According to a recent article at eMarketer, spending on email marketing is low compared with search. However, the ROI is significantly higher than all other direct marketing methods. In addition, the article goes on to explain how great the ROI is within email marketing and the metrics that current email marketers look at are still clicks, response rates, leads generated and awareness to name a few.
It would be great if the organization can now tie this into marketing automation to get a true picture of what the return is. Its great to want to measure this, but the technology needs to exist, especially in larger organizations in order to measure it.
Here is a funny little stealth project that someone in my organization put together. As soon as I saw it, I knew I had to post it to the Quest account on YouTube. For those of you who watch Saturday Night Live, you will understand the parody. Its all about Archiving (the) box!
Once you answer the tough questions that I laid out in Step 1, then you are like 10% of the way there. Step 2 is easy….not. You will need to select a platform from which to build your community on. Some questions to ask your organization are.
What are your hardware needs?
What sort of software do you need to run it on? (sharepoint, jive, windows community) and do you have room of systematic growth?
In regards to the software being chosen you will need to ask a few things such as ease of use? Compatibility with existing systems in house? Development and integration time. Scalability? Long term commitment? ROI? Real vs. virtual costs.
Alot of things need to be considered on the technical end of the house before you proceed. While I am not the most technical person around, I can tell you that depending on your needs, there are several fine open source software solutions as well some commercial products as well.
All in all, the technical end might seem like a big hurdle for some, especially in certain organizations where resources are scarce. Part 3 coming soon.
Want to build an online community in your organization? Great….do you have a plan?
Many companies jump into building an online community but have no idea what they hope to accomplish with it. Some companies are so product focused that they feel that building a community centered around talking about their products will draw tens of thousands of people to it. Others want to build a community on the assumption that its what the customer wants. Others want to build a community cause its the “in” or “latest buzzword” and they must have one.
Step 1 - Define what you want with clear cut goals and expectations. Organizations need to answer some tough questions when building out a community
1. How will an online community further our companies mission?
2. Will there be an evangelist for this community? In other words, will there be one person or a team of people with the same goal in mind and that is to be nothing more than figure head for this thing?
3. How do you envision the community growing over a 10-18 month period? How will you keep the community vibrat and full of energy?
4. How will you empower the users of the community to feel they are the owners and not you the organization?
5. Are you wanting to start big and have a promotional strategy around it or are you wanting to start small and gradually build your base?
Once some of these questions are answered, companies then need to move into Step 2. (Step 2 tomorrow)
There was an excellent article written by Janet Kornblum in today’s USA Today about how young people are not necessarily that concerned with their online privacy. With the increase in popularity of social networking sites, Janet talks about how reaching out and being transparent over the net is easily down for those folks in the sub 35 age category.
I find that this attitude is pervasive at some of the highest levels of companies that I am a part of and engage with. The feeling of transparency or lack thereof resonates to their activities and disclosure both in marketing, PR and in some cases throughout the organization. The “I don’t want to reveal anything attitude” is old school and with the Internet Generation now starting and indeed being involved in the workforce, its high time companies begin to rethink their strategy of marketing or branding.
Time to reinvent the way we think again ladies and gentleman. Transparency is the new privacy.
Wanted to share with all of you a piece of marketing goodness that my company produced. Our theme is that if you want to be a SQL Server Rock Star, use our tools which I think is pretty compelling as well as kinda uber-geek cool.
We hear alot of things today relating to Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0 or even Web 3.0. I think its time that marketers wake up and realize that we don’t have a choice in marketing anymore to want to relate to New Media or Web 2.0 technologies etc…..
Its a new era for technology marketers and we need to stay ahead of the game that is out there. We need to somewhat abandon traditional methods of marketing and look for inventive ways to build brand, awareness and of course leads for the sales folks. Marketing 3.0 is knowing the marketplace, the technologies available: harnessing and executing on all of the above to win the end game. As a marketing professional we should always think and be ahead of the world around us.
Marketing 3.0 - Thinking and executing ahead of everything else.
Do you know how much Spam is really costing you? Yea….neither do I. Fortunately, the folks over at Sendio have what is called a Spam Cost Calculator. Yep…all you have to do is stick in your data and poof…out comes a cost to your org. The neat thing is that they are not afraid to give you the cost of their product and how long it will take to break even if you decide to go with their product.
