Email marketing strategy independent consultant and MarketingSherpa email marketing trainer, Jeanne Jennings, wrapped up MarketingSherpa Email Summit 2011 at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas with a great presentation that offered some quick hit advice illustrated by several case studies.

Make it so

Jeanne opened the session by outlining the four challenges of email marketing:

1. Strategy
2. Relevance
3. Deliverability
4. Return on investment

And she immediately went into the differences between strategy and tactics. In fact, Jeanne admitted when she starts working on an email campaign and starts blocking out the strategy, doing the big picture works gets her so excited she starts getting into tactics too quickly and has to draw back.

Her main definition of strategy is, “A plan of action to achieve a specific goal,” and her description of tactics was to quote Jean Luc Picard of the Starship Enterprise — “Make it so.” Strategy is the plan, or blueprint, of your email marketing campaign, and tactics are the steps or stages you take to turn that strategy into reality.

The case study

The first study she presented was an email campaign for the National Education Association’s Member Benefits Corporation conducted this past holiday season. The NEAMB provides programs and services to the 3.2 million members of the National Education Association. This particular case study is focused on two of the seven steps of efficient email strategy — performing a SWOT analysis and developing a content strategy.

The control for this case study was a catalog list email that often ran several pages, making holiday offers hard to find. The test against the control took a page from the Groupon handbook with a clear offer, and content that based on Jeanne’s description I call “Groupon-lite.”

SWOT analysis

• Strengths — members have highly favorable impression of association, great holiday offers for members, recipients historically responded to discounts, new CMO encourages new idea
• Weaknesses — email had been catalog of offers, limited internal resources and budget for content, limited budget for content freelancers, concern that members are being overrun with mail decreasing response rates, no explicit opt-in; opt-out email permission
• Opportunities — Groupon and other deal emails are popular, people are actively looking to save money in this economy, busy professionals (teachers) are looking for ways to reduce holiday stress, shopping online is becoming more and more popular
• Threats — all the other holiday offer emails, differentiate from those; general inbox clutter makes members look for mail messages, some deals offered by retailers aren’t exclusive to organization

Here are the parameters Jeanne set up for the test email: weekly send; 100% opt-in; content strategy — engaging quotes,  gift ideas; single discount offer; low -resource content marketing;  quotes and tips from staff; differentiation from National Education Association’s Member Benefits Corporation control and other retail messages.

The quantifiable results

“Holiday cheer” test v. control

• Open rate up 214%
• Clickthrough rate up 105%
• Decrease of 34% in click-to-open because the click rate was so much higher than control

“Holiday cheer” v. internal benchmarks

• Open rate up 185%
• Clickthrough rate up 337%
• Click-to-open up 49%

Jeanne mentioned that conversion data is not available yet for this study.

Roll your sleeves up and get a full day of email training with Jeanne through MarketingSherpa’s Email Marketing Essentials Workshop Training. The next dates include Chicago on Tuesday, April 21, and San Francisco on Thursday, March 10.

Related resources

Ten Numbers Every Email Marketer Should Commit to Memory

Email Marketing: “I am not dead yet”

Welcome Messages: Are You Making a Good First Impression on New Opt-ins?

How a 6 Email Series Increased Unique Key Clickthrough Reach by Nearly 400% Over a Single Email

(photo credit: MYMRMARK)

David Meerman Scott is a marketing strategist and author of Real-Time Marketing & PR: How to Instantly Engage Your Market, Connect with Customers, and Create Products that Grow Your Business Now. He describes himself as a recovering VP of Marketing, and as the keynote speaker he pumped up the crowd at the MarketingSherpa Email Summit 2011 at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas.

Real-Time Marketing and PR

David shared a number of examples of actual real-time marketing and engagement, and one had a little relevance to the Summit because the event driving the effort happened in Las Vegas. At the end of last August, Paris Hilton was arrested in Las Vegas for possession of cocaine.

Paris Hilton and Wynn Resorts in Las Vegas

Wynn Resorts immediately sent out a press release stating that she was banned from their properties. The immediate result was that most stories covering the arrest also mentioned that Wynn Resorts banned Hilton as well. Over 5,000 stories were written right after the arrest and a Google search today using this string, “paris hilton arrest las vegas wynn banned” pulls up over 500,000 hits. Wynn resorts took advantage of a real-time event to drive promotion in the form of traditional media coverage.

David said speed and agility are a decisive competitive advantage. Reacting to, and focusing on, what is happening in the news can apply to both email and marketing campaigns. He added that too many companies are run by “MBAs and spreadsheets,” and are looking at data from last week, last month or even last year, and forecasting out as far as five years. He said he didn’t have anything against long-term planning, but David asks, “What about now?” Focus on today.

The Gap logo change

To provide another example of just how fast things happen in real-time, David talked about The Gap changing its logo. The change set off a firestorm of traditional and social media coverage, and most of that coverage was negative. The entire process from logo change, loud and energetic negative reaction, and The Gap announcing it was keeping its old logo happened over four days.

David asked the audience, “Is there anything you could have done with this?” for Summit attendees to think about opportunities with their own businesses and how they might use an event like The Gap logo change, and he pointed out that the event would have played out differently even two years ago. Twitter, Facebook and other online tools have changed the timeline of how the public reacted to the new logo.

(photo credit: @ContactLab)

Real-time guidelines

David said the way to start the process of real-time marketing is set guidelines in the company that allows for employees to take advantage of, and react to, real-time events. He pointed out that news happens all the time. The CEO might be away at a conference, or it might be the middle of the night, or during dinner after business hours.

To truly implement real-time marketing, the triggering event needs to be addressed immediately, and not have to wait for business hours and approval within the company.

