2010 March | Personalized URLs, Custom Landing Pages with Social Media Integration & Realtime Analytics.

Archive for March, 2010

The Socialization of Search and What it Means to You

No matter what product or service your company sells, people need to be able to find it online. Climbing to the first page of results in Google (while extremely difficult) used to be the best way to help your customers find you on the intertubes.

However, the rules are changing, and while search engine optimization is still important, it is no longer enough. Search is going social, as the major search engines try to create more relevant results by leveraging the power of social networks.

For example, both Bing and Google now index tweets. Also, with Google’s new social search feature, whenever users enter in a search term, Google displays items posted by members of their “social circle” in the results, on the first page.

People are also becoming more likely to turn to social networking sites to find information, as opposed to search engines. Brian Solis notes that “20% of social consumers today, use social networks as their primary navigation hubs, relying on contacts and trending themes to point them in the right direction.”

What does that mean to companies and brands? On the Web Strategy blog, Jeremiah Owyang and Charlene Li explain that the forthcoming integration of social and search means that it is vital to get your customers talking about you (and to make sure they are saying nice things!):

“For the first time, consumers will be able to directly impact web search results. Although companies spend thousands of marketing dollars controlling their search results by using Google’s advertising services, customers and competitors can quickly and cheaply impact search results using simple tools like Twitter.”

Brian Solis has a helpful list of 10 steps that brands can take to optimize themselves for social search. Developing a presence on social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter is important, of course, as is developing procedures to monitor these sites for mentions of your brand. You need to connect with your customers and engage them directly.

But it’s not enough to simply create a Facebook page or a Twitter account. And you can’t simply talk about yourself-you have to encourage your customers to talk about you. One of the easiest ways to do that is to integrate social media sharing into your direct response campaigns.

Whether you initially connect with your customers via direct mail or email, if you provide them with a compelling offer and give them the means to share it on social networking sites, it’s possible to generate viral campaigns that can give your company more visibility in social search.

To quote Brian Solis:

“If the socialization of search and commerce is driven by any one behavior, it is that of sharing…In the share economy, currency is defined by likes, links, retweets, updates, comments, shares on Facebook, Twitter, Google Buzz, MySpace, et al. And, its impact only grows as Social Media becomes pervasive.”

With Dukky, you can quickly and easily create integrated campaigns that bring together direct mail, email, social media and mobile marketing. Through the use of pURLS, your offers become part of the “share economy,” with results that are trackable on our real-time dashboard. It’s a simple, yet effective way to get customers talking about your brand!

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Are Americans REALLY Shunning Email for Social Media?

Recently, I came across this post on Socialsmallbiz.com, titled “Americans Are Shunning Email in Favor of Social Media.” Naturally, I was intrigued, and the post was an interesting write-up of a study by email marketing company Implix.

However, the headline doesn’t seem to ring true. Yes, the rates of social media adoption in the US have skyrocketed-your mom and maybe even your grandma are on Facebook now. But are Americans really avoiding their email inboxes?

I don’t think so. The study by Implix tracked 1,652,000,000 marketing emails sent from Implix’ s platform between July and of December 2009. Implix did find that Americans were a good deal less likely to open emails than their European counterparts. Emails sent to Americans had an open rate of 10.76%, while the open rate for emails sent to Europeans was greater than 13%.

Additionally, Americans proved to be much less likely to click on links in emails than their European counterparts. In a press release announcing the results of the research, Simon Grabowski, CEO of Implix, said

“Our study shows how serious the problems of e-mail fatigue and low engagement have become in North America. Fewer than one out of every three recipients opened and clicked on a link. And only one out of every eight subscribers who clicked on links did it twice .”

But are we really becoming less engaged with our email, or have we just become better at tuning out the spam? Other research suggests its more likely the latter than the former. For example, Merkle Inc recently released a study that found that the amount of time people spent on personal email use is unchanged from last year : 71% of respondents spend 20 minutes or more each week on it.

In fact, the study also showed that social media users were more engaged with their email inboxes than non-social media users. We aren’t shunning email in favor of social media, we’ve just become more selective about the emails we open and the links we click on.

What’s the answer? Of course, step one is to maintain your customer’s trust by not abusing the access they’ve given you. Don’t email too often, and provide compelling offers when you do. Make sure that your most loyal customers stay excited about receiving your emails!

