Pilots have it easy. All they do is flip on the autopilot, order some Sleepytime® tea from the galley, and get a little shuteye, snoozing across the Atlantic, until they land at Schiphol (word of caution: this is based on my utter lack of knowledge of what pilots actually do … but thanks for getting us there safely).
In all seriousness, marketers have an autopilot, too … of sorts – the automated, event-triggered email. When I read Megan McCardle’s line in Newsweek, “Looking for a fail-safe plan to get rich without working?” I thought, “That could almost be a description of triggered emails.”
Think about it: Triggered emails offer the Holy Grail of email marketing that is so difficult to achieve – relevant, timely information.
I sign up to your email address, you welcome me … right at the moment I am most interested in receiving emails from you. And, perhaps, I hop right on a promotion in that welcome email, since you’re reaching me at the peak of my interest in your company (hey, I just signed up for your list).
Or I abandon a shopping cart because the product is 20% too expensive and then, poof, like magic, I get a 20% discount code in my inbox.
Or it’s my birthday, and you give me a free bottle of prosecco or wine to celebrate (hey, I’m going out tonight anyway), as Pizza Express did for Kate …
Editor’s Note: One of the prizes of winning theMarketingSherpa Reader’s Choice Awardsis the chance for a guest post here on the MarketingSherpa blog. Today’s post is by Amanda Gagnon of the AWeber Communications blog, chosen as best email marketing blog … by you.
It’s critical for any marketing email to be labeled with an appealing, even gripping, subject line. Since the subject line acts as the email’s introduction, if it deflects attention, the rest of the message never gets seen.
The question is, what do consumers find appealing? What grips them?
The AWeber team investigated results from recent email broadcasts promoting posts on our blog to find out.
Comments Off on Mobile Marketing 101: 5 ideas to help you begin a conversation with your team
Since cavemen gathered around the first fire, technology has changed the way humans relate to each other, and modern times are no different. For marketers, it’s about figuring out at which fire their consumers are.
So W. Jeffrey Rice, Senior Research Analyst at MECLABS, has a point when he says, “I believe smartphones have changed not only the way we interact, but what our expectations are.”
For more than half of Americans, 50.4%, their smartphones are that gathering place, according to a March 2012 study by Nielson. Really, that number only stands to grow (and it already has — up from 47.8% in the same study in December 2011) since 33% of Gen Y Internet-user moms have let their children use a smartphone by the age of two, according to a BlogHer study. Laptops barely beat them out at one percent more.
Essentially, smartphones are babysitting your future consumers.
According to research by Antenna Software, many businesses are planning to invest in mobile projects in the coming year, but where to begin? Jeff’s advice when entering the world of mobile email marketing is simple:
Comments Off on Customer-centric Marketing: 7 triggers to engage customers and build loyalty
“How many of you believe you are more fascinating than the average person?”
Keynote speaker Sally Hogshead, who goes by Chief Fascination Officer at Fascinate, presented this question to the MarketingSherpa B2B Summit 2012 audience Tuesday afternoon.
Not many hands in the room went up, which supported Sally’s findings: Only 39% of people believe they are more “fascinating” than “average.”
What is fascination? According to Sally, it’s a moment of total emotional focus.
She has developed the 7 Triggers of Fascination, “which are deeply-rooted means of arousing intense interest.” Each person, and brand, has primary and secondary triggers. These triggers indicate where your strength lies in fascinating others.
When your company fascinates your audience, your will get more engaged and loyal customers who are morelikely to refer others.
That leaves marketers asking, “How can we create the moments of fascination with our consumers that use the same triggers we experience when we are fascinated?”
The seven triggers represent different paths or ways to fascinate your customers with your brand. So, let’s break down each one:
Comments Off on B2B Social Media Marketing: 5 career killers and how to overcome them
Day one of B2B Summit 2012 has finally arrived. Today, I had the opportunity to listen in on the panel discussion “5 B2B Social Media Career Killers … and how to overcome them.”
This session went beyond simply helping your company, and on to improving the future of your personal career.
MECLABS Director of Editorial Content Daniel Burstein moderated the panel of three B2B social media experts: Eddie Smith, Chief Revenue Officer, Topsy Labs; Chris Baggott, Chairman, Compendium; and Nichole Kelly, President, SME Digital.
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With the introductions made, they jumped straight into the first B2B social media killer …
So, in today’s blog post, let’s look at lead generation budget trends (hint: money is moving to online tactics) and provide some resources to help you make wise use of that budget.
To help you get the most effective use of your budget, here are several case studies and how-to articles for some of the tactics mentioned in the above chart.
One of the prizes of winning the MarketingSherpa Reader’s Choice Awards is the chance for a guest post here on the MarketingSherpa blog. Today’s post is from gnome Flash blogger Emily Taylor. Please note, at gnome Flash, they use toys to represent themselves instead of the traditional bio picture.
It is too easy for a brand to lose its artisanal flare as it grows into a larger organization or corporation. The American spirit purveyor, Jack Daniel’s, has made a commitment to taking an equally homegrown approach to their campaigns. They have a series of videos that document the making of promotional posters by local artists that harken the Americana of the brand.
Data collection and analysis is a topic near and dear to most digital marketers’ hearts. Social media interaction is another topic that fits the same bill. What happens when you combine data mining with links shared on a social platform? Measurable and actionable insight that can inform your marketing planning and tactics.
Rishab Aiyer Ghosh, co-founder and Chief Scientist of Topsy Labs, took the time to explain to MarketingSherpa how marketers can mine Twitter for links, hashtags and topics to learn more about influencers, trending subjects and how your brand is perceived.
Data collection and mining is Topsy’s core business, and Rishab shares the types of data that marketers should be tracking on Twitter and what marketers can, and should, be doing with this social media information.
Eddie Smith, Chief Revenue Officer, Topsy Labs, will speak on this topic at the upcoming MarketingSherpa B2B Summit, August 27-30 in Orlando.
At Optimization Summit 2012, Michael Lykke Aagaard, Online Copywriter / Landing Page Fanatic, Contentverve, pulled me aside for an interview about content marketing. Below is an excerpt where we discuss three tips for getting started …
Let me (I hope) exceed your expectations in this blog post by adding three more tips for how to get started, helping you, in this case, to overcome common objections you might receive in trying to launch or expand content marketing in your organization …
With B2B Summit 2012 right around the corner in Orlando, let’s take a quick look at your peers’ top takeaways from our last Summit – Optimization Summit 2012. In case you couldn’t be there, listen in to what fellow Web marketing directors and optimization managers learned at the Summit to help guide and prioritize your own A/B testing and landing page optimization efforts.
Here are some of the key takeaways. Feel free to use the links below to jump directly to these parts of the video …
Infographic: How to Create a Model of Your Customer’s Mind
You need a repeatable methodology focused on building your organization’s customer wisdom throughout your campaigns and websites. This infographic can get you started.
