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Posts Tagged ‘Email Summit 2012’

The Content Marketing Tipping Point: Marcus Sheridan’s magic number is 30, what is yours?

July 13th, 2012

“Content is the best sales tool in the world.”

After exploring his analytics, Marcus Sheridan, co-owner, River Pools and Spas, discovered that potential customers who viewed 30 pages on his website had an 80% closing rate, compared to the average closing rate of 15-20%.

Alongside Luke Thorpe, MECLABS’ Multimedia Specialist, I grabbed Marcus before his Email Summit 2012 keynote, to hear his ideas of content tipping points.

 

 

You can see Marcus Sheridan’s full keynote, along with seven other sessions on the MarketingSherpa Email Summit 2012 DVD.

 

Related Resources:

Most Emails Stink as a Sales Tool. Here’s Why… (via The Sales Lion)

Content Marketing and SEO: The world doesn’t need another blog post

Brand-side Marketing How-to: 6 content marketing lessons learned from a B2B IT company

Overall Content Marketing Strategy Leads to 2,000% Lift in Blog Traffic, 40% Boost in Revenue

Marketing Intelligence: 3 ways to better serve your customers (and your bottom line)

Where to Find Email Marketing’s Low-hanging Fruit

June 19th, 2012

At Email Summit 2012, Luke Thorpe, Multimedia Specialist, MECLABS, grabbed his camera, I grabbed a mic, and we traveled the vast recesses of the expo floor at Caesars Palace to ask attendees and sponsors where the low-hanging fruit is for email marketers. Here’s what they had to say …

 

  Read more…

Social Media Marketing: 10 minutes with Brian Solis

June 5th, 2012

Focus on what people value.” That is my main takeaway from my interview with Brian Solis, principal, The Altimeter Group. As he sees it, Facebook is a democracy, and you can’t simply shove marketing messages down your followers’ throats (or in this case, into their Timelines) and expect to be successful.

In our 10 minutes together, he discussed so much more, including why many social media marketers are misinterpreting the movie “Moneyball” …

 

Luke Thorpe, multimedia specialist, MECLABS, and I grabbed Brian Solis after his keynote at MarketingSherpa Email Summit 2012, and he graciously gave us 10 minutes packed with interesting marketing insights.

Here are a few key points in the video, in case you want to jump ahead:

0:09 – Social media marketing metrics and Facebook EdgeRank

1:30 – The unlike button

2:24 – How to find out what your customers want

3:56 – The American Express Link > Like > Love campaign

4:38 – How to talk to business leaders about what really matters in your social media marketing campaign

8:46 – Social media is not just conversations; it is business data

 

Related Resources:

Email Summit 2012 DVD Combo Special (includes the Brian Solis keynote)

In Social Media, Your Return Represents Your Investment

Social Media Marketing: Finding and winning hyper-social consumers

Email Summit: Integrating mobile, social and email marketing channels

Inbound Marketing 2011: The 9 social media, content marketing, and SEO articles your peers shared most

Email Marketing Trends: The results from 6 live polls conducted at Email Summit 2012

March 27th, 2012

One thing I really enjoyed at Email Summit 2012 was being able to walk around and talk to the email marketers of the world about the tactics they’re using. For example, I learned about marketers’ experiences with sales and marketing automation for small businesses over breakfast and European privacy regulations over lunch.

If you weren’t able to attend (and even if you were), I hope this blog post can serve as a proxy for that experience. During some of the general and breakout sessions at Email Summit 2012, we conducted a live poll using Acxiom technology where attendees could text to vote. (Full Disclosure: Acxiom was an Email Summit 2012 sponsor.)

In this blog post, I’ll share some of these results, along with some resources to help you act on these tactics.

Please keep in mind that I don’t intend this data to be regarded as statistically valid, rather view it the way you would anecdotal information you would attain from networking.

There are many validity threats, including the fact that the sample we surveyed (Email Summit attendees) is likely a skewed sample and much more active and experienced than the average email marketer since they invested the time and money in attending Email Summit. So the average email marketer is even less likely to be using these tactics.

That said, let’s jump right in …

 

How are you deploying mobile in your marketing strategies for 2012?

In research conducted for the MarketingSherpa 2012 Email Marketing Benchmark Report, mobile was identified as the most challenging channel to integrate with email.

So it’s not surprising that only a handful of email marketers considered themselves advanced at deploying mobile in their marketing strategies.

