March 31st, 2009 | by admin
Innovative Marketing Tactic or Ridiculous Attempt for Attention?
via thedirectmarketingvoice.com I recently came across an article describing Kentucky Fried Chicken’s latest buzz-marketing effort. The company has put a call out to five of the United States’ major cities asking them to allow the fast-food fried chicken chain to “re-fresh” their streets. What does this mean exactly?
Creating an Opt-Down Strategy
via www.b2bemailmarketing.com In this article, Stefan Pollard explains why you should offer an opt-down option on your unsubscribe page and offers some advice on how to do this: Use topic choice rather than cadence to reduce e-mail frequency.* Define your message streams clearly.* Start with a short survey.
Authenticity
via www.jewishdonorblog.com Fundraising letters coming soon to a mailbox near you! But we’re often so busy making sure our direct mail package gets out that we forget to ponder the holiday’s many important messages. One in particular is especially relevant to non-profit organizations: Authenticity. Your organization is unique. You do something special that others don’t. And whatever it is that you do, be true to it.
Measuring Your Marketing
via www.delivermagazine.com Steve Cuno has a passion for blending science with marketing. The founder and chairman of Response Agency Inc., a direct response marketing firm in Salt Lake City, Cuno is a nationally recognized expert in branding and measurable marketing. In his new book, Prove It Before You Promote It: How to Take the Guesswork Out of Marketing, Cuno focuses on hard evidence and debunks myths about success based on focus groups and “gut” feelings. He sat down with Deliver recently to discuss his crusade against marketing-by-intuition.
Online Shoppers Optimistic, says Survey
via www.internetretailer.com Online shoppers are not quite as reluctant to spend as they were in the fall, according to a survey by comparison shopping engine PriceGrabber.com. 50% say they have cut back spending in the past few months in a survey conducted in February and March, compared with 59% who said so in a PriceGrabber survey in October and 56% in May.
March 30th, 2009 | by Cynthia Fedor
I recently came across an article describing Kentucky Fried Chicken’s latest buzz-marketing effort. The company has put a call out to five of the United States’ major cities asking them to allow the fast-food fried chicken chain to “re-fresh” their streets. What does this mean exactly? According to Kenneth Hein’s article in Brandweek, the chicken chain will fill up the city’s potholes in the name of helping the community. Of course, a non-permanent street chalk will top the newly covered potholes with the phrase “Re-freshed by KFC.”
As noted in the article…
Giving back has become a trend for marketers, including Starbucks, Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes and others that have centered their message around helping the community.
But to me, this attempt seems a little too opportunistic and self serving. Where is the long-term benefit for KFC and for the community? And, is the connection of potholes to chicken meaningful in anyway? What are the positive and negative implications of purposefully making this type of connection?
My opinion of this buzz-marketing attempt and the frame that it’s all in the name of community is not favorable for KFC. As Robert Weissman, director of Commercial Alert, stated in the article:
There is an aggressiveness towards moving into new dimensions of public spaces. This would be another example of this unfortunate incursion of advertising messaging into [consumers' lives]… KFC should fix their menu first.
What do you think? Is this an innovative marketing tactic or a ridiculous attempt for attention?
March 30th, 2009 | by admin
Video In Email
via thedirectmarketingvoice.com I was reading this fantastic post over at email-marketing-reports.com, about using video in email marketing. I was under the impression that email marketing is not really ready for embedded video, and the post corroborates what I thought, but the post reminded me that there are other ways to get video into emails, and very good reasons for doing it.
Why You Should Never Rely on Intuition to Assess Your Campaigns
via www.delivermagazine.com DELIVER: Why do you think so many marketers remain reluctant to embrace real measurements for their campaigns? CUNO: One reason is the thing we call denial. It’s very human of us. Think how many parents prefer to think their kids aren’t using drugs, no matter where the truth actually lies.
Banks increase direct marketing to customers – DMNews
via www.dmnews.com Although the bulk of banks’ direct marketing spend is still devoted to acquiring new customers, banks are paying more attention to existing customers via direct mail and e-mail, according to a new report from Mintel Comperemedia.
The Direct Mail Blog: Working out What Promotional Action to Do
via theaddressers.typepad.com You know one thing about these promotional materials – THEY DID NOT DRIVE BUSINESS AWAY. The period of increased production or income may have had many explanations (success tends to generate many claims of causation from a variety of sources), and many of these explanations are just so much opinion.
Greening Print Marketing: Do You Really Want to Purchase That Imported Paper?
via inspiredeconomist.com In this economic environment, it’s tempting to succumb to the temptation to purchase on price. Two products may seem comparable in quality and performance, so why not go with the less expensive one? When it comes to paper, the reason is environmental impact.
March 27th, 2009 | by Robert "Dude" Spellings, Jr.
I was reading this fantastic post over at email-marketing-reports.com, about using video in email marketing. I was under the impression that email marketing is not really ready for embedded video, and the post corroborates what I thought, but the post reminded me that there are other ways to get video into emails, and very good reasons for doing it.
The easiest way to put a video into an email is to grab a screen shot of the video and then simply throw the image into the HTML of the email with a link, so that users can click on it and go to a page outside the email client that will display the video. One thing that I didn’t realize is what a drastic improvement to clickthrough rates that adding the screen shots will create. It doesn’t help your open rate, so if that’s your problem, you gotta get recipients to open the emails first, but once you do that, throwing a few links to videos sounds like a fantastic idea to boost clickthrough rates.
Of course, you don’t want users to simply click on the video link and then not buy/convert, so the video page will need to close the deal, if that’s your goal. Many email marketers apparently see the primary purpose of videos in email as brand awareness. Personally, unless your videos can stand on their own because they are compelling, funny, or entertaining (like www.willitblend.com), I don’t think brand awareness is necessarily the best use of video in email. We all get too many emails as it is, and viewing some cheesy branding video with the charm of a Dharma Initiative training video, is not going to earn you any brand loyalty. But who knows, email marketing tactics are still being developed and we are all learning, so do some A/B split testing and post your results in the comments.
