Email Advertising

Real Email Threat #2: The Specter of “Inbox Clutter”

Monday, November 2, 2009 by Morgan Stewart

There is a lot of talk about the sheer volume of email consumers receive. According to Forrester, 60% of consumers believe they receive too many email offers and promotions (Forrester, December 2008). Thus, it should also be no surprise Forrester also found 64% of consumers say they delete most email advertising without reading it and for them to conclude that consumers find marketing emails a burden.

According to MarketingSherpa, 32% of marketers see general inbox clutter as the biggest challenge to their success in email marketing (MarketingSherpa, Email Marketing Benchmark Survey, September 2008). In Customer Knowledge is Marketer Power, Forrester found that 90% of marketers who believe email will be less effective in 2 years believe the reason for this decline is “too much clutter in consumer inboxes,” while 59% believe “SPAM” will drive this decline.

Yes, inbox clutter is impacting the industry-wide success of email marketing. In fact, at the beginning of this year I the following prediction in our 2009 Marketing Almanac: “On average, we expect open rates, click-through rates, and conversion rates will decline in 2009 as subscribers’ inboxes are flooded with bad email from marketers trying to stay afloat.”

The latest DMA figures suggesting that the ROI from email marketing slipped again this year, down 3% from last year to $43,62, support this prediction. However, recently release open rate benchmarks from Epsilon suggest my prediction was wrong. They say open rates have increased slightly in each of the past 4 quarters. From Q2 2008 to Q2 2009 they report an increase from 18.8% to 22.2%. That’s an increase of 18%!

Okay, so the DMA says ROI is down 3% and Epsilon says open rates are up 18% over the past year. At the end of the day, all this suggests is that even if inbox clutter is having a negative impact, it isn’t having much of one on individual marketers.

Consider the following information presented by MarketingSherpa. 31% of consumers indicate that one of the reasons they unsubscribe or disengage from emails is related to inbox clutter. However, this is the third most common reason identified in this survey. The relevance and frequency of YOUR emails are much more important.

Thus, I call this threat the specter of ‘inbox clutter’. It's simply another myth that your emails are being crowded out by junk. Unless you plan on running an average or below average email program, none of this matters for you! If your program delivers value, your program will continue to thrive. The problem is not “out there” as the specter of inbox clutter suggests. More and more, the challenge is to create an above average program.

Are Your Subscriber's Fan's For Life?

Monday, November 2, 2009 by Lindsay Niemiec

On my drive back from Chicago last week, I noticed a large billboard towering over the interstate. Of course, many billboards crowd every interstate, but this one was different. The advertisement for the Chicago Bears, read “if you’re not a fan, you’re a tourist”. What grabbed my attention was not only to how clever I though the ad was, but how applicable it is to the ExactTarget’s Subscribers Rule! philosophy. Everyone wants to be a part of something special, and marketers want their customers to feel as if they are special too. It starts with delivering 1 to 1 direct marketing of which subscribers are a fan.

Does your marketing program address what your subscribers want? Or do you blast out the latest news and hope for click-throughs? Do you dynamically target the content of your emails to your subscriber's preferences? Or do you batch and blast the same email to everyone, hoping they find it relevant? As the NFL season continues and the holiday season kicks off, the relevance of your email campaign programs could be the key component in making your subscribers true fans.

If you make your subscriber a fan, then much like a Bears fan, they're in it for life. If not, then they're just a tourist on your list for now waiting for the next best thing.

Live Blog: Email+Video - Take 2

Wednesday, October 14, 2009 by Kevin Nuest

This is a live blog from Connections 09 in the Email Optimization Track

Email is not dead. People that use social media are actually high volume users of email.

History of email:
(present by Chris Studabaker of ExactTarget)
Text Based only 10 years ago
HTML is now being accented by Rich Media and Video

Advertisers continue to increase spending in online video. All the more reason to use video in email.

