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Archive for December, 2009

“My customers don’t use social media”

Today’s post was written by John McCrory and originally appeared on his blog. It has been reprinted here with permission.

Really? How do you know? I’ve heard this line many times and it’s one of the most common reasons people in small business give for why social media isn’t a good fit for them.

What about advertising? Direct mail? How many of your customers are you reaching through those channels? A lot of the small business owners I’ve met aren’t sure they are getting any value out of ads and mailings. “Truth is,” they say, “I get most of my customers through word of mouth.”

Guess what? If word of mouth is your top marketing channel, you had better rethink your attitude about Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and the rest. Social media makes word of mouth visible. Because of that, I happen to think that social media are more relevant marketing tools for small and medium sized businesses than they are for big national brands.

If you integrate online and social media into your advertising and direct mail with something as simple as promo codes, you can even make the formerly invisible effects of your traditional marketing visible. But don’t take my word for it. Measure it.

Consider the case study of a retailer cited by Olivier Blanchard in his talk on measuring word of mouth the other day at the Word of Mouth Supergenius in Chicago: Though 90% of their marketing spend was on newspaper ads, E-mail, Facebook, and the retailer’s blog all brought in significantly more customers than print.

* 4% came from print ad codes
* 69% came from email
* 17% came from facebook
* 10% came from the blog

Not to trash print ads, but too often they are the default for many small businesses, nonprofits and educational institutions. In my experience, most small businesses never measure the ROI of different marketing tactics and channels, and proceed with advertising largely on faith. (Businesses based on direct-mail sales being a prominent exception.)

Alas, according to a recent survey, small business owners still have a long way to go in online and social media marketing. But the real problem is not knowing what works, and the solution is to measure and find out. I’ll choose evidence-based marketing over faith-based marketing any day. So before you say “My customers don’t use social media” again, ask whether that’s just your impression, or if you have real data to back that up.

Want more? If you still aren’t convinced, say, because “my customers don’t use Twitter,” Laura Fitton provides 5 great reasons why businesses should be on Twitter even if they think their customers aren’t.

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Harnessing the Power of Social Media to Build Awareness

Building consumer awareness of your brand or product is one of the key goals of marketing. However, as Augie Ray of Forrester noted on the Forrester Interactive blog, it is becoming more and more difficult to reach consumers via traditional media. Just think of how adept we have become at filtering out advertising that distracts us, whether it comes through email, direct mail or via TV and radio. It’s all become so ubiquitous that we simply tune it out.

Of course, overabundant advertising has been annoying consumers for quite some time. What’s new is that technologies like TIVO and ad-blocking browser extensions have given us a way to escape completely from interruptions that we would otherwise be unable to ignore.

In his post, for example, Ray cites a study by Forrester in which 21% of people surveyed said they made a point of fast-forwarding through commercials on TV. Ray even goes so far as to declare that “2010 will be the year marketing–as we know it–dies. “ Given this environment, how can you get your message out to consumers?

In this article on AdAge, Judy Shapiro says that she believes 2010 will be the year that social media really begins to shine as a way to build awareness for your brand.

Technology may have made it easier for audiences to escape unwanted advertising, but it has also created a new venue that marketers can use to connect with customers. In her article, she identifies 6 strategies that can be used to harness the power of social media to build awareness, including:

Using social media for customer service.

Promoting your company with multi-channel content campaigns

Building mobile apps like the Gap Style Mixer, which allows customers to get discounts while they are in the store and to share them with friends.

Going for large numbers of impressions using behaviorally appropriate ad networks as a base for social media-centered campaigns.

Not overlooking real-world social networks. Instead, create programs that encourage consumers to share your products with their friends and relatives. Shapiro singles out a company called HouseParty, which connects consumers with brands for brand-sponsored product-sampling parties, as a good example of this.

Taking advantage of the new tools that are becoming available to help you measure the success of your social media campaigns.

