Real-time communication

Brands need to communicate directly with customers in real time in order to keep their finger on the pulse. Trends change more rapidly than traditional research can track.

Responsive

Customers demand superior service and expect brands to respond to them swiftly, proactively and incessantly.

Cost effective

Customer service and communication are more important than ever, yet the pressure is on to keep the cost of operations as low as possible.

Integrative

Mobile marketing is opening up opportunities and challenges that need to be addressed and integrated in conventional marketing for businesses to stay at the front in the race for customers.

1. Hoop Dreams (1994), Steve James
2. The Thin Blue Line (1988), Errol Morris
3. Bowling for Columbine (2002), Michael Moore
4. Spellbound (2002), Jeffrey Blitz
5. Harlan County U.S.A. (1976), Barbara Kopple
6. An Inconvenient Truth (2006), Davis Guggenheim
7. Crumb (1994), Terry Zwigoff
8. Gimme Shelter (1970), Albert Maysles, David Maysles, and Charlotte Zwerin
9. The Fog of War (2003), Errol Morris
10. Roger & Me (1989), Michael Moore
11. Super Size Me (2004), Morgan Spurlock
12. Don’t Look Back (1967) D.A. Pennebaker
13. Salesman (1968), Albert Maysles, David Maysles, and Charlotte Zwerin
14. Koyaanisqatsi: Life Out of Balance (1982), Godfrey Reggio
15. Sherman’s March (1986), Ross McElwee
16. Grey Gardens (1976), Albert Maysles, David Maysles, Ellen Hovde, and Muffie Meyer
17. Capturing the Friedmans (2003), Andrew Jarecki
18. Born into Brothels, (2004), Ross Kauffman and Zana Briski
19. Titicut Follies (1967), Frederick Wiseman
20. Buena Vista Social Club (1999), Wim Wenders
21. Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004), Michael Moore
22. Winged Migration (2002), Jacques Perrin
23. Grizzly Man (2005), Werner Herzog
24. Night and Fog (1955), Alain Resnais
25. Woodstock (1970), Michael Wadleigh

The foundation of email marketing is a targeted, responsive and permission-based email list. If you have a list of subscribers that trust you and consider you to be an expert in the field of your interest, you are on the right track.
Below you will several list building ideas that will help you make the most out of your email marketing.

Provide useful, relevant and unique content.

Your visitors will not give you their email address just because they can subscribe to your newsletter free of charge. You have to provide unique and valuable information that will be useful for your subscribers.

Add a subscription form to every page of your website.

Make it elegant and accessible. Locate it at the top-left corner of your site, as that’s where the human eye will initially travel.

Make the sign up process as easy as possible.

You shouldn’t ask for too much information upfront, because you will lose subscribers. Collecting just the name and email address should be enough for most email marketing campaigns.

Address your visitors’ privacy concerns.

Most people are worried that they will receive spam after giving out their email address. Tell your potential subscribers that you respect their privacy and link this statement to a privacy policy page.

Show an example issue to your visitors.

This lets your potential subscribers review your newsletter before they sign up and determine if it is something they’d be interested in.

Create a web-based newsletter repository.

By putting an archive of all of your newsletter issues you can make it more appealing for your visitors to subscribe. You will also generate additional traffic from search engines.

Contact other newsletter publishers.

Let them know that you’d be interested to announce their newsletter if they’re up to do the same for you. This way, both of you can build your lists faster.

Give away useful free stuff.

Write an ebook or a PDF report. Hire a programmer to create downloadable or web-based software. Then give it away to your visitors provided that they join your list.

Request that your subscribers pass it on.

Word of mouth is a powerful viral technique that works great with email marketing. If your subscribers find the content you share with them to be useful and informative, they will pass your newsletter on to their friends. This can be a good source of new subscribers.

Let others reprint your newsletter, as long as its content is unmodified.

Many webmasters and newsletter publishers are actively looking for high quality content, and if they reprint your newsletter, you will get new subscribers, traffic and links pointing to your site.

Include a “Sign Up” button in the newsletter.

If you are using plain text instead of HTML, provide a text link to your subscription page. You may feel that this is not required, because the subscriber is already on your list, but remember that your readers will forward your newsletters to others, or reprint it online. You want to make it easy for them to subscribe.

Add a squeeze page.

A squeeze page is typically designed only to build your list. It features a powerful headline and a couple of most important benefits that should make your subscribers salivate to sign up to your list. Once created, use a service such as WordTracker to find hundreds targeted keywords, and advertise on them using pay per click advertising on Google, MSN and Yahoo.

Include testimonials in your squeeze page.

This is crucial. Put 1 or 2 strong testimonials from satisfied subscribers on your squeeze page. This can be in any format, but you may find that multimedia (audio or video social proof) is more “believable”. People like to follow footsteps of other people.

Blog religiously.

Blogging is a great way to communicate with your potential customers, and it creates a nice synergy with your email marketing. Be sure to include your newsletter sign up form on each page of your blog.

Use co-registration service to build your list.

Co-registration is a great way to build your email list. Your newsletter’s ad appears on other website’s and their visitors are able to check your subscription box and become added to your list.

1. Declaration of Identity
2. Identity through Association
3. User-initiated Conversation
4. Provider-initiated Conversation
5. In-Person Interaction

Identity-based Interaction is your declaration of your value, who you are, and where you can be found. Your customer happens upon your online identity that you, as a provider, define and declare. This is anything from your About Us pages on your blog or website, to your MySpace profile, to your Naymz profile. Here, there is very little interaction outside of your own declaration, but this becomes critical in defining how you can benefit your marketplace.