Check it out and let me know what your number is………
Here is an update on this. First off, I have to admire the person doing this. They are coming up with some interesting names for me because when I receive an email that they signed me up for, I get a kick out of what they are putting down. My 2 favorite ones are “Dear Dogboinker” and “Dear Schnizzlehead”
All too funny and I really appreciate some of the variety that I am getting. It only goes to show that this person has a wild imagination from politicians to pampers to non for profit organizations. Heck of an imagination.
Here is where I said it becomes not so funny anymore….I have you my friend. I have your IP address, your name and your location. Thanks to the generous support of some of the organizations that you used my name with to do this stuff, we/I know who you are. I have contacted your ISP and in fact the local authorities near you. You see my friend..its one thing to sign me up for newsletters which I really don’t care about, but its another thing to submit a credit application with falsified information on it. That’s where it becomes a crime and that’s where your prank goes a little too far.
Welcome to the internet….where your identity can never be masked.
One of the things that he points out is that according to the DMA, is that for every $1 spent on email marketing, people can expect a $48.29 ROI. In addition “Email is delivering sales at an average cost per order of less than $7, compared to $71.89 for banner ads, $26.75 for paid search and $17.47 for affiliate programs” which I find to be amazing.
On Friday afternoon, I received an influx of email, email confirmations and such from a variety of companies who apparently think I signed up to receive their solicitation. It appears that someone has my work email address and finds it funny to sign me up for things. However, little does this person know that I have their IP address which was kindly provided by a few of the companies and so the tracking begins.
Little does this person know that I am close to finding out who they are and that they will be dealt with very soon. Not to worry, I am a passive person and I would not even think of wasting my time in dealing with this individual either physically or otherwise. You see, I have a different approach……and that is legally. So my fine friend…and you know who you are……keep on subscribing me as it only furthers your stupidity in this prank. I have you cornered and it wont be fun when you are exposed.
Many companies have started to blog.Most suck. I say most cause there are some bright ones out there, but when I look at the posting history, there has been nothing in the last 2 or 3 months.They started with gusto and faded off into the sun like the cubs did this year in the playoffs.
I have seen corporate blogs being promoted on the front page of sites with no postings in 3 months, or with a ton of postings that are nothing but self serving advertisements for their latest product releases or endless drivel about how great they are. Some of these corporations are big and some are small, but all should know better.Some have multiple platforms for people in the company, some are a general dumping ground for a select group of employees to drone on about nothing.
Much has been written about how to start and maintain about corporate blogs, but one of the greatest pieces of advice that I can ever give is that if you start one, stick with it and don’t always talk about you. Talk about the industry you serve and offer up the readership something other than your product advertisements or press releases. Make it issue based and not company or product based.
Bring on your comments and show me some of the best and worst corporate blogs.
Whether you work in a small or a large organization, there always is that person, group, department or even large business unit which is labeled the problem child.
This problem child does stuff with a complete disregard for others. They question other groups about their value and worth with out really looking at themselves first.They don’t involve the right groups when doing projects or bring you into the fold at the last minute.They create work for others and then ask your opinion or advice and never take it (even if you are the known company experts in that area).They are the problem child.
Most groups that deal with the problem child sit silently talking about their operational inefficiencies and bash them with out really trying to understand who/what they really are.They don’t want to be controversial and take a stand and tell this problem child about where to stick it. They just go along with them and there inefficient and ineffective ways.
In technology marketing, I have found that in order for things to work, most groups need to be in a constant state of cohesion.All of the cylinders need to revving at the same time, because things change fast.
Here is what I have learned about dealing with the problem child.Get down to their level, understand their pain, listen and learn.Then in as inconspicuous as you can, tell them how you feel and offer to work together to become better. Give them 2 chances to hose you over, then if all else fails punish them.
No one is perfect and I will never claim to be, but the problem child is there. Don’t be afraid to tackle them head on and with maturity.They will either thank you or bash you, but you can walk away from it with your head held high as opposed to sand.
About 14 months ago we tried our first giveaway at my organization.It was met with some trepidation and some folks flat out were against it citing as to why we should give someone incentive to download an asset.It was a huge success and has since been duplicated many different ways across the company.We have given away Zunes, Xbox’s, monitors, soundocks, iPods, T-shirts and even gift certificates to people just to either try our stuff or read a darn white paper.
I say no more.Stop. I have since see some people in our company that treat this sort of incentive as cocaine and are wanting to give away some trinket or toy just for the sake of getting more leads with a complete disregard for the quality of the lead.
