As many of you know, Digital Marketing Strategy was honored last week to be included in Aaron Kahlow’s Online Marketing Summit regional conference in Phoenix (Mike Corak – “Relevant Content is King” session, David Hibbs closing keynote panel – email expert).  A great show, and like an avalanche, OMS continues to gain steam with many of the digital industry’s best and brightest attending and speaking.  The Phoenix summit was the kick-off of the new Online Marketing Summit tour, a 23 city show with stops across the US and Canada.  If it’s coming to a city near you, I definitely recommend checking it out – a perfect mix of local and national insight, with strong networking opportunities.  The Phoenix version featured topics including social media, content strategy and distribution, search, email, usability and loads of case studies presented by tactical experts and communication executives alike.  It appears future shows on the tour will have more of the same – a great formula – fantastic!

As a follow-up to my presentation at OMS Phoenix (Relevant Content is King)

I would like to share some of the Q&A generated at the event and directly to me over the last few days:

Q – With Yahoo!’s purchase of Associated Content (slide 14), and the growth of other large content publishers like Demand Media, what can smaller publishers do to compete with these entities?

A – The content production and distribution game will not be won solely through the quantity of content produced, but rather, by the return on investment the produced content provides.  Extremely relevant, link worthy content that results in conversions, more than eyeballs and visits, is what both advertisers and target audiences desire, and what publishers will eventually be held accountable to.  While small publishers may not possess the ability to build content in the same mass and with the efficiency of larger players, they will have the opportunity to outwork and outsmart larger publishers through niche understanding of communities and target audiences, and frankly, creativity and relentless elbow grease.  Let’s remember, content publishers don’t determine what content is noteworthy – the public does, and by understanding what content is in demand (through search demand research), and what that interest means (through search and social conversation analysis), smaller publishers can get one-step closer to outperforming the competition.

Q: In reference to your navigation naming example (slides 43 and 44), should smaller players that have a harder time ranking for competitive phrases use less popular keywords?

A: No.  While it’s tempting to leverage the power of a site’s architecture to rank in search for all targeted phrases including less competitive long-tail phrases, you’re better off using the most common vernacular in way-finding messaging to ensure you make the most relevant connections possible with the user.  Further, this behavior, along with matching linguistics in titles, meta, headlines and copy, is shown to encourage those linking to your pages to use this common vernacular in their links, helping sites rank for those more competitive phrases over time.

Q: How do you know that consumers use the same language online as they do offline?  Have you seen improved results from this type of research for communications in both online and offline communications?

A: The short answer is that we’ve tested this theory and it holds true in all online and offline communications.  Why?  Because requests for information and conversations online are conducted by actual real people!    More scientifically, typical offline to online behavior shows that people take interest generated offline to online tools like search engines to fulfill their interest, meaning that data taken from search shows offline content interest by nature.

Any other questions? Feel free to ask them here.  For the record, we’re looking to improve the content of this presentation for future speaking opportunities, and would appreciate any feedback you may have.  Thank you as always!

First off, I love Pei Wei – great food and affordable prices.  The other day though I received this email in my inbox:

Look closely, what do you see? Not much here for me to take away, but at least I’m a valued guest.  So as a fan of Pei Wei, I’m going to offer up some advice on how they can make some minor improvements to their email marketing efforts and improve their overall success, and you can too!

1. Be aware of potential delivery issues

The from name is good, I quickly know this is an email from one of my favorite restaurants, Pei Wei.  The subject line is good as well, as I’m expecting a free voucher on a new item.  The problem though, was this was put in my junk folder (after releasing it from my spam filter).  I’ll save all the details about spam filters for a later post as their are many factors that can play a role in getting blocked: reputation, email size, text to image ratio, content and a laundry list of many other factors play a very important role and help explain why this email didn’t make it to my inbox.  Proper testing and monitoring can help limit the likely hood of getting caught in filters.  Make sure to monitor your programs this year to help limit the likelihood of getting junked!  And remember email delivery doesn’t equal number of emails sent minus number of bounced.

One other thing to note is some email clients will display a warning to the subscriber if the click a link within an email that was placed in the junk folder.  This is another reason why staying out of the junk folder is very important.

2. Know the inbox – not everyone will see your “entire” email

Not everyone will see the whole email, so you need to take into consideration preview panes and how your email looks to those viewing email within these panes. Luckily there is only two types – horizontal and vertical.  If your call to action is too far to the right, or too far down in the email, it has a greater chance of being missed by this audience.  Remember, people are busy and move quickly so make it easy for them to take action.

