3 Questions For...
Grady Smith, Founder, Further In Productions - January 21, 2010
Grady has been a gracious donor of video production services to several eec projects. We spoke with him about the importance of using quality video in digital marketing – and what it really gets you. Thanks, Grady – for all you do for the eec, and for these great insights!
1. With everyone putting their own amateur stuff on YouTube these days, have consumers lost their appreciation for quality video filming and production?
Consumers have not lost that appreciation. They can clearly define the difference between user generated / viral videos and video they expect to see from a corporation.
2. Does that mean that user generated content is not helpful for marketing?
No, of course not. Pepsi (or any marketer) can certainly create buzz with a user-generated, viral marketing campaign, but that is exactly what it is, a marketing campaign and one of many Pepsi might be running at a given moment. When a company uses video within their control to represent their image or message, quality is extremely important, just as a quality website, quality messaging and quality product are to a consumer.
3. How do business professionals use video in online marketing today?
Video is a great asset to any company trying to promote a product or service. Video simply creates another view of a company’s message and another way to reach consumers. It is very friendly for search engines and a site like YouTube can ONLY generate more views.
It also adds texture to a website, giving the consumer a break from text overload.
Simon O'Day, Managing Director, Eservices Email - January 14, 2010
1. Why did you write The Big Australian Email Report?
As Australia's largest email marketing service provider, with more than 10 years experience, we understand the thirst for knowledge within the email industry. Whether in the US, Australia, or anywhere else in the world, email marketers are constantly seeking information on best practices and opportunities to improve their programs.
In Australia there has never been a report of this size looking at the performance and practices of the Australian email industry. So we produced the Big Australian Email Report to help drive the industry forward in terms of accountability, content creation, data analysis, campaign measurement and reporting.
It was a thorough and extensive process, analyzing nearly a billion emails and combining this with results from a survey sent to more than 300 email marketers. But we think it was worth it, laying the foundations for what will be an annual report on the attitudes and activities across the industry.
2. What did the report find?
The Big Australian Email Report shows Australian companies are increasingly sophisticated in their approach to email marketing, with many companies using global best practices for testing and measurement of their program. However, too many senior marketing decision makers still equate a big data base with a successful program.
Size sometimes matters, but the far more important factor here is not size, but what you do with it. Like with any marketing discipline, best results and ROI comes from being targeted and relevant. For some companies, this may mean sending fewer emails, only to people who really value them.
Some of the key findings include:
- Marketers are moving to email at a fast rate with 2 out of 3 planning to grow their use of the channel
- 50% of decision makers evaluate the success of their email program based on the size - rather than the health of their database
- Opens are trending up but click rates are trending down, making relevance essential
- Two thirds of companies don't address inbox placement appropriately
- There has been a 400% increase in the number of emails opened on an iPhone in Australia - but that's still only 2.1% of all emails
- Transactional emails (welcomes, notifications) have 2-3 times the response rates of traditional email marketing.
3. Where can readers get the Report, and is it relevant to companies outside Australia?
The report is available for download for free from the eec's Research Store.
The report provides a framework for assessing and analyzing an email program no matter where in the world they are managed operate. Whether you're in Australia, the US, or Guatemala, the key message from the Report is that companies need to understand their own metrics and their own customer databases.
It is useful to have an overview of an entire industry, but every program is its own benchmark.
Steve Woods, CTO, Eloqua - November 19, 2009
1. Email has generated a ton of revenue for marketers, and most of it from a pure batch and blast approach. Why is segmentation and customization so important now?
The parallels with the newspaper industry are fairly accurate. They used what could easily be described as a “batch and blast” approach for many years with great success, but you only need to look as far as the collapse in subscribers at most major newspapers to realize that it’s not working any more. How our audiences discover information has changed substantially, and it it’s not relevant, it’s invisible. Marketers have to work hard nowadays to understand each prospect’s buying process and deliver relevant content that is timed and targeted based on each individual buyer in order to be noticed.
2. In your blog, Digital Body Language, you propose that customers and prospects provide marketers with persona data simply by their online actions. How much data do we need for this persona to be reliable and representative?
Every step matters. The first, and simplest, thing to look at is just whether a person is “active” or “inactive” as that requires very little data and can help you manage how frequently you communicate with each person and whether they are beginning to emotionally unsubscribe. From there, understanding areas of interest based on web activity (what areas of your site they visit) can give you a better ability to personalize and much stronger results. We’ve often seen marketers leverage exact search phrases to understand where a person is in their own buying process, or tie in usage data from product trials to give even deeper insights into behavior.
Each additional data point gives you additional insights, but every step you take lets you increase your relevance and your response rates, so there’s no reason not to get started.
3. How can a marketer test the waters with a Digital Body Language approach. Is there easily found and managed data that we can all use to get us started?
Web and email activity is the easiest. Do they open and click your emails? What areas of the website (products, services, case studies) do they find interesting? What are they searching for when they find your site? This information is readily available and can give you some very good insights very quickly.
4. In our world of a socially connected Internet, how does the Digital Body Language of a segment or group of subscribers evolve?
