Digital Expression

As email marketers, we are fundamentally interested in finding ways to increase:

• The numbers who click links in an e-mail
• Sales revenue that is generated as a direct result of an e-mail campaign.

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Even though social network usage has surpassed email, this chart suggests that email still rules the roost.  9/10 US consumers receive promotional email, only 4/10 are followers of a brand on Facebook and only 5% follow on Twitter. However, the results are overly simplistic for 2 reasons:

1. Once customers are given the choice to hear from a business via social media in addition to or in place of email, the gap will narrow. Greater freedom in contact choice is also linked to greater loyalty.

2. Furthermore, the comparison fails to take into account the increased viral potential offered by Facebook. The average Facebook user has 130 friends who could potentially see your brand endorsement and continue to exponentially spread your message. This fact alone is compelling enough to make your social network page the hub of a promotion using WildfireApp, run an e-commerce store using Payvment or do a product launch like SPCA Petfood or Dentyne have successfully done.  With 500 million users worldwide, Facebook is a safe bet, but for data to back up a channel decision, try using Flowtown to build a social profile for each customer.

1. The most elementary of steps is to include social sharing links in your email

It's time to go beyond the default 'email to a friend' option. Here's why:

A Getresponse poll that analysed 500 million emails that included links for Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, and Digg found found that:

• Overall, social media links improve CTR by 30% (7.2% to 9.4%)
• A Twitter link drives the best CTR: (10.2%) than email without one.  An increase of 40%
• The more links, the more clickthrough (11.2%)
• Interestingly, the social bookmarking service that started it all, Digg, offers the lowest CTR (5.3%)

2. The next step is to create hybrid email that drives traffic to both your website and social media.

More people use social networks than email.  It's prudent for us to position ourselves to adapt to changing contact preferences. So in your email communications, you can demonstrate a compelling reason to connect with you on a social network including samples of the unique content available and remember the entertainment and social-interaction elements that people are looking for.  Balance the email with your regular product offers that customers have come to expect.  Remember, either/or options are better than yes/no options.

Your marketing team should be able to copy/paste the needed HTML code, or you could try using a hosted email marketing provider like iContact, Netsuite or GetResponse that have built-in social media features (including tracking.)

Preference. With greater freedom to choose, we as online marketers must enhance our targeting capabilities so that we get noticed by a larger proportion of our potential audience (subscribers, followers and fans.)  I feel like i'm stating the obvious here, but ExactTarget have provided the evidence to back it up:  People don't interact with brands in silos:

There's an overlap between channels like Email, Facebook and Twitter but different audience subsets have their preferred interaction channel. For example, it's a younger audience that is more likely to share your message on Facebook.

The report supports what we have come to accept as best practice content guidelines for engagement:

On Facebook, provide infotainment

On Twitter, it's all about what's new and keeping people informed.

How is Social Media impacting your email marketing?

Scientific Advertising by Charles C. Hopkins is one of my favourite books.  It provides common sense insights into what works, what does not work, and why. I read this book for the first time over a year ago and i've just finished going through it a second time. The book teaches one about good advertising and succesfully launching new products.  The principles can be applied to the entire online marketing suite, from SEO to Conversion Optimisation. I highly recommend reading this book. If you're short on time, here's a summary for you.

(reading time is ~ 15 mins)

Advertising

1. Advertising is salesmanship.  Its purpose is to make sales and thus its results should be compared to those of other salespeople.
2. Good advertising is expressing oneself briefly, clearly and convincingly. Fine writing and flair steals attention away from the subject.  It reveals the hook, thereby creating resistance to the sale.
3. The plain and sincere salesman that knows his products and customers is best. When writing ads, ask: "Will this help sell the item if I met the buyer in person?"
4. Advertising agencies have tested and compared thousands of ideas and recorded their results, therefore nearly every selling question which arises in business can be answered by experience. Meaningful metrics like: Cost/reply, Cost/$ of sale and Cost / Customer have been used to prove the best advertising methods for nearly every product line.
5. Principles are learned and proved by repeat tests. Uncertainties arise from people and products, not the advertising methods used.

Writing Headlines

1. Headlines should aim to attract qualified prospects and create action.
2. Headlines should isolate people whom you can interest for your purpose and target them only.
3. People are busy and skip 3/4 of the reading material they pay for. Headlines can make all the difference to the Cost/sale.
4. Learn with precision which inherent quality (of your offering) most readers seek and use it to attract more people.

Writing Ad Copy

1. When writing your copy, always keep a typical buyer in mind. Don't boast.  Don't show-off.  This causes resentment.
2. Write specifically. No superlatives because they suggest looseness of expression and devalues your authority.  Use exact figures where available. Specific facts are taken at face value.Flair and dressing is a blatant attempt to sell. Content is king.
3. Present all claims that resonate with your buyer.  You have 1 chance to gain interest of the prospect.  An average reader is only once a reader.
4. Use pictures if they offer a better return than text only.  Colour offers no benefit over monochrome.  Size does not matter.
5. Use time limits on offers to overcome the tendency to procrastinate.
6. People are selfish. The best ads often don't quote price, but offer service: Wanted information, advantages, a sample - proof without the risk. Always remember that people do things to please themselves.
7. Human nature is the same today as in the time of Caesar, so the principles of psychology are fixed and enduring.
8. Everyone is CURIOUS.  Exploit this curiosity.
9. BARGAINS not cheapness.  People don't like to feel like they can't afford something, but they do like to have access to bargains. People judge largely on price.
10. Guarantees are a dime a dozen.  Personal guarantees are more effective, as our 110% refunds and longer right-of –return periods.
11. Offers to certain classes or groups invite comparisons.  People want exclusiveness.
12. PREVENTION may be better than a cure, but it is not popular subject matter. Focus on the positives:  Don't say: "Prevents acne" say "For clear, flawless skin." Present the benefits.  No good comes from stating the problem or the "before" state. People are already familiar with it.  State the desired outcome.
13. Individuality in ads count, but be weary of changing a well established identity.

