KSL Media partners with Dukky, wins AdWeek Media Plan of the Year award
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Category Archives: Advertising
How Important Are PURLs?
Chief Marketer recently released a post where they used a “round table” of brokers to discuss the importance of PURLs in the marketing arena (view full story here). The panel included Price Anderson of DirectMail.com, Patricia Leone of Leon Henry Inc., Michael Peterman of Veradata and Michele Volpe of Media Source Solutions.
First, for those that don’t know, a PURL, also know as a Personalized URL, is an add-on to a domain that is dynamically given to a single individual that you send a marketing message, typically used in direct mail. So when you send your direct mail to John Black, instead of using a static domain such as www.greatoffer.com, he’ll be asked to go to www.greatoffer.com/johnblack, in order to get his personalized message and offer.
Once John Black goes online and types in his Personalized URL, he is directed to a custom site, that is created specifically for him, generally with his data prepopulated and a “Welcome John” message.
Obvious benefits are the customization the appearance of speaking “one-to-one” to your target audience as well as the ability of the retailer to track these interactions. This was clear on the round table’s discussion, and the overall feel was that “yes” purls are important.
But I think they used a bunch of fancy words to sound important and missed one of the key reason why Personalized URLs work.
Consumers are lazy.
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Marketing tips for your small business
When it comes to marketing for small businesses there is no mold for success. With the quick google of “marketing for small businesses or small business marketing strategies”, you’ll easily pull up a plethora of options. As Dukky is quickly moving forward with our beta version of the Small Business platform we have spent many hours profiling small business owners and their marketing strategies during the research and development phase.
We have put together a few slides displaying some of our recent findings about our most successful small businesses that are a part of our beta launch. These clients have had similarities that differentiate their campaigns and push them towards success from the ordinary.
Bring out your dead! (marketing tactics, that is)
Finally, someone explained it. Listen up world, as we tell the sad, sad story of the last advertising agency on earth – courtesy of FITC, which is, oddly, an advertising agency.
Why this video? Well, currently we are hard at work putting our new SMB platform to the test and each member of Team Dukky has a part to play. My main duties have been in assisting new small business clients to draft out their campaigns and put them into action. Small business owners on a whole are a pleasure to work with. Most are eager to dive into the social media integration and live analytics feed our product provides. However, from time to time I’ve been hit with one particular question – why should I have my campaign set up as a share-to-win promotion? Will social media help me at all?
While the answer seemed obvious to me, I have come to realize that many small business owners are operating under the rules of the old guard of advertising. This, my friends, is a mistake. Television and print ads alone are quickly becoming a thing of the past. Consumers are tired of having marketing messages dictated to them. They’re tired of having no control over what sort of messages they’re bombarded with. With the growth of internet capabilities, smart phones and the ever expanding reach of social media into every aspect of our lives it’s no wonder that traditional marketing tactics are failing to work. Think about it. How many people do you know that sit and watch cable television anymore? They don’t. They have Tivo and DVR. They record their shows, watch them on their schedules and, if you’re like me, relish in the fact that they can fast forward through the commercials. That’s right, I work in marketing technology and I hate television commercials. In fact, I don’t even have cable. Why pay $60 a month when I can snuggle in bed with my beloved Hulu? Sure, there are commercials (count em, 3 per episode) on Hulu shows. BUT they allow me to tell them if the commercials are relevant to me or not and then customizes what ads pop up during my shows. Most are even interactive. Hulu listens. Hulu learns. Hulu, is my new best friend.
Consumers do not want to be pandered to. Our lives are too busy these days. We need smarter marketing. This is where digital and social media, with their ability to take traditional marketing further, have taken hold. When I log onto Facebook I don’t see ads for arthritis pills, Dora the Explorer or hockey gear. Why? Because those things aren’t relevant to me or my life. It would be a waste of money for a company to pay to put those ads in front of me. I’m never going to buy Scott Turf Builder. I let the landlord worry about the lawn. Facebook and other social media sites allow advertisers to filter the people their ads are visible to based off their searches, likes, posts, tweets and comments. So when I login to Facebook I see ads for local New Orleans music performances, my beloved Saints (Who Dat!), sales at Anthropologie and discounts at Starbucks (yep, I’m that girl).
