One-to-One Marketing goes 3D

Lord Leverhulme famously said that “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted, and the problem is I do not know which half”.  In a downturn it is vital that none of the marketing pound is wasted and as planning director at Leeds-based direct response agency PCD, I can reveal how to be smarter with your marketing spend.

Whether you call it direct marketing or one-to-one marketing, the all important goal is to promote your message to your customers in a more targeted way. Achieving this goal becomes ever more vital as company boardrooms insist marketing teams justify their budgets and as such decisions, strategies and plans will become more customer data insight driven.

Digital opportunities and channels provide marketers with never before seen levels of interactions with customers and prospects. Integrating in a single process, for example via direct mail, sms, web or email, with levels of personalisation that are no longer restricted to simple variables but include imagery, product messages and copy to fit an individual customer’s particular purchasing habit and lifestyle, help to engage with target audiences.

Yes, this comes at a higher cost, however experience has shown that cost per pack whilst increasing is countered by an overall increase in conversion, lowering overall acquisition costs.”

To reflect this explosion in alternative on and offline media platforms, we at PCD have refocused the business and developed a 3D approach – data, digital and direct.

• Data means knowledge and provides insight, information and understanding which results in targeted planning, segmentation and a well defined strategy.
• Digital means one-to-one dialogue, delivering relevant and personalised comms. This means that the right message is being delivered the right way at the right time, both on and offline.
• Direct means accountable and results in brand building, generating response, measuring, learning and improving.

I believe that we needed to develop this unique 3D approach in order to provide clients with targeted methods to reach their consumers and increase customer value.

What’s different about our 3D approach is that you will realise it’s not just about sending complex mailing packs, building the biggest websites, sending the most emails or developing ‘flashy’ online campaigns. It’s about taking data and using it to understand your customers. It’s about understanding a customer’s journey with your brand, the touchpoints and conversations you’ll have and those you should have. It’s about segmenting data to target creative more effectively and then delivering campaigns that embrace and engage the customers.

This is all before a creative concept is hatched and means that clients fully understand their customers, allowing them to embrace and engage with them in a way they have not been able to do before.

I believe that our approach begins by understanding our clients data, the segments they form, the impact these segments can have on your business and then the creative message we can deliver, ultimately ensuring the right customer receives the right message by the right channel.

 For more information visit www.pcdagency.com or telephone 01943 872505

Nine Top Digital Trends for 2010

1: Facebook replaces personal email Question: Google has it, Hoover has it (in the UK anyway), TiVo had it, lost it and has somewhat got it back. Xerox had it, but nobody really cares anymore. So what is it? It’s when a brand name becomes the verb associated with its use. So rather than searching, you Google, or TiVo when digital recording a television show.

Arguably an even more powerful synonym is when a brand becomes a noun, such as Polaroid, for instant developed photograph, although that didn’t end so well. The newest one would seem to Facebook, although it has too meanings. ‘I Facebooked you’ could mean that you the person has added you as a Facebook friend or they sent you a private message though Facebook. The latter would seem to be of more interest as no-one has really owned this type of communication before. No brand ever became synonymous with email. To Hotmail or Gmail someone just never happened.

So the interesting and overlooked disruption of Facebook is its displacement of personal email as a communication tool. Completely permission based, no SPAM (yet), and no address book required - your friends are already on Facebook.

2: Open source software starts making proper money, thanks to the cloud There’s something starting to happen within the open source software world. Projects that were typically for the purview of programmers, or at least technophiles, are now available to the masses. An example is Beanstalk www.beanstalkapp.com a fully hosted, version controlled code repository that uses the Subversion open source project. The big deal is that to set up and maintain a Subversion repository can be a pain - plus you need a server if you want to give access to anyone. Beanstalk has created a subscription based service that, for a small fee, removes the hassle.

Services like this can only really exist with cloud computing infrastructure - so companies such as Beanstalk don’t have the huge upfront capital outlay for servers, they only pay for what their customers use. With the right skills any open source project can be commercialized in this manner.

3: Mobile Commerce - the promise that has never delivered, yet. As annoyingly tantalizing yet esoteric as the word ‘convergence’ has been over the last 10 years, mobile commerce has promised much but never delivered.

Mobile phones have delivered real benefits to societies world wide and in developing nations are used commonplace as devices for the transfer of money. However, until only very recently in the nations that invented and first adopted mobile technologies, has use of your most precious device been extended to payment for goods and services.

With the advanced browsers of iPhone and the Android platforms one could pay for goods through full e-commerce sites, but who really wants to fiddle around with a phone in one hand and a credit card in another? The game changer is the iPhone / iTunes platform. In-app purchases on the iPhone can tempt users to buy small items, upgrades, updates, etc, while iTunes holds their precious credit card information.

