Blogs

SAP and Unica both held their annual user conferences last week in the same city – Orlando. Both events highlighted a fundamental shift that’s underway in the world of B2C marketing. Corporations are moving from near-time to real-time marketing communications, where they can immediately serve up personalized experiences to consumers interacting with their brand across multiple channels. This might sound next to impossible, but for companies that use multichannel campaign management (MCCM) solutions like those offered by SAP and Unica, there is a real opportunity to reap the benefits of real-time marketing – and email marketing is one of the most effective channels for executing on that strategy.

MCCM solutions make it possible for companies to capture customer information across multiple touch points and then make that data readily available to drive campaigns. The advent of social media has forced companies to start looking at customer experience holistically, rather than continuing to operate in disparate marketing silos. Loyal customers expect a brand to know who they are and what they like, regardless of what channel they choose to interact with the brand through. Real-time marketing enables companies to achieve a new level of relevancy that meets customer expectations and drive significantly higher response rates and revenue per customer. Companies that chose to embark on such a significant undertaking will have a critical competitive differentiator in the coming years.

Email marketing is fast emerging as the common thread that links all of these customer interactions together. It is the hub of all digital marketing conversations and the unique identifier in many customer databases. A cutting-edge example of real-time marketing comes from Unica marketing excellence award honoree Intercontinental Hotels Group (IHG). When someone books a room online at one of IHG's 4,400 global properties, they automatically receive a confirmation email that is tailored to the individual based on their loyalty status, the hotel location, their purchase history and specified preferences. No two confirmation emails are alike. At the time of booking, IHG's online reservation system communicates with StrongMail and Unica Interact to deliver a unique, targeted email to that individual in less than 2 seconds. Soon this real-time personalization will be extended to the web, providing a seamless customer experience between channels.

Brands are quickly realizing that the days of batch and blast are over. Not only are they becoming increasingly ineffective, they are also alienating customers who expect companies to send messages that reflect their relationship with the brand. Campaign management systems like Unica and SAP CRM are making real-time marketing possible, and tight integrations with email marketing, web, mobile and social media channels are necessary for delivering these unique experiences to the consumer.

Smart marketers know that one-to-one marketing is the best way to generate revenue and customer satisfaction, and StrongMail works with leading campaign management vendors to put true one-to-one marketing within your reach. For more information on using email marketing and CRM together to deliver targeted, personalized messages, you can view our on-demand webinar "Email Marketing with SAP CRM: Achieving Relevance, Deliverability and Scale."

Before the rise of social media sites like Facebook, MySpace and Twitter, content was typically spread through email – the first social network. Web visitors and email recipients that liked a piece of content would email it to their friends and they, in turn, would do the same.

This had the potential to spread content visibility faster than search engines but sharing options were still limited. Today, email marketing campaign still hold the lion's share of content visibility at about half of the total content sharing on the Internet. However, social media has provided an interesting way for email marketers to increase their reach while using sharing tools as quick and effective calls to action.

What are social sharing tools and what can they do for email marketing?

In short, social sharing tools are the small icons that say things like "retweet" or "share this". A good example is StrongMail’s Social Notes.

These buttons allow readers to not only favorite your content, but send it to their friends via email and social media.

However implementing social sharing tools in your emails and on your website is only part of the job. In order to be shared, the content has to be share-worthy in the first place. Stop and ask yourself... would I forward this on? What about this is interesting and valuable? If you can't answer those questions, it's time to go back to the drawing board.

Choosing sharing tools and social platforms for your emails

One of the most common mistakes that email marketers make is trying to do too much with a single email. This is often manifested as a vast forest of tabs targeting every social media network.

Just as you need to evaluate your content, it is important that you think about who your audience is and determine which social networks and social media channels they use the most. This will help you select a social sharing tool that will best facilitate the sharing of your content. Remember that more options isn't always better. Sometimes too many options can detract from the user experience.

You can follow these steps when building a sharing tool strategy for social media and email marketing integration.

1. Content Research: what types of content are shared most often?
Alternatively, which topics tend to quickly turn stagnant? Use the reporting in your sharing platform to understand what people like and don't like. Modify your content creation strategies to feed them more of what they love.