I agree that every once in a while we should give something fun away to give incentive to people and to let the marketplace know that we are a fun and vibrant company, but enough is enough.I have this strange feeling that the marketplace is either getting sick of our gimmick giveaways and in some strange ways almost expecting it.I have a feeling the some marketing people are the crack addicts want to give away this sweet thing just to boost lead count. I think its time that we stop being the dealers and start to be innovators again.
What is wrong with giving away something that the client is not only going to gain value from but also give them something that shows our commitment to that particular space?Sure, a book or a subscription is not as sexy as an Xbox, but we need to start giving out all of our candy all of time and give the marketplace a time to WANT to see something from us as opposed to the fat kid hanging outside your house everyday, cause they know you throw out a pound of chocolate every day.
It sure is fun to work on a program where we are giving away something for fun, but it might be even more rewarding to go back to the basics of marketing again and make something that is traditionally not appealing sexy again.
We do a fair amount of list rentals at my current organization and about 2 or 3 weeks ago we rented a list trough a company called ITS Profiles. It was a disaster to say the least. First and foremost, they had a bunch of selects that seem fairly dead on for our target audience. We were promoted a tech brief geared toward BSM and hoped to yield more than what we got. What we got was nothing. Nada. Zilch….in terms of new leads. Ok ok..before you jump all over me, I clearly expect that some lists don’t work, and I am willing to concede this. However, it was the manner in which this company conducted itself when we questioned them on their methods of distribution for this particular email campaign. Let me explain.
First and foremost, there was no header or footer on the email which explained to the end user where/who the email is coming from. Normally on list rentals that we have done through respectable vendors such as TechTarget, Redmond, CMP etc…they normally prepend the message that it is coming from them and how they got onto the list. Second, the email was sent from a yahoo.com account. ITS Profiles set up a yahoo account with the Quest name on it and sent the solicitation from the Yahoo account. So basically it appeared that we set up the account sent the email (which I am sure has SPAM written all over it) with nothing. When we questioned the company on their practices and I indicated that it appeared as if they not only violated the Can Spam Act, but the Yahoo service agreement we were responded too in a very curt manner indicating that they are Can Spam Compliant and that it was an oversight or mistake on their part that they used the yahoo account. Ok..how can you make a mistake in using a yahoo account to sent an email to over 10,000 people. I have an email from ITS Profiles, but chose not to display it hear unless for some reason someone from this really questionable organization wants to challenge me on their sheer stupidity and flagarent violation.
That said, after threatening to contact my legal department and report them, ITS Profiles comped us for our email, but it still does not excuse their ignorance, inexperience and lack of general email marketing etiquette. If you rent lists in your company, my advice it to stay as far away from doing any sort of list rental or purchase from this company. They don’t know what they are doing and it appears that they don’t have what they say.
I have found that most companies don’t have a concrete email marketing strategy. Some are run from the gun, where they use it like cocaine to promote everything and anything. Some use it strategically but don’t find it useful because they either don’t know how to measure it. And then there are the companies that don’t leverage it at all, simply because they have no idea where to start.
Since starting email marketing at my company almost 6 years to the day, I have seen it go through a bunch of transitions. We had the early adopters, the skeptics, the jokers (everything we send is spam..and I was labeled the spam king) to the abusers. As email marketing is ever evolving in the marketing landscape new things pop up every day, but one of the things on my agenda for 2008 is the ability for my organization to adapt better to reading panes, auto previews, mobile devices and offer our users flexible templates from which to work from.
My strategy right now is to get better. In fact my strategy is to be the best, since I truly feel we have a good thing rolling now. To be the best one must constantly innovate and not rest on ones success.
The first priority is to get people in my organization to think of email as a strategic weapon and not as “free” or “lets just send an email” type of activity.
I posted about 2 months ago our status on viral vids and the use of YouTube in our efforts to promote our brand. I was able to log onto our account this morning and noticed that we just tipped over the 85,000 view mark, which means we have gone up 22,000 in less than 2 months. I have asked my team to ensure we post fresh content every couple of weeks so our audience and subscribers can gain value from our brand.
I am anxious to see if we go over 100,000 this year.
I recently saw a post from a blogger about a competitor and could not help to think and hope that this company has a person or a method in place to monitor their reputation. It wasn’t your run of the mill lambasting either. It was from a loyal customer who went on and on about the defects in their product.
Quick poll: How many of you out there have an active plan to monitor your companies reputation?
