Email still a powerhouse in internet marketing

Email as promotional activity has exploded in recent years, and most forecasters believe that its growth is likely to continue for the foreseeable future. A recent survey by Strongmail showed that email marketing was the top area of business budget growth for marketers, with 65% of marketers surveyed planning to increase their spending on dmail marketing. Why this continued growth from what has been termed the ‘granddaddy’ of internet mediums? After all, email started many years ago and focus tends to be on new media like social and mobile.

Email offers marketers a fast, flexible and highly controllable format. Email is essentially direct mail on steroids because the customer is contacted directly and different offers and methods of engagement can be tested to find the most effective means of communication.

Interestingly, email has proven to be a more powerful retention tool than an acquisition too and according to the same StrongMail 2011 marketing Trends Report mentioned above, increasing subscriber engagement tops the list of important email marketing initiatives. The Direct Marketing Association reports that about 73% of businesses are focused on Customer Retention with their email program, versus, 27% who are focused on customer acquisition. However, as the Pew 2009 Spam report notes, many users are having less problems with email and are becoming more sophisticated in dealing with spam; 71% use filters offered by their email service or employers to block spam.

So don't rule out email as a powerful retention and engagement tool; email will be around for a long time to come.

Social Media Value

On Wednesday, May 18th, Dr. Lauren Labrecque spoke to a group at NIU’s day-long Interactive Marketing conference about the value of social media. Social Media continues to be a “hot topic” in interactive marketing and it doesn’t look like this will change anytime soon.

Lauren writes "As echoed in the CADMEF’s IMC Roundtable discussions, oftentimes marketers want to jump straight into tactics instead of focusing on developing strategy. This is especially true for social media, as companies act quickly to keep up with its rapid evolution. Before racing onto the next trend, marketers should sit back and ask themselves, “What am I trying to accomplish?” and “What value am I offering to my customers?” The “build it and they will come” mentality doesn’t cut it in social media. Companies need to offer something of value to consumers– create unique experiences that make them want to connect with you again, across different channels.

A strong social media campaign should consist of three steps- (1) listening, (2) planning, and (3) engaging.



Social Media Planning Stages
For the listening stage, marketers should conduct a “brand audit” in order to gain insights into consumers’ perceptions of the brand.

I highlighted a number of paid and free tools that can help marketers achieve this goal. Popular paid tools include Alterian SM2 (which I’ve used in my Internet Marketing Class), Radian6, and Meltwater Buzz. These tools offer a historical look at the brand– for example Alterian’s SM program has a historical database storing around 4 years of social media data.

Marketers can monitor peaks in brand mentions and attribute these events such as advertising, new product launches, etc. Sentiment analysis offers marketers the ability to see what words are frequently used in conjunction with the brand. I gave the example comparing the sentiment and themes around Skechers Tone-ups versus Reebok Easy Tones. When looking at the word cloud for Skechers, negative words such as “pain,” “discomfort,” and “ugly” appear, while these words are noticeably absent from Reebok’s word cloud. Reports can also provide information to help identify heavy brand influencers, along with demographic and geographic profiles.

Much of the same information can be glistened by using free tools; however, the marketer faces a challenge in bringing all of this data together since none of these free tools offer all of the features available with the paid tools. Therefore, marketers will have to conduct several analyses with different tools. Also, the majority of these tools lack the ability to view historic data.

Some free tools I discussed include:
Brandtags http://www.brandtags.net/
Google Alerts http://www.google.com/alerts
Social Mention http://socialmention.com/
Tweetfeel http://www.tweetfeel.com/
Backtype http://www.backtype.com/
TweetPsych http://tweetpsych.com
Twitter Advanced Search http://search.twitter.com/advanced
Social Mention http://www.socialmention.com/
Blog Pulse http://www.blogpulse.com/


Information from the listening stage can provide insights for planning and ultimately engaging with consumers.


Consumer Motivations for Using Social Media
For the planning stage, marketers should focus on understanding consumer motivations for engaging in social media. I identified the 4 C’s of consumer motivations– create, connect, control, and compete– and gave examples of successful social media campaigns that tap these motivations. Again, the key is to make a reason for people to engage with your brand on Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, YouTube, or one of the many other social media channels. One classic example that speaks to all of these motivations is the Doritos “Crash the Super Bowl” campaign. In this example consumers are able to create their own Doritos ad, which allows them to connect with the brand and other fans and compete for votes from other fans. The online community, not the brand, controls the selection process and the lucky winners see their ad on the Super Bowl (and may even win prize money). Other examples I discussed include the Old Spice “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like” campaign, Mt. Dew Democracy, and the BlendTec “Will it Blend?” series.

