I am copying and pasting from this morning’s MediaPost because, well, this is well done…Enjoy!

Email Has Leading Role In Multichannel Engagement
by Chad White , Monday, October 26, 2009

Marketers are slowly catching up to their multichannel customers by ramping up usage of multichannel marketing tactics — and email is at the core of many of those efforts.  That’s the key finding of the “Retail Email Guide to Multichannel Engagement,” which Smith-Harmon created in partnership with ExactTarget. We’ll be releasing the guide next week, but here are some of the key points.

According to a study conducted by Forrester Consulting for ExactTarget, 84% of respondents agree that multichannel marketing is more successful than single-channel efforts. Email’s ability to play well with other channels is one of the key reasons that 81% of respondents said email would be as effective or more effective two years from now. Among those respondents believing that email will retain or increase its effectiveness, 58% say email is a key part of their multichannel initiatives, and 37% say that email boosts the ROI of other channels.

But in addition to supporting marketing messages in other channels, email benefits from pulling in content from other channels to boost relevance and subscriber engagement. Seventy-four percent of those respondents believing that email will retain or increase its effectiveness say that the relevance of their emails is increasing; 36% say that including more social features in their emails will make them more effective.

In the retail industry, there are great examples of email being used to drive traffic to and interest in…

Stores, as in this Mar. 11, 2008 Urban Outfitters email, which announces a new store opening.

Social networks, as in this Sept. 23 Dick’s Sporting Goods email, which asks subscribers to follow the company on Twitter.

Mobile sites and apps, as in this Oct. 3 Ralph Lauren email, which includes a promotion for an iPhone app for the company’s latest collection.

Direct mail, as in this June 27, 2008 Norm Thompson email, which asks subscribers to vote for their favorite catalog cover.

Online, as in this Sept. 27 HSN email, which promotes the top-searched items and departments from the company’s Web site.

TV, as in this Dec. 3 Victoria’s Secret email, which tells subscribers when the company’s fashion show is being televised.

As promising as these multichannel efforts are, the survey also revealed several barriers to taking a more multichannel approach to marketing. For instance, 62% of respondents couldn’t measure customer engagement. Also, only 37% of respondents knew which channel their customers prefer to use, and only 27% of respondents could measure whether efforts in one channel boost results in another.

These findings speak volumes about the need for better customer engagement visibility tools and more time spent unlocking channel synergies. What’s clear is that marketers who can best coordinate their channels and play to channel strengths will have a significant advantage over competitors who can’t. We hope the statistics and examples in the “Retail Email Guide to Multichannel Engagement” inspire you to take a leading position.

So it’s been about fouryears since facebook redefined networking (MySpace fans, I do recognize that your site came first, but I’m on a roll here) and since, the world has come to see things just a bit differently. So here are some thoughts on what we have and have not learned about the new world.

1. Rush to fools gold - believe it or not, people still believe that you can get rich through social networking. This is Fools Gold 2.0. Yup, this is reminiscent of what happened with “the internet” about 15 years ago. The fact is, social networking takes time and work…one other thing, it’s not free. The medium may be free, but the work is not.
2. Who you tweeting to? - “I can get someone right out of college to do this stuff,” one of my current clients said to me when I was pitching his firm. “Certainly, you can.” I replied, “But will this person have the strategic background to build your network because if your network is not relevant, then there’s no reason to do this. Oh, and how are you going to keep your network interested in your firm.” Guess what? We got the account and the client is happy
3. Protect Your Brand - We now know that we need to protect our brands, products, and services on social networking sites. So it’s important that we secure these accounts even if we don’t intend to use them.
4. Your Network is Key - Building your relevant network takes time, but once it’s build it will serve you well, but only if you keep your network engaged. Are you measuring network growth? Are you measuring engagement? What are you doing for your network?
5. Social networking is the tip of the iceberg - It’s about integrating all the tools that the web offers and doing it well. Social networking is not a silo, it’s not an activity, and it must be a key part of your overall marketing communications strategy. And if it’s not, you’re probably dropping marketing bombs.

More to come.

I started my career working for legendary stock picker and investor Mario Gabelli. In my brief stint at Gabelli’s Rye, N.Y.-based firm, I learned much that has stuck with me to this day, including the basics of value investing. Value investing is about kicking the tires, doing your research from the ground up, and carefully evaluating a company and its stock based on its intrinsic value… before you pony up one dime for shares.

