It’s almost Memorial Day. This is a solemn holiday, and we should all stop, reflect on the sacrifices made by our military, and say “Thank you.” To our brave men and women in uniform: Dukky salutes you!
That said, it’s also become a tradition to get together with friends and family and celebrate the holiday around a hot, smoky grill. While we put together our own barbecue plans this week, it occurred to us that marketing is a lot like planning a cookout. Here’s why: Continue reading
“Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.” – John Wanamaker
You’ve no doubt heard that quote before – it’s pretty famous. But does it still ring true for you today? If so, it’s time to step into 21st century. Marketing analytics provide oh-so-much more than just cool graphs to spruce up your next presentation. They are the key to finding out exactly how well your marketing campaigns are performing and improving them. Continue reading
These words are music to a business owner’s ears while simultaneously capable of sending a chill down a marketer’s spine who has not yet merged it’s strategies with accountable marketing. Marketing campaigns have long been deemed successful based on the end-calculated results that surface at the close of a campaign. Did sales increase? If yes, then chalk it up as a success. If no, back to the drawing board. But with tracking now that allows visibility into the success of a campaign during the campaign’s life cycle marketing has gained a level of accountability that is bringing transparency to the forefront.
With tracking and analytics that can provide clients with accurate data, reporting and statistics while a campaign is active, there is no need to wait for results at the end to evaluate. You can market, monitor and make changes to improve a campaign’s results throughout the life of the outreach. Talk about a formula for epic success.
How do you judge if a campaign is successful? If I were to run a credit score of your past marketing campaigns what would you qualify to buy?
If you’re waiting for results at the end of your campaigns to evaluate success then you’re missing a big piece of your market opportunity.
There is ample information that can be collected in the time between deployment and redemption if your marketing is equipped with the right tracking capabilities. Customer behavior and insight is not going to surface in your end sales calculation, but it should not be disregarded. There are pieces of the story that are left to be told by customers who respond and drop off during the activation process and do not make it to final step, redemption.
Equipping your campaigns with tracking capabilities (I’m not just talking google analytics here) can bring in a wealth of information. Even though this info may not account for a recorded sale, if the lead is captured and cultivated during the decision making process then with some motivation…a sale is waiting. No one said this would be easy.
Here a few things you could be missing out on:
Marketing campaigns equipped with tracking capabilities do not just provide sales results but fill case studies and reviews with customer data and insight. If you can run a campaign and gain information along the way to improve end results there’s no excuse for low response. Monitoring campaign’s and making adjustments or adding supporting outreaches to drive more response during a campaign allows marketers to take advantage of the actual users who show interestyet drop off in the funnel. Capturing leads, identifying their level of interest and pushing those who drop off back into the sales funnel drives more response, resulting in more customers, which ultimately leads to more sales.
What are your campaign analytics saying about you?
Dukky is currently searching for 2 to 3 interns to help us in rolling out 2 new divisions of our award winning new marketing SaaS platform. We are searching for 1 to 2 students to assist our production team as well as 1 to provide client relations, public relations and project management assistance to two of the Vice Presidents.
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Here’s an interesting article about Facbook and the workplace by Dan Tynan from ITworld to kick start your week. Further proof that you can market to people via social media even when they’re at work.
Admitting that you access social networks on company time is a bit like admitting that you surf Internet porn. Hardly anyone cops to it (“oh no, I would never think of doing that”), but when they’re surveyed anonymously — or your IT geeks look at their usage logs — it turns out a surprisingly high number of people actually do it.
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Dukky is busy preparing to speak with the USPS at the upcoming DMA convention in San Francisco. If you’re going, be sure to mark this session down. We promise you will not want to miss it. We wanted to give everyone a sneak peak at a few things we picked up for our booth…we do things big around here.
Come hear success stories about Dukky + Direct mail. It’s pretty cool, if you ask us. Mark your calendar now to attend this session. We can’t wait to see you there.
What: The New Normal
When: October 13, 2010 from 10Am – 11AM
Why: Because it’s time to do things better, we’re going to show you how.
Prince’s new album 20TEN comes out Saturday, but the only place you’ll be able to get it is as a free CD included in newspapers in Europe, including London’s Daily Mirror. US fans are apparently out of luck, at least for the time being. It’s not being sold in stores at present, nor will it be available as a download. Confusingly, the Daily Mirror says that Prince “has shunned selling his eagerly anticipated CD 20TEN in the shops or releasing it online because he wants as many people as possible to hear his music.”
Umm, wouldn’t more people be able to hear it if it were released online? The real issue seems to be Prince’s disdain for all things digital. In an interview with a reporter from the Mirror, he issued a proclamation that’s been burning up interwebs ever since:
“The internet’s completely over. I don’t see why I should give my new music to iTunes or anyone else. They won’t pay me an advance for it and then they get angry when they can’t get it. The internet’s like MTV. At one time MTV was hip and suddenly it became outdated. Anyway, all these computers and digital gadgets are no good. They just fill your head with numbers and that can’t be good for you.”
Prince, I’d like to introduce you to Erik Qualman. Here is a nifty video Mr. Qualman created, called Social Media Revolution. I know, I know, it’s full of those awful numbers, but bear with me here:
Doesn’t look like the Internet’s going anywhere to me. But I guess if you don’t take those darn numbers into account, I could see how you might think so. As Fast Company points out, Prince’s refusal to allow his videos on YouTube contrasts sharply with the approach of Lady Gaga, who has become quite successful by using YouTube and Facebook to market herself. And of course, there’s Justin Bieber’s Twitter army of breathless teenybopper followers. And Trent Reznor, who has distributed both Nine Inch Nails albums and the first EP from his new band, How to Destroy Angels, as free downloads.
So, as much of a musical genius as Prince is, it seems like he just doesn’t get the potential of the Internet and viral marketing the way many of his colleagues seem to. Or does he? After all, we ARE talking about him, aren’t we? Although Fast Company notes that “you are more likely to find a rainbow-farting unicorn in your cutlery drawer than a Prince music video on YouTube,” he did become a trending topic on Twitter yesterday.
Still, I don’t see how making it harder for your fans to get to your music (unless you’re in Europe and can buy one of the newspapers that has it) is going to help his career. And I don’t see how the temporary buzz his crazy-talk has created can possibly compare with the direct, long-term and in many cases permanent connections that Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber have built with their fans via social networking.
And how many people actually carry around portable CD players any more? So, if you get the CD and you want to take it with you to listen to on the go, you have to go through the extra step of converting it to MP3s? I’m glad I’m not really a huge Prince fan, although he was an important part of my childhood. I would be more than a little irked if a musician I actually cared about were trying to make it harder for me to play their music even after I paid for it.
So, what do you think of Prince’s marketing and distribution strategy? Genius or fail? Let us know in the comments!
Incentive I Donna M. Airoldi I October 29, 2009
Dukky is a new direct response company with a new platform to help loyalty and rewards program marketers. Its product creates gift card offers as part of a direct mail campaign that integrates viral marketing and an online component for monitoring individual performance and gaining feedback on users. The result? Significantly higher response rates, and feedback that can be used to better target future offers.
The New Orleans–based company, founded in June 2008, unveiled its new program earlier this year and is beginning to get national attention, with BMW and other top clients signing on.
“The product can be used across a number of platforms, from internal employee programs to B-to-B, however its most common use is B-to-C programs because of the nature of its outreach,” says Dukky CMO Scott Couvillon, who said the loyalty/reward product was created to assist large incentive houses, after talking with firm like Carlson Marketing and Maritz at tradeshows and trying to figure out how Dukky’s products could be applied to their programs.
