Social Strategy

Cross-channel marketing. We're all trying to do it, but how many of us are doing it well? When it comes down to it, how do you put together a really successful cross-channel campaign?

Our advice? Build one campaign across email, mobile, and social media!

In this series of blog posts, I'm sharing three easy steps you can follow to accomplish this:

1. Create a Sweepstakes
2. Get a Committment and Follow Through
3. Measure, Refine, and Repeat!

Today, we'll explore the third and final step.

Step 3: Measure, Refine, and Repeat

In order to truly understand the impact of your campaign--and learn from the results--,...

By now, most brands have recognized the value of well-executed cross-channel marketing. But when it comes down to it, how do you put together a really successful cross-channel campaign?

Our advice? Build one campaign across email, mobile, and social media!

In this series of blog posts, I'm sharing three easy steps you can follow to accomplish this:

1. Create a Sweepstakes
2. Get a Committment and Follow Through
3. Measure, Refine, and Repeat!

Today, we'll explore Step 2.

Step 2: Get a Committment and Follow Through

An important goal for any brand on Facebook is to build a loyal fan base. Ask users for a...

Cross-channel marketing is a key focus for many brands right now. But when it comes down to it, how do you put together a really successful cross-channel campaign?

Our advice? Build one campaign across email, mobile, and social media!

ExactTarget client eBags recently executed a highly successful cross-channel campaign called "Bag an iPad." In this series of blog posts, I'll share the three easy steps they followed:

1. Create a Sweepstakes
2. Get a Committment and Follow Through
3. Measure, Refine, and Repeat!

Ready to get started?

Step 1: Create a Sweepstakes

Your current email subscribers are some of your...

Yesterday Facebook announced a new “Gifts” product – the Facebook gift card. An actual physical card, users will be able to send friends monetary gifts to various retailers that will automatically load onto the card. A single card will be able to hold balances for multiple retailers at once.

Right now there are four participating retailers (Target, Jamba Juice, Olive Garden, and Sephora) and money is only added by “gifting.” However, as the concept catches on and expands there could be some very interesting results to this experiment.

One problem social marketers continually bemoan is...

Each Thursday at 11am EST, marketers from around the world join the ExactTarget user community on Twitter for a conversation about trends and campaign ideas across the interactive marketing industry.  We call the virtual coffee chat the ExactTarget Café.

Our first #ETcafe guest for 2013 was Get Smart Content (@GetSmartContent), a behavioral targeting and testing solution on Facebook,  powering dyanamic content on your Facebook tab to help you deliver relevant content and test your creative.

In addition, Get Smart Content is now a featured Partner Gear within SocialPages. We had a great...

The ExactTarget team invites you to participate in our #ETCafe Twitter chat this Thursday (and every Thursday) from 11 a.m. - 12 p.m. ET, where we discuss emerging topics and trends from across the interactive marketing world. The virtual coffee chat is hosted directly on Twitter by @ExactTarget using the hashtag #ETCafe.

For this week's #ETCafe chat we've invited Megan Neely (@meganneely) of Get Smart Content (@GetSmartContent), a featured Partner Gear within SocialPages. Get Smart Content is a behavioral targeting and testing solution on Facebook,  powering dyanamic content on your Facebook...

The ExactTarget team invites you to participate in our #ETCafe Twitter chat this Thursday (and every Thursday) from 11 a.m. - 12 p.m. EST, where we discuss emerging topics and trends from across the interactive marketing world. The virtual coffee chat is hosted directly on Twitter by @ExactTarget using the hashtag #ETCafe.

Last year we worked with one of our national retail customers to determine how many of their email subscribers also used Twitter and followed their brand. We then dug into their email reporting to see whether social connections and interactions correlated positively with email engagement metrics like opens and clicks. We also checked in to see what the average Klout Score was for their subscribers and what Klout topics they were influential in.

The results were pretty amazing! See for yourself:

Want this infographic for your blog? Here is the code you can use:

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Facebook admins may be aware of a page management tool called “Hide” that allows them to hide and then unhide wall posts left by fans on a brand's wall. We're excited to announce that as of today, this capability is now available within SocialEngage as well!

This means brands can quickly remove inappropriate or undesirable posts from their wall:

Without permanently deleting them from their page history, leaving them the ability to restore them at a later date:

In the fast-paced, high-stakes world of social media, this can buy your team precious time while you decide who should respond to the...

In Part 1 of this post, ExactTarget client JetBlue provided recommendations around helpful content and holiday staffing. Today we continue with Part 2.

