The Rewards of Relevance

The open rate for marketing e-mails increased for the third quarter in a row during Q1 of this year and also rose significantly over the year-ago..

The "Epsilon Q1 2009 Email Trends and Benchmarks" report found that (over Q1 2008):

• Email open rates reached 22.1 % in the first quarter, up 11.2% over 2008.
• Click rates increased to 6.1%.
• Delivery climbed to 94.1 percent compared to 93.4 % for the same quarter last year.
• Open rates generally increased. Financial services achieving the highest open rate at 31.4%, while retail apparel did the least well at 14.3%.

The report concludes that the single most important driver of these improvements is relevance in terms of "content, timing and frequency." Marketers increased focus on growing and maintaining an effective list, and using advanced analytics and segmentation models to reach the right consumers at the right time with the right message underpins this.

An additional study found that emails drive offline sales - 59% consumers in Asia Pacific made offline purchases as a result of e-mails. That figure was 53% for North Americans and 37% for Europeans. There is a lot of life yet in this complimentary channel...

Banners Are Dead, Long Live.....

Kudos to my former colleagues and (still) friends at Bridge Worldwide for the really smart banner ad (yes I said banner ad) that won the Gold Cyber Lion at Cannes last week. Just goes to show that there really is life in online advertising yet. Please go ahead and click on the banner, watch the story unfold and enjoy - it won't take you off to a Pringles site. The brand building value in free media of something this cleverly put together is incredible, take a look at the blog trends for the week that the win was announced.

What's On TV?

Interesting way of looking at trending in the TV world.

SnapStream records national TV (ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX, MSNBC and CNN), and then creates a database of references. Users can search the database to see how often terms were referred to over a given period - the example here is an analysis of references to MySpace and Facebook in 2009.

They describe themselves thus: SnapStream brings some of the power of "new media" -- search, copy and paste, linkability -- to the "old media" of television.

Digital as a Platform, Direct as a Methodology, Data as an Obsession

I borrowed the title of this post from a M&C Saatchi agency in Australia called Mark (seems fair since they borrowed my name). Today is Lester Wunderman's 89th birthday. I had the privilege of working with Lester for many years and learned much. He still goes into the office every day, sharing his blend of wisdom and magic that helped him create an industry. The 19 Things that all Direct Marketers know is still as crisp, relevant and insightful in this age of channel multiplication, social media and mobile as it was the day it was written over a decade ago.

1. Direct Marketing Is a Strategy, Not a Tactic
2. The Consumer, Not the Product, Must Be the Hero
3. Communicate with Each Customer or Prospect as an Audience of One
4. Answer the Question “Why Should I?”
5. Advertising Must Change Behavior, Not Just Attitudes
6. The Next Step: Profitable Advertising
7. Build the “Brand Experience”
8. Create Relationships
9. Know and Invest in Each Customer’s Lifetime Value
10. “Suspects” Are Not Prospects
11. Media Is a Contact Strategy
12. Be Accessible to Your Customers
13. Encourage Interactive Dialogues
14. Learn the Missing “When?”
15. Create an Advertising Curriculum That Teaches as it Sells
16. Acquire Customers with the Intention to Loyalize Them
17. Loyalty Is A Continuity Program
18. Your Share of Loyal Customers, Not Your Share of Market Creates Profits
19. You Are What You Know

In talking about Lester Wunderman's approach, Malcolm Gladwell said: "All these strategies amount to a marketing system of extraordinary sensitivity....sophisticated ways of listening, of overcoming the problems of distance and distortion which so handicap other forms of persuasion."

I am now at Rosetta, an interactive marketing agency; were Lester to walk in here today he would instantly recognise a company built on and building upon his vision. The platforms may be different, the decisioning more rapid but the absolute focus on more relevant, personal and impactful marketing is the same.

Happy birthday Mr. Wunderman.

Learning Here & Reapplying There

All marketing needs to inform all marketing as overarching marketing optimization will always produce more significant benefits than channel by channel tinkering. Even in apparently disparate fields such as search engine marketing (acquisition) and email (more readily associated with retention). Marketing insights garnered from one of these channels can readily be applied to inform and optimize the other.

