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.

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:

1. Are we talking about behemoth iDirect agencies, bigger than the Department of Defense, trying to do every single marketing thing that a company needs – and then, in real time, running the results, measuring, reacting, reframing? I mean that hasn’t worked out too well for DOD, has it?

2. Or are we talking about simply applying the lessons of direct marketing – namely, if you can’t measure it, don’t do it – to every imaginable digital effort like email, web, social media, and those yet conceived?

3. (My Choice!) Or are we talking about some evolving form of digital application that can bring the message to one place in the customers’ hands. I think that’s the one.

Case in Point One: My friend’s love affair with his new Palm Pre. I haven’t gotten beyond my Blackberry (which, frankly, I hate), so I’m no expert in smart-phoning. But my friend is and he’s literally spent weeks fixing this gadget to the point where he can now carry his office — even his life — in his pocket. He checks email, of course.. but also retreives soccer scores, listens to podcasts, figures out where the restaurant is, reads movie reivews, follows blogs and Twitter, and gets whatever he wants on uStream. Last night, he announced with incredible excitement that the Pre has an app for his new Google Voice! This allows him – in some magical twist of technology – to talk for free, leaving Sprint pretty much out of the equation (extra points for screwing Sprint). The point is that maybe this is what we’re talking about when we keep saying that customers will drive the bus. This is not about what marketers will do, say, or contrive: This will be about what customers will choose to do. We won’t be able to reach them unless they somehow allow that. Bottomline: Likely the contemporary marketer’s job is to realize this difference and — somehow — respond. Very tricky.

Case in Point Two Makes the Case: In an energetic Q&A following Stan’s remarks, one participant observed that, to the upcoming generation of iDirect users, “i” had an even more centric meaning — as in “ego-centric.” The commentator said, “To my 17-year old son, “the ‘i’ stands for ‘I’ — as in, I get to chose the tunes I listen to, the video I watch, who I talk to, who my friends are.” Me.

So, yeah… looks like our new job is going to be finding out where the customer is hanging out, nailing (not guessing) who might be interested in what, giving the customer a way to get back to us, measuring the reaction, re-evaluating (in real time, if possible), and then starting all over again. Technology can do it, but we have to dream it.

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!

Sholz and Friends: A Dramatic Shift in Marketing Reality

Scholz & Friends: “Dramatic shift in marketing reality” – aka “A short history of marketing” … from Michael Reissinger on Vimeo.

This short video illustrates how marketing has changed over the years, becoming more challenging and complex as marketers strive to make themselves heard above the noise and the Internet makes it easy for customers to share their opinion of a brand with many people at the same time in a just a few clicks.

Social Media Revolution (from the Socialnomics blog)

This video is definitely one of the best presentations out there today that discusses the incredible impact of social media.  Eric Qualman of Socialnomics uses a series of striking statistics to make the case that social media is not a fad-instead, it is the most significant cultural shift since the Industrial Revolution.

Word of Mouth Visualized (via the Melodies in Marketing blog)

How much impact can one customer’s experience have on your brand?  The infographic above gives you an idea, and remember, with social media, this can all happen in the blink of an eye.

Of course, while customer anger and frustration can spread like a wildfire over the Internet, so can promotions, offers and positive experiences.  Marketing campaigns that include social media are a powerful way to sow the seeds of brand awareness and attract exponential numbers of new customers.

Chain Reaction and Social Network Ripple Effect (via laurelpapworth.com)

A nice illustration of the “ripple effect” produced as your message spreads throughout different social networks via social media.

A Day In The Life Of the Internet (via OnlineEducation.net)

Created by Online Education

This infographic does a marvelous job of showing just how much information is distributed on the web each and every day.

Do you have a favorite infographic or video  that deals with social media or viral marketing?  Share it in the comments!

According to a press release describing the results of the study, 81% of respondents expected to increase spending on social media in 2010, while only 18% expected to see no change in social media budgets or spending.

