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Category: Editorials

  • The Power Of Words . . .

    The Power Of Words . . .

    Marketers use words for many different purposes, to persuade, to cajole, to express urgency, to instill fear, to provide an identity, to convey calm or safety or trustworthiness. We’re like superheroes, in that we can use those powers connected to words for good or for evil, to help customers find the perfect item or service, or to drive them to register for a worthless but exciting-sounding product that they may regret later if indeed they ever receive it. Despite a documented decrease in the average person’s vocabulary inventory, the power of words has never been stronger. How far can that trend be extended?

    Our fervent hope is that it be reversed, that the general populace realize the power of words, the need for a full-scale, broad-spectrum education, which can open doors far beyond computers and technology. As little as 50 years ago, the average American high school graduate had a strong grasp of their own language, could read and write at a reasonably consistent level, and was equipped with the tools to take them as far in life as they could achieve using public, published information sources. The library was a place of knowledge, of reverence, and for those equipped to use it to its fullest potential, a place of wonder and excitement.

    Today, that same American graduate has a smaller functional vocabulary, lower level spelling skills, is slower to comprehend what they read, and can often not fully absorb the daily newspaper, which is typically written on an 8th grade reading level. They can also carry a small library in their hand, on a digital reader with a collection of public domain books, and with an internet-connected tablet, can learn things about the world around them every minute of every day. However, the words may be there and be readable by nearly all, but the wisdom and the editorial judgement and curation that vets those words are no longer present, so the onus is on the reader to choose their sources wisely, to choose who to believe very carefully. Inaccurate words have the same power as the accurate ones, and travel just as quickly.

    Marketers of questionable ethics and flexible morals have been known to take advantage of the power that words possess, to portray a situation or product in a certain light that might take advantage of those whose comprehension of words and their discernment of nuance of phrases might be diminished. Good marketers know they needn’t stoop to that level to be fantastically successful at what they do, to engage and persuade and enlighten audiences and provide a gentle nudge toward purchase. But the internet has become a playground for the more nefarious among us, causing the average person to act with additional caution when reading anything online, regardless of its source.

    Marketers need to remind themselves that this tactic of deceit and misdirection is a game of diminishing returns, that the more tricks, click bait, misleading tags and headlines that appear, the fewer people who will investigate anything in that channel overall, reducing response rates and cutting profits to the point where the credibility of digital outreach will reach a low ebb, and a new approach will have to be put in place. Those who are agile and can adapt to the new paradigm with flourish, those who are more Tyrannosaur-like will perish in the aftermath of the volcano. Be mindful of the power of words that you hold in your hands – misuse of that power affects us all . . .

  • 3 Ways NOT To Fall for a Clever Headline

    3 Ways NOT To Fall for a Clever Headline

    In a routine scan of my e-mail inbox, the discussion pages of my 40-some LinkedIn groups, various news sites and marketing sites, I counted over 100 headlines like the one above, promising everything from business lead generation to building up my profile, to keeping my windows from sticking, to where to go in Ocean City. All tempt the reader with a memorable number of simple solutions, neatly encapsulated in a short, easily digestible list, suggesting that if you compile enough lists about all the elements of your life, you’ll have all the answers and your life will run smoothly.

    Is this what content marketing practice has distilled itself down to, a clever headline offering quick easy solutions to life’s tough problems? I certainly hope not, because if your life is like mine and those of my colleagues here, it’s never that clean and neatly arranged – life is just plain messy!

    Marketing is a difficult, complex and widespread discipline, vastly misunderstood by the rank and file and by many of it’s practitioners. It takes YEARS of experience to master even the rudimentary elements in a coherent fashion, to be able to apply them in some fashion to a company or organization’s challenges, to identify and isolate the problem, and devise a strategy to combat it with well-thought-out tactics that do more good than harm, won’t break the budget and will return many times their cost. That’s a tall order for any single discipline, but marketing covers roughly 20 different disciplines within it, all of which can and should be considered when assessing and formulating a plan of action. If you can fit that in a list, I’d love to see it.

    Don’t get me wrong, lists of reminders can be very helpful and useful as a memory joggers of the various rough spots and pitfalls that can befall the forgetful. But I think the use (and overuse) of the catchy tip-laden headline is the lazy way to go. If our business attention span, our ability to learn new concepts, to absorb data and information, has sunk to the level where lists of tips guide your operative day, we are truly in a crisis. From the outreach side, they are a crutch for the lazy man, a cry for attention in the digital wilderness, where solid, impactful and dense information are traded away for quick thrills and easy clicks, screaming “Hey, look at my stuff, not that guy from the learned institute over there, I’m faster and easier.” They are the cliff -notes of a practice and a discipline that takes time and effort to learn, trial and error to master, and guts and determination and discipline to apply.

    Next time you see a list headline with 10 tips on anything, see if you can guess what at least five of them are before you open it. If you’re right, skip the list and it’s author and move on. I’m off to write the next entry, “10 Ways to Be Labeled an Old Curmudgeon Without Really Trying.”

  • Empowered Customers: A Direct Result of Technology Adoption?

