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Social Relevance

Posted by Alok Ahuja April 2, 2009

Social media has been around for some time now, from Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and even LinkedIn.  As all of these social platforms have evolved over the years, you still hear people asking…..but what does it all mean?  If you really sit down and think about it, social media is just another form of communication simply just bringing the world closer together.  Ten years ago if someone were to ask me if I would ever have the ability to chat with Madonna I would have just laughed at them, but now with Twitter the thought of that chat doesn’t seem so far off.

With the introduction of all these social media outlets, retailers are slowly starting to enter the realm of building societies and groups of avid fans and followers.  It was only a matter of time before my colleague’s looked at me funny because I was not friends with Amazon.com on Twitter.  I can still hear them whispering; “That’s exactly why he never gets any one day deals on Amazon….sucker!”

With all the Facebook friends and Twitter followers, what does this ultimately mean for retailers and vendors alike?  More potential shoppers!!  By using the social media outlets, retailers are now keeping shoppers informed and ahead of the rest of the crowd through Facebook updates and Twitter tweets.  This is allowing them to create a cult following and loyal fan base of shoppers that they can direct to their site whenever they want.  Once again, you have to take one step back and ask ”what does this all means?”  With increased loyal traffic coming to retailers sites, and certain promotional offers being provided to the Twitter bugs, Facebook friends and MySpace followers, how are these retailers able to differentiate between the various traffic sources and what to provide them with?

As social media continues to mature, so has Sitebrand’s involvement with these new sources of traffic.  Being the leader in online website personalization, Sitebrand has once again taken the lead and is allowing retailers to segment their various social media traffic sources through a series of simple one click campaigns.

It’s been a long time coming, but allowing retailers to speak to their individual Twitter traffic or Facebook friends is becoming an everyday affair with Sitebrand.  The new Segment&Serve tool is allowing retailers to use referrals through any one of the social media tools to speak to their unique traffic segments and add a sense of continuity and relevance to that customers shopping experience.  By clicking on a tiny_url from Twitter and then having a “Welcome Twitter bug” message once the link is clicked, has allowed retailers to create a friendly and non threatehing environment for shoppers.  This has allowed our customers to enjoy higher cart averages and ultimately more Twitter followers and Facebook friends!

This campaign was also used for all Twitter shoppers.

This campaign was also used for all Twitter shoppers.

This campaign was used for all Twitter referrers.

This campaign was used for all Twitter referrers.

Alok Ahuja

The Road Less Travelled

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Did Mark by Ben miss the mark?

Posted by Kevin Butler March 26, 2009

Up here in Canada, we’re hockey freaks.  Simply put.  Before going any further, I want to acknowledge that finally (and I mean finally!) I can bridge my passion for hockey with online marketing… sort of.  I’ve long wondered if I would ever get the chance to talk hockey in an e-Commerce blog and today, it’s now a reality.

Which leads me to a question: Do you know who Mark Gullet is?  No?  Alright, how about Mark Gullet from Tampa, Florida?  Still nothing?  That’s okay.  I didn’t know of him either, until 24 hours ago – thanks YouTube.

Regrettably, Mark is one of millions who’ve recently lost his job due to economic woes and organizational restructuring.  The only reason I even know his name is because he worked as VP of Marketing for the NHL’s Tampa Bay Lightning – yes, this is the hockey tie-in – and because it’s the latest viral YouTube phenomenon made by Ben Gullet, Mark’s son.

Ben Gullet, super marketer

A viral job search missing the mark? You tell me.

Upon being laid off after more than 9 years of service for the Lightning hockey club, Ben created a video tribute highlighting his father’s professional strengths and experience with large cue cards and sappy music to help his father find employment.  Ben’s video hit YouTube on March 12th and two weeks later, the video has been seen more than 100,000 times and resulted in numerous job interviews (apparently).