Research & Testing

1. Constant testing results in exponential savings:  The cost/reply can reduce from $14.20 > $0.85 > $0.41 with optimisation.
2. Mail-order is the hardest way to sell a product.  Ads that are used repeatedly are done so because they are proven to work. Learn from them.
3. What cannot be done on a large scale profitably cannot be done on a small scale. Small advertising expenses become large ones when the certainty of their impact is known.
4. Never state a supposition before you have proved it. Substantiate all claims.
5. Knowledge is power. Learn what people spend. Learn total consumption. What % does our ad appeal to? One can answer any question with a test campaign.

Coupons, Samples & Freebies

1. The best salesman is the product itself. Use samples, together with a mental impression and the right atmosphere.
2. Altruism leads people to buy.  Picture the customer's point of view.  Give free samples, free trials with right of return and no-money up-front or even without collection of payment details.
3. A coupon to try something free is better than just giving it away for free:  The coupon redemption attributes a value to the product, whereas a free-trial with no coupon associates $0 value, making it hard to charge for later on.
4. FREE is always in exchange for:  a coupon, an email address, something that let's you stay in contact with the customer and track the effectiveness of your campaign.
5. Coupons that can be cut-out are actionable.  This is important because people forget.  They get distracted - absorbed in some story, so something tangible like a cut-out acts as a reminder.
6. Making people mail a coupon produces lower returns than if you ask people to present a coupon at a store. Allowing people to telephone provides a much greater return than postal replies.  Perception of effort is important. (Remember, this book was written 80 years ago.)
7. Never start advertising without distribution. Samples enable one to direct customers to where they may be supplied for future purchases.  They help establish your distribution channels. Make samples available at specific stores and name those stores in your ads (or offer to name them in exchange for stocking your product.)
8. Correctly used, samples can reduce your cost / customer.

Picking Products & Services

1. Go to people already educated and satisfy their created wants, rather than trying to create new wants.
2. Watch the development of any popular trend (the creation of new desires,) then at the right time, offer to satisfy those desires.  Every year, it can be done on new things.
3. Focus on foundations and finding the advantage. Use Names that tell stories.
4. The greatest profits come from great volume at small profit.

Good Business Sense

1. If your ad fits in a 1/2 page, then don't waste money on a full page.
2. You must do your own selling and define your own success. Distributors exist to fulfil orders.
3. Generic names create new markets that others can share in. They invite commoditisation: substitution and price competition.
4. Good business is made from educated decisions.

Intrigued?  Here's a sample of the book.  I'd love to discuss Scientific Advertising with you on Twitter: @KunalKripalani

The book is out of its copyright period and has been published in full on the internet. Here's one source.

A couple of days ago I wrote about 5 ways social media can enhance your SEO efforts.This is good stuff, but:

SM and SEO certainly overlap, but I still see too many people operating in silos...Neither effort will succeed unless it's part of a larger marketing and analytics strategy." @AndrewCMiller

Wise words. So, SEO is only a fragment of an overall search marketing strategy, which in itself is part of a larger stragetic drive by a business as a means of achieving their goals.  So let's take one step back and look at:

1. Why you might use search engine optimisation.
2. How you can use SEO to achieve business goals.

1. SEO should form part of a strategy to achieve business goals like,

• An increase in brand awareness
• An increase in sales / market share
• A reduction in customer acquisition costs.
• Increasing operational efficiency
• Reducing customer service queries

2. The business benefits of high organic search rankings are the result of a well formulated and sustained SEO effort.

"SEO needs to be iterative and evolutionary. It should learn from itself and its PPC sister to become more targeted and relevant to the intended audience."@RyanDeShazer

So it follows that SEO does not deliver free traffic, because it requires time to first implement your strategy and then also to sustain it. That's human resources working with an analytics package. There are ofcourse opportunities to reduce the financial investment by using automation tools like Wordstream, but let's not get sidetracked.

You want to make sure people who need what you have are able to find you more easily than they can find your competitors.

We want them to visit our website, to place orders, fill out applications and subscribe to our mailing lists.  You need to know what keywords are driving tangible results and we need to measure our progress month to month and quarter to quarter.

If you are an SEO newbie, you need to read Google's Search Engine Optimisation Starter Guide.  For the rest of us i've created a 35 point Search Engine Optimisation Checklist to increase your visibility and rankings.  I also recommend reading about Conversion Optimisation to guarantee the effectiveness of your SEO efforts. The landing pages that prospects clickthrough to are critical.

Talk SEO with me @KunalKripalani