3. Images are worth a thousand words but when turned off they are worth nothing

Imagery can really help add to your messaging, but when your whole email is an image and images are turned off by default, you are essentially saying nothing at all. Images should be used to enhance the overall message and call to action.  So in this email from Pei Wei it would have been great to see a voucher, or even the new dish.  In this email, your copy becomes invisible without enabling images, and the imagery is focused on the holiday event…incorporating some of this other imagery would help get this message across far easier than having to read and decipher the entire content of the email.

4. Add Content (but not as an image)

Similar to the last point, your textual content (unless it is brand related and requires a certain font type) should be placed into the email so when images are off it is still visible.  This comes in handy when someone may be getting this email on their mobile device like Blackberry or Windows mobile device.

5. Clear call to action

Make sure it is clear to the subscriber on what is is they need to do next, and make it very apparent. Here is a quick mock up I created in order to drive home the simplicity that could have been added to this email. (Sorry for the lack of design, I was in a hurry to mock this up.)

In this layout, you can quickly see the things you need to do in order to get your Free Caramel Chicken dinner.  I don’t need to read through tons of copy in order to learn about what is needed to take advantage of this offer.

6. Keep your promotions simple and measurable

In the Pei Wei email, there is no call to action. Finding the nearest location should be front and center.  This will help Pei Wei determine if people are interested in the offer.  If not, maybe future offers should be adjusted in order to create more interest among their subscribers.  Adding a printable coupon or show this email to the cashier will also help determine the traffic generated from the campaign.  Over time, you can start to tailor your offers to each subscribers interests (opens, clicks, bounces, etc.).

7. Utilize space efficiently

The canvas for your email is somewhat limited, add in preview panes and various monitor sizes and your really left with 600 pixels of good horizontal space.  As mentioned before in bullet two, you want to keep your important information higher up in the email so your “canvas” becomes pretty small. As you can see in the Pei Wei example the content of the email is pretty far down from the top, with the top adding no value to this communication.  This layout may work well as a print ad, but email is an entirely different medium.  Space becomes extremely important, make every pixel count.

8. Add viral components to your campaign

Email was the first form of social media, you can forward email to friends and family to spread the message.  Now more and more email service providers are incorporating sharing with social networks into their software.  What better way to get your email to work harder for you then to give your subscribers the capability to spread your message and promotion through forward to a friend and share with your network.  In this case, let the subscriber promote this offer through their facebook or twitter accounts.  Kudos to Pei Wei for including references to their social accounts, but “check us out on” is missing the point of what happens there…interactions and conversations with people who have the same interests in Pei Wei!

9. Use the opportunity to further your brand

Use your ongoing communications to continue to build upon your branding.  Don’t send your subscribers a new, redesigned email every time you send an email.  It will take your subscribers “time” to make sure that what they are looking at is really an email from you.  By keeping colors and fonts similar, you lessen the time it will take them to familiarize themselves.  That doesn’t mean you can’t create campaigns that add in new elements, but keep a few of the elements the same.  It is interesting to see that Pei Wei has chosen to move there logo to the lower portion of the email versus front an center to ease the subscribers mind that – yes, this is an official Pei Wei email, not spam…even though this was in my spam folder.

10. Analyze the post click experience

Where are you sending the subscriber?  Does the page the subscriber land on match link they clicked?  In the case of this Pei Wei email, it took me to the home page (which for some reason wasn’t working in Safari).  Not bad since the same lantern promotion was a feature on the home page, but landing on the promotion page would have been a far better landing area.  Make sure to use your web analytics to track your email subscribers and see what they do when they visit the site.  You’ll be surprised on the results you may find!

Bonus tip: Stay away (far away) from linking generic text like “here” or “click here.”  This adds zero value to the reader, especially those who scan the information in front of them.  Use the opportunity to explain what they will get when they click – Visit our website, Download 10% off coupon…

If you try some of these out on your own email campaigns, leave a note in the comments and share some the results you get!

It’s 5 a.m. in Arizona , which equates to 4:00 a.m. PST, 7 a.m. EST, and 6 a.m. CST.  This puts me close enough to the middle of the launch of the annual shopping feeding frenzy that I’m unofficially ringing the bell, and calling this the online observer’s start of what we’ve all been schooled to know as “Black Friday,” the biggest shopping day of the year for retailers and consumers alike.  While traditionally an in-store experience, more and more retailers are bringing Black Friday online, not only advertising promotions occurring at their brick and mortar locations, but also fishing for sales through their web stores.  Let’s see what’s happening at this early hour, shall we?

