Yaffe Tidbits

What You Need To Do In Mobile Marketing This Year

Part 1: Know your mobile customer

For most of us the 2012 resolutions look like this: lay off Hot Pockets, earn a ton of money and make a diligent effort to smile when your mother-in-law unexpectedly shows up on your doorstep for a visit. When it comes to resolutions for your business Mobile Marketing should be at the top of your list— especially if you’re playing catch up with competition. Last year was huge for mobile marketing and it’s getting even bigger. Technology innovations make it easy to shop, stay social, informed and entertained anywhere and anytime.  Smartphones drive our life on-the-go and with it present constant opportunities to advertise. Why wouldn’t you reach your customer through something they carry and interact with every waking (and sometimes sleeping) moment?

Watch the video below to see some amazing mobile stats

 

Know your mobile customer
Gen-Y facetweets, youblogs, and mysquares faster than you can log into your email, while Grandma is still figuring out the whole webcam thing. Each customer uses a smartphone to satisfy a NEED while being restricted or empowered by their aptitude for technology.  The game hasn’t changed, customers are still shopping, but they’re using mobile to simplify and enrich their experience.

Tracking mobile visitors
First step is to assess the situation. You might not know that people are accessing your website through mobile devices unless you have a way to track it. Meet your new best friend, Google Analytics. Study your traffic under the microscope and establish a baseline. What devices are your customers using? How does your marketing strategy affect traffic? Through analytics you will understand the current situation and pave way for future decisions.

 Identifying Mobile Segments
The wonderful thing about customers is that they can be grouped together into segments.  After you ninja your way through demographic/geo profiles think about the following.  

Psychographic and motivational segmentation will force you to step into the shoes of your customer and focus on their attitudes, goals and emotional features.
-Think about what your users seek through their mobile devices: entertainment, information, social or a bargain. For instance, customers seeking a bargain may not like mobile technology, but will use it anyway if there is a reward (like a coupon or a discount).
-Is the customer skating on the high tech edge or staying away from technology because it invades their privacy? For example: Social oriented high tech users would be more likely to check in on foursquare  at your store location, which presents a valuable opportunity to engage them.
-Is mobile a lifestyle choice or something they are forced to use? Gen Y vs Late adopters.
-In addition to insights you gather from this exercise, create a map to key customer touch points with your brand. Map out customer’s mobile shopping experience from interest about your product to purchasing decision. 
-Do they browse and compare prices on the phone before purchasing? What brought them to your website? Was it to find store locations, order online, get a deal or check in on foursquare? How did they find out about it? Through company’s e-letter, a chat with company rep, QR code or external advertising?

I leave you with many questions to answer and priorities to fulfill.  Moving forward in the Mobile Resolutions series, you’ll learn about mobile websites and implementing mobile advertising strategies.  In the meantime, share some of your mobile experiences in the comment section and give Grandma a call, she  still needs help.

Check back next week for part 2 of this series.

Dmitri Pivtorak, On the move, going mobile

How To Turn Your Worst Projects Into Your Best Products

Ever get handed one of those projects that nobody cares about? Something under the radar that just needs to get done? What do you do? Grumble and just crank something out or rise to the challenge and create something spectacular? In my experience, these kinds of projects are ripe for doing great work. In fact, my most award-winning campaign ever (for both creativity and effectiveness) was one of these projects.

Sometimes the problem with high-profile projects is the layers of approval and all the chefs in the kitchen. I'm not saying you can't do spectacular work on high profile projects. You absolutely can. It's just harder. The beauty of a project that nobody cares about is that you have the opportunity to do something out of the box. People won't try and second guess creativity on a project like that - they are surprised to see it and much more likely to accept it.

That was the case with my most award-winning project. It was a postcard size insert in Advo mailers for a drug store client of ours. The strategy was sound. Boost traffic at under-performing stores by creating a loss-leader coupon (half-gallon of milk for 66-cents, two 2-liter Cokes for a dollar, etc) and inserting in in the Advo mailer in the zip codes around the store. Sounds boring right?

