MarketingSherpa Blog

A new report from ExactTarget and CoTweet reveals interesting differences in consumers’ motivations and habits when connecting with brands via email and social media. Take a look to find out more about why your customers are listening to you.

The report (you’ll be asked for an email address and phone number) is the result of three types of focus groups conducted with 44 people, and a 1,506-person survey (see methodology). It is loaded with interesting stats, such as:
o 38% of U.S. online consumers are fans of a brand on Facebook
o 5% follow at least one brand on Twitter
o 93% receive at least one permission-based email per day

The report offers plenty of other great metrics, and touches on useful topics, such as the motivational differences between consumers who first check email in the morning and consumers who first check Facebook. Check out the report for more.

The report also offers great best-practice advice for communicating with customers via social channels. However, there was one piece of advice I want to offer a different opinion on.

The report suggests that marketers avoid promoting exclusive, channel-specific offers in social media, and that “tone and content should be the primary differentiators in our channel strategies, not promotions.”

In general, this is sound advice. Integrating campaigns through multiple channels always drives stronger performance. And you do not want to condition followers to receiving special deals.

However, I feel like marketers should throw their social media followers an occasional treat. They are often truly fans of your brand. I do not think it could hurt to make them feel special, say, once every six months.

The “treat” does not have to be a discount or offer, either. For example, it could be a hint of a product launch sent to the audience two days before a press release is issued. And if it is a deal, it does not have to be exclusive to social media followers. Maybe, just once, they receive a coupon code a few days before your email subscribers.

How do you feel about occasionally giving social followers and fans special treatment? Waste of time? Vital display of gratitude? Let us know…

Many marketers have yet to explore mobile webpages as a marketing opportunity. If you are putting off tests because you think they are too complicated, take a look at this case study on mobile page testing we published today.

Mike Brown, VP, Internet Optimization, Vegas.com, and his team tested if catering to a mobile audience could improve site performance. The team showed mobile visitors a homepage and category pages designed for their devices. The test was a proof-of-concept on whether to invest in an end-to-end mobile experience for Vegas.com.

The tests successfully improved site metrics such as bounce rate and conversion rate (see the case study for details), and Brown’s team plans to rollout more mobile pages this fall.

Brown said these tests were easier than his team anticipated. From our conversation, I understood two criteria the team met to successfully run them:

– Mobile traffic present

Testing mobile pages only makes sense if your website receives mobile traffic. The team looked at its site analytics and noticed mobile visitors accounted for 7% of traffic, and growing rapidly.

– Testing and page design expertise

The team had extensive testing experience with Brown as the head of Internet Optimization. Also, the team used SiteSpect‘s multivariate and A/B testing tool to run tests. SiteSpect team members helped Brown’s team learn to create mobile pages, which Brown noted was surprisingly easy.

So if your team has capable developers, some mobile traffic and good testing experience, there should be little preventing you from running similar tests. And remember: you don’t have to dive in with a full investment. Brown’s team only dipped its toe and is now comfortably moving forward.

For several years now we’ve seen marketers report that a bigger email list isn’t necessarily a better email list. There’s often more value in a smaller list of engaged, responsive subscribers than in a huge list with a significant portion of addresses that never open, click, or convert from your messages.

But a new study from Return Path shows that many email marketers are still hammering unresponsive subscribers with undifferentiated, sales-focused emails — rather than providing more relevant messages intended to re-engage those subscribers, or removing them from their lists.

To observe marketers’ email practices, the researchers at Return Path purchased one item from 40 online retailers and opted-in to their email marketing programs. They kept that email account active for 19 months after the purchase, but did not open or click a single message they received and never purchased another item.

In short, they were totally unresponsive subscribers. But during those 19 months, the researchers observed:
• Retailers sent on average between nine and 11 emails per month during the course of the study
• Only 27% of retailers stopped sending messages during the study period
• Only 12.5% of retailers sent a “win-back” message that attempted to reengage the subscriber

We agree with Return Path’s conclusion: Marketers that don’t pay attention to unresponsive subscribers are missing opportunities and potentially harming their sender reputations.

Instead, identify those non-responders and approach them differently than you do your engaged customers. Here are three steps to take to begin the process:

1. Segment database by recent activity

Monitor subscriber actions to identify those who are engaged, and those who are not. Then, create a special segment for subscribers who have not responded to an email (clicked or purchased) in a specific period of time — say, the past six months, nine months, one year, etc.