Although I discussed each of the steps (listening, planning, and engaging) in a linear process, each stage should be revisited throughout the campaign. Don’t execute your strategy and stop listening, instead keep your eyes and ears open for more feedback to improve your relationship with your customers.

Lastly, use social media in synergy with other channels. For examples, include incentives for customers to opt-in to receiving email communications or provide coupons for discounts at your ecommerce site. Try to continue the relationship through these different channels by informing customers of new products, specials, and news."

Thanks Lauren. For more from Dr. Labrecque, follow her blog.

Dr. Zahay-Blatz on Web Site Strategy

I just wanted to share with you some of my comments on web site strategy from last week's "Hot Topics in Internet Marketing" seminar at NIU Naperville. There I am above having a great time telling it like it is!

My Ph.D. was in both marketing and strategy and it was a pleasure when I went back to school in 1996 after so many years of industry experience to study strategic concepts and understand how they can be used to explain and predict what is going on in business, even in what appears to be a turbulent time of discontinuous change, like ours.

We first looked at basic concepts like core competencies and the positioning map (sometimes called a perceptual map), where you take two dimensions and put them on a simple grid formed by two perpendicular lines. We used the web portal business and looked at the dimensions of providing general information and being a trusted news source. Both Yahoo and AOL have been struggling with their identities lately and AOL recently merged with the Huffington Post and has been developing the local news site 'patch' to become a trusted news source.

However, more people actually get their news from Yahoo than any other source, including CNN! AOL aspires to Yahoo's actual competitive position but is acting confused as to its role right now. I think Yahoo needs to pull out the tried and true positioning map and take a look at its true competitive edge. I suggested that Microsoft buy AOL to get a uniqueness in the marketplace (which I forgot to mention it actually tried to do a few years ago..think that AOL would be more open to acquisition now?) Here's the link to the ebizmba listing of the top web news sites for May 2011.

http://www.ebizmba.com/articles/news-websites

We then looked at the generic positionings such as low-cost, differentiation, both and stuck-in-the-middle and mapped these positions to Walmart, Target, Kmart and Nordstrom and looked at their web sites to see if the basic positioning was being conveyed. Why don't you take a look at let me know what you think? I think too often the web site gets taken over by the technologists and not the marketers and doesn't convey the company's strategy. Branding is becoming so important on the web because of the transparency of the internet in terms of pricing and product features. These generic positionings, reinforced on the web, can help the customer remember what our product is all about.

Joel Book on Interactive Engagement

We had a great time at "Hot Topics in Internet Marketing" at NIU's Naperville campus yesterday. We spent a full day with some great guest speakers that I will be highlighting in my blog (hopefully a few of the participants will help out as guest bloggers for the sessions that I missed). Food and facilities were great also so Thanks to our support teams at NIU Naperville and NIU Outreach. Keep following us on the hashtag #niunet on twitter.

Folks really enjoyed Joel Book (@joelbook, http://www.linkedin.com/in/joelbook) from Exact Target's presentation on innovative brands and how they are using interactive marketing to attract and retain customers. That's Joel in the picture above 'engaging' with two of my colleagues from NIU Outreach. Joel said that successful brand are using a triangle offense of email, social and mobile to engage customers once they have come on board. He said that 58% of consumers begin the day with email, which aids the buying process, improves service and maximizes retention for customers. Those who buy products marketed through email spend 138% more than non-readers of email.

Best Buy stays connected with its customers via email after the sale and so does Scott's Turf Builder. Johnston & Murphy personalizes its offers based on customer information. Multi-channel interaction is a must and the true challenge is to manage the customer conversation in both inbound and outbound channels. Exact Target is working to become an Interactive Marketing Hub where the audience and content can be managed and reported on centrally. Campaign management certainly needs some help as our students learned managing just two channels in their live project for Restaurant.com this semester.

Some other Joel Book gems include "Serving has become the new selling" and "Think it through, not just think it up." I am sure that we will all be quoting Joel on these and many more gems from his talk. I am so glad that we have a relationship with thought leader Exact Target and have been using the tool in the classroom since 2004. More on the conference to come!

Mixing, Matching and Messing With the Push and Pull Marketplace: Don Schultz tells it like it is in IMC on May 18th

Don Schultz, internationally known consultant and emeritus professor at Northwestern University will speak at our 'Hot Topics in Internet Marketing' conference on Wednesday May 18th at NIU Naperville on "Mixing, Matching and Messing With the Push and Pull Marketplace." Don is one of the leading experts on IMC and essentially created the field a few years back. We are excited to have him at the conference. I have had a chance to get a sneak peak at Don's slides and I think you will really enjoy the message he has to present.

