Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Breaking the Ceiling on ROI with e-newsletters

Breaking the Ceiling on ROI with e-newsletters

I’ve always been quick to advise clients that the world doesn’t need another newsletter.

In the old world, it seemed like every marketers job was dependent on how quickly he or she could get a newsletter written, printed, mailed and in the hands of every hot prospect and valued customer. Newsletters were typically long and drawn out brag bulletins and most offered very little value to the reader. The prevailing attitude among marketing departments of any industry was that “if they read it, sales will come.” Most often, they didn’t and neither did the second issue. Somewhere there must be an archive of all the thousands of newsletters that ended with the debut copy.

Things have changed. Digital newsletters have become one of the most powerful tools of marketing. Few mediums today can boast double digit open rates among target audiences. E-newsletters done right can.

Just recently I sent out a debut e-newsletter for a client. The content was written specifically for past customers and focused on issues of direct relevance. It was simple, to the point and powerful. The open rate for this newsletter broke all previous records, upwards of 30%, and got the phone ringing within minutes of hitting the send button. It also generated hundreds of new visits to their website the first day it went out.

What an amazing difference from newsletters of the past. The distinguishing factor is relevance. With tools like Constant Contact that provide simple to use templates, you can quickly and efficiently customize newsletters for various target segments and thus personalize the message down to the individual. The digital format also plays well with the new generation of consumers that will rarely commit to reading anything longer than a bullet point as they can scan headlines and click through on just the topics they care about.

As Larry Brummond, president of The Write Touch in Denver, Colorado, a Constant Contact (CTCT) Business Partner, says, “An e-newsletter should be an integral part of an email marketing program. If you provide good value in your e-newsletter, you’ll create trust, loyal following and many more revenue opportunities.”

According to statistics offered by Constant Contact, open rates and click-through rates in most industries easily exceed 10% for email campaigns. For medical services, the open rate is around 17% and the click through to corresponding websites around 13%. That is far better than response rates for most advertising campaigns utilizing other mediums.

The key to success is direct relevance. As Brummond puts it, it is all about “providing value - what they want, not what you want. “ That is one of the fundamental differences between the old style of newsletters and the new. The former was about the brand; the latter about the customer.

Making e-newsletters work:
Planning:
Like any marketing project, have a plan. Don’t just dump copy in an e-newseltter template and hit send. You need to have a strong understanding of your audience, what message will resonate the most at the time of the e-newsletter, and how to organize the flow of your message. Content flow is critical in digital communications. You have to give them a reason to scroll down and see what is below the screen. Good copywriting is essential. You must grab their attention and inspire them to read on immediately.

Part of your plan must be timing. How often is appropriate for your audience to hear from you? Too much frequency with too little substance results in a lot of opt-outs.

The foundation of all planning is to know what you want to achieve with your newsletter. Don’t just do one because you can. Do it because you want to drive visits to your website via click-through traffic, generate new leads for your sales database, keep your brand’s name, message, and products on your client’s mind – all of these are solid reasons for starting an e-newsletter program

Engagement:
Your e-newsletter is not a digital brochure. It is a tool to engage your customers with your brand, your product, and your core value. Engagement is enhanced by meaningful offers and incentives, and ROI is directly related to the quality of engagement, points out Brummond, who has seen an e-newsletter for an insurance industry client get above average open and click-through rates by including a contest, humor and personal information in its e-newsletters.

Data:
Without a solid customer database there is no reason to do an e-newsletter. Collect it, keep it current, and use it. Segment your database into customer groups and create newsletters that reflect the needs for each group directly and relevantly. Get email addresses from all customers and prospects and permission to use them you’re - newsletter. Before a solid data management system is in place you cannot be effective with any type of email communications campaign.

Measurement:
One of the greatest values in anything digital is that you can track results to the individual level. Always incorporate metrics into your e-newsletter so you can measure how it is working to achieve your business goals. You can learn a great deal of valuable information from this tool, such as:

What customer segments respond to which offers
What offers get the most response?
What time of month gets most response?
The accuracy of your customer data files. Emails that bounce back are a great indicator that something has changed with a customer or prospect.

When done correctly, e-newsletters work very well. According to Brummond, Constant Contact has seen customers increase revenue as high as 30% among existing customers from email campaigns. The key to succeed is to focus on the customer, include timely and actionable offers, track results in order to improve relevance and efficiency, and finally, stick with it. –

About the Author
Jeanette McMurtry is a sales and marketing expert specializing in psychology-based strategies for health care and other industries. She is the principal of e4marketing and can be reached at jeanette@e4marketingco.com or 970 390 6909.

Friday, April 9, 2010

Making Fans and Friends via Facebook

Making Fans and Friends via Facebook and other social media
By Jeanette McMurtry, MBA

Although I am dating myself, I remember a time when business owners, large and small, contemplated the value of creating a website for their brand. Was it worth the resources and would it really build their business? Now, just a few years later, business owners of all types and sizes are asking the same questions about Facebook and other forms of social media. While there are still many unknowns about how social media impacts sales, there are more reasons to explore a presence for your brand.