    Empowered Customers: A Direct Result of Technology Adoption?

    This was so good I couldn’t resist re-posting it, courtesy of Sourcelink

    Rich Brown, Oct 02, 2012

    Enlightened marketers are now referencing the “Age of The Customer”, which is defined by consumers holding all the advantages as they have real-time information about pricing, product features and competitors.  The “Age of The Customer” has promoted the everyday consumer to the role of an empowered customer where not only consumer shopping behavior has changed, but also the way we market to these consumers.  Empowerment, as a direct result of technology adoption, has given a single individual, your customer, the power to choose how, when, and what they desire in terms of marketing.

    • How – In which channels does the empowered customer choose to be reached? Email, Social Media, Telephone, Direct Mail, or all of the above?
    • When – How often does the empowered customer choose to be reached specifically related to the cadence and frequency of marketing messages?  One email per day vs. one per week or one SMS text message per day vs. one per week?
    • What – What type of marketing content does the empowered customer choose to receive? Plain text vs. HTML emails, a printed catalog vs. a dynamic online catalog, printed coupons vs. electronic coupons vs. emailed coupons vs. location-based coupons?

    While customers have always had choices, it’s never been a more powerful time for the average consumer.  The Internet has been around for many years now and personal computers have long been a common household staple for most families.  Avenues for customer empowerment have existed for decades since the first online bulletin boards and online chat started to take a grip on our modern computing society.  What has specifically evolved us into to the “Age of The Customer” is hands down widespread technology adoption.  Without the proliferation of both the Internet and advanced hand-held, always-connected, technology devices such as smartphones and tablets into the hands of nearly every consumer, there would never have been this massive shift of empowerment toward the consumer.

    Today we take it for granted that we’re able to sit in front of a computer or better yet, pick up our latest and greatest smartphone or tablet and quickly do just about anything we need.  All in the palm of our hands, the empowered consumer can search for a specific product, find retailers who carry that product, research those retailers and their reputation, conduct a price comparison, read product reviews from other consumers and ask specific questions about that product, and finally buy that product. Customers are no longer blinded by false or improper product claims and misleading marketing because they have a global community in which to converse. They can research and determine if a company is not only reputable but also if their product claims are true and if they do right by their customers in the event of a problem.

    Additionally, as a direct result of technology adoption, a single consumer, with the power of a mobile device paired with the Internet and the long reach of various social media networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Yelp, YouTube or Google+ for example, now has the ability to create a collective opinion or voice, which rivals even the reach and voice of most commercial organizations and governments.

    Customers are indeed empowered and learning to use this power to not only buy exactly what they want, but to force companies, who want their business, to become “customer obsessed” and create an engagement strategy to help build relevant, timely and valuable customer interactions. Continued technology adoption will continue to make the empowered customer the new ‘norm’ and drive marketers to find new and innovative ways of customer interaction.

    If you found this insightful or helpful, and would like to read more, subscribe to this blog today! Don’t forget to pick up your copy of “The Marketing Doctor’s Survival Notes”

     

  • Does Social Media Marketing ACTUALLY Drive Customer Behavior and Convert to Revenue?

    Does Social Media Marketing ACTUALLY Drive Customer Behavior and Convert to Revenue?

    Social Media, social media, social media – there, I said it three times into the mirror, now I just have to wait and see what happens . . .

    That seems to be the approach many companies are taking to this relatively new phenomenon. The head in the sand approach might have some advantages in the long run, if recent data on the effectiveness of social media in driving customer behavior is to be believed. It seems that despite all the hype, and press, and sturm-und-drang in the digital media, minting new ‘social media gurus’ by the flock, digital media and it’s permutations don’t drive near as much revenue or even shopping behavior individually than they do when used together. Integration seems to be the real strength behind conversation marketing’s mechanics, and when the reams of data generated are used properly ACROSS multiple platforms, it seems to at least have the ability to drive a solid promotional campaign and boost response levels.

    That said, here are some interesting tidbits of data, excerpted from a recent Gartner Group study:

    • 11% of polled consumers had read a company blog, and only 4% had commented on one.
    • Twice that many, or 23% had viewed a company provided video.
    • 45% said they planned to purchase based on a combination of brick and mortar, digital ads, and mobile marketing, but only 1% said they planned to do so based on mobile marketing alone.
    • Only 26% of consumers said they had clicked on a Search Results page paid ad – irrespective of engine brand.
    • Based on data from another similar study, only 6% said they had purchased based on a facebook ad
    • 40% said they had registered for a promotion or contest based on an e-mail or social media ad

    Clearly, consumers want something for nothing (hence the contest results), but don’t want to work at it (read the blog data, reading a whole blog takes effort)

    Also just as clearly, mobile marketing has not reached the level of credibility, trust or penetration it’s purveyors would have you believe, and while it may be the next big thing, it ain’t there yet, not without massive support from other media to reinforce it’s message and bolster its credibility.

