Email Marketing Back to Basics

Email Marketing is an accessible and affordable way to reach your audience. Virtually anyone can launch an email campaign with little to no effort. This approach is often taken by many due to the ability to easily deploy an email, with the thought of creating a strategy pushed to the wayside along with the building blocks of a solid Email Marketing Program.

Whether you’ve been in the game for three months or three years, take the time to assess your Email Marketing strategy using the check list below and help put your current Email Marketing efforts into perspective:

1. Identify Your Goals

• Are you looking to generate leads, acquire new customers, or to sell your product?

2. Analyze the Health of Your House List

• How clean is your data?
• What kind of information are you currently collecting? Should/could you be collecting more?
• Could this information be segmented?
• How frequently are you sending to your current list?

3. Identify Your Target Audience

• Put yourself in their shoes and be sure that you are sending a message that answers the “Why Do I care?” question. Be relevant!

4. Identify the Best Mix of Messaging

• Short-Form Editorial (Tip of the Day)
• Long-Form Editorial (Newsletter)
• Short-Form Promotional (Single Product)
• Long-Form Promotional (Multiple Products)
• Transactional (Event-Triggered)

5. Identify the Ideal Frequency

• Capture this preference during the signup process & send accordingly
• Update your send frequency to behavioral data when available
• Don’t have access to user preferences? Look at industry best practices to identify a good starting point

6. Create Benchmarks to Measure Results

• Leverage research resources like Forrester & Marketing Sherpa to guide your success metrics

7. Test, Improve, Test

• Continually test, learn, improve & repeat
• Don’t be afraid to try something new, the results may surprise you!

Google Analytics Setup

As mentioned in my previous post, Making an Analytics Choice, every marketer needs to be able to measure their online marketing campaigns and website performance in order to improve and succeed.

Using Google Analytics is a great way to get started tracking your web stats. Google provides the tool online at no cost. The web-based tool allows you anytime, anywhere access to your website analytics information. Before you can get started with looking at your stats, you need to create an analytics account and get the tracking working on your website.

First, you will need a Google account. If you don’t have one, it is the first step. After that, you just need to sign into the Google Analytics. Google will ask you a few simple questions to create your account.

Next, you will need to install the tracking code provided by Google at the footer of your website. If you have a website that is a series of standalone HTML pages, you will need to install the script on every page in order for it to be tracked. You just need to copy and paste the script just above the tag. If you have an include that automatically generates information for the footer of every page, you will most likely need to put it in there.

On the tracking code screen, you will notice a lot of options including Advanced and Customer Options. We will cover more advanced configurations of Google analytics and when to use those features. Once you get the script installed, you can come back and check to make sure it is tracking correctly. Once your script is tracking, you can start to use the Google Analytics reports and all of your website visitors.

Now that you have analytics up and running, we will start to focus on the Google Analytics Reporting Interface during the next post. Until then, keep measuring!

P.S . . . If you ever need to back to your account to find your tracking code, it can be a bit tricky to find it. Here is how you do it:

1. Log in to Google Analytics
2. From the Overview page, select the account that has the profile for the tracking code you're looking for, as the code is profile-specific.
3. Select the profile from the accounts Overview page.
4. From that profile's Actions column, click Edit
5. At the top right of the 'Main Website Profile Information' box, click Check Status

Your tracking code will be on this page.

Best Practices for Integrated Online Marketing Campaigns – Part 1

Every online marketing activity belongs in one of three categories: Acquisition, Conversion or Retention. Integrated online marketing is a complementary combination of tactics that provide consistent messaging and (hopefully) successful marketing. The key to success is the exact mix of marketing elements that are unique to each individual business.

• Acquisition is simply getting prospects to your website or business. These activities include awareness and direct marketing tactics. Display ads, social media, organic search optimization (SEO), paid search marketing, blogging, webinars and many other tactics are used to drive traffic.
• Conversion actions typically occurring on your website that aim to make a visitor take a specific action. Conversion can be any specific goal such as ecommerce sales, lead form completion, registration, downloading content or even just viewing a page(s).
• Retention is every effort to increase the value of a prospect by encouraging repeat visits, further engagement and additional purchases. Email is the king of retention marketing, but other activities have substantial impact including blog feeds, loyalty programs and online customer service.

Impact of Business Models One of the biggest filters on the effective online marketing mix is the type of business model the company/website represents. BtoB, BtoC vs. Non-Profit is one level of that, but even more important for determining media mix is the purpose of the site: Branding, Education, Lead Generation vs. eCommerce.