Value investing also looks at businesses in their totality and, just as importantly, over the long term. No flipping stocks, no short-term trades; value investors are overwhelmingly in it for the long run.

The era of managing quarter to quarter is over. If you’re in business, surely you’re in it for the long term, right? So your business, including your marketing approach, ought to reflect that reality. No one doubts Gabelli’s success, just as we all love to hear from Warren Buffet, the renowned value investor, pontificate about his latest corporate conquest. Both Buffet and Gabelli run their businesses the same way they invest: with an eye on value and for long-term success.What can we learn from these legendary investors about marketing and promotion? Here are four suggestions to include in your marketing plans that will deliver real value for your business:

Kick the Tires: Do your homework on marketing, including media. Not all media are created equal relative to your products, services, customers, and geographic service area. Take time to review all options before investing a medium. And because media companies are recognizing that we are in the age of engagement, many are providing advertisers with more venues to reach customers. They may include websites, networking opportunities, and direct mail, in addition to its core business offers. So do your homework on media and negotiate a good deal.

Avoid Marketing Bombs: Without a marketing plan, you’re dropping marketing bombs and wasting your hard-earned money. Recently, a CEO of a $500-million firm that sells telecommunications equipment said of his marketing: “Yeah, we got that idea, we tried it, and it didn’t work.” When I asked him about the context of that particular tactic within an overall campaign and why it did not work, he replied, “What campaign?” A tactical approach to marketing is far less effective than a strategic one, so invest in and employ market-driven strategy. Then measure your strategy in its entirety; don’t simply examine one tactic, no matter how important.

Know that People Buy From People: Bring your business out of the office. Target trade shows that have a close affinity to your firm. Investing in trade shows goes far beyond having a nice booth. It’s a great chance to network with other businesses, each a potential client. Trade shows allow you to measure yourself against the competition.

In addition, invest in opportunities to make personal connections, such as the simple act of taking potential clients to dinner. It may sound clichéd, but it’s the blocking and tackling that allows you to move down the field with consistency, and not the 60-yard “Hail Mary.” Very often, personal connections win more business than 9-to-5 sales tactics.

Do Good, Do Well: In the 1980s, American Express developed a unique campaign for their customers to help restore the Statue of Liberty. A penny for each use of the American Express card and $1 for each new card were donated to the Statue of Liberty Restoration campaign. In four months, $2 million was raised and, more importantly to American Express, its transaction activity increased by 28 percent. So integrating social causes into your marketing strategy will surely allow you to “do good”—while doing well.

PLAN FOR THE LONG RUN: The above are value-based tactics that should be included in your overall marketing plans. Don’t rely on one approach. Delivering value through marketing is ensuring that you integrate your tactics with business-driven strategy. So, if you agree with me that we’re in a new era of customer engagement, you’ll give your marketing plan a second look. If you don’t have a plan, build one around adding value to your business. And remember, that plan must deliver value to your market not just for now, but for the long run.

Here’s a brief interview with FIOS1 about social networking.

It’s an understatement to say Google has taken over the Internet, it may be even more parochial to speak about how Google has taken over our lives. From search, maps, video (Youtube), email, cell phones, and publishing, Google has built a vast business empire faster, and perhaps far more reaching, than any business in history. Heck, GE is now partnering with Google on environmental initiatives. This is GE, the king of all things industrial, partnering with a search engine on environmental initiatives?  Who’s zooming who?  But it’s true, Google is not only a resource for all things personal relative to the Internet, but the good folks at Google are smart enough to take leadership positions in non-core business opportunities.

However much Google has become a part of our lives, it’s important to know that business on the net is much more about the Internet than Google.  And it is much more local than anyone, including the mainstream media, will lead-on.  Once we recognize that the Internet is still an infant that can be shaped in ways that can be meaningful to our lives and businesses, then and only then can we recognize the wonderful opportunities that lay ahead, locally.  Locally? Locally, like right down the street locally.  Locally like within your city, county or state locally.  But we’re talking about the vast Internet, a world controlled by the Googles, MSNs, and powerful media moguls who we see on TV.  Folks, the Internet is local and Google can’t do anything about it, unless it start opening up stores in your area - note to the people at Google, the Google store thing is my idea.