2. Send unresponsive segment special offers or win-back campaigns

Once you’ve found your “unresponsive” segment, work to re-engage them with more relevant messages, such as:
o Special offers for win-back campaigns
o Requests for them to specify their email frequency and other preferences
o Requests for them to confirm whether they still want to receive email from you

3. Clean your list

Unresponsive subscribers that don’t reengage after win-back campaigns or re-permissioning emails should be purged from your list. Otherwise, your deliverability can suffer.

As Return Path and other deliverability experts have noted, some ISPs are increasingly using subscriber response rate as a factor in a sender’s reputation. If they see low or no-response from a big portion of your database over time, they may reduce your sender score to the point that your messages are sent to spam folders — or blocked entirely.

Multichannel marketing strategies can be powerful sales and awareness drivers, but they can present challenges to maintaining consistent brand messaging and sales performance.

The marketers at luxury jewelry brand Scott Kay, for example, reach audiences through several offline and online channels, including:
o Website
o Email
o Radio
o Outdoor
o Direct mail
o Retail partnerships

Marketing through so many channels complicates achieving continuously improving results, says Dan Scott, CMO, Scott Kay.

“There is no single silver bullet or one structure or one formula in multichannel marketing that will work,” Scott says. “There has to be assessment and reassessment each year of how the campaigns were structured, if they worked properly and what we can do better.”

Here are two tactics the team uses:

– Test the waters

Scott’s team tests multichannel messages and materials in a small group of retailers and focus groups before releasing them in a broader market. If results are positive, the campaigns are broadened to 10 select markets. From there, the team may adjust the messaging in specific markets to improve resonance and response.

“If in a six-month period the metrics are not performing as forecasted, then we’ll make additional changes,” Scott says.

– Establish checks and balances

The team also uses a system of checks and balances to ensure marketing messages are consistent across channels. For example, the team requires Scott Kay’s retail partners to sign a compliance agreement before selling its products. Part of that agreement requires retailers to submit marketing campaign materials for Scott Kay’s approval.

For example, one retailer wanted to invest heavily in marketing its Scott Kay collection in nearby movie theaters.

“We had to respectfully reject that,” Scott says. “The basis being that the audience was too widespread, too difficult to quantify and the environment too pedestrian for the luxury brand that we represent.”

The time for companies to get more value from online conversations is fast approaching, says Wendy Lea, CEO, Get Satisfaction, a social application provider.

Social media can help satisfy a variety of business goals — such as cutting support costs and informing product design — but who is responsible for ensuring these goals are well met? The likely answer for most companies is no one.

Lea sees the need for a new role, a community manager, at many companies. This person would interact with an online community and ensure it yielded real business results.

“This is a non-trivial leadership role that I do not think most companies have really begun to understand how to take advantage of,” Lea says.

The key responsibilities and traits of a good community manager are still up in the air, Lea says. However, the person will likely need to have:
o Strong command of brand voice and style
o Strong writing skills
o Deep knowledge of company products and service
o Ability to work with multiple branches of the business

“I think this is a very complex and sophisticated role that sits right in the middle of CRM,” Lea says. “It’s a whole other skill and knowledge set. I know there are some books about it, but how many corporations are really making sure their folks involved in this are developed to do the work rather than just picking people who understand social media?”

Get Satisfaction is planning a pioneer effort to train community managers for other companies, Lea says. Although the role is somewhat undefined today, you can expect announcements and more information from her team over the next six months.

Does your team have a community manager? Please tell us about them in the comments…

I’ve been digging through MarketingSherpa’s new 2011 Search Marketing Benchmark Report: SEO Edition and finding very interesting data describing social media’s impact on SEO performance.

The most interested stat I came across noted that marketers working in social media reported an average 27% conversion rate for organic search traffic. Those not working in social media reported 17%. That is a 58.8% difference — which is huge.

What could cause this disparity?

Possible explanations are found in a second chart. Marketers were asked whether social media or SEO were effective marketing tactics for achieving a list of objectives.

More marketers said SEO, rather than social media, was a “very effective” way to:
o Increase brand or product awareness (42% vs. 37%)
o Increase website traffic (57% vs. 33%)
o Increase lead generation (35% vs. 18%)
o Increase offline sales revenue (17% vs. 10%)
o Increase online sales revenue (26% vs. 9%)

On the flipside, more marketers said social media was a “very effective” way to:
o Improve brand or product reputation (37% vs. 29%)
o Improve public relations (36% vs. 27%)

Clearly, SEO is more effective at attracting attention and ultimately converting people. However, social media is more likely to increase positive thinking around a product and brand.

This leads me to a hypothesis: marketers who engage in SEO and social media have 58.8% higher conversion rates for organic traffic because their social media work has increased trust in their brands and products.