All, of course, is done in seamless fashion, enough to promote impulse purchases. Would seem like an easy task for this to be extended to other platforms with PayPal or Google Checkout. But we have been here before haven’t we?

4: Fewer registrations - one sign-in fits all I use a great application on the Mac platform that securely holds my login details for upwards of 50 different sites. It means that I don’t have to use the same password for each site and that I don’t have to search around for post-it notes (my 1998 method) to log into the site I joined a week ago. However, I’m starting to resent having to register for anything ever again. I don’t see why, to leave a particularly pithy comment on a blog or news site, I have to register all over again. I’m sure I’m not the only one and that’s why services like Facebook Connect and OpenID are particularly useful and will continue to be adopted at great speed through 2010.

Who knows where these might go? Perhaps next year I’ll be able to pay for something using my Facebook login.

5: Disruption vs. Continuity - Alternatives to the “Big Idea” As the significance of social networks continues to grow, businesses are investing more in community building as a marketing driver. According to the recent Tribalization of Business study released by Deloitte, 94% of businesses will continue or increase their investment in online communities and social media and, for the majority of these companies, their marketing function will drive this investment.

At the same time, as evidenced by Google’s recent release of “free floating” social tools, such as Google Waves and Sidewiki, there is an increasing shift towards online identity and social activity being an integrated part of the network as a whole, rather than concentrated within discrete platforms such as Facebook.

With the increasing emphasis on marketing and advertising through social networks and the increasing pervasiveness of social tools, marketing objectives come into conflict with advertising techniques.

While advertising has often sought to distinguish itself and stop the consumer in their tracks with a disruptive “big idea,” the emphasis is shifting toward persuasion through fitting organically into the consumer’s social sphere. It will always be the objective of marketing to provide creativity and novelty, but the way in will increasingly be one of persistence and continuity.

6: Self-Sufficiency – The Continuing Evolution of Web-Driven,Open Source DIY Culture Much has been said about the power and potential of collective intelligence. From solving complex problems through crowd-sourcing, to reconfiguring industries to be leaner and more innovative by harnessing the expertise of a network of independent suppliers, many of the breakthrough solutions of tomorrow appear to lie in more effectively pooling the resources and intelligence of our increasingly networked world.

On the other side of the equation, the power of pooled intelligence and networked resources have empowered individuals to take on more and more complex undertakings themselves. From drawing on the collective intelligence of blogs and university open courseware to educate themselves, to services like ponoko, spoonflower and cafe press that facilitate small-scale production, to offline resource pooling like pop-up retail and collective office spaces, individuals are discovering that it has never been easier to try doing it themselves.

While we find new ways to thrive in a still struggling economy, expect to see lasting changes coming from empowering individuals to work together to become more ever more self-sufficient.

7: Info-Art Where we once had pop-psychologists and pop-philosophers, we now appear to have pop-statisticians and pop-economists. The growing wealth of data and the access to rich and diverse data sources that are significant byproducts of information networks have made the art of data analysis a defining skill of our time. By the same token, the skill of elegantly visualizing that data has become a defining art of our time. The art of the infographic is becoming increasingly pervasive as people look more and more to the growing amount of data at our disposal for insight, and more refined as the interactions of that data becomes more complex.

With an ever increasing need for real-time analysis of a growing torrent of raw data, expect to see greater innovation spurred by more elegant ways of capturing and visualizing information by a growing number of info-artists.

8: Crowd Sourcing Across many industries and organizations, crowd sourcing will become a growing tool as part of elance outsourcing strategies. Organizations will mobilize the passionate special interest groups to not only carry a message but, even more importantly perhaps, to lead and take part in activities on their behalf.

Predictions for 2010 are not as rosy as we all hoped and budgets for just about everything continue to be cut, encouraging ‘creative’ thinking regarding getting things done and done well. From political canvassing to software development, from people journalism to environmental activism, we will see huge growth in crowd sourcing models provoked and led, largely, by digital social media strategies.

9: More Flash, Not Less Outside of the obvious brand sites, micro-sites and media sites (video, games, etc.) Flash has often been looked down upon if not completely discounted by techies and search engine optimizers alike. It seemed to face an uncertain future as a viable tool for serious websites and applications such as eCommerce tools and corporate websites.

As it is, Adobe’s rich media tool has enjoyed the grit and determination of its advocates and external development community. Several tricks, authoring tools and server side scripting workarounds have meant that Flash built websites no longer serve up a single, impenetrable page. They offer deep, searchable, indexable sites that will allow acute, detailed traffic and behavioral analytics and search engine optimization. As websites continue to increase in their importance as a company’s storefront, the demand for rich, brand-extending experiences will also increase. Further proliferation of (lightning speed) broadband will reduce download issues while the adoption of Flash on mobile devices will dramatically increase and fuel reach and the desire/need for highly usable, brand transporting, conversion oriented experiences

Dispelling the myths of online video.

