Multichannel Magic

Creating the Illusion of Progress

Have you ever had the feeling that you are not accomplishing anything even though you are working harder than ever? Neverending projects, like website or social platform optimization, can wear you down so much that progess slows down. This post from Fast Company tells you how to trick your mind into powering progress. Now that’s a brain game that helps!

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Everything You Need to Optimize Social Platform Cover Art

What’s the best size for your Twitter avatar? YouTube cover art? Facebook profile photo? These questions can be answered with multiple web searches or you could save the infographic in this post. It is a great resource.

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Google Takes the Government to Task in a Brilliant Marketing Move

You would have to have been living under a rock to not know about the NSA monitoring online and cell phone activity. Google published a letter to US government that requests permission to include the requests in the company’s transparency report. This is a brilliant marketing (some might say CYA instead) move because it gives the illusion that Google protects its users’ privacy.

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Do you remember the good old days of email marketing? Messages that slipped past the spaminators landed safely in subscribers’ inboxes. The right subject line captured attention, the content offered goods or services, and sales followed. Those days are disappearing thanks to Gmail. Capturing attention, the first objective in every marketing email, is getting harder.

In case you haven’t heard, Gmail is becoming a virtual assistant to its users. The new interface automatically sorts incoming messages into five tabs: Primary, social, promotions, updates, and forums. Using the new design is optional, but one should expect the majority of gmail users to convert once it rolls out completely.

Source: Gmail Blog

This news should send shockwaves through companies that have relied on template email marketing instead of relationship building to generate revenue for the past decade or so. Great subject lines lose their effectiveness when they are hidden on a back tab. Enticing copy is rendered helpless when no one reads it. And, sales are hard to get when marketing messages are not seen.

The Primary tab is dedicated to messages from other people (aka humans) and given top priority. Every other incoming email is sent to a secondary tab. Messages from social networks go to the next tab. Marketing messages (aka company revenue generators) go to the Promotions tab. The Updates tab houses invoices, order status, and other trigger emails. And the final tab, Forums, is for newsletters and discussion sites.

Mobile and tablet versions are rolling out within weeks of the desktop tabs launch. This makes it harder for companies to share their marketing messages on every device.

Source: Gmail Blog

There may be a silver lining for marketing in the user’s ability to customize the inbox. According to the gmail blog post that announced the new design, “You can easily customize the new inbox – select the tabs you want from all five to none, drag-and-drop to move messages between tabs, set certain senders to always appear in a particular tab and star messages so that they also appear in the Primary tab.” This is good news for companies that have great relationships with their customers. Their emails could end up on the Primary tab.

Inbox filters are not new. Other email servers allow users to set up rules that automatically sort incoming messages. The difference is that Gmail does it automatically without the user having to do anything except choose to use the feature. Most people will leave the automated settings as is and miss the marketing messages your team worked hard to create.

Companies have to motivate subscribers to change Gmail’s settings so their messages aren’t hidden in the secondary tabs. It’s hard enough getting people to whitelist marketing email addresses. Motivating them to whitelist AND change settings requires strong ties between company and individual.

Fortunately, there is some time before this new design dominates the email channel. The interface is new and Gmail is planning a “gradual” rollout. How long is gradual? Only the powers at Google know for sure. If history is an indicator, there will be several months before it is available for everyone. There will be an adaptation period that affects timing too. People may wait to see how well it is working before they make the change. This gives companies and organizations time to revise their marketing strategy with more emphasis on relationship building. The companies that do will have an edge over the competition.

For tips on how to connect with subscribers, check out 31 Ways to Supercharge Your Email Marketing.

Why do you send emails to your customers? Are you using them to generate more sales, better loyalty, and lower costs? Or, are they a simply a vehicle for moving products or selling services? Spend a little time looking at the emails coming from a variety of industries and brands and you’ll see a cookie cutter approach reminiscent of catalogs in the 1980’s. The strategy generates revenue and short term success but it doesn’t build the relationships between customer and company required for longevity.

The opportunity to create one to one relationships with thousands of customers has eluded marketers until now. The high costs associated with personalized marketing messages prevented companies from connecting with people on a personal level. Things have changed. The combination of low cost email marketing and extensive data availability makes creating individual messages an affordable option.

Few companies are doing it because email marketing works so well now. Why should they invest resources in changing a strategy that profitably generates sales with every send? History has a way of repeating itself. The catalogs that modeled themselves after each other are gone now. Their short term vision failed to build brand loyalty. The catalogs started to look outdated and stale as competition heated up. Customers quietly disappeared over time.

The same evolution is happening with email marketing today. Competition is heating up with more business emails being sent every day. Newcomers are following the lead of their predecessors and sending template messages. Why shouldn’t they? It’s a strategy known to work well.

Before long, email marketing programs will start losing traction. Opt outs will start increasing while opens and clickthroughs decrease. The companies that change their strategy now will continue to have a successful email marketing program. Their outgoing messages will enhance customer relationships while generating sales. To get started:

• Use behavior analytics to identify the best opportunities for marketing to your customers.
• Create personalized email messages that speak to individuals.
• Provide useful information that educates customers about your products and services.
• Make it easy for people to connect with your company.
• Use trigger emails to improve service, capture abandoned carts, and make the buying decision easier.

Moving from cookie cutter marketing to personal messages is an evolutionary process. The sooner you start, the faster you’ll start receiving the benefits.

For more details and specific examples, check out 31 Ways to Supercharge Your Email Marketing.

For more tips on improving email marketing results, check out 31 Ways to Supercharge Your Email Marketing.