A recent article in emarketer says that most executives believe the return on investment to engaging in social media campaigns is high. Some believed it was as much 4:1. Most executives thought social media campaigns contributed to increasing

• marketing effectiveness
• market share
• brand or stock value
• speed to market, and even
• product quality and talent retention

At the same time, about half of the executives said the biggest impediment to social media was the lack of a “standardized metric” that would let them measure ROI.

I agree that it’s important not to assume that correlation proves causation. Every time I wake up with a headache, I find I slept with my shoes on. That doesn’t mean sleeping in my shoes is what causes the headaches. (It could be my drinking problem.) Likewise, just because sales increased when I did a social media campaign doesn’t mean the social media campaign is the reason.

It is said of marketers that “we waste half of our marketing budget; we’re just not sure which half.” The Internet and related technologies offer the tantalizing promise to tell us which half, by allowing us to measure and track behavior in ways that were impossible not long ago. But some metrics (like page visits, click-throughs, conversions) will always be easier to relate directly to sales. While social media campaigns provide plenty of data points, it may be inherently harder to link that data directly to a purchase:  How exactly do “likes” relate to sales?

This explosion of data means that many marketing executives are under pressure to provide ROI for all Internet-related activities and campaigns. Our business culture likes to prioritize “scientific” results, but the fact is, our work involves decisions that combine objective and subjective judgment. This will be the case no matter how much data we have access to. Whether you call it “gut feeling” or “common sense” or “my opinion based on years of experience, coupled with some research and deep thinking on this matter,” there is validity to what we call the “subjective” thought process.

Marketing has never been an area where cookie-cutter solutions get results. In addition to having great creative, any solution has to be appropriate to the product and the audience, and the content has to be managed properly.  In other words, many decisions are involved in the creation and execution of the campaign that are…subjective.

And isn’t that why we got into this business? Because it involves art and creativity combined with solid business sense?

Of course marketing executives will always have to answer to someone who wants proof, whether it’s the board, the holding company, the shareholders, or the pointy-haired boss. But do you have the option of insisting on solid data with benchmarks and controls, or, alternately, just saying “No,” to every new idea, while your competitors are taking the bit between their teeth and seeing growing revenue as a result?

Perhaps, rather than seeking a more standardized metric or more conclusive data, your time is better spent developing your persuasive skills and polishing your belief in the combination of your experience and creativity.

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We have them of ourselves.

We have them of family and friends.

And we have them of our marketing efforts, right?

But are they realistic?

The other day I overheard a  conversation between my 3 and 5 year old about what they were going to be when they grew up. It turns out that my oldest wants to be a teacher (the most powerful position one can hold in the eyes of a 5 year old) and my youngest wants to be…wait for it… a cement mixer.

You read that right, a cement mixer.

Aside from the obvious rush of pride I’m fairly confident that my youngest can one day drive a cement mixer (hopefully she doesn’t actually want to be a truck).  Chances are also very good that my oldest, if she still wants to, can one day become a teacher.  Both are reasonable and attainable goals.

As marketers I think we sometimes aim too high or in the wrong direction altogether.  This happens a lot with social media marketing efforts. Do we have reasonable expectations of our Facebook brand page?  It probably won’t create lots of new customers, sell our latest product or significantly raise our brand awareness. That being said, I think we can reasonably expect that a properly supported Facebook brand page will at the very least make some of our loyal customers happier.

I’m not suggesting we should abandon social media in favor of more “traditional” digital marketing. I’m simply saying that if we (and our clients/bosses) have reasonable expectations we won’t be let down. And if we are fortunate enough to get some new customers or sell some stuff then that’s a bonus.

If Michael Bay made people we could all be cement mixers. Until that happens we’ll just have to settle for driving cement mixers instead.

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That was simple – right?  Well maybe it’s not quite that simple.  When we say mobile we are really talking about an entire category of devices. It’s like saying “cars”. There are multiple mobile phone form-factors including; bar phones, slate phones (iPhones), flip phones, slider phones, swivel phones and more. All of these have different sized screens and capabilities.  Tablets are also part of the larger mobile category. Fortunately they are a little easier to get your head around because the market is presently dominated by the iPad.

OK, so we can all agree that we have to be ready to provide an acceptable experience on our websites, for our emails, our videos and anything else digital we make. The challenge is knowing where to start.  There are literally thousands models of mobile devices on the market today.