Social media provides a lot of great insights into how buyers discover you and your company. The context of how and why they ended up on your website provides vital information into who they are (or are not) as a buyer. Was it a blog post that caused them to visit you? A discussion on LinkedIn? A video shared on Facebook? All of that context, which you can see as someone visits your site, through what we call the social media periphery, gives you insights into who they are as prospects and why they are there, which is much more actionable segmentation insights than just demographics or firmographics.
David Daniels, Email Analyst & Co-Author of Email Marketing: An Hour A Day - November 12, 2009
1. What should marketers take into consideration when putting together their 2010 budgets?
Marketers should ensure that they have enough staff resources in their budget for 2010. I often find that marketers don’t do enough testing or targeting because they simply lack the resources to get things done. As email marketing matures, the channel is becoming more complex, not easier. To manage this complexity, marketers will need more staff.
2. A recent Wall Street Journal article claimed email is on a fast decline, soon to be obsolete. Can you provide some feedback on the statements made in the article and also touch upon the future and sustainability of email?
Ironically, the story quickly became the most emailed story on the Wall Street Journal web-site. Email has a strong future and remains to be the primary online communication tool. Even social sites such as MySpace have begun to offer email inbox capabilities. Our email address is our digital fingerprint. We need one in order to gain access to social networks, have an online banking account or order products online. While the use of email for personal communications in some demographic segments is lower than others, it simply underscores that we need to be as relevant as we can be to capture the user’s attention when they are in their email inbox.
3. What can marketers do to sell email and social internally/to the C-Suite?
Email is the hub to all other cross-channel marketing tactics and it must be used in tandem when building a social presence. Both email and social are cost effective, so the emphasis should be put on the return that can be achieved when both channels are leveraged. For example, I found in a recent study that I did for Forrester that marketers that segment and target subscribers by using social behavior and used user generated content generated 5 to 6 times more revenue and profit than marketers that did not.
Lastly, marketers need to stress to the c-suite that their clients are likely already talking about their brand in the social sphere and it is important for any brand to be involved in that dialogue.
Matt May - November 6, 2009
1. In your keynote presentation, you spoke about “elegant solutions”. Can you explain what that means?
An elegant solution is one that achieves the maximum effect with the minimum means. It’s an idea — a product, process, service, strategy or performance— that accomplishes two conflicting goals at once: profound simplicity and surprising power. Scientists, mathematicians, and engineers search for theories that explain highly complex phenomena in stunningly simple ways. Artists and designers use white, or “negative,” space to convey visual power. Musicians and composers use pauses in the music—silence—to create dramatic tension. Athletes and dancers search for maximum effect with minimal effort. Physicians draw on the Occam’s razor principle in an effort to find a single diagnosis to explain the entirety of a patient’s symptoms, shaving the analysis down to the simplest explanation. Filmmakers, novelists, and songwriters strive to tell stories that seem simple but that foster multiple meanings yet achieve universal resonance.
So you see, elegance is a widely sought-after quality, and a universal pursuit.
2. What is kaizen and why is it so important?
Kaizen is the Japanese word for the American-born (circa 1940) concept of continuous improvement. It is responsible for Japan’s competitive advantage in business and other pursuits, and responsible in large part for Japan’s rise from the ruins after World War II. Kaizen roughly translates to “change for the better.” It is at once a principle and a practice. As a principle, Kaizen puts creating customer-defined value at the center of all activity. As a practice, Kaizen entails just three fairly simple steps: create a standard, follow it, and find a better way. It is a fundamentally democratic business concept: of the people, by the people and for the people. When Kaizen is embedded in an organization, the result is broad and deep portfolio of small ideas implemented very quickly, every day and by everyone, that consistently yields low-cost, low-risk, high-impact breakthroughs. It prepares you to capitalize on the bigger opportunities when they come, so you won’t miss out. Ultimately, the small steps catalyze something altogether new and novel. Kaizen achieves big leaps through small steps.
When you can get the entire company to walk into work every day to not just do the work but look for a better way to do the work, you become unstoppable. Toyota implements over one million ideas a year, and that alone explains why they have survived the current economic crisis relatively unscathed, compared to their industry competitors.
3. Why do you think people/marketers are so stuck “inside the box”?
Honestly, I think being inside the box is okay. There’s plenty of room for innovation and improvement inside the box. But to answer your question, I think it’s because the pressure to innovate in a fiercely competitive marketplace falls on the individual: we’re asked for higher commitment, more adaptability, quicker progress, better execution, stronger decision-making, and freer thinking. At the same time, we’re told to manage risk, meet short-term objectives, and only bet on sure things. All within the confines of environments that are often anything but free: powerful systems, rigid structures, conflicting agendas, privileged information, political posturing, and limiting rules. The truth is that uncertainty, risk and failure are all part of innovation, and the ability to meet business objectives doesn’t always square with the personal capabilities needed to innovate as required.
So, what’s the solution? Work like an artist. Work like a scientist. Work like a designer.
How? By exploiting your expertise; by pursuing possibility; courageously rejecting the status quo; viewing opposition as an inventive challenge; refusing to let bureaucracy and hierarchy stifle your creativity; using cutbacks and resource constraints to drive new ideas and methods. By pursuing the simple question that drives the kind of “new school” thinking found at the heart every breakthrough, big or small: Is there a better way?
Matt May
Author of In Pursuit of Elegance
Follow: @matthewemay
Email Matt