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2011: Lead Generation & Management Tips
Lead generation is not new to business strategies nor is it the product of new technological advances. It’s a tried and true strategy from centuries ago for securing new business. Whether driven through a handshake, referral, newspaper ad, tv ad, direct mail piece, email, or phone call. Annually businesses, organizations and institutions have focused strategies and resources to generate leads to drive new business into their stores or websites. Why? Because it works.
In 2011, where will you focus business resources to generate leads and how will you manage incoming leads? Here are some tips on Lead Generation and Lead Management from some fellow ducks you are big fans of lead generation. Continue reading
The 2011 Marketing Strategy: Engage –> Motivate –> Reward
There’s no better time to refocus and redefine goals and strategies than at the end of a year and start of a new one. New beginnings have a way with easing the growing pains of transition making them a bit more acceptable. Dukky has learned a lot in 2010, along with our customers. Each campaign provided us valuable data to better execute and equip resellers and clients with the tools that ensure success in each campaign.
I’m a big advocate of learning from other’s mistakes and successes in life. I do not need to have a first-hand experience to recognize the real value of the lesson from that experience. We try to keep this practice as a vital part of our business model in order to equip our clients and campaigns with their maximum potential by keeping track of the great, the good, and the not so fabulous. So, what did Dukky learn this past year? Take a gander.
The Lessons of 2010
1) We are reaching an interactive audience. Consumers are active and engaged. We saw a continuously increasing level of engagement from consumers across industries throughout various campaigns this year. Businesses that fostered their online life and presence and added sharing technologies to their outreaches saw an overall growth in numbers to lead generation, customer database, sales, and ROI. All by harnessing the power of their active audience.
2) Influencers are your greatest assets. Identifying the influencers in campaigns was not only a way to generate more leads but a way to build community and increase customer retention by placing value on those who are able to carry your message to their peers. This year our clients have not only identified their influencers but developed loyalty programs from their new list of valuable customers. By uniquely engaging and rewarding their influencers, it resulted in increased reach, customers, and conversion.
3) Cross channel marketing took on a whole new meaning with the ability to funnel all mediums into one portal (microsite) for enhanced tracking and analytics. Being able to watch consumers interact and engage with brands and offers has redefined the expectation of results for our clients. In successful outreaches and in the campaigns that did not succeed, it was the ability to see which mediums brought in customers and converted clicks to leads that was vital to planning future campaigns.
4) Analytics do not lie and businesses wanted the proof that their dollars turned into customers and sales. What do your numbers tell you about your campaigns, investments, and ROI? 2010 revealed the do’s and don’ts for our customers. Having access to analytics that covered campaign statistics, demographic information and breakdowns, poll results, sharing activity and lead list provided answers and results in real-time.
5) With the ability to engage consumers through various marketing outreaches (direct mail, email, digital, etc) and motivate them to action through offers and sweepstakes our clients learned a valuable lesson about rewarding the customer. Tell the consumer the value of your offer and what they need to do to get it. When they engage….respond back. Reward them for sharing the offer or being an influencer, thank them for participating in the campaign, remind them to come in-store to redeem the offer, etc. Campaigns that were successful from start to finish did not just start off strong but the marketers were active throughout the life of the campaign, taking a proactive approach to fostering the leads that were generated.
At the end of 2011, we want to fill our review with endless success stories from our resellers and large and small business clients. To start your year off right here are few more tips to take with you into 2011.
- Customer retention is just as important as lead generation.
- Don’t be afraid of viral campaigns. When your customers multiply your sales increase with it.
- Keep your marketing consistent across channels. Don’t separate direct mail, email, and digital into different departments and strategies. It’s one marketing message with multiple channels to drive customers to the same place.
- Above all else engage and interact with your customers.