Examining PPC, or Pay-Per-Click, activity is always a good way to get a quick lay of the land.  Paying for a phrase is an important indicator of corporate level interest as there’s a financial investment attached, all be it relatively small, and not necessarily an indicator of true revenue production as we can only see the ad and its placement, not its conversion through this lens.  None the less, looking at the term “Black Friday”  we see the following:

Some points of interest:

1. Black Friday advertisements are largely dominated by big box retailers these days with very little action from local players, likely due to the cost to compete.  Additionally, some Black Friday entrepreneurs (coupon sites, blogs, etc.), and odd-balls like Visa are advertising under the flag of “savings,” have entered the conversation.
2. Open competition exists between online only retailers like Dell and Amazon and multi-channel retailers, and the lines are blurring more than ever.
3. Few are maximizing the budget they’re spending online by implementing according to best practice, and creating relationships beyond Black Friday.  The remainder of this post concentrates on opportunities to improve results.

The Post Click Experience

The largest opportunity for improvement across the board starts with the point of engagement, most commonly, the website.  Few retailers go the extra mile to optimize the post click experience for their customers, ensuring relevance between the ad and the offer, and therefore maximizing results.  Note this post will largely ignore impediments like requiring users to choose a store, or the balance between promoting online and offline sales realizing that these business decisions go beyond what we are able to examine from the outside.

Relevance to Black Friday – About half of the retailers above acknowledge that visitors came from a “Black Friday” related search phrase and ad, a start but too low.  Example, Target takes the visitor to a page touting its “2 Day Sale.” The urgency of Black Friday is not there, nor are any calls to action to purchase online.  While spending across all sites, this is the effort that leaves the most to be desired.

What I do like about Target’s effort is the concentration on collecting contact info to further the conversation.  Linking to social media outposts would have been wise, as would exposing the fields required to subscribe to Target’s communications.

Call to Action, Creating Relationships Beyond Black Friday – Walmart does miss the opportunity to create a connection beyond picking a local store (email, social links, etc all can build relationships past this visit should a web visitor not purchase on or offline).

Walmart Black Friday Landing Page 2009

It should be noted that Walmart does have links to social media outposts, however, they exist near the bottom of the page and therefore may as well not exist.

Ease of Use – Others like Sears who create a great connection to products and the brand, unfortunately bombard the visitor with a non-consumable product listing page (see the craziness at here – below is one of three screen shots required to capture the page).  I’d guess the bounce rate of this page to be equal to Target’s if not higher.

The Winner? – While far from perfect, the best multi-channel retail experience that I’ve seen thus far comes from JCPenney.

Driving store traffic is huge for most retailers believing you’ll buy more than the sale you come to the store for – no argument – and JCPenney definitely provides information for users to make the connection.  JCPenney however also understands that an online sale is valuable, and promotes them online with vigor, and links. As well, navigation exists to shop all deals, and links exist that allow visitors to connect with the brand in social media.  The user experience is underwhelming visually, borrowing from print ads, but the info is there and ready for visitor action.

Of course, Dell and Amazon (who is leading the twitter buzz war per Mashable) are doing a great job and get it.  Not unexpected, their business is online and their effort is superior, and frankly, easier to execute upon promoting a singular point of purchase.  Amazon makes a quick connection to products and purchase, the name of their game, allowing their strong website to do the rest.  Dell however goes the extra mile, allowing visitors to share their deals and connect via their strong social media presence.

The lone knock on Dell?  A visitor is forced to click on another ad on the Dell site prior to arriving here.

Creating One-to-One Relationships

Forget the sale today, the lifetime value of an engaged customer more often than not outweighs the short term profit sacrificed to begin a relationship.  With a strong push for contact and interest acquisition while customer attention is high, it’s quite possible that the brands listed could exceed their revenue totals from today through proper customer lifecycle marketing to these audiences over the next 12 months.  Here’s how:

Data Capture – Improving data capture is an opportunity for all advertisers mentioned in this post.  Email and mobile are great opportunities to provide a subscriber the information they want at the time of need, with the later often being enough incentive to supply it.  What about providing deeper savings to those already on the contact list as an incentive to sign-up?

Social Media – Social media provides a unique opportunity to bring actual brand and community interaction to the relationship building process. The social media possibilities could spawn five posts of their own as my notes go for miles, but a few tidbits:

• All retailers at this point should be allowing visitors to share the deals they are finding with their social networks using the method and outpost of their choice.
• Retailers should absolutely be promoting contact aggregation and membership in their social media programs at every turn in the communication cycle.  On the topic, it’s unbelievable to me that not a retailer on this list appears to be utilizing Facebook Connect to help the cause!
• Utilizing geo based applications like foursquare or GoWalla are no-brainers, and custom applications and widgets based on location could also be amazing.  What if smart phone users could find special products and deals only known to them in-store using their devices?  Augmented reality?  Implementation is a real possibility, and not outrageously expensive.

