MarketingSherpa Blog

In our just-released MarketingSherpa 2013 Email Marketing Benchmark Report, we asked marketers about new email marketing developments for 2013 …

Q: What new developments will affect your email marketing program in the next 12 months? Please select all that apply.

As always, we asked your peers what they thought of this data. Here are three takeaways from their feedback …

Takeaway #1: Use mobile marketing and social media to engage a younger demographic

“In our market, loyal customers are getting older so we are focused on mobile and social as a way to communicate with younger customers to increase their loyalty. Spot on!!” said Randy Kobat, Vice President and General Manager, Strategic Initiatives.

Takeaway #2: Consider mobile design, not just content

“Mobile is dead on with our strategy and focus. We are developing programs with mobile in mind not only through content, but design. How have you faired with responsive design in email? Have you seen engagement go up?” asked Ivan Printis, Email Product Manager, Gannett.

At MarketingSherpa Email Summit 2013, I moderated the Mobile Email Panel, in which Laura Velasquez, Marketing Program Manager, REI, shared the retailer’s experience with responsive email design.

Below you can see how the emails display differently on an iPhone thanks to responsive design.

Default on iPhone

Responsive on iPhone

Results

The above charts show the results of A/B testing the responsive design email versus a traditional email, and you can see how Laura’s team was able to improve open rates with responsive design.

Laura also noted while mobile was slowly increasing as a percent of all opens of REI emails, the largest increase came after the change to a responsive layout.

For those looking to move to a responsive email design, Laura suggested marketers shouldn’t only focus on making mobile-friendly changes and creating a template, but they should also look at change within their organization. She advised marketers to have discussions with key stakeholders so they understand how their email messages will be affected.

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At MarketingSherpa Email Summit 2013, I was asked about the top three things marketers should do to make more effective emails by Jim Ducharme, community director, GetResponse Email Marketing …

Blogging can be a very effective element of your marketing mix. For example, an online retailer realized a 172% ROI from its blog.

Of course, as with any marketing tactic, just having a blog is not enough. So, if your blog is underperforming, or you haven’t yet begun to invest in this content channel, perhaps it’s time for a tune-up.

Inspired by the come-ons from the local oil and lube joints for “160-point winter readiness car inspections,” here is an eight-point analysis you can conduct to identify areas for improvement – and we all have them, the MarketingSherpa blog is no exception – on your blog.

Point #1: Posting frequency

On many blogs, the frequency and cadence of the blog posts is sporadic. You might see a blog post on Wednesday, then one on Friday, then no posts for a week, then two on Thursday.

An element of effective content is consistency. Let the journalists of the world be your guide here. For example, I have a weekend subscription to my local newspaper, The Florida Times-Union. Every Saturday and Sunday, a newspaper waits for me on my driveway.

If I were to stumble out of my house one Sunday morning – Tony Soprano-style – to find no newspaper waiting, well, I’d start to question the quality of the newspaper. If it just happened once, I would probably not think too big a deal of it. But, if the newspaper was no longer reliably on my driveway on the weekend, I would start to question the reliability of the information in it.

The same goes for your blog.

That said, you have a tough challenge to face as a content marketer, because you can’t sacrifice the quality of your content for a reliable cadence.

To serve both masters – content quality and reliability – you need to set up an editorial calendar you know you can consistently over-deliver on and build up a queue of content. In other words, if you’re writing your blog posts the same day they are posted, then you have a problem. For example, I’m writing this post on February 15.

That queue will wax and wane in size as you become busy with other duties, but it is your insurance and buffer against missing a scheduled deadline. You can still add some real-time posts to take advantage of general news or changes in your industry. Just make sure you have plenty of high-quality, evergreen posts in your queue to comfortably meet every date you are promising to your readers.

Point #2: Content value

“We know you have a choice of airlines when you fly, and we want to thank you for flying with us.”

