Marketers - Stop Spamming Your Customers!

Spam is more than a problem: it weakens the bond between you and your high value customers. When I conducted marketing survey for a class project at Northwestern University, I have heard a lot of complaints from customers. Every day people's email boxes are filled with at least 10 unsolicited, random, and irrelevant messages from sloppy email marketers. Obviously, opening email box in the morning has already become a headache for our customers. I know none of us want this to continue, we need to stop it.

According to DJ Waldow and Jason Falls' book The Rebel's Guide to Email Marketing: Grow Your List, Break the Rules, and Win, the era of email marketing has changed. The breezy “one-size-fits-all” way doesn’t apply any more. To get breakthrough results, marketers need to align every facet of the email campaign with the target market. Focus is not only on the contents, but also on the names, subject lines, calls to action, social network integration…everything! According to Waldow and Falls, great companies could achieve breakthrough results by “breaking all the rules”. Using real case studies, they demonstrate how companies can make the right decisions about different email attributes and optimize every component of an email marketing message.

Here are the four items that a good email marketer should consider:

1. Get Permission

Without permission you not only risk losing customer goodwill but also could end up blacklisted by ISPs that refuse all mail coming from your domain. Permission is not difficult to get. Offer something of value (eg. a coupon or promise of special discounts, a whitepaper or informational newsletter) in exchange for the customer agreeing to receive your messages.

2. Work with a Clean, Targeted Database

Work with the cleanest permission-based list you can find that is targeted to your industry and your offering. Do some research to ensure they will reach your targeted demographic and the lists are maintained. For instance, Programbusiness.com allows its members to send broadcast emails to its database of some 50,000 targeted subscribers and members have the opportunity of selecting subsets of addresses categorized by insurance type such as commercial, health, life, and auto.

3. Let Readers Drive Design

A well-crafted newsletter should be more than just a summary of your resume or company history. Personalizing the contents and adopting an intriguing subject line can make a big difference. Many companies offer both plain and rich text email editions, giving customers the option of registering for the html edition on their Web sites. In those editions, design becomes especially important.

4. Have an Exit Strategy

People who gave you their email address did so because they wanted to hear from you. But that can change and often does. Always add a link to unsubscribe to the email. You should always let your customers know you are always their ally but not their headache when they open their mail box every day.

After all, email marketing is about what works best for your audience. Sometimes it’s necessary to break the rules and test to better engage your customers. It all starts from developing a thorough understanding about their demands and customizing the email contents toward that demand.

Qing “Sunny” Tian is studying Integrated Marketing Communications at Northwestern's Medill School. Her concentrations are Direct & Interactive Marketing and Marketing Analytics. She has marketing experiences with Fortune 500 Companies in finance, consumer packaged goods, and automotive industries. Follow her @SunnyTian and connect with her on LinkedIn: Qing Tian.

How to secure the leading position in technology industry?

Market the future concept to show ambition and know the consumers more. 

Technology industry is now competitive than ever. Innovations happen every moment. Biggest challenge for marketers in technology industry: how to help a brand to secure its leading position in the industry? Show the ambition and understand your customers.

Released on April 4^th, Google’s “Project Glass” shows its ambition of future technology. It has already generated 14 million views. Is it a good timing to market the unfinished product – say even a conceptual product? For most of us, as marketers, what we really want to figure out is what does Google want from this marketing campaign? The answer is simple: Consumer feedback and brand image enhancement.

Google is not the only one to pursue this strategy. Microsoft and Samsung unveiled their own conceptual video as well – Microsoft in 2019 and Samsung 2015. Find anything in common among these three cases? Yes, they are all leading companies in the industry. The goal above the line is to show off the company’s capability and creating a blueprint of future life to consumers. Companies want to show to the consumers that they own the industry and is capable to offer the consumers a better future life.

Is there any hidden goal behind the campaign? Those leading companies can look deeper into consumers’ response through this kind of campaign. Project Glass has already generated 14 million views and both positive and negative comments. From all the comments, Google can understand more about the consumers’ imagination towards the future life and see whether the company’s future blueprint will fit or not. By understanding the negative comments, Google is able to identify which kind of technology is unrealistic for consumers and drop it in their future plan.

Marketing in high-tech industry, what can we take advantage from Google’s Project Glass?

1.     Brand image enhancement: If you want to impress the consumers and strengthen your brand image as a leading brand, unveiling your blueprint is not a bad way. Take the inventor spot as quick as you can to impress the consumers.

2.     Creative idea is a must: If you are a marketer, it’s time to come up creative ideas by leveraging the future technology. Get the sense about what consumers expect and how you can utilize the technology as marketing tools.

3.     Take advantage from consumers’ feedback: Listen to the consumers is always the key. Show them your ambitious and listen carefully to what they respond. It would help you to readjust your blueprint.

      Casey Lin is a Medill IMC Graduate student at Northwestern University. She is very enthusiastic about marketing, especially in technology industry. Follower Casey on Twitter  @Caseylin_NW.

Celebrating the Beauty of your Customer by Finding the Beauty in Your Brand

Pretty Face?