- If it isn’t working, change it.
Here’s to starting off 2011 with the tips and tools to taste success from the beginning!
Why can’t we be friends?
Here are some shocking stats for you:
- Five of the top 50 global brands have either no or a virtually nonexistent Facebook presence. Marlboro, Goldman Sachs, HSBC and Siemen’s, that is.” And Apple, one of the most admired global brands, does not have an official Facebook presence?
- Budweiser is the only one of the top 50 global brands to direct users to an “unfiltered” Facebook wall. That means that the other 44 are actively limiting what consumers can see on their pages.
- 89 percent of consumer replies on company’s Facebook pages remained unanswered. Case in point: Gucci didn’t reply to a single thread in the last three months. Eleven companies, meanwhile, responded to more than just one consumer.
If you’re a social media marketing professional then you probably had the same reaction to these statements from a recent article from Forbes.com that I did. And that reaction was “What the #@*?!”
Much to my horror, the article says that some of the world’s biggest brands, with thousands of dollars at their disposal, simply don’t get the value of social media marketing, namely Facebook. The article states that five of the top 45 companies on Interbrand’s list of the Best Global Brands had no Facebook presence and seven others—namely Disney, Gucci, McDonald’s, Louis Vuitton, American Express and Sony—allow only for “company-initiated conversations,” meaning consumers can read, but not chime in the dialogue.
That last part is what got to me the most. How can you not allow for a conversation with your customers? Isn’t that what social media marketing is all about? Well it seems that a lot of these companies either lack the 24/7 resources needed to manage a corporate social media presence (cause we all know that social media never sleeps) or they subscribe to the old guard mantras of marketing. And that old mantra is to keep the power. One of the contributors to the study the article talks about explains – “Most of these marketers were raised with the goal of owning the consumer…but with social media, the objective is not to own the consumer, but to be their friend.” To this sentiment I’d like to borrow some time honored words from War and ask “Why can’t we be friends?”
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A Social Media Professional’s Guide to Surviving the Holidays
Christmas is just a few days away and with a only a handful of holiday parties to attend down and still about five more to go the winning question so far this year has been “How’s your job going? I see you posting things about Dukky…what exactly is that and what do you do?” Depending on who’s asking usually determines how I can actually respond. Aunt Mary loves me but has no idea what viral sharing means or even understands what a marketing SaaS is, nor does she really care. Her involvement in social sites is solely based on connecting with others and staying in touch with old friends.
And thus, the social media professional’s dilemma arises. When you love your new Christmas present and immediately want to instagram a picture of it or feel it necessary to immediately tweet Uncle John’s outlandish holiday declaration to your social networks it’s likely that some of the family just won’t get it. How can you avoid being labeled rude and withdrawn when really you are just maintaining a high (or normal to you) level of connectivity? Continue reading
Dukky Featured Campaign – The power of teamwork (cont.)
Recently, Dukky was lucky enough to work with some pretty great fashion and beauty companies who teamed up to bring their customers amazing opportunities to win big (all the while promoting their brands virally). As advertised in People StyleWatch magazine, users can visit the Holiday Cliques website and enter to win loot from Smashbox Cosmetics, Express, Lord & Taylor, Tory Burch and Vince Camuto. We love this campaign so much we’re featuring it on our blog, our Dukky Promotions Facebook page and Twitter @dukkytweets. Be sure to check out the campaign and enter to win! Best of luck to everyone!
Dukky Featured Campaign – The power of teamwork
Recently, Dukky was lucky enough to work with some pretty great fashion and beauty companies who teamed up to bring their customers amazing opportunities to win big (all the while promoting their brands virally). As advertised in People StyleWatch magazine, users can visit the Holiday Cliques website and enter to win loot from Smashbox Cosmetics, Express, Lord & Taylor, Tory Burch and Vince Camuto. We love this campaign so much we’re featuring it on our blog, our Dukky Promotions Facebook page and Twitter @dukkytweets. Be sure to check out the campaign and enter to win! Best of luck to everyone!