2. Ask: marketing power comes from an audience that is willing to provide feedback.
Ask your readers which social media sites and applications they prefer and what motivates them to share content. Choose sharing tools and options that meet their needs and address their feedback.

3. Expand and Test: Add more sharing tools and social media.
If a piece of content is already doing well in email sharing, try adding social media sharing options. This can revive old content and enable you to fairly benchmark sharing sites against each other.

Why should email marketers use sharing tools?

The average Internet visitor is primarily concerned with speed. How fast can they get the information they need and how quickly can they share it with others.

If you provide sharing tools within your email marketing campaigns, you can give them a quick way to send interesting content to their networks. In a way, these sharing tools function in much the same way as calls to action.

By providing these tools throughout the content after key points or powerful statements (not just at the bottom), you can give your reader a quick way to connect with their friends through similar interests, benefiting your brand.

Do you want more tips to leverage the power of social media in email marketing? Discover StrongMail’s integrated social media and email marketing solutions and download the Email in the Age of Social Media white paper to learn how to effectively integrate social media into your email marketing campaigns.

Next week, the Canadian Marketing Association (CMA) is holding its National Convention in Toronto, May 26 – 27 2010. Titled Next: 2010, the event looks to be one of the year’s most exciting and informative Canadian marketing events, featuring keynote speakers ranging from accomplished direct marketers to environmental activists, social media gurus and even a few noted celebrities.

The CMA is breaking from tradition and taking a different approach with this event. Instead of linking their largest annual event to an exhibition, the they have eliminated the tradeshow floor to focus exclusively on making the conference experience as enriching as possible for the attendees. This decision was based on feedback from attendees and exhibitors in previous years, and I applaud the CMA for listening to their constituents and responding in such a quick and nimble way. I am honored and excited to be covering this event in conjunction with The Email Guide and look forward to learning what’s next from the best and the brightest minds in Canadian marketing.

For live coverage of the sessions, you can follow my Twitter stream at @kristinhersant or www.twitter.com/kristinhersant. I’ll be tweeting under the hashtag #cmanext2010.

UPDATE: For a complete recap of this event including a link to my 13-page Twitter Transcript, check out my blog post: The Top 10 Things I Learned at CMA Next 2010

The Email Experience Council (owned by the the Direct Marketing Association) released a new whitepaper today that contains useful information on the different types of email authentication (SPF, Sender ID, DomainKeys and DKIM) and when you should use each type. The report also contains a handy chart that details which types of authentication are being enforced by which ISPs, so you can plan based on the domain composition of your list.

The report is free for EEC members and $149 for everyone else. To get it, visit the following link:

EEC Deliverability Roundtable Email Authentication Whitepaper >>

Social media is playing an increasing role in customer engagement. However, as Econsultancy found in their 2009 Customer Engagement Report, email marketing remains by far the most important customer engagement tactic.

Since that report was published, a new study by eMarketer showed that when social media and email marketing are combined it strengthens the reach and viral marketing potential of both marketing channels.

However, the real power of the integration of social media and email marketing lies in the ability to engage customers in conversation. It is about generating word-of-mouth and enabling people to engage in conversation with your business when and where they want. Marketers today must embrace the power of online customer conversations and facilitate them using whichever channel the customer prefers.

According to every major study released in the last several years, that channel is most likely going to be email, followed by the web and increasingly social media. Hotmail recently surveyed their users and found that the top three reasons people have a Hotmail account all have to do with communicating with businesses, whether it be to keep up with a company’s developments via newsletter, receive transactional email confirmations or get special offers and discounts.

The power of customer engagement: why social media and email marketing are best friends

Earned media is defined as awareness gained through publicity or grass roots action, and this term has taken on new meaning with the advent of social media. By analyzing your subscriber database and empowering them to spread the word about your brand through viral marketing, your customers can literally become your most effective "earned" marketing channel.

To accomplish this, start by looking at your email database. Who are your most profitable customers? Who are opening and clicking on your emails the most? Who are the most engaged with your brand? These segments should be your first targets for an integrated social campaign. Key rules of thumb when designing your campaign include:

- Give them something to talk about. This is social, after all. What about your message is worth sharing with someone else? If you can’t answer that question, you shouldn’t launch the social email campaign.