Online video is one of the fastest growing areas in advertising. And with that growth come a host of opportunities for savvy marketers. However, despite the many advantages of online video, many advertisers remain wary due to various myths surrounding the medium.

It’ll end in tears if you’re just going to Tweet around.

I’ve just been through a whirlwind of social media lately. Conferences, projects, discussions, it’s left me feeling quite anti-social about the whole thing. But stay your burning pitchforks. Do not assault my door as you Tweet that you’ve found a non-believer.  

So social media? Yes please, but only if it fits with my commercial objectives and I can afford – both in time and money - to integrate it as part of my plan.

www.theagencyonline.co.uk

Don’t let DM go on strike

Get out your violins: I’m about to complain about the trials of being a direct marketer. Boo hoo. The postal strike is making our jobs difficult. Pass the tissues – I know you feel my pain.

But the truth is that the strikes are causing problems – for clients, for agencies, and for the postal service itself. Because despite all the special vitriol postmen reserve for the so called ‘junk mail’ that makes their bags so heavy, clients sending marketing letters with Royal Mail is what makes the business run.

We’ve all heard Royal Mail’s long-standing gripe that “Royal Mail does the work. TNT takes the profit”. Yes, other providers take profitable downstream access work while the Queen’s posties still deliver the final mile. It must be hard to see that happening, but it’s a fact of deregulation and it is not going to go away. Striking, however, is building up a raft of problems for the future.

Not all business users have switched to other providers. Some like the quality assurance of having a Royal Mail postmark – it shows a company is supportive of the service and that it wants to align itself with the well-loved Royal Mail brand.

Or, I should say, the ‘once well-loved Royal Mail brand’. The sad fact is that more big spenders are considering leaving every day the strikes go on.

The industrial action is giving businesses an excuse to swap providers, even though, in the event of a strike, the mail taken out of the system downstream generally ends up in the same sorting office while posties warm their hands on a brazier outside.  

It’s not news to say that the strikes are damaging the Royal Mail brand. But it is perhaps pertinent to put a real value on it in this way.

The longer the strikes go on, the less Royal Mail will be viewed as an old, friendly and dependable brand – and the more lucrative contracts will switch elsewhere. This will leave  postmen with even more to carry on that last mile, and even less sympathy from the bosses as their diminished pot of funds shrinks even further.

No client wants to have to make these decisions. But many feel – rightly or wrongly – that they have no option in dissociating themselves as far as possible from a brand they can no longer rely on.

 David Rolfe is client services director at customer management agency Snowball

Facebook encourage its members to reconnect with the deceased

Facebook has hit the headlines again for introducing a new service helping its members reconnect with old friends. However within moments of the service going live facebook was inundated with furious emails as members were being encouraged to reconnect with deceased friends!

 

The new ‘reconnecting’ service Facebook introduced turned into a PR nightmare for them. The repercussions on brand damage were huge, news stories started appearing online and national newspapers also carried the story of the insensitive reconnecting messages.

 

Facebook’s head of security quickly responded with a solution, by requesting proof of death such as an obituary or news article! Anyone who is responsible for managing consumer databases knows the importance of screening for deceased individuals on a regular basis and applying industry best practice. Not only does this help to avoid the negative headlines and reduce brand damage but also lessens the risk of upsetting and alienating existing and potential customers.

 

However with vast amounts of personal data stored and published online, fraudsters are continually lurking in cyberspace.  Unscrupulous individuals make a hobby and even a career out of identifying deceased members of the public and using online ‘skimming’ techniques to collect relevant information to steal people’s identity.

 

According to CIFAS, the UK’s fraud prevention service, during the first quarter of 2009 there has been a massive 74 per cent increase in deceased identity fraud compared to the same period in 2008.  Without wanting to be sensationalist or taking the moral high ground, companies who store and use personal data must understand the importance of putting strict procedures into place which help to identify deceased individuals. With over 600,000 people sadly passing away each year regular database management is imperative.

 

Until recently the deceased suppression market was often thought to be a confusing market place with a number of deceased suppression files available. However last month Mortascreen signed an exclusive partnership agreement with deceased data provider Lifecycle Marketing, which will provide Mortascreen with deceased data from over 90 per cent of UK register offices. 

 

I am pleased that Facebook have now introduced the option for family and friends to ‘memorialise’ profiles of members who have died and remove sensitive information such as status updates and contacts. But as identity fraudsters continue to find security loopholes using clever and complex techniques to steal identities, I am sure they could quickly forge obituaries or edit news articles as proof to steal the identity of dormant members.

“Every Company is a Media Company”

As early as 2006 the phrase “Every Company is a Media Company” began to appear in speeches, news stories and blog columns, presaging a paradigm shift in the way business of every stripe must communicate with their audiences in the Internet / social media age.