These are all excellent strategies, and both Shapiro and Ray are correct about how important integrating social media into your marketing campaigns will become in the next year. Read more

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What Can We Do to Reduce the Carbon Footprint of Direct Mailing Campaigns?

This post was written by Greg Barber, an experienced eco-friendly printer, and is part of a series of green printing tips originally published on the Eco-libris blog. It is reprinted here with permission.

In the post, Greg talks about the dramatic impact personalization can have on response rates, and how the power of personalization can be used to create greener direct mail campaigns. Dukky’s personal, PURL-based campaigns are an effective way to achieve the increased response rates Greg discusses below.

Direct mailing is considered by many a very not sustainable marketing channel, as it can be very wasteful and have a significant carbon footprint, while at the same time it often generates poor results. Today, in a tip dedicated to the Hopenhagen campaign, Greg is offering another option that combines greater effectiveness and a reduced carbon footprint.

What can we do to reduce the carbon footprint of direct mailing campaigns?

I attended a sustainable meeting at NYU last week and came away with a few good Green tips on direct marketing – how to make it effective and minimize its footprint at the same time.

There is no secret here and it’s actually quite simple – if you look at your clients and really decide to target what it is they really want, you can create a direct mail program that will give you better results, be environmental, and save trees, paper, energy, water and money.

First step: Make your list of names targeted to these best clients, or the ones that can do you the most. Look at their history of their buying. What did they buy, and when did they buy, and how much did they spend? Make a new print campaign that targets those wants and desires.

It’s all about personalizing your marketing. Personalize by name, products, time frame, and do a mailing that might be 20% of your present mailing list, but targeted to their past history of buying.

Second step: Even though you already eliminate waste by sending this printing only to past customers, don’t forget to use 100% recycled paper that is 100% processed chlorine free for the materials you’re sending.

Third step: You can also an email to this targeted audience on a second run, that will not only help you to minimize your campaign’s footprint, but can also be an helpful tool to estimate the effectiveness of your campaign and even further personalize your database for future campaigns. Read more

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Case Study: Toys R Us – Social Media Marketing hits the Mainstream

Today’s post was written by Ragy Thomas and David Levitsky of Sprinklr, and originally appeared on the SoMeMa blog. It is reprinted here with permission.

2009 will be known as the year that Social Media Marketing went mainstream. According to eMarketer and Deloitte, 17% of consumers will be using social media this holiday shopping season, 27% of online shoppers will seek gift hints and 45% will “use social networks to research items, compare prices and look for offers.”

Now that the holiday season is in full swing and online shopping has become ubiquitous, many retailers are jumping into sales promotion via social media to capitalize, and Toys”R”Us is one of the most aggressive. Given a few false starts with their e-commerce web site in the mid-90’s, it is obvious that Toys”R”Us wants to get Social Media right the first time out. While Toys”R”Us has a healthy Twitter presence of almost 20,000 followers, Toys”R”Us‘ 400,000 Friends on Facebook is twenty times that number, and the page is growing by tens of thousands each day. In fact, according to All Facebook, Toys”R”Us is currently the fastest growing brand on the social network and the growth shows no signs of slowing, at least during this holiday season.

In an economic climate where consumers are on Social Networks instead of TV or in the stores, and are looking for deals for the holiday season, the company has limited the visibility of some Facebook Page tabs to only fans, thereby stimulating Facebook users to join the group.

A smart move – obviously this has been a large factor in the company getting to 400,000 fans. Becoming a fan enables you to view the company’s Twitter stream, view all circulars from the store (including one with 35 pages of Black Friday deals before they are released to the general public,) and access specials, including “mystery deals”

Toys”R”Us has also embedded their entire 80 page Big Book toy catalog as a part of their Page, along with including redeemable coupons, links to the “Shaq Give Back” charity and Toys”R”Us You Tube videos.

Summary: It’s an extremely great effort. Toys”R”Us obviously drew virtually all of the content for the Facebook page, and this means that their cost (aside from driving new fans to the page) was minimal.