How and When to use video in email

Benefits:
-Emotion
-Highly engaging
-Personal, even user-generated
-Great demonstration medium (show, don’t tell)

Concerns:
-Development cost and time
-Production quality and the “uncanny valley”
-File size and bandwidth
-Frame rates
-Deliverability

Deliverability methods:
Streaming – video downloaded as it plays
Embedded – video data included in sent message
Linking – click through to externally hosted video

When using video in email, make sure your subscribers want to see the video you have. Knowing your subscribers’ expectations is very important. Also, remember the messages primary goal. Is the video the Call to Action or do you want your subscribers to click on something else in the email?

Linking with Button or Image?
Do you link to your video with a graphic button, a clip of the video with a play button superimposed, or a rotating animated gif with multiple clips from the video. It depends on your subscribers. Experiment with all three. One type may drive more total clicks but another may drive more conversions.

Streaming Video in Email:
(Peter Horan of GoodMail)

GoodMail is a CertifiedEmail partner with many ISPs so messages sent don’t end up in the spam filter.

CertifiedVideo will create an interactive experience via email.

Every time you ask a subscriber to do one more step, you loose some of them. If a subscriber has to click to turn on images in their emails, they may not view your email.

Daily Candy currently sends CertifiedVideo in their email.

Fandango also includes movie trailers inside their video, not just a static button that a subscriber has to click to see the video.

Target includes essentially video commercials inside their emails to represent their products and brand.

Thrillist allowed Canon to sponsor a video displaying a new camera inside one of their emails.

The Effects of including video in email:
Increases Brand awareness in important categories, such as increasing how Target is perceived as caring for their customers.

CertifiedVideo emails currently only works on web-based email, such as AOL, Yahoo, and Gmail, but not Outlook.

The Success of Behavioral Targeting: Earning Consumer Trust

Friday, October 9, 2009 by Caitilin Landrigan

A recent study performed by the Annenberg School for Communication, University of California Berkeley School of Law, and the Annenberg Public Policy Center reports that Americans believe marketers should not advertise to them based on preferences and behavioral data…But why? In a marketplace of abundant information and almost innumerable and varied products, why don’t consumers desire some assistance to narrow down their selection? Why don’t people appreciate that marketers want to provide them with relevant advertising? If I am going to see advertisements on a website…and there is no question that I will…I would much rather see advertisements that pertain to my interests. Wouldn’t you?

The Annenberg/Berkeley study reports that 66% of Americans do not want to see website ads that are tailored to their interests. This sounds discouraging, but I believe the information provided by this study offers valuable insight for marketers seeking to capitalize on relevant, 1 to 1 marketing efforts. This study’s stats highlight consumers’ desire for control and trust—observations that can inform behavioral web and email marketing strategy.

Advertising preference is not the only metric this study provides, as eMarketer’s article “Behavioral Targeting Misses Mark” points-out. There are several other, seemingly contradictory metrics this study reports that can help us solve this puzzle. For example, close to 50% of Americans would like websites to give them discounts specific to their interests. Hmmm…So you don’t want to see the ads, but you do want the coupons presented in those ads? Puzzling…let’s dig deeper.

eMarketer highlights another Annenberg/Berkeley metric: 67% of all Americans feel that they have “lost control over how their personal information is collected and used by companies,” and at the same time 54% of Americans believe that “existing laws and organizational practices provide a reasonable level of protection for consumer privacy.”

This issue is one of trust, not necessarily the failure of behavioral marketing. Consumers like discounts, but people feel as if they have lost control over their personal information, and no one likes to feel like they have lost control. As a Catapult at ExactTarget, I spent two days in Chicago with fellow Catapults, interviewing people on their marketing preferences. Overwhelmingly, people expressed that they felt their personal information was abused by spammers and companies they had no relationship with. Yes, there are “reasonable” laws regarding consumer privacy, but consumers ask, “Why do I get so much spam?!” “How did they get my email address? My phone number?”

When asked how they felt about tracking on “websites in general,” people stated that they felt behavioral tracking was creepy and “Big Brother-like.” On the flipside, when given a concrete example, like Amazon.com’s personalized product recommendations that appear when browsing the website, interviewees’ tone changed: “Yes, I find that helpful, but they don’t send me a million emails after I buy something and pester me all the time. And, I have a relationship with them.”