This 14 year old wiz may have a future in internet marketing too (although I’m not convinced his father didn’t have a larger hand in this).  The video’s call to action is engaging and convicting: visit a micro-site featuring his dad’s resume.  I already feel for the guy, so OK, you got me.  I’ll click on the site.  Before you worry about being replaced by the up-and-coming-internet-genius, Ben Gullet, I’ve got good news for you: The plan isn’t flawless and stumbles in the same ways many websites and landing pages do.  If you agree with me, I’ll see to it that you keep your job.  Scouts honor.

MarkbyBen.com features the infamous video, filling the entire front page and then some.  Scrolling below the video reveals a tiny link to Mark’s resume.

But wasn’t the goal of the site to display the resume for anyone and everyone?  Why create any unnecessary barriers by hiding it below the video at the bottom of the page?  And normally, I wouldn’t make a nit-picky comment like “this site doesn’t even have any analytics” – but wouldn’t 100,000+ YouTube plays in two weeks merit it?  Finally, I’m surprised there’s no visible email address or way to connect with Mark.  Sure, you can leave a message through YouTube, but why make it difficult for potential recruiters, contacts and hiring managers to contact you?

The battle certainly doesn’t end once the visitor gets to your site – something I think we see too often in online marketing.  I fully believe that’s when the battle begins and in this case, where the viral job search falls short.  Driving traffic is great, but what happens when visitors arrive to your site?  MarkbyBen.com serves as a great example of time, effort and money invested, yet falls short of the most important aspect: creating a connection with the visitor and getting something out of their visit.  One of the keys to sucess on this site and any other: reduce any and all barriers that block the original goal of the website.  MarkbyBen.com should have Mark’s resume front and center, clear call-to-actions and a visible email address/LinkedIn profile link.  The site should have additional information about him that his resume and large cue-cards don’t speak to.  Much like any online marketer, Mark’s got one shot at a first impression and may be his only shot at converting the visitor.  Removing those barriers should be the first step towards a better site experience and ultimately, make Mark’s job search successful… or not missing the Mark.   But if Mark were a company, the next step should be web personalizaiton to better engage his vistiors.

Stay classy, Mark and Ben.

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Put your hands up if you’ve seen or heard a conversation about social media today.  Week after week I postulate if social media is at its peak.  And week after week I’m wrong.  I’m not sure when this streak will end either.  Reminds me of Tim Horton’s roll-up-the-rim… except I’m only kidding myself until May.  With this social media thing, it could be a while.

Note to our American friends: roll-up-the-rim is a Tim Horton’s annual promotion Canadians cannot get enough of.

And here we are – 2009, social media this, social media that.   Can you imagine the look a 15 year old kid might give you if you told him/her that Facebook didn’t exist 20 years ago?  Actually, can you imagine our own faces?  We’ve all become increasingly reliant on social media in one way or another.   Many of us are finding our personal and professional Facebooks, LinkedIns, Myspaces and Twitters intersecting.  I blame smartphones, but that’s another conversation altogether.

Here’s the thing with social media.  Number one, we’re all self-professed ‘experts’ with social media, yet don’t have the control we think we have.  And two, as good as we think we are with social media, today’s kids are quickly becoming better.

Think about it.  We’re all trying to find ways to integrate social media into branding, campaigns, sales, etc… but kids aren’t.  For many kids and youth, social media has forever been a part of life.  They’ll use it more naturally and probably in ways us, the good expert, will never think of.

Scary?  Us ‘experts’ should really figure out a Plan B.

My biggest gripe with social media?  Limited ability to personalize, customize and tailor appearances.  We as marketers have embraced social media, but social media hasn’t embraced us.  Everyone from Skittles to Coca-Cola is using social media for all sorts of reasons and experiments.  And despite this, we can’t even brand our Twitter and Facebook pages properly.  Social media is all about self promotion, expression and information sharing, but they aren’t sharing.  Instead it’s “you can put your logo in this 200×300 space on the left hand side and your choice of background is blue.”

Look no further than the Skittles phenomenon we’ve nearly forgotten about.   We know the Skittles colors (especially since we all bought a pack or two after their infamous experiment), but each social media site didn’t really reflect the company and product like it could and should have.  How cool would a red Skittles Facebook page look?  Certainly better than blue.