Social Media Marketers now have ample case studies to prove that Social Media Marketing works: Starbucks. Ford. Intuit. Dell. And now ToysRUs, with 400,000 followers at a cost of probably less than $100 K (my guess.)

I can’t wait to hear Toys R Us results – I’d venture a guess that this vehicle will show a huge return compared to the company’s other ad buys.

Company: ToysRUs

Location: Wayne, NJ

CEO: Gerald L. Storch

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2010 Social Media Predictions: What They Mean For Direct Marketing

‘Tis the season to reflect on the past year and start preparing for what the coming year will bring. To that end, social media marketing experts have been busy reading tea leaves, gazing into crystal balls, watching the flight of birds, and anything else that might give them a glimpse into the future. What changes can we expect to see in 2010, and how will they effect your marketing campaigns?

According to David Armano of the Harvard Business Blog, social networks will begin to become more exclusive in 2010, as people begin to wall themselves off and focus their time and attention on the people in their networks who matter most or who add the most value. Social media users are putting more and more effort into filtering the signal from the noise.

What does that mean to you? It means that you can’t just tweet about a promotion or post something on your Facebook fan page and expect to generate a huge response. Creating shareable content and promotions will become increasingly important, as brands will become increasingly reliant on customers to spread the word for them.

Armano also predicts that people will share less content via email in 2010 and more via other social networks. According to him, “it’s likely that we will see an increase in user behavior as it becomes more mainstream for people to share with networks what they used to do with e-mail lists.” Dukky makes the most of this trend by making it easy for customers to share offers they receive through our direct response campaigns with others in their social networks.

Also, according to the 2010 Marketing Trends survey by Strong Mail, 42% of marketers plan to drop spending on direct mail, while 59% plan to increase spending on social media. If you will be spending less on direct mail in 2010, don’t you want to make sure you are getting the biggest bang for your buck? By personalizing your offers and targeting them so that they go to the recipients who are most likely to respond, you can greatly improve your response rates and do more with a smaller budget.

Dukky is one solution that can help you do just that. Dukky is an add-on that helps you get more from your direct response campaigns by integrating social sharing. This allows you to leverage the trend towards peer to peer sharing via social networks without abandoning direct response altogether.

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Don’t Strike the Captain Morgan Pose in Social Media

Editor’s Note: Today’s post was written by Peter Platt, the Chief Digital Officer of Catalyst Direct, and originally appeared on the Catalyst Direct blog. It is reprinted here with permission.

While reading the recent stories about Captain Morgan’s guerrilla marketing effort with the NFL, I realized that we’re often tasked with similar objectives for developing social media campaigns. There are huge audiences out there actively communicating and brands want to be part of the conversation, but is inserting our message really the right approach?

A quick background for those of you who missed the news…recently, Captain Morgan created a promotion to provide donations to charity for NFL players who struck the Captain Morgan pose after completing a touchdown. Quite honestly, this was a brilliant concept, in perfect alignment with the brand, provided support to a good organization and was intended to make a significant brand impact in front of a lot of people. But the problem with this was that the NFL does not allow players to do any promoting on the field during a game.

Why is this territory protected? The NFL thrives on advertising and sponsorships; there are plenty of great places to put your messaging surrounding games–tv commercials, on the scoreboard, throughout the stadium, even flying overhead, so why not in the game? It’s pretty simple. When you bring marketing campaigns onto the field, you distract from the game, weaken the experience for the participants and the audience and, in the end lose focus of the real meaning of the event itself.

When brands that want to insert themselves into the conversation apply this approach to the social media space, you can expect similar results. Social media is about conversations. As marketers, when we see audiences actively communicating and we want to be part of it, but we can’t just barge in and strike a pose. So let’s take a lesson from sports marketing: The key to social marketing is to look for ways to surround the conversation and get invited in…rather than just standing there with your leg in the air.