Comments from the Twitter feed:

• Nobody cares about your products, except you. Create interesting content! #dmscott#Sherpaemail — @BjarteFalck (Bjarte Falck Olsen)
• Offer valuable content – not incentives. (@dmscott) #sherpaemail — @kristinhersant (Kristin Hersant)
• Don’t “do” social media. Make it a part of who you are. (via @dmscott)#SherpaEmail — @martinlieberman (Martin Lieberman)
• Create interesting content for your audience to share. People love to share valuable or funny information. (@dmscott) #sherpaemail — @kristinhersant (Kristin Hersant)
• Hard to separate work/personal on social media. Just be an authentic human being. (via @dmscott) #sherpaemail — @martinlieberman (Martin Lieberman)
• “virtually everyone is online.” @dmscott. Love it! #sherpaemail — @jenniebennie (Jennie Beyer)

(photo credit: @mattmcn)

Related resources

David’s blog, Web Ink Now

Improve Your Copywriting with Help from Social Media: 7 Tactics from David Meerman Scott

Lead generation: Real-time, data-driven B2B marketing and sales

Email Marketing Manager: Look past campaigns to boost your career

There is a certain tribe of marketers out there that are Pied Pipers for a new way of thinking. Email is dead. Get social.

Well, there are many metrics I can give to refute that stance, but here’s my favorite – paid attendance to next week’s MarketingSherpa Email Summit 2011 is up 40% from last year.

Horn tooting done, my point is that the best strategy for most marketers is to engage in both email AND social media marketing, despite what the rhetoric-filled and biased bloggers out there may say. This may not be shocking news to you. Your bigger question is likely – but how?

Well, that’s why we have the Email Summit to begin with, to learn from all the high-performing marketers out there. So, I turned to Lindsay Massey, Marketing Director, Freshpair to share some techniques and tactics that might help your efforts.

Lindsay is a panelist for the how-to panel at Email Summit entitled, “Growing Email Lists and Engaging Customers with Social Media.” Freshpair.com is a leading intimate apparel retailer. You can find them on Facebook and follow them on Twitter. But first, read on…

So, the first thing that jumps out at me from your successful campaign is that Facebook is the “next big thing” in email, while email is supposedly “dead.” Yet, essentially, to me your campaign was really just a traditional email send where Facebook was the conversion goal. “Dead” delivers I guess? How did you approach this send similar to other promotional sends, and in what ways was it different?

Lindsay Massey: We look at email and social as great complements to each other, and we definitely don’t see email as “dead.” After all, how does Facebook notify you that you have new comments or messages? Email!

By engaging our email subscribers in another relevant channel, we are able to interact with them on a more personal level, share unique content to generate buzz and ultimately engage more people in our brand. We approached this send like other promotional sends that are part of a larger campaign in that we developed an offer, segmented our list to target customers with the highest propensity to participate and, where this message would be relevant, created supporting content on Facebook and tracked the results.

This email campaign was different from other promotional sends in that the main goal was to encourage people to follow us on Facebook rather than go straight to freshpair.com. We measured the success differently than other campaigns – number of fans in addition to standard email KPIs.

Why email? Why not, say, Twitter?

LM: We definitely promote our Facebook presence on Twitter as well. The email was just one piece of our overall campaign. We chose to promote Facebook over Twitter for this particular campaign, mainly because Facebook allows you to customize the experience more than Twitter.

We were able to show more content tying back to the email. As soon as a customer fanned us, we were able to display new content that gave them the offer and let them click to freshpair.com to shop. A different approach could definitely be utilized on Twitter and would be a great follow-up campaign.

What is the importance of a Facebook fan-acquisition campaign? What is the value of a Facebook fan?

LM: For us, the goal of a Facebook presence is to strengthen our brand and reach new customers. By encouraging our existing customers and brand loyalists to join, we are able to build our relationship with them, as well as encourage them to share us with their friends.

Buying intimate apparel online can be challenging, so we try to educate fans with photos and take on a friendly tone by sharing funny statistics, like what percentage of people own a lucky pair of underwear. By keeping followers engaged and giving them unique content, we leave a favorable impression, so they remember us when it’s time for a fresh pair!

When it comes to measuring social media, the focus must go beyond traditional e-commerce analytics. We use Omniture to gauge the impact of our Facebook presence, specifically the conversion rates of visitors coming from Facebook. However, we consider Facebook to be more of a branding tool, so the exact value of a Facebook fan goes beyond the data in Omniture.

We also look at fan count and interactions. The customer insight you gather through social media will help you develop strategies across all marketing channels to get new customers in the door and keep them in the door. For example, we test different types of content within posts to see what people are most interested in interacting with. We then use this to inform marketing campaigns to further shape our other social initiatives.

Why aren’t social media sharing buttons enough?

LM: The social media sharing buttons are also important, and we include those in our campaigns as well. However, we see the main content receive the majority of clicks, while the share buttons receive a very small fraction of the clicks in each email campaign. We felt it was important to dedicate an entire campaign to acquire fans, but we also continue to push social through emails and onsite messaging as well.

It’s important to note that one dedicated email is not enough. Acquiring Facebook fans or Twitter followers should be an ongoing effort across channels in order to see the best results. Social isn’t just about sharing content, it’s also about extending interaction to new spheres and providing additional value to your fans. Share buttons are limited in that they don’t allow you to proactively communicate with interested parties and build your brand.

What is the downside of a dedicated send to try to attract Facebook fans?

LM: We didn’t see a downside to this specific campaign. The unsubscribe rate was not higher than a regular promotional send, and the segment of customers we mailed was highly engaged. The subject line actually led to an open rate that was 40% higher than average.

For all the marketing VPs and directors out there, what are the biggest lessons they should take away from your success?

LM: Email can be a very effective driver for Social. Before you begin a Facebook acquisition campaign, be sure you have a clear goal and strategy in place, as well as a supporting content strategy for your Facebook page.

Also, you could start small with a test to your most engaged customers to gauge response before you roll it out to a larger list. Then continue to marry your email and social strategies, so customers can get the information they want in the form they like best.

One of the things that we struggle with is catering to multiple demographics – some people want to see pictures of men in underwear and some people want advice on which bras go with what. Before you push your social presence to your entire list, make sure that you have a defined content strategy (either focus on one demo or have something for everyone so no one feels left out).

As for Facebook specifically:

• Be sure to develop a clear strategy for Facebook overall, so new and existing fans continue to be engaged. If you are just on Facebook to be on Facebook or because your competitors are there, take a step back and rethink your long-term strategy.
• Be sure to devote resources once your strategy is in place, so your Facebook page stays current. Take time to engage with your fans and continue to provide them with unique and interesting content.
• Promote your acquisition campaign across multiple marketing channels – not just email, and be sure to track your results.

