Reward

Posted on December 27, 2010 by Renee

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!

Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse’s winning email campaign makes them Dukky’s star student of the week!

Posted on October 26, 2010 by Renee

Today, I want to highlight one of our star students at Dukky. After ending a great campaign last week, I think they deserve a little time in the spotlight. Seriously, if I had an award to pass out, I would.

There are many factors that play a vital role in the development and execution of a successful campaign. We often refer to Dukky as an “add-on” technology. Your secret weapon that, when positioned just right, takes your marketing campaign to uncharted territories. This technology is a strategic piece to entering these uncharted territories, however, it is not the only important factor in a successful campaign. Continue reading →

Have you talked to your customers today?

Posted on October 11, 2010 by Renee

Last week The Gap released a new logo after a 20 year reign of its previous one. Along with its new logo came a tremendous amount of comments and opinions many disapproving of the new corporate symbol from customers. CNN released a story reporting The Gap responded to its negative customer’s comments with this statement, “We know this logo created a lot of buzz and we’re thrilled to see passionate debates unfolding! So much so we’re asking you to share your designs,” the company said on its Facebook page late Wednesday. “We love our version, but we’d like to see other ideas. Stay tuned for details in the next few days on this crowd sourcing project.”

Although The Gap didn’t exactly win big with the new logo, the fact that a campaign or new product release stirred its customers to action and gave them an outlet to voice their approval or disapproval makes The Gap much smarter than many of its other retail competitors. So what if customers didn’t approve of the new logo, The Gap was able to get them talking, and better yet, they listened and responded to them keeping the conversation alive. This kind of welcomed customer involvement and engagement is why The Gap is certainly ahead of the curve in terms of marketing strategies if they capitalize on this moment with customers.

So what did The Gap do that was so great?

1) They welcomed the conversation. We hear plenty of opinions and stories of how “risky” it is to involve customers in planning and development and how new technologies like Dukky are giving customers a voice. “What if they say something negative?” Well at Dukky we think, “What if they do?” Great news…you can find out now and respond. It’s only a risk not worth taking if you really don’t care what your customers think, and if that’s your strategy then you’re in for a rude awakening in today’s marketing environment. Don’t be afraid of the conversation, welcome it and engage it. You might just learn a thing or two from your audience…the marketing and planning is for them anyways, right?
2) Consumer engagement is not important – it’s vital. Keeping your current customers is a much better strategy than depending solely on new ones to replace those who have lost interest in your business. In order to keep customers engaged, a proactive approach is required to interact with them. I love that The Gap has extended the opportunity for new logos to be submitted from customers. Sometimes our customers just need acknowledgement that we are willing to listen and respond to their voice and they are satisfied.

Regardless of whether The Gap chooses to keep the new logo or opt for another one, they have managed to do something many companies ignore or do not consider in their strategies. The Gap has stirred up a conversation and now has an opportunity to impact its marketing and outreach exponentially in the coming months by engaging its customers. Customer-centric planning, marketing and development is the key to long-term success.

New technology that allows consumer engagement to be a steady part of marketing is changing the game of outreach. Mass marketing is only a small portion of strategies now, it’s no longer the driving focus.

What level of involvement do your customers have in your product development, business strategies, expansion, new services, etc? Have you given your customers a chance or portal to respond and engage?

Dukky’s solution to include consumer engagement as a part of all marketing campaigns is serving as the game changing solution for businesses that welcome the conversation with its customers. The results of these conversations speak for themselves.

Success prior to the launch of a new item or product line

Customer insight on past, present & future direction

Development of future target marketing strategies

Identify your key customers and their influence in their social realms

Qualify, rank and track the customer behavior

The shift of conversation and opportunity has already happened. Have you talked to your customers today?

To learn more about Dukky’s strategies related to consumer engagement, visit us at www.dukky.com.

Social Media – the new Tupperware Party

Posted on October 8, 2010 by Dominique

I found this article likening social media marketing to a 1950′s Tupperware party extremely relevant to what we do here at Dukky. In it the author, who was attempting to explain social media marketing to his grandmother, makes a pretty basic point – it’s important to get the word out there about yourself on social media, but unless you can identify who your true influencers are then you’re screaming at a deaf audience.

Successful Tupperware party hosts were able to do three things really well: get people to the party, separate the influencers from the friend collectors and motivate people to buy – all three of which are anchors of a solid social marketing strategy.

This is exactly what we do here in the hallowed offices of Dukky. We help you find who your brand’s mover and shakers are and then assist you in getting the information you need about them to keep in close contact with those influencers so you can reward them for acting as your brand ambassadors.

Social marketing does not have to be overly complicated. The same rules that made Tupperware hosts successful in the 1950s can be applied today to make brands successful in the 2010s. It is important to keep in mind, however, that it is not just as simple as using Facebook or Twitter to reach a large audience. It is about reaching the right audience: those people who are going to become loyal customers and brand advocates.