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Cross Media Marketing is a Great Way to Get Customer Information

Editor’s Note: Today’s post was written by Ivana Taylor, and originally appeared on the QuestionPro blog. It is reprinted here with permission. Ivana is the CEO of Third Force, a strategic firm that helps small businesses get and keep their ideal customer. She’s the co-author of the book “Excel for Marketing Managers” and proprietor of DIYMarketers, a site for in-house marketers. Her blog is Strategy Stew.

Have you ever considered using direct mail as a way of gathering demographic and psychographic information? If not, then this is your opportunity to really get some bang for your marketing budget dollar.

With the advent of on-demand printing and publishing, we’ve been able to literally convert mass-marketing to a more personal one-to-one experience. All it takes is a list, a database and some creativity and for a relatively small budget, you will be on your way to:

1. Getting more information about your list (email address, buying preferences, job title)

2. Learning how to better communicate with your list (how would you like to be contacted?)

3. Drive list members to your website

4. Present them with a specific offer

5. Invite them to an event

6. Register for a conference or event, including break-out sessions, etc.

All of this can be yours by exploring “cross-media marketing.” Read more

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Zhu Zhu Pets- All I Want for Christmas is a Fake Hamster

Every year, a new toy becomes the focus of holiday hysteria. Over the years, parents have fought crowds (and sometimes each other) to obtain Tickle Me Elmos, Furbies and Cabbage Patch dolls, just to name a few. It’s Christmas time again, so parents, choose your weapons and prepare to go to battle for this year’s “must-have” toy: robotic hamsters called Zhu Zhu Pets. Even if you don’t have kids, you’ve probably heard about the mechanical rodents, which have been disappearing from store shelves since well before Thanksgiving.

What do Zhu Zhu Pets do? Well, they squeak and make noise, run around the floor or a little fake hamster cage, and make “tooth-brushing” and “toilet-flushing”sounds when they go into their little “bathrooms.” They can also drive little hamster cars around.

How did a robotic hamster that basically just runs around the floor and chirps become the most requested toy of the year? The success of Zhu Zhu Pets is even more unexpected when you consider that the toy doesn’t have a major toy company or the power of a popular TV show or movie behind it.

To jump-start demand for Zsu Zsu Pets, Cepia, the company behind the toys, used a series of clever marketing strategies to get the word out about Zhu Zhu Pets both online and off. Let’s take a look at what made it so successful:

Giveaways: They began by releasing the toys exclusively in Phoenix, distributing them to children’s hospitals and even giving them away at a Arizona Diamondbacks game.

Social media: Social media also played a part in the toys’ success. For example, according to this post on Social Media Today, Cepia provided free hamsters and accessories to influential Phoenix-area “mommy bloggers,” who hosted “hamster parties” to let kids get a sneak peak at them. This not only got people in Phoenix interested in the robotic furballs, it also helped get people talking online and created anticipation for the Zhu Zhu Pets’ national launch. Mommy bloggers and who received the faux rodents uploaded videos of their kids playing with the toy hamsters on YouTube.

Scarcity: From there, a national launch and traditional TV commercials combined with a hamster shortage to help get convince adults and kids alike that they needed these toys. Soon, the critters, which usually retail for around $10 without accessories, were disappearing from toy store shelves overnight, and the resulting scarcity only increased the demand. People started selling Zhu Zhu Pets on Amazon and Ebay for 4 to 5 times the suggested retail price.

Theirs was an approach that defied the traditional toy launch leading up to Christmas. But their atypical approach using grassroots, social media and viral distribution is spelling serious profits. If only Cepia could get them to reproduce like real hamsters!

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New Personalized URL Best Practices

Editor’s note: Today’s post was written by Heidi Tolliver-Nigro and was originally printed on The Digital Nirvana. It is reprinted here with permission.

Have you noticed? The best practices for personalized URLs are becoming more sophisticated. You may not always see those best practices listed, but they are being reflected more and more often in industry case studies. It’s really neat to see the evolution.