But for years innovative companies like apparel giant Benetton Group have pioneered the concept. In 1991, it launched its oft-controversial Colors magazine, each issue of which focuses on a single topic and is published in four languages in 40 countries by its’ Fabrica research center. www.benettongroup.com/en/whatwesay/colors_magazine.htm

Or consider, leading industrial design firm frog (www.frogdesign.com/), which last July launched Design Mind magazine (now in its 9th issue) (design http://designmind.frogdesign.com/magazine/motion/). Why are companies as diverse as an apparel manufacturer and an industrial design firm investing so heavily in becoming “media companies?”

NYU professor Clay Shirky put it succinctly. (In the era of social media) “It is inescapable, ‘every company is a media company.’ Every company, no matter what industry, is essentially tasked with gathering and distributing information to employees and external audiences.” In other words, content, media, conversation with all key stakeholders is key.

Examples are more numerous by the day as this trend rapidly gains traction across business channels. We're witnessing a paradigm shift in which traditional media companies are moving towards becoming software / digital companies (aka, The New York Times' strategy) while manufacturers, service and creative firms are becoming media companies.

The shift is one of both strategy and format driven by necessity – the consumer’s demand for information. Show by Telling…. Take frog’s print magazine, which is but one component of a broader effort to invest in proprietary media channels to produce and disseminate their own content as a showcase for frog’s thought leadership.

As frog says, we "transform by doing," and in their media channels they "show by telling." frog hasn’t fallen into the self-serving trap that snares many companies’ by just telling the frog story. Instead they tell ever-changing stories from multiple perspectives by many authors because “if you want to have a true conversation, you've got to change the message.”

That's why it is the voices of frog. And that's why they don't talk about frog per se but rather articulate what the contributors see, feel, and think. Design Mind is an invitation to write, to co-create, and to invigorate the brand.

Signs of the need for change in BtoB and BtoC conversational patterns are everywhere. The fast evolving consumer preference for uncensored content and open conversation over corporate speak and website cant, was documented in 2007 by Cisco’s Dan Sheinman who showed charts / stats highlighting how the companies’ web traffic has switched from page views to RSS feeds and blog posts. http://www.influxinsights.com/blog/article/1416/every-company-is-now-a-media-company.html

The media revolution continues to accelerate, moving into video (YouTube and its imitators) FaceBook (social networking at large), Twitter (instantaneous messaging), and emerging platforms. Every day more businesses awaken to the realization that they must become media companies if they hope to engage consumers in a productive and profitable dialog / relationship.

So what does this bode for the PR profession? It means PR too must be revolutionized if it wants to lead the new media management process, PR must educate clients to understand, accept and adopt this new dimension of communications. Tom Foremski (Silicon Valley Watcher, April ’09) said, “Every company has to learn how to publish using the new (two-way) media technologies, to reach their customers, their employees, partners, local communities, etc.

And one role of PR is to help companies become media companies and help them tell their stories.” http://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/mt/archives/2009/04/guest_post_futu.php The unfortunate reality is that the majority of companies, even in light of recent research findings that most executives get their news online, still mandate that PR focus on generating big stories in major print media.

Certainly, this is one leg of the PR stool but it ignores the importance of a creative, open and on-going conversation between source and audience. Marketers today face a revolution in communications, a near perfect storm in changing style and channels.

Consumers with their personal brands are battering down the walls of the old communications regime, while PR, if it is to prosper, must find courage to lead client companies into the promised land where every company is a media company and everyone is a marketer – but that’s a subject for another day.

What are the rewards of consumer sales promotions for businesses?

It is clear what the benefits of sales promotions are for consumers – and they know it. Demand for rewards and consumer incentives have grown immeasurably in the last year and it’s now what consumers expect wherever they shop. On the surface it would appear that this is a one-sided relationship in which consumers are holding businesses over a barrel. Sales promotion shouldn’t and mostly isn’t something that businesses are forced to resort to. Managed properly and thought out thoroughly, sales promotion can be mutually beneficial – particularly in the current economic climate. So what are the benefits of consumer sales promotions for businesses?

Consumer retention

In the long-term a loyal customer is worth far more to a business than an occasional high purchaser. When a customer is recognised as loyal the emotional involvement with the brand is increased. Showing recognition by offering consumer incentives for loyalty stands to solidify the idea of staying loyal to the brand. Loyalty can be rewarded in a number of ways from offering a coupon at the checkout to points collection cards.

Create positive brand associations

Working together with another brand creates a sense of corporate validation and helps your brand to tap into new loyal customer bases. Whatever you trade in there are sure to be a synergistic brands for you to work with, for example hotels and theatres or gyms and sports clothing retailers. It can also work well for pushing you brand’s image in a new direction by moving away from the logical partnerships, for example if you want to raise your green credentials how about teaming up with environmental brands such as The National Trust.

