Tips, Trends, News and a Night Cap
Friends and colleagues,
Feeling whipsawed? Know what whipsawed means? Yea, me neither. But I do know that uncertainty represents opportunity for fleet-footed marketers who (alliteration warning) clearly, compellingly, confidently and consistently communicate their value proposition to customers and prospects. Obvious point, right? Then why aren’t more of us executing better? Let me know what you think via email, phone or our Facebook page.
Now to the meat and potatoes:
Tips
- Keep calls to action (CTA’s) in the top 5th of email. We all know calls to action should be above the fold in email, but results we’ve seen indicate that almost 90% of response comes from the top of the communication (seen in preview panes and on mobile devices.) So keep those call to actions up high and top of mind.
- Try the 3-second test. Find five to 10 target customers and show them your latest home page, ad, banner, etc. (it’s easy to set this up online.) Give them ONLY three seconds to review your work. Then ask them what the communication said. If you get five to 10 different answers you should re-assess the communication.
- Guard against confirmation bias, the tendency for people to favor information that confirms their preconceptions or hypotheses regardless of whether the information is true. We want to believe what we believe, but make sure you’re not compromising your campaigns in the process.
- Successful webinars (i.e. where > 50% of sign-ups actually attend) require at least three post sign-up communications and at least two should arrive the day before and the day of your event.
- Try to “own” at least one adjective. In highly competitive market segments, success will depend on your ability to associate your brand with the descriptor – easy, fast, low-cost, etc. – that you credibly represent.
- Garnish hors d’oeuvres with sprigs of parsley. Whoops, wrong email.
Trends
- Companies are starting to sell a lot through Facebook. The ability to convert a “social” interaction into a customer transaction will be critically important to organizations – particular B2C companies – in the next couple years.
- Social media and mobile apps continue to proliferate but their business value remains unclear. The emergence of analytics providers who can tell you what works and what doesn’t will soon separate the wheat from the chaff.
- An encore appearance for this one: Integrated, life-cycle marketing is becoming the standard operating procedure. By coordinating the consumer’s end-to-end experience, companies should enjoy revenue increases of 10-20%. Let me know if want to learn more.
- The evolution of customer relationship management. We’re seeing an increasing level of sophistication among clients many of whom are finally moving from segment based marketing to one-to-one, behaviorally triggered campaigns. Everyone’s been talking about this for years but until recently very few companies were realizing the vision.
- Location-based marketing to explode. Once privacy challenges are addressed you’ll see a wide variety of efforts to market to customers and prospects based on where they are. This a good thing?
News
- We’re launching new products and services – for two different clients – entirely through social media. More specifics on these wildly fun efforts soon.
- We are now offering concept testing services to allow you to predict the outcome of major campaigns. It’s very effective, but it’s not cheap. Then again neither are six or seven figure campaigns that don’t work…
- For the fifth year in a row Crossbow Group has been named a B-to-B Magazine Top Agency: http://tinyurl.com/292pevd
- New clients we can tell you about (some of our bigger clients want our work for them to be kept under tight wraps…) include Sassy Baby and new divisions of Intuit and CIGNA Healthcare.
The Night Cap
If we’re not always on your mind, we at least want to be on your head occasionally. Send me a note and we’ll send you a Crossbow hat so you can represent when not at your day job.
That’s all for now. Thanks for your friendship, your insights and your business. And please check in soon.
Best,
Jay