The Amazing Social Race
A new fad in the digital world is location-based marketing. It’s been a major driving tool to local businesses and capturing a whole new customer base. Location-social networks such as FourSquare and Loopt provide a new way for friends to meet up, connect, share and review some of their favorite spots in the city.
Any in-store promotion can grow like wildfire when it is broadcast through one of these social networks and shared by hundreds of people…it can also bring in a customer that would have never thought of stopping in.
A small coffee shop in Austin, TX uses Gowalla as its location-social media tool. Lift Cafe provides a 10% discount to whomever “checks-in” with their mobile phone. For those simply looking for a quick coffee, Lift Cafe would be an easy and optimal choice for the money saving consumer. Returning on a daily basis to get your morning coffee is a no-brainer if you get rewarded to do so.
From these types of promotions, the retailer has the ability to track and somehow reward their loyal customers. This then gives the incentive for customers to return time and time again. It especially can be appealing to the competitive sector of your customers. If, to possibly win a contest, why wouldn’t he/she check-in just one more time?
Ex: “10 check-ins and you’ll receive a free coffee”. Or sponsor contests, “The most check-ins this month, gets a free breakfast sandwich”.
With so many marketing tools, location-based marketing works well with the busy, on-the-go consumer- opening up a whole new customer base if used effectively. This social-mobile use of business is finally bringing internet to retail point of sale, and finally bringing together online and offline sale techniques.
Social + Email = BFF
With the wave of everybody and every business going social, email marketing is still important. Social is fast, and based on impulse. While email is well thought out, and more reliable. If you log onto any social network, you’ll see that your eye can be easily drawn to something shiny and blinking (also called social ADD). If you’re a business, you need to know how to market effectively on social sites because it’s becoming overwhelmingly full of content (and distracting shiny icons).
Email will always be important because it is our personal space. We’ve all spent a lot of time filtering out the right emails and senders, that what we get in our inbox is usually valid and important. Our inbox has become a centralized management tool that receives all messages from Facebook, Digg, Twitter, Flickr, LinkedIn, Revver, My Space etc. (you get the point).
This all can be good for email marketers. As social becomes more and more cluttered, and if businesses do not leverage social media correctly; email can and will remain the “trusted” information source from your company.
There is no doubt that social media is one of the most important tools of communication, and proves to be growing steadily; but social media is proving to enhance your email campaigns, not replace them.
Let your social media and email work together because after all they do play nicely.
A new wave of communication-Where is your brand?
Kids are our future. They’ll be leading our country; soon enough managing America through the fifth version of the iPad! Hopefully not. But really, they are growing up in a different age than you and I, and they are adopting to technology changes more than anyone else.
Do you know of any 17-year-old that uses email to say hi to a friend? Or better yet; a teen that stamps, seals and sends a letter? Probably not. And an 17-year-old probably doesn’t receive a lot of mail, or email for that matter.
ReadWriteWeb sited an important statistic: “A recent study from Pew found that text messaging is the favored method of communication by teens, surpassing cell phone calls and face-to-face conversations.” We’re losing our old communication model of advertising and marketing our brands because today’s teens, along with many aged 20-25, are adapting to the new wave of digital communication.
The market is changing so fast, and companies have been looking to other digital outlets to bridge this communication gap– recognizing this gap and grabbing a hold of their brand before it is lost and paying Mark Zuckerburg’s virtual wallet.
A few questions to ponder in the whole scope of digital space:
Are you monitoring your brand?
Is your target demographic receiving the right messaging from you?
Are you reaching to all social markets that are unknown to you, but used by many?
There are many communications to think about, and giving thought to these questions could essentially be a realization of a new marketing channel, or a centralized control of your brand.
Take control! It’s your company. Don’t let Twitter own your brand.
Back to junior high and being “in” with the cool crowd.
There are many factors that can affect the success of your email marketing campaign. And it’s not easy to know and follow all of the rules to actually get the emails to your subscribers’ inboxes, and opened.
Doesn’t sound like rocket science does it? It’s more like junior high…think of it as a catty group of girls. “If you’re wearing blue today, you can’t sit with us at lunch.” Well it’s time to sit with the cool kids, and learn a little about deliverability factors.
More than ever, ISPs (internet service providers) such as Yahoo, Gmail, Hotmail, etc. are making it harder for you to get your emails to that inbox. Not many people check their spam on a daily basis, so it’s critical that your emails are bypassing the spam filters.
"Mean Girls" (2004)
If the leader of the pack doesn’t like you- the rest won’t like you.
Same with ISPs. Many are sensitive to spam complaints. ISPs such as Hotmail, identify the number of recipients who mark the email as spam. This in turn will affect the deliverability to the rest of your Hotmail subscribers. A few people can really be the judge of your deliverability success!
If your best friend isn’t cool, you’re not likely to be cool either.