Increase brand recognition

Brand recognition is essential for enticing customers to buy your product/service over another. The authority recognition gives your brand offers consumers confidence in your product/service, as they know what to expect. Increasing brand recognition comes from offering your sales promotion to a wider audience than your regular customer base. A good example of this is featuring a consumer incentive or exclusive discount in a loyalty and membership programme or discount club. These programmes are usually a free marketing option, managed by an external agency that have an large existing customer base.

Reach new consumers

Sales promotion can be one of the most effective ways to catch new customers’ eye.  The best ways to offer a discount or consumer incentive is through a loyalty and membership programmes/ discount club or a chance to win a grand prize. By doing this you are giving consumers a reason to stray away from the brands they are usually loyal to. Competitions are an instant way to catch people’s attention but loyalty and membership programmes or discount clubs go out to an established customer base and can sustain a lasting message.

These rewards are useful to any business and however you want to represent your brand there is a sales promotion answer for your business, that can be effectively integrated to compliment any marketing plan.

Contact The Rocket Marketing Group if you would like to discuss how a loyalty and membership programmes/ discount clubs or consumer incentive and rewards can benefit your brand. For more information visit www.rocketmarketinggroup.com

Micropayments open up new sources of online revenue

Demand for micropayments is increasing fast as social networking and dating sites wake up to the benefits of taking small subscriptions via secure SMS or voice billing services. Adding to this and as part of the Digital Britain report, the Government's body for business innovation in technology, the Technology Strategy Board, has announced a £10M investment to work, at least in part, with industry partners to create and trial new models, including micropayments for online content and video on demand.

But with the organisations receiving only 66 pence in every £1 for micropayments due to network charges, compared with 96 pence for credit card transactions, there is a very real danger that the market for micropayments for a range of online goods and services could be severely constrained.

Given the lack of credit card penetration in many countries, including China, and within the younger demographic that still dominates the online customer base, the need for robust and commercially viable micropayments is pressing.

With the arrival of proven technology that can be delivered globally and rapidly integrated into core systems, online vendors now have seamless access to a whole new revenue stream - but just how many organisations will be deterred by the excessive network charges.

Payment Flexibility

Whilst providers of online goods and services continue to buck the economic downturn, it is clear that a significant proportion of potential online revenue is being lost due to the near reliance on credit cards for payment. Whilst a number of micropayment solutions have been introduced in recent years, a lack of global integration and the complexity of attempting to manage different mechanisms across different countries and networks have deterred the vast majority of organisations from supporting any payment option other than credit cards.

But as a growing number of organisations are now discovering, the arrival of viable, global micropayments technology is opening up a whole new revenue stream. The micropayments model works perfectly for sites operating a model of small, regular subscription, such as dating or social networking sites, especially in areas such as China, where credit card penetration is very low.

But the potential for micropayments is not limited simply to subscription services. A global micropayment service using SMS or voice billing as available across each continent provides organisations with a fantastic opportunity to achieve new revenue streams, and not just with products aimed at the younger demographic unlikely to hold a credit card. Whilst music downloads and gaming sites will obviously benefit from a flexible, robust and convenient payment method, there are very real opportunities to also offer micropayment facilities for additional services such as in hotels - reducing the need for late night reception staff to process payments, for example.

Grossing Up

Evidence is growing that the adoption of micropayments opens up a massive untapped market - with no upfront investment. However, one of the key concerns for many organisations assessing the pros and cons of micropayments is the network tariff. And for good reason: whilst organisations receive 96% of  credit card based transactions, high network charges mean only 66% of the payment is received from a micropayment.

For any organisation with a low margin product or service offering, this approach could theoretically make micropayments unfeasible. Indeed, low levels of micropayment adoption to date, point to the fact that organisations are concerned about margin erosion created by these high network charges despite the proven access to new customers.

Early adopters of this payment method have demonstrated that consumers are actually happy to pay more to leverage the flexibility and ease of use of micropayments for the time being.

By offering the customer the option of making a micropayment but charging a little more (grossing up), the organisation can maintain its margin without cannibalising the existing customer base. With the right integration into the core product/service software, it is a simple process to offer two prices - one for credit card transactions and one for micropayments - enabling the customer to make the choice.

Secure, Simple

Key to user adoption of micropayments is the delivery of a completely seamless, flexible service irrespective of country or network. Micropayments must also be easy to use, secure and support a wide range of payment values - from the €1 ringtone download upwards. 

Delivering this consistent service globally is a major challenge for many providers of micropayment solutions. The payment market is highly regulated - for obvious reasons. Organisations must comply not only with local, state and national regulations but also meet the demands of each network supplier in each country.

Furthermore, payment technologies need to be integrated with back-end customer service and web content management systems to deliver a complete, auditable solution.