Other Opportunities for Improvement

Search Engine Optimization – Given the media budgets  spent today, it only makes sense that search engine optimization (SEO) be ephasized to lower the reliance on one-time spend. As far as I can tell, Black Friday isn’t going anywhere, and a permenent, indexable presence wouldn’t hurt.  If an off-site permanent presence is preferred, procurement of an existing Black Friday site or URL would provide a buffer from the main site, and could be obtained for a similar budget to the media that is being spent.

Content Improvement – Across the board, it should be noted that quality content was completely absent, often times substituting offline ads for engaging and actionable copy, images and video.  The most overlooked, and critical to conversion, strategic and engaging copy is proven to move the needle, and the user through the digital experience to the conversion desired.

Testing – If you’re not testing, you’re leaving money on the table, and the landing pages and ad copy reviewed today didn’t seem all that dynamic.  Even if your promotion is a day long, there’s always opportunity to improve results, much of which can be done through automation.

Breaking the Mold – Just being different can often separate companies from the competition and create some much needed buzz, and digital couldn’t be a more malleable implementation medium.  Live inventory reports online by store?  Local advertising online?  Online product demos before Black Friday?  Offers through new technology?  Releasing products throughout the day with live messaging?  The options are bound only by the imagination.

So how was your Black Friday experience in 2009?  Were your expectations met?  Are you expecting more from Cyber Monday?

Mike Corak

Mike Corak leads the strategic planning practice and account management efforts at Off Madison Ave, and is co-founder of www.digitalmarketingstrategy.com.  An active member of the digital marketing community and frequent blogger and speaker, Mike’s passion is interactive marketing. Mike’s developed and implemented winning digital and integrated strategies for hundreds of companies over his 12 year career including the likes of Coca Cola, ConAgra Foods, ConocoPhillips, FedEx, Fujitsu, Nike, Office Depot, and Walt Disney. Contact Mike at mikecorak@gmail.com, or interact with Mike here: twitter, LinkedIn.

While checking out what College Football has to offer me on this glorious desert morning, I came across the following banner on ESPN:

It caught my eye for 2 reasons:

1 – I was just at a conference, ExactTarget’s Connections 09, where a speaker talked about testing and how Microsoft found that green buttons convert especially well in their campaigns

2 – I’m intrigued by all things Microsoft v. Apple

Back to the matter at hand, the main banner message implies that the young woman pictured provided input for Windows 7, in-line with the recent campaign which I think is actually well done.  A smaller and potentially competing message (software v. computer purchase) on the right talks about finding a PC, but it’s clearly secondary and I frankly didn’t see it prior to clicking on the banner, but only later when trying to connect the dots to my post-click experience.

Upon banner click you arrive at the following page:

Had I clicked on the “Find the Right PC” portion, or noticed it pre-click, this landing page would have made more sense though I’m not sure PC=laptop.  But that’s not the banner’s main message, and therefore, the user experience created is less than optimal.  I expected some back-up to the campaign – videos from the advertisements, a way to interact or put my $.02 in, etc.  Backing that up with a pick a PC secondary message could have made my experience more relevant, but straight to pick a PC is confusing-bounce.

Windows 7, I didn’t provide any input that contributed to your product’s features and functionality, but here’s a little something that may help improve the relevancy of your online advertising campaign.

Mike Corak

Mike Corak leads the strategic planning practice and account management efforts at Off Madison Ave, and is co-founder of www.digitalmarketingstrategy.com.  An active member of the digital marketing community and frequent blogger and speaker, Mike’s passion is interactive marketing. Mike’s developed and implemented winning digital and integrated strategies for hundreds of companies over his 12 year career including the likes of Coca Cola, ConAgra Foods, ConocoPhillips, FedEx, Fujitsu, Nike, Office Depot, and Walt Disney. Contact Mike at mikecorak@gmail.com, or interact with Mike here: twitter, LinkedIn.

Email marketing is a great tactic for testing whether it is an a/b test or multi-variate. Many email marketing tools have simplified the process of testing through use of randomized groupings and dynamic content which allows you to focus on what is being tested rather than figuring out how to set up those tests.  Another advantage to using email as your testing ground – your subscribers have already shown interest in your product or service simply by opting-in to your email communications!  This makes for an ideal group to test potential new products/services, specials, messaging, and more.  However, what the majority of people fail to do is share those results with other members of the marketing team.

What you learn from email testing should not reside only within the email marketing team. Those results should be shared with all team members and disciplines.  These email results can be applied to nearly all marketing channels for an even greater impact.  If your tests show a certain kind of messaging resides with customers, why not apply this information to your landing pages, website content, or even pay-per-click ads so all can benefit.  I’m not saying the results from your email testing will always work in other advertising mediums, but the information should be shared to see if it can provide a greater impact.  If your testing shows current customers are more likely to buy based on a particular type of promotion, you can expect future ones will as well.