80 – 20 (ish)

Here’s a simple approach I recommend you consider. Look at your website analytics. They will tell you what mobile devices are being used by your site visitors today.  (If they don’t you need a new analytics platform!)

By way of example when looking at the websites of our clients we find that roughly 90% or more of their mobile traffic comes from 3-4 devices, that’s it.

I recognize that this solution won’t address every website visitor but,  90% sure is a great start.  At the very least it’ll get you into the mobile game without a huge investment. Who doesn’t like that?

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Everyone wants to let consumers know their company is hip to social media but, you have to make sure that you give enough information, and in a way that makes sense.

Let’s go over the icons on this box, starting from the right side.

Facebook: Well, most companies are on Facebook, and people wanting to connect with this brand don’t need the URL to do it. Facebook makes it easier to search for a brand or person’s page than to type it in. For most users, a “Find us on Facebook!” statement and a brand name is enough information for people to go find it.

Twitter: Twitter is appropriate for this brand, but how do you find the page? When announcing that your brand is on Twitter, explicitly sharing the username of the account is very important. I tried typing the brand’s name into the Twitter search box and reached the correct account but, I had to check that it was first. Twitter’s internal search defaults to top tweets about the search term you use with no blatant “search users” option. Even if your username is very obvious, promoted pages can often supersede your brand’s page in search results.

RSS: Now we come to the most confusing icon on this box. RSS stands for “Really Simple Syndication”. It’s used on blogs and allows you to pull those posts into an RSS reader like Google Reader so you can read those posts without going to the main site. What is this icon doing on a pizza box? I have no idea. I tried going to this brand’s homepage to see if they had some kind of a blog, and they don’t – there actually isn’t an RSS feed to be found on the whole site. Having an RSS icon on a pizza box is like a QR code on the side of a bus: they can be useful, but both are presented in a way that you can’t do anything meaningful with them.

What kind of takeaways can we learn from this take-away box?

Facebook: It’s okay not to write the URL for your Facebook page. Facebook makes it easy to find your page and as long as it’s logically named, it will come right up in search.

Twitter: Include your Twitter username for your company or organization when advertising it. Twitter’s internal search does not make it easy for customers to find your account (though it is getting better as time goes on).

RSS: Unless I’m looking at your blog, I shouldn’t see an RSS icon.

I’ll like your pizza on Facebook, I’ll follow your cook on Twitter, but once I finish what’s in the box, there’s no pizza left to subscribe to! Make sure you give enough information to find your social media pages, and that they make sense in the first place.

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A tiny handful of sites have something so terrific that users will put up with all manners of clumsy design. I can say with total confidence that your site is not among them.  Keep in mind, a bad user experience will cause visitors to leave and perhaps never come back.  This forces us as website designers and owners to pay close attention to how users engages with the sites we make.

I am pretty sure that this is the case in most industries.  Sometimes, though, I have to wonder.

Recently, I took my family on an extended road trip.  We rented a spanking, brand new car for this trip.  It was great fun, for the most part.

I should mention that both my wife and I are university educated technologists.  Between us we are certified, accredited, commissioned, sanctioned and otherwise qualified to operate just about anything electronic.  We spent a week in this car, pouring over written manuals, testing multiple buttons and interface combinations.  We were never able to fully transfer the sound to the wireless headphones that came with the back seat audio system.  As a result I spent hours and hours listening to, “Where are we going; clap, clap, clap, Dora’s House!!”  Thanks Detroit.

One of our destinations along this trip was the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral.  I love just everything about NASA.  I can’t help getting misty eyed watching Apollo 13 when the engineers pour all those parts on the table and in a blur of pocket protectors, horn rimmed glasses and flashing slide-rules, they manage to fit the square peg in the round hole.  Real-life action heroes, if you ask me.

Accordingly, a primary attraction for me on the Space Center tour is dedicated to the Apollo program.  A bus drops you off in front of a pair of steel doors where a news ticker primes the crowd for the experience with some scrolling facts about 1968.  You wait for the doors to open.  And you wait…and wait…and wait.  I’m pretty sure that just about every single person standing in line is thinking the same thing,  how long before the doors open?  Seriously NASA, you must have countdown clocks lying around all over the place.

