Thank you for reading my blog.

As a token of my appreciation, I would like to offer you a free PDF copy of the first 4 chapters of Seth Godin’s Permission Marketing.

To receive your free PDF copy, all you need to is to sign up to my mailing [...]]]>

Dear Readers of idaconcpts.com,

Thank you for reading my blog.

As a token of my appreciation, I would like to offer you a free PDF copy of the first 4 chapters of Seth Godin’s Permission Marketing.

To receive your free PDF copy, all you need to is to sign up to my mailing list at the top of the right side of this blog.

Thank you for your support and I hope that you enjoy reading the excerpt of this great book.

Aloha from Hawaii,
Damian, Founder and CEO, idaconcpts.com

Back in May 2009, I wrote a review of the application LinkedIn Polls available on LinkedIn and how LinkedIn Polls can be used to do some great permission e-mail marketing polling.

I strongly believe that this LinkedIn application is a great way to gather data fast [...]]]>

Back in May 2009, I wrote a review of the application LinkedIn Polls available on LinkedIn and how LinkedIn Polls can be used to do some great permission e-mail marketing polling.

I strongly believe that this LinkedIn application is a great way to gather data fast and to create actionable bar graphs that you can e-mail to your colleagues.  More importantly it follows the fundamentals of permission e-mail marketing by making polls more personal, relevant and anticipated.

On this post I wanted to provide an example of how we can use LinkedIn Polls not only to meet the fundamentals of an e-mail permission marketing campaign but also to gather useful qualitative data from your respondents.

Background

Currently I am working for a non-profit organization that has as one of its goal to provide its Alumni and Associates (anybody who has either participated in a conference, seminar or event) engaged through its world wide network.  My job is to develop and maintain our online presence, which includes a website, a blog, several online communities (e.g. LinkedIn) and e-mail newsletters.

Details of Current Scenario

Notice that I mentioned “several online communities”. We have a LinkedIn Group, 2 Facebook Pages, 1 Facebook Group, and 1 Harris Connect Online Community. There’s now even talk of creating several Ning communities and a Twitter account.

Are all of this online communities necessary?

To answer this question, I created a quick online poll on LinkedIn.

Methodology

I access LinkedIn Polls on Linkedin:

I create a LinkedIn Poll:

You can submit your poll to either your 1st degree connections or a target audience of professionals in the U.S (this option is free for premium subscribers).  I would recommend to stick with the first option (targeting your first degree connections) because this makes your poll personal (”Hey Mike can you take a loot at this?”), relevant (”Susan, your input is important to me because I know your expertise in marketing while we worked together), and anticipated (Linkedin is a site for networking!).

This is what all of my connections received:

Bonus

Even though you may have lots of connections on LinkedIn, you should consider including the link to you LinkedIn Poll on RELEVANT LinkedIn Groups. In this case, I included this poll in the Alumni groups or associations that I belong to in LinkedIn such as University of Alberta Alumni, Beta Gamma Sigma, Delta Upsilon Fraternity, among others.

There are lots of different kinds of groups on LinkedIn. Join the ones that you strongly believe that will provide you added value. Also, make sure that you actually qualify to join because some may have a list of requirements (e.g. company e-mail, student ID).

Results

How do people prefer to keep in touch with their classmates?

Facebook. There’s no contest.

Notice that this poll was conducted on LinkedIn and still LinkedIn is only preferred by 16% of respondents. (Disclaimer: Yes, it is a small sample, 62.

Here are some reasons why Facebook is preferred:

Male software consultant:

Use what most of them use – Facebook. It’s better for casual conversation.

Male small business entrepreneur:

For 20 to 40 somethings…Facebook, Facebook, Facebook!

However, still for those that realize that Facebook is the best way to keep in touch with the bulk of their classmates, they comment on the need of a more professional network such as LinkedIn.

Male consolidator trainee:

Of course Facebook is the most popular way to keep in touch with classmates. I think it can work for students who stay in the same unviersity over 5 years. But when you travel, you get to know a lot of people and facebook isn’t the most appropriate for keeping in touch with classmates. Therefore I do prefer Linkedin.

