Email Marketing - The Future or Necessary Evil?

During 2009, the U.S. spent $13.4 billion of direct marketing dollars on email marketing. Some estimate email marketing's average ROIm is as much at 40X. That's quite a return. However, speaking to the average consumer (as well as the average B2B buyer), email is the last medium they would like marketers to employ. So, is email marketing the future of direct marketing or just a necessary evil?

For marketers, email represents a way of touching subscribers at home, at work and (thanks to smartphones) on the go. It's also significantly less expensive than traditional direct mail marketing. However appealing email marketing may be, it does have a few challenges:

• Slow List Building - CAN-SPAM Act requires marketers build their own opt-in lists
• Easy List Attrition - Opt-ins can unsubscribe permanently from your list at any time
• Email Filters - Even the most basic email filters catch wanted emails by mistake
• Low Activation - Although easy to click, email is not a proven medium to activate a new purchase cycle.
  

Email marketing best practices can help overcome many of these challenges (see JDM's "Design Your Email for Delivery & Response" email marketing best practice article). However, traditional direct mail has few (if any) of these drawbacks, but many still regard it as too expensive or even antiquated.

Fact is, they are not mutually exclusive.

At JDM, our feeling is that email marketing will never fully replace direct mail. Rather, these mediums work best when they work together. Our research has show that in every respect, integrated direct marketing (e.g. email, online and direct mail together) performance is greater than the sum of its parts.

What do you think? Is email marketing the future of direct marketing or potentially its undoing?

Google: The Relationship Algorithm

Often I find myself explaining search engine optimization and 'visibility' to clients in terms of a relationship. It's a pretty useful analogy, so I thought I'd share it. Feel free to take credit for it.

Google Is My "Other Girlfriend"
I've made peace with the fact that I'm in a relationship with search engines, like Google, as well as my girlfriend. The way I'm constantly trying to figure out what Google is thinking mirrors the way I'm always baffled by my girlfriend's line of thought. So let's take a stab at understanding Google's ranking algorithm as they can not possibly be as complex as my girlfriend's.

Communication is Key
When you're speaking with someone and hoping to begin a relationship you have to let them know about you, who you are, what you do, and what your interests are in life. When you're building a website, you also need to be communicating to search engines who you are, what you do, and what interests might bring people to your website. You can't just skirt the topic, you have to have content that's relevant and makes "semantic sense". By that I mean, using real sentences not "keyword stuffing".

The way you present yourself and dress does say something about you too. No it's not just being shallow. A stained and wrinkled 'Blame the Intern' T-shirt sends a message. It sends a message in much the same way as header tags (h1, h2, h3), ALT tags and META tags do. They send a clear signal about your page's content, what's important, and what's obviously not.

Meta-tags are Pick Up Lines:
Do you believe in love at first sight…or should I walk by again?

You only have one chance to make a first impression, and being far too forceful can have just as negative an impact on your chances of impressing search engines, as an attractive woman. In your first conversation, you also need to be truthful about what it is you actually do. If you claim to be "in finance" and turn out to be a cashier at the local Quickie Mart, then you arent going to be seen as particularly trustworthy.

In your META title and description tags you need to describe what it is your site is about, without adding items that you don't actually cover. Recently Google's been making changes that make keyword stuffing a thing of the past (see our blog post on keyword META tags).

Think of your META tags as "pick up lines." You dont want to be pushy or totally misrepresent yourself. Girls (and Google) see right through that stuff.

Don't hate the Player, Hate the Game
If the people who know you refer to you as "shady", or "flirtatious", then a woman you want to be in a relationship with is going to be second guessing you, questioning your actions and generally not secure in her relationship with you. Likewise, if you link to shady and disreputable sites and they to you, you're hanging out with the wrong crowd. Search engines look at not just the number of inbound links, but the quality/credibility of the sites linking to you. A single link from CNN is worth more than a hundred links from SPAMMERS-R-US.

It's All about Trust
To summarize my analogy, no relationship can function without trust. Without it, both partners will start taking on negative behaviors, and trust me, you do NOT want to have Google as your Ex-Girlfriend! But if you stick to the straight and narrow, and faithfully update your content, find trustworthy links and friends to support you, then over time you'll form a positive and fruitful relationship with Google—I mean your Girlfriend...

I Now Pronounce You Man and Search Engine
Let's make a commitment to ethical SEO practices. Repeat after me:

I SEOer,
Take Thee Google,
To Love and to Optimize for,
With useful, unique content
through serp changes and algorithm updates,
For Adsense or Adwords campaigns,
Till Death or Server Outage do us part.

Related Stuff

• SEO Tips: What's a Sprite Map?
• Articles: "Search Engine Visibility"

Report Suggests 10-20 Percent Hiring Increase

Amidst the doom and gloom in the job market, a new hiring trends report, published by our friends at HRmarketer, finds 31% of hiring professionals will be staffing up by 10-20 percent in 2010.

The report, "Trends in HR Marketing: HR Buyer' Behavior: What to Expect in 2010," is based on data from human resource and employee benefit buyers collected during October and November of 2009 and has some really interesting findings.

Learn more on JDM's Shameless News media center.

The report, itself, is available for direct download from HRmarketer. No registration is required.

Ardent Believers

All too often, an organization's strategy comes down from the corporate mountain and the Brand comes right out of the marketing department. Both are imposed on the most critical human resources—those at the bottom. How can you get the boots on the ground to become ambassadors of the Brand and the corporate strategy? How do you build an organization of 'ardent believers'?

