The Evolution of Marketing Data [Infographic]

Being a marketer, I am always a big fan of personalization of communication. Actually, its far easier than what most marketers think. The basic fundamental ingredient to this is how you manage your data and databases at the backend. Subsequently, its imperative for marketers to understand the touch points and the activities history/log of your consumers. If you can bring these ingredients then successful campaigns can only be a by product of that.

The below is an interesting info-graphics that shows an interesting evolution to personalization of communication. Though, I have to say, with all the tools and segmentation available, if marketers are still sticking to the 1960 then please don’t expect results of today. For being successful, you need to match the consumer to the channel to the message…and ensure you move from dissemination to conversation….. 

Data Driven Marketing

This info graphic based on a recent survey conduct with almost 1000 digital marketer and analysts by folks at Econsultancy provides a great insight into the importance of data in the entire whelm of marketing paradigm. This while advocates the fact that in any organization which is serious about marketing in this data age needs to elevate up on how they use or rather utilize their data to make the marketing decision. Further, the importance of data and its ability to understand and further base marketing decision and/or investment dollar base on deeper data analysis is not only good to have rather a fundamental element in today marketing world. The more you invest in understanding the data the better conversion yield you will get out of it.

And yes organizations need to invest in building these resources as its apparent by this graphic that alludes to skill shortages in areas like digital analytics tool, statistical modeling and conversion rate optimization.

The load or the “Over”load of Emails….

The picture tells us much more than the words, and one such picture is below. This show a battle that we take every morning when we switch into the world of information through the button known as the INBOX.

Booommmmmm……We are loaded or rather overloaded with very important or termed as very important mails that make us feel ineffective to manage ourselves. And somehow this inability to effectively manage communication means lost information, and reduced responsiveness. For some its a negative outcomes for both individuals and corporate productivity.
Email is one of the most successful computer application yet devised. However, interestingly, email applications were originally designed for asynchronous communication, but we all know, email has evolved to a point where it is now used for multiple purpose: document delivery and archiving; work task delegation; and task tracking. It is also used for storing personal names and addresses,, for sending reminders, asking for assistance, scheduling appointments, and for handling technical support queries. We use the term email overload to describe the use of email for function that it was not designed for.
And, one more thing it does the best for few people – it just simply takes a very large portion of their actual productive time.
Nick Mehta rightly argues in his article – “4 Reasons that why email overload is our own fault”, that the problems we have with email aren’t about the technology at all — they are about us. So we’d better own up to our core issues, because they’ll follow us no matter which communication medium we use.

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1. Loneliness

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It’s Saturday morning in your neighborhood, and you’re in line at Starbucks with your family. Why are you checking email on your iPhone?
As much as emails can be annoying, they do make us feel important. Someone wants to talk to us. Remember the Peanuts specials when Charlie Brown would go to his mailbox every day to see if someone sent him a letter?

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2. Vanity

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Although we’ve all been faced with colleagues who use the “CC” option far too often, are we blameless ourselves?
Perhaps we just want to demonstrate that we’re actually getting things done, or that we are indeed in the know about what’s going on. Whatever the reason, do we consider the effect our message will have on the recipients before thoughtlessly adding to the CC line?

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3. Paranoia

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And then there’s paranoia.
“I don’t want to be left out.”
“Why was I not copied on that email that I should have known about?”
This aversion to missing out on conversations others are having reinforces our CC addiction.

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4. False Productivity

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Often, email can be a mindless activity. Answering it gives you quick gratification.
Writing back to people with “thanks” and “great job” is much easier than creating something original from scratch. It’s a way to “get things done” without actually doing anything. This false productivity can be consuming and drain time away from things that actually matter.
But, then we also need to understand on how actually we can handle or battle with tons of mails that we receive daily. I am sharing few simple yet magical practices that I would have loved to put my name on, but I am glad that these practices are coming from someone who easily get over 000’s of mail daily. Yes, you read it correct.
It works for him, and it magically worked for me as my unread mails plummet from over 100’s to less than 5 at any given point of time. So here is the magic.

• Color code my inbox automatically. Messages sent just to me show up in red (because someone likely wants a response), messages sent to me and someone else on the To: line are colored green (likely a bit less important), messages for which I am only on the CC: line are colored in blue, and messages for which I am not on the addressee list (because it is a distribution list) are colored in black.  This way, I can focus in on messages that are possibly (but not always) the most important first
• Make use of macros / quick steps in Outlook.  For example, I can respond to a customer complaint and have it logged with the right people in support organization with a single click.
• Use “unread” marks as my primary organizer. If I have dealt with a message, it is left as read. If I have not read or dealt with a message, it remains unread. From all of my devices, I then only look at unread messages
• I try to clear or minimize my inbox every day no matter what.  At the end of a day, there are typically fewer than 10 unread messages (and typically those are heavier messages that are best dealt with after a good night’s sleep)
• I do not do any filing of email messages. I just let them accumulate in my inbox, and archive them once a quarter.  I use full text searching to find all messages that I need to find, and don’t waste anytime with the filing.
• I use Conversation View, so that related messages are all clustered together.
• Create a threshold or limit of unread mails. If its 5, 6, 7 or 10 don’t let it go beyond it.

