Plushies in Action

We don’t need to hear more about the gloomy economy and how marketers have to work with shoe string budgets during rough times, aggravated by the immense pressure to deliver more results with less dollars. So amidst all of the craziness, social media/ Web 2.0 and other smart marketing tools like permission-based email marketing and virtual roadshows take center stage, offering marketers the promise of survival during this rough-and-tumble time.

How about adding one more item to your survival list? Eco-marketing.

Chad Horenfeldt’s post on The recession is here – Time to become an eco-marketer explains his definition of eco-marketing: “…it’s not about adding some corny green recycle image to your website…”, but rather, working with the concept of 3 Rs in demand creation terms-  Reuse, Reduce, Recycle. Not from an environmental standpoint, but from a marketing perspective.

As marketers, we’re constantly chasing new technologies, churning out new campaigns, new landing pages, new communications, new leads, etc. While it’s good we challenge ourselves with new ideas and new methods, we often leave behind some old hidden treasures. We forget about the successful past campaigns we ran or that popular white paper we’ve created months ago, which could be reused, recycled and repurposed for current use.

So back to Chad’s really intriguing eco-marketing concepts. It could possibly save you significant marketing dollars, deliver good results, and help you weather the storm.  Chad’s eco-marketing concepts as summarised, with my take on it:

• Reuse your recorded webinars, email newsletters and recorded live presentations by making them readily available on your website. Use social media tools such as Twitter and Youtube to publish these content and maximise your reach.

• Reuse your marketing materials. You don’t need to just focus on pushing out new content, reuse the content you already have such as blog posts, newsletter articles, industry white papers, demos. Good materials are worth reusing. If you find some info out-dated, update it with statistics or testimonials to make it current.

One example on how to publish reused materials: If you’re planning an upcoming enewsletter, considering including a “In the previous issue” or “Articles you may have missed” or “Most popular white paper / blog post” section.

• Reuse your marketing campaigns. Your old campaigns don’t have to be a one hit wonder. Reuse high performing campaigns and make them work harder for you.

To start off, look back at your campaign ROI reports and identify your top performing campaigns in 2008 or even previous years. Then identify new leads or new verticals you wish to target. Tweak your message and/or call to action, and re-run these campaigns. You should also consider combining various standalone campaigns and mediums you’ve used previously, marry them together and created a campaign that is integrated.

Also, standardise email and landing page templates that can be reused, and tweak them when necessary.

• Reduce communications. Reduce the amount of communication that you’re sending. (Even though Jack Welsh says you should over communicate during tough economic times)

Let me paraphrase this. Reduce any irrelevant or sales pitch types of communications. Because in a downturn, marketers turn to low costs, highly measurable communication channels such as email marketing. You will desperately be fighting the inbox clutter war, and standing out among hundreds and thousands of emails becomes daunting. If you over communicate, you are also at risk of being labeled a spammer. So look to segmenting your database, and send communications that are targeted, relevant and provide real VALUE to your target audience.

• Reduce complexities. Reduce the amount of time it takes for qualified leads to be followed up with by eliminating clumsy processes. According to B2B lead generation guru Brian Carroll a qualified sales lead should be followed up by the assigned sales person within 24-hours.

• Reduce friction. Removing any unnecessary fields from your landing pages, and ask for more information only if it makes sense to the potential lead.

If you want to know more about optimising landing pages by reducing friction, I’ll recommend  Marketing Experiments. Listen to their recorded webinars on landing pages, try Live optimization + lead generation = better B2B landing pages in one hour. This is just one of the many great webinars from Marketing Experiments.

• Recycle “inactive” leads. Look back at all marketing and sales qualified leads you’ve generated from past activities that were not closed or have not responded to your marketing communications.

Consolidate these leads and re-engage them by designing in a separate “we miss hearing from you” programme, such as an email with a survey asking them what they would like to receive from your company or a request to opt back in with a targeted offer. Then place them back into your marketing funnels and continue to keep in touch with them through your newsletters, white papers and webinars.

• Remove barriers between the sales and marketing team. Remove campaigns or tactics that are not working. Remove crappy data and automate the process if possible.

If you work for a global company, remove communication barriers with other offices and start communicating regularly. Get to know your counterparts overseas, find out what they are doing, exchange ideas that work in each region, and look to reuse/recycle/repurpose good content. Don’t forget to tweak it with a touch of local flavour.

So start digging those old archive folders and find your hidden treasures.

