Mobile Device Uptake Doesn't Mean They Read Your Stuff

Here's an interesting thought - don't assume that because nearly everyone has, or uses, a mobile device that your email has a greater pick-up rate.

Even the fact that 45% of the smartphones shipped in the year 2014 will be priced below $200 doesn't necessarily equate to email being opened.

According to a quick survey undertaken by Marketing Sherpa, only 2% of marketers find mass adoption of mobile email interaction among their customers.

Worryingly, a third of respondents didn't know whether they clicked through on email offers or not?!

However, you have a better chance of having it read if you adhere to the principles of responsive web design.

GraphicMail’s Nicholas Eckert, in a PR Web article, says "As email readership continues its migration towards mobile devices, responsive design becomes even more important to mobile and email marketers"

And it is what your email contains that makes people want to open it and read it.

Overt sales-pitches will be left unopened; refocus your communications so that they become education-based emails.  If you give recipients something they actually want to read and learn about that you will succeed.  If you don't, the result will be immediately obvious.

Related articles

• What 2013 Holds in Store for Digital Marketing
• The Future is Mobile & Email Marketing
• Marketing Tip of the Day: Trash The Boring Sales Pitches

Text, Buttons Or Banners - What Works Best?

According to a post by Simon Penson of eConsultancy conversions from a corporate web site are best served by buttons, with the the traditional banners trailing a distant third.
The research was conducted on a casino web site over a period of 12 months and with a sample of approximately 10,000 visitors.

On the basis of these finding it would seem best to avoid placing too much of your advertising budget on web banner advertising.

On The Subject Of Subjects

If you don't give your email subject  lines serious consideration than your marketing campaign could well be a fizzer.

Recent research from Adestra suggests that subject line length and specific words and phrases have a major impact on your email marketing success or failure.

They took a a random sample of email campaigns, each of which were delivered to more than 5000 recipients, giving a total volume of 932 million emails sent over a six month period. As the average in one industry may not be to another they split the data down into six key industry groups – Publishing,
Events, Ecommerce, Charities, B2B and B2C.

Key Findings:

• For the e-commerce sector, character and word count results are paradoxical. The choice is clear – shorter subject lines drive clicks, and longer subject lines drive opens
• Subject lines with 70 characters provide give a significant boost click-throughs
• For Events the best click through rate comes from subject lines with 15 words/120 characters upwards
• Publishers should realise that a higher word count delivers more opens and click through rates
• If you are a Charity running a donation campaign then short subject lines are critical as these drive both opens and response
• Rather strangely they report that mentioning ‘kittens’ will increase your opens by 41% but if you mention 'children' the opening rate will drop by 28%
• For B2B's the more words the better with anything over 16 words delivering on both opens and clicks
• For B2C's a 20 word subject line appears to be clear winner

Parry Malm at Adestra who authored the report says: “Our new subject line research has produced some incredibly interesting stats. It’s only one aspect of your email marketing arsenal, but when approached in the correct way subject line optimisation can prove to be an effective, and quick, tactical winner to help drive response rates.”

Open publication 

Although interestingly these findings seem to be at complete variance to recent research by email provider MailChimp.  Their statistics from their own system released in September suggests that subject line length means absolutely nothing.

Mailchimp's analysis of 12 billion emails shows that as your subject line gets longer, nothing happens

Ian Creek of Econsultancy suggests that one email is never enough. He recommends this campaign schedule:

• Send the first email explaining the offer in full HTML. 
• Send a second follow-up email in a plain Outlook style from a named sales contact. 
• Send a final reminder of the offer (day before the offer ends), again this can be from the sales contact. Simple-not over-designed. 
• If you’re really cheeky you can even send a final email the day after the offer ends with a ‘special extension’.

Related articles

• This Just In: Subject Line Length Means Absolutely Nothing

Boom, Boomers

In the words of the immortal Basil Brush - Boom, Boom!

If you can remember the fox puppet then you might just be in the Baby Boomer generation.  If you can't then you are either too young to have see the show or possible too old to remember what you have seen. There are 80 million of them,  born between 1946 and 1964 and they have great spending power

Source: Nielsen

 Recent research  by a team of Nielsen Neurofocus neuroscientists have come up with the conclusion that the older we become, the greater the neural decline. This means that to market to Baby Boomers you need to keep it simple as they will begin to find it more difficult to handle visual or verbal complexity

But there is a flip side.  Baby Boomers have the ability to filter out negative messages and experience negative mentions less; at least that's the theory.

According to the Nielsen unit "the amygdala, an emotional center in the brain, tends to be active in older people only when viewing positive images. Negative images are overlooked unless they’re “immediately relevant.”

Marketers have tended to ignore the group once they migrated from the 18-49 demographic.