However, at the moment, most organizations don’t seem to know what tangible benefits, if any, they are actually getting from this increased spending.  According to the Econsultancy press release, 61% described their organizations as “poor” or “very poor” at measuring the return on investment for their social media efforts.

The results of the survey should surprise no one-in fact, they closely mirror the results of  a survey released last month by Alterian.  Marketers know that they need to be involved in social media.  However, without an effective way to measure ROI, throwing money at social media is kind of like throwing coins into a wishing well and hoping you get your wish.

According to social media guru Brian Solis, 2010 is the year that this will change, the year that “we enter into a new era of social media marketing, one based on information, rationalization, and resolve.”

He notes that CMO’s want, more than anything, to get measurable results from social media, not warm fuzzy talk about “engagement” and “connection.”  Engagement and connection are great, but the not-so-warm-and-fuzzy truth is that they are really just means to a concrete, measurable end, such as obtaining new customers or retaining old customers.

To better manage social media ROI, Solis suggests first “defining the “R” in ROI.” That is, first determine what results you are trying to achieve, whether it be increased revenue or something else, and then set goals and measure accordingly.  If you have time, read the whole article (and the lively debate in the comments) for more insight.

One of the great things about Dukky is that our platform allows marketers to integrate social media with direct marketing campaigns in a way that makes it incredibly easy to measure and analyze the impact of social media on the results. Our real-time analytics can show you who’s sharing your offer, which social networks they are using, the social influence of each customer and more.

Other aspects of your company’s social media strategy may be more difficult to measure, but when it comes to integrating direct marketing, mobile and social, we’ve got you covered.

C’mon, check out our demo. You know you want to.

Savvy direct marketers are using data and digital printing technology to develop engaging creative approaches and compelling direct mail campaigns that are almost fully customized to the individual recipient. The result is more relevant direct mail and stronger customer relationships.

Chances are, you’re already capturing transaction data and contact information every time your customer makes a purchase. You may even have demographic and lifestyle data on your files.

Using that customer data can help you create high-impact mailings that generate better results.

When it’s time to produce your next direct mail campaign, ask yourself this key question: “What do I know about the people I’m mailing to and how can I use that knowledge to develop a more effective creative approach?”

Here are five ways to use data to develop great direct mail creative:

Idea #1: Use Data to Allocate Creative Resources

Conduct pre-campaign data analysis to determine each customer’s value or potential. This measurement should drive format selection for your direct mail pieces and the allocation of creative resources. Higher value customers – and high-potential prospects — should get a more elaborate and personalized mailing; less valuable customers and prospects should get a simpler, less expensive piece.

Idea #2: Use Data for Better Targeting & Personalization

Append demographic or lifestyle data to your customer files, then use this data to segment customers into smaller, more targeted groups of individuals with similar characteristics. Develop creative approaches and marketing messages that more accurately target the specific interests of these smaller groups.

Idea #3: Use Data to Get Attention and Engage

Grab attention on the direct mail carrier envelope and engage readers throughout the mailing with data-driven messages. Even simple geographic and demographic references in copy can have a big impact. Printing technology now enables you to customize almost every element of your mailing.

Idea #4: Use Data to Strengthen Relationships

Customers know their value to your organization and they expect YOU to know it. Use data from your customer database or CRM system (such as the length of time they’ve done business with you, the types of products they purchase, or information on their last transaction) to speak to customers more personally in your mailing about their relationship with you and its value.

Idea #5: Use Data to Facilitate a Response

To make it easier for prospects to say yes, pre-populate customer data on response forms and create personalized URLs (PURLS) with the customer’s name that link to pre-populated forms on your website.

Dukky makes it easy for you to use these strategies to create compelling, personalized direct mail campaigns, as well making it easy to track and collect additional data to make future campaigns even more compelling.

Of course, Google’s product launch hasn’t gone off without a hitch-the company was a little bit too confident in its ability to automatically calculate which email contacts its customers would actually want to connect with socially, and privacy concerns and lawsuits have ensued.