There has been a recent outcrop of websites created purely for this function. An expanded business card, if you will. Most also include the opportunity to link to your other forms of presence online, bringing together your presence in one place…well, kind-of. They include:

Naymz
Ziki
ClaimID
SuprGlu
LinkedIn

Association-based Interaction is your customers’ opportunity to associate themselves with you and you with your customers. Most obviously, this is accomplished through things like becoming “Friends” on MySpace, you and your customers’ BlogRoll, or through their social bookmarking. This is your customer wearing your company’s logo proudly - Like Andy wears his Beatles shirts.

The most explicit form of allowing for this ability is through social bookmarking sites. I say this, and not social networking sites, because this is the sole function of these sites. Make it easy for your customers to bookmark your site, blog posts, etc with their favorite tool.

del.icio.us
Furl
blummy
Ma.gnolia
StumbleUpon
BlinkList

User-initiated Conversation is your users’ opportunity to create their own declarations or questions, and your opportunity to respond. This is your opportunity to be there and cater to them. Here, you serve your customers.
Perhaps the most cut-and-dry examples of this lie in messageboards, forums and “groups” sites such as Google Groups, Yahoo! Groups, community sites, etc. So, how do you find these conversations? Andy Beal’s Online Reputation Monitoring Beginner’s Guide. Here, he walks you through, step-by-step, how to find out what conversations are being initiated by others online.

In order to get directly involved with your customers, the most well-known example of this is “GoogleGuy” on the WebmasterWorld forums, is through your users’ forums, and sites such as:

Yahoo Groups
Google Groups
AOL Groups
Topica Email Lists
Kaboodle Groups
Eurekster
tribe.net
Ning

Provider-initiated Conversation is your chance to find out what your customers think, feel, love and hate about your product. Ask them. Challenge them. Present yourself to them, but do so respectfully. As much as it’s an opportunity for them to tell you what they love and hate about your product, it’s also their choice whether to do so or not. Be kind. Be respectful. Appreciate their time.

Although it’s not a primarily online company, there is one company that has made this their culture. Seeking feedback and input from its customers 24/7/265. And it is: Current.tv. There’s little-to-no format, except for about half of the content is contributed by its users. If you haven’t seen it or don’t have digital cable, find someone who does and watch it. Do that this week, you won’t regret it.

Social networking strategies for connecting with your customers can certainly be complex, tricky and cumbersome, so I’ll be writing up strategies in the very near future to hopefully assist on those fronts. In the meantime, find your customers and interact with them here:

Myspace
Bebo
Friendster
Facebook

In-Person Interaction is the pinnacle form of interaction with your customers. You’re interacting with them online, why not in person? Does it get better than that? This is where relationships are built and authentic conversation is had with so much more input, feedback, collaboration and communication. I had a seven hour conversation with a good friend last night. It was one of the best conversations I’ve ever had about so many things, and I could have never had that quality of a conversation online. Nothing beats face-to-face.

Get out there. Meet your customers. Let them interact with other customers. Build your community. Go to conferences…better yet, organize your own gatherings. To help this along, coordinating, managing attendee status, etc, there have been several sites that can help in either finding local events or coordinating your own:

Meetup
BarCamp
Evite
Upcoming
Eventful

One thing about social media marketing: It’s complicated for two reasons: no one has created a structure to work from, and there’s so much overlap in functionality of different sites, that it can be quite confusing as to a site’s single purpose because…well…there usually isn’t a single purpose.
Don’t let this hold you back. Get out there. Spend time with these sites. Sign up, Use them, meet your customers, talk to your customers, and LOVE THEM.

Bounce rate is the percentage of single-page visits or visits in which the person left your site from the entrance (landing) page. Use this metric to measure visit quality - a high bounce rate generally indicates that site entrance pages aren’t relevant to your visitors. The more compelling your landing pages, the more visitors will stay on your site and convert.

What can be done to improve your bounce rate

Answer questions.

When someone comes to your site, they’re probably not thinking “Gee, I wonder what their office looks like.” Instead, they’re asking, “Do you have the mountain bike I really want”? Which question do you answer? Answer the latter and you’ll keep more visitors. (Inspired by Specialized.com)

Simplify.

Believe it or not, every person in your company does not get to contribute one link to your home page. The average person is most comfortable processing 5-7 choices at a time. Don’t overwhelm them. Simplify by removing options or at least grouping and prioritizing them. How many links does Google have on their home page? How about Apple? Look at your traffic reports, find out what visitors really want, and then link to that and only that. If anyone in your office whines, blame me.

Remove autoplay videos.

My first reflex if a video starts playing and music that sounds like a bad 70’s porn flick comes streaming out of my speakers is to hit the back button. I’m willing to bet most people feel the same way. Remove the video altogether, or at least have it paused.

Improve pageload time.

If your home page takes more than 8 seconds to look intelligible, you’re probably shedding visitors. Note I said ‘look intelligible’, not ‘load completely’. If there’s a huge image or a video that takes longer, that’s OK, as long as it doesn’t prevent the rest of the page from loading. Trim 2-3 seconds off your pageload time and watch the bounce rate drop. Proof? When I first relaunched my blog, a bug in the code led to 10-15 second load times. Once we fixed it, the bounce rate dropped by 30%.

Write a better headline.

A punchy, take-action headline will keep visitors. Instead of “Enterprise Security Solutions for A Web 2.0 Workplace”, try “Protect Your Network” (I made this example up).

Move the important stuff up.

If you have a store, show products near the top of the page. If you’re promoting a candidate, put that message at the top. Always put your call to action up high, front-and-center. If you’re uncomfortable doing that, you may have the wrong call to action.

Dump the popup.

I shouldn’t even have to say this any more, but if you have a popup or other annoyance on your home page, get rid of it. You’re losing a lot more than you’re gaining, plus you’re making me hate you.