Example Multi-Variate Test Using Email:

Here is a sample of a mutli-variate test we did to determine the price, messaging, and headline for a new consumer product launch:

Pricing and Messaging:

We determined the three price points we wanted to test:

1. $10
2. $20
3. $30

We determined four headlines and respective messaging to test:

1. We’ve got the best way to a better career.
2. Get more out of your results by putting it to work.
3. Let our experienced team help you find the right career.
4. Jobs can be risky. Finding the right one shouldn’t be.

We now had 12 possible scenarios to test the pricing and the messaging about this new product.

multi-variate test sample

Each possible scenario was sent out to randomized subscribers. We then used a combination of email analytics, web analytics and sales to determine which one of these variations was the “winner.”

Winner:

Most people might have thought the least expensive product would have out performed the other two, but from an overall sales and transaction standpoint the $20 price point was more successful.  Not only were sales higher, but those who engaged with the email were more likely to react to this messaging.  The pricepoint and message was implemented into the clients’ pay-per-click and traditional advertising campaigns to announce their new product.  By testing the pricepoints and associated messaging beforehand, the campaign wound up a huge success!  We even won an award from Marketing Sherpa for best email test campaign!

Originally posted by David Hibbs on offmadisonave.com 7-21-09

Look who’s talking, no, I’m not referring to the surprise 80’s smash starring John Travolta, Kirstie Alley, and this kid (by the way, there was actually a sequel, wow). I’m talking about your customers, and they’re telling you everything you need to know to improve the bottom line.

Conducting primary market research and audience research, and purchasing secondary studies are fundamental ways communicators inform and align their efforts to produce relevant results. Obvious.  While amazingly helpful and unquestionably valuable, beyond simple surveys, the downside is that this type of research is often expensive and time consuming to produce.

In the fast-paced, economically suppressed world we currently live in, it’s not uncommon for organizations to roll the dice and move forward without this knowledge. That’s a mistake, and while everyone knows results are at risk, budgets are budgets.

Wish you could afford to sharpen your communications through customer understanding?  And obtain actionable tips quickly on a budget?  It’s your lucky day.  This post will show you how to learn more about your customers than you do now to improve your communications efforts all by digging into data you already have or have access to.

So What Exactly is This Data I Speak Of?

Just as the internet has changed the way we communicate and interact, the data tracked has presented an opportunity for market research professionals to adjust their methodologies for the better.  One of the benefits, and slightly disturbing nuances of the internet, is that all activity is recorded.  Search engines, social networking sites, results from your promotions and testing (email activity, customer reaction to banner ads, etc) and analytics from your own website for that matter, hold unbelievable gems of knowledge that you can utilize immediately to improve the relevance of your integrated communications.  Bottom line – if you know how to tap into and mine these sources for trends, you can learn a great deal about your target audiences without ever having to bribe a single stranger that might match the profile.

Search Engine Data Analysis: Equivalent – Market Research, Audience Research, Focus Groups and Surveys

My friend Jeff Herzog of iCrossing fame and ZooLoo (what exactly is ZooLoo Jeff anyway?) used to say “search is the world’s largest focus group.”  I’m not sure if he authored the phrase, but regardless, I’ll always remember it and give him credit.  Why?  If you compare the 14.3 billion searches conducted in March 2009 per comScore to the response pool of any survey or focus group, you can quickly understand which set may provide more value.  Of course, not everyone is searching for the topic you may be interested in, but it’s extremely likely that more people are searching for your topic of interest versus the number of subjects in your research partner’s database.

So what can you learn from search phrases?  Some elbow grease and time with the tools mentioned in a previous post of mine Keyword Research and Keyword Ranking Tools, can net you findings like these from our webinar From Keyword Research to Customer Communications:

By categorizing search phrases and ranking groupings by popularity, in this case, it was easy to discover what true product demand looked like online and understand consumer vernacular.  The company we performed this particular research for changed website vernacular, navigation, product names and categorization to better align with their consumer’s interests, and the results spoke for themselves.  There isn’t an organization in existance that wouldn’t benefit from improved consumer relevance, the real mission of employing research.  We call this study a Verbal Cue Analysis at Off Madison Ave, and the results from implementation help our clients kill it every time.

Social Listening and Search Behavior Over Time: Equivalent – Market Research, Trending Reports and Surveys

A way to enhance the findings of linguistic studies like the above is to examine search phrase popularity over time.  On a high-level, many sites and reporters use this information to report on the latest in pop culture interest.  Beyond providing Perez Hilton with the necessary ammunition for his next rant, trending data is extremely useful for gaining a better understanding of seasonality and changes in consumer interest over time.  Overlaying the efforts of campaigns, press mentions and the like can also help you understand the effect of your integrated communications efforts.  Free tools like Facebook Lexicon offer glimpses at searches on Facebook.  TweetVolume allows you to compare searches for various phrases – looks like I have you covered Jeff, Kirstie and John, watch your twitter popularity backs!

