Social Media

Social Media is so mainstream it is making its way into sitcoms.  The other day I was watching The Middle, an ABC sitcom and was humored to watch the dad, a middle aged man struggle with social media.  He is a middle aged man who is trying to promote his new business.  The exchange was around a Twitter feed.  He received an insult about his product.  Naturally, getting defensive he immediately replied to the Twitter which started a Twitter argument.  He was surprised at all the Tweets and realized he had no idea how to deal with it.  His college aged son stepped in, shaking his head in disbelief about

Twitter is an effective tool to promote the company and brand.  It can be used effectively to share a promotion or a link to your company website of blog.  Once a Tweet is sent, it can be easily forwarded and distributed.  So posting the link to your web site, You Tube video, blog, etc with a strong message or value proposition will help the message to be shared and promoted to a wider audience.

Yelp was mentioned in another sitcom, Last Man Standing (another ABC sitcom).  The premise is that the main character owns an Outdoor Adventure store and has recently opened a restaurant/café.  Someone gives a bad Yelp review and the immediate, and correct action, is that the manager immediately tries to rectify the problem by reaching out to the customer and inviting him back to give him a free meal and to fix the post with customer service.

Both these examples show how pervasive social media has become in our culture.  It also exemplifies how important it has become to marketing and the importance of preserving the brand.  As important as engaging and leveraging social media is the ability to listen and learn from the chatter.  It helps a company better understand the customer. 

Below is a link to a very interesting article on Social Media as a marketing tool.

http://www.toprankblog.com/2010/06/7-social-media-marketing-solutions/

Email Marketing

The focus for this week is:  E-Mail Marketing.  How can it be used effectively?   With the growth in the web, e-mail is a burgeoning method of marketing and accounts for much of the marketing activity companies deploy. 

One of the benefits of email is that the costs are much lower than for DM.  An April 2015 study by the Direct Market Association, “Response Rate Report” found that email had the highest ROI compared to other marketing communications. Below is a chart from MarketingCharts.com that shows the ROI of different marketing media from the DMA study.

http://www.marketingcharts.com/traditional/direct-media-response-rate-cpa-and-roi-benchmarks-53645/#.Vsng8rrOAGo.mailto

However, while the costs are much lower than for direct mail (DM), I caution marketers to be careful using email and to understand how to create the most impactful communications.   Too much messaging leads to “ email fatigue”  The consumer tiers of all of the inbox messages just hits “delete, delete, delete” while in their inbox.  How does the marketer get consumers to open the email and read the message? 

So how can email be successful?  First, the pure economics of how low cost it is should be part of a marketing campaign.  Collecting email addresses of existing customers is a wise move and should be a key objective of all communications and transactions with customers.  Follow up and relevant and targeted messages to existing customers will likely drive higher response. 

For new customers and prospects, companies can also buy email lists of customers.  Once a database of addresses is established, email can be used effectively for promotion and customer communication.  The challenge is how to get the email open. 

The key metrics for marketers is Open Rate which is the percent of email messages that were successfully delivered were actually opened by the recipient.  The subject line is the key driver to grab attention and interest to get enough interest and curiousity to open the email.  Creating a relevant and strong subject line is important to encourage customers to open the email. 

Once opened, you want the recipient to take action and click on a link to order or to get more information.  This is the Click Through Rate (CTR).  This is the percent of customers that opened the email that found enough interest and relevancy to click on a link. 

Once the customer clicks on you want to drive the customer to a web site where they can get more information of the product or service you are promoting and to a site that is simple to navigate and order.  This will help to maximize your web visits and sales.

You may wonder with the rise of email technology why marketers even continue to use direct mail.  The reason is that it is still effective.  E-mail is not a perfect substitute for direct mail which is the traditional ink and paper communications that has been used extensively.  Direct mail still generates a higher response rate than email.  This was another finding in the DMA study, “Response Rate Report”.   However amidst all of the promotional messaging, we do find promotions and offers that are worth realizing.  For companies and marketers DM is typically very expensive.  There is the print and production costs and postage.  To minimize costs and to get the most benefit from DM marketers have sophisticated models to target the mail, whether it is based on geography or customer profile.  Since DM is expensive, it is important that marketers target the direct mail so you are reaching the most likely customers to take action to improve your response rate and return for the company.

            DMA Response Rate Report 2015

For more information and statistics on this topic or to review the DMA 2015 “Response Rate Report” study the following links are available

thedma.org/news/data-driven-marketers-diversify-across-channels/

Direct Media Response Rate, CPA and ROI Benchmarks, April 14, 2015 - by MarketingCharts staff, http://www.marketingcharts.com/traditional/direct-media-response-rate-cpa-and-roi-benchmarks-53645/#.Vsng8rrOAGo.mailto

2015 DMA study: Direct mail response rates leave digital in the dust, http://sequelresponse.com/blog/2015-dma-study-direct-mail-response-rates-leave-digital-in-the-dust/

Shopping Issues

It's a cold snowy day today in the Northeast and MidAtlantic regions of the US.  I thought it was a good idea to look for Carribean Cruises.  I searched for Carribean Cruises and immediately saw an Ad promoting "Royal Carribean 70% Off".  Perfect.  I click on the link and it takes me to CruiseLines.com.  It has a very easy and navigatable search where I can select on several different attributes of a cruise.  However, the search results require me to put in my contact information.  I understand why the website requires the information as it is the best way to collect information on potential customers and build a prospective customer database.  However, I am not at the point of really considering a cruise.  I am still in the "wouldn't it be nice" and dreaming phase.  I was reluctant to put in my information so I exited out.  From an e-marketing perspective is the best way to collect information?  Do you think this discourages more prospective customers from perusing or is it effective for the company to build a targeted database of prospectives customers?   I don't like to provide the information when I am "window shopping".  From an emarketing perspective, I think the company would be better to allow searches but to collect cookies to send targeted ads over the next several days and weeks.