As a major shareholder in an oil & gas exploration company, I know my way around a board room. It's funny how some things make perfect sense there on a white board, but none in the field. Instead, let’s develop a corporate strategy that’s not so specific as to impede the boots on the ground while still being free of corporate puffery. As my father likes to say, "Folks, everyone can say the word 'Tango'—damn few can dance!"

Once you've got a corporate strategy that's measurable and accountable (read: has dates and numbers not meaningless adjectives), go to the boots on the ground. Ask not what corporate can do for them, but what can they do for corporate. Challenge them to come up with local strategies that mirror the overall corporate strategy. Then reward those who make innovations that help achieve that strategy.

For example, if the corporate strategy is to cut production overhead by $1 million by the end of Q3, then the local managers could devise strategies like, running the power-hungry manufacturing processes at night when electricity is cheaper. Impose an over-simplified, silver-bullet strategy and watch your ego slump along with profits.

Build an organization of innovators and ardent believers by giving those at the bottom the authority to make small but meaningful changes you and your white boards wouldn't come up with in a million years.

Related Posts:

• Business is Not a Game of Chess
• The Brand Bubble
• Ruin a Rebranding in 5 Steps
• Learning the Most from the Worst

JDM Celebrates 3-Year Incorporation Anniversary

Today, February 17, 2010, JDM is celebrating our 3-year incorporation anniversary. A big thanks goes out to all our fantastic clients and our talented marketing team for helping us reach and exceed our business goals during such a hard time in our history.

Over the last weekend of the month, JDM will be having a corporate retreat at the D3 Ranch and It'll Do Golf Resort. We'll be posting photos from the retreat on our Facebook Page. Stay tuned for more Big Marketing Ideas as we look forward to another great year!

Branding Trends for 2010

In Robert Passikoff's, "Top 10 Brand and Marketing Trends for 2010" article for UTalkMarketing.com, he makes a few good points but neglects a larger issue facing brands in 2010. Passikoff writes:

Old tricks don't work/won't work anymore

In case your brand didn't get the memo here it is -consumers are on to brands trying to play their emotions for profit.

In the wake of the financial debacle of this past year, people are more aware then ever of the hollowness of bank ads that claim "we're all in this together" when those same banks have rescinded their credit and turned their retirement plan into case studies.

The same is true for insincere celebrity pairings: think Seinfeld & Microsoft or Tiger Woods & Buick. Celebrity values and brand values need to be in concert, like Tiger Woods & Accenture. That's authenticity.

They won't need to know you to love you

As the buying space becomes even more online-driven and international (and uncontrolled by brands and corporations), front-end awareness will become less important.

A brand with the right street cred can go viral in days, with awareness following, not leading, the conversation. After all, everybody knows GM, but nobody's buying their cars.

What Robert's not mentioning is the erosion of Brands as value-adding, differentiating assets. Today, competing brands look more alike than ever before and consumers are quickly not caring.

Perhaps branding (traditional branding that is) has become antiquated. In 2010, building a brand that comes out of the marketing department (rather than the organization as a whole and its loyal customer base) is like trying to give yourself a nickname. It just won't stick.

Related Posts:

• Scorched Earth Branding
• Online Marketing Can Kill Your Brand?
• The Brand Bubble: Don't blame the brand - blame the business
• Ruin a Rebranding in 5 Steps

Valentine's Day Marketing Ideas

Like most holidays, Valentine's Day brings out the worst, most hackneyed and cliche'-ridden marketing programs of the year.

Shame on marketers who want to offer clients a "sweetheart deal" or run a heart-shaped ad with "we love our customers!!!" on the diagonal—note the ever-so-effective triple exclamation marks.

Here's a couple (get it?) Valentine's Day marketing ideas that give cliche' a wide berth.

Marketing Idea :: Be Mine on a Dime
A new bakery sends locals a tiny, heart-shaped box. It contains a single chocolate and a tiny card. The outside copy reads: "Will you be my valentine?" The inside copy reads, "Say yes, I'll give you 15% off any box of chocolates between now and Valentine's Day".

Marketing Idea :: A Call to Tardy Cupids A flower delivery service runs a radio ad on Valentine's Day saying "Okay, so it's Valentine's Day and you've got nothin'. No flowers, no card, no candies - nothin'. Buddy, we're about to save your ." Ad goes on to explain how they have operators standing by, ready to take emergency orders for their "Last Minute Package" - flowers, candy and a nice card with her name and your name pre-printed. Order by 2 PM and receive delivery by 6 PM. This one could be brilliant—albeit logistically tricky.

From all of us at JDM, have a happy, cliche'-free Valentine's day!

Online Marketing & Promotion Article Published

Kevin Costner is told repeatedly in his 1989 movie, Field of Dreams, "Build it and they will come." If only Internet marketing was so easy.

Download our online marketing and promotion article.

There's a lot of passion and anticipation in developing a new or redesigned web presence, but many stop short when it comes to promoting it.

"It's simply not enough to assume that 'if you build it, they will come." Says Justin Downey, Owner of JDM. "You must actively promote, build traffic channels and keep it updated. That's why we published, Don't Just 'Build It and They Will Come'."

The article offers the latest marketing best practices and a few cheap and easy tactics for promoting, building traffic channels and keeping your new site fresh and up-to-date.

Learn more and register to download our latest online marketing and promotion article on our resources page, Bathroom Reading.