Related Resources

Email Marketing: Finding the time to improve results

MarketingSherpa Email Summit 2011

MarketingSherpa Email Essentials Workshop Training

Email Marketing: A customer-focused mindset at ATP World Tour

The answer from one marketing automation vendor might surprise you.

During an interview with Kristin Zhivago, President Zhivago Management Partners, for a Sherpa B2B article, Guided by Buyers: Four tactics to create a customer-centric sales and marketing strategy (members’ library), she mentioned that marketing has undergone a sea-change in focus from 80% creative and 20% logistics in the past, to today where those numbers are exactly flipped. I recently had the chance to speak with Phil Fernandez, President and CEO Marketo, and a 26-year Silicon Valley vet with a present and past riddled with marketing software companies. I guessed this “80/20 rule” was a topic right up his alley.

We covered a wide range of marketing subjects, and in passing I mentioned the 80/20 rule presented by Zhivago and Phil immediately offered his opinion on the topic. We didn’t want to sidetrack our talk at the time so I told Phil we’d get back together and revisit his thoughts. This quick interview is the result.

A surprise that opens a debate

Phil’s answer was more than a little shocking coming from a marketing automation guy, and not an agency, since he sells data and logistics … or so I thought. Read on to find out what the CEO of Marketo thinks about the art of marketing versus the science of marketing.

His response opens a debate on the state of marketing today — is it more data- or creative-driven? We’d love to hear your thoughts on this topic in the comments section.

During our conversation a few weeks ago, I mentioned that Kristin Zhivago told me marketing once was 80% creative and 20% logistics and data-driven, and now that number has flipped to where logistics and data make up 80% of a marketer’s world and creative is only 20%. You strongly disagreed. Tell me why.

Phil Fernandez: At Marketo, we obviously evangelize marketing automation and analytics as critical components to drive significantly better marketing performance and ultimately greater revenue growth. I regularly advise corporate management to embrace a more metrics- and data-driven sales and marketing culture – what I like to call “hard marketing.”

So it may come as a surprise, especially from the CEO of a leading technology company that builds products for marketers, that I fundamentally disagree with the premise that marketing has flipped to a world where creative is only 20% of the craft of marketing.

There is no question that the sophisticated marketing automation and analytical solutions available today, such as Marketo’s, are imperative for successful marketing. However, it is incorrect to suggest that the adoption of technology solutions has made creative less important. In fact, I’d argue that the creative side of marketing is more important than ever! Why? Two reasons, one tactical and one strategic.

Tell me more about why the creative side of marketing is more important than ever.

PF: First, we need to look at how marketing automation (“MA”) tools are changing the job of the marketer. In particular, MA solutions help the marketer to implement a key new business process called Lead Nurturing. In Lead Nurturing, it is the job of the marketing professional to engage across channels and develop a relationship over time with each and every prospective buyer for their product or service. They work to educate the buyer, to assist them in their independent research, and to stay top-of-mind for that magical moment when the buyer is ready to make a decision.

And what is the single most important factor in implementing an effective Lead Nurturing program? It’s content. If a marketer is going to stay in touch with prospective buyers over time, helping to educate them and build trust and awareness, the marketer must deliver a stream of compelling, persuasive and brand-reinforcing content. Effective Lead Nurturing initiatives need a continuous stream of new content to stay fresh and relevant, and the most common reason why MA initiatives fail is a company’s inability to create enough content to build a trusted relationship with prospective buyers.

What defines an effective marketing automation system?

PF: The goal of effective MA solutions needs to be to make it fast and easy to do the logistics and data-driven parts of the job and then fade into the background, so that the marketer has the time to focus on the critical process of creative development.

More strategically, the relationship between buyers and sellers has fundamentally changed with the emergence of the Internet, Google, and more recently, the whole world of social media. The buyer has taken control of the process and only “listens” when and where he/she wants. And we all know that the Internet and social media world is a pretty noisy and chaotic place. This shift has greatly elevated the need to break through with creative, compelling content and big ideas – it’s the only way to get buyers to listen.

As a result, the art of marketing (communicating your brand, creating awareness about your unique value proposition and creating marketplace excitement through big ideas) is even more important today than it was a decade ago. If your message and/or content are not resonating with potential buyers, they will purchase from competitors who have done a better job of connecting with them in a relevant, timely and compelling way. That’s why our own marketing team at Marketo spends a lot of time focusing on our brand strategy and developing “magnetic” content via our blogs, webinars, “Definitive Marketing Guidebooks,” videos, events, and yes – advertising.

So both automation tools and the creative side of marketing are important …

PF: Keep in mind, automation and advanced analytics provide marketers speed, precision, and powerful insights into revenue performance. They can even go as far as predicting the amount of revenue a marketing campaign will generate. However, it’s the creative that inspires someone even to consider what you are selling in the first place, and eventually (if you did your job effectively) to buy. Automation and advanced analytics such as we offer at Marketo, give a marketer more productive time to spend on developing compelling creative that will generate the greatest impact. By balancing the “science” of marketing with the essential “art” of the craft, successful marketers are able to accelerate predictable, expanding revenue across the revenue cycle.

Then, what do you think is driving the argument?

PF: As much as anything, it’s probably a factor of today’s technology-driven business environment, where there is an expectation that the right technology can solve pretty much anything. More broadly, since the Industrial Revolution, we have been conditioned to the idea that science and technology replaces the arts and crafts culture that came before it. And in lots of areas, like precision manufacturing, this has been true.

But the world of creating revenue is different. The art of marketing and the art of sales remain very much alive. The good news is that there is a tremendous amount of synergy to be had when companies get this right and the art and creative elements of marketing and sales are combined with hard science and technology that Marketo and others have created. It can seem like the Holy Grail to companies looking to generate more revenue more predictably.

Related Resources

Find Phil’s blog at Revenue Performance

B2B Marketing: What to look for in 2011

Lead generation: Real-time, data-driven B2B marketing and sales

Inbound Marketing: Invest in content to generate leads

Lead Nurturing and Management Q&A: How to Handle 5 Key Challenges (Members’ library)

photo by Jennifer R.