Old is back. Old is new again.

Neither of them give straight answers.

Related article from WebProNews on Google Answers Some Tricky Questions.

Are you one of those guilty of creating your subject titles at the last moment? Think twice if you are, because subject title is easily one of the most important parts of your message.

Those who know its importance are quick to ask for “the best way” or some “sure win” formula, and then follow it like it’s Word of God. Wrong! Rather, it’s more a Work of Art.

While there are guidelines that you can follow, there is no magic formula or template in creating winning subject titles that will guarantee you a higher response rate.

Just like a work of art, one size does NOT fit all.

But what we can do as Marketers is to understand the factors that contribute to a winning subject title, and then put them into practice, with constant testing and improvements.

Subject Title Length

In general, the shorter the better, according to Email Marketing Metrics Report.  (See pages 11-14). Findings show that shorter subject lines result in dramatically higher open and click rates.

Here’s another interesting study by Alchemy Worx on Subject lines – Length is everything that challenges the Shorter Is Better theory.

In summary, this study shows that:

1. Shorter subject lines generate higher open rates, a measure of reader interest, but much lower click-to-open rates

2. Longer subject lines earn a much higher click-to-open rate, an indication of real relevance

3. Subject lines somewhere in between (dead zone*) optimize neither the open rate or click to open rates.

(*The dead zone represents the likelihood that marketers tend to fall into when they over simplify multiple/complex propositions, or lengthen unnecessarily strong single propositions)

The lesson here is to look beyond number of characters or number of words. Instead, focus on giving your target audience a reason to respond to your email. Also, you’ll need to test, test and test what works best (using simple A/B tests) with your target audience and the types of messages you send.

For example, a promotional email with a single offer or call to action might do well with shorter subject titles. While an informational content driven newsletter for client retention and relationship building objectives might need a longer subject title to communicate its propositions adequately. So it’s important to find a balance between length and communicating multiple or complex proposition(s).

The bottom line is: While you’ll need to keep your subject titles compact and concise, don’t sacrifice on message for the sake of keeping it short. Use enough to communicate your value proposition adequately.

Part II – Personalisation coming up.

Hey, at least I was a runner up!

My runner up winning caption for Michael Stelzner’s Weekend Fun: Write Caption For This Image is…

Happiness is a choice. So choose to be happy!

Thanks Michael!

Michael runs this as a regular weekend fun contest, and I’m really impress by his readers’ creativity. Read their comments. Wow!

Michael’s contest is a reminder of the importance of writing subject titles. I’ll be blogging about this in my next entry.

I was reading Michael Stelzner’s New B2B Study Shows White Paper Importance, where press releases ranked 2nd in online content effectiveness for lead generation, according to findings from MarketingProfs.

Looking at the comments he got (apart from the big question mark about newsletters being the 1st), another question remains: How do press release generate leads?

My neurons instantly reacted… “Ask David Meerman Scott!”

According to his book titled The New Rules of Marketing & PR, press releases in a web world suggest that Marketers can reach buyers directly, and the primary audience is no longer a handful of journalists. Online press releases are now a direct-to-consumer medium.

He suggests tips to optimise press releases for search and quotes WebEx’s press release at the top of Google search results.

Some tips that David gave for the new rules of press releases:

• Create news releases that appeal directly to your buyers
• Write keyword-rich press releases
• Add social media tags
• Place landing pages links in releases
• Include offers for people to respond in some way
• Optimise news release delivery for searching and browsing

David has a complimentary e-book if you wish to know more: The new rules of PR: How to create a press release strategy for reaching buyers directly

Other resources I found useful: Rocky Fu on tips to boost your online press release efforts, social media press release template from SHIFT Communications, and Press Release Grader from HubSpot.

So while media relations is still important to overall communications strategy, it is no longer a deal breaker if your press releases are not “picked up” by the mainstream media. The Web enables us Marketers and PR professionals to reach buyers directly through direct-to-consumer news releases, and even generate leads for sales with optimisation techniques.

Finally, my seemingly feeble (not!) attempt to sum everything up in startling simplicity:
SEO Friendly Press Releases = Lead Generation.

As my organisation starts to embrace the whole Web 2.0 shebang in its overall marketing strategy, I can only taste the sweet fruits of hard labour in the next few months (it’s work in progress right now). I am putting my hopes high on this one.

Unrelated side note: Wondering who’s Pocoyo? This cute little blue boy is full of antics and making both kids and adults fall head over heels in love with him.