Source Nielsen

Nielsen make the point that in five years, 50 percent of the U.S. population will be 50+ and they spend close to 50 percent of all Consumer Packaged Goods dollars. Why is it then that less than 5% of advertising is targeted at this group?

Nielsen in collaboration with BoomAgers gives additional insights into this marketing opportunity.

Consider these points from the report:

• Between now and 2030, the 18-49 segment is expected to grow +12%, while the 50+ segment will expand +34%.
• Boomers are more tech savvy and more marketing-friendly than believed
• Their business is winnable and losable
• They are a much more sensitive and dynamic cohort than most realize
• By 2050, there will be 161 million 50+ consumers, +63% compared to 2010
• Internet users over the age of 50 are driving the growth of social networking as their usage of the social net has nearly doubled to 42% in the past year
• 53% of Boomers are on Facebook

Boomers drive car sales and according to the Huffington Post. they also buy 73 percent of all hybrid cars. A monthly poll by  AARP media sales  showed that 70 % of women 50 and older felt invisible to fashion and beauty companies.

Clearly there are some 'golden opportunities' being overlooked!

Related articles

• Only one in six 'baby boomers' in good health
• Baby boomers 'driving cosmetic surgery increase'
• The New York Times Gets in on the Baby Boom

Open Sesame

This magical phrase from the story Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves may well  resonate for budding email marketers.

The place of email in the online marketing mix remains a contested topic but it most definitely has it place.  The seemingly depressing statistic is the opening rate for such communications and this can be off-putting until one realises that you measly 25% is consistent with the industry standard you represent.

Take this recently released 2012 Silverpop Email Marketing Metrics Benchmark Study, for example.

The chart shows nonprofit emails have an average unique opening rates of just 21.2%.  It so happens that I have an interest in this particular figure as since 1998 I have been publishing a museum news site and send out weekly emails to subscribers.  While my opening rate is usually above 23% the aim is to get results that are in the upper quartile.  Being average is not good enough.

More important still is the Click Through Rate.  The simple act of opening an email is no guarantee of capturing a reader's interest. The better news is that while email opening rates are falling the CTR is increasing.

It is therefore essential to be using a good email marketing programme that has a robust set of statistical reports built in.  There are several in this category but one of the simplest to use (and the most friendly) is MailChimp.

One of the latest trends that is yielding very good results are email programmes that combine the functionality of social media platforms.  CheetahMail for example, has added Pinterest functionality to some of their email campaigns so that consumers can link products listed in a promotional email directly to their Pinterest pin boards. The result - 11% higher opening rates.

In the case of a furniture design enterprise the results of using this approach also showed:

• A 2.8% increase in click-to-open rates
• A 15%+ increase in Pinterest followers within the first week of deployment
• A 33% increase in pin board activity

Related articles

• Some experts say email marketing is dead: true or false?
• Survey Reveals Changing Role of Email Marketing
• E-mail Open Rates Declining, Click-Through Rates Rising [Study]

Global Social Media Check Up 2012

As this presentation shows companies have adapted their marketing practice to embrace the use of social media.

A couple of key findings:

• Twitter is the most popular social network among Fortune‘s Global 100 companies.
• 79% of company Twitter accounts engage users using @mentions
• Pinterest is being increasingly used to highlight products and services in a visual manner
• Twitter is the most popular network for company use in Latin America
• Many companies are using more than one social media account on the same network. This is especially so in Europe where there is the challenge of multiple languages
• Companies in Asia are using different channels to communicate
• Mobile Web, Visual Storytelling and Social Enterprise are the three big trends in the Asia Pacific region.

The presentation can be downloaded here.

Seeing The 'TV Light'

A large segment of the population don't bother too much about TV watching. They are often referred to as 'Light TV Viewers'.

31% of the18 to 49 age demographic spend an average of 39 minutes per day watching TV, so where can advertisers get better bang for their buck?

Google would have you believe that they and YouTube are better options for advert retention. TV by itself misses a whopping 63% of this target market, but with the addition of online there is a 27% increase in brand impression rate.

A Marketer's Guide To Pinterest

Source: MDG Advertising

The Early QR Code Catches The Worm

Want to capture the attention of those busy commuters and convince them to shop with you?  Here's what Tesco did in Korea, redefining the meaning of 'grocery shopping' for today's generation.

Using Smartphone technology it is providing QRCodes for items. A quick scan of a mock supermarket shelf (the poster version) puts the product into the virtual shopping basket.  Once the shopping list is complete he or she pays for it online and the products are delivered to the home.

No more standing in Supermarket queues and being kneecapped by errant trolleys for these savvy shoppers. The virtual grocery stores are to be found in subway stations and similar location where traffic is heaviest.