Every time a new social media application pops up, the first thing analysts, experts and everyone else says is “I don’t see potential for a revenue model.”  This is the perfect opportunity for Facebook, Myspace and Twitter (especially Twitter!) to do just that.  How much more valuable would your fan page be if you could have it reflect your company, brand and online marketing strategies?  Brand Managers have slaved to ensure the colors and messaging are perfect.  Social media is about sharing information and for businesses, is a great opportunity to act as an extension of your website, banner ads and wacky commercials.  If your colors are red and white (random example), what differentiates your page from a competitors?  Or Andy’s Local Fish & Cactus Store?  And seriously, would it be that hard to accommodate?  The only other question is would you, the marketer be willing to pay for that kind of personalization?

My name is Kevin and I have a social media problem.   Now if you’ll excuse me, I have several notifications to attend to and I need to create a viral marketing strategy based around Twitter.

Stay classy, social media.

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“Change we can believe in”. The famous words that were spoken by Barack Obama during many of his speeches while he campaigned across the United States on route to becoming the 44th US President.  And with that change, cell phones have become an integral part of the marketing world.  We see advertisements on TVs, magazines and newspapers on a daily basis, so it only makes sense that marketers push mobile announcements on our most personal piece of technology.

Mobile marketing is changing the face of media; it offers a sense of intimacy and loyalty that other media outlets struggle to achieve.  There are over 200 million cell phone users that live in the United States (that’s 1 out of 4 Americans) and we’re now beginning to see this exploited, from Time Magazine to Barack Obama.  Over 2.9 million cell phone users downloaded Obama’s phone application and received frequent updates about his campaign and whereabouts his next event.  Each cell phone user was specifically geo-targeted, so a Californian didn’t get the invite for the Florida rally, etc…   So yes, even Obama’s optimizing his messages.

Obama optimizes messages, do you?

Obama optimizes messages, do you?

With 2009’s economic downturn in full effect, businesses struggle to remain relevant in budget friendly ways, while cutting through all other clutter.   Companies have begun to use mobile marketing as a means to do that, distributing coupons, surveys, reminders, links and landing pages to stay connected and boost conversion rates.  Marketers have to create an engaging message to a specific audience if they hope to be successful.  They need to optimize, target and execute properly.

Newspapers and magazine readers are declining and people want a faster way of getting to information.  A mobile marketing campaign can be cheap and inexpensive from the other types of advertising; a company could boost its marketing strategies and send messages more frequently while spending less money.

But do we as cell phone customers have a choice of receiving these advertised messages, optimized or not?  Why should we have to pay for advertisements once they are streamed across our screens?  Marketers have to constantly be out there and in our personal lives to be effective.  Since mobile messaging is so new, is this something we should be concerned with in the long term?  And what might be the ramifications to one’s brand, sales and marketing campaigns?  Only time will tell…

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Ox equals personalization

Posted by Kevin Butler January 5, 2009

Hello and happy 2009 to all Sitebrand frequenters. Thanks for kicking off the new year by reading our blogs – we appreciate it and love all the comments that come with blogging. According to Chinese calendars, 2009 is the year of the Ox. So just how are oxen relevant to anything e-Commerce you ask? Keep reading to find out…

So apparently the United States is in a recession and has been for some time. Lately, I’ve been so immersed in various other things and may have missed out on such news. However, as sad as that may sound, I am up to date in things like Twitter (totally the new RSS of 2009, don’t you know), Amazon’s massive holiday sales spike, Chinese new year’s, terrible year end lists and of course, personalization. I swear my introductions are getting longer, but this is all going somewhere, I promise.

A recession, eh? Is that the thing that makes companies shrink budgets – more specifically, shrink marketing budgets? From talking to some peers, it seems a big trend for 2009 will see marketers finding cheap, inexpensive or free (the best kind) ways to promote and grow. I’m no genius, especially since I didn’t even know about this ‘recession thing’, but how does a company grow with limited/reduced budgets? While the aggressive side of me thinks there’s no time better than now to increase marketing budgets, I also understand the other side here – the responsible side of me, that is. And that could be why social media has and will continue to climb to the top of many marketers “definitely need to do/try that in 2009 lists”. I know, more lists at the beginning of a new year, but I digress.