    Video seems to have made substantial inroads, but anyone who recognizes the level of involvement the TV generation needs to engage will see a clear correlation between the aging of the boomer TV generation and the level of importance video has attained. Add in the near ubiquity and availability of high-speed broadband Internet access allowing for video transmission at better fidelity and faster speeds, and video’s effectiveness becomes less mysterious. The fact that consumers would rather watch a video and have their eyeballs babysat rather than read and understand and digest and analyze a company blog to get their information is less than mysterious as well, when the audience is considered.

    The trick with all this is to take the data it generates, and use it to form better customer profiles that can be used to not only drive behavior, but to predict it as well. If you can create a digitally integrated campaign that uses the initial brush with consumers to link to a behavior and transaction based profile, you can then draw that consumer along a continuum toward a purchase after several touch points are hit. That’s how integration beefs up the ROI equation. The development of such campaigns requires broad and detailed knowledge of the target audience, so that it can be set up to account for the wide variety of behaviors possible by consumers. If you can narrow the range of preferences and behaviors, and drive consumers down a narrower funnel, the ROI can be quite lucrative.

    According to Gartner, ‘Companies using in-bound and event-triggered marketing techniques to draw consumers will see a 600% higher response rate compared to traditional outbound push campaigns’. That sounds pretty fantastic. I wonder if that will continue to be the case as more firms start to embrace this practice and it becomes more common. Will this type of campaign reduce the level of trust and credibility across the board, making consumers distrustful? Interesting to ponder, but I think not. To paraphrase W.C. Fields, “no one ever went broke underestimating the gullibility of the American public”.

    If you found this insightful or controversial, and would like to read more like it, subscribe to this blog today! Also, don’t forget to pick up your copy of “The Marketing Doctor’s Survival Notes” 

     

  • Integration Is Key To Marketing Campaign Effectiveness

    Integration Is Key To Marketing Campaign Effectiveness

    The phrase “The whole is greater than the sum of the parts” is never more appropriate than as part of a discussion of integrated marketing campaigns. No matter how you slice it, by media type, by audience, by offer type or any other way, multiple approaches working together with common offers, common brand and common goal will be much more effective than any of those single efforts, and even more than all of them working independently. At the risk of using an overused term, there is “synergy” to be gained by driving all efforts under the same flag.

    Integration offers several key benefits, which as marketers we can scarcely afford to ignore.

    1. Cost-effectiveness. If a greater return (be it registrations, hits, impressions, memberships, sales, etc.) is gained by fewer outgoing exposures (mail pieces, ads, radio spots, e-mails, phone calls) because they work together and support each other, then the results have been obtained for less expense. More for less is the goal, and this hits it squarely.

    2. Breadth of Coverage. If point one is true (and we stipulate that it is) then the corollary is that for the same cost, you can reach out to even broader audience. This spreads the brand and the offer further, which can be beneficial to the next effort beyond this initial one, preconditioning the new audience to respond the next time they are touched.

    3. Brand Strength. Based on point two, if you are reaching more people with an integrated campaign, the pieces supporting each other, the brand impression is strengthened with each hit – overlap is more likely, and the impression is stronger with each hit as a result – there’s no disconnect between impressions depending upon the piece to which the audience is exposed.

     

    Some of the strength of campaign integration comes down to brand control. Harley Davidson has one of the strongest brands on earth, and its customers and fans are among the most loyal purchasers around. One reason for that effect is that the brand itself is so highly protected. All licensing is strictly enforced, and that HD moniker in all its various forms can ONLY appear on products that fit the brand profile. That kind of control creates a strong continuity. That brand on any product means that you can expect a certain level of quality, a certain outward attitude, a certain value and an appeal that competing products don’t have. An integrated campaign uses that same power of continuity and of meeting expectation as part of its effectiveness.

    Another big strength of integrating a campaign is to drive more response from the fringes of the target at no additional cost. If each segment of a campaign is independent, some slivers of the audience may slip through the resulting cracks in coverage between segments. If one medium fails to reach and motivate a member of the target population, if another does hit at a later time, the recognition level will be lower because the look, feel, fit, offer or appearance are not the same. No gain for that second piece. On the other hand if that first effort hits but fails to motivate, when the second, but integrated hit comes along, it has higher chance of being effective and motivating a usable response, because the recognition level is higher.

     

    It’s All About Levels

    Integration can be achieved on a number of levels. Ideally, a tight effective campaign should be tied together on all of them to maximize return on investment.

     

    Level 1 – Appearance

    All pieces in all mediums (except radio) should have a similar look and feel to them, including type face, imagery, color palette, theme, copy voice, and should offer the same product at the same terms, should share contact information (same phone number, e-mail address, website address etc.) for response, and include the same expression of the product and company logotype. First glance continuity will go along way toward boosting that recognition and beefing up response numbers.

     

    Level 2 – Functionality

    Each piece should not only function on its own to drive response, but cross-promotes to drive response from the other approaches as well. Fast food advertising is often good at this technique. You see the spot on television, which drives you to the website for more details, which drives you to the restaurant to use the coupon from the web, which is emailed after a registration process. These three media are functionally tied together in this campaign. The TV spot, the website, the e-mail and the point of purchase materials all have the same offer, the same appearance and you are engaged by all 4 to drive a purchase. The added bonus is that along the way you’re also exposed to a full range of other related products, thus priming the pump for an extended purchasing relationship.

