Social Email Marketing: Small Tweaks, Big Impact! The Power of A/B Testing #SMMSF
This presentation took place at the Social Email Marketing event, put on by Influence People with lead sponsor Constant Contact. The conference took place on Friday, September 17, 2010 at the Hotel Nikko in San Francisco, CA. In this session, Shelley discussed how even the most simple tweaks and A/B testing techniques in email can improve KPIs and significantly impact traffic to your site.
I felt bad for Shelley, as earlier in the day some folks had bagged on MySpace. But Shelley recovered nicely and the testing data she presented was informative and sometimes surprising! The speaker was:
- Shelley Beaumonte, Online Marketing Manager, MySpace
Bullet Point Review!
- Almost any email variable can be tested.
- Determine your success criteria before sending email.
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Variable Open Rate CTR CTO Subject X Design X X Frequency X X - Lessons learned:
- Test 1 variable at a time, or else you won’t know what factor actually affected the data.
- Don’t abandon the losing variable completely, you can still tweak it.
- Know the objective of your email.
- Never assume a small change = small results.
- There’s no standard minimum sample size. No one number but you want it to be statistically significant.
Here’s Shelley’s’ slide presentation:
CJU Course: Joel Comm – Top 11 Social Media Mistakes
There’s a basic misunderstanding about “advanced social media”. It really doesn’t exist. Social media is just basic human interaction and common sense. However, there is such a thing as a social media fail, and mistakes one can make when entering into the world of social media from a professional standpoint. Joel Comm, best selling author and CJ Performer (@JoelComm), came to CJU on September 22, 2010 to impart to us the top 11 social media mistakes.
To be completely honest, this was nothing new to me. However, Joel is a good presenter and it was very entertaining and still worth my time to attend and take copious notes to pass on to you!
Bullet Point Review!
- Mistake #1: Believing the world of social media isn’t real life.
- State your opinion.
- Be polite.
- Don’t libel.
- Avoid flame wars.
- Mistake #2: Regarding social media as a marketing tool.
- Put your relationship with followers first.
- Train employees or interns on proper use of Twitter.
- Make it up to your fans with special offers if you make a mistake.
- Like me, know me, trust me, pay me.
- Mistake #3: Forcing audiences to follow your marketing instead of following you.
- Reward loyalty.
- Know your audience.
- Accept criticism, even if it’s over the top.
- Answer positive posts publicly.
- Mistake #4: Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.
- Keep control of your sites – inmates should never run the asylum!
- Guide the conversation.
- Mistake #5: Spamming sites (or asking others to do it for you).
- Don’t bribe. Don’t subterfuge.
- Pay for honest, sponsored mentions.
- Become influential legitimately.
- Mistake #6: Not being authentic.
- Write your own Tweets (remember it’s a personal thing, so your logo might not actually be the best user icon to use).
- Focus on the relationships.
- Mistake #7: Silencing critics instead of listening.
- Moderate but allow dissent.
- Make mistakes right quickly.
- Mistake #8: Not being professional.
- Be professional!
- Know your audience – this will help you to be personal, but also not too personal where you cross a line that might hurt your brand.
- Mistake #9: Loose lips sink ships.
- Watch what you say.
- Apologize quickly if you offend or cross a line.
- Engage the community.
- Mistake #10: Stopping your campaign – and your relationship.
- Build campaigns for the long term.
- Don’t cast aside engaged customers.
- Remember real people build real relationships.
- Treat your audience with respect – they know where you “live” online.
- Mistake #11: Not realizing that the world is watching.
- Engage your brain before Tweeting.
- Make it right when you make a mistake.
- Don’t become a negative example in Joel’s presentation.
Social Email Marketing: Finding Influencers in Your CRM & Making Advocates #SMMSF
This presentation took place at the Social Email Marketing event, put on by Influence People with lead sponsor Constant Contact. The conference took place on Friday, September 17, 2010 at the Hotel Nikko in San Francisco, CA. In this interactive session, Chase explored how to go from boring CRM to Social CRM discussing the importance of knowing your customer, segmenting out advocates and understanding who and why they are following or “Liking” you.
I felt like this was mostly a pitch for the company, which was a little discouraging. But some of the info was useful, hence the notes I took. The speaker was:
- Chase McMichael, Co-Founder and CEO, InfiniGraph (@chasemcmichael)
Bullet Point Review!
- There are 4.6 billion cell phones.
- 500 million users on Facebook.
- Facebook Connect – you don’t even need email anymore.
- If you integrate that, you might just have given up control.
- An affinity map provides insight for co-marketing.
- InfiniGraph ranks shared content based on people, context, influence, and brand affinity.
- Your “stream” must induce clicks (Facebook, Twitter).
- If a consumer is active around your brand, they’re sharing details with friends.
Here’s Chase’s’ slide presentation:
CJU Course: Kerri Pollard – It’s All About Growth
Of course, at every CJU the general manager of the company has to give an encouraging “state of the company” type speech. This year it was all about growth.