Don will talk about how the traditional marketer's toolkit, the 4 p's and mass communication, has become obsolete and what we need to do as marketers to operate successfully in the new world of integrated marketing communications. Don always has provocative comments and I just heard him speak to an academic audience on Friday about what we can do to cope in this time of discontinuous change. I don't want to give away the whole store but I do want to invite you once again to attend our "Hot Topics in Internet Marketing Conference" on Wed. May 18th at NIU Naperville. There is still time to register and to get 33% off the full price of $399. Thanks so much for your attention and I hope to see you there. TO REGISTER: http://www.internetmarketing.niu.edu.

Jennifer Veesenmeyer from Stratigent to talk on 'web analytics sins"

Jennifer reports that she will speak at our "Hot Topics in Internet Marketing Event" May 18th at NIU Naperville on the following topic.

"7 Deadly Sins of Web Analytics

Web analytics can be a powerful tool for driving your organization forward, but for many organizations, the reality falls far short of the promise. Instead of using data to improve websites and campaigns, those organizations are drowning in useless data. Jennifer will identify the seven deadly sins that prevent organizations from achieving the promise of web analytics. Then she will share her best tips for extracting actionable insight, designing dashboards, establishing a data driven culture, and incorporating multichannel metrics (such as social and mobile). Learn practical ways to overcome common obstacles so you can unleash the full power of web analytics."

I agree with Jennifer from my years in database marketing and my research in the area...most organizations don't fully understand how to mine their data and that is particularly true of web data. Do you agree?

There is still time to register for the event at http://www.internetmarketing.niu.edu.

Projects drive success of Interactive Marketing Program

We just completed a successful project with Restaurant.com in which our students in the advanced course Marketing 470 (Interactive Marketing Technology) worked in groups and acted as affiliates to Restaurant.com and used two marketing channels to drive traffic to their own landing pages. The students chose their own channels and measured and reported the results.

The channels chosen included email, google adwords, facebook advertising, twitter campaigns, facebook fan pages and contests and some offline channels such as campus-wide flyers and ads in our campus newspaper. Overall, we drove almost $8,000 worth of traffic to the site in the form of new Restaurant.com certificates in a four week period, 10% of which will be donated to a charity of the students' choice.

Students in this project got to compare channels and see the synergies in both. It was a great opportunity as a professor to coach them through the challenges and rewards of a real-life marketing campaign. This project is unprecedented in terms of interactive marketing education in its design and scope and in the level of involvement of the project company. Students had to work with Restaurant.com to get their plans approved and implemented and learned about project management and how to get things done in a company as well as about channel strategies and channel synergy.

Students learned about the legal aspects of marketing as one group had planned a campaign around "March Madness." When they learned it was a trademarked term, the group switched to "Buzzer Beater" as the tag line for its offers. This integrated campaign using emails and adwords advertisements around certain themed events and holidays performed well.

We used Omniture reports and Google Analytics to report the results and also some of the analysis tools from Facebook and other sources as appropriate.

Another advisory board member, Alterian, donated the use of its SM2 software in our classroom, which is a social media monitoring package. This tool was also invaluable in our project as we used the tool in conjunction with the keyword tool in google adwords to find out how people talk about Restaurant.com so we could refine our marketing campaigns. One group used twitter and facebook exclusively to drive traffic to the site and also blogged on influential sites as identified by SM2.

We also used Alterian's SM2 product in the Marketing 370 (Internet Marketing) course taught by Dr. Lauren Lacbrecque. Students chose a particular company and monitored the social media buzz and made recommendations for improving the company's social media buzz.

I am reminded of other successful student projects over the years in our program for Marketing 370:

2009-2010: Students participated in the Google Adwords challenge on a national basis and helped drive traffic to ten web sites that had not used Adwords in the past.

2009: A viral video campaign helped our interactive and sales programs and a startup firm rise high in the google search rankings. We were noted for our success improving our search rankings for our program through this this campaign in Aaron Goldman's book, "Everything I know about Marketing I learned from Google." I love talking to people who read the book and find out about our program that way.

2006-2008: Students also did live campaigns comparing two media channels and most of the groups helped raise money for charity. We raised over $10,000 for charity over three years, primarily for the Ovarian Cancer Research Fund (supporting my, Dr. Zahay-Blatz's, triathlons for that effort. Students were required to use email (Exact Target, which is also provided for use in our classroom by board member Exact Target) and one other channel and got to also got purchase lists and send out mailings or use social media, viral techniques and point of purchase and compare channel results.

2004-2005: Students worked on a variety of projects for industry including web site redesign efforts for major firms such as Careerbuilder, Teradata, Restaurant.com and Smurfit-Stone.

In our database and data mining course, Marketing 455, students have since the year 2005 been using data provided by the Direct Marketing Association based on real-life company datasets to analyzed marketing problems using statistical software and make suggestions based on the results.

