2011 February |Alterian Blog | Social Media, Email, Web Content & Campaign Management

Archive for February, 2011

The Luxury Car Market is a Trip

Wednesday, February 23rd, 2011

Okay, I admit it… I am a car addict. Autoblog, Jalopnik and TheTruthAboutCars are all daily reads and I still have subscriptions to Car And Driver AND Motor Trends. In my life, I’ve owned over 18 cars and have only been driving for 13 years. There I said it. It feels good to get that off of my chest.

That being said, when the opportunity arose to do a Hot Topic analyzing social media data about the automotive market, I was beyond excited. With all of the recent advertising during the Super Bowl – great ads from VW and Chrysler, and okay ads from Mini, BMW & Mercedes-Benz and a down-right bizarre ad from Kia that appears to be written by a 14 year old boy (apparently, I share the same tastes, because I thought it was AWESOME) – I knew there would be some great online chatter about autos.

As we chose our topic for what will hopefully be the first of many automotive industry snapshots over the next year, we settled on looking at the advertising effectiveness of Luxury Car Manufactures in three segments:

European – BMW, Audi, Mercedes-Benz
Asian – Lexus, Acura, Infiniti
Domestic – Cadillac, Lincoln, Chrysler

From our initial research a few things blew us away:

One yet-to-be revealed automaker has a predominately female audience for their brand
The majority of conversation about one of the automakers was about their previous model (3+ years old)
One automaker’s core audience was over 50, while all other brands had an audience of 34 and younger
With another automaker, one of the top discussions was in a video game forum

Additionally, we took a deep dive into all of the entry-level luxury models from the previously mentioned manufactures and found a few surprises, including who was the most discussed and what was actually said about these cars.

On Thursday, February 24th at 2pm (ET) we’ll present and publically share our research. I’d like to personally invite you to join us and be part of the conversation. During the presentation, we will be walking through our research so that you can learn from our methodologies and use that knowledge for your own campaigns, benchmarking, and analysis.

Tags: Advertising Campaign Performance Analysis, Social Media Analytics, Social Media Monitoring, Social media Reporting, Social Media Research, social media ROI
Posted in Social Media Marketing | 1 Comment »

4 Steps to Success: Implementing a Campaign and Analysis System

Tuesday, February 22nd, 2011

I was asked at a sales pitch the other day to list out the most important factors a client needs to consider when implementing an Analysis and Campaigning system. I thought this was a really good question, as until a system is delivered, it won’t produce a return on investment.

Off the top of my head, I listed out the first three points below, and after a bit of reflection on the journey home, I think that the fourth also needs to be added to the list.

Thorough Scoping

Once a supplier is chosen, the initial scoping activity to really uncover, document and agree exactly what the new system will look like, is absolutely crucial. This means making sure key personnel from the business and technical teams are available to discuss their needs. The Lead Consultant from the supplier will generally lead this exercise and help the client articulate their needs. These scoping sessions, often one or two days of detailed workshops, ensure that areas such as data structures, data engineering, typical campaigns, reports required and system users are understood at a detailed level, rather than just a superficial one. I’ve never found that time spent on scoping is wasted.

The scoping is also likely to identify areas for initial development and those which the client wishes to implement later.

Focus on Realistic Quick Wins

With any new system, there is always a period of adjustment. Therefore, I’m a strong believer in ensuring there are opportunities for getting in place realistic quick wins, and not trying to be too ambitious too quickly. For instance, although you might want to move to multi-phase, multi-channel activity targeted at tens of different segments, this might be too ambitious from day one. By being more realistic with your ambitions, and focusing on carefully planned testing strategies, I’ve found that key learnings are more easily understood, providing a solid knowledge base for further roll out.

Continuous Evolution

Although I’m suggesting that you shouldn’t be too ambitious straightaway, I firmly believe the best implementations plan for continuous development. This can be built into an implementation via the use of regular ‘planning and review’ meetings. At these, the client and the supplier should push each other to evolve the system and continue to test and learn.

It is all too easy once a system is in place, to sit back and pat each other on the back knowing that you are able to run more effective campaigns with the new system. However, this loss of momentum prevents the maximum benefit of a system being obtained.

Tight Project Management

As with any successful project, tightly managing all activities is critical. Having an appointed project team with clear roles is vital for success. A project manager should be appointed to take ownership of actions and fix up regular progress meetings. Generally, the project manager is from the supplier, but I’ve also seen successful implementations where a specialist from the client takes on this role, albeit working closely with the supplier.

If these simple steps are followed, the implementation of analysis and campaign systems should rapidly start to deliver excellent return on investment.

Tags: campaign analysis, multi-channel, multi-phase
Posted in Campaign Management and Analytics | 1 Comment »

Are you truly engaging or just plain nagging?

Thursday, February 17th, 2011

I had a letter in the post letting me know that my eyes had not been tested for two years and that an appointment would probably benefit me quite nicely. The check-up at the opticians is never a high ranking priority of mine, even with these imperfect, spectacle adorned eyes.

The next morning, on the reverse of my bus ticket was the clincher. An eye test for £5 (plus the £1.70 bus fare) ensured that I would get my eyes checked out, so I went into the store to make the appointment.

Being short on time and not too fussed about a non-critical eye test, I made a lunchtime appointment for later in the week. A reminder letter, a chance voucher, and appointment booked. Seamless.

The day before the appointment I received a voicemail with a friendly reminder that I had an appointment on the horizon and that the high-street optician was “very much looking forward to see me.” It was a touch point, and a personal one at that.