Lesson learned: people want to feel safe, respected, and protected. Amazon.com is not scary, because they have a trustworthy reputation. As marketers, we cannot neglect that relationships are the foundation for business. Leverage your landing pages, emails, voicemails, and SMS organically to build trust with clients, at point of sale, for example. In your emails, provide a reminder of how clients signed-up. Provide a link in your emails to a page on your website that explains how you use subscriber information. Perhaps you should only advertise on trusted websites. Finally, don’t be abusive: be cognizant of email frequency and content.

I encourage you to check out our whitepapers on building quality lists direct marketing channel preferences. Use our List Growth Advisor for custom recommendations on how to responsibly grow your subscriber lists so that you can leverage subscriber data respectfully and effectively. Behavioral tracking does not have to "miss the mark."

Sending SMS Messages? Make Sure You are in Compliance with New SMS Regulations.

Friday, October 2, 2009 by Phil Schott

If you're an ExactTarget client using SMS to enable targeted 1 to 1 communications you should have received an email on October 1, 2009, informing you of a change to industry regulations.

Here's what the email stated:

Beginning October 1, 2009, industry regulations state that the phrase "Standard Message charges apply" is no longer acceptable as standard messaging in SMS communications. For all digital advertising formats and message flows, one of the following phrases must be used in its place:

Message and Data Rates May Apply
Msg&Data Rates May Apply
Msg&data rates may apply
Msg&data rates may aply

View the ExactTarget SMS Regulation resource page for more information and helpful links to ensure that your Text Messaging campaign and communication programs are compliant.

If you have any questions about this change, please contact Deliverability Services at deliverability@exacttarget.com.

54% of Marketers Caught Up in Channel Budget Battles

Tuesday, September 29, 2009 by Morgan Stewart

Last week, ExactTarget released a commissioned study from Forrester Consulting titled Customer Knowledge is Marketer Power. To me, the most sobering statistic is that for 54% of marketers, “each channel they use competes with each other for budget.” Another 28% provided a neutral response to the question. Leaving only 18% that disagree with the statement.

Each channel we use competes with each other for budget

That these budget competitions are occurring is not a surprise to me, but what concerns me is what this leads to—debates about the relative value of each channel for the purpose of re-allocating budgets.

Marketers look to the pseudo-science of marketing attribution to help them resolve these questions and buzz about the topic is picking up again. Shop.org recently announced the creation of a new Online Marketing Attribution group, David Baker wanted a new attribution calculator for Christmas, and Ed Henrich (appropriately) wants to make sure email is included in the attribution equation.

The idea of attribution makes sense. The hope is that by properly attributing the influence of different marketing campaigns on actual conversions will allow marketers to spend their marketing dollars more appropriately. However, the reality of marketing attribution is mired in disagreements about how it should be done. As one marketing manager interviewed in Customer Knowledge is Marketer Power shared, “Multichannel efforts are hard to track. We’ll look at a sale, but it’s hard to determine whether it was the email or the catalog that closed the deal.”

In this age of marketing accountability, have our attempts to answer John Wanamaker’s conundrum about which half of his advertising dollars are wasted gone too far? Is it really necessary to know if it was the email or the catalog that closed the deal? Or do we simply need to know that both played a role and that fewer sales would have occurred if one or the other were to be eliminated?

Would love your thoughts as I continue to ponder…

Marketers Moving More Budget to Email Marketing

Friday, September 25, 2009 by Joel Book

Two recent studies provide compelling evidence that marketers are turning to digital marketing – and specifically email marketing – to improve marketing effectiveness.

According to the “2009 ANA/MMA Marketing Accountability Survey” from the Association of National Advertisers and Marketing Management Analytics, “The No. 1 strategy for marketers who wanted to improve effectiveness without spending more, according to the June 2009 poll, was shifting from traditional to digital media. More than one-half of respondents also reported shifting spending away from brand-building initiatives, and 38% were putting more spending into lower-cost media.”

Tactics Used by US Marketers to Improve Marketing Effectiveness

Change in Marketing Spending for Select Media in 2009

And as more marketers shift to digital media, the tactic that is seeing the largest increase in spending is email.

According to the “2009 Media Survey Results & Analysis” study conducted by Round2, “40% of US Marketers reported that they had increased spending on email marketing in 2009.