- Kerri Pollard, General Manage, Commission Junction (@kerripollard)
I really enjoyed the statistics Kerri shared, despite her saying she wasn’t a numbers person. Neither am I, but these were very “feel good” numbers for current CJ publishers and advertisers.
Bullet Point Review!
- Unless you were a coupon publisher, growth was hard in 2009.
- $1.9 billion spent on affiliate marketing in 2009 – it’s estimated to be $4 billion in 2014.
- Online advertising has tripled.
- Affiliate marketing is growing faster than other advertising types.
- 28% of consumers’ time is spent online, but online advertising is typically only 13% of a company’s marketing budget.
- E-commerce sales are still only 3.8% of total retail sales.
- 62% of adults shopping online seek out a coupon before purchasing.
- Old Spice was the most viral campaign in 2010.
- Twitter is seeing 90 million tweets per day.
- 63% of online retailers that use a 3rd party advertising tracking solution, use CJ.
- Bed, Bath, & Beyond is the newest big-box retailer to come to CJ.
- CJ has seen a 40% increase in advertisers over the last 12 months.
- Publishers need to generate $10k/month in commissions for 3 straight months to qualify for CJ Performer status.
- Monthly income doubled on average after publishers become a CJP.
- There’s a new “Get Links” area, in beta right now.
- Advertisers supporting direct linking are clearer.
- There’s additional filtering options.
- Everyone at CJU now has access to the new “Get Links” area.
- CJ has seen a 24% increase in publisher relationships over the last 12 months.
- Affiliate marketing is now retailer’s first stop instead of their last stop.
- CJ feeds product helps advertisers fix data feeds and also works with 200+ comparison shopping engines.
- CJx beta takes care of finding advertisers, getting approved, finding products, and managing links for the publisher (name is temporary).
- CJ media is more short term campaigns (like an internal CPA network).
- 10 largest publishers on CJ experienced 50% year-over-year growth in Q2.
- 20 largest advertisers on CJ experienced 26% year-over-year growth in Q2.
Social Email Marketing: From Fans and Followers to Customers and Advocates #SMMSF
This presentation took place at the Social Email Marketing event, put on by Influence People with lead sponsor Constant Contact. The conference took place on Friday, September 17, 2010 at the Hotel Nikko in San Francisco, CA. Jacob explored changes in customer demands and expectations and looked at how organizations can work with the new “social customer” via Social CRM.
Jacob’s hatred of American Airlines made the presentation pretty hilarious. I was unfamiliar with the concept of Social CRM, so this was really enlightening. The speaker was:
- Jacob Morgan, Co-Founder, Chess Media Group (@jacobm)
Bullet Point Review!
- Email is just another marketing channel.
- 43% of consumers say companies should use social media to solve customers problems.
- Only 7% of organizations understand CRM value of social media.
- #1 thing people care about when purchasing products are personal experiences.
- Traditional CRM involves marketing, sales, and service & support all leading to the customer.
- Social CRM rotates those three things around the advocacy and experience of the customer.
- Building a powerful advocate is important no matter what channel.
- Don’t bribe your customers, fix the problem.
- Download a free white paper on SCRM at the Chess Media Group website
Here’s Jacob’s’ slide presentation:
Vote for “Behind the Curtain of Affiliate Management”! #ASW11
For the second conference in a row, Affiliate Summit has opened up the democracy of picking out which sessions attendees want to see on the agenda. Voting will be open through October 8th on their Slinkset page. Vote here! I don’t see that many changes since the last time, so I sincerely hope that those who attempted to game the system the last time by offering contest entries for votes have learned their lesson. Remember, the venue for Affiliate Summit West 2011 has changed this year to the Wynn Casino in Las Vegas, NV. It’ll take place January 9-11, 2010.
I’ll be a shameless shill for a moment and ask that you vote for my & Karen Garcia’s panel idea, Behind the Curtain of Affiliate Management. We will discuss tools, tricks, and processes that make being an affiliate manager more effective and efficient. Please vote as we really want to help all the new, struggling affiliate managers out there to improve even the smallest affiliate program! Karen has nearly 10 years in the business managing various retail affiliate programs, and I have 3 years managing a wide variety of both retail and leads based affiliate programs in the business-to-business and business-to-consumer verticals.
There are 91 options to choose from, and you can vote up as many panels as you’d like to see. To vote, just click the upward arrow. You will have to create a login, or retrieve your login from the last round 0f voting. Do your civic duty as an attendee of Affiliate Summit and help shape what the agenda looks like. As soon as I have a few free moments, I’ll be voting and tell you all what I’m voting for. Just in browsing through, before reading the descriptions, there are more than a few really good sessions that are jumping out at me. It makes me even more excited for January to get here!
Viva Democracy! Remember, you have no business complaining about the content presented at the conference if you don’t go vote!