To achieve this successfully and rapidly requires significant expertise and experience of different global markets. It demands strong integration skills and the ability to rapidly respond to organisational requirements to roll out into new markets to address customer opportunities. With the right technology, infrastructure and experience, micropayments technology can actually be deployed within days, with little or no upfront investment, allowing organisations to trial the technology in specific markets to assess its potential.

Global Opportunity

Indeed, those organisations that have opted to trial micropayments have all opted to extend the service across new geographies as a result of a significant increase in revenue.  Customer feedback reveals that the process is simple to understand and extremely transparent; whilst there is strong anecdotal evidence that organisations are achieving higher conversion rates via micropayments than credit card payments.

As a result, growing numbers of social networking sites are now offering micropayments although, to date, this has been limited to sites in the UK, US and Australia. With the arrival of proven global solutions, organisations are looking to leverage the new market opportunities in China, Africa, the Caribbean and South America.

Furthermore, given the strong consumer response, the networks are showing increasing interest in introducing new micropayment tariffs to enable organisations to move beyond existing services towards a true mcommerce model.  Indeed, as consumer awareness of the additional costs associated with micropayments grows, there will be growing pressure on networks to offer far more competitive rates.

A major shift is on the way: micropayments not only offer unprecedented ease of use for the consumer, overcoming the resistance to buy online via credit card, but also provide the opportunity to leverage the billions of mobile owning individuals globally to add revenue consistently and easily for a range of online goods and services.

By agreeing to operate on smaller margins, it is likely that the networks could precipitate a massive adoption of micropayments that would generate significant additional revenue. Without that change in policy, the real micropayment opportunity could remain untapped.

Twitter Search Deal: Social Networking Now Mainstream

It’s undoubtedly very exciting that Twitter has struck deals with Microsoft and Google which will see people’s tweets added to their respective search engine results.

In certain respects these are landmark deals – rather than a particular search engine trying to take market share off the other, what we’re seeing is two search engines clearly recognising the importance and influence social networking now has within the search marketing space.
 

The fact is social networking is now mainstream – that the search giants are now actively adding tweets to their search results underlines that.
 

This isn’t something that has happened over night, and many industry gurus will be quietly thinking ‘I told you so’ and breathing a sigh of relief after years of trying to convince advertisers to take social networking seriously.
 

In recent years we’ve seen ideas such as desktop search and search content ads fall by the wayside as search companies try to increase revenues and improve user experience.
 

This latest Twitter deal will be different as it offers something in search results that is incredibly useful to users - opinions, real stories and snippets of information that  will help them to navigate the web better, purchase products/services that are right for them, and warn them off anything that perhaps sounds too good to be true.
 

The integration of tweets into search results needs to be done properly to avoid diluting the quality of search results. ‘Bing’ especially, has spent a lot of time improving relevance.
 

But for brands, the development means they'll have an even bigger job on their hands as user opinion spreads even further.

 

Author: Tim Cook, Group Account Director, CheezeDMG - www.cheezedmg.com, twitter.com/Cheezedmg

 

 

CNN leads the way with more integrated multimedia website

With CNN launching it’s new website with a focus on better integrated video and photography, it highlights the importance of considering a multimedia approach for all new stories.

Brian Stelter of The Washington Post said last week:

“The Web site, which will come online Monday, aims to highlight CNN.com’s original content. The red-hued home page will place breaking news and headlines to the left side, and add a feature section in the centre. It will often include a video player front and centre, reflecting the growing popularity of online video. “

“With 38 million unique visitors a month, CNN.com exists within the top tier of news Web sites, making any redesign particularly influential.”

 As someone who not only works in a news agency but also works in communications, I get my news through many channels through out the day:

• Getting ready for work: Radio – BBC Radio 4
• Commuting to work: Print – The Independent newspaper
• At work:  Online – Press Association newswire (Mediapoint) / RSS feeds / Twitter / industry newsletters / email alerts
• Commuting home: Print – Free Paper
• Winding down:  TV – BBC Newsnight, ITV 10 o’clock news

Wow, just writing that list shows how much news I personally consume in any given day and all the different channels I use to get it. I am sure that most people  would find that if they did the same list, they also would be consuming their news through a variety of platforms.

 Of course,  not all media avenues will be relevant or possible for each campaign as budgets and content are of course varied but starting off by thinking about a multimedia approach to any campaign can be key to getting the most coverage and therefore the biggest impact for yours or your client’s message.

Posted by Suzy Richards @ TNR Communications

Morning boosts and afternoon apathy - What email marketers need to know about the working day

 Marc Munier, commercial director at email marketing provider Pure360, discusses ways in which marketing professionals can get the most out of the working day – by targeting consumers when they are most responsive.

The media’s stereotype of employees taking advantage of work-based email and internet to browse online is leading marketers astray. Consumers’ behavioural patterns continually shift throughout the working day and email marketing providers must be aware of the changeable consumer mood if they are to reap the rewards.