What This Means for Marketers

Increased dependency on email marketing means three things:

1. Email is no longer optional. It has firmly established itself as the #1 tactic for 1to1 marketing. And email has become the “go to” tactic for word-of-mouth marketing as brands empower email subscribers to “share” email messages and offers with their friends on Facebook, their followers on Twitter, and their connections on LinkedIn.

2. Email marketing will become more sophisticated as marketers move aggressively to integrate email with other tactics and technologies – like CRM, SMS, POS, Websites, and Social Networks -- that are used to keep customers connected to the brand. The cornerstones of effective email marketing will be Integration, Automation and Optimization.

3. ESP (Email Service Provider) selection will become a more strategic decision. Marketers must evaluate and select an ESP by their ability to provide “industrial strength” application functionality plus consulting services including 1to1 marketing strategy, email and landing page design, email deliverability, and application integration.

Social Media is Here to Stay

Thursday, September 17, 2009 by Kevin Nuest

Is Social Media a fad?

Over the last couple years, many businesses have been asking this question. Companies have been trying to figure out if they should justify time and effort in their marketing campaigns to pursue social media. I think everyone will agree that the answer is a resounding YES!

As part of a balanced plan of attack, marketers must include social media in their mix. It is too powerful to ignore. Social Media is relatively new, compared to other sources like TV and print advertising that have been around for a long time. In the technology driven age we live in, companies have to continue to evolve their one to one marketing.

Below you will see a great video about the power and importance of Social Media Campaigns.

For tips to improve your social media efforts, check out our free whitepaper: Expanding the Reach of Email Through Social Networks

@knuest

Truly a One-to-One Marketing Company, Not Just an Email Service Provider

Wednesday, August 26, 2009 by Kyle Schroeder

As I am looking back over the 14 weeks that I have been here this summer, one of the biggest things that has hit me is that ExactTarget is not just an email marketing company. They are not just an email service provider. They are truly a one to one marketing company that has a full line of products to help increase the marketing ROI for a company.

Yes, we do email. We actually send some of the most intelligent and customer-driven email through our dynamic content capabilities.

But what else is in our product line?

SMS: We have the ability to develop and execute powerful SMS text message campaigns to engage customers on the spot.

Voice: We have a product that can send targeted and specific messages to consumers by telephone. Adding this personal touch moves a company way beyond simple TV advertisements.

Landing Pages: These microsites enable users of ExactTarget’s already powerful email software platform the chance to call customers to action through a targeted website, designed specifically for the particular action.

When a company uses all four of these tools together, they have the ability to become a very sophisticated marketer that engages consumers in a relevant way.

Kyle Schroeder
Slingshot Summer Intern

2009 Marketer's Dilemma: Doing More with Less...Again

Thursday, August 20, 2009 by Amanda Berkey

39% of Marketers think their budget will be cut in 2009

As a marketer, I've always focused on balancing driving the most results from a limited budget. Then the global recession took effect last year and to remain competitive, companies began their prudent cost-cutting measures across all areas of the business. All marketers know that their budgets are some of the first to be reduced during trying economic times. This challenge helps us flex our virtual marketing muscles to affect our target audience with strategic marketing campaigns, with less budget than before.

The good news is that you're not alone! MediaPost shared results from the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) recent survey of marketers, concluding that while marketing spend is slightly increasing in some companies, the amount of new projects is surging. What a balancing act!

MediaPost's Jack Loechner writes, "today, 87% of the respondents indicate they are identifying cost savings and reductions, the same as one year ago, and only slightly improved from 93% six months ago." The survey shows that marketing spending is still tight often leading to sending fewer people on the road, reducing the media advertising, and lowering overall production costs.

This recent survey validates that the pressure is on to continue to improve marketing strategies that drive business results, all while spending less budget. At ExactTarget we know more than ever that our customers come to us for One to One Marketing and Email Marketing Strategies that help set them apart from their competitors.

This Tuesday, Myron Corporation, announced that they renewed their contract with ExactTarget because they were able to reduce their marketing costs while more than doubling their email-related sales using our on-demand marketing solutions. So what's "in" for 2009, you ask? Saving on costs, while driving business is always in style.

