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Driving mobile channel engagement via Email

Posted by Sarah Walsh August 11th, 2011

Email has long been an integral part of marketers’ multi-channel communications toolkit. While more recently its profile has been overshadowed by the rapid rise of social media and mobile, it is still as important as ever. Not only is it a highly valuable marketing channel in its own right, it is also key to driving engagement in newer channels such as social media and mobile.

The rapid growth of mobile and particularly m-commerce has been well documented in recent months with a slew of infographics to show for it. There are multi-channel marketing strategies driving this growth, of which, email is a part. A recent report  on society’s growing dependence on mobile has shown that not only does email usage increase with the purchase of a smartphone but that 55% of consumers are using their smartphone to check email at least once per day. Furthermore, marketing messages delivered through email and read on a smartphone have driven more consumers to purchase than any other mobile method.

These statistics show the importance of optimising email marketing in order to drive greater mobile engagement. With just over half of customers citing an email as the impetus for a mobile purchase getting the following areas right is key;

- Rendering: Email design needs to render correctly on a smartphone so that it is easy to scroll and that calls to  action are visible on different mobile handset types

- Calls to action: Mobile versions of emails should contain calls to action that are relevant to time sensitive mobile behaviours such as links to store locations, promotions, events etc.

- Timing: Test and learn to pin point the time of day that delivers the greatest levels of response

All of the above should be tracked, analysed and enhanced in order to deliver email communications that drive the greatest mobile engagement, click throughs and ultimately conversions. A good example of this in action are Gap, who have integrated mobile store locator functionality into their Emails:

Therefore, Email and Mobile should not be viewed in isolation. We should leverage their combined powers to drive engagement across the channel mix.

Sarah Walsh – CRM Consultant (LBi London). Follow me on Twitter @Swalsh8

Talk to LBi CRM if you want to find out more about email optimisation, driving mobile engagement, CRM or Social CRM.

Tags: Communications, CRM, email, Engagement, mobile, Optimisation

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Rise of Consumer – The New Brand Guardians

Posted by Ken Martin July 14th, 2011

With the rise of social media into the mainstream marketing mix, it’s not surprising it’s now overtaken Email in terms of on-line duration (4.6 vs 4.4 hours per week). This peer-to-peer engagement equates to circa 3.8 billion+ weekly interactions via Facebook/Twitter alone.

Although this volume of social communication is noteworthy,  it’s the impact on consumer brand perception that’s more significant.

Consumers now control the brand agenda

The power of consumer word of mouth has long been acknowledged within the marketing mix.

- Brand opinion holds much more weight from someone you know (90% of people are more likely to trust a  recommendation if from a friend). First Direct, with 61% positive net recommendation rate, the highest of any UK bank, have built their whole brand/service proposition around this insight.

- Negative brand experiences travel faster and much further than positive. We only have to look at events of the last week to see the impact consumer power can have on a UK publishing brand with 168 years heritage.

However, since social channel usage is now firmly part of every day consumer culture, the word of mouth factor has now even more importance.

Our role as marketeers

We therefore, need to manage and leverage consumer conversation via the following four ways:

1) Insight: Listen to what consumers are saying about your brand, and view social as a continuous real time focus group (for relatively low cost). Gatorade have made socially generated insights integral to their brand strategy, with their impressive listening capabilities well publicised on YouTube.

2) Manage:  Consumers are now just as likely to feedback via Twitter/Facebook as your official service channels. Since this communication is visible and impacts perceptions of others, integrate social into the core brand/service proposition, and pro-actively manage your community. Airlines such as Virgin Atlantic  are a great example, since they actively seek, acknowledge and deal with passenger/potential passenger queries and complaints.

3) Engage: Your fans and followers are also likely to be a key segment of your brand advocates. Think of ways to reward/engage them further to help shape the brands future, such as new product trial or marketing feedback. An example is Rightmove.co.uk, who canvassed their Facebook fans on what new functionality they would like to see on their website, and received many valuable suggestions.

4) Amplify:  Social should not be viewed as a vertical ‘silo’ as per the old broadcast/media model. Social will cut across and impact every brand communication whether intended or not (via Comments, Tweets and Shares). Therefore incorporate it into the campaign idea, and leverage social reach. The well publicised Old Spice Man activity from 2010 is a classic example of amplification in practice.