I could go on and on as there’s hundreds of social media research tools around that provide information and the number is growing.

Google Trends is even more useful for general market research as more people search Google for information than any other site ever.

Example, when looking at the Google Trends report above for Kirstie Alley, yes, we’re really going there, you see a large spike in late 2006.  I know you’re thinking that must have been the buzz-worthy release to BluRay date of “Look Who’s Talking Too,” but surprisingly, it’s not, as explained by the backup information on the right of the graph – the Oprah effect, imagine that.  These tools are also a PR pros dream, and the findings apply both online and offline as they represent general interest.

Site Analytics: Equivalent – Audience Research, Customer Survey

Maybe the most informative way to listen to your customers is through your own site’s search software.  Understanding what terms your visitors are using here can help you identify popular vernacular, the associated quantity can help qualify demand, and this data also is informative when thinking about plussing up the usefulness and usability of your website.  One step further, response to testing efforts can also uncover notable consumer interest.  Our Kolbe case study is a perfect example.

There’s literally thousands of ways to mine consumer data online to inform your integrated communications efforts.  What tools do you use?  How do they inform your decisions?  Are you doing it at all?

Posted by – Mike Corak – Originally posted on www.offmadisonave.com 6-27-09

Mike Corak

Mike Corak leads the strategic planning practice and account management efforts at Off Madison Ave, and is co-founder of www.digitalmarketingstrategy.com.  An active member of the digital marketing community and frequent blogger and speaker, Mike’s passion is interactive marketing. Mike’s developed and implemented winning digital and integrated strategies for hundreds of companies over his 12 year career including the likes of Coca Cola, ConAgra Foods, ConocoPhillips, FedEx, Fujitsu, Nike, Office Depot, and Walt Disney. Contact Mike at mikecorak@gmail.com, or interact with Mike here: twitter, LinkedIn.

3 truths about email that you need to know (via our friends at eMarketer).

1. Email drives serious sales – Nearly two-thirds of US Internet users made a purchase because of a marketing message received through email.

2. Of all online marketing tactics, email has the best ROI  -  “Commercial email ROI hit $45.65 for every dollar spent.”

3. Email builds relationships – “Email produces the highest response rate of direct marketing methods studied.”

Without the validity of eMarketer’s back-up, however validated by my +12 years of experience in the industry, I’d like to add a 4th truth to the list.

4. Your email marketing program is underperforming.

While generally thought of as an obvious tactic and therefore passe, for most organizations, email marketing should literally return the most efficient revenue and results in comparison to any other online marketing tactic.  How’s yours doing?  If you don’t know, I suggest bookmarking this post, finding out, and then returning to finish – you’re leaving money on the table.

If you are one of the few who can recite performance metrics (render rates, conversion rates, etc.), and have been managing your program to improve them, depending on your answer to the following questions, there’s still likely room for improvement:

• Are you “blasting” out of Outlook or Constant Contact rather than sending targeted emails?  These tools do not provide the infustructure for proper audience segmentation and results tracking.
• Do you religiously test your email messages (A/B or multi-variate)?  Testing is a must, every time, all the time.
• How old is your email template?  Does it look and feel like your other online and offline marketing tools?  Consistency here is important.  As noted in my last post, consumers do not differentiate messaging by marketing medium, meaning that consistent messaging and call to action is critical to maximizing your return.
• Do you send the same newsletter out to all contacts?  Giving people exactly what they want, and how they want it, is the key to any successful direct marketing effort.

So let’s assume you have these bases covered – and congratulations by the way, you are extremely rare and should ask for a raise.  My next question for you is are you working towards building one-to-one relationships with your subscribers through email?

Building Loyalty is the Goal

The real opportunity with email, and for that matter any direct marketing campaign, is the ability to build loyalty by learning exactly what your contacts want from you, when they want it, and by what medium they would like to consume it.  By building this knowledge base for every contact over time, you’ll dramatically increase the relevance of your communication, thereby improving response rates and results.  This process is called Customer Lifecycle Marketing, and it may be the most immediately impactful online marketing opportunity available to most organizations today.

My colleague David Hibbs will soon be sharing a detailed blog post on Customer Lifecycle Marketing, look for it.  But high-level, Customer Lifecycle Marketing involves understanding how, what, when, and why a customer wants to be communicated with, matching that with the medium of their choosing and stage of their relationship with you.  As a prelude, the five stages of a customer lifecycle marketing program include:

1. Acquisition

2. Conversion

3. Growth

4. Retention

5. Reactivation

While not a new concept, proper execution is often an afterthought, and most organizations can increase revenues in short order by creating or plussing up their relationship building efforts. Look for future posts on our blog providing more in-depth detail on opportunities to do just that.