Cost Per Lead Advertising: The New Era of Online Marketing

Thursday, August 20, 2009 by Joel Book

Online advertising has shifted from a “blast” and “broadcast” approach to an engagement focused strategy. And the emphasis has switched from CPM to Cost Per Lead to generate higher ROI.

If you’re serious about improving the quality of the leads you are generating from online advertising, plan to join me and my special guest, Evan Adlman, Vice President of Strategic Development at Pontiflex, for a very eye-opening and educational webinar on Cost Per Lead Advertising titled Solving the Online Marketing Puzzle.

In today’s webinar, we will demonstrate how you can acquire the email addresses of qualified consumers that are most likely to be responsive to your products, services and communications. Then we will discuss how you can effectively engage these consumers through email communications. Finally we will show how you can extend and amplify your communications to attract more consumers using social media.

Pontiflex is the industry’s first open and transparent Cost-per-Lead or CPL market. Through Pontiflex, advertisers can connect to the entire performance advertising market from a single point of connection. They can run ads on premium publishers and acquire leads – the contact information of people that are interested in their products or services. What’s more, they pay only for qualified leads – not for wasted clicks or impressions that might never convert. Using transparent CPL advertising, advertisers can grow their email lists with qualified subscribers in a cost-effective way.

Register now to attend today’s webinar at 2:00PM Eastern!

Email + Social Media: The Future of B-to-B Marketing?

Wednesday, August 19, 2009 by Joel Book

At the recent ANA/BtoB Magazine conference in Chicago, Paul Dunay, Global Managing Director for services marketing at Avaya, and Jason Ferrara, VP Corporate Marketing at CareerBuilder.com presented a terrific session titled "How B-to-B Marketers Are Using New Media," in which they discussed how they have increased spending on new media, especially in the past year.

"We do search, email marketing and social media. That's the holy trinity of online marketing," said Dunay. He also noted that – with no new money in the marketing budget – he has paid for his new media efforts by decreasing spending on print, TV, radio and other traditional media. Ferrara has done the same at CareerBuilder.com

Avaya and CareerBuilder.com are not alone in embracing new media. According to a recent survey conducted by the Association of National Advertisers and BtoB Magazine, 20% of b-to-b marketers used social media in 2007. This year, 66% of b-to-b marketers are using social media.

My Take

I think it’s becoming more and more clear that email + social media is an effective strategy for business development. And there are three reasons:

1. Attracting Email Subscribers. One of the biggest benefits to social media is the ability to attract new email subscribers. Brands that provide a compelling reason for members of social networking sites to subscribe to their email communications are finding that these sites are an ideal venue for list growth. And as these people become new email subscribers and use Social Forward to share email content with those in their online social networks, they become powerful influencers.

2. Professional Networking. With more than 45 million users representing 150 industries around the world, LinkedIn is the biggest networking watering hole for business professionals. It’s just as effective for attracting talent as it is for generating referrals and product recommendations. But be on the lookout for WSJ Connect from The Wall Street Journal, a new networking site that’s in the works. It will also be aimed at professionals and its being billed as the “LinkedIn killer.”

3. Lead Generation. Social networking sites provide a natural gathering location for people who are passionate about a particular brand or interest. Engaging these individuals with offers that are relevant is proving to be smart business. An excellent study from OneUpWeb shows that ads on social networking sites work. As the report states in its summary, “Repeated exposure through the synergy of sponsored ads and search results increases familiarity with the brand. This is vital for generating sales both online and offline.” And once these leads are generated, email provides the most effective tactic for lead nurturing and aiding the buyer’s decision-making process.

Free Webinar to Maximize Advertising ROI with the Cost-Per-Lead Model

Tuesday, August 18, 2009 by Kevin Nuest

When: Thursday, August, 20, 2009 at 2PM EST- Register Now

Webinar - Maximize Advertising ROI with the Cost-Per-Lead Model

It's a challenge these days to optimize advertising online. As we have seen, many company are pulling dollars from different forms of offline advertising and putting it towards PPC causing search costs to increase. Instead of following the pack and spending even more money on your online advertising campaigns to maintain the same results, be a leader and take advantage of the Cost-Per-Lead Model.