 


  • Advanced (3 respondents, 7.31% of all respondents): We currently deploy advanced tactics to reach our mobile audience (e.g., geo targeting, mobile apps, SMS outreach, email optimized for mobile)
  • Basic (16, 39%): We have optimized our website (or) our emails for mobile
  • Considering (19, 46.3%): We are considering mobile marketing, but have not yet decided upon a strategy
  • Unconvinced (3, 7.31%): We do not believe that mobile marketing is the right fit for our audience

Some resources to help you with mobile marketing:

 

Have you used SMS and/or QR codes for email list sign-up?

We asked this during a session I moderated with Ryan Amirault, Digital Marketing Manager, Whole Foods Market.

[whole foods]

Ryan’s team saw some impressive results — generating more than 2,000 email subscribers from SMS and QR codes. Ryan’s advice:

  • Place QR and SMS in strategic locations. For Whole Foods, that meant table tents, meat/deli/seafood scales, bathroom stalls, registers, cafés, grocery aisles, eating areas and guest services
  • Test QR codes before deploying creative materials

However, 67% of Email Summit attendees have not tried this tactic at all.

 

 

Here are a few resources to help get you started:

 

How are you designing your emails to fit into your mobile marketing strategies for 2012?

There was limited response to this question, which is not surprising considering that we learned in the first survey that a minority of marketers are really engaged in mobile tactics.

 

 

  • Relevant (7 respondents, 15.5% of all respondents) – We deploy emails targeted for relevance in the mobile environment (e.g., geo-targeting)
  • Responsive (6, 13.3%) – We have designed our emails to be responsive for a handful of mobile operating systems (e.g., iOS 5)
  • Visible (14, 31.3%) – We have added a “view on mobile device” link at the top of our emails
  • Considering (18, 40%) – We are considering integrating email with mobile marketing, but have not yet decided upon a strategy

Here are a few resources to help you with your mobile email design:

 

Do you optimize email landing pages for specific devices?

Let’s get a little more granular, and instead of talking about mobile as a big picture, look at how marketers handle devices …

 

 

  • Yes, iOS – 5 respondents, 6.17% of all respondents
  • Yes, Android – 1, 1.23%
  • Yes, multiple devices – 23, 28.3%
  • No – 48, 64.1%

If you’re thinking about getting device specific, here’s some help:

 

With regard to email testing, which of the following best represents your organization’s efforts?

While mobile clearly is a hot topic for marketers, let’s look at a more tried and true tactic – email testing.

 

 

  • Basic testing (14 respondents, 21.4% of respondents) – Subject lines, personalization, copy
  • Average testing (11, 37.2%) – Templates, timing, automation
  • Advanced testing (4, 17.3%) – Validated tests, multi-varied options
  • Expert testing (2, 23.9%) – All aspects have been tested and optimized

Some inspiration and ideas to get you started testing or give you new ideas for future tests:

 

What do you think will have the biggest impact on email marketing in 2013?

At the MarketingSherpa Email Summit, we focus on what really works. However, sometimes you have to look past what is already proven, gaze into the crystal ball, and try to make strategic decisions today to position your company for the opportunities (and threats) of tomorrow.

So what will tomorrow bring? Let’s take one extra spin on the email marketing carousel of progress and take a look at what your peers think will have the biggest impact on email marketing in the near future.

 

 

  • In-line Video (15 respondents, 10.7% of respondents)
  • Social Data/Content Integration (48, 34.2%)
  • Privacy Legislation (29, 20.7%)
  • Dynamic Content (48, 34.2%)

As you try to peer over the hill for your own marketing efforts, here are a few resources that may help:

Command-and-Control Marketing vs. Servant-based Marketing

February 28th, 2012

What are we really talking about when we’re discuss cutting-edge marketing topics like mobile, social media and Priority Inbox?

These are just technologies. Zeros and ones dancing around in some magic box in the sky. In this interview with Jim Ducharme, Community Manager, GetResponse, I lay out my argument for where you really should focus your efforts in the year ahead, and it’s not on technology …

 

  Read more…

Email Summit: Brian Solis on the connected consumer and the digitally evolving world

February 16th, 2012

Last week, we held our Email Summit 2012 at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, where more than 750 of your marketing peers joined us for four days of keynotes, workshops, discussion panels, case study sessions and networking.

Brian Solis, Principal, Altimeter, joined us as one of our three keynote speakers for the Summit.  Brian spoke to the audience about integrating social media with your email marketing to engage a new type of connected customers. After his keynote, Brian took a few minutes to chat with GetResponse Community Manager, Jim Ducharme.