MarketingSherpa is a research firm specializing in tracking what works in all aspects of marketing (and what does not.) So, we’re not an agency, consultancy or other vendor seeking your business. We’re not even available for private research — all our research is published for the entire MarketingSherpa community to benefit from. Our goal — to give marketers of the world the stats, inspiration, and instructions to improve their results. Our name “Sherpa” refers Admiringly to the Sherpas of Nepal who guide climbers up Mount Everest. Our goal is to be your friendly native guides who help make your tough climb toward great marketing results easier by handing you research on ‘what works.’ If you are interested in contributing to the MarketingSherpa blog, consider joining our team. Please review career opportunities here.

The MarketingSherpa Bloggers

		Daniel Burstein, Director of Editorial Content, MECLABS Daniel oversees all editorial content coming from the MarketingExperiments and MarketingSherpa brands while helping to shape the editorial direction for MECLABS – working with our team of reporters to dig for actionable information while serving as an advocate for the audience. Daniel is also a frequent speaker and moderator at live events and on webinars. Previously, he was the main writer powering MarketingExperiments publishing engine – from Web clinics to Research Journals to the blog. Prior to joining the team, Daniel was Vice President of MindPulse Communications – a boutique communications consultancy specializing in IT clients such as IBM, VMware and BEA Systems. Daniel has 13 years of experience in copywriting, editing, internal communications, sales enablement and field marketing communications. Blog Posts | LinkedIn | Twitter
		David Kirkpatrick, Senior Reporter, MECLABS David is a reporter for MarketingSherpa and has more than 20 years of experience in business journalism, marketing and corporate communications. His published work includes newspaper, magazine and online journalism, as well as website content, full-length ghosted nonfiction, marketing content and short fiction. He served as producer for the business research horizontal at the original Office.com, regularly reporting on the world of marketing; covered a beat for D/FW TechBiz, a member of the American City Business Journals family; and he provided daily reporting for multiple LocalBusiness.com cities. David’s other media and corporate clients include: USA Today, Oxford Intelligence, GMAC, AOL, Business Development Outlook and C-Level Media, among many others. Blog Posts | LinkedIn | Twitter
		Justin Bridegan, Senior Marketing Manager, MECLABS Justin is the senior marketing manager for MECLABS and oversees the product marketing for all conferences, events, and publications. He has over eight years of experience in marketing to the software training industry, printing industry, and marketing professionals. As one of the contributing authors of MarketingSherpa’s 2011 B2B Marketing Benchmark Report, he regularly speaks at our Summits and webinars. He specializes in creating, planning, and implementing new marketing techniques across the industry. Blog Posts | LinkedIn | Twitter
		Paul Cheney, Editorial Analyst, MECLABS Paul helps turn raw research into easy-to-understand content for MarketingExperiments and MarketingSherpa readers. He earned his Bachelor of Arts in English Literature from Covenant College. Before joining the MarketingExperiments and Sherpa team, Paul wrote grant proposals and fundraising letters for a mid-size nonprofit in New Jersey. He has also worked as a freelance Internet marketing consultant and copywriter for small businesses. In his spare time, Paul enjoys reading, writing poems, and dating his wife, Callie. Blog Posts | LinkedIn | Twitter
		Selena Blue, Reporter, MECLABS As part of Primary Research, Selena edits everything copy, from blog posts to benchmark reports to articles. Before joining MECLABS, she worked in two nonprofits, writing and editing communications, planning events and developing media databases. She also did freelance work as a copywriter. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Communications and a Master of Science in Integrated Marketing and Management Communications, both from Florida State University. Outside of work, Selena enjoys reading, waterskiing and volunteering. Blog Posts | LinkedIn | Twitter
		Andrea Johnson, Editorial Manager, MECLABS As an Editorial Manager for MECLABS, Andrea Johnson develops content for both MECLABS and its Research Partners – from articles to landing pages to emails to blogs. Her goal is to give audiences actionable knowledge that will create more opportunities and revenue, and help them be more effective, productive and happier. Andrea is a journalist who has more than two decades of marketing communications and public relations experience in B2B consulting, senior living and healthcare, nonprofit, real estate, and telecommunications. Blog Posts | LinkedIn | Twitter
		Brian Carroll, Executive Director of Applied Research, MECLABS Brian Carroll is Executive Director of Applied Research at MECLABS and CEO of InTouch, part of the MECLABS Group. Author of the bestseller, Lead Generation for the Complex Sale (McGraw-Hill), Brian is a leading expert in lead generation and he’s profiled and regularly quoted in numerous publications. Brian also speaks to 20,000 people a year on improving sales effectiveness and lead generation strategies. He’s been profiled and regularly quoted in numerous publications such as BtoB Magazine, Selling Power, The Wall Street Journal, Entrepreneur, Target Marketing, Inc. magazine, Marketing News, DM News, MarketingProfs, MarketingSherpa, Software CEO and CMO Magazine. Blog Posts | LinkedIn | Twitter
		Courtney Eckerle, Reporter, MECLABS With a focus on inbound and email marketing, Courtney’s goal is to produce clear, interesting and actionable external content for MarketingSherpa readers. She earned her Bachelor of Arts in English Literature, Mass Communications and Film Studies from Saint Mary’s College in Notre Dame, Ind. She has worked as a writer and sports photographer for The University of Notre Dame Observer, and was a collegiate correspondent for USA Today College prior to joining MECLABS. In her spare time, Courtney enjoys kayaking, travel, reading and photography. Blog Posts | LinkedIn | Twitter
		John Tackett, Editorial Analyst, MECLABS As a member of the MECLABS Editorial Content team, John helps turn raw research into easy-to-understand content for readers. Before MECLABS, John served for eight years in the U.S Army Military Police Corps as a military law enforcement instructor. John provided training to military personnel in the United States, Germany and Afghanistan. John holds his Bachelor of Arts in Anthropology from the University of North Florida, where he worked in radio broadcast production as a volunteer at Osprey radio. In his spare time, John enjoys reading, organic gardening, 5k runs and home beer brewing. Blog Posts | LinkedIn | Twitter
		Jonathan Greene, Social Media Analyst, MECLABS As a social media analyst at MECLABS, Jonathan strives to unlock the hidden potential of marketing in the social sphere for MECLABS clients. As a graduate student and frequent guest lecturer on topics related to social media and e-commerce at the University of North Florida’s Coggin College of Business, Jonathan has developed a passion for communicating marketing best practices to students and business owners who can utilize them to impact their businesses. Prior to joining the MECLABS team, Jonathan was the president and owner of Ten Forty Media, a Jacksonville, Fla.-based marketing and design consultancy. He graduates with a master’s degree of Business Administration in December. Blog Posts | LinkedIn | Twitter
		Taylor Kennedy, Senior Research Manager, MECLABS As a senior research manager, Taylor’s day-to-day responsibilities include managing a group of research managers and analysts along with guiding major partner/project efforts. His specialties include email marketing, landing page optimization, lead generation and UX for responsive design and online testing. He has also worked on a number of projects to enhance the back-end integration of his partners and MECLABS operations. Taylor graduated from the University of Florida in August 2009, with two bachelor of arts degrees; one in Business Administration (international focus), and another in Political Science. Before working at MECLABS, he worked in the institutional financial services industry with Merrill Lynch. His other interests include surfing, running, reading and live music. Blog Posts | LinkedIn
		Emily Rogers, Research Manager, MECLABS Emily’s position requires managing more than 10 projects for a Fortune 20 wireless company. She works to make its website easier to understand by developing testing strategies to increase usability, and ultimately result in an increase in revenue. Emily also works with MECLABS to ensure its teleprospecting programs generate the highest number of leads for its clients. Emily graduated in 2011 with a BBA in Marketing and an Advanced Business Communications Certificate. She began her career with MECLABS in September 2011. Blog Posts | LinkedIn
		Tony Doty, Senior Manager of Optimization, MECLABS Tony is responsible for guiding and assisting all aspects of testing for our Research Partners. When not optimizing projects with our Partners, he is guiding other members of the team by providing key insights and training to support their professional development. Prior to MECLABS, Tony was a Product Management Consultant where he performed research to help companies optimize product offerings and marketing strategies. Tony holds a Bachelor of Science in Materials Science from the University of Minnesota and is a self-confessed data junkie. In his spare time, he enjoys playing video games with his wife Ashley, and spending quality time their dog, Barley. Blog Posts | LinkedIn
		Emily Munns, Research Analyst, MECLABS Emily is a member of the MECLABS research team, where she is responsible for assisting two research managers with Research Partnerships. One of her responsibilities includes managing a test schedule and testing implementation for a MECLABS Research Partner. Emily holds a Bachelor of Arts in Marketing and Sports Management from Saint Mary’s University-Winona. She was co-chair for her Senior Class Gift committee and a member and manager for the Saint Mary’s Dance Team. Emily enjoys going on trips with family and friends, and actively follows at least one Minnesota sport at all times. Blog Posts | LinkedIn
		John Cockburn, Senior Business Intelligence Manager, MECLABS John organizes and manages research efforts to provide competitive intelligence within a given industry to inform testing strategies for each Partner. This involves evaluating pertinent industry information, segmenting the competitive landscape, revealing competitive strengths and weaknesses and evaluating opportunities for testing. John attended Florida State University and holds a Master of Science in Demography. He’s particularly interested in the evolution of social media and mobile technology and how it will influence the means in which people interact and exchange information. In his spare time, John enjoys the outdoors and is a regular at the local boxing gym. Blog Posts | LinkedIn
		Michael Groszek, Business Intelligence Manager, MECLABS Mike began his MECLABS career in March 2012 as a member of the research team, managing multiple Research Partnerships. He recently transitioned over to his current role as a Business Intelligence Manager, where he provides competitive analysis for Research Partners in the form of product and market research. Mike is highly interested in the constantly-evolving mobile and social media marketing trends and is working to find more ways to incorporate aspects of both into our Partnerships. Prior to MECLABS, Mike attended Florida State University, where he earned his Bachelor’s of Science in Economics with minors in Biology and Chemistry. In his time away from the office, Mike enjoys going to the beach, fishing, kayaking and skiing (although he often struggles to find quality slopes in Florida). Blog Posts
		Matthew Hertzman, Research Manager, MECLABS Matthew works daily with Research Partners helping with optimization strategy and test implementation. Before joining MECLABS, Matthew worked with small businesses across multiple industries helping with accounting, marketing and Web development. Matthew holds his BSBA in Finance from the University of Central Florida, where he worked in marketing for Simon Property Group. When he’s not working, he loves to read, travel and play sports. Blog Posts | LinkedIn | Twitter

