Best of Marketing

How to improve your online banner campaign

1. Get to the point:
Consumers think: "I don't have time to wait for the name of the advertiser to pop up. I'm busy doing other things."

In other words, don’t beat around the bush.
You have about three seconds to catch a viewer's interest, so don't attempt subtlety. The brand should be the first thing a person sees.
In this area, static ads have an advantage over animation because they are not oriented in time. They "tell the story" right up front.
In animated ads, those that display the brand in the first frame and keep it in view have the greatest chance of establishing clear brand association.
Here are 3 tactics to get to the point:

   A. Images must be powerful and "pop"

With static ads, the eye must have a compelling focal point. Even in "frenetic" ads (such as in the computer gaming industry) where images abound, one image must dominate.

   B. Follow the flow

With car ads, viewers tend to look at the middle of the car, then to the front of the car. If the car is facing to the right, then copy will be seen better if it’s on the right. If the car faces the left, copy on that side is more visible.

In both static and animated ads, the eye should be drawn toward the important information.

   C. Follow the flow

With car ads, viewers tend to look at the middle of the car, then to the front of the car. If the car is facing to the right, then copy will be seen better if it’s on the right. If the car faces the left, copy on that side is more visible.

In both static and animated ads, the eye should be drawn toward the important information.

2. Ads communicate on rational *and* emotional levels

The rational part of a viewer notices benefits. But, “if you grab someone's heart, that's where breakthroughs in advertising come." It’s one of the most difficult things to do.

The best ads combine reason and emotion.

3. Advertisers must leverage the unique strengths of each ad format

--Skyscrapers work well "if you have pleasing vertical motion" or something that builds up.
--MPUs do well with video because they're shaped like a television screen. They also work with "a big beautiful picture.”
--Leaderboards work well for text (as long as there's not too much of it) because we read from left to right.

E-mail preview pane limits opening ratios

A new survey says B2B e-mail marketers should pay more attention to the information they   
put into the preview pane of their messages. The survey, conducted by Email Labs, revealed 
that almost 70 percent of B2B e-mail newsletter subscribers have a preview pane in their   
e-mail program and always or frequently use it. About 50 percent use the preview pane as   
intended, reading a few lines to determine whether they want to open the e-mail, while      
one-third read the entire message in the pane. About 15 percent take a middle road and read
as much as they can in the preview pane without having to scroll down. EmailLabs            
recommended that senders "redesign the top of e-mails to include a 2-3 inch preview pane   
header area that is HTML and text only (no images). This area should include only copy such
as article teasers, key offers and 'In This Issue' information that enables the subscriber 
to determine whether to read further and/or open the e-mail."

3 best levers to sell more via e-mail marketing

What are the big 3 levers to increase sales via e-mail marketing and what is the correct order?

If your goal is to double online sales, your best bet is doubling qualified traffic to your site (Lever One). This is generally easier than doubling average order value or doubling site conversion. (Worthy goals, too, but harder to achieve.)

If you've not yet tested paid search, paid inclusion, local search, affiliates, Ebay, Amazon, and so on–get out and do so. Such "list" tests offer you the greatest chance of really bumping sales.

After "list", focus on "offer" (Lever Two). Is your site presenting the right merchandise at the right prices? What about shipping fees: would the conversion lift from a free free shipping offset the cost? Suggestion: when setting a minimum order size for an offer, place it above your average order size.

Finally, focus on your creative–how your site looks and works (Lever Three). Does your homepage highlight the breadth of your merchandise? Are your product detail pages clear, with relevant information above the fold (visible without scrolling)? Is your checkout processes smooth, fast, and intuitive?

Nice example of an internet campaign to a corporate audience

Would not have guessed that a viral campaign targeting middle and junior management would work, but after watching these funny video's I changed my opinion. These are well written ads that get the message of FedEx greatly across. The style is a bit like The Office. Click on the link and enjoy:

http://www.relaxiwillmanage.com/

Creative strategies for rich internet media vehicles

According to Wikipedia, rich media is "a broad range of interactive digital media that exhibit dynamic motion, taking advantage of enhanced sensory features such as video, audio and animation."
I am trying to make the dots connect and offer for now a simple connection. You start, as with any good advertising campaign, from your target audience. You should have them very well described and profiled. Ideally in demographic, psychographic, lifestyle and others as well as visually. That is photos and video material. From there you select the appropriate rich media vehicle and develop the creative tailered to your target. Execute the campaign like a layered story with a hook and build to click-through.