Sending reputation is highly dependent on others within your shared IP address. If others within your shared IP are sending spammy emails, ISPs will pre-judge your emails to be spam as well.
Wearing last-year’s style is a no-no.
Certain factors in your email campaign will filter your emails to the spam folder. Factors such as having a dollar sign in your subject line, or having too many images in relation to content can make your email be spam blocked.
So…it’s really up to you to learn how to get in with the cool kids. A common myth is that your email service provider handles inbox placement for you. This is not entirely false; a good ESP will manage a solid sending infrastructure, but you are essentially in control and you must own your sending reputation.
The anatomy of subscriber lists
There’s a reason why buying a list is shunned in the email marketing world. Although it is completely legal, if done correctly, most companies prefer to not go that route. It’s not just about saving money; maybe it’s saving their reputation?
Email Reputation management: the act of handling your email marketing campaign in a way that delivers optimally. For example, avoiding spam filters is essential to the success of email marketing, and managing your subscriber lists correctly will make your list more reputable.
Once you have a list, you want to make sure you’re targeting your audience, making the email effective, placing calls to action, and playing by the rules.
These are part of the formal methodology to building your subscriber list the right way. Building your list isn’t just a one-time effort; it is an on-going process that should always be kept in your e-marketing mind. Growing your list organically is proven to increase email marketing ROI.
Your list is the body of your subscribers. Take care of it to keep it working like a well-oiled machine!
Share the wealth!
What’s with everyone AND their moms griping on all of these social networks sharing personal information? It’s 2010, and we’re starting a digital social revolution. When’s the last time you called a high school friend to chat? Yep, me too. Just sent them a Facebook messages to get it all done in one mouse click.
On your next email campaign, you may send to 1,000 people. If 10% of those people share your email throughout their social network, your message can exponentially grow and could lead to more newsletter opt-in’s.
To be up to speed; Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn should be among your marketing efforts. Even if you, yourself, aren’t using the networking tools (yet) you can still put them in your email and let your subscribers do the sharing!
Remember, it’s always a plus to award your social butterflies. With social sharing, you can track who shares your message. Send those who share a “thank you” email, or even a discount off of their next purchase. These people are worth it; they are spreading your word!
You Say It’s Your Birthday
Triggered emails, you set them up once, and you let them do the work. It’s kind of a present in itself. We all like when emailing is that easy!
Birthday presents are expected. Getting a birthday present because you’re a subscriber is not. Set your triggered sends to go out automatically and your subscribers will thank you- by stopping by your store to get the free lotion, or getting the complimentary drink at your restaurant.
Your birthday pal will probably buy something else for making the trip, and probably bring in a friend. From this triggered email, that you set up and forget about, you have two+ happy customers spreading the word of their great birthday surprise. Now they’ll be telling others to subscribe, and even forwarding the email on to others.
Contact us for more information in regards to sending a triggered email, or feel free to call the LB (503) 528-9500 x105 and we can help you set them up for free!
Trouble in ESP land
It’s not new when we run into a client having troubles with their email service provider. There are so many tips and tricks to know, so little time. Have you really ever made a “measure” or did you really need to spend the $1000+ on the “Microsites” feature?
If you run into a technical problem when trying to deliver your email marketing campaign, who do you turn to? Hopefully you’re not spending your valuable time trying to figure it out.
Call us, or fill out our contact us form. We may have a tip or two. Or maybe even give you a better cost solution; we’re known to do that!
Results CONFIRMED!
We conducted an A/B test on our last “Weekly Tips” email sent to our newsletter list.
In this A/B test we took 10% of our newsletter list and split it into two- both having slightly different subject lines than the other:
Test 1 – Weekly Meds- Testing your lists
Test 2 – WEEKLY MEDS- Testing your lists!
Tuns out, the Test 2 email generated a 15% higher click through rate. Confirming, in this case, that using all caps and an exclamation point, work in getting a higher open rate!
Subscriber Lists- WE’RE TESTING
One of the important ways to leverage your subscriber list is testing it.
You already have your subscriber list. Your subscribers are signed up to hear from you, and they are the right people to get answers from! From testing, you can see what resulted the best open rates and the best click throughs, and use that best result in future email sends.
There are many ways to test your lists, but the most common and easy way to see results is A/B Testing. When conducting A/B Testing, an easy start is to try two different subject lines. As you all probably see on a daily basis, your subject lines are what gives your email a brief summary, a preview of the content, a sales pitch, and so on. Email marketers across the board try everything to get you to open their emails.
One of the most annoying (to many), but eye catching ways to get people to open your email is to USE ALL CAPS! (and exclamation points) in your subject line. Though deemed to a big no-no in the industry of email etiquette, some companies still choose to use this because they see that something there is working.
So let’s start testing!
Using A/B testing, 500lb is going to take a subset (about 10%) of our subscriber list and split them into two. One of our subject lines will be using ALL CAPS! and the other will be, well, more subdued.
Stay tuned on the results.
