Turning Marketing Into Business

Shadow Social Networks

2010-03-15T13:04:00.000-07:00

Social networks are all the rage.

However, they are far too formal to capture how people truly communicate with each other, especially if they are breaking the law. After all, we live in an informal age. While the TV show Mad Men presents us with visions of the formal past, in our current world formal attire is rapidly giving way to informal dress even in some of the last bastions of formality such as offices, the symphony, and expensive restaurants. In offices, for example, where once the tie ruled, now the open collar shirt rules and even it has to be over its shoulder, so to speak, at the pull over shirt which is sneaking up on it.

You law abiding citizens – how do you communicate?

Don’t you flip and flitter between email, text, phone, a structured social network, and in person meetings? If you don’t want your boss or spouse to know what you are up to don’t you try and cover your virtual tracks, even if you aren’t breaking the law?

Now how about non-law abiding citizens?

Chances are they are creating a Shadow Social Network. They are likely giving some structure to their unstructured communication system in hope that they don’t get caught. Law breakers and would be law breakers tend to switch from work to private email accounts, the phone or in person meetings when it is best to not leave too clear of a trail.

What so Shadow Social Networks mean for companies and law enforcement?

To really understand what employees are doing and to catch the criminals or terrorists, organizations have to be able to piece together these disparate strands of communication and see HOW the Shadow Social Network functions, WHO is involved, and WHAT is being done. Normal search and analytics won’t work. Simple email threat analysis and keyword search is not up to the task. Only sophisticated solutions for monitoring, searching, and analyzing across all types of unstructured data can hope to piece together the real picture in a timely manner.

Some marketing myth busting

2010-02-14T20:09:00.000-08:00

In the last post, I wrote about why people get as excited by your marketing collateral as they do your home movies. In this one, I’m going to bust some commonly held marketing beliefs.

Myth 1: People are going to pour over every word in your marketing text just like you do.

Reality: You’ll be lucky if they skim it. People like to feel that they are making sound decisions so it is helpful to have a coherent story in the text – just don’t expect people to read it word for word. They will skim it and piece together an executive summary, especially if you haven’ already provided a skimable executives summary.

Tip: Make your marketing text easy to skim. If they can’t get the message in a quick glance through go back to the drawing board.

Myth 2: The facts matter and, if they aren’t convinced yet, give them more facts.

Reality: Narrative is key. People don’t remember facts and are often bored by them.

Tip: Give them a simple narrative they can remember and repeat to others.

Myth 3: Marketing is a creative function

Reality: Good marketing uses both the left brain and the right brain.

Tip: Adopt an agreed upon set of marketing metrics, set clear goals, analyze your market, test and analyze your campaign to the degree possible.

Myth 4: You know what your customer wants and why they did what they did.

Reality: You probably don’t know. The customer might not even know.

Tips:

a. Talk to customers. Conduct 1 on 1 research, surveys and analyze behavior.

b. If you have sales reps, go with them on calls or listen in on the phone to understand where customers get excited, what turns them off, what closes sales, and what inhibits the sales process.

c. Get your customers to come and talk to the sales staff and the marketing staff about whey they bought and what they think of dealing with your company pre-sale and post-sale.

d. Where possible analyze customer behavior over time, across channels and across touch points otherwise you have no chance of getting a clear picture.

Why your collateral is like your home movies

2010-01-19T09:00:00.000-08:00

For most companies and executives, their marketing collateral is a priceless object that when bestowed on a prospective customer magically transforms said prospect into a real paying customer. Alas, people outside the company simply do not share the passion for the company’s collateral. For outsiders, with the exception of competitors who are conducting research, reading a company’s collateral is as exciting as watching someone’s home movies.

Why?

+ They don’t care if YOUR Bobby and Sally got to swim in Lake Metamucil because they have THEIR own Bobby and Sally who they actually care about. Your Bobby and Sally just do not generate the same warm and fuzzy feeling. In business, your company and products are at the center of your world. They aren’t at the center of your prospective customers’ worlds.