     

    Level 3 – Emotionality

    This is the toughest to achieve, but if the campaign is truly integrated it becomes extremely effective. Emotionality describes the emotion, the feeling elicited by the campaign. Each piece, each media contact, each touch-point with the customer should elicit that same emotional response. And at its peak, not only should the same emotion be activated, but the customer should feel it at the same level of intensity as the initial contact.

    Say for example you receive a direct mail piece from a company selling fitness equipment. You’re interested in losing weight and getting fit. The next day you see a TV spot for the same piece of equipment with even more information and a fuller set of benefits, shown to you in living color, and you’re pumped up all over again. That afternoon on the radio driving to the grocery store you hear a radio spot for that equipment. When you get excited, and when you get to the organic foods aisle of the grocery, you see a dispenser with coupons for $10 off organic foods for owners of that equipment, just by sending in the coupon or going online and registering with your equipment’s serial number. You’ve gotten that same level of excitement in all five cases, and it’s driven you to seek out the equipment and make the change in your life, for purely emotional reasons – there are probably lots of different pieces of equipment that would provide the exercise you need, but that one got you excited in a repeated, intensive way at a very deep emotional level, and kept up that intensity throughout all the different media and offer sets. That’s a truly effective integrated campaign, and it provides maximum return for your marketing dollar.

    All three levels offer advantages over the traditional, less coordinated campaign. The higher a level of engagement you can achieve, the higher the level of effectiveness you’re going to experience. There is a direct correlation between the degree of integration you can achieve compared to response levels among the target audience.

    Level I offers significant gains over any single medium alone, and is the most cost effective, in terms of the number of different media used and the level of effort required compared to cost to execute.

    Level II requires a bit more in terms of resources, but can provide a strong boost in response, especially for existing programs that have some brand awareness among the target audience but that need some refreshing to re-engage the audience.

    Level III requires a very strong effort to coordinate all the various elements, to time them to launch together, and requires more media exposure initially to drive traffic toward the goal, but the ultimate response level can be incredibly high. Double-digit responses from the selected target are not unusual, and on higher-ticket offers that can represent significant revenue.

    Of course, all of this coordination and integration cannot happen without the

    technological infrastructure in place to support it. The databases involved in handing off the leads from one medium to another, the online backbone and processing software that allows prospects to see exactly what they are supposed to see when visiting the target site, to be able to take advantage of offers referred by other medium, to be able to print custom coupons with matching response codes and list numbers, and all the rest of the necessary back end that provides the intelligence for all the activity behind the scenes cannot be overlooked.

    Overall, integration is a valuable key to attaining pushdown marketing response levels that are unrivaled by singular media levels. The extra expense and effort at the outset provides significant payback in the long-term, and sets the stage to expand your efforts to new products, new approaches and the creation of an extremely loyal purchasing audience for a long time to come.

    If you found these insights valuable and helpful, and would like to read more, subscribe to this blog today! Don’t forget to pic up your copy of “The Marketing Doctor’s Survival Notes”

     

  • Emoticons Do NOT Elicit Emotion From Prospects

    Emoticons Do NOT Elicit Emotion From Prospects

    I got several e-mails and text messages yesterday from other professionals and colleagues that contained one or more emoticons – you know, those little symbols of smiley faces or their derivatives made out of punctuation marks. These have become more popular with the advent of phone texting and Twitter, platforms of communication which limit the character count of a message. They are safe little familiar symbols that can be used in informal, personal communication to convey mood, or indicate that the preceding message isn’t serious. But one of the messages I received was acting in a different role, that of a selling communication piece, and I felt it was inappropriate to include this little symbol in this message. It reduced the seriousness of the document, as it was intended, but it also reduced the credibility of the sender, and diluted the sales message to the point that no serious prospect would consider buying services from this company – a net loss just for using a little symbol.

    That shows the power that written communication still has to hold, engage and persuade us in today’s high-speed communications environment. It also shows how much impact a few characters can have, be it negative or positive. Written communication is one of the elements that separates Man (big M) from other animals, and as such, I feel it’s owed a certain level of respect and that each of us should practice it’s usage and strive for the highest level of clarity and effectiveness in all of our written communication efforts, no matter how trivial or insignificant it’s intent. These little symbols work against that principal, and as such have no place in professional communications.

    Language is a very powerful tool, and written language has the additional advantages of thoughtfulness and permanence. You can take your time, craft effective phrases, get the word choice exactly correct to convey slight shades of meaning, and one you write it, either on paper or on a screen, you can review it again and again, in different contexts and under different circumstances, to help digest and grasp the intended meanings over time.