- Make the conversation seamless. Use email as the launchpad to start a conversation.

- Move from listening to engaging. Customer engagement is about creating relationships that result in value for both customers and businesses. Listen to your customers, engage in conversation with them and inspire other customers to chime in where appropriate.

- Use the right technology. Make it as easy as possible for people to share your message and take it viral in social media. Plus, you’ll need detailed tracking on how well your program is performing, including reach, engagement and conversion metrics for the C-Suite.

Discover StrongMail’s integrated social media and email marketing solutions and download the “Email in the Age of Social Media” white paper to learn how to effectively drive customer engagement with an integrated campaign. If you simply want to engage your customers via social media and learn how to turn Twitter and Facebook into revenue generating channels, check out our social media solutions.

UK email marketing agency Alchemy Worx recently announced an important change in the way that Gmail renders image code. I've re-posted the full announcement below. As a reminder, always use an email campaign preview tool to see what your email campaign is going to look like in various email clients prior to deployment!

From Alchemy Worx....

Why does this matter?
It matters because it causes unwanted spaces to be added to your email potentially breaking the layout of your HTML. Code that used to render perfectly may now render incorrectly.

The change appears to be affecting messages in Gmail webmail when viewed in Firefox, Opera, Chrome and Safari. However it does not appear to have any effect on HTML emails in Gmail webmail viewed in Internet Explorer.

The solution
This issue is similar to a long-standing Hotmail bug. However, although you can fix this by addingat the top of your email in Hotmail, Gmail ignores this code so that fix will not work.

To ensure your HTML emails render the way they should in Gmail the following needs to be added to every image tag: style="display:block"

There is one exception: when you are displaying images directly alongside text, such as when you are wrapping text or putting images inside paragraphs.

Don't forget your triggered and transactional messages
The change will not just affect new messages you create, it will also affect any triggered or transactional email templates you have already set up.

Kara Trivunovic recently talked about the importance of the convergence of email marketing and social media and how both marketing channels are complementary.

Interviewed by Mike McDonald of WebProNews at the Online Marketing Summit 2010, she said that several aspects of social media and email have the potential to come into play together and allow businesses to expand the reach of their existing offers.

When combined, email marketing and social media allow marketeers to expand their customer base in a way that was not possible through email only. In particular, leveraging both channels can be an effective tool for gaining new subscribers.

When Mike highlighted a statistic that was presented at the event, stating that 50% of all content is still shared via email, Kara replied that about 86% of people in StrongMail client programs choose to share via email, the rest via Twitter and Facebook.

Sharing and sharing tools key when integrating social media and email marketing.

Kara further explained how StrongMail enables businesses to improve their email marketing campaign performance by combining the proven ROI of email with the power of social media to reach new audiences.

Today, businesses need to create integrated campaigns to leverage the natural synergies of these two channels to boost customer acquisition, retention and loyalty while generating more revenue.

According to Kara, there are three ways to integrate email marketing and social media:

1. Share with your network:
To engage evangelizers to share content, email is a great channel. But also provide other options to share including social media sharing tools.

2. Leverage as a medium to incentivize current customer base
Use social media and email marketing to drive additional subscribers, and to create awareness about your programs.

3. Acquire customers through referrals and shared content
Email is important since it still is the main channel to enable people to share information through emails, of which at least 90% can be converted. Emails do enjoy higher conversion rates.

Finally, Kara explained how StrongMail has embraced the integration of social media marketing and email marketing to make this integration work for StrongMail customers and businesses, seeking to leverage the power of both social and email.

From a technology viewpoint, StrongMail offers a referral marketing platform StrongMail Influencer, a social media management application called Social Direct and a social sharing tool called Social Notes.

Customers of StrongMail’s email marketing solutions can use these tools as part of the platform while our email and social media marketing strategists (led by Kara) help you get the most out of the integration.

To learn how to effectively integrate social media into your email marketing campaigns, please download the “Email in the Age of Social Media” white paper.

You can watch the full interview below.