But that might not be the whole story.

As pointed out in the benchmark report’s analysis, working in social media provides additional benefits. Social profiles and content are indexed by search engines and added to results pages. These additional results can push down a brand’s competition, increasing its organic conversion rates. Also, the social results can broaden the variety of content on a SERP and help brands appeal to more people.

The data are very interesting. If your team has well established SEO and social media strategies, take a look at your stats and look for similar trends. It just might make you smile.

This week marks the launch of MarketingSherpa’s 2011 B2B Marketing Benchmark Survey, which gathers data from members of the B2B marketing community to benchmark their latest best practices, tactics and results.

If you’re involved in B2B marketing, please take the next 5 to 15 minutes to share data and insights:

Click here to take the survey now.

As a thank you for your participation, you will receive an offer for a free copy of the Executive Summary of the 2011 B2B Marketing Benchmark Report, which will include highlights and key findings from the study.

We’re excited to see how your responses illuminate what’s working in B2B marketing today. The B2B community has been humbled by the recent recession and has been forced to operate with limited resources — while producing a higher level of quality leads than ever before.

The organizations that have persevered through budget cuts and increased expectations are the ones that could apply the most efficient marketing tactics for every stage of the buying cycle — and in the process, improve the overall efficiency of their marketing and sales departments.

The greatest challenge for B2B marketers is generating high-quality leads to deliver to their sales teams. Because of this challenge, marketing automation, lead nurturing and lead scoring have become critical tactics for B2B organizations.

In order to optimize the efficiency of marketing and sales departments, walls between these teams are coming down to enable more collaboration. Sales and marketing are working together to identify various stages of the buying cycle for the complex sale, and to determine what marketing collateral or level of sales contact is appropriate for each stage. Through this process, marketing’s role has changed from just generating leads to generating and nurturing leads to the point that they are qualified, and ready for sales involvement.

The next year will be pivotal to the success of these organizations. With signs of an improving economy, the B2B marketing community is feeling more optimistic and reacting with the greatest budget increases we have seen since before the recession. It is critical that these organizations take the lessons they have learned during the recession and apply them efficiently with their now-increasing marketing budgets.

MarketingSherpa’s 2011 B2B Marketing Benchmark Survey will focus on organizations’ best practices, tactics and results in the key areas of marketing automation, lead nurturing, lead scoring and managing the complex sale.

Please feel free to tweet or post the following invitation:

B2B marketers share your insights. Take the 2011 B2B Marketing Benchmark Survey http://www.surveygizmo.com/s/341299/8gnpw @MarketingSherpa

Thank you!

If you’re still on the fence about the importance of a company blog, consider this trend: Many B2B marketers report that their team’s blog — not the company homepage — is now the most popular entry point for online visitors.

While judging our Viral and Social Marketing Hall of Fame entries earlier this month, I reviewed several strong entries from B2B marketers that cited impressive statistics for their company blogs. Thanks to a solid blogging strategy and the inherent SEO benefits of blog content, these marketers reported that their blogs were now outpacing their company homepages for key metrics such as:
o Total visits
o Time spent on site
o Number of pages viewed

For example, the team from the ESP Delivra (who just missed the cut for our Viral and Social Hall of Fame honors but nonetheless had a strong entry) reported that their company blog and social networking activity have become the primary ways they get thought-leadership content in front of prospects.

Carissa Newton, Director, Marketing, Delivra, shared these stats:

– They now see 4x more blog traffic than website traffic.

– Visitors are now staying 3x-4x longer to read blog content and website links included in that blog.

“In previous years, visitors went straight to our website,” says Newton. “With social media and blogging, it’s kind of changing that dynamic.”

Two factors are at work here: Blog content that is frequently updated and loaded with your team’s most important keywords lead to greater visibility on search engines. Plus, social sharing tools now enable your readers to share that content with their extended networks, further extending your reach and visibility.

In fact, Delivra has jumped more than 20 pages in Google search results for key phrases such as “email marketing” since starting its concerted blogging and social media effort. And since last October, the team has seen a 70% increase in inbound leads.

So if you’re not yet using a company blog for your own marketing efforts, now is the time to develop a strategy. To make the most of that tool, Newton offers these three tips:

Tip #1. Recruit multiple bloggers

Effective blogs are updated frequently. But many small marketing teams struggle to find the time to continually feed the beast. Newton’s team uses nine or 10 regular contributors from within the company, as well as three to four frequent guest bloggers, including customers.

Having multiple contributors ensures your blog will be a compilation of multiple viewpoints and relevant expertise that attracts a variety of readers. Plus, each blogger’s writing style will incorporate keywords in different ways to attract search engines.