In the meantime, be sure to check out these resources to help you improve your direct marketing efforts strategically and tactically:

- Get With The Program-Integrating Email within Your Overall Marketing Mix – presentation deck from Exact Target webinar

- Creating Effective Email Marketing Communications – Off Madison Ave webinar

Posted by Mike Corak – Originally Posted 6-3-09 on www.offmadisonave.com

Mike Corak

Mike Corak leads the strategic planning practice and account management efforts at Off Madison Ave, and is co-founder of www.digitalmarketingstrategy.com.  An active member of the digital marketing community and frequent blogger and speaker, Mike’s passion is interactive marketing. Mike’s developed and implemented winning digital and integrated strategies for hundreds of companies over his 12 year career including the likes of Coca Cola, ConAgra Foods, ConocoPhillips, FedEx, Fujitsu, Nike, Office Depot, and Walt Disney. Contact Mike at mikecorak@gmail.com, or interact with Mike here: twitter, LinkedIn.

Many would argue that thorough and diligent keyword research is the most pivotal part of a successful search marketing campaign.  Not only can it help you bring relevant traffic to your website and away from the competition, a deep dive can also help you understand what topics your target audience are interested in, and what vernacular they use in the process informing both content creation and link building opportunities.

As promised in my ExactTarget webinar today “Get With the Program!  Integrating Email within Your Overall Marketing Mix,” here are some helpful tools to use when building keyword lists:

Google AdWords Keyword Tool – This free tool can be used with or without a Google AdWords account, and results are based on actual Google search traffic results. Marketers can also see the approximate number of advertisers bidding on specific PPC keywords. If you’re researching SEO keywords, the Google Ad Words Keyword Tool will also help gauge the popularity of the term.

WordTracker – WordTracker compiles a keyword list based on 330 million search terms from the major metacrawlers, including Dogpile and Metacrawler. Keyword search volume numbers are typically lower in volume than those reported by the Google AdWords Keyword Tool, but WordTracker does generate additional keyword derivatives and bases traffic on more engines than just Google, a big advantage depending on your target and the engines they frequent.

Keyword Discovery – From Trellian, Keyword Discovery generates up to 10,000 keywords per engine. This tool goes beyond simple keyword research and conducts a long list of specialty searches, including permutations and excluded (AKA negative) keyword lists.

Once your keyword research is completed and your site has been optimized for search, consistent tracking and reporting related to how your Web site is ranking for those phrases in the search engines is part of the necessary information needed for long-term success (coupled with of course the results you are actually acheiving from your listings). There are a large number of keyword ranking tools on the market, but these have proven to be the most effective:

WebPosition – The newest version, WebPosition 4, not only reports on how your targeted keywords are ranking in over 29 search engines, it also helps you optimize your pages, target keywords, submit URLs to the search engines and analyze conversions based on WebTrends.

RankChecker – All you need is an SEOmoz account to log in and check your rankings on Google, Yahoo, MSN and Ask.com, as well as international domains (google.co.uk for example). Also handy is the archiving feature allowing you to trend how keywords have performed over time.

Authority Labs – A very simple to use keyword ranking tool that helps track domains, and also allows for multiple user access on the same account. A cool feature is their Graph Analysis, which also trends how each keyword has been performing over time. There is a wide variety of monthly pricing tiers based on the number of domains you are wishing to track.

The one drawback of keyword ranking tools is that Google frowns upon third parties scraping data from their site. They allow it, however, the data may take longer to pull from Google based on when the reports are pulled.

Almost all of the fee-based tools offer free trials, so test each one to determine which tools work best for your unique needs.

Posted by – Mike Corak – Originally posted on www.offmadisonave.com 4-29-09

Mike Corak

Mike Corak leads the strategic planning practice and account management efforts at Off Madison Ave, and is co-founder of www.digitalmarketingstrategy.com.  An active member of the digital marketing community and frequent blogger and speaker, Mike’s passion is interactive marketing. Mike’s developed and implemented winning digital and integrated strategies for hundreds of companies over his 12 year career including the likes of Coca Cola, ConAgra Foods, ConocoPhillips, FedEx, Fujitsu, Nike, Office Depot, and Walt Disney. Contact Mike at mikecorak@gmail.com, or interact with Mike here: twitter, LinkedIn.

A month or so back I was honored by the opportunity to speak at Gangplank during their “Brown Bag” lunch series, the crowd sourced topic selected (don’t ask) being “marketing tips in a down economy.”  Audience participation and internal debate since has spawned a number of secondary conversations, and as follow-up, I’ve been asked to supply an updated list of tips.