As one of the top airline carriers in the country, with service to 75 locations mostly within the continental US, JetBlue is familiar with the holiday rush – and the strain it puts on travelers, many of whom are first-time or infrequent flyers. They make it their mission to alleviate that stress and put some cheer back into holiday travel using both offline and online methods – including social media.

How do they do it? Laurie Meacham, social...

Let’s face it; the holidays can be a really stressful time. Last-minute shopping, decorating, traveling, cooking, hosting, and the coordination of everything that comes with making the season merry and bright... It all translates to increased pressure for brands to provide outstanding service to their sometimes-frazzled customers. In this 2-part post, ExactTarget client JetBlue provides their best advice for the holiday season.

The ATA estimates that 47 million passengers will travel during the winter holiday season (between December 13 and January 2) which directly follows a Thanksgiving...

At Connections 2012 UK, I sat with over 700 marketing professionals at the end of a day packed with all kinds of valuable information, to listen to Joseph Jaffe’s keynote presentation based on his book, “Flip the Funnel.” At first I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to take in another sentence. With my brain already so full, how would it fit another drop of inspiration?

But right from the start the presentation was like a jolt of caffeine. I found myself nodding along the whole time. It was one of those talks where each point was so clear, and made so much sense you caught yourself thinking,...

Last week Andy Sernovitz, author of “Word of Mouth Marketing: How Smart Companies Get People Talking,” spoke to a group of ExactTarget customers, employees, and prospects at an event in San Francisco. While we enjoyed the beautiful weather and scenery from the deck of Waterbar on Embarcadero, Andy shared the most enjoyable marketing presentation I’ve seen in some time so I wanted to share some of the key points I learned from him with you*:

1. It all starts with happiness. Customers will talk about you whether they’re happy or not, obviously, but it’s the happy ones you want to activate – so...

Manage Conversations Effectively in Twitter and Facebook: Part 3, Track and Adapt in Real Time

At Connections 2012, I hosted a panel featuring Joel Ballezza of Brooks Running and Allison Gonzalez of Carter’s. We spoke about the top three ways you can manage social conversations more effectively, using SocialEngage:

1. Staff for Success
2. Plan Ahead
3. Track and Adapt in Real Time (today's topic)

In case you missed it, this blog series will bring you up to speed on the best of the session, including attendee feedback. Leave your own tips in the comments section!

Tracking is the key both to measuring success...

At Connections 2012, I hosted a panel featuring Joel Ballezza of Brooks Running and Allison Gonzalez of Carter’s. We spoke about the top three ways you can manage social conversations more effectively, using SocialEngage:

1. Staff for Success
2. Plan Ahead
3. Track and Adapt in Real Time

In case you missed it, this blog series will bring you up to speed on the best of the session, including attendee feedback. Leave your own tips in the comments section!

Planning is critical to social media success. If you or your company first got involved in social media as a response to conversations your customers were...

At Connections 2012, I hosted a panel featuring Joel Ballezza of Brooks Running and Allison Gonzalez of Carter’s. We spoke about the top three ways you can manage social conversations more effectively, using SocialEngage:

1. Staff for Success
2. Plan Ahead
3. Track and Adapt in Real Time

In case you missed it, this blog series will bring you up to speed on the best of the session, including attendee feedback. Leave your own tips in the comments section!

The first, most important, step to take in order to be more effective when communicating with customers online is to make sure you have the right people on...

Klout score is a great way for brands to get a birds-eye view of the amount of impact their social channels are having on customers and the public at large. The bigger the Klout score, the bigger the potential impact.

SocialEngage includes an influence report so marketers can effortlessly keep a finger on that pulse for all their Twitter channels.  Knowing how beneficial that is, a top customer request has been to add a score for Facebook pages into that report.

Apparently Klout has been getting the same request - Klout recently updated their score to include interactions that brands are having...

You may have already noticed this new feature in SocialEngage reports recently, but if not allow me to introduce you to our Export Messages Report!

Now you can easily run a report to export all messages in a given date range from your Inbox, Queued, Sent and Closed folders.  The report will include key information for each message like the type of message it was, what network it came from, what channel it was sent to, the tags placed on it and more.

Export Messages makes your SocialEngage data portable. The ability to store messages and contextual engagement information offline and outside...

Last week Facebook had its first ever conference just for marketers, fMC. During the course of the day several exciting announcements were made that will affect the way that brands do business and engage with customers on Facebook.  We know it can be hard to keep up with the ever-evolving world of social media so we put together this crash course on the upcoming changes.

Lesson 1: Timeline For Pages

The new Timeline profile structure that rolled out to users several months ago will now be available for brand Pages. Over the new few weeks you can opt-in to update your page but by 3.30 all Pages...