Other MarketingSherpa Team members, present and retired, and contributing partners include: Dr. Chuck Coker, Kaci Bower, Stonie Clark, Adam T. Sutton, Todd Lebo, David Meerman Scott, Bob Heyman, Jen Doyle, Brad Bortone, Zuzia Soldenhoff-Thorpe, Jeanne S. Jennings, Chris Heine, Stefan Tornquist, Anne Holland, Sean Donahue, Natalie Myers, Boris Grinkot, Tom Sather, Jay Baer and Marcus Sheridan.

Google recently published some detailed research on Gmail’s Priority Inbox feature. The four-page PDF includes some key features and specific calculations that power the email-filtering function.

I am honestly shocked at the level of detail provided. Readers with a math background might be able to further deconstruct the supplied equations, but the explanatory information alone provides a wealth of information.

Here’s what jumped out at me from the “Learning Behind Gmail Priority Inbox” PDF:

‘Many Hundreds’ of Data Points

Priority Inbox ranks mail by the probability that the user will perform an action on that mail. The calculation is made on a per-user basis and is based on hundreds of data points.

There are several categories of data points, or “features,” used to determine whether a message is marked as “unread” or “everything else.”

Here are the categories:

o Social Features – based on the degree of interaction between the sender and the recipient, such as the percentage of a sender’s mail that’s read by the recipient. “Opening a mail is a strong signal of importance.”

o Content features – headers and terms in a message that are highly correlated with the recipient acting (or not acting) with a message.

o Thread features – the users’ interaction with the thread so far, such as if the user began the thread or has replied.

o Label features – the labels that the user applies to messages using filters.

Time is of the Essence

A stated goal is “to predict the probability that the user will interact with the mail” within a set time frame, giving the mail’s rank.

I am not a math wizard — but it appears that your messages will have a higher likelihood of being prioritized in the inboxes of users who typically open and/or act on them quicker than other messages they receive.

More “False Negatives” than “Positives”

If Priority Inbox makes a mistake, it is more likely to let an unimportant message into the inbox than it is to boot an important message into “everything else.”