With the Cost-Per-Lead (CPL) model, you only pay for qualified leads. You don't have to pay for those clicks that are most likely not going to drive new business and revenue. During the webinar, you will hear from Joel Book, ExactTarget's Director of eMarketing Education, and Pontiflex, the leader in the open and transparent Cost-Per-Lead market.

Solve the marketing puzzle by listening in on the complementary Webinar, "Maximize Advertising ROI with the Cost-Per-Lead Model" on Thursday, August 20 at 2PM EST. Register Now before it fills-up so you don't miss out!

Measuring ROI By The Square Foot

Tuesday, August 18, 2009 by Teresa Becker

I was driving along the interstate last week when I noticed a billboard alongside the road. In big, bold letters it read: "Measure Your Advertising ROI By the Square Foot". Suddenly the difficulties of advertising in print media took on a whole new light. Advertising on paper is a very difficult task. You can't measure impressions, you can't track data, and it's almost impossible to follow the path of your customers through the buying cycle. In the end, it comes down to a guessing game paired with a hopeful strategy. So what can marketers do to target their audiences and to track relevant information? I'm glad you asked.

Enter a One-to-One Digital Communication Platform. The hassles and difficulties of tracking impressions and leads no longer has to be a daunting process. You don't need to measure your effectiveness by the square foot - with business to business email marketing, you can measure actual conversions by clicks, leads, and impressions and take out the guessing games.

In fact, with a platform like this, you can Integrate Email, CRM, and Web Analytics, helping you to spend your marketing dollars even more wisely and giving you the power to make informed marketing decisions.

Don't throw your marketing dollars to the wind. In this economy, it's more important than ever to make sure your marketing dollars are giving you the best return - a Digital One-to-One Communication Platform will help you track your ROI without the guessing.

How To Sell Virtual Goods Using Email and SMS Marketing

Friday, August 14, 2009 by Kevin Nuest

So you think you want to sell virtual goods for a living? First you have to understand what a virtual good is. According to Wikipedia, “Virtual goods are non-physical objects that are purchased and exchanged on the internet.” Pretty vague definition. As an example, most people thing of items in online games such as World of Warcraft and Second Life as the only virtual goods being exchanged.

What about those virtual flowers you bought on Facebook and sent to your significant other? Or maybe it was a martini or beer glass you sent to your friends on Facebook to commemorate an unforgettable night out. According to eMarketer, the market for virtual goods is on the rise and will reach nearly $2.5 billion by 2013!

A great way for creators of virtual content to claim their piece of the pie is to market their masterpieces using Email and SMS text messages. For example, someone that regularly creates and sells backgrounds for Twitter can begin to amass a following. Why not allow customers to opt-in for a weekly, personalized email notifying them of newly released backgrounds that may be of interest to them based on previous purchases. This type of One to One Email Marketing campaign has a huge ROI compared to that of other traditional methods of advertising.

Maybe you create games or programs for the iPhone. You can send customers an SMS text message when you release new add-ons, updated versions, or products that are similar to something the customer already downloaded from you. Of course all of this can be automated, leaving you with more time to make amazing creations.

One to One Marketing is My Kung Fu - and It is Strong (Thanks to Landing Pages)

Friday, August 14, 2009 by Bob Ullery

One to One Marketing Kung Fu with Landing Pages

Hey all. Today I'll be discussing how to strengthen your e-commerce kung-fu by utilizing ExactTarget's Landing Page technology.

As you might have realized from browsing some of the other posts on our blog, targeted email marketing is only part of the story. A question to ponder is: 'Why personalize a customer's email only to send them to a non-personalized web page?'.

There often seems to be a disconnect in the minds of marketers when it comes to the partnership between email and their website. If you harness the power of one to one marketing for email shouldn't your website also present content to the user in a one to one manner? You've taken meticulous care to present precise product offerings in your email (driven by analytic data, purchase data, engagement data, etc), but when a subscriber clicks through they're shown the same content as everyone else. What?

The gap is apparent, but the remedy isn't always so easy. Each site is unique in both hardware and software, and implementing a true one to one strategy with customized content isn't always an option. There could be high development costs or long production runs associated with integrating this strategy into your current site.