Let’s get to heart of the matter. The local market? You’re probably saying, who cares. More importantly, you’re probably thinking you can’t monetize the local market in a way that generates real cash flow, and that’s why Google is staying away. Well, there are many very successful local sites that have built themselves a terrific niche in the local market.  These hyper-local, meaning everything is local, may cover issues relevant to one town, one business vertical tied to a particular geography, or neighborhood sites have proven that they can not only generate cash, but become real brands.

I would argue that hyper-local sites are real competition for becoming online gateways to local communities. And while the publishing industry’s troubles are directly related to the rise of the Internet and media fragmentation, there is a strong case to made for looking closer at the publishing model as the Internet continues to evolve.  Think of Google as Time Magazine, and think of hyper-local sites as your local or regional magazine that focuses on your community.  Both provide information that you deem relevant, just different information.  Unlike Time or Newsweek, your regional publications are your connection to what is happening locally.  So no matter, how relevant the national magazines are, the local ones are just relevant or useful.

Why is hyper-local so relevant? And why is it a coveted market? Let’s take a closer look at social networking sites and their success. What is it about Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, or Youtube that makes them so popular? The easy answer is you and me. Yes, that’s right, those properties are about you and me, they are ubber hyper-local relevant to me. I can create my own reality, with my friends, my interests, and my world within a given social networking site…It’s all things relevant to me. My personal reality show if you will.  And so within the vast confines of facebook, I can create my own little world where I can connect with friends I haven’t seen since college, and go out to dinner (local), I can discuss a movie (seen locally), review a spa (which I go to locally), and share good news about the birth of a new child with my cousins in Argentina who will send me flowers using a local flower shop over the net. You see, the Internet is relevant, locally.  So the rise of hyper-local sites, though not orderly, is a business model that deserves attention.

In Montclair, New Jersey there’s Baristanet everything local to Montclair. Founded in 2004, the site “soon after emerged as a leader in both hyper-local blogging and the online citizen journalism movement. Baristanet receives more than 5,000 visits a day and has inspired local news sites in Pittsburgh, Brooklyn, New Haven, Watertown, MA and Red Bank, NJ.”  Baristanet effectively competes for audiences with traditional local media such The Montclair Times, the venerable weekly newspaper, to CNN.com.

Staying in New Jersey, we find a business vertical, there is NJWedding.com a website that ties all things weddings to a geographic region. Founded by Erik and Beth Kent on February 14, 1997 to help wedding professionals promote their services and directly connect with future brides and grooms. According to the site, it currently “receives over 500,000 hits per month and features over 500 wedding businesses serving New Jersey and parts of New York and Pennsylvania that future brides and grooms can choose from, including helpful articles and tips about wedding planning, expert relationship and marriage advice and much, much more.” NJweddings.com competes not only with Google but with the 800 lb. gorilla of wedding sites, theknot.com.

In Maplewood, New Jersey, the well-healed turn to Maplewood Online for neighborhood gossip, news…it’s the equivalent of an online piazza. The site is jam-packed with classified, a community calendar, and every else imaginable. It even serves as a portal to news sites such as The New York Times, professional sports teams, cross word puzzles, all within one, local, place.

So as the Internet continues to grow, the threat to places like Google loom larger because people will continue to find ways to make the Internet resources relevant to them.  And with the continued rise of mobile, let’s see if these successful hyper-local sites adapt or go the way of newspapers. There are already sites popping up offering hyper-local mobile coupons delivered right to your phone.

The problem is, Google doesn’t have the foot-soldiers to compete at a hyper-local level. What it can do is to start buying hyper-local sites, but then again, why not simply buy community newspapers and turn them into mega-hyper-local sites (ok, enough jargon).  One final thought, I’m not sure if I would count Google out. They understand relevancy and adaptability, arguably the two most important strategies for success online.  More to come..

The internet as a medium is old news. Yes, it’s the most revolutionary medium in the history of man, but it’s old news. The good news is that we continue to discover how to use the internet to connect with consumers, build businesses, expand brands, and engage markets.  The 800 lb gorilla is content distribution strategy, which is how business get as much relevant exposure as possible across markets and demographics on the net. And why is that important? Well, think of your website as space sitting on your URL. And while you’re promoting the site in various way on and offline, there are ways to repackage your existing content and position it across the web.

Here’s an example:

Let’s say your site has video and 15 pages of static content. Think about the high value of relevant link-backs and create a channel on Youtube and upload your videos there, create a blog on blogger and recreate your content there…and use that blog as a platform going forward to update your customers on your products, business etc. Now, with a little effort, your site’s exposure just got exponentially more powerful.