Using the language of intent (the keywords used in a search - both in an engine and on your site) better informs the content and, more specifically, the subject line of your emails. If a specific set of keywords are driving traffic to your site, use them to increase your email open rates. PPC also gives you a great rapid cycle testing arena for your offers, include the best performing (and most profitable) in your email campaigns.

In terms of timing, if you see that the peak period for traffic to a particular service or product on your site is between 6PM and 10PM, time your email promotions to arrive during the same period. Compare results against a control group.

A study last year by Datran Media demonstrated that more than 70% of marketers see email as a complimentary channel to search, I have yet to see evidence of the two direct response channels being used in harmony to deliver the right message at the right time...

Over Representation

Harvard Business Publishing recently launched a study of over 300,000 Twitter users in May of 2009 which presented some less than attractive findings for the social networking site...

The study compared Twitter users with users of other social networks, and found that:

• The top 10 percent of the social network’s most active users accounted for about 90 percent of all content,
• The majority of those users were men.
• In other social networks, the top 10 percent of users account for 30 percent of all content
• 80 percent of users are followed by or follow at least one other user.
• Men have 15 percent more followers than women
• An average man is almost twice more likely to follow another man than a woman.

To quote the report - “This implies that Twitter’s resembles more of a one-way, one-to-many publishing service more than a two-way, peer-to-peer communication network"

In spite of the silence of the crowds, they continue to flood onto Twitter, Nielsen Online reports that visitors to the site increased by 1,382%, from 475,000 to seven million in the year to February 2009. In comparison Facebook grew by 228% during the same period.

I Know Where You Are, So What...

Whilst location based mobile services are becoming more available as companies such as Vodafone, Alcatel-Lucent, PlaceCast and Navteq enter the market with solutions, marketers are, to date at least, pretty much ignoring the opportunities. Why is that? Why isn't retail jumping on this and experimenting with location-based offers? I guess the truth is that we haven't found the right model that marries location with other points of contextual relevance to deliver a message based not solely on where, but also on what and when. From a consumer perspective location, location. location just isn't enough in this case and this, like all other forms of (specifically) digital marketing, in order to be impactful, needs to draw on more than one dimension of relevance - contextual, temporal and experiential. Connecting the technology and marketing dots to deliver on this is not easy even today...

Because That's where The Money Is...

...so said Willie Sutton a prolific bank robber when asked why he robbed banks. The real money in marketing is in retaining the customers we work hard to acquire, studies have consistently shown that modest increases in customer retention produce significant bottom line impact via gains in marketing efficiency and effectiveness such as:

1. The cost of acquisition occurs only at the outset of the relationship - the longer the relationship the more time to amortize the cost
2. Account maintenance costs decline as a % of total costs
3. Long term customers are less price sensitive and less inclined to switch
4. Long term customers tend to purchase additional products/services
5. Long term customers can grow the brand via word of mouth and social channels
   

Why then do marketers still over-index on acquisition over customer retention ( at least, as Lester Wunderman would say "acquire customers with the intention to loyalize them). A recent report from Bain & Company reaffirms that acquiring a new customer can cost 6 to 7 times more than retaining an existing customer, yet the lions share of marketer's budgets are allocated to pure acquisition plays, even in a period of economic downturn. For example, the Lloyd James Group in the U.K. surveyed 1000 finance directors and senior financial managers - more than 70 percent of the respondents favored a reduction in resources for CRM while boosting investment in prospecting for new customers. The truth is that it is often hard to measure the true cost of retention, so I am not sure that I buy the simple maths here, I do know that there needs to be a holistic view of, and balance between the two, intrinsically connected (yet often organisationally distinct) activities...

Shared Positioning System (SPS)

Nope, this is not a new expression of the global positioning system (that I have now become totally reliant on) with an additional social layer. Rather it is a way of thinking about navigating the increasingly scattered content that once was enclaved on a single website, a way of thinking about the destination and the different (and increasing number of) ways of getting there.