As a professional in the industry, you have a good grasp on the concept of beauty, but have you recently taken a moment to consider the face of your brand? What does it look like?  Arched eyebrows or high cheekbones?  What distinctive features allow it to stand out in a crowd?  How beautiful is your beauty brand?  Many beauty brands boast glamor and allure, but what makes a brand genuinely attractive?  As a brand manager, it is not enough to just know the product and its variations well, you must also understand how customers interact with the product in their daily lives.  As it may seem to the untrained eye, you are in the business of building communities of brand fans, but in actuality, your success is driven by your ability to engender confidence, style, and poise in consumers.  Concealers, liners, and pigments are tools used to help display inner beauty to the outer world.  In order to build toolboxes full of your branded products, you must: (1) profile your loyal customers and those who could become loyal customers in the future; (2) understand how they engage with the brand; and (3)  Capitalize and expand upon the “beauty” of the brand as defined by consumers. 

The Double Helix  

In the same way that double-stranded molecules determine our appearance and composition, your brand’s DNA determines its identity, aptitude, and scope.  A brand’s DNA is dependent upon the product(s) it represents, its origin, reputation, and possibly the people who build and endorse it.  By assessing these elements, you and your team will ensure that your communication strategies, product developments, and brand trajectory are aligned according to the most essential aspects of your product(s).  By understanding the core of your brand (i.e. what consumers associate with it, what they expect from it, and what characteristics could or should separate it from the competition), you will connect with consumers by intersecting at points of engagement, communicating authenticity, and creating financial and competitive results. 

Make Over 
 

       They are often highlighted during morning shows and teenage birthday parties, but makeovers have secured a place in almost every aspect of daily life.  In many cases, experts are solicited to lend consultant services, but since you are an expert on your brand, there is no need to seek the help of outside resources.  You can take a few simple steps to answer the question – How beautiful is your beauty brand?

§  Discuss the brand’s DNA and customer base with your team.  It is imperative for all those involved with the day-to-day business of the brand are functioning on one accord and working toward a common vision.  

§  Evaluate the current state of the brand in the competitive market and articulate weaknesses.  When everyone has gained a renewed sense of the brand's identity, the team must determine the ways in which marketing and advertising strategies are (or are not) aligned with the essence of the brand's DNA. 

§  Develop 3 ways to make your brand more beautiful.  Brainstorming never hurts!  Following a deep analysis of the brand and its position in the market, create a list of short- and long-term action items that will promote beautification.

Take the time to put on the best face of your brand.  After all, your customers do.

Andrea is a student in Northwestern University’s Master’s Integrated Marketing Communications program.  Her studies are concentrated in Brand Management and Digital Marketing, and she has a particular interest in the beauty industry.


Follow Andrea @A_BusseyIMC 

"Love of beauty is taste.  The creation of beauty is art." ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Build your Six-Second Resume if you want to be … eaten?

By: Tara Gupta  

Follow me @tbg1230

Photo source: Slashgear.com

            I read an article the other day about how the average recruiter only spends six-seconds reading your resume. Six-seconds! So you mean all the hours I’ve spent explaining how I organized the Post-Its by color in the supply closet is lost by your cursory glance at my resume and your toss to the side for the “next best thing”? So that made me think, what else are we as a society just glancing at and sizing up in a mere blink of an eye. As a graduate student at Northwestern University’s IMC program, I’m learning that I have a passion for helping consumers make educated and healthy food decisions. So what if we as CPG marketers started to apply the six-second rule to our own resumes: the nutrition and package label.

            So let’s try this out together. If a consumer were to pick up your product and give it the six-second test what would they find? Probably a bunch of health claims that they don’t believe, frilly icons that may be losing meaning, and percentages that mean little to nothing. That is according to a January 2012 Nielsen Global Survey of Food Labeling Trends that found consumers don’t believe over two-thirds of health claims made on package labels or by food marketers and 59% of consumers from around the world experience confusion by nutrition labels. Often times we’ve got health claims plastered all over our packages but it seems that it just results in more confusion for the consumer. But wait! Without our packages to describe the benefits we’ve got nothing, and on top of it, they don’t believe us? Time to get to the drawing board and reinvent our label efforts.

But it begs the challenge – will changing up icons or words on a label solve it? The study finds that “half (52%) of consumers around the world understand nutritional information panels on food packaging only in part. Four-of-ten consumers understand nutritional labels “mostly” and seven percent say they do not understand them at all.” Perhaps we need to think outside of the box (pun intended), and figure out outreach efforts that bring the nutrition labels to life and regain the consumer trust and belief again. But it’s also important to note that labels have come a long way and companies like General Mills have embraced indicator icons to help with nutritious decision making. But the survey results indicate that we need to be forward looking. According to Food Product Design Blog, “Consumer-friendly nutritional labeling can be a powerful marketing tool as consumers are hungry for easy-to-understand information.”

Build your six-second resume now

It’s pretty clear. You’re not getting “hired” with your current resume. This is a clear call-to-action for marketers to get rid of the skepticism, be clear and transparent for customers, and make it easier for consumers to make healthy food choices:

1. Think ‘outside the box’: Combine innovations in labeling with outreach efforts to gain trust in the claims you’re making.
2. Be honest and transparent: Know what the hot issues are for consumers and be honest about your ingredients.
3. Content Rules: Give consumers new ways to interact with your labels and packages and make the content easy for them, please! You’ve only got six-seconds. 

Tara Gupta is a graduate student in the Northwestern Medill IMC marketing program and spent six years in interactive strategy and user experience design.  Tara is passionate about brand management in the CPG space and health & fitness. Tara will be graduating in December 2012. 
Follow Tara on Twitter @tbg1230 or on LinkedIn