Most importantly, continue to look for new ways to get your content out there where your customers aggregate and where you can get those valuable linkbacks…it’ll keep you one step ahead of your comeptition.

Here’s an article by Mike Henry about internet video that I thought was pretty interesting. I got it today in my email subscription to The Video Insider - Pretty good stuff, if I had the link I would have posted here…the article is below: 

DURING A COCKTAIL PARTY A few weeks ago, a newly single friend of mine gulped down his third Scotch, slammed down his glass and announced, “Okay, I give up. What the heck do women want? I used to think I understood them, but these days, I’m completely stumped.”Being the supportive friend that I am, I offered him a few words of wisdom (”Beats me, but let me know when you find out”) handed him another drink and promptly changed the subject. But later that night as my thoughts turned to work, I remembered his words and realized that the business of marketing in an online video environment is going through a similar life stage. As marketers, we are starting to get to know online video viewers — what they want and how they want to be treated. Sometimes we connect well and other times we find ourselves, well, stumped.Here are three rules of the relationship I think marketers should keep in mind to ensure that their video advertising efforts win the hearts of consumers:

1) Length matters. It’s no secret that the 30-second pre-roll is both reviled and at the same time delivers more in-video weight than any other ad unit. But just how much do viewers dislike their length? At Veoh, we’ve found that viewers are 40% more likely to abandon the video experience during a 30-second pre-roll ad than a 15-second pre-roll ad. And contrary to popular opinion, we’ve found that viewers are just as turned off by 30-second pre-rolls before long-form video as they are by pre-rolls before short clips. In other words, it doesn’t matter whether it’s a 3-minute clip or a 30-minute episode: viewers have narrowed their windows of ad acceptance. 

2) Your best prospects are already engaged. When choosing video sites for your media buy, it’s important to make sure the site partners have highly loyal and engaged audiences. Why? Because viewers who are not yet familiar with or engaged in a site are much less accepting of ads during their viewing experience. We found that heavy video viewers (viewers who visit the site and watch a video at least six times per month) are 50% more likely to continue watching a video after a pre-roll than are light and new viewers. In addition, heavy viewers are more than 10 times more likely than light or new viewers to accept a pre-roll ad within the first video they watch in a session without abandoning the experience.So in an online video environment, if the majority of the viewers are already “taken,” you’ll actually have a muchbetter chance of making a strong connection.

3) It’s always better with an audience. Yes, network TV shows are great, but the only way to take full advantage of Web video is by targeting audiences rather than following a traditional TV model of buying around content. The same valuable viewers who watch full-length network sitcoms are also watching independent studio productions and popular video clips - so why not reach them throughout their entire viewing experience? In addition to increasing the number of opportunities for marketers to reach consumers, ads that target audiences based on their behaviors and interests are much more relevant to and therefore well-received by online video viewers. For example, during a recent national family restaurant campaign, we saw that ads that were behaviorally targeted to the family-focused audience performed 20 times better than basic contextually targeted companion ads - and yielded a higher number of impressions than they would have received if targeting a single show. Make sure to work with your video site partners to identify viewer behavior segments that fit with your brand’s target audience - it’s the best way to start a positive conversation with a video viewer (and much cheaper than buying them a cocktail).

In any budding relationship, it’s very easy to overlook the basics when you’re trying to make a good impression.As marketers, if we listen to what our viewers want and pay more attention to their unique interests, we can build more exciting and lasting relationships in online video environments.- Pretty good eh…

By Abe Kasbo

Well this post has been a long time coming.  While the internet has sent the marketing communications world in one direction, it seems businesses are still looking around, wondering what to make of it and how to leverage it?  I’m not talking Coke, Sony, Pfizer, McDonald’s, AFLAC, or Fidelity.  I’m talking about businesses whose revenues may range from $5 million to let’s say a couple of billion in annual revenues, from banks, financial advisors, to small publishing houses, retail, manufacturers, and especially healthcare providers like hospitals and medical practices.  You may be thinking, “you’re joking…in this day and age?” I am very serious.