But what if there was a middleware that could be skinned to look exactly like your site and could serve customized content as a stand-alone page or be embedded into your existing pages? Obviously there is or I wouldn't be writing about it:

Enter ExactTarget Landing Pages.

Landing pages are an easy way to spin up dynamic behavioral and/or profile driven web pages tailored to the individual. Often these can be spun up by marketers without involving their IT crew, and since they function as middleware you can consider them platform agnostic.

They can leverage the same Dynamic Content and AMPScript driven content areas that you already use in your emails, including those pre-created and stored in the system. You can even drag and drop them into the page when creating it just like when you create your emails in ExactTarget.

There's also a new(er) Smart Capture tool designed specifically for landing pages. With it, you can easily create forms that talk directly to your ExactTarget data, and optionally, your Microsoft Dynamics CRM or Salesforce.com data as well. You can visually create forms that add users to lists, send triggered emails, modify data extensions, and many other tasks. All of the HTML and required AMPScript is generated for you. All you have to do is drag and drop it into your page.

Landing pages can harness ExactTarget Live Content including Live Offers. With Live Offers, you can serve generic or subscriber specific promotional codes AND track the redemption of those codes so that they can/can't be shared or expire after a certain time.

ExactTarget has a productized Google Ad Manager integration that can also be leveraged within landing pages as well. Integrations like this help bridge the gap between your real site and your landing pages. You could show the same ads on your landing pages that you do on your site, simply by dragging them in, while your impression and click tracking stays intact. This integration can even show different ads based on profile attributes. Talk about a value ad to your advertisers! Real targeting!

Landing Pages as Mini-Apps

The beauty behind landing pages is that the entire ExactTarget platform is at your disposal. Think of a landing page as a mini application that can do almost anything that you can manually do in the system. Not only can you customize layout and content on-the-fly based on who the subscriber is, but using AMPScript and data extensions you could:

Create an out-of-stock reminder system
Interact with a user using SMS and/or Voice
Create a CMS application
Create a shopping cart with checkout system
Develop a user commenting system

Use your imagination. Literally, you could build nearly anything that you could on your own server. Data extensions are the databases and AMPScript is the programming language. Programs are the cron jobs that run your interactions.

Flexibility

The true power behind landing pages is that they can stand alone or be embedded via an iframe into your current site. I've even created AMPScript-only landing pages that I'll ping via ajax to do some processing for me and are completely hidden to everyone else. It's a way other than our API to do some really robust tasks and is useful when used client-side.

FYI, I built the ExactTarget Extensions Network entirely on Landing Pages.

Kung Fu
Like I said in the title of this post 'One to One Marketing is My Kung Fu - and It is Strong'. Now your Kung Fu can be strong too by using landing pages to bridge the gap between your emails and website to reach true one to one marketing nirvana.

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Follow me on Twitter: @bobbr

Social Media Use on the Rise Among B-to-B Marketers

Friday, August 7, 2009 by Joel Book

A new report being unveiled this week at The B-to-B and ANA Conference in Chicago shows significant increases social media use by B-to-B marketers.

According to an exclusive survey of B-to-B and B-to-C marketing professionals conducted by BtoB Magazine and the Association of National Advertisers, more B-to-B marketers are getting on the social media bus. Here are some highlights:

57% of B-to-B marketers are now using social media channels, compared to just 15% in 2007.
Among newer media tactics for social networking, blogs top the list.
81% of B-to-B marketers are currently using LinkedIn compared to 25% in B-to-C.
Twitter use ranked highest among B-to-B marketers at 70%.
Facebook is still the most used social media site (74%). Among the B-to-B marketers, 60% use Facebook.

How B-to-B Marketers are Leveraging Social Media

Tactically speaking, Social Media Marketing (SMM) is primarily a public relations tool, but it is fast becoming very effective for generating new business leads, either directly or through referral. While Facebook is the dominant social networking site for B-to-C marketers, LinkedIn – as the study revealed – is the preferred watering hole among B-to-B marketers.

Another big way in which marketers are leveraging social media is for email list growth. According to the recent ExactTarget 2009 Email List Growth Study, Social Forwarding is projected to be the most frequently adopted new list growth tactic in 2009. Social Forwarding uses ShareThis to make it easy for email subscribers to share email content directly with friends and colleagues on Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, LinkedIn, and many other online communities.