Usability has been an important concept in digital strategy and technology business since its inception, so none of this is anything new.  Nevertheless, the lesson here is crucial and bear repeating.  I couldn’t just abandon the car and I wasn’t about to storm out of the Space Center over a countdown clock.  On the other hand, users can abandon a website without any consequences.  Almost zero sunk cost.  Forget that at your peril.

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P.S. Make sure you read the customer’s original email

From: Zappos.com xxx@zappos.com;
Date: February 23, 2012
To: (name deleted)
Subject: Can I return this, PLEASE?

Hey there!

Thanks for contacting the Zappos Customer Loyalty Team. My name is Bri. I would be happy to look into your inquiry. I’d also like to thank you for being an amazing VIP customer!

I am sorry to hear that the (brand name) Sport Underwire Bra you purchased from us is defective. That’s definitely not something that we like to hear about our merchandise, and is not indicative of the high quality of service and products we strive to provide our customers. I am glad that you wrote us right away so we can immediately address this situation.

I certainly do not want to further inconvenience you with returning this item. You are welcome to donate it, trash it, turn it into an art project…it’s up to you, really!

I went ahead and refunded you in full today for this item. Please note, it takes about 2 to 10 business days for that refund to post to your credit card account.. I have also notated your order to indicate that you were advised there was no need to return the item.

If there is anything further we can do to assist you, please do not hesitate to give us a call 24/7 at 1 (800) 927-7671 or e-mail us at cs@zappos.com. You can even use our awesome Live Chat feature, located on our website.

Have a marvelous week!

Yours in relentless service,

Bri A.
Customer Loyalty Representative
Zappos.com
Powered by Service!
Phone: Toll-free 1-800-ZAPPOS-1 (1-800-927-7671)
e-mail: cs@zappos.com

http://www.zappos.com

On Thu, 23 Feb 2012,(name deleted) wrote:

—– customer message to follow —–

hi,

I ordered bras from three vendors and after trying them all on kept yours only. I have worn it to exercise twice now, and find that it does NOT support as it seemed to when I tried it on, my ‘girls’ fall out the top when I do downward dog, and everything sags- well I am not happy!  But the trouble is, I have thrown out the box and the tags.

If I had spent $20 I would say, oh well, live and learn. but the @#$% thing cost $48.

Is there anything I can do?

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For a practical example, let’s compare this to a different marketing medium. Recently, I bought a daily deal for a month membership at a gym I wanted to try. I planned to make use of the low-priced first month and then switch to a different gym where my friends belonged.

I expected a lot of hassling phone calls from the low-price gym chain, turning me off from staying. Over the course of the month, I only received two phone calls – one for a deal off my next month, and the second offering me a waived fee and a reduced rate for a month. In the end, I took the second deal and signed up for the year.

Why were these marketing tactics effective to me?

• I was given an incentive to go and give the gym my information. (An email application could be a coupon for a percentage off your next order.)
• The gym contacted me infrequently enough that I wasn’t being harassed, and frequently enough that I remembered there were deals.  They clearly wanted my business.
• When I was sent a high-value, limited-time offer, I jumped on it and became a recurring customer.

These are points to keep in mind for any marketing campaign, but they often are forgotten online where many companies think that visibility is the most important thing. When I worked at an email marketing agency, I saw companies shooting themselves in the foot by sending at least one email to their entire list every day, and clients were shocked that their unsubscribe rates were so high. Yes, visibility is important but it can work against you. Remember those flash ads that would fill your entire screen and pop up ads every time you clicked a link? They had high visibility, but definitely not in a good way. A good balance between having your name known and offering valuable deals is the key.

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POUGHKEEPSIE, NY — During the first half-hour a special website for Vassar College early decision applicants was live this past Friday, January 27, a computing error caused mistaken information to be posted on the site about the admissions status of a number of these applicants. Before the error was corrected approximately 30 minutes later, 122 applicants logged onto the site. Of those, 46 read a correct letter from Vassar stating that they had been offered admission to the college. The 76 other applicants read a mistaken letter stating they had been accepted for admission, when in fact they had not been admitted to the college. A little more than two hours after Vassar corrected the error, the college had determined who all of the affected applicants were and apologized to them via email for the error.     -info.vassar.news, January 29, 2012

I learned a lot at Vassar but since then I’ve learned the importance of thorough quality assurance or QA. Due to the seven sisters college’s recent embarrassing admissions mistake, I expect there are 76 young people walking around with very bad feelings about Vassar – not to mention their parents and BFFs. I feel sorry for the person or persons who didn’t check their code that one last time, or who didn’t QA the site once more. And I will remember this story the next time I feel insanely pressured to call something “done” when I don’t feel it’s quite ready. Every time a mistake goes out under your name, it does some damage to the trust and good faith you have worked so hard to gain. And some mistakes you just can’t undo.