Even thought the strategy was sound and the coupons were incredible values, it wasn't performing. So the assignment was basically, do something to stop people from throwing this away without even looking at it. Do whatever you want; if you can work the logo and the product in, that's great. So, instead of looking at it as a crappy mail coupon insert job, my art director partner and I looked at it as a "go crazy and do something creative" opportunity.

What we ended up doing was a series of single panel cartoons with a "Far Side" type sense of humor. For the milk coupon, if it was a 24-hour store, we showed a cow sneaking out in trench coat disguise to pick up milk so she didn't have to be milked. For the Coke coupon we showed aliens raiding a man's picnic for Cokes and him hoping he had enough to appease them. We found a good illustrator and this just do something assignment became one of the most successful we'd ever done. Not only was the creative good, but the response rates were incredible. In fact we repeating the campaign later for another drug store chain we represented. (to see each postcard bigger, just click on the image)

So, next time you get an assignment nobody seems to care about, look at it as an opportunity to really wow someone. Look at is as an exciting challenge instead of dreaded drudgery. Who knows, you might do something truly out of this world!

Has this happened to you? I'd love to hear some of your hidden opportunity success stories.

Mike McClure, Exec Creative Director & social media guy

Why There's a Direct Mail QR Code Explosion Happening Now

If you've looked at your mail recently, you may have noticed that much of the direct mail pieces (re: junk mail) you're getting have QR codes on them. You may be thinking, wow this is really catching on. Well, that may or may not be true. But, it's not the reason you're seeing so many of them. It's because the U.S. Post Office is basically paying advertisers to use them.

That's right, now through the end of August, the Post Office is giving bulk mailers a discount on the postal rate if they include a visible QR code on the piece. There are some rules. It does have to be relevant to the piece and not just some random link in order for the mailer to get the postal discount. It does seem that a lot of big direct mail marketers are taking advantage of it.

All this makes now a perfect time to test out its effectiveness with your own marketing. We have talked to our clients about whether or not to use QR codes for some time now. This presented a good opportunity for testing. For most of our clients, we used an "enter to win a prize" carrot to get customers to scan the code. Then, we sent them to the newsletter sign-up page on our client's site. Anyone who signed up for the eNewsletter during the time period of the promotion is eligible to win. That way, we could gather information on those who scanned in the code without having to spend money on creating a new landing page.

We also used a bit.ly code for the QR code and printed the non-bit.ly url below the QR code. That way we can track the number who went to the page using the QR code and how many typed in the url, giving us a good feel for how many understood or could use the QR code.

What about you? Have you or your clients taken advantage of this QR discount? And what has your experience with them been so far?

Mike McClure, ECD & QR-Curious

14 Fascinating Facts from Future Midwest

Besides the inspirations and new ways of looking at things, Future Midwest speakers throw out some very interesting statistics during their presentations. I thought it would be interesting to compile a few of them together. Here's some of the ones I heard at this year's conference.

 

 

1. Smartphone ownership will overtake feature phones by the third quarter this year.

2. 77% of consumers engage with brands online for incentives and ad offers.

3. 28% of consumers will provide an email address or engage with a brand online with promise of incentive.

4. Many online new businesses eliminate the middle man between consumers and the product/services they want.

5. The majority of colleges (85%) look at applicants info posted online (including social sites) before deciding to admit that student to their university.

6. 86% of iPad owners would prefer to put up with ads in order to get free content rather than paying a nominal monthly fee.

7. In Michigan, only 1.01% of the people are on twitter, compared to 47% on Facebook.

8. However, the ones who are on twitter have much larger followings/communities online than those just on Facebook.

9. Teens today send about 300 texts per month, but tend to make only three phone calls during that same time.

10. Over 700 billion minutes per month are spent on Facebook.

11. 70% of connected consumers have participated in a branded sweepstakes or contest.

12. The average consumer is exposed to over 3,000 messages per day

13. Email offers that have specific relevance to those receiving it get five times greater conversion rates than full list email blasts.

14. 47% of consumers consider their mobile devices to be essential to their lives and keep them within arms reach at most times.

There you have it, 14 fun facts I heard from the Future Midwest speakers this year. What other pieces of info did you hear that stuck with you?

