HOW TO ALIENATE YOUR CUSTOMERS

On April Fools Day I received an email from a pure pay online rug company. They are very successful and there is a lot to admire. What shocked me was how damaging to the company their recent email campaign was. Someone was asleep at the switch.

They had forgotten about their relationship to their clients and they had forgotten the most fundamental issues of appeal and e-mail marketing. The email stated I was the lucky winner of a rug from the company. I was excited and clicked on the email and the first message above the fold I got was April Fools. I had lost. First impressions above the fold count folks..message first.

The image below tells the story. I took a snapshot of what was above the fold on my screen. That is the absolute sweet spot. This is example of how not to email market. Make sure you get to the point quickly and do it above the fold. How many of us scroll down below the fold on the screen. Be honest – I have a 17 inch screen.   PS: Below the fold was a great offer. TO LATE

Behavioral Targeting is coming of age

Tom Hespos in an article in Imedia Connection on Behavioral targeting makes a startling claim about its effectiveness. He writes that ” It’s not uncommon to see 1,000 percent lifts in clickthrough and conversion rates when adding behavioral targeting to an online ad effort. With that kind of performance differential between targeted and untargeted ads, it’s more important than ever to understand how your ads are being targeted.Behavioral targeting has captivated marketers and agency people alike with promises of increased return, but it wasn’t until fairly recently that behavioral targeting learned how to scale appropriately. For example, when Tacoda was in the enterprise software business, its clients realized that BT’s biggest issue wasn’t identifying people according to their web behaviors but rather how to find enough people fitting certain behavioral criteria to make campaigns worthwhile.”
Its a great read. Also have a look at Neil Perry’s article on “Agencies & Behavioral Targeting”

Measuring Social Media

Measuring Social Media is something like sucking and blowing at the same time. You can build brand awareness and but To often the metrics are hard to get to. But there is help at hand. Fast Company has launced a new show entitled Global Neighbourhoods TV which is hosted by Shel Israel.

They are all good shows but the one that caught my attention is the most recent where Shel interviews Kami Huyse about how she used Social Media for her client SeaWorld San Antonio. Its sounds like a huge success. The Show

Interesting article in Marketing Vox “Social Media Marketing Still Lacks Strong Metrics“