    Professionals, like the consultants here at Granite Partners, spend hours and hours honing their writing skills, crafting effective copy that evokes an emotional response from the reader, one that can persuade the reader to take action, either in advertising, or in direct mail, to make a purchase, to send back a coupon, to answer a survey, to buy an ad, and a host of other activities, without using one of these little symbols. We spend days devising questions to elicit a usable response in surveys, either to be spoken or read by the respondent, and don’t use any of those little symbols. We spend hours on the wording for a headline that elicits just the right emotional response, days on a piece of collateral material, fact checking, spell checking, organizing and editing to elicit just the correct reaction to the offer and call to action – without using any of those little symbols. So why are they even here?

    People use them as a short cut. They are lazy, or not properly motivated or sufficiently educated to use their own language properly, so the symbols make it easier to convey emotion with a limited vocabulary. It may seem curmudgeonly to professional readers,  but I feel that anyone who has graduated with a diploma from a public high school paid for by tax-payers in the country should be able to craft a sentence that is adequately robust so as to not need to add an emoticon at the end to convey meaning. Maybe a little test about a week before graduation for every senior, one that asks each one to write five paragraphs that will be sufficiently eloquent to persuade the principal that they should be allowed to graduate, without using the little symbols. I wonder what that would do to summer-school enrollment . . . ?

    More about the craft of language and other fascinating topics in your copy of “The Marketing Doctor’s Survival Notes”

  • E-Mail Brilliance In Bite-Sized Chunks

    E-Mail Brilliance In Bite-Sized Chunks

    5 Elements of Effective E-mail Messaging

    1)      Carry the Brand – if you send an e-mail to a new or known constituency, no matter what’s in the body of the e-mail, if it doesn’t get opened it’s a waste of time, and if you don’t have your brand prominently displayed, your chances of an “open” are decreased by 70%. Security concerns are at such a level that if you don’t recognize the sender, it will NOT get opened. Make sure your “from” address is the one the recipient will recognize. If you’re sending through a third party e-mail service, which most will be for lists of any size, be sure they have created an outgoing box your audience will recognize.

    2)      Make the Subject Compelling – in the inbox or in preview, even on mobile devices, the subject may be the only thing your recipients will see. If you get it wrong, it’s irrelevant, looks promotional or like a scam or come-on, it won’t get opened. Give the receiver a reason to read further, make it relevant and within your brand characteristic list. Then it reflects accurately and well upon your effort.

    3)      Make it Personal – Modern e-mail technology allows for multiple personalization of e-mail messages – use it. Sending e-mail that looks like a static ad says to the recipient “you don’t know me”. You do know them a little so show that you not only know but have something you think they would find of value. Call them by their name, use their company name, pitch it to their gender, include a neighborhood fact – all this comes from just the address block on a mailing list! Make the technology work for you.

    4)      Get it Up Front – Structure the message like a press release – put the most relevant information in the first few sentences, front load the offer, use a coherent and attention getting headline and subhead. Pique the reader’s interest, get him to read further, and draw them in with relevancy. Most people, if they open your message at all, will only read the top 10% of the message before deleting. You only have a few seconds to get your point across, so make it short and sweet.

    5)      Make it Easy to Respond – One of e-mail’s main advantages are the links to web content you can include. Whether it’s to drive web traffic, drive donation, registration for events, make it a simple single click to get them the relevant information you wish to convey. Multiple links should be part of the body of the message, as well as at the bottom where the response mechanism is likely to land. Converted links are fine so that the message makes sense even when printed, and avoids long URL addresses that interrupt the flow of the message. Provide links in multiple formats, both full length and blind as part of the call to action, so that if it gets printed and passed along on paper, you can at least type the URL into the browser and reach the response page. Devise a specific landing page, so that the link takes them to the specific response you want, and they don’t get lost among multiple pages of your site.

     

    List Hygiene – Essential elements for high deliverability

    Keeping your e-mail list clean and functioning has many advantages, both reputational and economic.  There are many parallels between snail-mail mailing lists and electronic mailing lists. The ISPs function in the Post Office role, and they have their rules of conduct just like their paper corollary.

    Several rules will help you keep the list clean and effective, now and into the future.

    1)      Respect Your Recipients – when bouncebacks and requests to unsubscribe should be respected and acted upon immediately. All “Unsubscribes” should be scrubbed prior to the next mailing. Bouncebacks should be examined to determine the reason and a decision made whether to repeat them or drop them immediately. Remove any duplicates – they may not you’re your message once, they sure don’t need it twice.

    2)      Respect the System – ISPs are duty bound by their customers and enrollees to police their bandwidth and protect their customers. Repeatedly mailing to bad addresses will alert the ISPs and your mail may be considered SPAM. Set up feedback loops with the ISPs to have them alert you to requests to stop mail and other dead ends in your list. Take your bounceback that are bad links and use them as the seed of a suppression list for future mailings.

    3)      Check it on the way in and the way back – use data checkers in your data entry screens to keep out obvious errors and fat-finger mistakes – simple things like seeing the “!” in place of the “@” can raise your deliverability. Check the bouncebacks for simple errors and correct them immediately, especially errors in the domain name, which can be done with a find/replace algorithm.