Related articles

• Woolworths unveils virtual supermarket
• The New Worst Place for QR Codes: Burkas 

How Agencies Rate Their Clients Social Media Tactics

Agencies have rated the effectiveness of their clients' social marketing tactics and according to an article by Marketing Sherpa, posting content on company-branded or -managed blogs is deemed either very or somewhat effective by 85% of agencies.  This is particularly so when that content is purposely fed into other social media outlets.

Unusual marketing tactics - Betfair sponsored Bromley Town and the footballers 'adopted' QR Codes

Related articles

• 2012 Social Marketing & New Media Predictions (socialmediatoday.com)
• Optimizing Your Social Marketing Program - A Practical Way to Social Media Optimization (SMO) (thecustomercollective.com)
• The What And How Of Social Business (forbes.com)

Attack Of The 'Munchies'. How Businesses Devour Content

This infographic based on the Buyersphere report provides a mouthwatering sample of B2B practice. The 'content fillings' are revealing with the importance of the company web site being reinforced.

Click on the image to see the larger version

LinkedIn has doubled in importance in the space of the year and even for those who shy away from onion rings, pressing the flesh at offline events and seminars remains important.  That said, online events and seminars (webinars) have shown the greatest gain in business content interest, up 17% on 2010.

Whichever way you look at it, the B2B content burger just got bigger.

The survey was conducted in the UK and Europe with a range of companies, varying in size and profile. IT and manufacturing equipment were the most common types of purchase made recently but the Italians were purchasing more consultancy services, property/land and support services than other countries

Source - Buyersphere report

40% of buyers used social media at some point in the buying process

Time is On Your Side - Part Two

Social Media

A recent 'The Science of Timing' seminar for Hubspot's Dan Zarella suggested the following optimum times (US times - Central and Eastern Standard Time Zones) to be engaged:

Retweets by the Hour - Dan Zarella

• Retweets of your content from Twitter

2-5 PM provides the greatest number of  ReTweets and you get more during the day than during the night.

Later in the day (5 PM) and later in the week are the dominant times for retweeting,

You need to pick the optimum time for the time zones of your target market and this may vary from the above.

Use this free tool to determine the best timing for retweets of your content - you could well be surprised.

Interestingly the study also shows that those who Tweet about 22 times daily have the most followers so I suggest that if you are using an automated service such as Twitterfeed you should adjust the settings to this posting amount.

Using Google Analytics timing reporting mentioned above you will also be able to see the number of referrals from Twitter to your web site.

• Facebook

Facebook sharing happens most during the weekends.

Less is more with Facebook postings and once a day, or once every second day, yields the best results

11 AM is the time when most people read content on Facebook. 2 AM, 5 AM, and 7 PM are the next best times which could mean some adjustment of corporate sleep patterns!).

• Email

Most bounces are recorded at 6am. and 5 and 7 in the morning have the best opening rates.

97% read their email in the morning, and 95% read it in the afternoon.

Weekend email has an open rate of around 42%  but note that abuse reports are also highest on Saturday and Sunday, 6 AM being the peak for this.

As with Twitter automation, you can set you email programme to deliver it into inboxes at the best time to capture the attention of your target audience.

• Blogs

Mornings are best for people who view blogs; 80% do so during this time.  The percentage drops to 60% during the afternoon, half (50%) read them in the evening and only 40% do so at night.

More men (60%) than women (50%)read blog posts in the evening, so demographic targeting is important.

Viewing rate is highest on a Monday (130 average) but tapers of a little on Tuesday. From Wednesday to Friday the average levels out at an average of 120 views. Saturday and Sunday's average views are lowest (80). Comments i.e. feedback, is higher in the weekend.

10 to 11 am has the most blog views, averaging 190 and the lowest blog viewing rate is at 5 am(65)

The Science of Timing

On The Tiles

TheDigitalConsultant Tile

Here's a clever use of social media and engagement  by the Dutch Airline KLM. By logging on to the airline's Facebook site visitors are invited to create their own Delft Tile.

One of these with its accompanying slogan will be chosen as the competition winner and this person will see their tile appear on a real KLM plane, flying on journeys of inspiration around the globe.

The combination of a traditional Dutch ceramic art form with the digital interaction using Facebook profile pictures is an inspired piece of advertising.

Watch and click on the promo clip below and then try it for yourself

Sharing propelled by ebuzzing

Time is On Your Side - Part One

Social and online media is all about engagement; more often than not in realtime.  If you are posting on social media sites at times when your target audience are away doing something else then you have a problem.

More of a challenge are enterprises who persist in following their business hours for online activity instead of adopting those of their audience.

While it is true that you need to be where where your market is, it is equally true that you need to be there when that market is digitally engaged.  Logistical challenge aside, consideration of time zones is a must if your business is not locally focussed.