For example, many marketing professionals believe that lunchtime is the perfect opportunity to engage with their audience. But new research by Pure360 contradicts this theory. Contrary to popular assumptions, the volume of marketing emails opened actually drops markedly during the lunch hour.

In fact, recipients are far more likely to open emails in their own time rather than at work. Almost half (48%) of all marketing emails were opened outside office hours. Marketers would benefit by targeting consumers at specific times of the day, instead of relying on ‘gut instinct’.
 
Pure360 analysed hundreds of thousands of emails sent by 34 companies and discovered that a mere 9% of the emails sent were opened between noon and 2pm. Sixty two per cent of those opened were news or magazine alerts rather than promotions on goods or services. It seems that employees like to spend their lunchtimes catching up on all the latest news, sport and gossip and are significantly less receptive to marketing emails during this period than at other times of the day.

Consumer AM and a Life-Changing Afternoon

While the lunch break is something of a wilderness where email marketers are concerned, the research indicated that they can capitalise on consumers’ desire for a ‘morning boost’ to engage with their audience. Employees are very receptive to consumer promotions, such as discounts on clothes, gadgets and events, at the beginning of the working day.

Counter-intuitively, offers relating to dining and going out are far more likely to be opened first thing in the morning. For example, 27% of all restaurant promotions and 19% of promotions on live events, such as concerts and rugby matches were opened between 9am and 10am.

The ‘instant gratification’ of planning outings or shopping for bargains gives workers the ‘morning boost’ they need to get through the day, with 16.5% of all emails being opened between 9am and 10am.

In contrast, it seems that job-related apathy may be leading employees to be more receptive to life-changing promotions mid-afternoon. The research indicated that during the well-documented post-lunch slump period (between 3pm and 5pm) people become more responsive to marketing emails that address ‘bigger picture’ and often more serious issues, whether that involves sorting out their finances, finding a new job or looking for a new property. Nearly 43% of all the financial services emails that were sent were opened mid-afternoon.

Following the Latest Trends

Based on our research, we identified patterns in consumers’ responses to different email marketing promotions throughout the day:

The Abyss (10pm to 9am)
This is an ineffective time to send email promotions – it’s akin to throwing them into a black hole.

Consumer AM (9am to 10am)
The second most prevalent opening time is at the beginning of the working day, when consumers allow themselves to be distracted by offers on clothes, live events, restaurants and consumer goods.

Do Not Disturb (10am to Noon)
Consumers are not opening marketing emails, choosing instead to focus on work.

The Lunchtime News (Noon to 2pm)
Counter-intuitively, consumers are also unlikely to open marketing emails during their lunch, choosing instead to spend time on news and magazine alerts.

In The Zone (2pm to 3pm)
In the immediate post-lunch period consumers remain focussed on work, responding mainly to email offers relating to financial services.

A Life-changing Afternoon (3pm to 5pm)
Job-related apathy sets in and consumers start thinking about their personal situation. As a result, more emails relating to property and financial services are opened between 3pm and 5pm than any other type of promotion.

‘Working Late’ (5pm to 7pm)
There is a dramatic rise in recipients opening holiday promotions during the period (17.9% of all emails promoting holiday promotions were opened in these two hours). Counter-intuitively, this is also the timeframe within which recipients are most likely to open B2B promotions (26.4%).

Last Orders (7pm to 10pm)
Recipients are more likely to respond to consumer promotions in their own time, with 23% being opened in this period. Offers on clothes, special interests such as sports and gym promotions (26% opened during this time) performed extremely well in this period.

Make It Personal

Our research reveals trends and opening times that marketing professionals should be aware of. The most effective email marketing campaigns will go that step further, looking at the behavioural patterns of individual recipients.

Tools such as Intelligent Time Saving (ITS) enable marketing professionals to identify when individual recipients are most likely to respond to email marketing campaigns. By analysing when people have opened and clicked through on previous messages, ITS can ensure that emails are delivered at the time they are most likely to be read.  

Everyone opens their emails at different times and professional marketers should use technology such as ITS to help them spot these trends. For the best result, marketers must endeavour to adapt their campaigns to suit the consumer’s individual needs.

Marc Munier is commercial director at progressive email marketing provider Pure360. Founded in 2001, Pure360 provides big brands and small companies with the technology, know-how and support to run effective email marketing campaigns that have a measurable, positive impact on business for more information, please visit www.Pure360.com

Beta is Better

The most effective web stores are works in progress, using real customer behaviour to drive small, iterative improvements on an ongoing basis. This approach not only removes the guesswork, but also the pressure of trying to be perfect first time.

A sub-standard shopping experience

Test as you go

Amazon, the master

Marketers miss the point

Mass personalisation

Beta is better

The online revolution: the times they are a changing... or are they?