    4)      Take out the obvious offenders –  remove all addresses that have the word “SPAM” in them, and distribution addresses – sales@domain.com or info@domain.org – those folks didn’t give you permission to reach their entire sales department, and will view your mail as spam and report it to the ISPs as such. SPAM addresses are likely traps added by the ISP and will land you in trouble quickly.

    5)      Routinely Revive your Opt-in – once you have permission via opt-in from a recipient to send something to them, don’t count on them remembering that they granted it. For regular e-mailers, those with periodicals and times messages, refresh your opt-in message and take the opportunity to show any value-adds that make it worth it to grant permission.

    If your lists are large, some mechanical assistance might be in order. LeadSpend recently introduced a new email validation service that correctly verifies over 97% of all email addresses. Check it out here http://www.leadspend.com/validation . Companies like FreshAddress and others can do some of the hygiene for you and keep your reputation clean with the ISPs.

    Mechanical Considerations

     

    1)      Make sure your HTML and other formats are readable by ALL formats of e-mail reader, including Outlook and others. If using a service they will likely ask for three versions of the e-mail, one for each of the two major formats and a plain text version.

    2)      Don’t count on an image to tell the story, use text as well. Some mail programs are programmed to strip out the images, or deny your message entry as a result of containing the image, so the recipient never sees them. Some very strict firewalls will deny any e-mail with any images in them at all.

    3)      Give your audience a chance to unsubscribe – always. If your content is relevant, they won’t take advantage of it, and if it’s not, you won’t waste money on sending to them in the future.

    4)      Provide a phone number – some people still aren’t comfortable spending via the web, but will gladly give out their credit card number over the phone, thinking its safer.

    5)      Make sure the links and phone numbers are current and functional – enough said.

    6)      Test color – some colors read strangely on different monitors and different graphics cards.

    7)      Keep fancy backgrounds and images sizes to a minimum and still maintain quality – if the e-mail is a huge file it might get filtered out of many firewalls based on size.

    8)      Make the headline tell the tale – some readers don’t get past the top three inches of the screen.

    9)      Format for mobile – most don’t do that yet, and you’ll gain an advantage over them if yours is readable on a Blackberry or iPhone.

    10)   Learn from your mistakes and READ your  metrics report from the ISPs and your service provider – there is a lot of valuable information that can be gleaned from open rates, dwell times and other stats, ready to be used when you design the next campaign for this same audience.

    If you found this information valuable and would like more, be sure and pick up your copy of “The Marketing Doctor’s Survival Notes”

     

  • Just Like Rodney, Marketers Get No Respect . . .

    Just Like Rodney, Marketers Get No Respect . . .

    I’ve been reading and absorbing a lot of chatter about the level of respect marketing professionals get (or don’t get) in companies across the nation. There is some debate as to how to justify and validate the need for such positions as CMO, Marketing Director and Marketing Manager – debates that tend to ignore the elephant in the room. The bottom line in most of these discussions is that if nothing is bought or sold, then there really is no “business”, and that without the skill of folks internally in a marketing capacity, regardless of title, no one would be aware that the potential for commerce with your business exists, and therefore no transactions could occur. So based on that logic, without marketing, there is no business. Yet, there is an ongoing debate as to why such people are needed, and what their value to the organization might be.

    Why is this?

    Is it because the rank and file are jealous that the marketing people seem to have all the fun – planning and attending big events, creating collateral, going on photo shoots, speaking with media editors and television stations, creating commercials, and the like?

    Is it because other employees think they could do the marketers job, it doesn’t look too hard and they have fun, so why can’t I contribute to that?

    Is it because with so many marketers out there, there must be a reason everybody picks that, it must be easy?

    Is it because they have a larger budget to work with, and sometimes a larger staff over which to divide the work?

    I’ve heard all of these postulated in one form or another, and many others as well. I’ve sat in meetings where senior executives questioned the efficacy of the entire marketing department’s efforts in the face of 10-20% business growth directly tied to specific campaigns! When the economy slows, such complaints often rise in volume and stridency. Apparently a rising tide floats all boats, but when the waters recede, the marketers that made the boat and kept it afloat are no longer effective . . .

    As marketers, it is our job to facilitate contact and commerce from without the company by working from within the company. There needs to be a belief that an investment in marketing activity drives commerce far in excess of it’s cost, and that beyond that, criticism of the mechanisms employed and the means brought to bear are so much sturm and drang from naysayers. If a culture of marketing is formed and supported at the top of the organization, and communication of those efforts within the organization is fast, accurate and appropriate, that culture will flourish and all members of the company will prosper.

    So, how do we spread the word of such simplicity, and earn the respect we deserve as facilitators of transactional commerce?

    1) Do the job well, and get results that can be measured and proven.

    2) Stop worrying about who gets credit, or blame, and focus on results.

    3) Closely tie effort to results, and promote those results in reasonable, detached fashion – leave the ego out, and just state the facts without the superlatives.

    4) Drive the volume of effort upward – not all ideas are good ones, and not all executions are perfect. But the more you attempt, the more likely one will be a success.

    5) Innovate new ways of thinking and doing that drive success. Open your mind to input from unusual quarters, and give it it’s due diligence. You never know where the next great idea will come from.

