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Buzzword-Free One-to-One Marketing Strategies

Email + Surveys

Wednesday, October 7, 2009 by Scott Roth
At ExactTarget, we often talk about honoring subscriber preferences in regards to permission, frequency, content and channel. In my last post on Email + Web Analytics I wrote about the value that web analytics brings to the table by allowing you to sense behavior and then respond with appropriate offers.

Here's my buzz-word free advice for today. Instead of just observing behavior and reacting, why not also ask your subscribers what they are looking for? It may seem like a no-brainer, but not that many people do it, or do it well. This is where preference centers, lead capture forms, and surveys come into play. By leveraging surveys both on your website and within emails, you can gradually accumulate more and more information about your subscribers that will help you target them with more timely and relevant one-to-one communications.

One of our certified ExactTarget Extensions Network survey partners is SurveyGizmo. SurveyGizmo provides a seamless integration to include intelligent surveys in your emails, leverage existing subscriber data in surveys, and automatically update ExactTarget subscriber records with survey responses.

You can learn more about SurveyGizmo by visiting their listing on the ExactTarget Extensions Network.

Or, if you are going to be in Indianapolis for Connections on Tuesday, October 13th you can stop by their user meet-up happy hour from 5:00-7:00. Click here for more information.
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Email + Web Analytics at the Internet Marketing Conference

Tuesday, September 15, 2009 by Scott Roth
On Friday, September 18th I'll be presenting at the Internet Marketing Conference in Vancouver, BC on the topic of Email + Web Analytics. In particular, I'll be focusing in on how leveraging Email together with Web Analytics can help your one-to-one marketing strategy in three main areas:

1. Understanding and optimizing the performance of campaigns
2. Improving the timing and targeting of campaigns
3. Increasing the relevance of content and offers delivered through campaigns

The full description is below, and if you are going to be in the area or are already planning on attending the event, I hope to see you there!

Friday, September 18th, 10:45-11:15: Email + Web Analytics

You know how important it is to take the insights you get from your web analytics and use them to drive targeted and relevant content to your email subscribers. But have you made it a priority? It’s time to turn your data into action!

Understanding visitor behavior gives you indicators of not only when to reach out to your subscribers, but what offer to send them. By leveraging what you know about your website visitors, you can improve the relevancy and targeting of your one-to-one marketing campaigns, thereby increasing your ROI.

Can't make it to Vancouver? Sign-up for our free webinar about Email + Web Analytics, on Wednesday, September 23rd at 2:00pm EST. Don't miss Driving Results Through Actionable Data.

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Be Relevant with your Social Media Marketing Message

Friday, August 28, 2009 by Scott Roth
Be Relevant with your Social Media Marketing MessageToday there was a great article in Clickz by Bryan Eisenberg called Social Media is not the Message that I couldn't agree with more. Bryan doesn't bash the importance of Social Media, rather he embraces it and says that it shouldn't take our focus away from making our overall communications better. Here's my favorite quote:

"Every status update, tweet, and inbox message is nothing more than a communication between a sender and a reader. What you say and how you say it matters. Be relevant."

Leveraging Social Media as a part of your overall marketing communications strategy shouldn't come as a replacement to what you're doing through existing proven channels such as email - but more as a compliment. Here's a link to a presentation that I did at the Online Marketing Summit earlier this year in which we walked through several examples of how ExactTarget clients are embracing Social Media as a part of their overall one-to-one and email marketing strategy - not simply replacing what they are doing.

Relevance drives engagement, and engagement drives business...

To learn more about leveraging Social Media check out:
Webinar - Social Forward: Email Meets Social Networking
Whitepaper - Expanding the Reach of Email Through Social Networks
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Getting a seat at the web analytics and optimization table

Wednesday, August 12, 2009 by Scott Roth
Curious how to take your email marketing efforts to the next level? One suggestion that might help is getting a seat at the web analytics and optimization table within your organization. It was Jason Burby's latest ClickZ article titled Integrating Web Analytics and Optimization Into Your Business, that reminded me of this fact, but the premise is simple: what's happening on the web can definitely impact what can or will happen within your email marketing programs. Whether it is better understanding your web audience overall, at a segment level, or down to the individual - by understanding how they found your site, how much time they spend on your site, how often they come back, and what content they are interested in you'll be able to reach out to them with more relevant and timely communications.
 