It struck me because, earlier this week, I released an update to “Personalized URLs: Beyond the Hype,” a primer and training and educational tool for printers and marketers. In the best practices section, I had previously separated out the best practices into two categories: those commonly seen in industry case studies and those not yet commonly seen but practiced by some of the industry’s leading practitioners. During the process of updating the report, however, it struck me the extent to which the two are converging. In fact, in the October 2009 update I removed the distinction between the two classifications.

Here are three of the best practices that have now moved into the mainstream:

Incorporating personalized URLs as part of a larger, multi-channel campaign. Although personalized URLs are, by definition, multi-channel, I’m talking about using them as part of a larger, more comprehensive strategy that includes email, text messaging, and other channels to prime the pump, follow up, or reinforce the message.

Using personalized URLs as one of several response mechanisms. Personalized URLs are not a marketing strategy. They are a response mechanism. Sometimes they are the best response mechanism. Sometimes they are one of several “best” response mechanisms, depending on your target audience. The recognition that different audiences respond to different response channels and that marketers don’t want to lose responses by forcing them into a single channel is finally starting to sink in.

Using the survey buttons to really learn something. For a long time, marketers were using the survey buttons on the mini-sites to be cute. Tell us your favorite band, your favorite color, or some other thing like that, and then marketers would follow up with a personalized poster or sign to show their ability to process variable data, but in the long run, it didn’t really accomplish much. The buttons weren’t really being used to learn about the prospect in a way that could either be used by the sales force to make follow-ups more effective or that could be used to wrap around to better personalize future campaigns. Today, they are.

Those are only three of the major changes I’ve seen, and there are many more. The point is that 1:1 printers and marketing services providers are really beginning to wrap their minds around these applications and do a better job of implementing them. That is good for everybody — printers, their clients, and the customers and prospects, too.

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How to Win at Facebook: IKEA’s “Tag This Item” Campaign Shows You How

Swedish furniture giant IKEA wanted a creative campaign to promote the opening of their new store in Malmo, Switzerland. According to this article on CNET.com, they also wanted to save a little bit of cash. So, they hired ad agency Forsman and Bodenfors to create a promotional campaign using Facebook.

In the beginning, the campaign seemed like just another somewhat bland attempt to use Facebook to connect with customers. The store manager, Gordon Gustavsson, “created” a Facebook profile (actually, the ad agency created it for him). He began posting pictures of the showrooms at his new store.Then, IKEA announced a contest-the first person to tag their name to a product in the showroom pictures would win that product.

Naturally, people began to tag themselves in pictures. This pushed the pictures, and the contest, into their friends’ newsfeeds. The promotion went viral, and soon thousands of Swedish IKEA fans had flocked to the Facebook page. The campaign successfully raised the profile of not only the new store, but also the IKEA brand as a whole.

Of course, as commenters on the CNET article were quick to point out, IKEA’S contest does not comply with Facebook’s new guidelines for promotions. However, that doesn’t mean that there are no lessons to be learned from the campaign. First of all, IKEA’s campaign illustrates how powerful social media can be when it comes to spreading the word about your company. Because the contest was built around Facebook’s tagging feature, users “told” their friends about the contest just by entering it, since tagging themselves put the picture and the contest details into their friends’ newsfeeds. If you are trying to create a viral marketing campaign, capitalizing on social networking features like this will help ensure your message gets the maximum amount of exposure.

Many people also made a conscious decision to share the contest with friends via their Facebook walls. Creative, fun campaigns like this entice people to share. And, of course, so does the opportunity to get something for free, get a discount or win prizes.

At Dukky, we integrate social media with your direct response campaigns in order to increase overall performance and improve the customer experience. People like sharing discounts and freebies. Plus, your offers can be shared on any social network without you having to run a Facebook promotion, with all of the time and money that the new regulations entail.

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