Not three hours later that day, I received a text message – with the same reminder and other information. A touch point, yes. Overkill, for sure.

I will happily extol the virtues of multi-platform communications from a business to a customer, but can you have too much of a good thing? “Right time, right place” is always the preference and comes across as sensitive and understanding of my individual needs – especially when there is a prospect of the purchase of a new pair of spectacles (or two, depending on the upsell).

Getting the same reminder via two different platforms within hours of each other is not so joined up. Don’t undo the initial efforts to secure the appointment and chance to sell a product by nagging. I’m 26; my parents gave up on that technique years ago. Sure, it isn’t quite so pushy that I get uptight enough to a) cry about it, or b) cancel my appointment. Naturally, I took the easy option and c) blogged about it.

Have you experienced a great execution of marketing messaging to initially bring you in, only for it to quickly turn into overkill?

Tags: multi-channel, multi-platform
Posted in General Marketing | 4 Comments »

Move Over ‘Experts’: Social Media’s Deciding this Year’s Winner

Friday, February 4th, 2011

I was reading an article earlier this week in ADWeek (if you haven’t read it yet check it out), and it emphasized the importance and need for an integrated strategy for brands to capitalize on their 3 million dollar investment in Super Bowl Sunday. This year’s line-up features an interesting mix of familiar faces, such as Coca Cola, Anheuser-Busch, GoDaddy, etc. and newcomers like CarMax, Salesforce.com and Groupon. And while all of these brands will compete against each other for the attention, memory and an emotional connection of the 110 million viewers on game day, the brand that best takes advantage of the pre-game and post-game opportunities will cash in on a golden opportunity.

So how can brands take advantage of their ads and measure their success? At the end of the day, an impression is still just an impression no matter what Don Draper or the folks on Madison Avenue may tell you. The answer is an integrated approach that takes advantage of social channels to extend and capitalize on the social and emotional connection people establish with the brand. (I credit Mike Fisher for coining the phrase ‘social and emotional connection,’ truly the only way I can think to describe it.) Brands have consistently tried to establish an emotional connection with the consumer, and now this finally becomes quantifiable in the social space. The evidence that brands are looking to achieve this in 2011 can be seen even before this year’s Super Bowl as numerous brands are ATTEMPTING to take advantage of social channels to spark conversation (see here, here, or even here for a few examples).

So then the question becomes, if the Super Bowl ad is only one part of the overall marketing effort (though an integral one), and brands are immersing themselves in the social channels pre and post game, can we truly leave the winner of the best Super Bowl ad to a group with ‘expert opinions’ based solely on the game day spot? As a marketing metrics nerd, I am a firm believer that the conversations surrounding a brand and the Super Bowl tell a fuller and more measurable story of who should be crowned the winner. Enter company plug of Buzz Bowl 2011 (#BuzzBowl), a non-biased Super Bowl contest to determine which brand is able to establish a social and emotional connection with the audience of Super Bowl XLV across a plethora of social media channels. Using metrics of cost per social mention (Brand Social Reach/Media Spend) and an SSEI index* a winner will be determined by all of the conversations surrounding the Super Bowl from December 1, 2010 to March 6, 2011. It’s easy to get caught up in the game day hype of one channel as you see your twitter stream blow up and are forced into an occasional intimate conversation with the fail whale. But to truly understand if a brand did or did not seize the opportunity of its Super Bowl ad you must remember that there are three essential parts to the Super Bowl success equation: pre-game preparation, in game execution, and post-game follow up.

I’m completely biased on this due to my love of one brand’s approach and efforts thus far, but in the case of full disclosure, Dorito’s is my predicted winner.

So, who do you think is primed to take advantage of their 3 million dollar investment?

*SSEI index – All positive posts/mentions get assigned a value of +1, all negative get a value of -1, all neutral = 0. Then you multiply that value by the potential reach for each conversation. Then you sum that up for all conversations for that particular brand and then divide that by the average for all brands. Finally multiply that by 100 to get a nice simple number.

Tags: Buzz Bowl, Super Bowl
Posted in Social Media Marketing | 3 Comments »

Inbox vs. Delivered

Wednesday, February 2nd, 2011

How are you adapting to the shift in the email deliverability landscape?

“Authentication, Domain-Level Reputation, and Customer-Level Engagement Metrics Fundamentally Transforming the Email Deliverability Landscape” – Pivotal Veracity

There is a tendency within the email marketing arena to jump from one email service provider (ESP) to another, in the ever-growing search to improve email deliverability. However, simply moving ESP’s isn’t going to improve your delivery if your practices remain the same. It is your delivery processes and strategy that underpin email delivery.

A clearly defined on-boarding process, which includes dedicated IP’s, ISP mediation, authentication, functional set up, domain customization, data collection audits, IP warming strategies and email marketing strategies complemented by industry leading email “health check” scoring and reporting/visibility on actual inbox placement are fundamental to ensuring that your emails reach the inbox faster.

A few things to think about:

Are you using a dedicated IP address or are you on a pool of shared IP’s? A recent study conducted by Marketing Sherpa demonstrated that utilizing a dedicated IP was the most effective way of increasing delivery optimization.

Do you understand how your ESP defines “delivered”? Sent minus bounces does not equal delivered.

If your delivery reports don’t tell you where your email is really going, and more importantly why, then you are not getting a true reflection of your email deliverability.

Your definition of what counts as “delivered” is probably far different to that of the reports sent to you by your ESP. With this in mind, you could be doing much better than you think if you measure email deliverability in the right way.

So what delivery rates are you getting?

Tags: email deliverability, ESP
Posted in Email Marketing | 1 Comment »