Mike McClure, Playing digital trivia and #winning

Creativity and Curation at Future Midwest 2011

Last year I walked away from Future Midwest armed with new knowledge and inspired by passionate speakers. This year's edition provided more of the same. The conference took place last Thursday and Friday. Quite a few of the people here at Yaffe attended. We plan to get together soon and compare notes and what we gleaned and how we can use it for our clients. In the meantime, here's a couple nuggets I picked up from this year's speakers.

Creativity has become the currency of success. In his opening keynote address, Josh Linkner, former CEO of ePrize and author of Disciplined Dreaming, talked about creativity in whatever you do is the key to success these days. That's something I've believed for some time, but he brought it into clarity. He pointed out that while GM & Chrysler were taking bailouts and going bankrupt, Ford doubled down on innovation - and you can see how well they're doing now as a result of that. Faster and faster, new companies are knocking off old ones. The time has come for all of us to double down on creativity and innovation.

Conversely, Josh talked about the Creativity Crisis, highlighted in last July's Newsweek magazine. He pointed to legos - at one time they were about creativity - you made stuff, tore it down and made something new. Now, they come with huge booklets to build something like a death-star, that you build once and put on the shelf. The most alarming statistic he gave us: if you ask kindergartners if they think they're creative, almost all of them will say yes. If you ask recent graduates if they are, only 2% of them say they're creative.

Some of this lack of thinking we're creative has to do with only certain professions being seen as "creative" and some has to do with people being afraid to put themselves out there and speak their ideas out loud.As a leader, it’s your job to foster that creativity in all your staff. Foster your team into being a jazz combo rather than a structured orchestra where everyone ridgedly plays their part. Awaken curiosity. That is the building blocks of creativity.

Curation is the next big thing. A number of speakers spoke about curation. Oliver Starr, of Pearltrees, defined curation as the selection of, care for and presentation of whatever group you are curating. Aggregation is not curation. Curation needs to be organized - more like a museum than a warehouse. Almost everyone is a curator of some sort and it's changing the way we view the web.

Curation helps you better find what you really want. Search engines are starting to break down, are easily gamed, have too much content and are controlled by the few search giants. Curation dramatically improves your content by adding context, opinion, nuances and other factors that make the content more relevant to you. It allows you to produce meaningful insight without having to depend completely on your own content. And if you make it easy for your audience to curate the content you create, you become a part of a larger conversation.

Oliver went on to list a number of tools you can use to aid in curating the content you find interesting or relevant. One very interesting one, was his own Pearltrees tool that allows you to create your own content tree around the factors that are relevant to your brand or site. Embedding that tree into your site also adds to your SEO juice. Other tools he mentioned include Storify, BagTheWeb, CuratedBy and KeepStream.

Michael Morin, EVP & Lover of Knowledge

Why Attending Conferences Like Future Midwest Help Your Company

Companies are looking to cut costs these days. So it's easy to understand why some might look at sending employees to conferences as a frivolous expense. But that would be trading long term gains for short term dollar savings.

In truth, the knowledge and inspiration your employees bring back to your company is immeasurable. Plus, it says something to your clients when you send the people working on their business to learn new things that can ultimately bring fresh thinking and new ideas to the table. Future Midwest is one of those conferences.

Last year's Future Midwest was a tipping point for our company. We had long been making the transition from traditional marketing firm to one that truly understands and embraces digital and social marketing. But, I think last year's conference worked as a catalyst to us becoming what we are today and what we will be tomorrow.

I convinced our Executive Vice President, Michael Morin, to attend the 2010 edition with me. I came away with a ton of new knowledge and inspiration. But the real value was how much Michael came away with. He walked out of there with true excitement, saying we should have brought everybody with us. We even met one of the speakers, Ben Smithee, who gladly gave us some insights on a piece of business we were pitching. It propelled great changes in our agency over the past year. We now have a social media team. Our Yaffe Direct division is revamping to focus on digital and mobile. Things are happening around here.

Future Midwest is April 28 & 29 this year. It takes place in downtown Detroit, a short drive from our Detroit office. We have a huge contingent of Yaffe folks going this year. And not only that, we've invited many of our clients to attend with us. Because clients who understand this stuff make better partners and together you can accomplish so much more. Even if they can't go, they now know about it and will be eager to hear what we've learned and how it can help their business.