Equally, you can use tools like Xobni that enables effective  email management and links to social presence of sender.

Measuring the effects of social media

It is heartening to see companies and executives finally waking up to the potential of social media and rushing to join the bandwagon. However, most of the people are still apprehensive whether social media would work for their businesses and brand needs. Measuring social media ROI (return on investment) may be difficult but it isn’t impossible because it is difficult to track many of the pieces that need to be evaluated. Here are a few pointers to help you track down those pieces and find out the ROI you’re getting on social media.

1. Traffic is one of the most palpable ways of measuring social media. Though quality often beats quantity, sadly enough, it is always true.
2. Participation and interaction is an important pointer for many brands. It tells one about the nature of traffic being drawn. Interaction may range from leaving comments to customer reviews and ratings. You need to keep an eye on this as it can happen on other websites as much as on your own.
3. Internet has changed the nature of public relations forever. What earlier used to be distinct, is now a blend of PR, customer service, and marketing. Every person has a blog these days, along with a place to shout things to their friends and followers with twitter and Google Buzz.
4. In a world full of choices and the ease with which consumers can switch from one brand to another, the most important thing is customer engagement. This engagement is relevant both offline and online, on your website, as well as on social media sites. One way of improving your business, products, and the level of your services is by interacting with customers. Ignoring customers can be hazardous as research has found that engaged customers recommend your brand, convert and purchase more often.
5. The most useful outcome of improved customer engagement is better customer retention. This one factor is extremely crucial for the success of your business in the coming years.
6. Greater and bigger profits are the natural outcome of engage customers. You generate more business from your existing customer base and these customers are more likely to recommend your business to their network of friends, family, and social media contacts. It not only reduces your budget for customer acquisition but also adds to your profits. In the long run this improved profitability translates into more efficient organisation.

Sooner businesses strike balance between acquisition and retention better it is from a resourcing point of view. A number of acquisition strategies are so ill conceived that long term retention is not planned. Old wisdom says that it is cheaper to retain existing customers than look for new ones.

Tips for better email marketing

Many marketers would agree that e-mail service (ESP) providers offer solutions that are convenient, handy and capable of achieving excellent results. It drives their sales up and increases profits. While most of these solutions are easy on the pocket, they are not very effective unless you consider the following points when creating your next email marketing campaign.

Stand Out and Be Distinct

You will find dozens of templates with your ESP which can make e-mail marketing easy. But do you honestly think that using templates will get you outstanding results? Keep in mind that your potential client must be receiving several emails from other vendors. Quite a few of them could be your competitors and some of these guys could end up using the same template as yours.

It’s important to find a design that makes your message stand out from the hordes of other e-mail marketers. Customise the mail by using the name of the customer. E.g. Dear Mark rather than Dear Customer. Keep your tone personal to make the reader feel that you are talking just to him even if you are mailing the same matter to thousands of people. Efficient e-mail marketing software can be used to customize subject lines and email copy without putting in several hundred hours if you have a long mailing list.

When you make your emails personal, it creates enormous trust between you and the reader. Such an email also inspires a certain confidence in the receiver of the mail, which makes them more comfortable in doing business with you.

I can tell you that I never trusted that text version email could do anything till I was proven wrong by the team. I now I completely acknowledge the immense potential of a crisp, personalize, text version of an email.

Good Writing Matters

Nothing can put off a prospective customer more than poor spelling and grammar because it draws attention away from the message and makes you look unprofessional. While your ESP facilitates delivery of your e-mail, it pays little attention to the message itself. Hiring a professional writer trained and experienced in creating interesting messages to deliver marketing copies that are compelling enough goes a long way in making your e-mail marketing campaign a success.

The content of the e-mail should resonate with prospective clients and customers and hold their attention. While preparing potent emails is not child’s play, but if you get it right the response rate almost always compensates for the effort that goes into it.

Everybody Like a Freebie

All smart marketers know that people love nothing more than getting something for FREE! When you offer free shipping, free gifts, discounts or samples it encourages your reader to do what you want them to do in your email.

Size Matters

Don’t ever allow anyone to convince you otherwise. Aim of all marketing is to create top-of-mind awareness which comes only with perseverance and consistency. You can’t expect single, one-off messages to do any wonders. Follow up with other mails and don’t always talk about making sales and purchasing subscriptions. Load your mails with information and make them easy and interesting to read. It’s time to trash the rule that said short and to the point in favour of long copy that tells a more complete story. A good read can do wonders for your e-mail marketing campaign.

E-mail campaigns that are fully transparent without being unobtrusive significantly increase deliverability and effectiveness of your marketing strategy.