To begin, we humans are quite social by nature. We want to mingle, and engage with others in ways that are rewarding. The most meaningful rewards are not tangible trinkets, but more often positive feelings, such as pleasure, security, safety, acceptance, approval, and so on. When we are rewarded in ways that make us happy or feel good about ourselves, we tend to reciprocate appropriately, and in the case of business, that often means purchases and even loyalty. Providing a mutually rewarding experience for your customers should be the foundation of your core social media programs. There are many simple and affordable ways to do this. Just take a look at Facebook pages for some of the leading global brands – Starbucks, Coca-Cola, Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream, sports teams, even Barack Obama, and more.

Facebook is the social site that is taking the Internet if not the entire universe by storm, at least today. It recently overtook Google as the number one website in the U.S. Its attraction is that it gives people a chance to connect with like minds; to voice concerns, thoughts, joys, ideas, and reconnect with people from their past. The fact that the fastest growing population on Facebook is now the middle aged (women over 55 grew 175% in a 120-day period in 2009) indicates that this is not a trendy site for young tech savvy adults who change loyalties the minute a new product launches. It has appeal to all ages, types, and nationalities, giving it staying power that few new media outlets will ever have.

So as adults throughout the U.S. are turning to Facebook for networking and connectivity to the bigger world around them, the choice to Facebook or not Facebook is becoming a bit more clear. Even for B2B marketers.

As Joe Markwith, an Internet marketing strategist, and president of TMA Guild of Denver Colorado, says, “Not having a presence on Facebook can be a negative thing for any business, regardless of industry or if you’re business-to-business or business-to-consumer. Facebook is your ear to your consumers, while your website is your mouthpiece. If you don’t have a Facebook page to enable dialogue and customer feedback, you may be sending the signal that you don’t care to listen to those that keep your business thriving: customers.”
Creating a Facebook presence needs to be more than registering on the Facebook site and posting your logo as your profile photo.

“You need to have a strategy for making your posts and other content relevant and for keeping it current,” continues Markwith. “You also need to be prepared to take the good with the bad as fans might post negative comments on your site or information about issues you might not want others to hear or know about. In some cases, having multiple Facebook pages, each addressing a specific audience, might be the best way to go.”

Following are some things to consider when launching a Facebook page for your company:

Keep the word “Social” in mind: Social is not about selling, pushing products, collecting leads, it is about interacting, engaging, and exchanging thoughts, ideas. The dictionary describes “social” as a means to allow people to interact in a friendly way. This is precisely how you should be looking at tools lik Facebook. These tools are a means to an important end: positive, beneficial relationships with customers and prospects. After great relationships, come the sales.

Walmart’s Facebook page provides a great example of how to best use this medium. When Walmart poses non-product or sale type of questions like “What do you plan to do to celebrate Easter.” It gets hundreds of responses as we people love to talk about ourselves and get validation for our associations with others in good standing and for our individuality. When they post a poll about consumers vs. themselves, the response again is outstanding. Yet when that poll appears to be a solicitation for free endorsements or advertising for Walmart the responses dry up. For example, as of this writing, a poll on their Facebook page asking fans who the family clown was – Mom, Dad or the kids got 261,000 plus responses. On the same day, a poll asking fans about their favorite thing to do at Walmart got just one response. Point made.

Give people a reason to be a fan, and keep them happy: You want your Facebook page to have lots of fans as it immediately sends the signal that you are a company worth associating with, and that others endorse you by aligning with you publicly. To get fans, you need to give people a reason to sign up and come back often. Consider posting coupons, announcements about special promotions, and other incentives exclusively for your Facebook fan community. This will make them feel exclusive and appreciated and inspire them to view your page and read your postings regularly.

Interact, Interact and Interact some more. Facebook and other social sites should not be seen as venues to shout about how wonderful you are. They should be seen as sites that enable your customers to connect with you and get to know your brand on a different level. Fans don’t want to be sold on your site, they want to be engaged and informed in meaningful ways. They also want a venue in which they can be heard. Fans will tell you what you are doing right and wrong, invaluable for any company that wants to stay on top of customer satisfaction. Starbucks has more than 6 million fans on their Facebook page, many of which are quick to point out what they don’t like about changes to recipes, menu items, and more. If Starbucks is listening, they will bring back the old frapuccino mix and rejoice in the success of their new vanilla bean version.

One of the best aspects of Facebook is that it enables brands to show their “human side” or another “face” of their brand, and interact in ways not available elsewhere. When done right, Facebook can build more than relationships, it can build lasting friends.

About the Author
Jeanette McMurtry is a sales and marketing strategist for health care and other industries, specializing in psychology-based approaches. She is the principal of e4marketing and can be reached at 970 390 6909 or jeanette@e4marketingco.com.

Wednesday, February 3, 2010

Service Cultures

Service Cultures
February 3, 2010

My heart sank when the luggage carousel at Kuala Lumpur airport stopped moving, and my luggage was yet to show up. I had over prepared for weeks for my speaking tour in Asia, determined to have a flawless journey so that I could focus on my business engagement and have a successful outcome. And then this. I was the keynote speaker at a large conference the next morning, a workshop presenter in the afternoon, and both in front of large audiences of Malay people that were polished, well dressed and sophisticated. And there I stood at the airport in a pair of Lucky Jeans and a glorified t-shirt.