So, if you can make it, I highly recommend attending Future Midwest. If you can't, keep an eye open for what's happening near you. Is the 140 conference coming your way? Or TEDx? Or some more localized seminar? Find one you can go to. Learn. Be inspired. Create magic for your business and for your clients.

Make it happen. You'll be glad you did.

Mike McClure. Always eager to learn more.

4 Experts on Mobile Marketing: What's Now? What's Next?

Why is mobile marketing taking off right now? One answer is that it is easily targetable and has high response rate. In fact, mobile ROI is usually at least in double digits and can be as high as 60%. Another is that messaging through mobile is able to be highly personalized and can hit target demographics instantly. Inquiries through test campaigns usually go to recipients who are highly interested. Any message sent through mobile devices is usually looked at it within 15 minutes of receiving it. That is because we tend to always have our mobile devices with us, usually within 10 feet of our person.

The answers above came from a mobile marketing panel speaking at the Social Media is a Party event I attended last week. The panel was moderated by David Murray, Director of Social Web Communications at re:group and included:

• Linda Daichendt – CEO of Strategic Growth Concepts
• Thomas Emmanuel Beals – President and Founder of Mobile Box Office
• Greg Schwartz – CEO and Founder of Mobatech
• Rukmal “Rocky” Femando – CEO and Founder of Breeze Design Studios and Jalappeno

One of the interesting things they talked about was marketing using texting. With all the hot new ways to use mobile (QR codes, augmented reality, location-based apps, etc),texting continues to be the most effective way. Why? Because texting is the gateway into mobile. Even people who are afraid of technology don’t mind texting – it’s just typing. It doesn’t require downloading an app or figuring out complex techniques. So, texting or SMS messaging is a good place to start, when doing a mobile campaign. And new apps like Blackberry’s BBM system are taking texting to the next level.

So, what’s next? One panelist talked about how QR codes are really underrated in what they can do and what they will bring to mobile. For instance, you can put a QR code on a movie poster and someone could use it to buy tickets.

Another talked about how NFC (near field communication) is only in Asia now but it’s coming soon and will disrupt the way commerce is done. You will be able to use your phone to buy things and not have to carry your credit card. US phones tend to be a couple years behind Europe and Asia, but we’re catching up.  Mobile commerce will be a big factor in changing how we live our lives. To ensure security, facial recognition software in your phone could be used to make sure it’s you when you are using your phone to purchase things.

Also, a cool new era of mobile social media is starting. Besides being always connected to your social media channels through your phone, there are other ways social and mobile are mixing. Many car companies have developed systems that are voice activated and will both read and send social media messages via voice commands.

Social and mobile are also affecting the music business. Many bands are using mobile tech to interact with the crowd during a concert. Then, with social media integration, your audience becomes much bigger than just the fans at the concert. Also, by being able to buy concert tickets with your phone, it will eliminate the selling of fake tickets, because these electronic, mobile tickets will be impossible to fake.

Those are just a few of the nuggets I gleaned from their interesting and informative session. Mobile is definitely getting stronger every day and will change how we do things. If you want to keep up, I suggesting finding and following those from this panel and their companies. Or maybe you have some of  your own thoughts on where mobile is going, I’d love to hear them.

Mike McClure, Mobile And On The Run

Need a Marketing Database System? Don’t Touch that Dial.

They say don’t believe everything you see on TV. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t believe some of it. Like when the authoritative voice warns you, “Kids, don’t try this at home,” you really shouldn’t try it at home. Not if you want to keep all your limbs and digits intact.

Or when magician/pitchman Marshall Brodien does things with a deck of cards that simply can’t be done, and he tells you “It’s easy … when you know the secret.” Why bring these up here? Because you need to believe them both if you want to use a marketing database to grow your business. Like Brodien’s magic tricks, building a successful marketing database is easier when you know the secret. So what’s the secret?

It’s simple – don’t try this at home! In other words, this is a job that should be outsourced to marketing database specialists. Too many companies feel that because they know how to develop and manage an operational database, they’re in a good position to build a marketing database in-house.