    6) Show that the work you perform every day has value to the entire company, that everybody wins when marketing is effective.

    When sales slow down and the economy contracts, many companies go into “emergency” mode, cutting costs, laying off workers, creating an environment of fear and uncertainty, and delaying or outright removing opportunities for innovation – exactly the wrong reaction in a crisis. Many companies have been operating this way since mid-2008, and after six years the fear has turned to something else, killing creativity, halting innovation, and limiting possibilities for success.

    This presents an excellent opportunity for the marketing department to shine! Teach the others how to do more with less – we do it every day! Show others how to think and work your way out of a problem – we do it hourly! Tell others how to prime your thinking to view situations rationally with an eye toward exploitable opportunity – we do that constantly!

    Give away the benefits of your talents as a marketer, and the respect you deserve will return to you ten-fold – that’s a heck of an ROI in anyone’s book.

  • Digital Marketing is Direct Marketing in Electronic Clothing . . .

    Digital Marketing is Direct Marketing in Electronic Clothing . . .

    With some prodding from Eric Mohr (http://www.linkedin.com/in/ebmdirectmarketingservicesllc )I gave some thought to the reputation of Direct Marketing in the digital age. I read and absorb hundreds of electronic messages every day in the marketing sphere, everything from blog posts to group discussion posts, to e-mails promoting upcoming webinars on marketing topics touting digital marketing techniques, ad nauseum . . .

    What that gives me, besides a huge headache from message overload, is a good scan overview of what’s up in the marketing space, who’s promoting what and what techniques marketers and consultants are using to help their clients succeed (usually). After all that reading, there was something in the back of my mind that bothered and irritated me about most of the promotions and webinar topics – and it finally dawned on me that they looked eerily similar to the promotions and conference topics I was seeing two decades ago pertaining to direct marketing techniques!

    Now, don’t get me wrong, I understand that the new digital marketing sphere isn’t a straight rehash of direct marketing – there are many differences in delivery, technology and targeting operations. What bothered me is the approach that new marketers took, the tone if you will, of the communications, which tends toward the downward focused and toward a certain smug word choice that hit me as an experienced marketer from a bad direction. The underlying meta-text in many of these messages tends toward something like “Gee, you haven’t figured out how to use e-mail effectively? We’ve known about it for a long time, here’s what we ‘experienced’ digital marketers have learned in the last two years”.

    Guess what, digital marketers, direct marketers who are experienced and have applied their experiences to the use of e-mail, video marketing, targeting and social media, have had it figured out for nearly half a century! There still needs to be a good headline(read: Subject line), the offer has to be compelling to drive response (read:traffic), you can still break up the copy sentence length to help improve readability (read: chunking), you still need to send the message to the ‘right’ people on the ‘right’ list (read: geo-tracking for local promotion, keywords and webtracking for global campaigns), and most importantly, you still have to have good data, and use it appropriately, to reach out to the audience, engage their attention, and prompt a response (read: drive click-thru).

    Clearly, good DM skills, like copy writing, offer formulation, list selection and data mining still have a place in the success of digital marketing, regardless of what the new label for them is. So, why have the large consumer companies tended to gravitate toward the “new digital marketing” agencies to set up e-mail campaigns, social media programs and the like, if those skills reside in abundance at their usual DM agency? Because, like everyone else, hanging the “modern” or “digital” moniker on something makes it the new, shiny, spiffy cutting-edge ‘thing’, that everybody feels is the magic bullet that will solve their marketing problems. What the digital folks have going for them is the carefully crafted perception that digital marketing is “cheaper” or even “free” compared to all that paper, printing, postage, nixies, BRE accounts, etc., and in some respects that’s true. But I don’t know anyone who selects a major agency or marketing firm based on whether they use the cheapest methods. They select them based on creativity, skills, and innovation of approach, passion and inspired thinking. So how did the less experienced (by their own admission and by historical fact) agencies end up capturing this business that the old, experienced guys are perfectly well suited to capture?

    Two reasons, I think.

    1) The old guys failed to adapt, like saber-toothed cats. When digital was developing, these more experienced marketers often doubled down on their traditional skills, beefed up their relationships with traditional clients and grew them, rather than branch out and create digital divisions or think tanks to investigate and develop talent and expertise in those areas.

    2) The younger guys were deeply steeped in computer skills and culture, and saw the opportunities computers represented based on a comfort with the new paradigm in a very hands-on way. It’s a short step from sending e-mail instead of printing and mailing business letters to bulk e-mail and social media promotion, when you already spend a majority of time behind a terminal out of knowledge and curiosity. If a computer is your greatest tool in life, everything starts to look like a good digital adaptation.

    The downside is, much like the shift in the publishing world from printed books and magazines (done by professionals) to desktop publishing in the late 80s early 90s – having the tools doesn’t impart the underlying skills and abilities to make the final product effective. Many a butt-ugly company newsletter was produced by unskilled administrative help, involving many unusual fonts, bad design, poor use of things like bold and italics, bad rules and underlining, and a host of ills that the pros learned to avoid in their formal training. But they could do it cheaper, get it out in ‘good enough’ form and move on to something else.