For those not in attendance, here’s a recap of the presentation’s material (slide deck):

In today’s economy, marketing professionals are tasked with creating more impact for less budget.  As if that isn’t enough pressure, the reality of the corporate wide consequences of underperformance can be overwhelming – career advancement concerns are on the backburner.  For many, results production is now a game of survival.  Intimidating?  Definitely, but if you’re a gamer, you understand that such times present opportunity to sharpen your organizations’ efforts for the short term, with the added benefit of breaking bad habits and instilling ROI focused thinking for the future.

For most, these aren’t the times for big, shiny new expensive campaigns and websites – such budgets may not exist.  Instead, the question remains, how can you get the most out of the assets you already have?

The talk focused on the following key opportunities to do just that:

1.    Properly Allocating Online and Offline Budgets – Forward thinking organizations are pushing the old rule of thumb (10%/90%) to new levels in the name of measurability and return, with +30% of budgets going online.  How are your budgets allocated?  As more of the publics’ leisure time goes online, it only makes sense that ad dollars mirror this behavoir.

2.    Prioritizing Budgets for ROI – While tactics like email and search typically produce the highest return on investment, proper execution is often prioritized behind media buys and new creative campaigns.  Now is not the time to swing for the fences and invest the majority of your budget on an unknown, instead, string the singles together through a number of guaranteed tactics for the win.

3.    Reducing Reliance on Paid Media -  If the overwhelming share of budget (+80%) goes to paid media, think about investing some of that into areas that will provide return beyond the life of the spend (website conversion enhancements, landing pages, customer relationship building).  When media is purchased, make sure it’s as targeted as possible to the audience and their stated needs.

4.    Increasing Audience Understanding – Knowing what target audiences want, the words they use to describe the information they desire, and how they want to consume this information is absolutely critical to success – prioritize relevance and targeting over share of voice and volume.

5.    Integrating Communication Efforts – Consumers don’t differentiate information by source, they relate to the brand and the message.  It’s therefore crucial to ensure creative and content work together across execution to raise the value of the whole.  Centrally planning communications, and cascading messaging through various tactics is a smart start.

6.    Testing – Online, there isn’t a tactic that can’t be tested for success prior to mass release.  For this reason, testing needs to be part of standard operations.  But it shouldn’t stop there.  Make sure to apply online test findings to offline efforts to increase effectiveness.

7.    Lifecycle Marketing – It’s more critical than ever to deliver targeted messaging with the goal of creating one-to-one communication in the name of brand loyalty.  Make sure your outbound communication is segmented and relevant to maximize return and build valuable relationships with your message recipients for long-term success.

Based on follow-up conversations and input, the following are additional tips supplied by both attendees and my wonderful colleges at Off Madison Ave:

• Demanding Accountability – Make sure to spread results accountability to employees, partners and vendors alike.  If everyone is working towards the same goal, and expectations are clear`, the likelihood of success increases infinitely.

• Contracting Performance – On that note, don’t be afraid to build trial periods with new vendors and partners, and performance incentives into your contracts.  Anyone worth their salt won’t be offended, and will welcome the opportunity to demo their abilities.

• Creating Efficiencies –My favorite, take a hard look at what you’re spending your time on and prioritize it verses the cost of outsourcing coupled with the return you can expect from various efforts.  If you don’t have the expertise or time to write web copy, and the task is keeping you from building that customer loyalty program for instance, give the web work to the pros.

• 20XX, Return of the Budgets – While no one knows exactly how long the economic slump will last, one thing is for certain – opportunity exists to maximize results by planning for the budget uptick now.  Some ideas, as with current activities, prioritize future expenditures based on return, and try to negotiate pricing early by committing to the work prior to the spend.  A desperate sales rep may give you a deal if you help him make his quarter.  Additionally, if you are able to instill ROI focused processes and thinking into your organization now, you’ll build a culture where results are expected, and investments are maximized at all times, good and bad.

Posted by Mike Corak – Originally posted 5-28-09 on www.offmadisonave.com

Mike Corak

Mike Corak leads the strategic planning practice and account management efforts at Off Madison Ave, and is co-founder of www.digitalmarketingstrategy.com.  An active member of the digital marketing community and frequent blogger and speaker, Mike’s passion is interactive marketing. Mike’s developed and implemented winning digital and integrated strategies for hundreds of companies over his 12 year career including the likes of Coca Cola, ConAgra Foods, ConocoPhillips, FedEx, Fujitsu, Nike, Office Depot, and Walt Disney. Contact Mike at mikecorak@gmail.com, or interact with Mike here: twitter, LinkedIn.