Female communication and marketing professional:

I think that people’s preference depends on how they see their classmates – as friends or colleagues. In my case, some of my classmates from my graduate classes are, of course, my friends, but often they are more in the category of colleagues who share the same research interests. For me, Facebook is great in order to maintain a relationship with close friends but not necessarily with somebody from your professional community. Therefore, in my case, I prefer definitely LinkedIn over Facebook.

Female consultancy entrepreneur:

Facebook primarily, but LinkedIn also works.

Male consultant:

Most of my former high school classmates that use technology are hooked in with me via Facebook, because they tend to be “personal” connections, while my University faculty of business classmates are “linked-in” because it was business school where we launched our careers, and many of those relationships are primarily career related. Again, as others have indicated, which medium is best depends on the individual relationship. My closest alumni friends are hooked in with multiple media; we use LinkedIn for business networking and Facebook for personal “fun” stuff.

Conclusion

Facebook is the preferred method of keeping in touch with classmates by people. However, there is recognition of the need of a professional networking such as LinkedIn.

One important caveat raised by 16% of respondents:

Don’t forget about the “social” in social media

Female writer and photographer:

I prefer Skype. Because they are those selected people that you actually keep in touch with and share valuable updates on each others’ lives.

Female student:

I prefer either to meet them in person or talk to them on the phone rather than chatting over the Internet.

Male consultant:

In person (i.e. drinks or lunch) is always best for those we were closest with. Next best is phone (if they are a long distance away) followed by email.

Back in January 2009, I ran a post about Facebook Ads because I believe this is a great online marketing tool. This post was titled “How to target your audience using Facebook Advertising” and it touched on how to get started with an online ad.

At the [...]]]>

Welcome back!

Back in January 2009, I ran a post about Facebook Ads because I believe this is a great online marketing tool. This post was titled “How to target your audience using Facebook Advertising” and it touched on how to get started with an online ad.

At the end of February 2009, Facebook launched Pages as a way to allow businesses and brands to strengthen their online image on Facebook and increase the potential interaction with Facebook users.

Screenshot of the editing view of a Facebook Page

A Facebook Page looks very much like a regular Facebook Profile and there are several organizations and business that have one.

For example, here’s the AT&T Facebook Page:

…and here’s the Facebook Page from my MBA school, the Shidler College of Business:

The difference between a regular Facebook profile and a Facebook Page is that instead of becoming  a friend of a brand/organization/company, you become a fan.  A well-thought feature is that brand/organization/company CANNOT add friends.  This is a great practice of permission marketing because it forces users to really think whether they want to become a “fan” or not of a brand/organization/company.  Therefore, the “fan” gives permission to the brand/organization/company to contact him or her, making communications personal, relevant and anticipated (the 3 pillars of permission marketing).

This is all fine, but why is the title of this post called “How to target your audience using Facebook Pages”? The answer is: Facebook Pages gives you key insights into the gender and age range of your fans. Yes, there are other nice features like number of pageviews, comments, video views and more, but the key insight is gender and age.  Below is a screenshot of Facebook Pages Insight:

Having the age range and gender of your bulk of fans will allow you to tweak your Facebook Advertising campaign.

Thank you for your time and best of luck in your permission marketing campaigns!

Notice [...]]]>

Apparently, the Japanese seem to think so. Via the eMarketer Daily, I found that according to Marsh Research, 84.4% of adult Internet users in Japan have felt at least once that the Internet is “scary.” Here is the breakdown: Now, why do they consider the Internet scary?

Notice that at the top of the list appears “when lots of pop-up windows opened”.  Have you been a victim of  a “rickroll”?  Definitely annoying. Extreme use of pop-up ads is what Seth Godin refers to as interruption marketing.  You’re interrupting the natural flow of the user experience to say “hey, buy this!”.  Remember that ads or communications can only be effective if they are relevant, personal, and ANTICIPATED.  You need to employ permission marketing (another Godin term). I believe that the only way to a marketer can make a pop-up ad relevant, personal and anticipated is through the use of a tool such as 4Q from iPerceptions. Here’s a 10-minute video explanation of 4Q by Google Analytics Evangelist, Avinash Kaushik.