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1. A five-year-old can identify the logos of many products she doesn’t use: Nike, Starbucks, GE. The fact that she connects the GE symbol with her grandpa’s work shows the deep roots logos have in our culture.

2. Your logo speaks volumes. A shooting star with a planet. A beachball. Baby toys! And the Monster energy drink logo, well, it does look like worms.

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Sometimes people just need to get together and talk.

Hello “Cake Day”.
At 4 o’clock on the first Thursday of each month (or as close as possible) we get together to enjoy something sweet. We chat about movies and music. We joke with one another (Robert and Kevin seem to be the focus of that) and generally have a good time.

It’s always appreciated.

This month we took it to a new level when Jessica and Lauren made Chocolate Fondue! See the recipe below.

D2 Creative’s Decadent Chocolate Fondue:

• (6) 3.52oz bars of Toblerone Swiss Milk Chocolate
• (2) 5oz bars of Hershey’s Symphony Creamy Milk Chocolate
• (2) 3.35oz bars of Hershey’s All Natural Extra Dark Chocolate
• ½ Pint of Heavy Cream

Here’s how we made it
First we broke the chocolate into pieces and melted in sauce pan on low heat.  Slowly we added the heavy cream while continuing to stir until the chocolate was smooth and creamy.  We then poured our chocolate into our electric fondue pot and voilà!  For dipping we used strawberries, bananas, pretzels, marshmallows and cubed pound cake.

Check out our D2 Cake Day photostream of the team in action

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I am a big proponent of “say what you mean” in clear simple language, so I was kind of embarrassed in a meeting today when I was asked to explain a bullet point in a presentation we were developing for a client.

The bullet I had written said:

“Our campaign will contextualize product offerings, demonstrating value.”

The client immediately asked:

“Could you explain that bullet point?”

My response was something along the lines of, “Well, what it means is that the site will clearly explain how your products offer value. We’ve noticed that the language on your competitors’ websites tends to be jargon-y, vague and difficult to understand.  They use phrases like ‘creating a new commercial model’ and ‘maximizing brand potential.’  We will use more straightforward language with examples that clearly demonstrate what we mean.”

The client replied:

“Well, perhaps the bullet should say that instead of, ‘contextualize product offerings.’ “

:”>

(that’s blushing for the “emoticonially” challenged)

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When trying to schedule an email campaign, think about when you check your own inbox and actually click through to things. There’s not really a “magic time” where people are opening all their emails, but it does vary over the course of the day.

A lot of companies try the “first thing in the morning” approach, and when you look at research from MailChimp, this might not really be helping. Email open rates peak between 12PM and 4PM Eastern time. It’s probably because this is when the largest possible population in the US and Canada are awake and at their desks.  Emails will be fresh in their inboxes when sent around this time of day. People on the East Coast are taking afternoon breaks, customers in Texas are eating lunch at their desks, and those on the west coast might be in their late morning lull.

The day of the week also matters in terms of open and click-through rates. Wednesdays and Thursdays have the highest open rates of the entire week. Why? Think about it: on Mondays, you might not have looked at your email over the weekend, and there’s probably lots of emails you’re automatically hitting “Delete” on just to get through the pile. By the middle of the week, you’re ready for a little break, and that 50% off sale email that just arrived from your favorite store, or newsletter from your alma mater starts to look really good. When timing your email, think about when is the time you’d be most likely to open it.

If you’re not sure when is best, try dividing your list and doing some delivery-time testing. Split your email list population in half and try sending at two times that are a few hours apart. When you have a clear winner, try the winning time and a time later in the day. Since there is no agreed upon best time to send email, you should find the best time for your own audience through testing.

In my next post I’ll offer insight into the number of emails you should be sending to your lists.

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