    Same is true here – the digital guys understand the delivery mechanisms and constraints being used today much better, avoiding spam filters, enhanced delivery, subject lines that conform and pass through firewalls, embedded imagery and the like – but that doesn’t make them copywriters, or graphic designers, or impart understanding of consumer purchasing behavior or emotional engagement – ever talked to a computer geek at a party – not the height of emotional involvement in the conversation, was it?

    We’ve got the tools on the digital side that traditional direct marketing could only dream of even ten years ago – the ability to track audiences down to the individual level based on behavior, not just transactional history – a huge boon to experienced marketers! Now if we can just get the two camps together, to use those tools effectively based on years of tried and true techniques of engagement, not just delivery, marketing can rise to the level of a pure science and really drive revenue and loyalty like never before – something to put on your Christmas list for this year, gang . . .

    If you liked this or found it helpful or insightful and want to read more, subscribe to the blog above – and don’t forget to pick up your copy of “The Marketing Doctor’s Survival Notes”

     

  • Get Top Results When You Crank Up the “Direct” in Your Direct Mail

    Get Top Results When You Crank Up the “Direct” in Your Direct Mail

    By its very nature, direct mail promotions are designed to be one-to-one communication vehicles. As marketers, we are all aware of this in the back of our minds, but in practice, sometimes the “direct” portion drops off the map, and we end up producing unplaced promotional brand ads in an envelope. If you want o see the best returns possible from your direct mail program, make sure the “Direct” angle gets full attention.

    There are several ways to rev up the “you” in your programs. The most effective one starts with the concept of the mailing itself. As you envision the final mailing, conceptualize your offer, the list, the copy platform, the thematic graphics and other elements, get a good fix on your target audience for this particular mailing.

    The “It” Person

    Now take this to the next level, and picture in your mind a specific individual who fits the descriptors and parameters of your typical customer in your target market. Ask some key questions about your mailing with regard to this person: 1) Would this mailing appeal to this person? 2) Is the offer suitable for them and their needs? 3) Would this copy and these graphics attract their attention and resonate with them in an emotional way? 4) Is there enough reason for them to respond, to pay, to write a check and send it in?

    If the answer to any of those questions is no for that mythical person in your head, then adjust, correct, edit and revamp until the answer is yes to all of them.

    Copy is King

    Many of these personal elements start with the copy. Often, the offer is what it is, and either can only be changed minimally to match the audience or is inviolate based on the time and resources available. If you’re in that box, then the solution is to start with the copy.

    The word “You” is extremely powerful – indeed, you can’t write a true direct mail piece without it. If your copy speaks directly to that person in your mind, you are by fiat having that one-to-one conversation, and must use “You” to address that person directly, in first person voice. In today’s highly digital climate, the use of a person’s name in the copy is almost passé, but you would be surprised how little it actually gets used, aside from personalized laser letters. For postcards, fixed multi-page packages, and other formats, digital technology allows for the use of the recipient’s name and other information in repeated appropriate fashion, to juice up your message and really push the audience’s emotional buttons. This will drive your point home almost as powerfully as the word FREE in the offer, and will draw in the reader and involve them in your description and your message.

    Good copy for direct mail should tell a story. Listing benefits, describing features has its place, but the meat of the piece is a message directly specifically at the reader like there is no one else around, and it’s just the two of you having a short conversation. The story should be illustrative, persuasive, cohesive, and have a point. No matter how long it is, (and there are endless debates about copy length – see Hershel Gordon Lewis for details on both sides) you should make a point, explain why your point is the best, make your point again, and get out after asking for the order.

    Let the Data Be Your Guide

    To be able to write persuasive, effective copy, to concoct an effective working offer, you have to really know the audience. You can get to know the audience, but to do that, some research is in order. Carefully select your list to be as homogeneous as possible, to select as many similarities as you can to define the audience as finely as you can. That list if selects is the basis for your research. In order to get to know those people (and a market never bought anything, people buy products), you have to have an actual conversation with a few of them, to pick up the subtleties, the similarities and the things that really push their buttons emotionally that get them going, that get them excited.

    To help visualize the audience better, pretend to have a conversation with someone representative of the target group, and ask yourself these questions:

    1) How does this person speak, what word choices do they make?

    2) How do they synthesize the information you are presenting? Do they parrot it back to you verbatim, or do they absorb, summarize and paraphrase your concepts?

    3) Do they pick up and use any jargon you use related to the product?

    4) Does the product seem to be something they need, or just want?

    5) Do they seem to understand the product you are offering or are they just being polite?

    These ideas should give you plenty of ammunition with which to shoot down your current work and start from scratch, to really personalize your direct mail and make them truly “Direct” to the audience. Apply these techniques to your last project, recreate it with the new approach, and A/B test it against your control – you will be surprised at the results.

    If you thought this makes sense, and you’d like more information like this sent right to your inbox, subscribe to my blog above right, and don’t forget to pick up your copy of “The Marketing Doctor’s Survival Notes”