Ulitimately, this means that although we can obviously instigate the conversation agenda via communications, the power and a brands real destiny, now firmly lies in the hands of the consumer.

Ken Martin – Senior CRM Consultant
Follow me on Twitter @MrKenM

Tags: Amplify, brand, Consumer Listening, CRM, Engage, Facebook, Insight, Marketing Mix, service, Social CRM, Social Media, twitter

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How to use email to drive Facebook fans

Posted by Tom Burrell May 27th, 2011

When you sign up for a Facebook account, you need to provide an email address.  You are given the option to check if your existing email contacts are on Facebook and when you use the service, you are alerted of Facebook messages from friends via email. So for the user Facebook has clear relationship to email. But how are brands using email to drive engagement in Facebook fan pages and content?

There are 2 clear ways:

1.             Where users can easily share email content via Facebook

2.            Where users can “like” email content

Where users can easily share email content via Facebook

If your subscriber list is already on Facebook, you can provide tools in your email campaigns to allow your users to easily share email content. This will give you the opportunity to leverage the facebook friends of your existing customers and tap into the word of mouth and advocacy of your subscribers. A recommendation from a friend is significantly stronger than a brand message. Facebook’s own research shows 160% uplift in brand recall, where the brand recommendation comes from a friend, over brand advertising. To encourage URL sharing via facebook simply enter the following code into your email:

 Where email drives Facebook likes

You can also give users the opportunity to like content within an email. Mailchimp have pioneered this functionality, which is another very powerful way of driving advocacy and word of mouth for a brand. The easiest way to drive likes is by embedding the following code:

Talk to LBi CRM if you want to find out more about email,  social sharing via email, Social CRM or CRM. 

Tom Burrell is Principal CRM Consultant at LBi and sits on the IAB Email Council.

Follow him on Twitter @TomBurrell

Tags: CRM, email, Facebook, like, share, social, SocialCRM

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From Shop to Swap?

Posted by Sarah Walsh May 9th, 2011

As we begin to peek out from under the veil of recession, a new movement is stirring. An innovative business model is evolving that has the potential to change how we live our lives as well as how we do business. Time Magazine has listed it as one of the top 10 ideas that will change the world. So what exactly is this mystery movement?

Rachel Botsman, social innovator and writer, has aptly named it Collaborative Consumption. It began with a natural shift in customer behaviour from shopping to swapping and from buying to renting, ultimately moving away from the hyper-consumption that got us into so much trouble in the first place. This simple video from www.collaborativeconsumption.com sums it up nicely:

WHAT’S MINE IS YOURS from rachel botsman on Vimeo.

Both Rachel Botsman and Lisa Ganksy (author of The Mesh: Why the Future of Business Is Sharing) make some really interesting points on the impact that Collaborative Consumption could have for brands, marketers and consumers alike. I have picked two key points as food for thought;

1) The success of Collaborative Consumption hinges on trust (TED Talk ‘The case for Collaborative Consumption) and while there has been a lot of focus in the last year on influencers and metrics such as Klout score and Peerindex, it may be time for businesses and consumers to start thinking about reputation. In Botsman’s words “Reputation capital will determine our access to collaborative consumption. It’s a new social currency, so to speak, that could become as powerful as our credit rating”.

2) To avoid being left out of these new conversations that are forming in a peer to peer environment and to take advantage of new opportunities to engage consumers, brands need to get creative about adapting their business models. This could be through enabling sharing (e.g. Netflix), building communities that offer shared experiences and then providing ancillary services to these communities (e.g. Nike Plus) or simply adapting their traditional business model to incorporate sharing (e.g. DriveNow from BMW).

This is just the beginning of the discussion and only time will tell how big and far reaching Collaborative Consumption will become. The technology to support this entirely new class of commerce is developing rapidly and with brands such as Zipcar and Netflix growing at such a fast pace, it doesn’t look like it’s going away any time soon. So, maybe it’s time to get the thinking caps on?

Sarah Walsh is CRM Consultant at LBi

Follow the CRM team on Twitter @LBiCRM, or myself @Swalsh8

Tags: Collaborative Consumption, CRM, Engagement, Influencers, Reputation, Technology, TED

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