How Facebook does E-mail Newsletters

On 10/23/2009 Facebook sent out an e-mail newsletter titled “Ads Manager Announcement” to its Facebook Advertising users.

This newsletter is a great example of how to implement permission marketing, how to avoid the brochure mentality, and how to do seamless product placement.

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What Online Marketers Can Learn from Online Educators

A MBA degree is a highly coveted degree for online marketing practitioners because it backs up our professional practice. However, throughout our MBA education we are hardly exposed to a field that is very relevant to our practice: online education, also known as educational technology.

The field of Educational Technology (ET) explores the potential use and impact of learning technologies in a variety of contexts, and  determines good practices of curriculum design and technology integration.

Educational technology programs such as the Master of Educational Technology at the University of British Columbia provide learning opportunities in:

  • Teaching/Instruction using Learning Technologies
  • Planning and Management of Learning Technologies
  • Design and Development of Learning Technologies

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Naming a Tourism Website

What name do you like best for a “locals recommend” tourism website?

a) whatlocalsknow.com

b) wearelocals.com

c) localsknowbetter.com

d) wherelocalsgo.com

e) other

This is the poll that I shared to my LinkedIn network using LinkedIn polls.

It appears a as a pretty straightforward question, however I learned a lot from the comments of my LinkedIn network.

Here are the key things that I learned from this poll.

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How to Attract Fashionistas Online Pt. 2

There was a great response to the article on how to attract fashionistas online and even Avinash Kaushik, Google Analytics Evangelist, stopped by to comment on it.

Let’s recap on the conclusions from the original article:

  1. Unannounced sound of a client testimonial with a tiny close option is a major way to scare fashionistas away from your web site.
  2. As long as the ads offer you the option to view them, blend in, and don’t interfere with your content viewing, then they are ok for fashionistas.
  3. Make sure to offer a reward for your online survey and invest in making it look legit and professional, also keep your online survey short and to the point by avoiding too many personal questions.

The second conclusion is very relevant with the booming industry of widgets.  For an overview of how widgets look and feel like, take a look at the guys of Sprout.

To provide a better insight on the world of widgets and unobtrusive ads in the online fashion industry,  I was contacted by Poonam, a Product Manager at Harbinger Group. Poonam looks after Raptivity Web Expert software to make websites interactive without programming. She holds a Bachelors degree in Computer Engineering and is an active blogger.

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What drives you to choose a service to share photos online?

Flickr.

Photobucket.

Facebook.

These are just some of the many options available these days for sharing photos online. I’ve always wondered what are the true drivers for one person to choose one option over the other, so that is why I started this online poll at LinkedIn.

What drives you to choose a service to share photos online?


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How to Attract Fashionistas Online

A couple days ago I ran into a good friend that is trying to make it big in the fashion industry. She is one of the coolest persons that I’ve met: a Japanese born gal that grow up in Mexico speaking mostly English and moved to Montreal to work in the field of fashion design.

We started talking about her experience in Montreal and how the economy has hit the fashion industry pretty hard. Not only is she having a hard time hunting for a job, but she has noticed that most fashion websites that she’s visiting are starting to (gasp!) advertise more and more.

Here’s a review of what I learned about the user experience of a fashionista visiting a fashion related website: what turns her off, what engages her, and what are her thoughts about online surveys.

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Keeping in Touch with Classmates via Facebook

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.

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The Law of Reciprocity and Direct Mailing Campaigns

Intro: Online Video Ads and the Law of Reciprocity

Back in March 2009, we reviewed that video ads are a savvy strategy for marketers because the number of online video viewed has been steadily growing, as reported by eMarketer, and has a high click-through rate when compared to its alternatives. We found that the success of online video ads  lies in the law of reciprocity.

The law of reciprocity by Robert Cialdini, in his book, Influence: Science and Practice (New York: Harper Collins, 1993).  Basically, the law of reciprocity boils down to this:  “a person can trigger a feeling of indebtedness by doing us an uninvited favor”.

Online video ads are a form of entertainment and people are willing to be entertained.  An IBM study reveals that almost 60% of its study respondents said they were willing to provide to advertisers some personal information about themselves in exchange for something of value, such as access to high-quality music videos, store discounts or airline frequent-flyer points.