While this has become less true of the airline industry after the American Airlines and US Airways merger, it is more true every day in the blogosphere, especially in hyper-competitive industries that have a lot of quality content marketing such as information technology and marketing.

Sure, you could publish only self-promotional posts. But why would anyone read them? Or share them?

When writing every post, you must ask yourself the central value proposition question – If I am a [particular prospect, e.g., IT manager], why should I [read this blog post] rather than [get information from any other source, anything from an industry magazine to a competitor’s blog]?

The end results of every blog post must be to serve your audience. So, focus on value as your top objective – it is more important than length, promotions or frequency.

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“Mobile is a behavior, not a technology. It’s about accessing content wherever you are. It’s really the use that is mobile, not the device,” Anna Bager, VP and GM, Interactive Advertising Bureau’s Mobile Marketing Center of Excellence, said in an interview with ClickZ.

This leads to part of the challenge facing marketers. How do you optimize for this emerging behavior? After all, technology is easier to optimize for than fickle people. If you were just optimizing for technology, you could simply, or not so simply, make sure something reads well on mobile.

So to remix an ancient Greek aphorism …

With all thy knowing, know thy customer

In today’s MarketingSherpa blog post, we’ll give you an abbreviated look at some data and resources compiled by the MECLABS Business Intelligence team to help you understand this new and still-evolving customer behavior.

“According to a recent Adobe survey, mobile optimization has been identified as the most exciting digital opportunity of this year,” said Gaby Paez, Associated Director of Research, MECLABS. “As marketers, we need to learn as much as possible how consumers of all ages are using their smartphones; how and when they are visiting our websites, checking their emails, etc. More and more people are using their phones instead of laptop or PC to buy online.”

“We put together this summary to help our team get a quick snapshot of key takeaways they can incorporate now in their optimization projects. We hope this summary helps many of our readers, too,” Gaby offered.

Key Data Point #1: Users are spending a growing amount of time with their devices

What struck me about visiting New York City a few months ago is the sea-change in behavior of office workers. You used to walk through Midtown Manhattan and see people on the street in front of office buildings taking a smoking break. Now, everyone is milling around checking their smartphones.

Website traffic coming from mobile devices increased 84% from Q4 2011 to Q4 2012, according to a report from Walker Sands.

Nielsen also shows mobile growth but breaks it down slightly differently and looks at a slightly different timeframe – July 2011 to July 2012. Its study shows a significant difference in time spent in mobile Web versus apps. Time spent in mobile Web grew 22% while mobile apps grew by 120%.

How you can use this data: First off, this data is a great proof point to secure the budget necessary to reach mobile customers.

Second, you can use these mobile growing habits to help grow other, more traditional channels as well. For one way to do this, read the MarketingSherpa how-to article, “Mobile Drives Email List Growth: How to use SMS and relevant content to add opt-ins.”

Of course, that growth isn’t occurring in broad brush strokes …

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Fun Fact: the iPhone can make phone calls. I say this because two years ago, when Consumer Reports found that the iPhone 4 was prone to dropping calls, media reports were filled with people who didn’t care.

They didn’t care … that their phone … couldn’t make phone calls.

Because people no longer use phones to make calls—they use them to check Facebook and Twitter— the issue of call quality was simply not of importance.

I’m exaggerating, of course, but not by much. According to Nielsen’s State of the Media: Social Media Report 2012, use of the mobile Web has increased 82% from July 2011 to July 2012 and app usage time has more than doubled. Of course, many people connect to social media through an app.

While less people are using the computer to connect to social media, more people are using mobile phones and tablets to receive their daily Timeline fix.

“The Nielsen report has demonstrated significant evidence to support the idea that the growth of social media and mobile technology are mutually supporting,” said Jonathan Greene, Business Intelligence Analyst, MECLABS.

