Here’s a handy tool for real estate marketers. Walk Score™, launched in July 2007, allows users to type in an address and discover what amenities – as in restaurants, grocery stores, bars, retail shops, libraries, movie theaters – are located within walking distance. Read more…
Every time I turn on the radio or TV news these days, I have to grit my teeth. Most political sound bites and commercials from the presidential race break a cardinal rule of advertising – saying your competitor’s name.
Ad research has proven, over and over again, that the name people hear is the one they remember. Familiarity breeds comfort. Comfort breeds purchases and, possibly, votes. Read more…
Monday was the first day of fall. The weather has turned noticeably colder in Rhode Island. Yup, it’s time to wave good bye to summer and say hello to…Santa?
Last year, numerous email marketers used Halloween to spike their open and clickthrough rates and drive sales. But the most important thing that industry observers saw in their inboxes was that this mini-season isn’t just for seasonal marketers with tight product niches. Read more…
Jumping onto a bandwagon can carry you, but it hurts a lot when you’re thrown off. Marketing fads — like green, cost effective or energy efficient — do not matter. Marketing claims need to be factual or you’ll be thrown off the wagon.
When I spoke to Christopher Barger, manager of GM’s FastLane blog, the other day about best practices in managing corporate blogs for a MarketingSherpa article, something that struck me was just how hard it is for these managers to find employees within their companies who are willing to blog on a regular business.
It’s not something we at MarketingSherpa have to worry about too much because most of us are writers. But I’d imagine it’s something many blog managers struggle with.
Using branded screensavers used to be one of the coolest marketing tactics out there. At its height, 600,000+ fans downloaded Tabasco screensavers each month. Then came desktop apps – my personal favorite was Vail Resort’s – as well as branded IM ‘skins’ offered by marketers, such as Panasonic.
At 6 a.m. ET on Friday, September 12, 2008, handbag and design diva Kate Spade launched her version of the newest tactic to dominate the desktop – a branded iGoogle offering.
So far, results have been outstanding. In the first week, 17,000 fans in the US and UK customized their iGoogle homepages with Kate Spade graphics. (I’ve posted a sample of the email that made it all happen below.) Encouraged, Spade’s marketing team will expand their iGoogle offering promotions to the rest of the world in a campaign that will launch in early October.
The cost has been next to nothing. An in-house design team created the iGoogle programming. It took them about two months, but they were working on other projects at the same time. Then Spade’s marketing team sent an email blast to her house opt-in list and that was it.
I think this test is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of what may be accomplished with branded personalized homepages. Now that Yahoo is launching a new version of their homepage, which increases personalization, opportunities for creative marketers will blossom there as well.
Sherpa will continue to cover this area extensively in coming months. If you’re testing anything interesting, please let us know! Share your experiences in comments or contact News Editor Bill Rupp directly at BillR(at)marketingsherpa(dot)com
Thanks and here is the sample I promised you:
Kate Spade iGoogle Theme Offer:
http://www.marketingsherpa.com/cs/katespade/study.html
Sherpa’s classic Case Studies on:
Tabasco’s Screensavers for consumers and businesses:
https://www.marketingsherpa.com/barrier.html?ident=23584&pop=no
Vail Resort’s desktop app:
https://www.marketingsherpa.com/barrier.html?ident=23631&pop=no
How to advertise on IM skins:
https://www.marketingsherpa.com/barrier.html?ident=23745&pop=no
A major eretail player has been using a ‘wow’ tactic. In their order confirmation emails, the brand has offered customers the chance to call a toll-free number that same day if they want to add more products to their order. Read more…
Partnering with your competition can make for tense relations. You’re supposed to be working together, but you’re going after the same market with the same product. It can get confusing.
Measuring influencer reach and blog impressions is probably one of the most challenging aspects of entering a Web 2.0 strategy today. So, you created a social media campaign with outreach to influential bloggers. How do you measure the influence it had? Read more…