You might be thinking: “social media is the buzz, but it’s not a proven revenue generator”. True and like all things, I’m sure social media will quickly evolve with that in mind over the next few years. Something to bare in mind here - social media is still very new and I don’t feel social media should be providing mass sales at this point. Mashable.com has a great survey about this, too. That’s where I see social media differently at this point – does it have to provide unassisted new sales, right now? I look at the Twitters, Facebooks, (etc…) as a part of the marketing mix, not an independent one. They will help the conversational aspect – a critical piece – with your customers and potential ones, but won’t act as the first and last points of contact to drive the sale.

Looking at this from an outside perspective, you can pay agencies, firms, specialists, etc… to run integrated social media campaigns, but it seems many companies are keeping it in-house. Whether financial reasoning or otherwise, marketers are taking notice of varying methods from big time companies like Southwest Airlines, Starbucks, Dell, all the way down to the mom and pop shops that are still around. And why not? They’ve done a great job reaching out to customers and speaking to them. Those familiar with my views from previous writings probably see this part coming: you’ve developed interest. You’ve cut through the mass and now they want to know more, so they return to your website, only to find generic messaging and content. Maverick and Iceman just called: they said mission failed – failed like the Detroit Lions historic no-win season. Back to my point, use social media to cut through the clutter, use personalization to get relevant. That’s a better 1-2 punch than Brady/Moss (from 2007, of course – sorry Lions fans). While you can have one without the other, the combined efforts are far greater than one on its own. Also, personalization is a better and more proven ROI effort than social media, as of writing this. Like all things internet these days, that could change in a hurry.

For a quick recap, I’ll leave you with an equation that should help demonstrate why personalization should be on your radar, why it makes sense in today’s economy and how it will help even the newest social media-ist get the message heard loud and clear, at the right time. Its not scientific, but I’m fairly sure it checks out…

1.    2009 = the year of the ox
2.    Oxen = methodical and detail oriented, yet have difficulty connecting with others (I swear I looked this up)
3.    Sitebrand = easily connects with specific audiences, sending relevance/targeted marketing campaigns
4.    Social media = easy way to speak directly to customers and is quickly becoming an integral part of all marketing plans (big and small)
5.    Year of personalization = 2009 (according to many, including me)

Therefore: 2009 is the year marketers/e-Commerce professionals must integrate social media efforts with Sitebrand’s personalization in order to deliver that 1-2 combo that your customers deserve.

Stay classy, internet.

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Personalization with social media

Posted by Kevin Butler December 12, 2008

A colleague of mine – who we’ll refer to as “naD” for anonymity sake – recently told me my blogs are verbose. I’ve never considered myself to be loquacious before, but I suppose there’s a first for everything. Am I really of the garrulous kind?

Anyways, this all came full circle as some co-workers, naD and I were caught up in a rousing game of lunchtime Scrabble via Facebook. Without divulging any further information about my lunchtime habits, I got thinking, with so much emphasis on social media, what web 2.0 medium is most effective for e-commerce companies? I had an interesting conversation with another co-worker recently regarding social media and despite the emphasis placed here in the last few years, it’s very uncontrollable. I’ll get to that shortly…

Full disclosure: I realize it will differ for each company and that this blog is probably one of 2,000 blogs that will touch on social media today. And while there are numbers of books and blogs from experts like Dave Evans (Social Media Marketing: An Hour a Day, and Dave, if you are reading this, I don’t own this book yet and December 25th is right around the corner), this is a take that directly affects Sitebrand users or those further looking into web 2.0 strategies with personalization, targeted content and other marketing strategies. It’s a look at segmentation, how to work with open environments (users are free to say what they want, when they want – regardless of validity or truth) and avoiding the “boil the ocean” mentality.

Hypothetical example here… let’s assume you are an online electronics retailer selling everything from alarm clocks to MP3 players.

