Research showing how should we create dialogue by combining email and social media marketing with other channels
I've recently been involved with creating the programme for the upcoming eCircle event: ConnectEurope2011. As for last year I will share some highlights from the presentations like the case studies,research and latest thinking on Smart Insights. Last year I shared two case including Halfords Intelligent Lifecycle Marketing which went down well and Halfords are speaking again.
In the meantime, I just wanted to let you know about the event - if you have any questions please ask via my sign-off below or visit our website for more information. At the end of this note I'll share some interesting research about how the overlap in use of consumers of email marketing and social media.
Other questions the speakers will address are:
Is it possible to make people happy through your marketing?
What can you do to get information…
Update - Email marketing trends and challenges in 2011
This is a short, fun video recorded at MarketingSherpa's Email Summit in Las Vegas a couple in Feb 2011. I think it reinforces nicely the main trends in email marketing which need to be managed by email marketers.
In the video, Jeff Ginsberg from TheEmailGuide.com interviews several attendees asking what they thought was the the biggest challenges for email marketers in 2011.
These are the main challenges I took from the video:
Relevance - nearly everyone mentioned this and the segmentation needed to deliver this.
Engaging content which will be shared, especially with competition from content shared within social networks
Integration with social media marketing
Adapting email to be a conversation (my favourite)
Testing and tracking
Changing regulations - review your opt-in regulations and tracking
Designing emails for mobile devices (Anna Yeaman of Style campaign mentioned that their clients are seeing 5-15% of emails on mobile devices
…
Approaches to increase the value of your email messages Part 2 When resources are scarce
When we try to make email more valuable for subscribers, we tend to focus on technical and transactional optimization. Which means we focus on making the actual offer/content more targeted, mainly using tools like segmentation, dynamic content personalization etc.
That's a good thing.
But there are two limitations to this approach.
First, we forget that value doesn't just lie in the relevancy of content and offers.
Second, the required tools, data and/or resources for technical and transactional optimization aren't always available to marketers with budgets to care about.
Part 1 of this article explored how you might use personality, human voice etc. to address the idea of emotional value: building an emotional connection that keeps people engaged even when the content or offer misses its mark.
In Part 2 I suggest five relatively simple concepts you can use to build more…
We know that email subscribers, and now social media followers, are so valuable since they've given permission to receive communications. The problem is that vanilla flavoured, promotional messaging en masse will fail - the different audiences in those channels most likely have different information needs.
I read an interesting case study that's similar to another project I have been working on. It's a US business effectively combining email and social tactics creating 120% increases in traffic - and to the right web pages. I thought I'd share the summary here.
The good news - this case study is not a mega brand like Starbucks or Oreo, so it's a bit more real, the company is a much smaller cookware and cake decorating business called Wilton, an established business of 80 years, one that has grown adept at push marketing via email . The business had two realisations (I hope more companies have…
Approachs to increase the value of your email messages Part 1 Emotional value
Subscribers give you an address, attention and access to the inner sanctum that is their inbox. And they expect something in return. Some kind of value from your emails.
This value ensures you don't outstay your welcome in that inbox and drives responses, whether direct (e.g. sales) or indirect (e.g. awareness).
No surprise, then, to find email marketing experts regularly admonishing senders to increase the value of their messages. It's one of the ways I highlighted to ensure email success in 2011.
Your options for increasing value?
For many experts, the answer lies in using technology to increase the functional "transactional" value of an email. Which largely means better targeting through integration of web analytics, customer databases and email systems...supporting segmentation, personalized offers/content, one-to-one trigger messages etc.
That's quite a mouthful and quite a challenge for those without the resources.
But it's not…
How Cisco approach reactivating their inactive subscribers
Value: [rating=3]
Our commentary : We're alerting you to this Marketing Sherpa post reviewing a Cisco.com campaign since it's got a specific process you could follow for a common problem in B2B or B2C marketing. It's also got some example subject line or creative to inspire!
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="652" caption="Source: Marketing Sherpa"][/caption]
Marketing implications My summary of the process followed is:
1. Select a segment of database to test
2. Review segments in terms of potential value
3. Brainstorm and select the right segment for the audience (in this case based on position)
4. Send creative - example subject lines and creative are shown
Recommended link: Marketing Sherpa B2B Cisco Email case study…
Despite the proclamations that email marketing was dead in 2010, the data and practice by marketers suggests that email marketing is alive and well and will continue to be a mainstay of customer communications in 2011. Given the continued importance of email marketing, as we go into 2011, I thought it would be useful to highlight some of the opportunities to make better use of email marketing based on my following of the trends and the email marketers, email consultants and agencies I spoke to in 2010.
5 success factors for your email marketing in 2011
1. Decide how email best creates value for you in 2011. One of the best posts giving advice here is by Loren McDonald - read his 8 implications for email marketing in 2011. For me his suggestions show how you must understand the value email marketing can create for your organisation. This starts…
A manifesto for integrating email marketing with other channels based on marketplace trends
So, yes, it's the traditional time of year for posts offering perspective and prophecies on what you need to do to get through the next year successfully.
Instead of listing predictions, I'm going to pull out some broader trends and suggest five ways that email marketers might account for them. And I hope you'll chip in with your own perspectives and suggestions in the comments.
Digital marketing is characterized by the constancy of change. What's trendy today is typically trash tomorrow. But here are four developments I see continuing to influence (email) marketing in the coming months and years.
Choice and control
Competition
Trust
Expectations
(more…)
…
A case study of a Virgin Atlantic campaign showing the factors that matter
When marketers discuss email marketing we naturally tend to talk a lot about the creative and certainly it's a great way to learn. I love the inspiring examples at the Retail Email Blog and the Campaign Monitor Gallery. But is it the creative or copy that matters most? Other factors are equally or more important.
To help as a reminder of the email success factors I created the CRITICAL mnemonic which you can apply to just about any digital tactic.
To illustrate CRITICAL, I'm going to use this example of what I think is great email creative. It's not new, in fact I've used it in training for years and it features in the first edition of my Email Marketing book, but not the second. But I thought I'd dust it off for this…
How should marketers respond to the new Facebook webmail service?
Marketing impact: [rating=5]
Our commentary : Wow, we should have seen this one coming! This is a very logical and very sound move from Facebook.
It's no surprise really since reports from other webmail providers like Hotmail showing that around 20% of emails from webmail providers like Hotmail and Yahoo! Mail are updates from social networks - that's a massive opportunity for Facebook to increase engagement with their brand.
Although Facebook are saying this is "not an email service". They're looking looking to differentiate. There's a danger here for email marketers since Friends will have a separate social inbox, making it more difficult for email marketers to get their message through?
I'm sure that this service will become as popular as the other webmail providers and it will be optimised for phone access which…
