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02 Jul 2012
GetResponse Offers $1000 1st Prize for Email Template Contest
Update: Help us choose the Winners
We've had a great response with over 600 entries! The GetResponse team has selected 15 Finalists. To get inspiration from our finalist designs - click "view entries" at our special Facebook page. You can Vote your favourite and win as well:
My wife is really into scrapbooking and she creates the most amazing cards and scrapbooks. However, no amount of encouragement on my part can convince her of her talent. She believes it’s not her talent, but the plethora of powerful tools and templates available to her which allows her to create the wonderful things she comes up with. Yet, she has the will to be creative and the drive to use those tools effectively. I believe we are all creative geniuses. It’s just that…
5 reasons why organisations should develop their own online communities
In this multi-channel digital world within which organisations now operate, social engagement is a priority for many. With the growing use of social media platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest many companies see their communities as solely developing on these social networks. But should their online communities be limited to the social networks? This recent social media benchmark research from the CIM showed that just a quarter of companies have their own proprietary online community.
So, in this post, I'll be looking at why this may be limiting your options for engagement through social media.
Is Social Media Marketing a burden for organisations?
Organisations have been attracted by participating on the public social sites through the promise of greater brand and business engagement, but for many, whether their investments are delivering…
Dispelling 7 'marketing limiting' myths about IP geolocation
IP geolocation technology has been around for more than 13 years. It is used across the globe for a variety of purposes, one of the foremost being marketing.
And yet, an aura of mystery still surrounds what IP technology is and what it can do. IP also has a slightly tarnished reputation in some companies; usually as a result of IP data providers supplying data that fails to meet expectations, leaving companies disillusioned with the technology’s business potential.
This article aims to dispel some common misconceptions on the use of geolocation data, including the way data is derived. The objective is to help marketers understand this technology's true potential, which is increasing in an increasingly location-based digital world.
IP geolocation explained
IP geolocation is an extremely powerful technology that can make a tremendous…
Establishing familiarity, transparency and accountability
People with pollen allergies are 23% less likely to click on yellow links.
Amazing, no?
Well, it would be if I hadn't just made it up.
But you might have believed me, given the stat is published at a site that enjoys a trustworthy reputation.
The role of trust in evaluating and responding to advice, information and offers can only grow as online choice becomes overwhelming.
So how do you build trust through your email program?
Wearing my consumer hat, I can pick out three groups of basic tactics that influence my perception of an email and its sender:
Build and exploit familiarity
Establish transparency and accountability
Demonstrate "quality" and consistency
I'll review the first two areas in this article, the third in Part 2.
Build and exploit familiarity
One of the things we do when reviewing email is to identify who each message comes from.
A clear sender identity is itself a contributor to trust, but by ensuring you're quickly recognized,…
Why are brands killing the Facebook conversation?
June 2012 update - a new service for benchmarking Facebook customer service:
On June 20th at LeWeb, Socialbakers introduced a new service, Socially Devoted, which gives an idea of what are good and bad levels of customer service within Facebook.
Here is the worst from the retail category which shows there is still plenty of room for improvement:
The most responsive show how it can be done:
I originally read this post by Jan Rezab, CEO of Socialbakers, in October 2011 about the lack of interaction of brands have on their own Fan pages. Apparently only 5% of wall questions from consumers on brand pages ever receive follow-up interactions from the brand - shocking really! It's really shooting yourself in the social foot…
Have you considered Facebook Promoted Posts? Examples of results from tests.
Another new feature that Facebook is offering (and yet more evidence of its post IPO drive to monetise) is Promoted Posts.
As I reported here recently, most fans are only seeing 17% of a brand's posts. This data has always been available in the Insights dashboard, but Facebook are now choosing to bring it to brand page admin's attention far more by displaying the percentage to date under each post.
Brand page managers have been less than delighted to discover that they are now having to pay for the privilege of their earned fans seeing their updates. But, even with the best optimised posts on the platform, you will be limited in getting your message out there. Enter Promoted Posts.
It's pretty simple to promote a post. Create your new post and either at that point (or up to three days later) selecte "Promote". Depending…
How to use the new Facebook scheduling feature for weekend engagement
Despite Facebook engagement rates in multiple sectors rocketing at the weekends, on Sunday in particular, reports from organisations such as Buddy Media show that very few brands are in fact posting content at the weekend. Those brands that do post outside of normal business hours enjoy 20% higher engagement rates.
One of the reasons for this tardiness is likely to have been the lack of ability, until recently, to schedule updates on Facebook without using a third party tool such as Tweetdeck or Hootsuite.
Furthermore, using these may not be a great idea. The Facebook Edgerank algorithm appears to favour posts inserted directly into its platform rather than those scheduled via Hootsuite. Eloqua claim that there is 61% less visibility when a third party tool is used rather than manual…
Using segmentation to make your social media marketing relevant
We've mentioned the value of Forrester's technographics ladder before. It's a useful tool. Aimia, a Canadian company who specialise in loyalty management, have created a segmentation model that analyses the behavioral drivers of trust and control to identify six social media persona types – these are no shows, newcomers, onlookers, cliquers, mix-n-minglers and sparks. It's the behaviour angle which makes this worth a proper look.
“Today’s approach to social media measurement – racing to rack up the most ‘likes,’ retweets, followers and recommendations – is the wrong approach. Marketers must define success not by social media activity, but rather by customer value and engagement,” Doug Rozen, Aimia senior VP, lead author of the report
Naturally, Aimia argues that there's single social media channel can deliver a complete picture of customer behaviour, specific social media personas are identifiable which, if engaged directly, can reap benefits for…
9 tips and good practice examples to improve customer service quality through the big five social networks and other tools
Many savvy marketers have known for a long time that social media is more than just facebook pages and YouTube channels and that these channels have far more to offer than mere ‘brand awareness’.
Engaging a brand’s customers (and developing a stronger relationship with them as a result) has been one of the main justifications for brand’s investing in social media despite it remaining difficult to demonstrate an accurate ROI for social media activities.
I believe this is missing the point.
Integrate social media across the whole business
Social media should be viewed more broadly across a business and form part of an organisation's structure. And, as brands and businesses start to recognise the importance of integrating social media beyond the marketing or PR teams,…
Ideas to improve email marketing response rates by NOT following subject line "best practices"
I've found through testing that in some cases, click rates can be doubled by creating the right subject line. More typical click rate uplifts through use of better subject lines are still a very welcome 25%. So it's well worth being creative to get a better response to your campaigns.
What you want to avoid is bland, repetitive email subject lines like these called out by James Hart in his post showing these Email subject line examples.
But with so many myths around do’s and don’ts in subject lines, your creativity can be limited, so here I'll reveal some common myths that will help you create more engaging subject lines.
Myth #1 Don’t use CAPITALs in subject lines
I believe this myth stems from the idea that capitals are shouting…