• Branding focused websites need a larger mix of awareness campaigns such as online display, content sponsorships and social media marketing. Broad information search campaigns that are focused on 1-2 word phrases can also be effective in this mix. Conversion can be measured online in brand interactions, but capturing an email address and creating more brand interactions with valuable, fresh content will improve results.
• Education is a common goal for many websites, especially ones that rely heavily on advertising revenue. Organic traffic is critical for success. Tactics like SEO and social media marketing need to be built into the site architecture to maximize “free” visits. Conversion may be measured in page views and the site architecture should be designed to maximize those through navigation. Once again capturing emails and driving repeat visits with great free content will be key to growth.
• Lead Generation is often core to most BtoB sites, but can be an important part of consumer and non-profits as well. Typically leads are needed when sales cycles are longer and more complex. Awareness and reach are less important here. Some well placed ads on contextually targeted sites can help, but more important here will be search marketing. Paid search and organic optimization (SEO) can drive traffic to lead generation focused landing pages. It’s important to build lead capture into every aspect of your website to maximize conversion, and setup the critical step of retention. Retention may occur through email, or it could be moved offline to a more direct sales channel through a CRM integration.
• eCommerce sales are one of the most difficult types of sites to market successfully. Competition for valuable traffic is the biggest challenge. The best eCommerce marketers like Amazon.com focus on lifetime value ROI and not cost per acquisition. Here is where tracking all the costs and the results of all online tactics becomes critical in order to measure the true ROI. Many tactics can work successfully here but the key ones include paid and organic search, affiliate marketing and shopping comparison engines for initial acquisition. Onsite conversion will need a strong A/B testing program with dedicated topical landing pages to maximize conversion. Lastly, a strong email program with good segmentation and relevant promotional offers will extend and grow the lifetime value of the customer.

Check back for Part 2 in a couple weeks.

Augmented Reality - A Digital Marketer's Perspective

With all the hype around Augmented Reality AR a lot of marketers are ready to jump in head first like a social media junkie signing up for the latest location based social media site. But while the technology certainly has potential and is admittedly very exciting, its practical use in marketing lacks any mass ROI or platform for adoption. To understand this, let’s first look at what AR is.

WHAT IS AUGMENTED REALITY?

Augmented Reality is the effect of enhancing or supplementing a person’s view of the world via an assistive technology. The most easily recognizable example of AR is familiar to many of us during football season on any given Sunday. The yellow first down marker used in football was one of the first examples of AR. It was used to communicate information about the game that was hard for the casual viewer to see in real-time. More recently the concept has been used in science fiction movies such as The Terminator, Minority Report, and The Matrix: Revolutions as well as books like Rainbow’s End, where the characters experience entire CG worlds through wearable computers and contact lenses.

In his recent Ted Talk, Pranav Mistry demonstrated the potential of his Augmented Reality platform, SixthSense. This intriguing talk included examples of newspapers playing video, airline tickets displaying real-time flight status, and combining printed text with digital documents. However, there are a number of mobile Apps for the iPhone and Google’s Android OS that already bring AR to the average person.

Examples include:

• Google Goggles – Take pictures of objects and get information about them, from books to bridges http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GgcE_EQRpdA
• TwittARound – Find tweets posted near you http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Vbh7nHalCc
• Layar – AR browser for iPhone and Android phones, showing real-time digital information using your phone’s camera http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9eqcMGqJ-A

DON’T BELIEVE THE HYPE While many of these apps are very interesting, their viable application for marketing initiatives is a novelty at best and snake oil at worst. While launching something on a large scale can help build brand recognition and equity, such as Esquire’s Augment Reality issue featuring Robert Downey Jr, the ROI story is not as rosy of a picture.

Consider Best Buy’s Augmented Reality circular. The circular exceeded Best Buy’s expectations with more than double the number of users participating than expected. However, that number was only 6,500, out of a Sunday circulation of 43 Million. In other words, less than 1/1000 of one percent…

PROJECTIONS

Gartner recently released a report on the “Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies, 2009”. In the report, Augmented Reality is on its way to peak inflated expectations. After that it will spend time in the trough of disillusionment before tracking toward the plateau of productivity.

Some projections for augmented reality include:

• Market projected at $350 to $732 million by 2014
• Sixth Sense development
• Video game integration
• Smart eyewear and heads-up displays
• Augmented advertising
• 5-10 years to mainstream adoption

Right now, Augmented Reality is enjoying a firestorm of hype and the good news is that this should stimulate investment. However, AR has a number of hurdles to overcome before it becomes a viable technology for marketers.

Springing into the Fresh View from West 6th

With an estimated 83,000 tweets yesterday about Spring, I would say Spring is definitely around the corner…

Walking through the office yesterday I happened to walk by an Optiem Account Executive, Lisa Zandy, wearing a bright yellow dress and it instantly hit me, it’s March, and Spring is right around the corner! With heads down working, dreary grey skies and whiteout conditions as of late, I had completely forgotten. Realizing Spring is nearly here it immediately brightened up my Monday mood, but it also gave me great inspiration for this introductory post.