 

 

In this video interview, Brian talks about two main thoughts:

The connected consumer

  • The democratizing of information is creating an empowered and connected consumer
  • Technology simply facilitates to bring about change
  • Success now comes from listening and learning from consumers

 

The “Digital Darwinism” concept

  • When technology and society evolve faster than your ability to adapt
  • Examples of companies fading away because consumer behavior is evolving toward a digital world
  • The connected consumer requires you to design the experiences and outcomes they want in the channels they want

Read more…

Email Summit: Integrating mobile, social and email marketing channels

February 14th, 2012

The MarketingSherpa Email Summit 2012 audience was treated to Brian Solis, author of The End of Business as Usual: Rewire the way you work to succeed in the customer revolution.

He opened with the idea that the real marketing challenge is the culture of the organization, and he provided a phrase he uses to describe this:

“Digital Darwinism is the evolution of consumer behavior when society and technology evolve faster than your ability to adapt.”

Another big idea he offered was “social media is the new normal.” He continued that, “Social media is different than other media channels before it. Here, it’s about relationships, recognition, engagement, value and help.”

As you might guess from this set-up, the intro of Brian’s talk focused on social media and the mobile experience, and he offered many data points, such as:

  • More than 350 million Facebook users access the platform via mobile devices
  • Daily mobile social networking grew 58% in 2011
  • Accessing social platforms via mobile browser is up 25%
  • Accessing social platforms via mobile apps is up 126%

And given these numbers, Brian offered a chart that illustrates that the “connected consumer” isn’t limited to a certain age group:

 

Click to enlarge

 

Brian said, “My mother uses Facebook more than I could ever hope to use it. I may have to opt out of her feed.”

The mobile and social introduction led into the main theme of the keynote: integrating all the channels including social, mobile and email.

Read more…

Top Takeaways for Small Businesses from Email Summit 2012

February 10th, 2012

Editor’s Note: Email Summit is attended by hundreds of marketers every year from a wide range of companies —solo entrepreneurs all the way up to Fortune 50 stalwarts. So to give the small- and medium-sized business readers of this blog some actionable advice from this year’s Summit, we’re giving Rebekah Henson, Education Marketing Associate, AWeber, a chance to provide the SMB perspective. In full disclosure, AWeber sponsored an SMB-focused special report from MarketingSherpa, is a sponsor of Email Summit, and the editor of this blog used to root against Chris Webber (no relation).

 

“The customer is king.” That’s been the overarching theme of Email Summit 2012. From the first words of Dr. Flint McGlaughlin’s keynote on day one, promising not to teach us new things but instead to teach us to see things differently, the focus of this year’s Summit has been all about valuing your customers.

That is right up every small business’s alley. Speakers from all different backgrounds and business sizes spoke on panels and presented on their findings, but you can easily apply several key takeaways from the week no matter how big or small your business happens to be.

Read more…

Email Summit: Mobile marketing panel on the complex sale

February 9th, 2012

Day one of the MarketingSherpa Email Summit 2012 opened with Sergio Balegno, Director of Research, MECLABS, and Dr. Flint McGlaughlin, CEO and Managing Director, MECLABS, the parent company of MarketingExperiments, with an emphasis that this is a research-based event driven by the 2012 Email Marketing Benchmark Report, featuring W. Jeffrey Rice, Senior Research Analyst, as the lead author.

The afternoon kicked off with two sets of breakout sessions featuring both direct sale and complex sale tracks.

I was able to catch a complex sale presentation, “Mobile Marketing Panel: Integrating mobile campaigns for the complex sale.”

The panel was moderated by Meghan Lockwood, Research Analyst, MECLABS, and featured these presenters:

  • Josh Herman, VP of Product Strategy, Acxiom Corporation
  • Kate Williams, Independent Consultant, currently consulting for T-Mobile
  • R.J. Talyor, Director of Product Marketing, ExactTarget
  • Nick Fuller, Director of Strategy and Analytics, eDialog

Attendees were presented with a few data points to set the stage:

 

Click to enlarge

 

All four panelists provided the audience with case studies. I will highlight one of those here.

Josh offered a case study on mobile advertising and the mobile CRM handshake.

  Read more…

Email Marketing: A closer look at budgets

January 31st, 2012

With MarketingSherpa Email Summit 2012 coming up next week in Las Vegas, we wanted to take a moment to take a look at a common email question.

 

It’s a touch-and-go economy, are my competitors still investing in email marketing?

The answer is a resounding yes, according to research from MarketingSherpa’s 2012 Email Marketing Benchmark Report by W. Jeffrey Rice, Senior Research Analyst, MECLABS.

 

Click to enlarge

 

As you can see in the chart above, nearly one-fifth of email marketing budgets are set to increase more than a whopping 30% in 2012.

And if your budget is decreasing, I’m sorry to tell you that you are in an exceedingly small minority — we found 67% of organizations expect to increase their email budgets in 2012 with only 3% indicating that a decrease is in the works. Read more…