By
09 May 2012
What is the key to relevance in email marketing?
The answer to this question is simple… relevance is driven by knowledge of what each customer is interested in.
While this may seem a prosaic statement, it is true that email marketing is all about the pursuit of relevance.
Relevant emails are read and make money. Irrelevant emails end up in ‘junk’ or, worse still, lead to unsubscribes and loss of lifetime value.
The art of good email is knowing what someone is interested in and then applying this knowledge to all future email communications.
The search for relevance is as old as marketing itself
Back the late 1930s, radio programmes called ‘dramatic serials’ were soon renamed ‘soap operas’ because their main sponsors were washing powder advertisers. The soap advertisers, including such illustrious brands as P&G and Unilever, realised the ‘dramatic serials’ provided them with the…
Britain's online beauty brands find discounts, coupons and samples drive social media engagement - a quick insight to Mintel's latest social media research report
As we are well aware, British consumers are increasingly incorporating the Internet into their daily lives. The Internet has revolutionised the way that people communicate with one another and interact with brands. Social networking sites have facilitated a far greater reach for word of mouth marketing with 59% of Brits logging into their Facebook accounts and 13% signing into Twitter every day.
How are social media platforms used to inform purchases?
Mintel's latest social media research report (into the beauty and personal care market) reveals that Brits increasingly go online to research beauty products before purchase with sites such as Facebook and Twitter informing purchase decisions on beauty products for 34% of would-be buyers. Almost four in 10 Brits (37% - equating to 15 million consumers) have…
By
02 May 2012
The UK is 2 years behind with social media!
Having spent two days at the UK Social Media World Forum recently it seems to me that UK industry remains roughly two years behind North America and many countries in the Far East. Companies in South America also seem to be developing at a faster rate.
While the conference was about social media, I felt it had a very narrow focus, a focus on how to use social media for marketing campaigns. This is fine, marketers want to know this! But there are bigger strategy questions to ask. In my view, social media is not as effective for short term tactical campaigns without a wider content and engagement strategy. It works best when integrated across the business as this recent report by McKinsey suggested.
Don't get me wrong, there were many useful…
A case study: Jasdev Dhaliwal of AVG explains their approach to Facebook marketing
[Editor's note: As long-standing Twitter connections, when we noticed that AVG passed the one million "Like" mark last week, we asked Jasdev Dhaliwal, the AVG Head of Communities "how?" to see what everyone can learn from their approach. Thanks Jas!]
As AVG’s Head of Communities, for the past two years I’ve seen our Facebook community grow from a few hundred fans to over one million.
Our page is now larger than many UK Brands including Marks and Spencer, British Airways and Vodafone UK. Globally, we now have more fans than Zappos, Diet Pepsi and Sony Music which is truly remarkable considering our community has grown organically with very limited advertising. Our established history in the security industry coupled with strong brand loyalty has helped us build a strong…
Early studies reveal a mixed message
Value: [rating=3]
Recommended link: Simply Measured Timeline engagement data
Dave has recently covered 9 recommendations for the new Facebook Timeline pages for brands. These switched over on the 30 March 2012.
The question is, has this new platform helped or hindered marketers? Some light is shed on this by this initial data from social analytics software provider Simply Measured, that suggests the change is having a very significant upside for brands.
Average of 46% improvement in engagement across 15 brands
Simply Measured looked at 15 early adopting brand page and found that average engagement on brand posts (comments and Likes) rose 46% in the three weeks after the switch compared to the three weeks before. Prior to the Timeline introduction, the 15 brand pages saw an average of 1,672 points of engagement per post, rising to 2,441 after switching to Timeline.
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Customer over corporate-led communications
We're currently hiring at First 10. A friend asked me what kind of roles we're looking to fill. My response was, "two brand journalists". She was puzzled, "do you mean PRs", she said? "...aren't there loads of people in marketing who can write?" My response: "Not really, it's a different blend of skill-sets and a totally different motivation."
I embraced the whole idea of "brand journalism" via a book by David Meerman-Scott, I read 3-4 years ago, it's made increasing sense since. The way a journalist approaches an article is simply different from the way that somebody who is good at writing approaches an article. A brand journalist works inside the company across all content formats, writing and producing videos, blog posts, photos, webinars, articles, e-books and podcasts. It's about producing the content that is relevant to, that engages prospects and customers, which is something that Marketing Profs…
5 ideas for creating effective content on your website
We talk a lot in our posts about the importance of content and inbound marketing, that being central to success and a how blog is the key for building a central repository of useful, insightful or entertaining content for your website visitors.
A blog really does have the potential to be 'the hub' in regards to content marketing. But what are the other options on your site, assuming that you have a blog section already and you feel that you're doing it well enough, what's next?
Well, a question in my inbox this morning from a Smart Insights Expert member got me thinking on this. Subject to the realities of your website, its flexibility, ability to scale and of course your access to people or budget resources, there's tonnes that you can now consider beyond a blog.
Our 5 ideas: Think sales first
Think of the…
KISS: Keep It Simple Stupid
A now established process within some of the world's mega brands, social listening is now a highly competitive market in itself. With so many experts and software options it can be difficult to decide what option is best for you.
While social listening creates many opportunities I believe it is less obvious for smaller less talked about brands or industries, hopefully sharing my learnings from running this process at First 10 for a number of clients will help you design it into your SME. It all starts with keeping it simple.
Listening
Listening to your customers has always been important, social networks have just changed the scope and places in which that feedback can take place. Within this article I focus purely on social listening which I will explain in more detail shortly. Before I do, you should remember that their are…
How the ‘7 fascination triggers’ will help viewers engage with your brand
Video is a great new way to communicate your business to the world.
Imagine you have found a great production company to help you create shiny, amazing video content. And you have set a filming date and allocated a reasonable budget to make sure you get it right.
But you have no idea what message you want to get across - or what you’re going to film.
The ‘7 fascination triggers’ is a useful tool to help you work out how best to tailor your strategy to elicit the desired response from your target markets.
So what does it take to be fascinating?
How can you grab your audience’s attention and hold it long enough for your message to be heard loud and clear?
The key, according to Sally Hogshead, is to have an understanding of…
This video does it well we think
Earlier in the year, I described how consumer brand Burberry communicate their vision for how they seek to use social and digital media to transform their company.
Recently, I’ve seen another good example from B2B technology hardware and services company EMC (See their Social @EMC hub). Take a look; it’s tackling the tough job of convincing sceptical employees who ask “what’s the point” in a light-hearted way. As you can see, it shows that social media is nothing new, simply that technology now helps us to communicate in a way we always have, since the time of the caveman and cavewoman...
I found out about this video on the blog of Keith Paul (@Kempipa), the “Chief Listener” at EMC. It’s an interesting blog, if you’re working in a large company and dealing with big company issues. In this …
