From Constant Contact

Better Email Subject Lines

I found this brief article with 6 direct points on how to write a better email campaign communication.  When creating your marketing tactics, you need to understand your customer or prospect to get their attention.  Once you have it, do not forget to have a well integrated, measureable  campaign with clear objectives and a great, valuble “call to action” included in the communication.

What do you think?

From Hub Spot

Email Marketing Optimization

One of the tactics in an integrated marketing tactical plan is email marketing linked to a well designed landing page.   The article linked here has some great tips to consider when using email in your tactical marketing  mix.

From the article  “Like any good analytical marketer, you’re always testing, measuring, and improving your marketing campaigns. So you reach your email marketing program – what’s first? The copy? The image? The call to action? Actually, none of that. The first step in email marketing optimization is: your landing page.”

From Harvard Business Review

Article Abstract — Customer-centered Brand Management

This article says that companies are focusing on the lifetime value of their customers.  Really.  I agree that they should be, however,  I wonder how many actually are managing the Lifetime Value of their customers.  The article promo states “Yet, few companies have come to terms with the implications of that idea for their marketing management.”  The idea implications of course is that Lifetime Value Matters.

The article promo also goes on to suggest that managers are focused on brand equity rather than customer value.  The article authors suggest some things that managers should be doing such as ” replacing traditional brand managers with a new position–the customer segment manager; targeting brands to as narrow an audience as possible; developing the capability and the mind-set to hand off customers from one brand to another within the company; and changing the way brand equity is measured by basing calculations on individual, rather than average, customer data.”

I will be grabbing my hard copy of HBR and reading this one.  Most likely, it will be discussed in an upcoming class.

Comments?

From WordTracker

The LongTail of Keyword Research –Single Keywords are for Losers

this article gives some excellent insight into Single Word Keywords.  Time is precious, so is money.  The evidence is in, keyword phrases in the “Long Tail” is the way to go.

Fromn the article “How do you make a profit from keywords that bring just one visit a month? Easy, you target lots of them at once – you target groups of keywords (keyword niches). Here’s how…

Let’s start simply with one page. Your SEO might focus on one or two keywords but you’re really targeting those keywords and their long tails. And the more relevant and related words on your page, the more of that tail you can get results for.”

READ the Bullet points in this article after the subsection called “How to make a profit in the Long Tail”

What did you think?  Do you agree?

From BtoB Magazine Online

Twitter Tools for Teams reports that  “Today, it would be rare to find a marketer that not only is managing a single Twitter feed—either for themselves or a companywide feed—but more than likely juggling a slew of them across different departments or, in the case of marketing agencies, across a cross- section of clients.”

It seems that TWITTER is becoming a TOOL that must be considered in everyone’s marketing mix.

The article reports that tools are emerging to manage multiple Twitter Feeds.  Do you have your first one yet?

Thanks Hugh

GOOGLE Maps Navigation (Beta) Video

Scroll Down for Video

Awesome!  Perhaps we know why some are predicting  iPhone  domination by the Droid!    Can I build this into my car?  Are you listening Toyota?

Check out the slide shows too!

Voice command.  FREE no ads (for now)

What do you think?

Thanks Dave (MG-745) for the suggestion.

Digital Grandma

So, how important is education and training to technology diffusion?

A FAST COMPANY blog article says that, based on patent filings we may be seeing contextual ads in the Amazon Kindle.   Ads on the Kindle     From the article “What the patents set out is that downloaded text content for the Kindle could be spotted with contextually-sensitive advertisements: Mention of a restaurant on a particular page could result in a dynamic-embed for a nearby restaurant to the user on the opposing page.”.  

What do you think?  Would you like (accept) this?  Is this just the “way things are” and Amazon is just at the forefront? 

Also from the post  ”But it’s the possible extension of this idea to book texts that gets uncomfortable. Would you be happy reading a copy of The Hobbit, only to find an embedded ad for pedicure treatments on certain pages? The framework for this to happen isn’t clear from the patent, though it would be reasonable to expect Amazon to start by offering the ads in books with discounted prices”. 

So would you accept the ads if you got the book at a discount?  Does that change anything?

As important as search engines are to a firm’s brand building and promotion efforts, very few “industrial companies” really go beyond a “brochure-ware” website to smart “long tail tactics” such as this.  An example of a somewhat small firm getting it right is Enercon Industries  they have just started a blog on Plasma Treating that provides some excellent technical information as well as “link juice” for the corporate site.  It also allows readers to have a “conversation” with an expert, which I am sure will give them some interesting sales leads. 

What do you think of these efforts?   How can this tactic be used in New Product Management?