That’s like saying because you can balance your family’s checkbook, you’re ready to manage the books of a large corporation. You might be able to do it, but not without a lot of pain, a good deal of wasted time and money, unnecessary internal friction, ongoing frustrations, and the very real likelihood that what you wind up with won’t do you much good at all.

Consider that the data compiled, stored and used by most companies falls into three broad categories – the past (accounting and billing data), the present (inventory and operational data), and the future (marketing data). 

By their nature, the accounting, billing, inventory and operational data all are largely fixed sets of data that can be serviced by systems that provide organization and storage, but limited access and flexibility. This is data that relates to the past and present, and there’s not much that’s changing here, even over long periods of time. Nor does the information need to be accessible and able to be manipulated from desktops across the company. You have an excellent IT department? Great. Let them develop the systems to manage this data and move the marketing data systems to a specialist.

Marketing data, however, is fluid and subject to change daily. It includes customer and prospect information, purchase/order details, marketing communications, and data that shows not only who’s opening your e-mail and visiting your Web site, but what they’re doing while they’re there. A database marketing system needs to make sense of demographic data, shopping trends, consumer behavior and other customer-centric information that can direct current and future marketing campaigns. You’ll be able to segment consumers, identify high-value customers, target your best prospects, and provide the focus that can help ensure the success of all your marketing and sales efforts. But to do so, the systems and specialized software used to manage this database must be dynamic, flexible, accurate, dependable and able to be manipulated quickly and easily.

Creating, installing and managing such a system can monopolize the resources of even the best internal IT department. Do it yourself, and you might as well rename your company Hatfield and McCoy, Inc., and forget about peace in the family. It won’t take long for your marketing folks to grow impatient with a slow-moving and seemingly ineffective IT department, while your systems people will soon express frustration with the changing demands of your marketing department. “You want what today? That’s not what you said yesterday!”

And forget about actually keeping the system updated and current once it’s live. It’s a simple fact of business today that even the most promising marketing efforts will always be trumped by operational functions such as inventory maintenance or bill processing when IT departments prioritize their to-do list.

So give your marketing programs the support they need to ensure success and grow your company while avoiding unnecessary battles and saving your company time and money. Leave this one, as they say, to the professionals.

 

Guest post by Bonnie Massa, President of Massa & Company, Inc., Analytic Database Marketing

 

 

 

 

 

 

How Retailers Can Profit From Natural Holidays Like Memorial Day

Everyone expects there to be good deals on the "natural holidays" like Memorial Day. We've trained the consumer over the years that these are prime shopping times. They go out in large numbers to shop whenever there's a three or four day weekend holiday. But, if you're a retailer that doesn't mean you can just sit back and let them come to you. If you do, you could be missing out on a lot of sales. We're talking the difference between a good weekend and a "make your quarter" weekend here.

Yaffe has 'worked with a lot of retailers over the years. During that time we've amassed a lot of data, along with some good experience. The data shows time and time again that the more marketing channels you use, the stronger your presence and the more you give your customers, the better your weekend will be. Not just in gross numbers, but in profits and ROI, too.

Here's some tips we've learned over the years:

Give Your Customers More: Part of the reason consumers shop on the natural holidays is because they have the extra time to shop. But a big part of it is that they've learned from experience that many retailers give their best offers during these times. You need to make sure you're giving the public some of the best offers in your arsenal. You can bet your competition will be making their best offers, so you need to be out there with yours, too. It can be better financing, better overall savings, special deals on categories or individual items, free gifts or refreshments for customers who come in, early bird specials to get them in first or some other offer or combination of offers. 

Give Your Best Customers More: One thing our research and data has shown most strongly is that marketing to your best customers gets the best ROI, every time. In a natural holiday shopping frenzy, you want to make sure these customers feel special and have additional incentive to remain loyal. Send them a direct message through mail, email, social media or SMS and give them a little something more than what you're giving the general public. It will pay off nicely.