You are up to date with all the Facebook’s, Linked In’s, Twitter’s (this itself can be daunting, I know) and a specific intent is established for your internet marketing plan. You know you want to use Facebook and Twitter for different promotions. Those could be two vastly different kinds of visitors, right? Going back to a comment I made earlier, you can’t control what’s being said about you and any preconceived notions that go along with it, so how do you deal with this, without having a face-to-face conversation with every visitor? Since my example has us selling the coolest widgets and gadgets, understanding your visitors based on where they are coming from is just as important as anything else on your site and the need to segment your audience and dynamically message them truly begins.

The traffic coming from your hourly/daily tweets trust your promotions or the source it came from (and let’s suppose your analytics tell you nearly 12% of your traffic is from mobile browsers). Your landing page could offer minimal images and focus on messaging/links that load quickly and since I’m in ultra-merchandising mode, focus on the latest in smart phones and Bluetooth headsets. Since that trust is there (or at least higher than most first time visitors), you can focus on what the visitor should buy, not why. And that’s just for first time visitors. When they come back, you can target these same visitors to help increase brand awareness and drive home non-financial conversions/goals. Ultimately, ensuring they’ve seen your great promotions, seen why you are a great company and changing any preconceived notions they may have had about you before. This is your chance to get into your visitors mind and represent your company the way you want. The power of targeted messaging, eh?

For traffic coming from Facebook, you know this is either from paid ads or a link from a user profile. Either way, they aren’t as connected to you and your company as the Twitter crowd. Seems like a good opportunity to segment, right? One way or another, you’ve paid for this customer to be on your site, so it needs to count and needs to capture the visitors attention/trust. At this point, having a banner run through the entire session for these visitors (clickable or not), telling them the site is secure, potential refund info, shipping info based on geography/location might be worthwhile. Maybe the message changes and talks to the visitor based on their click patterns or the fact they came from Facebook, who knows – the sky is the limit here. Since it’s a more general crowd, you could opt to show an array of your different products and special sales. Or perhaps you want to focus on company branding more than particular promotions and quick conversions. Personalization and visitor segmentation give marketers a window to brand like never before. You can drive home your message in a conversational way. Imagine having your customers line up to have a face-to-face conversation with you. I’m sure you can make them a believer in your company (at least you could for me… I know how convincing our Sitebrand blog readers are) and isn’t that the whole point of a webpage in the first place?

If all this sounds cooler than a $4 sweater on Christmas, then hold onto your hat: I’ll be running a product demonstration webinar this coming Wednesday, December 17th @ 2pm EST (BTW, they are only 29 minutes long!). In the new year, I’ll be running these webinars bi-weekly, so this Wednesday’s presentation will be the neonate demo. I’ll be talking about web 2.0 integration with Sitebrand,  showing its ease of use and effectiveness. If your conversion rate is lower than 4% and you want to get more out of your existing traffic, I’d love to meet you. Remember: the tools your company uses to tap into your visitors represent the kind of company you are and the kind of customers you are after.

To everyone who can’t make it, happy holidays and see on you on the other side (2009).

Stay classy, internet.

p.s – naD won the lunchtime game… but only because he found an anagram-scrabble cheat online. He’s since been banned from our lunchtime game.

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Narrow profit margins are a reality for most online merchants…add to that a recession and it’s easy to understand why there’s increasing interest and demand for discounting alternatives. Marketing teams are also increasingly lean (I can speak from this personally), so it’s no surprise we’re also seeing more interest in marketing sophistication and automation. So what it really comes down to is finding a solution that is both appealing to consumers who are feeling the pain of the recession and profitable to merchants (and their marketing teams) who are also feeling the pain of the recession.

With Segment&Serve™, Sitebrand’s personalization platform and our team of pros who make it their passion to help clients be successful, I’m proud to say we’re able to tackle these above-noted requirements. While many best practice campaigns do involve hard incentives like discounts and free shipping, we’re really pushing for web personalization campaigns that leverage softer incentives that tie into service, social marketing and Web 2.0. And overarching everything is the added benefit of measurable results and return on investment. After all, if you can prove ROI, what’s the point?