Therefore, the success of online video ads lies in the law of reciprocity.

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Are you deceived by your email campaigns?

Measuring the success of your permission e-mail campaigns is often oversimplified.  Marketing managers are often happy to see rising open rates and click-through rates. (If you have no idea on how to measure the click-through rates of your e-mail campaigns, here’s an easy tutorial using Google Analytics). The problem of being content with just measuring open rates and click-through rates from our e-mail campaigns is that we are victims of the brochure mentality.

What’s the problem with the brochure mentality?

The brochure mentality is the mindset that tells us that as long people get our brochure, open it and browse it for a while; somehow they will get “aware of our brand” or that they will “eventually act on it”. Notice that how exactly the readers of a brochure become aware of the brand or act on it is not really defined, it is just left to, yes you got that right, pure chance.

I am sure that newsletter services and talented newsletter writers will challenge the above statement. But think about it for just a second. When discussing with a graphic designer or an e-mail newsletter, how often do you discuss about the actual objective of your e-mail campaign defined in one sentence and whose success can be tracked with one simple measure?

I am not talking about how many people click on your “read more” link or how many people open your “Labor Day Blowout Sale!” e-mail. I am talking about how many people actually end handing you cash in exchange for the product or service that you offer.

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:

  • Define business objectives and how e-mail fits into them.

I just quoted the first step out of 4 to emphasize the importance of this concept.  If you’re a frozen yogurt shop, are you in the business of selling frozen yogurt or are you in the business of making people open e-mails? If you’re a humane society that protects animal rights, are you working hard towards increasing the number of people adopting stray dogs or are you working hard that people click on a YouTube video of a sad dog looking for a home?

Before jumping into e-mail (and social media, for that matter) campaigns, you’ve got to have a clear idea of what objectives you want out of it. A clear one sentence objective that can be tracked with one measure.

Here are some great real life examples that I have encountered during my online marketing practice:

  • Bake shop: Sell my daily excess inventory of red velvet cupcakes, about 14, before they spoil.
  • Online coupon service: Generate 5 paying customers during a week.

Not so fast, monkey!

There are several e-mail newsletter services that work great (e.g. MailChimp), but before you sign up for any of them,  do your homework. Even though some offer free trials, hold off signing up for them until you have figured out your one sentence objective whose success can be tracked with one measure.

Helpful Links:

Latin America leads the recovery in advertising spending worldwide

In June 30, 2009, we reviewed at idaconcpts that talking about Latinos as a group is difficult because this group has so many commonalities with various ethnic groups, that trying to seggregate websites between Latino and non-Latino is a strategy that spells disaster.

According to Dr. Korzenny from the Center for Hispanic Marketing Communication at the Florida State University, when compared to other ethnicities, U.S. Hispanics appear to consume more digital content.  Therefore, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Latin America is part of the recovery in advertising spending worldwide.

Ad Spending to Recover Slo-o-owly - eMarketer

Even though the total advertising spending in Latin America is much smaller than that in North America, (ranging from 18% to 21 from  2009 to projections for 2010 and 2011 by eMarketer) savvy marketers, Internet startups, and  companies in general, should be aware of 3 obvious trends:

1. Latin America holds the key for a better understanding of the Hispanic market in the U.S.

According to the Immigration Informaiton Source website, in 2006, 47.2 percent of immigrants reported Hispanic or Latino origins.  Therefore, it is not a suprise that Business Week’s Douglas MacMillan reported that of marketers that target minority groups, 95% tailor messages to Latin Americans. However there is still much to be learned about the field.  Click here for an insight into how to approach the U.S. Hispanic market.

2. According to eMarketer, Hispanics make up 12.3% of the total US Internet population in 2009, and that number will increase to 13.9% in 2013.

Hispanics Online: No MౠE-Barrios - eMarketer

3. The U.S. Hispanic presence in the Internet is not only going to increase in quantity but also in quality as Hispanic U.S. Internet users are poised to have the highest purchasing power.

 

Hispanics Online: No MౠE-Barrios - eMarketer