Well, the online revolution has taken a lot longer to happen than many of us would have thought back in 1999. And that puzzles me. Then again, I am still running into businesses and marketing executives who (albeit increasingly shamefacedly) admit to ‘not really understanding this online thing'. Likewise, many traditional agencies still find themselves unable to properly embrace digital and make it a core part of their service offering. How odd. I'm occasionally tempted to wonder "Where have these people been for the last 10 years?"

In fact, the answer is rather obvious. They've been extremely busy running their existing businesses, of course!

I'm being flippant to exaggerate a point. Embracing ecommerce is potentially a painful, expensive, time consuming and probably frightening undertaking for many retailers. We are talking about fundamental organisation change in many cases - and that's not something that any business really wants to contemplate, given a choice.
But therein lays the rub. Consumer behaviour is now driving businesses to develop and change at a pace that they either can not, or are simply not willing to attempt. And many are failing to wake up to this realisation until it's way too late.

In the end, ecommerce (and the rise of the internet in general) are merely symptoms, as opposed to causes of this new consumer attitude. It's not about technology, digital television or the internet. It's a fundamental shift in consumer behaviour and expectations. The balance of power being wrenched from the hands of advertisers and media owners by a generation of information hungry, time poor, technologically savvy consumers who expect to be able to get what they want, when they want it, 24/7 and have little time or sympathy for any business unable to meet their demands.

And here's the crux. What we are seeing today is undoubtedly the thin end of the wedge. Maybe the only reason that some existing retail models still work as well as they do is that there are enough of us ‘oldies' left in the market place that still remember what it was like before the internet came along and changed everything. Now isn't that a scary thought?

Meanwhile, across the country, continue the (I suspect) almost ubiquitous client / agency conversations about digital strategy which tend to go along the lines of;

Digital Agency; "Why don't you take this more seriously, look at the potential? It's essential to get to grips with this stuff, because it's potentially the very future of your business that's at stake".

Client; "It's only 1,2,3,4 (insert your own number)% of our turnover, so our Board / CEO aren't interested - anyway, we are having way too much fun signing off our new TV campaign to bother with all that technical stuff".

Digital Agency; "Ok, that's obviously the case today; but have you seen how profitable that business could be? And, it could grow quite quickly to become somewhere in the region of 20%-30% of your total business - with a very flat cost base, resulting in the potential to generate very significant additional profits... AND anyway, it's not really a technical issue; it's more about how your brand understands, relates to and interacts with consumers in the coming years. The technical stuff is the easy part.... "

Client; "Ahh, but.... "

And off we go again. Our business is different. Our customers are different. Our products are different. We don't want to upset the salespeople in the stores. Well, my wife doesn't shop online, etc, etc.

And, undoubtedly most of that is true.  

No one said this was going to be easy. But, as the almost unfeasibly futuristic sounding 2010 draws ever closer, the question is, I think for many, one of survival.

Facebook is Squaring Up to Google in the Battle for Online Advertising Domination

In the wake of Facebook's first profit generating quarter and recent improvements to its self service advertising platform, signs are beginning to emerge that Google may finally have a serious contender on its hands for online marketing budgets. 

As Google's search market share has risen above 65% in both the UK and US, many marketers have come to rely exclusively upon Google’s Adwords platform for running their campaigns. During this period Google has also established its Content Network as the largest online display advertising network and cemented this position through a string of acquisitions, including DoubleClick and YouTube. However, there are signs that the days of Google's advertising hegemony may be over.  

With the high CPCs common in many niches on Google, marketers are starting to look at alternative channels and many are choosing Facebook. Although Google can usually boast higher conversion rates stemming from the intent of users to purchase the products they search for, Facebook's enormous reach can now potentially offer higher sales volumes. Add in the value of the brand exposure gained, something which can now be quantified with multi-variate tracking solutions such as AgencyDMG’s Digital Brain:Search; and Facebook DR campaigns offer a compelling return.  

In addition, Facebook has been investing heavily in its self service Direct Response platform, which offers reach and targeting on a par with Google's offering, but until recently only a fraction of the functionality of the Adwords platform. Bulk advert uploading is now being trialled which will enable advertisers to execute much larger and more targeted campaigns. Also, a host of companies are developing bid management systems to plug into the new API, which is also under limited release. Facebook has taken its time to build a viable self service advertising platform, but now it is seriously adopting the formula that has worked so well for Google, it is beginning to make up ground in market share.

Although Facebook still has a way to go before it can match the net revenues recorded by Google - £1.64BN in their recently announced Q3 2009 results, Facebook’s huge inventory and low CPCs have already tempted many marketers to begin shifting budgets. Is widespread advertiser adoption of its DR platform what Facebook has been waiting for before entering into a much anticipated IPO? Only time will tell, but having won the war of the social networks, Facebook now appears to be readying itself for a final showdown with the search giants.

Author: Andrew Griffiths, Senior Account Manager, CheezeDMG

www.cheezedmg.com, twitter.com/Cheezedmg