So just today, Sitebrand issued a news release re: several client success stories (e-commerce case studies) that reference the use of non-traditional “soft incentives” or “comfort-style campaigns” if you will.  Essentially we’re talking about personalized web campaigns that offer helpful product suggestions (like you would get in-store), links to customer testimonials or product reviews (”word of web”), and wish list/gift card reminders (’Tis the season now more than ever). These “soft incentives” truly counter the classic ”hard incentives” mentioned earlier - things like urgent discounts and free shipping. So what’s the result? Well, we’re helping many clients like ElectricShopping.com and Discount Dance see incredible results (that don’t compromise their narrow margins)…

John Miller, IT Director at Discount Dance says, “Depending on the type of visitor, and the campaign we’re triggering, we are seeing between a 5% and 20% lift on revenue.” Commenting on the measured statistics for multiple soft-incentive campaigns over a 30 day period, Miller adds: “On average, we’ve experienced a 5% conversion lift. Plus, our average order value has gone up about 2%.”

Gift Card Promo

Gift Card Promo

For ElectricShopping.com, Rob Levy, Managing Director, attributes a 17% conversion lift to web personalization campaigns primarily comprised of “soft incentives” that promote the service (caring) side of their business. “I would attribute at least a 5-fold return on our Sitebrand investment, at least that,” says Levy on the ROI generated by Sitebrand. Messaging a concern for the environment is also proving successful.

We care about the environment...

We care about the environment...

With the help of Sitebrand’s comprehensive web personalization solution, innovative online merchants like ElectricShopping.com and Discount Dance are helping to reset the definition of what constitutes a sufficient incentive to motivate visitors - especially soft incentives that don’t involve any financial reward to the buyer or financial loss to the merchant.

What are you doing to be part of this recession marketing shift?

For more inspiration, you should check out these case two case studies and more in Sitebrand’s Resource Center at: http://www.sitebrand.com/resources/case-studies

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As I was thinking of topics to address for this particular blog, I feared I’d used all my material and thoughts in my e-debut two weeks ago. Kind of like Chumbawamba did on their first album. I hope I don’t suffer the sophomore jinx… you will never keep me down, internet.

Moving right along, the e-Commerce-online marketing world is a funny one, right?

What is the average marketer or e-Com director planning over the next 6-12 months for their respective websites? Search engine optimization, personalization, platform upgrades, search engine marketing, post-click marketing, or just general optimization – whatever that means? Is it possible the term optimization is more over-used than personalization? The first rule about optimization: don’t talk about optimization. Whenever someone says to me, “we’re looking into optimization” I have no idea how to react. Optimizing what? Landing pages, Content Spaces (*cough, Sitebrand, cough*), Videos, Search, E-mail (*cough, Sitebrand, again, cough*), etc… Sounds like those general statements I make at awkward parties “I like stuff”. But in all seriousness, I like optimizing, too and that’s the point of what I’m getting at. What are we optimizing?

Lately, we’ve seen another quick shift with the rise of m-Commerce. Although interesting, I’m confused. Don’t get me wrong – I get it’s a new and direct market, recent claims to fame include Barack Obama using text messaging to announce Joe Biden as his running-mate in the now historic 2008 US Elections. To me, m-Commerce, although viable and important seems like a small branch of e-Commerce. You still need targeted content, market segmentation and wait for it… optimized messaging that can speak to visitors, regardless of whether it’s e-Commerce, m-Commerce or any other commerce. Mobile messaging will help drive traffic to your website and I think it’s important to be ready and prepared for those visitors.

Internet marketing is a vast space, but I see value in dynamic webpages. Right now, Sitebrand has begun a series of first time visitor landing pages with specific calls to action for a few clients in different markets and have seen tremendous results. We’re talking conversion rates doubling the site average (let me know what would that mean to you) resulting directly from Sitebrand’s Segment&Serve. The scary part of all this: the results and lifts in conversion come from running one or two campaigns. It takes less time to create these campaigns than it does to get sick of that Chumbawamba song (so not very long at all!). Remember, that’s just one campaign. Imagine the impact of running 10-15 thorough behavioral targeted campaigns, addressing other e-Commerce challenges you may be having or trends you are noticing.