Tip #2. Enforce regular posting

Maintaining a consistent schedule is essential to a successful blogging strategy. Newton’s team posts at least once a day during the work week.

How did they enforce that rule? They got the company CEO, Neil Berman, on board, and he made it a requirement that the blog be updated five days a week. He also leads by example: Berman contributes to the blog each Monday.

Tip #3. Share metrics and reward success

Newton also recommends using carrots alongside the stick of mandatory blog posts to keep bloggers motivated.

In the early days of their blogging effort, she ran internal contests to single out the blogger whose post was shared the most. She also used gift cards as rewards for the most successful posts.

Now, she simply shares the metrics from the team’s blogging and social efforts to show the rest of the company how important their contributions are.

“By sharing results, such as traffic increases, people’s eyes get opened differently.”

As the mobile Internet steadily gains in popularity, the future of mobile commerce in the U.S. is anybody’s guess. However, countries with widespread mobile Web access might provide some clues.

“Japan had a more-advanced mobile market,” says Matthew Snyder, CEO, ADObjects, a mobile strategy consultancy and agency. “It’s debatable whether it is more advanced or not these days.”

Snyder has worked in mobile and consumer electronics for over two decades. He spent much of that time in Japan, where access to the mobile Web is above 90%, he says. In the U.S., 31.9% of mobile subscribers used a mobile Web browser in a three-month average ending in May 2010, according to comScore.

Widespread mobile Web adoption has created a variety of opportunities for Japanese businesses to reach consumers, and also a variety of opportunities for consumers to interact with businesses.

For example, “every single McDonalds in Japan is equipped with mobile payments,” Snyder says. “It started about two years ago. As of this summer, every single McDonald’s was equipped.”

Tools such as mobile wallets have not caught on in the U.S., due in part to our comparatively limited mobile Web adoption — but change may be on the horizon.

“Even though the analysts have said it’s going to take a few years before we see 50% mobile Internet penetration, my gut tells me that we’ll be in 70% to 80% over the next couple of years very rapidly,” Snyder says.

Even if the U.S. market adopts some characteristics of the Japanese and other well-developed mobile markets, the U.S. is likely to be unique in some respects due to the strong presence of branded apps.

“In terms of mobile usage and mobile marketing, Japan is much more advanced. In terms of what we’ve seen in engagement, rich media, applications, and brand penetration into the space, we’re seeing a lot more in North America through the iPhone and the Android,” Snyder says.

I spoke with Snyder for an up-coming article on tactics for testing mobile marketing as part of a team’s overall marketing strategy — not as a one-off, tack-on tactic. Keep an eye on our newsletters to learn more.

Old Spice wrapped up a phenomenal viral marketing campaign this week that significantly leveraged social media channels, just as MarketingSherpa published our 2010 Viral and Social Marketing Hall of Fame.

What started as a funny Super Bowl Ad featuring a spokesman with an over-the-top ego and a penchant for manly nonsense turned into millions of views on YouTube this winter. The agency behind the ad, Wieden+Kennedy, followed up with additional videos, but the effort didn’t stop there.

For two days this week, the agency posted dozens of video responses to comments on Old Spice’s YouTube, Facebook and Twitter profiles. Every response is a unique, hilarious video of the Old Spice spokesman, actor Isaiah Mustafa, standing in a towel in front of a shower.

The videos are steeped in the same humor as the initial ads — supplying dozens of additional videos to an audience that expressed a strong craving for them. They also gave the campaign an exciting, real-time creative edge by directly interacting with the audience and quickly churning out videos.

To further the campaign’s reach, the team posted video responses to celebrities and other folks with major online followings, including:
o Perez Hilton — celebrity gossip blogger
o George Stephanopoulos — ABC News journalist
o Gizmodo — technology blog
o Alyssa Milano — American actress
o Kevin Rose — founder of Digg and other startups

Responding to these gatekeepers with personalized, high-profile and hilarious videos proved flattering enough to earn mentions in their respective media outlets. This brought the campaign to new audiences, further building the viral snowball.

Iain Tait, Global Interactive Creative Director, Wieden+Kennedy, told Kai Ryssdal on American Public Media’s Marketplace that the effort “certainly makes people kind of consider Old Spice in a new light again. And that has certainly been brought out in some of the conversations that we’re seeing online.”

With such a stunning viral success, where does the campaign go from here?

UPDATE 7/28: The campaign is proving to be a smashing success. Nielsen reports sales of Old Spice Body Wash increased 107% over the past month and 55% over the last three months, according to Brandweek.