Maximize Your Share Of Voice: Whatever media you're in, especially TV, you should try and get the largest share of voice for your category in your markets. You can't just advertising at the same level you always do. Your competition will be stepping up their media buys, you need to at least keep even in share of voice by stepping up your buys. And if you can be the dominant player in your markets, it will give you a stronger position in the consumer's mind.

Do Multi-Channel Marketing: Add more channels to your marketing mix. If you don't normally do direct mail, email, texting, digital marketing or some other media - this is the time to add one or more to your mix. It will broaden your reach and increase the amount of touch points you have with your consumers.

On a side note, make sure your messaging is appropriate for the channel you're in. Here is a link to a web video we produced for one of our furniture retailer clients who does fairly aggressive TV on the holidays. It was embedded in an email message. On the web, you need to be more engaging than on broadcast TV (being a pull medium vs. a push one). So, the web video had a different tone than the TV, while still tying in with the overall campaign. The email told the rest of the story pertaining to sale and offers.

So, don't miss out. It's an old cliche but it's true: make sure you're fishing when the fish are biting. That way you won't go hungry.

Mike McClure, Yaffe Exec Creative Director

5 Things Your Business Should Do Now.

It seems technology and the way it affects how we do business is changing on an almost daily basis. Every Internet search, eNewsletter or blog post seems to turn up new ways to connect with customers, to take your products to market, to market your products, to develop your business, etc... There's a lot of change taking place. Some of the revelations are truly the "next big thing" and others will turn out to be the latest passing fad that came and went (remember the rush to get product and store space in the virtual world of Second Life?).

So, how do you know what to do, what can wait and what is going to turn out to be completely irrelevant? In some ways, you can't. But we put together this list of 5 things we think you should do right now to make sure your company is relevant today and will continue to be so tomorrow.

1. Register Your Company Name Everywhere. Make sure you stake your claim to your brand before someone else does. Much like grabbing your name in a URL for your website (we're assuming your company has a website, if not, your company's name in a URL is absolutely the first thing you need to register for), you need to start staking you claim everywhere else. Even if you're not ready to start a blog or dive into social media, register your name in all the main areas. You don't want to go to open a Facebook Fan page or Twitter account a year from now and find that someone else has your company's name locked down for themselves. You can make it private so no one goes there or if they do, that they see nothing's available yet.

2. Start Collecting Customer Information. All our research and experience shows that money spent marketing to your own customers, especially your best customers, has a far greater return than marketing to the general public. Create an internal process designed to get their name, address and email address. Email is a fairly inexpensive way to send customers special offers and communications. But, you need to have their email addresses to do so. So, come up with a way to start collecting them now. So, by the time you are ready to do something with them, you have a database to work with. Added bonus if you get their cell phone numbers, too.

3. Find Your Strategic Advantage. We believe an advantage exists at the intersection of strategy, culture and communications. If you can figure out what your strategic advantage is and it is one that fits your corporate culture, you can then start communicating it to the world and start taking advantage of it. All good companies have at least one strategic advantage over their competition. The sooner you figure out what that is, the sooner you can start leveraging it to tip business in your favor. Don't know what your strategic advantage is? There are plenty of good companies, like ours, who will help you discover it.

4. Have Executives Create LinkedIn Profiles. It's become a big research tool for anyone checking out your company and the top people in it. Whether it's someone researching you for a job or a potential client evaluating the people they'll be working with, everyone searches LinkedIn for info on key personnel. Even if they don't ever do anything more with their LinkedIn account, you should make sure all your top people have a profile that is carefully crafted to make them and your company look good.

5. Empower Your Employees. Make sure everyone in your company knows what the corporate vision is and then empower them all to become brand evangelists for your brand. There are things in every good brand's corporate culture that should and will get employees jazzed about working there. Make sure those strengths are clear and encourage employees to spreed the word - in deeds, in their own circles of friends, in their online communications and social networks, any place they interact with people outside the organization. You don't have to have a wildly employee-centriccorporate culture like Zappos for this to work. Just makd sure your company culture has a good story that rings true and your employees feel good about.

There are a lot of new choices and technologies for advancing your business today. But, these five things should give you a good place to get started. Do them and see where it takes you. Chances are, the next steps will become self-evident.

Mike McClure, Yaffe Employee Brand Evangelist