Next, get your customers to help you spread the word about your company. The easiest way to do this is to allow them to share the offers you send with their friends and family. If they really like your products and you haven’t abused their goodwill by overwhelming them with email, they’ll be more than happy to introduce your brand to their loved ones. Read more

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Dukky CEO Jimmy Treuting interviewed on Bloomberg Live

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Dunkin’ Donuts Finds Sweet Success with Promotions on Twitter

Like David Letterman on The Late Show, some companies and brands still aren’t quite sure what to do with their newfangled “Twitter machines.” Even the most socially savvy marketers have a hard time determining ROI, though they realize that creating a presence and engaging customers on Twitter is important.

Compared to other brands, Dunkin’ Donuts realized the potential of Twitter fairly early-the company began tweeting in October of 2008. The Twitter account is primarily handled by “Dunkin’ Dave,” with other employees like “Java Josh” and “Bagel Ben” filling in when Dave is unavailable.

Dunkin’ Donut’s Twitter account has a good mix of conversational tweets and tweets related to various Dunkin’ Donuts promotions. They also do a lot of small contests. For example, to celebrate the return of the Waffle Breakfast Sandwich, they are giving away a free $60 gift card on Twitter. To enter the contest, they are asking customers to tweet about “what they are waffling about” using the hashtag #WaffleWeDDs.

This mix of deals and personal interaction has gained a lot of traction on Twitter. @DunkinDonuts has 47,938 followers, many of whom are extremely loyal and engaged with the brand.

As Dunkin’ Donuts fanatic Jess Greco explains on her blog, PRBreakfastClub.com:

They know how to keep consumers engaged and interested on a daily basis and they have a way of making you feel like you’re special, even as just one of their millions of consumers.

But what about ROI? According to Portfolio.com, the company has actually worked out a way to measure the impact of all of those tweets, by measuring the number of people who click on their “Win Free Coffee for a Year Offer” on Twitter and who enroll in the “DD Perks” program.

Dunkin’ Donuts isn’t sharing any numbers-not the click-through rate and not the quantitative value it assigns to the new DD Perks members added to the company’s database. Still, it’s great to see that they’ve established a method for measuring the ROI of their Twitter efforts that works for them.

At Dukky, we’re all about helping you harness the power of social media to promote your business and measure the results. Our platform lets you meld your direct marketing efforts (both email and direct mail) with social media, allowing you to create campaigns with unparalleled reach.

You not only see which of the customers on your original list have responded to your offer, you can also watch your promotion go viral as those customers share it with their friends on Twitter and Facebook.

With Dukky, it’s easy to see how social media is affecting and enhancing the ROI of your direct marketing campaigns.

Interested? Why not request a demo?

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Neuromarketing Study Supports the Effectiveness of Direct Mail

Editor’s note: Today’s post was written by Sharon Markovsky and was originally posted on her blog, Practical Discussions of Marketing. It is reprinted here with permission.

I was reading an article summarizing the findings of a new neuromarketing study conducted by Royal Mail through Millward Brown, employing the University of Bangor’s psychology department and fMRI (functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging), which sheds some light on how the marketing medium used can be just as important as the message when it comes to building an emotional connection with consumers.

And, I have to say I am pretty excited with the findings. They support the case I made in a prior blog, Direct Mail Is a Viable Option for Small Business, that direct mail can be an effective part of a company’s marketing mix—thus, direct mail is not dead!

While the research conducted was qualitative in nature, only 20 subjects studied, the results are nonetheless very important. Without getting into my “research geek” mode, which I am apt to do, here’s the crux of what they found:

Physical media—direct mail based material—generated more activity in the parietal cortex, an area closely associated with the integration of visual and spatial information; suggesting that print-based material is more ‘concrete’ for the brain, and can act as a cue for memory. The print marketing methods were “seen” as more “real” by the brain because of the multisensory nature of the materials.
Direct mail-based material was also associated with responses which suggest greater ‘internal’ thinking – suggesting that this material is processed more in relation to subjects’ own feelings and memories.
Online materials on the other hand elicited responses associated with greater difficulty in maintaining attention on the task. Researchers noted that online materials proved harder to focus on; and engaged areas of the brain associated with greater filtering of irrelevant information in order to attend to the task, such as the temporo-parietal junction.

So what?

As a marketer, you need to choose wisely when it comes to the media you use for customer and, more importantly, prospect communications.

Print media may be more effective for complicated or detailed messages; online seems better suited for short, easy to read and less comprehensive messages.
Print media may be more effective for the first or introductory communication from a brand campaign, an online message appears better suited as brand awareness/consideration reinforcement tool.

Thanks to Royal Mail, Millward Brown and the University of Bangor’s psychology department for putting together such a great and useful neuromarketing study!