“The false negative rate is 3- to 4-times the false positive rate,” according to the document. When tested on a control group, the system’s accuracy was about 80%, plus or minus 5%.

Changing Behavior

Google analyzed the amount of time some employees spent on email with and without Priority Inbox. Priority Inbox users spent 6% less time reading email, and 13% less time reading unimportant email. They were also more confident to delete email.

If this trend holds true across all Gmail users, companies sending irrelevant emails will notice even lower response rates from Gmail users over time.

Bottom Line: Keep on rocking

There is nothing in this document that should concern email marketers with effective programs. Gmail’s Priority Inbox will measure the high interaction rates your team achieves and categorize your messages accordingly.

For marketers whose email programs lack relevancy and value, this document should be one of many wake-up calls you’ve received to overhaul your program. Our Email Summit is less than two weeks away and you can learn a lot from the hundreds of marketers in attendance.

Related resources

The Learning Behind Gmail Priority Inbox PDF

MarketingSherpa Email Summit 2011 in Las Vegas

Email Marketing: Improve deliverability by deleting subscribers?

Email Marketing: Why should I help you?

“And I still…haven’t found…what I’m looking for.” Hopefully Bono wasn’t talking about your website.

According to the MarketingSherpa Ecommerce Benchmark Report, customers who use the search box on ecommerce sites convert at nearly three times the rate of general browsers. Yet, 52% of marketers graded their internal search a ‘D’ or  ‘F.’

On Monday, I’ll be presenting on the “Exploring On-site Search with eTail, BabyAge.com and MarketingSherpa” webinar with Jack Kiefer, Founder and CEO, BabyAge.com, and Kelly Hushin, Editor, the eTail Blog.

But before we share some of our research and case studies about on-site search, we wanted to hear what you had to say…

Four major points

1. Understanding of misspellings and synonyms

Search today must tolerate typing errors, spelling mistakes, and other altered forms, without requiring a preset dictionary. We use our patented algorithm(FACT) to first of all understand what visitors are looking for in a shop. Phonetic is king.

On BabyAge.com when you search for “armchair” instead of “arm chair” you get no results. It looks like BabyAge.com is trying to maintain search by manual optimization because “sleighbed” works!

So you can point out the long tail of search again. Same for fischer-price instead of fisher-price or “chocolat” instead of “chocolate” or “sumer” instead of “summer”.

What about “schanon” instead of “shannon”? It doesn’t work. In Europe, we deal with many languages and understanding the phonetic is really important. Even spaces matter – “infantseat” (21 results) instead of “infant seat” (1000 results).

2. Relevance

The order of the right products that are displayed on the result page is vital.

Top-sellers and revenue boosters should always be placed on top, while sale items and bad sellers should be placed below the fold or on the next page.

Make sure to show only deliverable products, because nothing is more frustrating for a customer than finding out that the just-found-present takes 5 weeks to deliver.

Use an intelligent result system that incorporates information like relevance, top sellers and availability status, to avoid frustration and to turn more visitors into buyers.

3. Speed and filter

A survey of 600 Internet users showed that more than half felt that a “suggest” feature is “important” to “very important.” An additional 25% found the feature to be “rather important.”

When online retailers provide such a suggest feature, the drop-down menu should note the number of matches for each of the terms listed.

General search terms (such as “shirt” for an online clothing retailer) normally produce a very large number of results. The right filter navigation prepares the list for the user, permits sorting and selections to be made, and displays appropriate navigation tools. The user can now quickly narrow down the results according to brand, price, size or other attributes.

4. Merchandizing and optimization

Today on-site search is one key factor to understand the customer in your online shop. But you should also be able to generate insights from this data and use on-site information to generate AdWord campaigns and optimize, test and configure your shop for a higher conversion rate.

– Mathias Duda, Head of Sales, FACT-Finder

Simple things

There are many simple things companies can do to improve performance of their site search to deliver a more user-friendly experience, and potentially result in higher conversions (for e-commerce sites, in particular). Here are a few of them:

1.  Incorporate rich auto complete

This feature significantly enhances the usability of your site, by not only suggesting possible terms when visitors start typing the first letters of a keyword (like most search engines do today), but also showing images, start reviews, price, discount info, short product description, and even a “buy now” or “check availability button,” without the need to press the search button and wait for the results page to appear. This powerful feature gives people an easier way to click through to the items they’re searching for and typically results in higher conversions.

2.  Test different positions for the search box, and not which positions generate the most search traffic

One online retailer – Black Forest Decor – took this approach, moving its search box from the right-hand upper corner of its site to the center. The company made other changes at the same time, including increasing the size of the search box. The company found that site search revenue per customer increased 84% and the conversion rate increased 34%.

3.  Offer “add to cart/buy now” options directly from the site search results page

Smart e-commerce companies create as few steps as possible from search to checkout. When you allow visitors to add products to shopping carts or to go to checkout directly from search results, they’re more likely to complete the purchase – particularly if they know exactly what they want and they see it in the results at a price they’re comfortable with.

4.  Show ratings and reviews in search results

Site visitors place high value on the opinions and feedback of other people who’ve shopped for similar products or services, and showing the average rating in search results helps them better determine what they want to click on. You should allow visitors to further refine or reorder their search results based on ratings. You should also show, in the search results, the number of reviews that a product has.

5. Be sure to include refinement options that are relevant to the search query

Refinements are a useful way for visitors to narrow down results by certain criteria – for example, brand, gender, price range, etc. Refinements should be relevant to the search term, so will vary from one search to another.

For example, if a visitor to your site has searched for “camera,” it may be useful to have refinement options for the number of megapixels and the screen size. If someone searches for “TV,” then you may want to offer screen size and resolution refinement options. Apparel retailers can offer refinements for men’s and women’s items, as well as size, color, or other relevant attributes.

The trick with refinements is to keep them relevant and useful. This can be done by tracking the most popular and related search terms for each product category, and dynamically creating the refinements based on the keywords that people have entered.

– Shaun Ryan, CEO, SLI Systems

The new slang

Know your audience’s slang. Aside from plain old keywords, there’s going to be all sorts of wacky short-hand terms, acronyms and inside jokes you ought to be aware of. You can nab your market from folks inside the bubble already that way.