Are you LinkedIn?

If you want to learn how to best leverage the networking and lead generating potential of LinkedIn, my friend and social media expert extraordinaire, Jason Baer, of Convince and Convert, has a great presentation on using LinkedIn to build your reputation and generate leads.

Twitter's Newest Revenue Model: Promote SPAM

Wednesday, August 5, 2009 by Morgan Stewart

While ideas come and go, some ideas are definitely worse than others. PC World ran a story this morning talking about a new Twitter venture called Sponsored Tweets.

The article, Twitter Sells Out explains, "Run by IZEA, a company that specializes in advertising via social networks, the service lets businesses pay "celebrities" to tout their product or personality." Reporter, Brennon Slattery, closes by writting, "Sponsored Tweets -- and services like it -- are damaging Twitter's already bruised reputation by turning it into an advertising spam-fest rather than an innovative tool connecting people."

I believe spam-fest is an understatement. To illustrate, I created a new Twitter account @GetSpammed. I have not provided anything to suggest who I really am, my Twitter handle is @GetSpammed, and the account has zero followers. I signed up for Sponsored Tweets and was presented with the following screen.

While the site promotes that you can have celebrities tweet on your behalf, I created this account as a non-celebrity interested in tweeting about "Adults Only" content--basically everything representing the worst spammer I could imagine. After completing the form, I was presented with the following confirmation.

I am not expecting to have a lot of requests to endorse products with this account (I wouldn't anyway). Advertisers can use a number of filters and selection criteria to determine who they invite to tweet on their behalf. Mashable covers these tools in more detail.

Nevertheless, the entire concept presents an overly simple business model spammers will be more than happy to follow:

Get a ton of followers through any means necessary (there are already plenty of morally questionable tactics promoted consistently for this)
Make yourself look credible by trimming down the people you follow in order to get your following:follower ratio to 1 or less
Sign up to get paid and spam the heck out of your list for a quick buck
Rinse and repeat with as many accounts as you can

There are plenty of people in the world willing to do the unethical for money. Sponsored Tweets not only enables, but promotes crying, "Come all ye spammers and use Twitter to make a quick buck."

Of course, there are some who would disagree with this assessment, believing that the social phenomenon will help weed out bad tweeters who abuse the system. How quickly we forget the monumental efforts email has made in order to combat spam. People get pretty creative when there is free money to be made.

The big question, is Twitter digging it's own grave by allowing this? I think it is, curious to hear your thoughts.

To learn more about ethically expanding your social media reach, read the whitepaper “Expanding the Reach of Email Through Social Networks Whitepaper.”

More Permission Failure - Friend Requests

Wednesday, July 29, 2009 by Dawn DeVirgilio

Being an avid participant in the social media sphere - I’ve found myself subscribing to more and more email. (So much for email being dead!) I generally keep a separate email for these opt-in’s and check in once a week to see what cool things other companies are doing with their email marketing.

Randomly a B2B opt in email started coming in to my personal account from a company who I had NOT opted in to. I started doing some sleuthing on how they acquired my email address.

We had two things in common:

The company was in Fort Wayne, Indiana - my hometown
They were in the communication/advertising industry

Then one of the emails advertised an event. Since I don’t live in Fort Wayne anymore – it wasn’t relevant to me. But as I was making my daily social media check-ins - Twitter, Facebook, LinkenIn - I noticed someone’s status promoted the event. This was a person I had accepted into my network, not because we were actual “friends” but because we had similar things in common. The SAME two things in common from the list above.

I had solved the case. This company received my email because I had added one of their employees to my social network.

But did that constitute opting into their email campaign? Just as my colleague (and true social media friend) Al Iverson has said, giving someone your business card does not imply permission. The same should be said for all your friends, connections, and followers in your social network. By adding you into my social network, the only one to one communication I’ve opt-in to is that you communicate to me personally, thru that network.

I'd be interested in your thoughts. Does adding someone to your social network equate to opt-in permission? Does it matter what network you’ve accepted them on (LinkedIn vs. Facebook)?

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