+ People are busy. They have a hard enough time keeping up with everything they have to deal with to put too much attention towards that they don’t have to deal with.

+ If they are non-technical executives, they probably just don’t love products all that much and words on a piece of paper are not going to get them to form an emotional attachment to yours. You love your product. It is your product. It isn’t our customers. For every iPhone that people love, there are 99 products that they use because they fit a need. If they are executives and are simply buying the product for others to use or to replace others then that emotional attachment registers even lower on the wow meter.

Reflections Part 2 - IRCE 2009’s email workshop starring Neil Kjeldsen

2009-07-01T17:15:00.000-07:00

Online marketers are continuously bombarded with new tactics that they “should” use if they want to be state-of-the-art. Most of these wonderous new tactics sound great and some actually are highly effective. However, many mid-size e-tailers have small online marketing teams (in many cases only a few people) that do not have enough hours in the day to adopt and become proficient with the tactic du jour.

The Perricone MD Case Study

At the Internet Retailer Conference & Exhibition’s email marketing workshop, iPost customer Neil Kjeldsen, vp of ecommerce for Perricone MD, spoke on segmentation and gave a very actionable case study built around problem, solution and results (with actual specific numbers). Perricone MD is a prestige skincare company that was founded by Dr. Nicholas Perricone, a dermatologist, award-winning author, and anti-aging expert.

Kjeldsen helped online marketers cut through some of the clutter and find a way to efficiently reignite relationships and sales from dormant customers. When Kjeldsen joined Perricone MD, he found that the vast majority of their customers were inactive - something that Perricone MD had in common with most companies. To make matters worse, these inactive customers were far more likely to opt out and flag Perricone MD as a spammer - hurting both the company’s ability to market to them in the future and Perricone MD’s email sender reputation with ISPs.

Kjeldsen’s solution was to adopt iPost as Perricone MD’s new email service provider (ESP) and to implement the iPost Customer Engagement Program, a combination of strategic services, processes and software. Kjeldsen said that iPost first worked with Perricone MD to analyze their email, web analytics and purchase data. Perricone MD then implemented iPost’s Autotarget, which automates and updates daily Recency, Frequency, and Monetary value (RFM) segmentation.

Using Autotarget to automatically group customers into micro-segments, Perricone MD divided customers into engaged and unengaged segments. First Perricone MD started mailing safely (engaged customers tend to have very low opt out and spam complaint rates) to the engaged customers and tested a variety of methodologies to see what best improved revenue and campaign profitability.

Perricone MD next worked with iPost to develop a “trail size” promotion for the unengaged customers and began mailing to them in “safe” segments. The safe segment approach is central to iPost’s Rapid Reputation Repair process and enables e-tailers to mail to questionable lists without damaging their email sender reputation. According to Kjeldsen, in one month Perricone MD was able to implement and optimize the engagement programs. Because Autotarget automatically segments customer data daily, Kjeldsen said he and his team found that it only took them 5 minutes per mailing to use Autotarget.

Kjeldsen's presentation made a clear case for actionable analytics

Kjeldsen stated that the results from the iPost Customer Engagement Program included:

* A huge increase in conversion rates (from 0 to up to 33 percent)

* A dramatic jump in revenue per email sent from $0 to $0.26

* Growth in online revenue from unengaged customers from 0 to 7 percent

The Bandwagon

Amusingly, another ESP in the session presented a case study on the benefits of RFM that used data from another iPost case study on the Eastwood Company. To work around the fact that it was actually an iPost case study, the vendor referenced a DMNews article from October 2008. I encourage you to check the article out!

The ESP’s pundit, also, told the audience that RFM is - as a process - very easy to do, something that Kjeldsen countered when he got up to speak. Kjeldsen said that he used RFM analysis in previous jobs and loves Autotarget because it makes RFM easy and that without Autotarget RFM is simply not easy for small and mid-size teams.

The Workshop in General

I found the presentations to be far better at the workshop than the general sessions. The presenters came across far more knowledgeable but were still not consistent in highlighting quantitative results and making it clear what all is involved (time and resource) to achieve those results.

