May I Contact You Please? The Evolution of Permission
Guest post by Doug Wick (@dougwick), who thinks a lot about marketing and is a Director of Business Development for Powered, a social marketing company in Austin, TX. He writes frequently for Powered’s blog, The Engaged Consumer, and at DougWick.com. In the past decade of direct marketing online, the focal point has become contacting consumers […]
Advanced Social Media Synergies
Last week, I was part of a panel discussion on how travel and tourism organizations can move beyond the typical Facebook and Twitter accounts to take their social media efforts to the next level. Part of the annual Arizona Governor’s Conference on Tourism, I was joined on the panel by the excellent Angela Berardino from […]
Your ESP has ESP – Use It
Is there a marketing medium in history as routinely underutilized as email? Not in terms of volume – few folks outside prison are clamoring for more messages in their inbox. But in terms of using the full capabilities of the medium, the vast majority of email marketers are just scratching the surface, and I don’t […]
Twitterati Says Email Isn’t Dead Yet – 6 Findings
Every conference I’ve been at, and at least 10 blog posts I’ve read this year have proclaimed the death of email. Social network messaging, and its 1:1 relevancy and real-time immediacy will inexorably make email the Edsel of digital communication, goes the theory. It’s not true. Firstly, this isn’t a zero sum game. The notion […]
Sloths Die. Why I Want My Guacamole NOW
Is your email list acquisition program too slow? If you’re going to ask consumers to divulge personal information in exchange for a special offer, the chances that your customers will participate go up dramatically if you fulfill your end of the bargain with haste. If I sign up to download a Webinar, I get access […]
Are New Customers Killing Your Company?
(Originally written for MarketingProfs MPdailyfix blog) I’m sure you’ve heard the maxim that it costs a lot more to get a new customer than it does to retain an existing customer. It makes perfect sense, right? So why is it that we spend so much time and money in violation of that credo? At the […]
Beth Harte – The Twitter 20 Interview About Marketing and Social Media
Beth Harte has been dispensing solid, effective marketing advice to companies and students for more than a decade. Now, her killer blog (The Harte of Marketing) and her wisdom-filled Tweets have increased her reach and influence geometrically. That’s a positive development, as her students at Immaculata University and the folks in Philadelphia shouldn’t have her […]
Don’t Put the Social Media Cart Before the Horse
Are you eschewing the basics to focus on social media? At two recent conferences where I spoke (Online Marketing Summit and Email Evolutions) there were several discussions about the confluence of email and social media. Thinking about email and social media concurrently is healthy – and appropriate. Both are best used as customer retention and […]
Social Media Adds Viral Frosting to the Email Cake
Are you enabling your email subscribers to spread your message via social media? Call it Forward to a Friend 2.0. Call it the inevitable marriage of two sides of the customer relationship coin. Call it the next big thing in email marketing. The hand-wringing in the email community about the impact of social media is […]
Is Email Killing Your Company?
Are you looking at your email program as a long-term investor, or as a day-trader? A lot of marketing tactics aren’t succeeding. It’s a combination of fundamental shifts in how audiences congregate and where they can be reached, and consumers that are too scared about an uncertain future to buy anything other than potatoes and […]
3 Absurdly Simple Ways to Tie Together Social Media and Email
Increasingly, active email marketers are wondering how they can engage with their subscribers in social media. It’s a bit scary, because most email is still of the “batch and blast” variety, and that dog will not hunt in social media, where the marketing is conversational and the name of the game is relevance. But, assuming […]
Mobile Opt-in Flies at US Airways
A recent study by ExactTarget and Ball State University showed that consumers 24 years old and younger prefer text messages to email. For consumers 25+, email still reigns supreme. Does that put text/mobile/SMS out of reach for most brands? Not at all. In fact, using mobile to drive email subscriptions is an emerging best practice. […]
Red Robin’s Email Program Has a Broken Wing
By all accounts, Red Robin is very successful restaurant chain. With hundreds of locations nation-wide and well-deserved plaudits for their Unbridled Acts customer service program, Red Robin has it together. (try the Bonzai Burger, Bruschetta Chicken Burger, and the Tower of Onion Rings). But the Red Robin customer loyalty messaging program is far less than it […]
Email Unsubscribes – Embrace Those Who Reject You
A long-standing “success metric” in email marketing is the unsubscribe ratio. Like telling children that their pet fish is “just sleeping” the “unsubscribe ratio” is a euphemism. Your unsubscribe ratio is the percentage of people who receive your email that have gotten so tired or frustrated with your program that they simply can’t take it […]
Bloggers: Who Is In Your Fab Five?
Thanks to Jason Falls for the inspiration (okay, it’s a straight rip-off) for this post. Jason pointed out five lesser-known bloggers that he reads regularly (including Convince & Convert). His post seems to have triggered an a-ha moment, as several other excellent social media bloggers including Mack Collier and Amber Naslund have posted similar lists […]
Amp Up Email Results with Honeymoon Segmentation
Subscribers to your email list are most likely to open, click, forward to a friend, and buy in the first 30-60 days after joining the list. This is the Honeymoon and you need to use it to boost your email results – especially in the 4th quarter holiday shopping season. This chart from Marketing Sherpa […]