Marketing Ideas!

More and more organizations are looking to use social media outlets, such as Facebook and LinkedIn, along with email marketing campaigns to announce events, promotions, or other similar efforts. And while in principal this seems like a good idea, there are a few things to watch out for:

1. Cross Post — Carefully. Many of your audience (followers, members, friends, etc.) obviously follow you on at least one of these platforms … and it’s entirely likely that they follow you on more than one. Don’t bore them with the same exact message. Give them an opportunity to find some new information on the various platforms you post on. However, make sure your core message stays the same.
2. Plan when your messages will go out. When you are sending a message via Facebook or LinkedIn, you are giving up a lot of control as to when and how your messages will be received. Your audience can choose to receive email notifications daily, weekly, or not at all. Thus, make sure you allow for plenty of time for your message to get to the right people.
3. Stagger your delivery. If you plan on announcing your upcoming event through email, Facebook, AND LinkedIn, be aware that many people are on all three, thus, they’ll see your message at least three times. While this can be a good thing, it can also overwhelm the recipient. Time your releases so that the first announcement goes out on say Facebook, followed a few days (or perhaps a week) later on LinkedIn, then a little while later via an email marketing campaign. This will maximize your visibility without overwhelming recipients all at once.

Did you know that email open rates are on the decline across industries? As the chart illustrates, there has been a steady decline in open rates since 2004. However, this is not necessarily an indication that people are not opening emails at the same (or better rate).

The reason why “open” rates are potentially misleading is inherent in the method of tracking open rates. Most email systems track “opens” via graphics; when a reader downloads the associated images of an HTML email, the “tracking” graphic is activated, indicating that the email was opened. Therefore, reduced open rates are not necessarily an indication of a reduction in readers. Instead, it could indicate that many people have figured out they can simply read a lot of content without having to download images, thus flying under the radar of many tracking methods.

Therefore, one great way to uncover your “actual” open rates is to include images that are integrated into the content, such as charts and graphs. Over time, this should give you better open rates and a better indication of your active readership (and perhaps uncover some of your more tech-savvy customers!).

If you do choose to include images, check out today’s post from Deliverability.com, which touches on some of the best practices for including images in your emails:

Most email clients block email images from unknown senders by default. So best practice advice for the use of images on email (particularly large ones that appear in the preview pane) is to avoid using them if at all possible.

If you do have to use images the general recommendation is that you use them sparingly, making sure you use carefully thought Alt Tags AND text descriptors for the images. Other design techniques used to compensate for the image being blocked include, putting text behind them and using collapsible boxes.

Ironically, some of the best practices may not lead to better open rates. It appears that open rates can increase by NOT including the Alt Tags, perhaps because the lack of information encourages people to download the images to learn.

So should you follow best practices or not? This gets to one of the fundamental truths of marketing: it depends. Test, see what works, and follow through on what’s best for your circumstances and audience preferences.

Networking — the act of actually going out an meeting people face-to-face — is simply one of the most powerful marketing tools any person or organization can use. However, there is one issue with this tool: it’s not scalable.

A colleague and friend of mine runs his own business. This margins are thin and he has little to no help (i.e., employees). Thus, it’s hard for him to both run his business and look for new business at the same time. After talking through his specific situation, we were able to find a great solution for him: email marketing.

Email marketing, while never able to replace the face-to-face networking, can be a great supplement. It’s a great tool to help build virtual relationships with people. What’s a virtual relationship?

A virtual relationship is something that many of us have with Hollywood celebrities (or have had at some point in our lives). We see their image on the screen (movie or TV) and project feelings and situations about the person that are simply not there: we are engaging with a two dimensional image that is not human — but we perceive the image as a real person. Then, we we meet our favorite star at a local restaurant or event, we call them out by their first name and feel as though we already know them.

The star, of course, doesn’t know who we are, but because our celebrity as had some training and has likely experienced this before, reacts as though he or she does know you … which build their brand.

Email marketing works in much the same way. It is a way for people to see your ideas interact with you on some level, and when done well, can feel personal and sincere. For my colleague, email marketing will serve as an augmentation to his normal networking efforts. It can replace several simple meetings with his existing clients and serve as additional touch points for prospects he just met. All the while, he can continue to build his brand, maintain the same personal service he’s known for, and scale his business to the point where he can hire new help.

One of my favorite ads running on television right now are from State Farm. Think about this: there are at least four national insurance companies that are fighting over “low cost:” Progressive, Gieco, Allstate, eSurance. If you see one of their ads, you are being pitched with the ubiquitous “save time and money.”

But not State Farm. They have delivered a series of ads that hint that you may not always be getting what you are buying. In the example below, the hot dog vendor sells hot dogs, but no bun. Others spots have popsicle, no stick; a car wash, no rinse; a shoe shine, but not shoes shine (he only does one). In other words, price isn’t everything. It may be worth paying a little more to make sure you get what you want.

I bring this up because it can be so easy to argue on points your competition brings up, especially when the point (such as spending money) is important to your potential customers. This is, of course, very dangerous because you are now fighting against your competition’s strengths.

We (i.e., Aperio Marketing) just as guilty of of falling into this trap as anyone. We offer email marketing services. Our prices are very competitive, but not as good as Constant Contact, which does a great job of being the low cost provider for email marketing.

Through Constant Contact you can do email newsletters and awareness campaigns at an incredibly low cost. And what’s one of the first conversations we have with new prospective customers? The price. We cannot win that conversation. Despite the fact that email marketing is inexpensive in general, we’re just not the absolute least expensive option.

What should we be doing instead? We need to be better at discussing things we do better than Constant Contact. We need to educate people that email newsletters and awareness campaigns aren’t the sum total of email marketing. Email marketing should also include informative, useful emails, such as appointment reminders, birthday or anniversary messages, or personalized, custom content based on their job title or industry. It should also allow you to track when and what campaigns drove people to sign up for your emails, so you can determine how best to use your resources. And we rarely get to discuss our superior customer service — mostly because we don’t ever bring it up. Instead, we just head in to a discussion on a topic we can’t win: price.

Obviously, we have something to learn from the State Farm campaign. I thought I would share with one of our failings as a company so that, hopefully, you too will be better able to fight the right battles. As promised, here’s the hot dog spot. Enjoy!