Reflections Part 1 on IRCE 2009

2009-06-22T13:12:00.000-07:00

Email marketing is growing up and getting its due at IRCE

Last year at Internet Retailer, email marketing seemed to be treated as the bastard stepchild of the online marketing world. The event organizers kept it out of the limelight and few speakers acknowledged doing something so pedestrian and “yesterday” as email marketing. Most e-tailers I met at IRCE 2008 were either satisfied with blasting out emails or were just thinking of dipping their toes in the email marketing waters. Online marketers were somewhat intellectually interested in email analytics and segmentation but were not emotionally revved to do something about them.

What a difference a year and a recession make! Not only did email marketing more often find its way into session presentations but most online marketers I spoke with wanted to take their email marketing to the next level, even if they weren’t fully clear on what “next level” meant for them. I also far more agencies who wanted to improve email marketing for their clients and C-level execs who wanted to understand the potential of email marketing.

The sessions – sadly – were generally worse than last year and reflect poorly on Internet Retailer. Most of the presentations in 2008 did not have metrics nor did they necessarily reflect sophisticated business savvy but they at least were professional. This year most of the one I saw seemed to be thrown together. For example, on session on email marketing messaging was put on by an email service provider and an e-tailer. They promised practical advice that attendees could put into practice but everything was vague and general. Missing in action were metrics and practical processes. For example, the big takeaways from the session included have a call to action (CTA) and make your emails relevant. Ok.

I would like to see Internet Retailer take a pledge to only have speakers who

1. Share the specific results of their programs and

2. Give attendees an idea of how much time and effort is involved to achieve the stated results

In small and mid-size companies the whole online marketing team has too many things on their plate as is. They usually need help prioritizing - given their resource constraints – on what will help them best move the revenue needle. A lot of things are interesting or worthwhile but few can do them all.

Random thoughts on the MarketingSherpa Email Summit

2009-03-20T15:26:00.000-07:00

I. General feeling that this was going to be a good year for email marketers. Based on a survey of marketers email marketing and social networks were the only two marketing programs that are expected to see a net increase this year.

II. MarketingSherpa stressed:

Take an analytic approach

Tie in email marketing with optimized landing pages. Big push on optimizing landing pages that included full day of training prior to the start of the show.

Tie in email marketing with social networks.

III. Social Media:
A. A lot of talk and survey results show big plans from companies on spending more here but the results on this were mixed. One case study of (anonymous company) showed a 62% increase in reach of the email. However, the case study where an emailer (Miles Media) showed results portrayed the reach as being minimal.

100K emails sent

47 posts

Ave of 8.4 opens and clicks (she didn’t show these on her slides so I just scribbled down the numbers from her talk but I think I got them right)

B. The big winners from the two case studies for most popular social media sites were:

Anonymous company in descending order of posts: Twitter, LinkedIn (sign a B2B emailer???), MySpace and Facebook (a distant forth)

Non-anonymous (Miles Media) in descending order: Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and Digg (distant forth)

IV. The email marketing awards were a joke. only big name companies won. (Big names = Fortune 200 and Global 1000. )

You may be asking yourself right now – why, did their vast array of resources yield superior results? Well, no. Except for a couple of winners from Capital One and a catchy email postcard from Dell, the winners…how should I put this…stunk. They were just a mass of very tiny and often unformatted text. One exec I spoke with said they looked like the type of emails he gets all the time and automatically deletes. Another exec described them as “text dumps.”

Tips on avoiding deliverability disaster

2009-02-25T16:46:00.000-08:00

I encourage you to check out a webinar Steve Webster and I did earlier this month.

You can find out about here: http://www.ipost.com/resources/webinars_deliverability.php

Email delivery is yet another thing for you to worry about in 2009. Delivery is always a moving target. ISP practices and customers' attitudes towards your emails change. It is a privilege, after all, to market to someone.

In the webinar we cover:

How can you determine how your email is performing?
What's important to get email through delivery obstacles?
What can you do to improve your email reputation?

While email marketing is very cost effective, the real cost of is losing the right to market to a customer or, at the least, having your email end up in the spam folder and not the inbox.