At ExactTarget we've partnered with and built integrations with all of the industry leading web analytics vendors, Coremetrics, Google Analytics, Omniture, Unica, and Webtrends. But it doesn't even necessarily take integration, just get a seat at the table and see what you can learn.
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Email Marketing & Social Media Webinar

Tuesday, June 2, 2009 by Scott Roth
Looking for innovative ways to take your 1-to-1 marketing strategies to the next level and put new technologies to work for you? On Wednesday, June 3rd at 2:00 EDT I'm hosting a webinar on how to leverage email marketing and social media together.

Joining me will be Emily Riley, Senior Analyst from Forrester Research and Lauren Kufta, New Media Coordinator from Roadrunner Records. Emily from Forrester will share some valuable research on the topic as well as some examples of companies that are on the cutting-edge. Lauren from Roadrunner will talk about their social media strategy overall and how they are using email marketing in conjunction with social media sites to connect fans with music artists.

Lastly, I will share some thoughts about how linking email marketing and social media initiatives is not only good for extending the reach of your message, but also a great source for acquiring new and highly engaged opt-ins for your email programs. I'll also touch briefly on our new Social Forward feature (including ShareThis integration, Direct to Social, and Forward to a Friend) that is quickly making its way through the ExactTarget Innovations Lab and is slated to be released to all of our customers in our Summer 2009 Release.  

Learn more about the webinar and register now

Social Forward Webinar
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It's Social Media Day at ExactTarget

Thursday, February 5, 2009 by Scott Roth

Today is a very fun day for us at ExactTarget as we start to see two worlds (email marketing and social media) coming together. If you didn't see it, we just announced a strategic partnership and forthcoming integration with ShareThis - one of the leaders in the realm of social media sharing.

One reason why we’re particularly interested in having a partnership with ShareThis to jointly provide this capability is because they allow for sharing across not only social networks (they already support over 40), but also blogs and email. So, in short, no matter where or how you want to share or post the content, ShareThis has you covered. Another reason that it’s great is because ShareThis is the expert in this space, and as quickly as social networks are changing, ShareThis is always one or two steps ahead of what’s going on. Being able to have a partner that is always up-to-date with the world of social media lets us focus on what we do best (email marketing and other one-to-one communications), and also gives us the benefits of what ShareThis does really really well.

That said, stay tuned as we continue to work together to release this new functionality for our joint clients and prospects and if you're interested in getting more information as soon as the product is officially released, you can submit your contact information in the Learn More tab of the ShareThis Extensions Network listing.

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Email Append: "It Sucks!"

Thursday, January 22, 2009 by Scott Roth
OK, how is this for a buzzword-free thought around the practice of Email Append?

Derek Harding from Clickz today summed it up pretty simply with two words: "It sucks."

In his article he goes on to very clearly explain the short term and longer term dangers of this practice. All concepts that line up directly with what our very own email marketing deliverability and strategy gurus Al Iverson and Chip House have recently had to say.

Nice work Derek, and thanks for keeping it buzzword free!

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Go buzzword-free, I dare you!

Tuesday, January 13, 2009 by Scott Roth

OK, here's the deal. I'm a marketer that markets to marketers. So, that means chances are pretty likely that if you're reading this, you are also a marketer. Which means in theory, we should be speaking the same language for the most part. So here's my promise to you - and the reason why I think you'll enjoy the contents that you find here: 2009 is going to be the year that I attempt to go completely buzzword-free in my communications. I know, buzzwords are everywhere so it's going to be hard to do, but here are two reasons why I think it's important.

  1. Too many times, especially in the business-to-business space, marketers are their own worst enemy when it comes to communicating with their audiences. We spend too much time trying to use the latest catch-phrases and coolest new ways to describe things, that we often leave the intended recipient of our message scratching their head, trying to figure out what we were talking about in the first place.
  2. Throwing out too many buzzwords in a single sentence just simply makes you sound like someone who is trying to compensate for something they really don't know anything about, even if you really do know a lot about the topic. I'm guilty of it, in the past, when I didn't really feel comfortable or wanted to make an idead sound bigger than it really was, I would fall into the trap of "inserting buzzword here" to try and make up for it. Not anymore, 2009 is a new year baby!

So, are you ready to join me on this journey to just cut to the chase? I'm ready to start sharing and collaborating on marketing ideas and strategies that don't get caught up in a lot of talk, but not a lot of action. We live in a pretty complex world, and hopefully this little slice of cyberspace will be a safe haven for sophistication, simplicity, and saying more with less.

Join me this year as we explore straightforward email marketing, SMS, interactive, and one-to-one marketing strategies for a complex world - all with an occasional dose of humor to keep it real.

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