The airport staff and Singapore airlines staff immediately confirmed that my suitcase had been on the flight, and suggested that it had been “mistakenly” taken by another traveler, and that it would likely show up in a few days. Not encouraging. Even less encouraging was when I hit the local shopping malls near the hotel only to discover that my body type wasn’t on the mind of store buyers in Kuala Lumpur.

Yet something happened that I wasn’t quite used to. The concierge at our hotel decided to take my missing luggage on as his personal mission, all in part of providing unequalled customer service. Without my knowledge, he called Singapore airlines almost hourly to keep them looking for it as they had concluded it had been stolen; he called all the other large hotels in the city that served the international business travelers, and he called the airport office numerous times, refusing to give up on his quest to find my luggage. Two days later, I got a call at 11 PM. Singapore Airlines was calling to tell me that my luggage had been sent back to my first international destination, Auckland, New Zealand, a mere 18 hours away. It was scheduled to be on the next plane to my next destination, Shanghai China. Miracle accomplished.

As I reflected on this adventurous experience, I truthfully couldn’t remember this kind of customer service in a long time. The concierge at the Park Hotel in Kuala Lumpur had no relationship to me, would likely never see me, an American business traveler, again, and certainly wasn’t going to get bonus points or extra money for finding my luggage. But he remained vigilant when everyone in my party had given up, including me. Instead of this experience becoming a lesson on airport luggage protocol and how to avoid mix ups in the future, it became a life-changing wake up call about the state of customer service today. Most companies I deal with would have given up and forgotten all about the one customer out of thousands they were serving that week. Clearly it wasn’t profitable to spend that much time on my luggage. Yet this kind of service that produced a truly happy customer can often differentiate companies that succeed from those that don’t. I couldn’t think of very many companies in the U.S. that would have spent this kind of effort, and thus profitable time, on a problem that they did not create.

As I ran around five different countries in the Asia Pacific, it seemed that customer service and thus happiness toward a brand was a culture thing, and that various service cultures provide valuable lessons for businesses in all industries.

Service Cultures:

Some examples of Service Cultures:

In Australia, I was everybody’s best friend. Waitresses and hotel staff chatted like old buddies as did the people I met at business dinners and events. Their attitude toward making you feel at home was relaxing, and left me feeling comfortable, and cared for. If I’d had time to shop, I am certain I would have spent a great deal of money in that cozy little Aussie town on the Gold Coast.

Singapore’s culture was one of pride and commitment. It is a very beautiful place and it was clear that locals everywhere wanted you to enjoy their beautiful country. You were treated with dignity and respect and a sense of politeness.

Another service culture that stood out to me was that of Shanghai, China. Everywhere I went, I was treated as if it was a privilege for the other party to serve me. Whether it was a small market on a busy sidewalk, a touristy shop, or a hotel concierge, service was quick, never needed to be asked for, and it was always whatever it took to make me happy. Another thing I noted about Shanghai was that the people there seemed happy, and that was contagious.

And then I returned home to the states via San Francisco. Unfortunately, it was a severe case of culture shock. For four weeks, I was treated like I mattered. The minute I got off the plane and made my way through customs, I felt like I was invisible. No one noticed me struggling with my oversized luggage and offered to help as I had become accustomed to throughout Asia. And when I asked an airport employee a question, he grunted, looked away and angrily motioned for me to move forward. I was shuffled through the line like a non-entity and suddenly felt very small, not happy, or calm like I had in other airports abroad. I found myself embarrassed at the thought of any of the foreigners traveling to the U.S. on the same 747 being greeted in the same manner and thinking possibly that this was the American culture everywhere. Thankfully it is not.

Over the weeks that have passed since this experience, I have pondered the impact of culture on business and its relationship to longevity and profitability. And what I have noticed in this great country and culture of ours is that the companies that have the best culture, one in which employees are happy, are also the companies that have the most business success. Happy cultures produce innovative products, employees with pride, and a desire for all insiders to embrace outsiders in a way that makes them love the brand or product as much as they do. It is “happy” companies that seem to weather the storms and come out ahead, successfully reinvent themselves with changing times and technologies, and keep customer loyalty much longer than market averages. Companies with unhappy employees or those deliver the kind of greeting I got at the San Francisco airport are those that we likely won’t see around much longer.

What is your company’s service culture? Look around you and pay attention to how you and your staff interact with each other, with customers, with vendors? Do you create experiences that make people want to come back for more? Do you create happiness through your interactions and commitments?

Email me for a free survey form to help you audit your service culture: jeanette@e4marketingco.com.

Next month, some ideas and tactics for how you can create brand happiness through an inviting and engaging company culture.

About the Author:
Jeanette McMurtry specializes in training sales and marketing teams about psychology-based marketing and helping them create brand happiness through leadership, marketing, sales and customer engagement strategies. She can be reached at jeanette@e4marketingco.com.