lower than these.
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A platform for true relationship building?
I wrote recently about what I had learned about Google+ for content marketing; Google+ remains a channel that's largely new to me, and as I delve deeper into planning my own personal (and +Smart Insights) foray into Google+ there are some very specific themes that are emerging and worth mentioning.
Google+ wins on user sentiment
First, the wider, changing picture of user satisfaction with social networks. Google+ has just entered into the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ASCI) on 78 out of a 0-100 scale, just as Facebook's score falls from 8 points to 61. It rates higher than LinkedIn or Twitter too. Not a big deal or in any sense the start of the end for Facebook with its 800 million user base, yet certainly a flavour of the ever-changing social environment and suggests that Google is getting the experience right. You can only imagine it's…
4 methods plus examples of integrating email and social media marketing
Integrating your email and social media initiatives can boost email revenue by as much as 400 percent according to industry studies, and the latest research continues to show that email and social can work together for the benefit of both. So how do you effectively link email and social together?
Here are a few statistics that show the benefits from integrating email and social media marketing.
Evangelists spend 13% more than the average customer and refer business equal to 45% of the money they spend
On average a Facebook fan spends $71.84 more than a non-fan
Of Facebook users who “like” at least one brand, 17% say they are more likely to buy after “liking.”
The percentage of active social media users across ALL age groups is growing year on year
So if social evangelists spend more than your average customer and then help refer business…
5 marketing tips from a Premiership footballer
After a prolific rise to almost 1.7m Twitter followers in about 10 months, it appears that Joey Barton knows a thing or two about social media, or at least he has a natural handle on it.
At First 10, we've been working with Joey for about 12 months and it's remarkable how quickly he's understood and adapted to the social media landscape. From helping raise the profile of the Hillsbrough campaign to the rib-poking of Piers Morgan and commentary across sport, politics and culture, he's become somewhat of a Twitter enigma.
Having just designed and built Joey's new website - www.joeybarton.com - we can reveal that it has received some pretty serious attention with 135,000 unique visitors in the first 24 hours of go-live,…
Implement a CRM system and your prayers will be answered? Greater efficiency, improved customer service and conversion rates …..
The arguments for implementing a CRM system are well known: improve the number and quality of leads; improve quality of service and increase customer retention. But that’s the theory of course...
A system is only as good as the people who own and support it; or it can lead to poor quality leads, unsatisfactory customer experience, damaged reputation to the company, inconsistent processes and a lack of a shared working strategy to deliver the business case.
In this post I’ll share my experience in selecting and managing a CRM system for a public sector organisation to show some of the problems that can develop and what to watch out for.
Here are my tips learnt in the first year of implementing a system within a…
10 mistakes to prevent using an Email pre-flight checklist
In my 10 years plus in email marketing I have been involved in sending hundreds of e-mailings and reviewing just as many in my consulting and training courses. Does everybody make mistakes? Yes. Can you make less if you check and double check? Yes.
It is good practice to always have a checklist "to hand" when sending an email campaign. I'm guessing you have one, at least an informal one? If you don't have one or want to see how complete your checklist is, try my helpful PDF with a 51 point email marketing checklist.
To give you a flavour, let me give you some real life examples of impactful email marketing mistakes we avoided because we did a last minute check. Here are 10 of most worst email marketing mistakes we prevented just at the last moment...
Very embarrassing spelling errors (don’t ask).
Picture of…
5 practical actions and an example you can follow
Google+ is continuing to gather momentum, with more than 170 million users or more depending on who you listen to. At the same time though, there's a lot of discussion around the number of active users and unconfirmed data that user engagement is weak. There's no question that Google+ hasn't arrived 'main-stream' yet, but we think the growth of it now warrants some attention when planning your content marketing, even if you keep the investment modest.
What's so special about Google+?
Guy Kawasaki said that Google+ is for "passions," that's what differentiates it, and though that's maybe a little vague and consumer orientated, the notion of it makes good sense.
"Businesses should jump on Google+ because it’s the Wild West, so you can stake your claim, as opposed to breaking through the noise on Twitter and Facebook." Guy Kawasaki
Google+ is very different to Twitter…
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31 Jul 2012
The makings of the ideal Community Manager
In a recent post on Smart Insights, Steve Kitt laid out some solid reasons why companies should consider having their own online community. Steve makes a good argument, but even if you have your own community and manager, your brand will be fodder for discussion on other communities you have no control over and that’s why having a community manager (CM) is important for every company.
The reason you need a community manager is not only because you need someone to build or manage your own “walled” community, but because you need someone to represent you in all communities across multiple channels where people are talking about your brand. A company does not have to have its own online forum to have a community manager. A brand’s community stretches across a multitude of channels.
A virtual diplomat
A community…
London 2012 template shows Enewsletters don't have to be boring
While this email template didn't entertain me as much as Danny Boyle's opening ceremony I thought I'd share it as an example of "state-of-the-art" email marketing.
It shows all these features well:
Dynamic content insertion for relevant events/images for days based on location
Multi-column design style
Accessibility and mobile support through text version
Simple social media integration
It also ticks many of the boxes in a previous post giving other Enewsletter examples and a 24 point creative checklist.
Maybe something to show your agency when you're next briefing them - it shows a style that could work for both B2C and B2B email templates.
I'm not sure who's behind it, but I was discussing it with Tim Watson and he though from eDialog. Not sure how. Tim?…
Enewsletters are still the main online direct to customer communications tool, so it pays to invest time and thought in a decent template.
Over the past few years of running email marketing training courses I have reviewed hundreds of enewsletter templates and often see the same basic errors. Individually they often aren't important, but if several good practice features are missed, they can definitely adversely affect the experience or response rates.
Three best practice enewsletter template examples
Good practice will naturally vary according to sector. The two main enewsletter styles are B2C retail-style for transactional sites featuring products and information-led for business-to-business, relationship development and publishing. We will look at and example from each.
1 B2C transactional newsletter example
2 B2B informational newsletter example
3 Professional services/membership enewsletter
Added this since I wrote…