While you can schedule your blog postings to publish at specified hours and use third party platforms to spawn your company RSS to your twitter account on a sequential basis, but do you really know that this scattergun approach is reaching your audience?

This is the first of two articles on timing and what it could mean for you.

Let's Start With Web Sites

Google Analytics should be now be a 'given' for all web sites.  To accurately gauge the times when people visit your site you need to enhance the Analytics reports and fortunately (if you are using Firefox as your browser) there is a free way of doing so. Here's how:

1. Download the Greasemonkey addon for Firefox 
2. Now add the Google Analytics Report Enhancer script (you will be prompted to accept this)
3. Open your Google Analytics window and in the left hand column click on 'Search Engines'

Click on Search Engines

 

Click on Source

  

Click on Time

You can do the same for 'day of the week' . As a result you now have a good idea as to which days andwhat times people are making greatest use of your site.  Check out not only 'visits' but also 'new visits'. Adjust the period to get monthly and annual rates.

Related articles

• The New Google Analytics Available to Everyone (analytics.blogspot.com)

.... And a set of plastic cups. IKEA's Desktop Branding

Sometimes the simplest digital branding ideas can be amongst the best.

Having lived for the past four years in a country with the Scandanavian retailer IKEA, it is easy to become reliant on the ease of redecoration at low cost.

Now that I have returned to another country where this retailer does not yet have a presence, I feel somewhat deprived (and it is not just the meatballs on the menu!). All however is not lost, as now there is a digital presence to remind me of their operation and product line.

Here's the innovative method of digital branding from IKEA.  Known for their low cost flatpack storage units they have translated these into a downloadable desktop set. The app comes from Hungarian agency Laboratory Ideas.

"From the beginning we tried to help you organize your home a better and more efficiently. The world is changing, but the challenge for us remains the same. So we created "e-folder set", a virtual version of the famous IKEA organizers."

So now you can virtually decorate your folders and screen to make it look more homely. A few clicks and you have practical, transparent shelving / storage units, where you can easily find anything.

Try it for yourself by downloading the zip file from this site.  Now I wonder what would be the result if the Subway brand was to do the same?

The Older The Better

There remains a common misconception that social media and use of the Net are solely the domain of the young.

A new report from Neilsen has confirmed that as populations age, the significance of consumers over the age of 50 will grow in importance.

"Already in the U.S., the Baby Boom generation accounts for the largest share of sales of any generation across most product categories. Understanding this new marketplace will be essential for brands that will grow in the 21st century."

Baby Boomers will redefine what it means to be old in exactly the same manner as they redefined what it meant to be young and middle aged.

Despite the global recession that has scuppered or delayed many peoples retirement plans, the baby boomer generation remains one of the most affluent and prepared for retirement.

A lot of online marketing focus has been on the Milliennials, those aged 18-33, while the affluent and retiring bay boomers have somewhat slipped off the radar.

It is true that Millennials are more likely to do the following:

• Use social networking sites
• Use instant messaging
• Use online classifieds
• Listen to music
• Play online games
• Read blogs
• Participate in virtual worlds

But a recent Pew Internet survey discovered that internet users in Gen X (those ages 34-45) and older cohorts are more likely than Millennials to engage in several online activities, including visiting government websites and getting financial information online.

The fastest growth in the use of social media has come from internet users 74 and older: Site usage for this oldest cohort has quadrupled since 2008, from 4% to 16%.

The jury is out on whether blogging is is being surplanted by the use of other social media such as Twitter and Facebook.

The middle aged and older are sticking with it even if younger generations are losing interest.

The Pew survey shows that among 34-to-45-year-olds who use the Internet, the percentage who blog increased six points, to 16 percent, in 2010 from two years earlier.

Blogging by 46-to-55-year-olds increased five percentage points, to 11 percent, while blogging among 65-to-73-year-olds rose two percentage points, to 8 percent.

One of the most popular platforms, Wordpress, recorded more than 6 million new blogs in 2010 with pageviews up 53%.  There were 23 billion Wordpress page views last year and new posts were up 110% to 146 million. Hardly an online activity on the wane.

People reading blogs on Wordpress

Defining the Generations:

US Online Activity

According to eMarketer the US senior population by 2030 will reach an estimated total of 72 million, nearly 20% of the projected total population.

While traditional media is still the main focus for seniors, the internet is quickly increasing its reach. Online penetration among older users is beginning to rival newspaper and radio usage, and this trend is expected to continue, reaching 56.0% by 2015.

All evidence points to seniors using the web for increasingly varied activities, graduating from email and search into social media.

Related articles

• Rewriting the New York Times Headline: Blog Use Wanes Amongst Teenagers (blogher.com)
• Pew Research Center: Baby Boomers Approach 65... Glumly (huffingtonpost.com)
• Older web users catching up: Pew report (cbc.ca)