Editor’s note: With Dukky’s integrated platform and shareable PURLS, you get the best of both worlds- the deeper engagement of direct mail and the viral reach of digital.

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5 Reasons Your Marketing Strategy Needs Social Media

In the past couple of months, the need for marketers to integrate social media with email and other direct response marketing campaigns has become increasingly apparent. Has your marketing strategy changed yet? Here are 5 reasons why it needs to:

Social Media is Becoming a National Obsession

A study commissioned by Retrevo shows just how much of a priority social media is becoming. 48% of respondents report checking social networking sites after they go to bed at night or first thing when they wake up in the morning. 56% check Facebook at least once a day; 12% check Facebook every couple of hours.

Facebook is More Popular than Google

Not too long ago, claiming that a social media site could ever unseat Google would likely have been greeted with an reaction similar to the one that greeted John Lennon when he claimed that the Beatles were “bigger than Jesus.”

But now, Hitwise is reporting that for the week ending March 13, 2010, Facebook was the most-visited website in the country. Facebook. Not Google.

Facebook and Twitter Drive Purchasing Decisions

Facebook and Twitter aren’t just places where people hang out and socialize in a virtual world. They also drive purchasing behavior, as shown in this study by Chadwick Martin Bailey.

In the study, 60% of Facebook fans and 79% of Twitter followers said that they were more likely to recommend brands that they follow on Facebook or Twitter. 51% of Facebook fans and 67% of Twitter followers were more likely to buy products from brands they follow on social networking sites.

Email Drives Social Media Sharing

However, other studies show that it would be utter folly to disregard traditional direct response marketing via channels like email. For example, this study, by Merkle, found that people still spend a lot of time in their inboxes. 71% of respondents spend 20 minutes or more each week on personal email use-a figure that’s unchanged from last year.

People that use social networks extensively are also more likely to use email frequently, and they are twice as likely as non-social networking users to access email through their mobile phones.

Even more important for marketers, 20% of social networking users have shared items from their email inbox on social networking sites. For your customers, email use now goes hand-in-hand with social networking, and your marketing efforts need to reflect that.

Everybody’s Doing it

That last statistic indicates how important it is to design integrated email campaigns. Your customer’s email inbox is, in many cases, the key to reaching their social networking accounts. With integrated campaigns and compelling, shareable offers (basically, what we specialize in here at Dukky), you’re not just emailing your customers, you’re emailing all of their Facebook friends, and their friends, and the people that follow them on Twitter…

According to e-Marketer, more and more marketers are attempting to tap into the potential of social sharing with their email marketing campaigns. The “Email Marketing Industry Census 2010” from Econsultancy and Adestra, found that 37% of respondents are already using social sharing as part of their email campaigns and 31% plan to start doing so in the next year. Don’t get left behind!

Dukky makes it easy to integrate social sharing into email or direct mail marketing campaigns. With our PURLS, your customers can share offers via email or on Facebook and Twitter-wherever they feel comfortable sharing.

Dukky makes it easy to raise awareness of your company on Facebook and Twitter by turning your customers into advocates. Plus, you get real-time analytics that let you measure response rates in real time!

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Restaurants, Food-Oriented Businesses Find Social Media Quite Tasty For Driving Sales

Editor’s Note: Today’s post was written by best-selling author Rick Matheison, author of Branding Unbound, and was originally published on his blog, Genwow. It is reprinted here with permission. Check out his new book, The On-Demand Brand, in stores on April 28.

Who says only big brands get in on all the soc-net fun?

As it happens, social media seems to be especially tasty to food-based small businesses.

Clikz, for instance, has a piece on how a 10-month-old ice cream sandwich start up called Coolhouse, which uses funky, architecturally inspired ice cream trucks to sell its confections, quickly discovered that sending offers for, say, trivia questions about architecture to Twitter and Facebook followers in its local area, boosted sales appreciably.

And countless pizza shops offer weekly specials on soc-nets to get people into their stores. One shop, called GoldenKnights Pizza, has discovered 40% of its business can come from these efforts.

Yet another restaurant, Axels’ Food and Ice Cream has found great success by posting special offers through Facebook and Twitter.

According to a recent Rice University study, Facebook fans of one Houston-based café chain visited 20% more often, and spent 33% more, than non-fans.

“Social media is not like direct mail or local print advertising,” founder Kristen Costa tells Clickz. “Those marketing mediums don’t make much difference with our customers. On the other hand, our Facebook fans and our Twitter followers want information from us.”

Actually, it’s exactly like direct mail or local print advertising, only done electronically among people who are expressing interest in your brand by following it on soc-nets.