Still, Google is fixing those issues, and it’s way too early to pronounce  Buzz dead in the water. In fact, as MediaPost notes, Buzz is  “the beginning of a hub that could eventually connect to forums, third-party PC and mobile applications, as well as other social sites.”

Facebook’s Project Titan is still being developed, but it is already hotly anticipated and expected to compete with Gmail.

On the Bronto blog, Kristen Gregory, Email Marketing Strategist for Bronto Software,  called Project Titan “a move that takes us more toward a truly integrated channel – where search, email, social, etc. reside together and where the idea of a master preference center could ultimately live.”

Taken together, these two stories seem to signal a broader trend- the impending merger of email and social networking.  Some people love the idea, some people hate the idea, but the same was once true of Twitter and Facebook.  As the lines between the two begin to blur, how should brands and marketers react?

Email that’s integrated with social networking demands direct response campaigns that are integrated as well. Even today,  our experience has shown that integrating social media and sharing capabilities into an email campaign improves response and conversion dramatically.  As the email inbox turns into a social networking command center, users will be encouraged to engage in social sharing even more than they do now.

Dukky makes it easy to integrate social media and email campaigns.  With our platform, recipients can share offers by email or on social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. Even better, with our analytics, you can see who is responding, who is sharing your offers and how they are sharing them, and more, all in real time.

Last week, Pizza Hut decided to jump on the “sweetest tweets” bandwagon with its “Sweetest Tweets with the Sweetest Treats to Celebrate Valentine’s Day” contest, offering free dessert sticks to the Twitter users who tweeted the best pick-up lines in 140-characters or less, using the hashtag #iluvPH.

The promotion runs through Valentine’s Day, with winners to be announced Monday, February 15. If your cheesy pickup line happens to win the contest and snag you a date with the girl of your dreams, you can go into diabetic shock together with a free order of Pizza Hut’s Hershey’s chocolate dunkers.

So, what inspired Pizza Hut to seek out and reward the cheesiest, gooiest pick-up lines? The St. Louis Food blog spoke to Sarah Rosanova, a PR representative for Pizza Hut, who explained that “It’s just a fun way that we can engage our followers on Twitter, and everyone loves sharing cheesy pick-up lines.”

But did the contest actually engage Pizza Hut’s Twitter followers? Despite some media attention, a press release, and coverage on Mashable, according to What the Hashtag, by 10:18pm Eastern on the last day of the contest, there were only 243 tweets containing the hashtag. Many people entered the contest more than once.

Even considering that it ran longer, Macy’s promotion seems to have beemuch more successful, with 1,614 tweets at last count.

The good news is that if you entered, there’s a pretty good chance that you won those chocolate-covered dessert sticks. I can’t help but wonder whether their response would have been better if they’d given away a more popular menu item, like a pizza or even cheesesticks.

The contest did yield some interesting responses-although if the contestants actually use these pick-up lines in real-life, I’m afraid they may be eating chocolate-covered pizza dough alone. Here are a few of the worst offenders:

“Are you free tonight, or is it going to cost me?”

“I can see my force is strong with you.” Okay, this one might work at a sci-fi/fantasy convention.

“Baby, let’s eat a whole Meat Lover’s pizza together and then you take care of me all night with Alka-Seltzer and TUMS.”

Of course, this promotion does illustrate how important social media has become as a marketing tool, even if it’s hard to be sure what will end up going viral ahead of time.  Dukky’s software can help you integrate social media into your direct marketing campaigns-increasing their reach and making it easy for them to go viral.  With our platform, customers can share your offer via email and via social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter.

We offer an easy and effective method to integrate social media into your existing marketing campaigns. The success of your promotion won’t depend on whether you attract the attention of the “right people” on Twitter or whether your hashtag makes Twitter’s trending topics. Instead, you’ll watch your  response rates soar as your recipients share your offer with friends and family via whatever social network is most comfortable for them.