Here’s an example of how 4Q looks like at the CIO website:

Using permission based marketing initiatives, we can all make the Internet a less scary place. If you want to learn about how to get started with E-mail Permission Marketing, here’s a primer.  Once you have read about it, you can learn about E-mail Permission Marketing Fundamentals.

So, [...]]]>

Thank you for the response via e-mail and comment post at idaconcpts.com about last week’s post regarding E-mail Permission Marketing.  If you’re still interested on the free copy of the first 4 four chapters of Seth’s Godin Permission Marketing, please e-mail me at damian [at] idaconcpts [dot] com.

So, you’ve created a great product or service and you have users lining up to register online for your product  or service so they can use it.  You have provided the option to received personal, relevant, and anticipated messages; and guess what? they are choosing to do so by clicking on the checkbox!.  Excellent! You cannot believe that people are interested in you and you  send out your first e-mail…and…now what?

This week I’m going to discuss, the basics of the “now what”: the E-mail Permission Marketing Fundamentals.

Let’s take a look at what Avinash Kaushik has to say on this (Web Analytics: An Hour a Day, p. 220):

Before you start your analytics, it is important to understand, at least at a high level, that there several important steps to the process of executing e-mail campaigns:

1. Define business objectives and how e-mail fits into them.
2. Identify core criteria for e-mail campaigns (what, why, how, when, and so forth).
3. Create and execute campaigns (mine your e-mail list, scrub it for do not contacts, create the right text or other type of offering, and send it to your e-mail vendor).
4. Analyze your campaigns.

Email analytics can focus on both ends of this process:  defining objectives and criteria as well as campaign analysis.

As you can see, planning is 90% of any e-mail permission marketing campaign.  You cannot expect results, if you don’t have an idea of what good results are.   The most important part is that you have to figure a return-on-investment (ROI) for obtaining 1 unit of your desired goal (e.g. one download of a software, one download of a flyer on how-to-stop smoking, one call to one 1-800 number, one view of a blog post, etct).  That’s the ultimate goal that you want to set up first before anything.  How much are you willing to spend in order to get 1 unit of your desired goal?  Once you set that goal, write in 60 font size, print it out, and hang it somwhere visible in your working space.  This will guide your overall e-mail permission marketing campaign.

However, before getting to the specifics of calculating the ROI, we need to establish the fundamental metrics.  Remember, walking before running.  In the case of an effective permission e-mail, you can only have up to 2 goals, for example:  a) click here to learn more about my great website, b) click here to download my great free mp3, c) click here to make an appointment, etc.

The funnel strategy of your permission e-mail is that people:

1. Actually receive your permission e-mail.
2. Open your permission e-mail.
3. Click on the link you want them to click.

In order to track these results, you will need the following metrics.  Kaushik suggests that you use an e-mail vendor, however I will assume that your operation is pretty small and does not exceed a couple thousand e-mails.  At that level, there are only a couple fundamental metrics that you need to worry about.

1. Number of e-mails sent
2. Number of opened e-mails
3. Number of bounced e-mails
4. Number of unsubscriptions ( You MUST provide this option! Remember that we are doing e-mail permission marketing. No permission = no e-mail.)

With these metrics you will determine:

1. Delivery rate = (number of e-mails sent – number of e-mails bounced) / number of e-mails sent
2. Unsubscribe rate = number of unsubscriptions / number of e-mails delivered
3. Open rate = number of opened e-mails / number of emails delivered
4. Click-through rate (CTR) = number of clicks / number of e-mails opened

That’s it, nothing more, nothing else, to get started.  I believe that even with little or no experience, you should be able to calculate everything except the CTR.

I will disccus the specifics of setting up the measurement of CTR with Google Analytics on the next post.

Thank you for your time.