Why positioning? From a consumer’s perspective, reminding me of why I am here, how I got here, got this far and what I need to do next is very helpful from a contextual point of view. Already proven to be useful on-site, this will become increasingly true as content that is currently found on those same sites is made available to the consumer, on demand, in different forms and via different channels. From a content owner’s point of view, a combination of both on and off-site web analytics tools can provide a good indication of the performance of your content both on-site and in the broader eco-system.

Why shared? Two reasons, one is that as consumers we inevitably fall into groups defined by demographics, psychographics or other behavioural identifiers and will tend to behave and track in certain particular patterns and as such follow a similar path (persona driven design and communication planning along with on and off-site behavioural targeting will allow you to map those macro journeys effectively). The other is simply another expression of the age old value exchange - As a site or content owner, I want you as a consumer to perform certain valuable actions, (sign up, opt in, buy, connect, friend, follow, link etc) and, since, you are here, one can imagine that these actions might be on your agenda too - assuming that the work I did to attract you here in the first place was correctly focused and that you are in the right place. As such, our Shared Positioning System (the navigation - from the initial interaction point to the conversion point) has one, and only one role - to enable both of us to get from point A to point B in the most effective way possible. All of the rest (page views, stickiness, etc...) is simply noise and must not detract us from the real focus of the journey; the destination.

All of this is contestable of course, but it is most beautifully testable and if you’re not testing it - why not?

Of Healthcare & Mobile Marketing

Below is the transcript of an interview I gave to MedAdNews Insider on the potential of mobile marketing to the healthcare industry.

Mark Taylor, a managing partner with the interactive agency Rosetta, recently shared a few of his thoughts on the subject with me.

Med Ad News: Why is the consumer relationship with mobile phones so well-suited for healthcare marketing?

Mark Taylor: The mobile has grown into something of a remote control for our lives. It’s an always on, multi-channel interactive communication device, which we increasingly use to entertain us, to see what our friends are up to, guide us, to alert or inform us. The truly personal nature of the cell phone brings with it the potential for a symbiotic relationship between utility and marketing. For example , there are many cases of simple text messages being used to alert populations at risk in developing countries of dangerous infectious diseases. Closer to home, hospitals are using text messaging to both disseminate information to patients and to create a support structure. We have a special relationship with our mobile devices, partly due to the fact that we take them everywhere we go, people develop far closer attachments to their devices than to their home PCs or laptops. Those same PCs are also much more likely to be shared than a mobile device and therefore less truly personal. It is this device intimacy that will provide healthcare companies with unrivalled possibilities to build and maintain one-to-one relationships with their customers and potential customers based on the age-old marketing principle of the value exchange (back to the symbiotic relationship between utility and marketing).

Med Ad News: How are companies marketing using apps on the iPhone? What are a few successful examples of healthcare marketing through iPhone apps?

Mark Taylor: Many companies are using the iPhone application platform to provide marketing opportunities. Kraft Foods are proving that if you can provide relevance and value, consumers are even willing to pay for your messaging. Kraft’s iFood Assistant is now #2 amongst paid apps in the Lifestyle category of IPhone applications. Nationwide Insurance married utility with messaging in its app which enables Nationwide customers to find local resources, document an accident, and submit claims information from the accident site. In terms of healthcare applications, there is a large selection of healthcare apps; most are for data tracking, storing medical information, or reference. The most popular are either for weight loss tracking or reference - WebMD has an excellent application, for example.

Med Ad News: Where does mobile marketing fit in for healthcare brand managers in a multi-channel approach?

Mark Taylor: The personal nature of the mobile device makes it excellent for communication on sensitive topics and we are sensitive about our health. So mobile is perfect for establishing one-to-one relationships with our most valuable customers. There are really five things to remember about using mobile as a channel:

1. Mobile is part of a multi-channel approach. Done correctly, the healthcare industry can lead with mobile marketing, it should not do only mobile marketing

2. Go beyond SMS, there are hundreds of healthcare and lifestyle applications available for the 30 million iPhone and iTouch users - many more will see the light of day as Blackberry, Google and others get into the applications field

3. More than ever, be relevant. The nature of the relationship between the consumer and the channel/device makes this more than ever essential

4. Aim for response, use the channel to start conversations not to blast messages

5. As with any other initiative, establish, clear measurable goals