With the mass proliferation of cell phone usage and the increasing ubiquity of cell phone cameras, the possibilities for customer acquisition through the leverage of innovative marketing solutions and these mobile technologies are growing.
For example, the realms of design, technology, and Marketing 2.0 overlap with the Semapedia project and more recently p8t.ch. These 2D barcodes can be read by taking a photo with a mobile phone(provided a code reader is installed), automatically launching the phone's web browser to any specified URL. The wearable p8t.ch product connects online social media with mobile technology and real-world interaction - true multi channel marketing!
With the ability for a user to redirect their unique p8t.ch URL as many times as desired, the image has the potential to act much like a standard text shortcode, and web tracking analytics should be able to be applied.
Until phones come readily equipped with the code-reader technology, however, the implementation of this technology is very limited. Even so, its potential is great for on-demand relevant marketing in print, outdoor/experiential events, and tradeshows.
For more information, visit:
P8TCH
Semapedia.org
Getting your customers to pay attention to your email marketing communications may become more difficult with future improvements to email client technology if you're not explicitly whitelisted by them.
Miles Libby, the anti-spam project manager for Yahoo, had discussed upgrades to their email client that ties back to their DomainKeys email authentication process. For their upcoming release, each email will have a rating that indicates email sender authenticity.
This development makes email reputation and deliverability more of a priority as it will be visualized with the email itself. And as the technology gains traction, the decision to open an email may weigh more heavily on the sender authentication than on the subject line.
In a business or work environment, it's not unusual to be bombarded by massive amounts of email, but there are technology solutions out there that are gaining ground with Web 2.0 email users. Xobni is a free application developed by a San Francisco-based company that uses integrated technology and analytics that tie right into Microsoft Outlook. Xobni automatically threads email conversations and provides the user with an email analytics overview of their personal email volume and the volume of emails exchanged between all their contacts by the time of day.
Xobni's features will probably prove beneficial to email marketers. With tools that make email management more efficient, received commercial emails won't get in the way as much, perhaps reducing their negative perception and providing lift to customer retention statistics. On the other hand, reducing the need to read through subject lines when searching for a particular conversation might also reduce the chances of your email marketing to catch the attention of your audience.
With changes in the way consumers are going to be receiving email, there is a need for a co-evolution of marketing software that provides innovative marketing solutions that work with these new Web 2.0 email technologies.
With so many factors contributing to how your marketing message is spread among your customers, it's impossible to come up with a fool-proof strategy for effective word-of-mouth marketing, but by applying recent marketing research we can create innovative and educated strategies that are worth trying.
Chances are, no matter how much you know about your customers, you can't possibly know them in a personal sense, the way their peers do. So when they forward your marketing message, its because they know someone who might be interested in your offer, even if they themselves aren't. But what factors, if any, contribute to whether or not someone forwards a message? Altruism may play a role, and that's why a segment that is worth trying to tap into are voters; not necessarily voters in terms of U.S. politics, but customers that vote on issues related to your brand.
Recent research from Richard Jankowski and James Fowler, professors of political science at the State University of New York, Fredonia and the University of California, San Diego, respectively, has indicated that there is a high correlation between voting and levels of altruism. The reason posited is that individuals who vote don't necessarily vote with their personal interests in mind, but that they vote to support the communal interest of society (or your brand) as a whole. Even if passing on an email marketing message is as easy as clicking the forward-to-a-friend button, that message may be more likely to be spread around if the original recipient is characteristically altruistic. It's a bold assumption, but one that may be worth trying. Correlation aside, individuals that participate in a vote related to your brand are probably going to be more engaged by your company in the first place and consumer input is one of the easiest and cost-effective ways to determine what your customer base is interested in and what they may want changed. Even better, this type of behavioral segmentation is probably made even more valid if no incentive for participation is offered, since the goal is to determine those individuals who are most engaged in your brand.
The hard part is getting people to feel that it's important to voice their opinion, so whatever is going to be put up for the vote can't be trivial, but it doesn't have to be a big deal either. A while back, Frontier Airlines executed a successful viral marketing campaign where their passengers had to vote on the animals that got to be featured on the tails of their aircraft. You don't have to change your brand, but you have to make your customers feel like their votes will contribute to it.
So for what industries will the be most beneficial? Clearly, for this type of approach to work, a company has to be in the industries that generate the most word-of-mouth marketing. According to research by the Keller Fay Group, these would be the restaurant/food, entertainment and media, sports and hobbies, beverages, and retail industries. Additionally, industries that deal with computers and consumer electronics also may be able to benefit as they generate a great deal of user reviews and user generated content.