“According to Nielsen, people continue to spend more time on social networks than any other category of sites – 20% of that time spent on PCs and 30% on mobile devices. This leads to a loose hypothesis that the increase in mobile usage and the increase in social media usage are related, with more people being able to access their social platforms with more frequency and increased lengths of time as a result of the proliferation of mobile technology,” Jonathan explained.

Here’s why this all matters to you, the marketer. We all hear about the meteoric growth of mobile devices. If people are using these mobile devices in large part for social media, that should inform your mobile strategy.

Here are three tips to help you improve the way you communicate with mobile social media users …

Read more…

In the MarketingSherpa Mobile Marketing Benchmark Report, we asked marketers about their challenges …

Q: Which barriers exist to overcoming your organization’s top challenges?

The MarketingSherpa community members shared their insights based on this data, which I hope you find helpful …

Challenge #1: Mobile site or mobile app?

“Strategy and staffing are (not surprising) linked. The resources required to fund a well-researched and well-structured mobile marketing strategy – or even a mobile strategy at large to address the primary question: mobile site or mobile app – are the very same resources necessary to staff such an initiative,” said Aaron Orendorff, Copywriter, Content Strategist & Project Manager, CREO Agency.

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In the MarketingSherpa Mobile Marketing Benchmark Report, we asked marketers about their mobile email marketing efforts …

Q: What percentage of customers/prospects interact with your organization’s mobile EMAIL messages?

Impact of the device itself on mobile email interaction

“I suspect the cost of service for data plans may impact and somewhat curb the degree of interaction on mobile devices,” said Lucia Panini, Marketing and Communications Manager, Betty Wright Swim Center –  Abilities United. “The other factor could be optimization of display, which should become a lesser or no issue with the most recent large-screen phones.”

31% of email marketers do not know their mobile email open rate

“I’m most surprised that a full third of marketers don’t even know if their emails are being opened on mobile! With all the attention ‘mobile’ received in 2012, I would expect that number to be lower. Tracking clickthroughs seem to be a bit harder – I’d be eager to hear how other folks are accomplishing this, technology-wise,” said Justine Jordan, Marketing Director, Litmus.

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On the latest episode of Marketing Research in Action, Milap Shah, CEO, NexSales, discusses research from the MarketingSherpa B2B Marketing Benchmark Report …

In the MarketingSherpa Mobile Marketing Benchmark Report, we asked marketers about their local mobile marketing efforts …

Q: What percentage of customers/prospects interact with your organization’s LOCAL mobile marketing tactics?

While marketers who do track these numbers saw some very impressive results (about a quarter of marketers finding that more than half of their customers engage with social check-in, opt in to geo-fencing communications, and redeem mobile coupons), the biggest surprise is the number of marketers who simply don’t know.

“The fact that the research suggests 50% don’t know how effective they are is evidence that although mobile consumption is increasing and marketers are increasingly adopting it as a marketing channel, analytics and measurement have still yet to catch up,” said Grant Osborne, head of agency, FIRST. “I believe tracking and analysis of mobile (both mobile Web and apps) will be a great source of gaining competitive advantage in this space this year.”

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Note: This email was automatically generated from a mailbox that is not monitored.

Ouch!

How often have you seen this line in an email you’ve received from a company? Even worse, are you guilty of including this line in your own email marketing?

When your customer sees that line, she basically hears, “Dearest Customer, We don’t really care.”

Email marketing should be a conversation

Think about it. When you ask a customer or potential customer to sign up for your email newsletter or other email list, you’re essentially asking them, “Can I have a conversation with you?” When they say “yes,” they are taking a leap of faith.

Will you send valuable information that helps them solves problems or meet their goals?

Or will you spam them with endless offers?

Or even worse, send them down the road to perdition and really betray their trust by selling that email address?

By cutting off the conversation before it begins, you question their decision to trust you.

This further worsens if it is in a transactional email, say, with a receipt for a purchase. Here, they took an even bigger leap of faith, gave you hard-earned money on the hope that the product will be as good as you say it is, and they’ll receive it when you say they will.

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