Email Marketing Grows Up

2009-02-13T14:03:00.000-08:00

The carefree days of email marketing’s youth were spent blasting emails to as many people as possible. What a party that was - sort of a combination of pledge week and Spring Break. Email was and is cheap to send. And in the past, email campaigns just seemed to make money, no matter how poor the methodology, and that sure looked good compared to the other marketing channels.

But, just like those fresh off Spring Break kids who must suddenly contemplate life after college, email marketers in 2009 should be considering a more practical and, dare we say it, sound business approach if they want to continue receiving a paycheck. Let’s take a look at why - now, more than ever - you should segment your email list, protect against opt-outs and spam complaints, and which segmentation approach is the most practical.

My February byline in smallbiztechnology.com covers:

Why should you segment? To avoid disaster
Why should you be especially worried about opt-outs and spam complaints in 2009?
Segmenting your list will reap rewards
What segmentation approach is most practical?

One-to-one marketing: Dream or wasted effort?

2009-01-22T16:54:00.000-08:00

Better informed marketing campaigns can be watershed events for many businesses, but keep it simple and stick to modest goals if you want to see them through.

Too often email marketers try to go from one end of the segmentation spectrum (blast away) to the other end (micro-segmentation). This extreme swing often bogs them down and, even if they are able to pull it off, often doesn't yield better results than a simple, macro segmentation approach. After all, most marketing teams are stretched thin and stressed out in today's crazy economy.

In my new byline in iMedia Connection, I offer a sane approach to segmentation that revolves around:

Understanding the true barriers to implementing your marketing strategy and choose the strategies with the best benefit-to-barrier ratios.
Pursuing strategies that use objective data for all of your customers rather than subjective (self-reported) or incomplete information.
Implementing the strategy in a graduated approach (simple to complex, broader to narrower, general to specific).

Practical Tips for Holiday Success

2008-12-15T15:07:00.000-08:00

The best thing you can give yourself and your company for the holidays is the gift of practical segmentation – a gift that keeps on giving, especially when it comes to profits in a tough market.

In the current economic climate, the shrewd email marketer has an opportunity to be the hero who helps the business stay afloat and even thrive. While many email marketers long to be able to segment their lists into thousands of mini-segments to conduct true one-to-one marketing, now is the time to stop dreaming and get practical.

In my iTiki bylines I give advice on such topics as:

Practical segmentation means a better bottom line for the holidays
Learn to say "No" - or at least "Wait" - to discounts
Thriving for the holidays mean putting on hold your dream of true one-to-one marketing

How to Use E-Mail in a Down Market

2008-11-16T13:37:00.000-08:00

In my Catalog Success byline I give an overview of how this is the time for email marketers to act like a sharp businessperson and consolidate their own standing in the process. I give practical tips on metrics, segmentation and talking the higher level biz talk.

One of email's assets - it is a cheap channel - can also be a trap that blocks email marketers from using real business metrics and employing savvy methodologies such as segmentation.

Now is the perfect time for email marketers to take their game up a few notches. In many companies, the email team is the only one hitting their numbers (or at least not taking as big of a hit as the rest of the channels). Email marketers can easily capitalize on their comparative success and increase the strategic importance of email in their companies. In some cases, where email has been off to the side, this will mean getting to sit at the adult, strategic table with the C-level team.

A Love Affair Gone Way Wrong

2008-11-12T13:00:00.000-08:00

Email marketers apparently just love to lower their margins and leave money on the table.

The mania for discounts is driven to a large degree by the standard practice of blasting emails to every possible email address. When presented with a business downturn, the Pavlovian response is to blast out discounts. The more discounts the merrier - too bad, though, about the impact on the bottom-line.

In reality, customers are not the same. Some will buy from you without regular discounts, some will buy from you with minimal discounts and some will require on-going discounts.

The trick is how to figure out who requires what. For decades in the offline world, marketers used Recency, Frequency and Monetary value (RFM) segmentation to resolve this issue. RFM can be used only even more effectively because it can be automated.