As the article says, the concept is pretty simple really. So come on, join the party, add Dukky to your marketing campaign today.

“Everybody’s doing it” – Harnessing the hive mind to boost your brand

Posted on October 5, 2010 by Dominique

Remember when you were young and your parents caught you skipping school with your pals? Remember the line they fed you when the best reason you could come up with for ditching class was that your friends were all doing it too?

I can still hear Dad now, “If your friends all jumped off a cliff, would you jump too?”

Yeah, I’d rather not relive that adolescent rite of passage either. But what’s interesting in this new age of social media connectivity is that in certain cases the answer to this question seems to be a blaring YES. Especially in the world of viral marketing.

If your friend says they just got an awesome deal from a company and recommends the offer to you on Facebook, you’re more likely to try out the offer yourself. In essence, if your friend jumps, you jump. And companies that harness this group-think mentality in their marketing campaigns are seeing their brands become turbo charged through social media sharing.

In a recent article on Mashable, David Armano, Senior Vice President at the advertising powerhouse Edelman Digital, was asked if he thought group or friend buying behavior could be used as a recommendation system for goods and services. His answer was resoundingly affirmative.

In the article he cited the success the recent partnership between Groupon and The Gap experienced in their group-buying incentive campaign. The single digital coupon offer smashed sales records. “If the numbers behind Groupon’s recent success with The Gap is any indicator, the answer is yes,” he said.

But, as the article is quick to point out, group buying is most powerful when combined with sharing across social networks like Facebook and Twitter.

“The key,” continued Armano, “is that the group buying activity needs to be be present in your friends’ streams. Combine ‘likes’ with mass purchase behavior, and you’ve got the perfect storm of a signal that says, ‘Your friend got in on the deal, maybe you should too.’”

So how can you make this work for your business? How can you harness the power of the same social media marketing tools that national brands like The Limited, Dukky’s latest client, are using to reach new customers? It’s simple, really. Just overlay Dukky’s platform on your existing marketing campaign and you’re equipped with the tools you need to gain a better understanding of your current customers, expand your database’s reach and garner a better ROI. Most importantly, you’ll get your customers to act as your very own brand ambassadors. With Dukky’s simple one-click share option, your campaign is put front and center in your customers’ social networks news feeds allowing you to be ‘liked’ and your offer to be redeemed by a whole new group of customers.

So go on, jump on the Dukky bandwagon. Everyone is doing it.

The Influential Consumer: A Marketer’s Golden Ticket

Posted on October 1, 2010 by Renee

Do you know how many friends you have on Facebook, 100, 500, or 1,500? Dare I ask the next question, do you have any idea of those friends who listen to you or respond to your post or recommendations? The truth is most of us are not aware of the true influence we carry on those around us. Whether in a face to face interaction or as a part of our virtual encounters (Facebook, Twitter, blogs, etc), we don’t have access to tangible numbers or facts to prove or justify our influence in these realms, nor is it a need in relation to our personal life and engagement with our peers and friends.

However, as a marketer and VP of Business Development at Dukky, the true influence rating of my consumers is not just an interesting piece of data, it’s my golden ticket to increase a campaign’s reach, response and ROI. The ability to categorize my customer’s based on their association, activity, commitment and influence with my brand changes the way I interact with them. Better yet, it encourages my interaction with them.

I read an article yesterday, Influence Versus Popularity on Twitter: Kim Kardashian Case Study, that exemplifies this comparison perfectly. The celebrity race to gather the most followers is no secret to any of us. This case study takes a more granular look at the responsiveness of those celebrity followers and evaluates their influence based on the number of followers. According to the article,

“Lady Gaga weighs in at 6.5 million Twitter followers, for example; Britney Spears has just over 6 million; Ashton Kutcher’s got 5.8 million; and even the pint-sized Justin Bieber has 5.5 million Twitter followers. Ms. Kardashian has yet to break the 5-million-followers mark as of press time. Nevertheless, Kardashian’s official website gets a ton of traffic from Twitter — more than any of these other celebs do. In fact, her site ranks 54 of all websites that get clickthroughs from Twitter users, and she’s number 20 in the entertainment category. The types of sites that outrank her are media hosting sites (Flickr, TwitPic and Vimeo, for example) and a plethora of sports and news sites.”

If I had to pick which of these celebs I wanted in my database, I’d pick Kim over Gaga any day. The power of a consumer’s influence trumps the difference in followers, because the number of followers doesn’t impact my ROI, the true influence of a consumers does. Equipping your marketing with the kind of intelligence to identify and reward your influencers will soon become the new normal, as technologies like Dukky continue to be added to campaigns to measure and identify a consumer’s influence. What are your consumers worth to you individually? It’s time to find out.

To read the full article mentioned above, click here.