Considering all things Spring, I think it is safe to say that Optiem is definitely Springing into March. With the bright colors emerging around the office, the rolling out of advanced services and of course enhancements to View from West 6th - I say bring on Spring rejuvenation. As many of you might have noticed, View from West 6th has been making some minor changes over the last few weeks and even bigger changes are to come. One of the biggest enhancements is the expansion of the blog contributors. As Optiem continues grow, it is becoming more important to leverage valuable internal knowledge and encourage the sharing of thought-leadership through View from West 6th. Readers will now be able to get to know Optiem employees, subject-matter experts and learn more valuable information about the digital space. As we make this transition, we would like to highlight the hard work of Linda Nawrocki, Director of User Experience. Linda has done a great job sharing her vast knowledge of Internet strategy and we are confident that our subject-matter experts can follow in her footsteps. So as Optiem continues to roll out more announcements and begins to share ideas, keep a look out for more changes coming to View from West 6th like a redesign, the addition of more sharing options and more “get to know us” content.

This Spring mentality isn’t only limited to View from West 6th. As I mentioned above Optiem has been hard at work for the last year growing and making great improvements both as an organization and as individual leaders within the digital space. Products of this growth can be seen in our revamped service offerings, our physical expansion into the 4th floor and the emergence of Uppercut, the newest member toAdcom ∙ Optiem. It is these growths and much more that have Optiem, Adcom and Uppercut all working together to provide a collaborative approach to our client and work.

All of this talk about March and Spring has led many Optiem employees to jump into the debate on whether you can consider March as the start of Spring or not. (And living in Cleveland it may be debatable with the probability of at least 2 more snow storms.) So whether March could be considered the tail end of Winter, a time for Spring Cleaning or the beginning of Spring; one thing is for sure – All of us here from the View from West 6th and Optiem see March as a time to take in the fresh air, see all of our hard work grow and look forward to the new energies it brings out in us all.

We look forward to sharing our ideas and greatly encourage participation. Happy Spring!

You Are Ted Turner (or Rupert Murdoch, Depending On Your Politics)

Back in the prehistoric days of 2008, I gave a speech to a group of direct marketers entitled "You Are Me(dia)" in which I talked about how the powerful nexus of added value content marketing approaches and new (mostly elegantly simple and free) communications/distribution channels and streams were transforming the way brands would interact with the world.

Since then, I have watched as our business and our clients have begun to test, tweak and embrace the concept, and recently in rapid succession, thought leaders that I follow have crystallized this vision.

Brian Solis recently put together a great post on Mashable titled "Why Brands Are Becoming Media".  Exactly.

Brian: "As media, brands earn prominence and hopefully influence as rewards for contributing meaningful content."

In his post, Brian cited the work of Sean Corcoran, a brilliant analyst at Forrester Research.

Sean: “Increasingly, interactive marketers are being asked to manage a wide range of paid and unpaid marketing communication —- despite the fact that many marketing departments are still organized around traditional paid marketing channels. All types of online media (whether ‘earned,’ ‘owned,’ or ‘paid’) can play specific roles in meeting marketers’ objectives —- especially when seamlessly working together."

In his report, Sean provided a great chart that helps to define this new landscape:

 










Finally, Cory Treffilitti at MediaPost recently posted some great thinking on how brands should operate and broadcast in a connected world:

Cory: "The Always On Brand" is a brand that is actively broadcasting and listening at the same time, all of the time.  It's the kind of brand that knows what it wants to say, but is not afraid to listen to feedback and react accordingly."

The bottom line: Your brand equity should be based on solid content and immersed in all media...whether owned, paid for or earned, and remember, it's always on.   After all, Ted and Rupert really don't need the business any more, but you do.


Posted by Clyde Miles

Making an Analytics Choice

There is a saying that you cannot improve what you don't measure. This tome is the foundation for online marketing analytics. If you don't really know how your work is performing, do you really expect those efforts to do more for you?

Over the next few weeks, I am going to be writing about how to use analytics to help you measure and improve your online marketing efforts. From choosing an analytics tool, to setting goals and understanding how to make improvements, there are a lot of different aspects of analytics.

Let's start from the beginning - the analytics tool. If you are not measuring, start now. If you are measuring, make sure you can get enough detail to make decisions. There are several analytics packages available with multitude of price ranges and complexities. Avanish Kaushik, the current Google Analytics Evangalist, put together a great web analytics tool comparison.

If you are just starting out, I would recommend Google Analytics as a solution. Google does not charge you for an account, you only need to have an gmail account to sign up.

One of the benefits of the Google Analytics platform is that is gives you a good view of basic information out of the box, but it allows you to build a high level of complexity as you want to get deeper into the data of your online marketing campaigns.

Contrary to popular thinking, analytics is not only for your website. It can be attached to any of your online marketing in order to measure campaign effectiveness. For example, you can add parameters to the end of the URLS in your email, online display or paid search ads.

In my next post, I am going to cover how to set up Google Analytics on your website and configuring your profile. It isn't a huge task, but it is one you want to do correctly.

Until then . . . keep measuring!