The real difference is summed up by Jenny Cheifetz, whose confections company started using social media last year: “[Social media] is viral, and it’s free….I’m a new business. I don’t have the money to spend on a large advertising campaign.”

In my new book, THE ON-DEMAND BRAND (out April 21 from AMACOM Books), I look at some of the most powerful ways to make use of social media to drive business. Among them: Limited time offers, which enable brands to get out promotional messages quickly to people just primed to take advantage of them. A growing number of food-based businesses are discovering that, but so are big players in several fields. Dell, for instance, makes millions off limited time, Twitter-only offers.

How is your company using social media to get people in the door and spending money? We’d love to hear from you.

In the meantime, read the Clickz piece, here.

And read more about THE ON-DEMAND BRAND, here.

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The Future of Marketing (Sooner Than We Think) Could Have Us Waiting for the Customer

Editor’s note: Today’s post was written by Nancy Scott, and was originally published on her blog, Marketing Brillo. It is reprinted here with her permission. Enjoy!

On January 6, I attended a talk by Stan Rapp, who co-founded Rapp Collins Worldwide and is now chairman of Engauge, the Atlanta-based full-service marketing agency with expertise in digital and interactive marketing. (Disclosure: I’m awed — and probably swayed — by the fact that Stan, courageously and with pleas from Morris Dees, managed the George McGovern presidential campaign).

Be that as it may, Stan’s informal dinner presentation on Thursday made a strong case that, going forward, the merger of direct marketing and digital lies at the core of what marketing will be. Stan calls that intersection “iDirect.”

In his view (and that of many visionary industry observers), traditional, Mad Men advertising — which, unlike direct marketing, is a) non-measurable and b) has been dominated by what Stan calls the Media/Agency/Nielsen Complex — has wasted some $2 trillion in the 20th century. In short, with no engagement, no brand-building, and no Internet connection, Stan describes 60 percent of print media advertising as “garbage.” At the presentation, he invited the professors in attendance to take last week’s edition of Newsweek and challenge their students to figure out how – by any measure (because there is none) – the ad dollars aren’t “wasted.” Pepsi’s defection from Super Bowl ads to online is cited by many as further confirmation of the trend away from traditional advertising.

Stan noted that “iDirect is the future of marketing. It is the growth engine at the confluence of Digital and Direct that enables customer engagement to drive a better ROI than ever before.”

Stan acknowledges that, while iDirect is the future, nobody is precisely sure what it will look like, but the perfect storm would appear to involve merging marketing across all channels, from online to offline, together in multi-variate, measurable touch points: mail, email, web, mobile, social, CRM, etc. This isn’t your Dad’s “integrated marketing,” though. That’s old news.

If a January 8 post by Samuel Axon on Mashable is correct, the billion dollar gate from Avatar is probably a solid example of the social side of iDirect at work. Now how do we take this outreach to the remainder of marketing?
Stan no doubt tackles this conundrum in his new book, Reinventing Interactive and Direct Marketing. I haven’t read the book (yet), but answers I’ll be looking for include: Read more

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Email, Social Media and Mobile Marketing: How They Work Together

We’ve been hearing a lot lately about how social media and email are beginning to come together for both consumers and marketers. But aren’t we leaving something out when we just talk about integrating email and social? What about mobile marketing?

According to this fact sheet from CTIA, as of June of last year 89% of the United States’ total population has a cell phone-and they aren’t just using them for talking anymore, either.

Consumers with smart phones are increasingly doing much of their social networking on their phones-newly released statistics show that both Twitter and Facebook have experienced triple-digit growth in the number of mobile web users (via MediaPost). Facebook has about 25.1 million mobile users, while Twitter has 4.7 million.

Even consumers without smartphones are texting, frequently- in America about 135.2 billion text messages are sent on average each month, and about 1.36 trillion each year.

These statistics show why creating an effective mobile marketing strategy is so important. You need to be able to reach your customers where are-which is increasingly on their mobile devices. In an article on DM News, Stephan Dietrich, the President of Neolane, suggests that to be effective, mobile marketing should be integrated with the rest of your marketing efforts:

To maximize effectiveness, mobile messaging and offers must be tightly coordinated across all communications channels, including direct mail, e-mail and social media.

People already use their mobile phones to share pictures, text messages and more with their friends. Wouldn’t it be great if they were using their mobile phones to spread the word about your company, too?

That’s why Dukky offers an integrated print, email, social media and mobile marketing platform. Encourage your customers to share your offer via email, social networks and text messaging, and watch your promotions go viral with our real-time analytics!

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