The best-selling books The Influentials and The Tipping Point have contributed to the development of the "Theory of Influentials" which dictates that there are select individuals that posses certain characteristics, skills, or personalities, making them innovative trendsetters who have tremendous influence over others; Win over the "influentials" and you win over the world. When you read the text, the theory makes sense, and advertisers spend millions of dollars a year trying to reach these highly-connected individuals, but the theory is not without its detractors.
Recent research by both Harris Interactive and network-theory scientist, Duncan Watts, suggest that word-of-mouth marketing and trends don't originate from special individuals. But this could be because the average individual is much more connected than they were even just 5 years ago. With the advent of Web 2.0, and the proliferation of user generated content, practically anyone with a computer can gain expertise in any field and network with like-minded peers.
The case may be that the Theory of Influentials isn't invalid, but that the social dynamics have changed.
The views of Harris Interactive and Watts do share a common thread: the degree to which trends/messages spread is determined more by the circumstances in which they are shared, not by who shares them. Communication has to be shared in an emotionally engaging manner, in the right context, to others who are already primed to be receptive to the message. This means that anyone can function as an "influential" when interacting with their like-minded peers online or elsewhere.
Successful personalized, multi-channel marketing campaigns leverage this concept; personalization contributes to the relevance and personal significance of the communication and the multi-channel elements play off of each other, priming the customer to receive a direct mail piece with an email, or vice versa, for example. The principle also contributes to why social networks are so valuable. People visit particular social networks already in a primed mindset, looking to learn or share information about a particular subject with their peers.
One argument made by Harris interactive is that people aren’t likely to be universal influentials, but that they each have expertise in certain subjects, so that a person's level of influence isn't absolute. Social networks mitigate this variation, however, by creating a forum where the focus generally revolves around a particular topic or theme. With so many data-rich interactions happening online, this is where innovative marketing technology solutions play a major role and will continue to do so in the future.
The future of marketing technology needs to be able to capture and integrate Web 2.0’s wealth of social network data. Watts attests that there aren't particular individuals who function as absolute influentials, but that often trends originate from "accidental influentials" that happen to be at the right place at the right time. Nevertheless, it still makes sense for marketers with access to social networks to take notice of who their most active brand advocates are. Chances are that they have a broader reach so even if they themselves aren’t the catalyst for a particular trend, their message may reach that right person at the right time.
More on this topic later for companies that want to leverage social network theory, but don’t have a social network platform:
- who to target
- why to target these particular individuals
- best and worst industries in which to leverage social network marketing
(continued from Internet Retailer: Do You Know Me? Part 2 of 8)
The following is an excerpt from the Internet Retailer article, "Do You Know Me?", by Don Davis.
More Design Work
In term of making use of the integrated customer data, Petco initially will use it to produce customized monthly e-mails. Each e-mail can be personalized with up to 12 items the customer has purchased or shown interest in.
In the second phase, Petco will customize the web pages visitors see based on their profiles. Customers who have made online purchases in the past or signed in to ther PALS account can be identified by cookies placed on their computers.
"The biggest challenge is the amount of creative you need for targeted home pages," says Lazarchic. "If I know you're a cat customer, the center theme of the home page and the offer shouldn't be dog-focused, it should be cat-focused."
Lazarchic expects to be sending personalized e-mails using the new data store by May.
The first phase of Lazarchic's plan should be standard practice, or at least in the plans for any progressive email marketing campaign and any decent email service or marketing software provider should be equipped with the tools required to deliver personalized, dynamic content. The foundation of behavior based marketing is the ability to tie customer records with sales data. That single connection gives marketers the ability to develop and execute a variety of email campaigns including: customer reengagement/win-back, customer retention, and customer acquisition.
The second phase to the Petco plan may not be for everyone, but is an innovative marketing move for those who do have an e-commerce component. If graphic elements other than featured products are made dynamic, too, then that extends the idea of relevant marketing to "relevant branding". If the look and feel of the website reflect the identity of the customer and/or the relationship between the individual customer and the product, then increases in customer acquisition and retention can be expected.
"More design work" is definitely needed to initiate these campaigns but the bulk of the work would only need to be done once, and the pages/emails generated by dynamic combination of the various elements would result in the equivalent of potentially hundreds (if not more) of static marketing messages. It may seem like a big undertaking at first, but in the long run, automated marketing solutions will undoubtable save time and resources while strengthening customer relations.