– Erica Friedman, President, Yurikon

Related Resources

Internal Search Data Inspires Store Page Re-Designs: 4 steps to boost revenue 50% – Members’ Library

Four Simple Steps to Tweak Site Search Box & Lift Conversions 20% – Members’ Library

How Eretailer Tripled Conversions with Internal Search Changes – Members’ Library

How to Improve Your Company’s Internal Search and Lift ROI – 9 strategies and tips – Members’ Library

How to Use Internal Site Search Data to Revamp Your Home Page: People’s Bank – Members’ Library

Several weeks ago I had the opportunity to chat with Brian Carroll, Executive Director of Applied Research at MECLABS, the parent company for MarketingSherpa, about the current state of B2B marketing, and what marketers can look forward to in 2011.

Our discussion covered three main areas — the alignment of Marketing and Sales, marketing automation tools and marketing operations as new a position within Marketing — and how all three are related.

For those attending MarketingSherpa Email Summit 2011 (January 24-26 in Las Vegas), Brian will be moderating a panel entitled, “How to Develop Content for Specific Buying Stages” as a B2B breakout session on Day 2.

Aligning Marketing and Sales

B2B marketers are being pressured to prove their value, particularly in terms of being able to contribute measurable revenue, and the struggle is that marketers are not fully in control of the process. Essentially marketers do not get to own a lead from first contact to close. Leads are generated and at some point the baton is handed to Sales to, “run the race and win,” as Brian put it.

He explained to me, “A lot of marketers don’t really understand the challenges facing salespeople today because they haven’t been a salesperson themselves. So there is the age-old debate around Sales and Marketing alignment, which is — Marketing wishes salespeople would act on their leads and give them feedback, and the salespeople wish that Marketing would actually give them leads, or at least more of the good leads and less of the bad, because they want real opportunities.”

Brian said the big theme is: the alignment of Sales and Marketing will drive results from the top of the funnel to the bottom line. Many B2B marketers understand that aligning Marketing and Sales is a net gain for both departments and the entire company, and evidence of that can be found in the MarketingSherpa 2011 B2B Marketing Benchmark Report where research found that lead quality is a top priority for B2B marketers.

And to go back to Marketing proving its value in terms of revenue? Brian said the key metric more and more executives are looking to Marketing for is the expense-to-revenue ratio, that is, the expense of marketing efforts to the revenue produced.

Marketing Automation

According to Brian, marketing automation is not going to solve every problem, but it’s a great start to help marketers. He did caution that often starting a marketing automation effort can expose more problems than it solves. It can expose things like the weakness of the data quality marketers are using. So it’s important to remember marketing automation is a tool, but it won’t do the work for you.
He said many marketers are using marketing automation mostly as an email tool, and this usage can expose the lack of a content strategy.

“Most people are still doing ‘batch-and-blast’ campaigns to lists that aren’t very targeted,” Brian told me.

This ties back into the alignment between Sales and Marketing, because better alignment will, hopefully, help bring about a content strategy, clarity of the value proposition, effective lead qualification and a lead nurturing process.

Marketing Operations

During our talk, Brian said, “I think what’s really needed is new position within Marketing which is called ‘marketing operations,’ and what that entails is really working to understand how Marketing is interfacing with the different operational aspects of the company — including Sales, including IT, including Finance — because those are all the places that marketing needs to go to get the data points that they need in order to prove their value.

“And on the other side of that is they are often going to be interfacing with the product development, or R&D, inside the company as well.”

He added that when marketing automation exposes problems, it will be up to marketers to really act as leaders inside their companies to teach and explain, and to not just report data, but to give real insight to the executive suite. When the CEO asks why only 1000 emails were sent to a list of over 10,000, the marketer is ready to explain those 1000 addresses were created by a high-level segmentation and that targeted list represents 70% of the revenue opportunities for the year.

He thinks when marketers can achieve better alignment with Sales and are prepared to explain and lead, they will do a better job of marketing inside the company. And that will make their marketing outside the company more effective as well.

Related Resources

Email Marketing Summit 2011

Fostering Sales-Marketing Alignment: A 5-Step Lead Management Process (MarketingSherpa Members’ Library)

2011 B2B Marketing Benchmark Report

Marketing Career: Can you explain your job to a six-year-old?

Marketing Leader’s Perspective: No cogs allowed in social media and content marketing

At this time of year, I see many “My Top 10 Posts for 2010” or “Our Top Blog Posts of the Year.” Here on the MarketingSherpa Blog, we thought we’d try something a little different. We’re sharing your top posts of the year.

We used that neat little plug-in located in the upper right of every post, the Topsy Retweet Button, to determine which posts you (and your peers) found most valuable this year. Here’s what you had to say…

1. Blogs are Becoming the New Front Door for Prospects: Is Yours Open?
   “3 Ways To Make The Most Of A Corporate Blog” – @flowtown
2. Making Social and Email Work Together
   “Social and Email need to work together–people who use social media actually check their email more frequently” – @leeodden
3. Internet Marketing for Beginners: Email marketing optimization 101
   “Want more email capture? Great article from @MarketingSherpa, with a fab little formula on messaging effectiveness.” – @whistlerjedi
4. Email Marketing: “I am not dead yet”
   “Email Marketing returns an average of $42 for each dollar spent this year” – @Newspapergrl
5. Content Marketing: How to get your subject matter experts on your corporate blog
   “How to persuade in-house experts to go social via @sbosm” – @jeffhurt
6. Public Relations: The best press release is no press release
   “Talk to media like they’re your older brother!!” – @laermer
7. Lead generation: Real-time, data-driven B2B marketing and sales
   “David Meerman Scott shares good info on the integration of B2B social media and real-time lead gen” – @copywriter4u
8. Social Marketing: Twitter contest boosts followers 43%
   “story behind clever @Kobo campaign run on @Offerpop” – @abonde
9. Social Media Success Means Learning to Let Go
   “article on relinquishing control in social media to get more engagement and consistency. Great insights.” – @sarameaney
10. Ten Numbers Every Email Marketer Should Commit to Memory
    “Don’t forget about email” – @thearchergroup

Related Resources

Free subscription to MarketingSherpa Best of Weekly – Marketing case studies and research

Most-Tweeted Blog Posts of 2010: Facebook case study, social media marketing human factor, antisocial media, and more – MarketingExperiments Blog

Sherpa’s Take on B2B in 2010: Part Two – Marketing automation and lead generation content

Email Trends 2010: Proven tactics and test ideas

By PYoakum

At MarketingSherpa, we’ve noticed that inbound marketing is a growing tactic that is starting to show consistent results for marketers, which is why we’re launching an Inbound Marketing newsletter in 2011. For example, according to the MarketingSherpa 2011 B2B Marketing Benchmark Report, the majority of B2B organizations are increasing their marketing budgets for inbound tactics like social media and SEO.