What do you think of Pizza Hut’s Valentine’s Day promotion? If you were designing it, would you have done anything differently?

However, this year, the Girl Scouts’ marketing tactics have gone high-tech, incorporating email, text messaging and social networking sites like Facebook. According to the Contra Costa Times, Northern California Girl Scouts are being encouraged to send out text messages to potential customers, saying things like “Ur a txt away from gr8 cookies!”

The article quotes Monique Lazzarini, the leader of Troop 30313, a troop of 4th and 5th graders, who said that “With the technology era and the different ways to communicate, we decided as a troop to capitalize on those technologies.”

It’s not just individual troops embracing social media, either. The organization released a video on Youtube called “What can a cookie do?” to help spread awareness of the programs that the cookie sales fund. In the three weeks since it was posted, the video has attracted 32,790 views.

In an article on DailyFinance.com, Girl Scouts of the USA CMO Laurel Richie explained why the Girl Scouts decided to create a viral video:

“We’re anxious to see how it works because it lets us get our message out in a cost-effective way,” Laurel Richie, chief marketing officer of the Girl Scouts of the USA, says. She also hopes the video will help engender trust among those viewing the ad. “There’s a greater engagement when a video is passed onto you, because it has the implicit endorsement of the person who passes it on,” Richie says.

The end of the video features a call-to-action that directs viewers to a website where they can find a place to buy Girl Scout cookies.

So, what’s next? Will there be a social media marketing badge? Considering how many non-profits and humanitarian organizations have been using social media to good effect, it wouldn’t be surprising.

The Girl Scouts of America are using social media and text messaging to get the word about their cookies-shouldn’t you be using them as well? Dukky makes it a breeze to integrate social media and mobile marketing into your next campaign. With a unique print, email, social media and mobile marketing platform that encourages social sharing, we can help you create a viral campaign that increases customer response by 8 times.

With that, I’ll leave you to consider what an 8-fold increase in customer response rate would mean to you. I’ve got to go get my Thin Mint fix!

The rising popularity of Social Networks have opened up to marketers an entirely new arena to pursue. In a recent study by Nielson Group they found , two-thirds of the world’s internet population visits a social network or blogging site and the sector now accounts for almost 10% of all internet usage time, according to a study by Nielson group.¹ As new dynamics in this industry are emerging, the basic questions as to how to effectively merge traditional marketing mediums with social networks has not been answered……until now.

Consider this:

You are sending a traditional marketing email to your database (2,500 records).  This means the absolute maximum reach potential of your campaign will be those 2,500 customers.

With the integration of social sharing into your email marketing campaign you are not just gaining access to your current customer database, but you are now gaining access to your Customer’s Friend List. Whether their friends on Facebook, Twitter, or any other social networking site, integrating this simple step into your marketing mediums will expand your reach exponentially.

With the simple theory of multiplication, your reach has the potential to double, triple, and beyond by accessing your customer’s friends, who also have the potential to share with their friends.

New Maximum Reach:   Exponential

Cost increase:   $0

Being able to integrate sharing on Social Networks into an email marketing campaign allows the retailer to reach customers at an unprecedented rate. Traditional Email Marketing doesn’t create communication between the retailer and customer, however, with Dukky’s Software integrated into a Traditional Email Campaign, the customer is engaged, leading to higher redemptions.

Three powerful things occur from Sharing on Social Networks:

1. 1. Company Awareness Increases
2. 2. Customer Base is expanded
3. 3. Friend-to-Friend Sharing is more powerful than Company to Customer sharing.

Local Companies

Bra Genie, a specialty bra-fitting salon, was looking for a way to promote their Holiday Specials and Offers to their customers and surrounding area. With no online shopping options on their website, all marketing goals are to increase in-store traffic. Their traditional medium, email marketing, was not generating the response they wanted or needed.