It has been quite a journey from our first projects to this latest, most sophisticated real-world experiences that we provide our students. I know they are well prepared to begin their careers in interactive marketing.

If you want to get a taste of what we do in the classroom, come to our May 18th "Hot Topics in Internet Marketing Conference" http://www.internetmarketing.niu.edu. It's a lot like our classes except no grades or exams!!!

Joel Book from Exact Target to speak on May 18th

If you have not heard Joel Book of Exact Target speak, you really should! He always has wonderful examples about how companies can use email marketing alone or in conjunction with other media to boost reponse rate and foster relationships over time.

On May 18th at our NIU Internet Marketing Conference, "Hot Topics in Internet Marketing" http://www.internetmarketing.niu.edu. Joel will talk about
"The New Dynamics of Customer Engagement"

To engage today’s empowered and influential consumer, smart marketers are effectively leveraging digital media to generate leads, aid the customer’s buying
process, and develop powerful communities of brand evangelists.

In this session, Joel will show several of the country’s top brands and companies are using Email, Mobile, and Social Media as the “Triangle Offense” otheir multi-channel strategy to accelerate marketing and sales performance.

What Attendees Will Learn

•Why Email is not dead or dying, and why it has become the most effective channel
for “business getting” and “business keeping.”

• How top companies are using Email + CRM to nurture leads, aid the customer’s
buying process, and improve sales force productivity

• How to use Social Media like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to attract new
customers and expand your database of email subscribers

• Why mobile has become vitally important for selling and serving customers, and
what you need to know to effectively leverage smart phones and tablet PCs

Examples of Digital Marketing Innovation Will Include

BtoC
• Scotts Miracle-Gro
• Papa John’s
• Belk Stores
• Crocs
• Baxter Pharmaceutical

BtoB
• Volvo Construction Equipment
• Hitachi Data Systems
• Milwaukee Electric Tool
• Genworth Financial
• Microsoft

Use the code mktg33 to receive 33% off early bird pricing by May 6th.

Google shares management insights with students

One of the groups in Maketing 470 reported on the Okner symposium they attended this semester: "As part of the group that attended the Okner Symposium at University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, we had a thoroughly enjoyable time. The keynote speaker from Google, Kristin MacGreogor, provided great insight into what makes a strong company. For example, she referenced how Google allows its engineers to use 20% of their time—roughly one day each week—to work on any project they want. Many great Google products, such as, Gmail and Google Earth, were borne of this free time. She also spoke of how Google doesn’t wait until a product is perfect to release it. They simply do it well and then continue to tweak it once it’s gone to market.

In addition to the keynote speaker from Google, we had a great time at the roundtable discussions. We had the chance to sit in on the roundtable with Warren C. Lillund, the Vice President of Consulting with Hunter Business Group, LLC. He discussed the ways that students can leverage social media sites like LinkedIn to get jobs. We also had a chance to sit with Chris Remington of Trivera Interactive. At his roundtable, we learned about where interactive is going and how it’s being currently used in industry.

We also enjoyed the interview with NIU alum Will Johnson. Getting to hear firsthand accounts of a recent graduate of NIU was great. From that we learned some things to do and not do in a job search. The most beneficial takeaway was simply not to settle. Find something you love to do and do it.

Overall, the Okner was a great day and we were glad to have been a part of it."

Students rock ROI; Razorfish helps to explain why

We went over this week how to calculate Return on Marketing Investment, ROMI, in the simplest sense. For our project each group got $200 to drive traffic to the Restaurant.com web site. Most groups have made back their money, for a positive ROMI of dollars made/dollars spent of 100%, with some groups making over a 600% ROMI. I told them to put this all on their resume as employers would like these numbers.

Of course these calculations are also just marketing acquisition numbers and don't tell the story in terms of customer lifetime value. I heard a presentation yesterday at the CADM luncheon from Razorfish (Chad Maxwell and Teresa Caro presenting) on their work on marketing segmentation by communications preference and the engagement expectations by channel (http://liminal.razorfish.com/).

In our class, our Students have to pick two communications channels for their project Our groups in class using email have done quite well and individual email and the company web site are still the most valued communications channels in terms of customer's engagement expectations, according to this research.

The goal once the customer has been acquired is to keep them around and keep them engaged. Razorfish, working with Virgin Airlines developed four customer segments based on engagement preference. In spite of the fact the company is quite a savvy online marketer, not all of its customers were socially savvy (only 22%) and those who were traditionally engaged and like email newsletters for example (11%) of the sample, were also among the most profitable for the company.

I will talk to the students next week about engagement now that we have spent a semester on customer acquisition, and had some fun to boot!