So, I was a little surprised by a recent statistic that came across my desk. Out of 534 Fortune 1000 CMOs surveyed byBlog2Print, only 23.2 % utilize corporate blogs. As a content marketing insider, I thought everyone and their sister (well, my sister is at least) is blogging. But that’s my problem. As a content marketing insider, I get all tingly when I see my blogs’ names up in lights on a tree (no, that’s not a Christmas reference. For a creative interesting inbound marketing tactic, check out The Blog Tree by Eloqua and Jess3. And thanks, Joe!)

So I pulled another Sherpa book off my shelf (the 2010 Social Media Marketing Benchmark Report, for those keeping score at home), and noticed that while marketers find blogging to be one of the most effective social media tactics (behind only blogger relations and microblogging), it is also one of the most difficult (second only to blogger relations).

So, to help you kick start your blog in the new year (or kick start the new year with a new blog), here’s a three-part answer to a question that I find marketers often struggle with: How can I get subject matter experts onto my corporate blog?

Step #1: Make it easier

While I have the luxury of a highly talented team of reporters and writers here on the MarketingSherpa blog, over on the MarketingExperiments blog we rely on subject matter experts who have better things to do than write blog posts. Their time is valuable. And one way they don’t want to spend it is figuring out a blog platform.

Yet, when I first started with that blog, our research analysts were publishing their own posts. They were going into WordPress, wrestling with picture layouts, the whole nine. We quickly removed that impediment. All we require is a poorly written Word document. Sometimes just an interview. Heck, once I even received a blog post written in Excel from a data analyst.

We don’t need their writing (or blog posting) skills. We can do that for them. We just want their subject matter expertise. Because these guys (and gals) are smart, and there is no way we can replicate their years of research and experience.

You might not have the exact same infrastructure, but ask yourself this – is there any way I can make the entire process easier? Ask them to forward an email they’ve already written. Take them for a walk and pick their brain. Heck, check out what they scribble on whiteboards throughout the day. After all, while they may be engineers or architects, they certainly aren’t writers. And they don’t need to be.

Step #2: Show them what they know

Another thing I’ve found with subject matter experts is that they are, as the name implies, experts. That means they have extremely deep knowledge. So, sometimes they set too high a bar for themselves. They don’t realize that their likely audience is not…well, experts. So when it comes to putting themselves out there in the world, they want to write a deep, knowledgeable post that will take them three weeks to compose and possibly will only be understood by three people.

Or they could swing in the other direction. They assume that everyone knows what they know and they would be mocked for even thinking about writing about such a simplistic topic. “Pssshhh. Everyone knows a 3.89-meter transinducer couldn’t stand up to the shock of multiple neutron bomb strikes with a 12 parsec velocity” Substitute the word “transinducer” with “server specs” or “mortgage regulations” and you’ll likely face the same challenge.

It’s something we wrestle with on our blogs as well. Where is the sweet spot? We don’t want to write content that is too elementary or too advanced. But sometimes I overshoot as well and forget that simple blog posts can be very helpful, as we’ve found with recent blog posts about email marketing and landing page optimization.

So challenge your SMEs (I love that abbreviation…so Peter Pan-esque) with this question – if I was new to our industry, what are the first three things you would want me to know? A treasure trove of blog post lies in the answer to that question.

Step #3: Reward them (differently)

While doing good is its own reward, writing a blog post is not. It’s one more task you’re throwing onto an already too big heap. After all, they (like you) are busy.

And, essentially, what you’re trying to do here is make a sale. Getting a subject matter expert to write a blog post is a conversion. So work up some of your marketing mojo and make sure there is a true value exchange. You are buying some of their precious and scarce time, and what do you have to offer in return?

While it is part of everybody’s job to help make the company more successful, in fairness, you will be getting more than you’re giving. Still, it’s important to reward your SMEs (more than Captain Hook did for Mr. Smee, that’s for sure) for the time and effort they put in to help grease the wheels for you as you try to get future blog posts from that subject matter expert.

But there is no one-size-fits-all solution that makes a good reward for a blog post. So, you must ask yourself – what motivates my subject matter experts? Here are a few types of subject matter experts and the rewards that might be most helpful to them (most people are a combination of the below archtypes):

• The Aspiring Industry Rock Star – Show them all the recognition they’re getting around the Web and particularly in your industry. Show them how their post was tweeted or quoted by an industry luminary.
• The Plumber – As Eddie Vedder said, “I want to be the plumber of rock stars.” Some people just like helping others and making a difference. For these people, share feedback you’ve received from your audience showing them how they helped move the needle in people’s careers and in their lives.
• The Ladder Climber – For these people, it’s all about career growth. So, do what you’re doing for the plumbers and the rock stars, just make sure that their boss (and their boss’s boss) knows about it as well.
• The Bottom Liner – It’s all about the Benjamins, baby. One of the reasons we all work, we all leave our loved ones and head out on that 6:35 train, is for filthy lucre. Try to work with your management in getting a little something extra for bloggers. A $25 Starbucks gift card for the blogger with the most tweets every month. A small year-end bonus for the person with the most comments. If it’s worth doing, it’s worth properly incenting.

And always, always, always give credit where it’s due. Speaking of which, thanks to Ruth White-Cabbell of Cisco for a conversation that inspired this post, and our own Joelle Parra for copy editing and Sean Kinberger for designing and posting what you just read.

Related resources

Create and Manage a Team-Authored Blog: 8 steps to reap SEO gains

How to Keep Your Blog Out of a Courtroom – Advice from a Legal Pro on Providing, Creating Content – Member’s Library

The MarketingExperiments Quarterly research Journal, Q3 2010

photo by: Mai Le