Campaign Objective: Increase store traffic for Holiday Sales

After the simple addition of Dukky’s Software to their email marketing, they saw a 19.27% response to their email marketing campaign with Dukky. Better than any other response before.

Dukky Analytics reported:

Email Database:   5,274 Records

Emails Opened:    2,056

Response Clicks:      709

Social Sharing: 44

Response from Social: 253 (from 44 of Response Clicks that shared)

Total Response: 1,104 (19.27%)

The Dukky Platform used Bra Genies compelling offer for “10% off the Next Purchase” to drive customers to a custom micro site.  From there, customers were taken through a survey and card activation process. This process was vital, not just to gather information about Bra Genie’s customers, but because the time invested created a psychological commitment between Bra Genie and the customer further reinforcing the end goal: Redemption.

Bra Genie was able to gather valuable data from their customers to help with future  marketing campaigns. They were able to gather Purchase Intent for that offer, gain information on if they should add an online store to their website, and hear from their customers about adding more products to their store and which ones were most desired.

Customers were then given the opportunity to receive an additional offer by sharing the offer with friends on any social network. Bra Genie reported 44 customers shared the coupons on social networks resulting in 253 additional responses from social sharing.

The 253 responses as a result of Social Sharing, increased the total response by 25%.

The proof is in the numbers.  As a result of the one-week campaign, Bra Genie was provided with real time data stats on their campaign through Dukky’s Analytics Platform. As customers responded and shared the offers, Bra Genie was able to learn about their customers, monitor the new customers from Social Sharing and respond to capitalize on those responses.

Thanks to Dukky, Bra Genie, a locally owned company, will never advertise the same again. But Dukky isn’t just for local companies.

WEB BASED RETAILERS

CanadaFlowers.com is a family-run flower shop located in Southern Ontario. They have developed a strong web presence over the past 5 years with Online Marketing, but were ready to take their company to the next level. Equipped with Dukky’s technology, an email promotion was sent out to customers in their database promoting a 3-week special offer campaign.

Campaign Objective: Increase Online Presence

The Process: An email offer for $5 off your next flower order equipped with a PURL (Personalized Url) was sent to 3,202 customers in an email promotion. The email promotion personally addressed the customer and provided a link for them to click on to activate their offer. PURL Example: www.canadaflowersoffer.com/johnsmith

Results: Canada Flowers had a 26.10% total response rate from their email campaign  with a total of 1096 responses coming from Emails and Sharing.  Of the total responses, 367 were the results of adding Sharing to their campaign resulting in 385 of their total hits.

Conversion: The campaign results in 230 conversions, a 7.14 % conversion rate.

The results from this campaign compared to previous periods, grew 450%.

Increase Traffic, Increase Rankings

As a result of an increase in traffic to their website, the email campaign had a dramatic effect on the organic rankings of the website’s standing with search engines. Canadaflowers.com increased from a ranking of 131 to 8 for searches for flowers. Dukky’s software drove traffic to the site, which had a powerful domino effect on the continual marketing of the company reaching beyond the campaign dates.

It’s all about Conversion

The goal of every marketing campaign is ultimately to turn your advertising dollars into revenue. Until now, no other marketing mediums provided the means to track and engage customers in order to maximize a retailers customer base through sharing on social networks. Dukky’s cutting edge software is leading the way in the industry to establish a new normal for conversion.

Using Dukky’s Spider PURLS, retailers can 1) Engage customers, 2) Encourage social interaction, 3) Promote Business Offers and Specials, 4) Gather highly valuable information, and 4) Track each step of the process. From the moment the email is sent, received, shared, and until redemption occurs, the Dukky Analytics platform allows you to watch your reach increase. Reach maximization leads to increased conversion, which ultimately generates higher profits.

Dukky’s Software was designed with two things in mind: Conversion and Results

Social Networks integrated into current Email Marketing Campaigns result in exponential potential.

SOURCES: 1) “Global Faces and Networked Places.” Nielson Study Group. March 2009