One of our customers decreased the amount of discounts they give out by 40% within a few months and was able to delay offering Holiday discounts by 6 weeks. How? Simple, they used RFM to segment the customers and give discounts to sale shoppers but not to their most engaged customers who are more interested in being first in line for the latest trend.

How will this play out for you? Well, you won’t know until the next time you feel the urge to blast and you just say - "No! I'm going to be a smart business person instead."

Thought leadership gap

2008-10-01T12:46:00.000-07:00

Much of what is presented as thought leadership in this industry is 5 or more years behind the times. This sad state of affairs is something I witness on a regular basis but one of the more egregious examples of it was at the shop.org show in Vegas last September.

An email marketing company was presenting the criteria they used to help a publication pick online retailers. However, the checklist was way, way behind the times. Need to have sign up on the home page. Email to people within a set period of time. Etc. It was the equivalent of selecting the top car manufactures by reviewing the following:
+ Four tires? Check
+ Turn the steering wheel and at least two tires move? Check
+ Windshield? Check

Email is often viewed as a commoditized product/service. To get online marketers to realize the enormous upside of doing things right, thought leadership needs to fast-forward at least 5 years and be just that – leadership.

OMMA Behavioral Take 2: What is in it for the customer

2008-08-08T11:02:00.000-07:00

Last time I wrote about my journey to the OMMA Behavioral conference in San Francisco and something that was M.I.A. – a discussion by vendors of BT's ROI. This time I take on something that was only mentioned in passing and something that happened to my car in the parking garage.

Something that was mentioned in passing

There was a legal point/counterpoint on the privacy and legal implications of Behavioral Targeting (BT). Each side expressed very strong opinions. Too little attention was paid to the fact that BT does not need to be a scary, black box to visitors of websites.

In the tech industry we love the next big thing; it is exciting, gives us jobs, and potentially makes us a lot of money. Most website visitors are not as inherently excited by the next big deal to come along, especially if it feels like an invasion of their privacy.

However, most people who go to websites want a convenient experience. They want relevant content and products. People, in general, want to have their lives made easier.

Companies pushing BT products and companies with websites using BT need to start educating the public on the win/win aspect of BT. Companies need to:

* Explain more clearly to the general public why using BT is in their self-interest

* Demystify and put BT technology in perspective by comparing it to what is known about the consumer in the offline world

* Explain clearly, concisely and truthfully what in the world BT is so that it isn’t a black box and imagined as being worse than it is

* Make sure that all their interactions with customers are such that most customers feels that they can trust the company

Something that happened to my car

Right along with buy low, sell high, I now hold as a truth – be careful when you park in the Union Square Garage. If you like shopping to replace items that were stolen, then park there without a concern in the world. If, on the other hand, you want to do something else with your time, take everything you can with you or have someone guard your car.

M.I.A. at the OMMA Behavioral conference

2008-08-01T14:25:00.000-07:00

I went last week to the OMMA Behavioral conference in San Francisco. The conference was memorable primarily for three things: something vendors didn’t address, something that was only mentioned in passing, and something that happened to my car in the parking garage.

Something vendors didn’t address – ROI M.I.A.

The topic of the ROI of BT was conspicuously missing in action during vendor’s on stage conversations. Most potential corporate customers do not share the tech industries inherent love for the next big thing, especially if the next big thing is expensive, time consuming, hard to use, or simply not one of the things that wake them up at three in the morning. There is a lot of inbred enthusiasm at conferences about the wonders of what we are doing. After all, we are wonderful, so what we are doing must be wonderful! Case closed. Why doesn’t the rest of the world just get it?

Well, one of the main reasons they don’t “get it” or “buy it” is tech companies do a lousy job demonstrating an ROI and focusing on ROI. By not presenting the ROI the customer will receive, BT companies allow price to become more important than ROI. The lack of ROI, complete with specific case study examples, increases the odds that new technology will be placed in the “nice to have/maybe someday when we get around to it after we put out all our never ending fires” category.

Next time: Something that was only mentioned in passing, and something that happened to my car in the parking garage