The big thing I keep going back to, something I read recently from Sean Carton’s blog: conversations are king. And that’s exactly what these first time visitor landing page experiments are proving. We are talking to new visitors, explaining options, values and news about the company. Something interesting to chew on, majority of the time, the content on these pages don’t include any specific product to buy. Either “see shipping information for your State/Country”, “see hottest sellers” or “learn more about the company” are the messages helping drive sales.

How are you speaking to your visitors?

Stay classy, internet.

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When we met with some folks from Silverpop for lunch at the DMA08 show in Vegas last week, we were really excited to hear about their developments with email marketing going social.

It’s what Silverpop is calling “Share-to-Social” - and it’s email’s first integrated and measurable social networking solution of its kind.

When users choose to share a message with friends in their social network, Silverpop’s systems are able to report on how many of their friends opened and clicked on the links in the message. This also means that marketers can get the same kind of 360 degree view of social networks as they do with email today.

It’s very much an updated forward-to-a-friend type of viral marketing because now instead of keeping the messages exclusive to the email channel, people are able to share their messages via popular social channels like Facebook and MySpace. It’s a great way of bringing all the channels closer together. And since this is today’s reality, it’s brilliant.

Since Sitebrand partners with Silverpop, this is exciting news for us and all our customers. For our many customers, especially retailers looking to sell more, this will be a great way to extend their marketing reach into the very populated social channels. But now more than ever, this also means the pressure is on to create really enticing offers that subscribers and customers want to share across their social network! Do this well, and you’ll find unparalleled reach.

Looking for how to maximize your email’s social potential? Sitebrand has a team of email experts who would be thrilled to brainstorm with you!

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Fresh back from presenting at Online Market World in San Francisco where I did non-stop tweets you should and could follow at http://twitter.com/sitebrand. One of the highlights was definitely the keynote by Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos.com. He spoke very passionately about the culture of Zappos.com especially as it relates to outstanding customer service - just look at their tagline under their logo!

Tony also shared “4 things” to build brand - one of which is all about company culture and core values. I’ll pay these forward to you now:

Thing #1: Have a Vision

Whatever you’re thinking, think bigger. Chase the vision, not the money. And make sure the vision has meaning.

Thing #2: Think Repeat Customers

Great product, great service or low prices. Choose and focus on two of these three.

Thing #3: Be Transparent

“Be real, you have nothing to fear” so go ahead and create a face for your company. At Zappos they have a blog, they have zappos TV and perhaps their most notable personality stage is on twitter…twitter.zappos.com

Thing #4: Create a Culture & Core Values

Zappos is a lifestyle for both employees and customers when you get right down to it. Here are the core values that play into the culture that Zappos prides itself on…

1. Deliver WOW through service.
2. Embrace and drive change.
3. Create fun and a little wierdness.
4. Be adventurous, creative and open-minded.
5. Pursue growth and learning.
6. Build open and honest relationships with community.
7. Build a positive team and family spirit.
8. Do more with less.
9. Be passionate and determined.
10. Be humble.

Tony and Zappos are living proof that all of this pie in the sky type thinking is possible. At the end of his presentation, he said that Zappos has tours at their Vegas headquarters and that if anyone wanted to have a tour, just send him an email. Well it just so happens that myself and 3 other Sitebranders are heading to Vegas for the DMA08 Conference & Exhibition Oct 12-15. After hearing this, I approached Tony at the end of the session saying we would like to take him up on the tour invite…so how do we go about setting that up? He said, just send him an email and he would send a shuttle to the airport to pick us up! I almost fell over…but then doesn’t this type of approach to service totally agree to everything Tony just preached in his keynote! You bet it does!

PS - are you going to the DMA08 show? If yes, be sure to drop by booth 1654 because that’s where Sitebrand will be! We’re part of the Passport to Prizes and we’ve got a Flip video up for grabs. As well, I’ll be hosting an Ask the Experts roundtable called: e-Marketing: Building a bridge from the landing page to conversion - would love to see you there!

DMA08

DMA08

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