Just look around you, look online, look off line and anyone with an analytic eye (only one eye will do) can see the challenges for businesses around marketing and the web.Here’s the problem - it’s a behavior issue.  It seems that businesses who have had success with certain media tend to stay with  it regardless of the state of that media in the market place.  Staying with what works is fine, but you could be overpaying in one medium and loosing strategic opportunities in an another.  For example, we all know that newspaper advertising is down, and rates keep going up. Looking at history, we know that when radio became popular in the early 20th century, everyone called for the downfall of newspapers. Didn’t happen. TV came along, and the death of radio was loud.  Didn’t happen. And the internet is here and everyone is calling for the heads of newspapers, radio and TV. Probably - and yes I am hedging here - not going to happen. If believe that your business has been getting great results from your existing media mix, review and verify.  Look at the cost per effective impression and results.  Try to get a better gage on what your media is delivering.  Are you in a medium because that’s where most of your target audience is now?  Or are you there because you may think it makes sense because it’s worked in the past?  The old financial services statement, “past performance is not indicative of future results” applies here.  Run the numbers. 

This is not the time to put your marketing plan on cruise control, it’s too important for your competitive advantage.  We’ve got a week consumer market, a downward spiral of business to business sales and in this case, my belief is that the smartest, most strategic businesses will do OK now, and come out ahead when it’s all over.  All of this means that businesses must continuously understand the media market and it’s influence - positive or negative. Sounds fundamental, but there is so much turmoil in the media markets that is worth while taking time to understand them or engaging outside counsel with expertise…don’t hire people who are going to sell you stuff, hire a firm who will explain the current rocky media landscape and your business can best leverage it for the next 18 months.  Build your communications plan on that, and incorporate it into your marketing plan.   

Just a refresher of the Peterson Model of online audience engagement. Your site’s usability is the foremost issue, so usability (and a couple of other simple elements) is the road to a transforming your site into an experience…

Check out what by Kevin Mannion had to say about usability in his column on Thursday, July 24, 2008 in Online Publishing Insider:

1. Click Depth: Do users know your wonderful content is there in the first place? Do they know how to easily find it?

2. Loyalty: Does the overall experience generate a strong desire to return often?

3. Interactivity: What makes your users passionate enough to generate content, post comments, forward content to friends or colleagues?

How does your site measure against these standards?

By Abe KasboSo Wal-Mart is changing it’s logo I hear. So what? It’s part of a huge reputation repair job. According to Marketing Daily, Wal-Mart’s first revamp of the logo since 1992 comes as the retailer continues to tweak its image after facing criticism from union-led groups and local communities across the nation opposed to big-box store developments. In the time since, Wal-Mart has launched a marketing campaign highlighting its environmentally focused practices and efforts to make health care more affordable for customers through a discounted prescription drug program.”Wal-Mart’s got it right. Managing its reputation is good for its business. Wal-Mart will continue to try to convince people that “what’s good for Wal-Mart is good for America.”  Years of bad press, Wal-Mart Watch campaigns, and local protests have given Wal-Mart some things to thing about, like how to be survive and thrive despite its reputation.  Companies like Wal-Mart really need to think about engaging the market in the following ways:1. Become A Consumer Advocate - Deliver information to the market place to help consumers and key decision makers understand why doing business with your company makes a measurable difference in their daily lives. Wal-Mart’s tag line “Live Better. Save Money” did not spare the company from mass criticism here and abroad even though the tagline conveys “everything” that Wal-Mart would like us to know as consumers.2. Tell the Truth - In everything you do, be forthright with the marketplace. Consumer confidence right now is low because of the economic climate, but anecdotal evidence also suggests that consumers are tired of being lied-to. From Enron, to the sub-prime melt-down, there’s only so people can take. And confidence in your business is not something that can be repaired with a press release or key marketing messages.3. Use Open Mediums - That means the internet. Get your message into the hands of consumer crusaders who can light a fire under your campaigns and get the message out quickly and efficiently.  4. Be Prompt and Aggressive -  An attack on your reputation should be viewed as an attack on your core business. In 1982, Johnson & Johnson faced such an attack when the Tylenol murders happened. Tylenol’s market share collapsed from about 35% to about 8%, but rebounded in less than a year because J&J was upfront and out front of the situation. It controlled the message and introduced the capsules in triple sealed bottles to gain the public’s confidence.  Soon after, Tylenol regained its market leading position. So, being in business means that your reputation is on the line every day. And with the internet, your brand is really in the hands of other people. So controlling your reputation and brand comes down to how well you are prepared to engage the markets - for as long as it takes.