Make sure you develop the right type of rich media. Include elements that catch the eye at the beginning of creatives. Engage target consumers, using host-initiated over-the-page elements like a car skidding across a screen towards your creative, or, maybe, a dollar bill that floats onto your logo
Include host-initiated video that immediately engages the viewer.

Leverage the click-to-full-screen experience. You're not taking consumers to another site, mind you; but just giving them the ability to further interact with the creative and experience it in a bigger way, is huge. Who doesn't enjoy a bigger picture, or at least the option of viewing one?   

A little frame work can be find below. Would welcome anyone to share their opinion?

Make use of your employees e-mails

Every employee sends out e-mails everyday. Why not convert the signature at the bottom into a little selling banner. Go beyond the usual name and contact detail and include clickable links to your company's websites or e-commerce.

Ipod video marketing

Fast food giant Burger King Thursday unveiled a plan to sponsor a series of short comedy videos designed to be downloaded for free and played on the new iPod. The Burger King sponsorship entails a branded page for video files specially encoded for video iPods. Some of the downloadable videos hosted on the page are user-created Halloween shorts that feature masks of infamous Burger King spokescritters: the costumed "King" that appears in current television spots, and the net-famous Subservient Chicken. To get the videos, Heavy.com sent out masks of the King and the Subservient Chicken to a group of their especially active users who submit content on a fairly regular basis. "They [Burger King] came to us and said: 'We've got these masks, can we do something with your users?'" Heavy.com co-CEO Simon Assaad said: "We just sent about 20 masks out, and people just started turning up at our front door with videos."

Last week, a group of users of print and online publishing software maker Adobe Systems' Photoshop software launched what might have been the first iPod infomercial, a half-hour guided tour of Adobe's Photoshop dubbed "Photoshop TV."

Brand integration in heavy trafficed websites

This has been done in the past. I remember Budweiser graphs on CNBC website on Friday afternoon, when everyone checked their stock prices just before hitting the pubs to close the week.
Still nice and appropriate execution: Page 6 and Sex and the City

Length of copy for e-mail marketing

NOBODY READS THAT STUFF. WE need to cut out some of this copy." Your client or manager says this and heads nod around the table. Of course. Self evident. But not always true. A shorter e-mail is not necessarily a better e-mail. I've done tests to prove it.

In a recent split test, response to a long e-mail was 35 percent higher than response (click-through rate) to the short version. In another example, the lift was only 7 percent, but it was a lift nonetheless. I have also done tests where the long and short versions had response rates that were dead even. Here are some things to think about when crafting your copy.

Images Arrest, Copy Persuades. While a great visual will capture attention, it cannot present an argument and motivate a reader to act. That's the job of your copy.

If your story is simple and your brand equity high, you don't need a lot of copy. We tried a simple postcard and a long, copy-heavy announcement e-mail for the new model year launch of a well-known brand. The results were even. All eager fans needed to know was that the new models were on the site to get them there. In this case, the descriptive copy in the e-mail was superfluous.

In another case, however, the offer was more complicated and the payoff more obscure. It was difficult to convince the team that the audience, who had not been thinking about the program 24/7 as the client had, would need a lot of information in order to appreciate the offer. The additional copy, in a graphically lackluster presentation, brought about the 35 percent lift cited above.

Pull Me In. Readers are busy, impatient and selfish. They skim your e-mail and make a split-second decision whether to bother with it. If your copy is in big block paragraphs, it does not invite the reader in. Use benefit-focused headlines and subheads to perform this very important function. In business writing, subheads describe the copy that follows. In persuasive writing, subheads tell why you should care about the copy that follows. Last week I employed this simple principle to convince a client that "Free Screensaver" was a more compelling subhead than "Thank you for signing up."

Guide the Eye. Use classic direct-mail techniques to make your copy skimable:

Bullets

Underlines

Italics

Bold print

Varying paragraph length, including one-sentence paragraphs

Indentation

Centered copy

Postscript (P.S.)

See how much more inviting that list is than a block paragraph? (Remember that the purpose of this column is educational, so even though I employ a few of the techniques presented, I am not trying to generate response.)

How much copy should you include? As much as you need to tell your story fully and clearly and present a compelling reason to click. Do not make cutting copy a goal. Make creating interesting, benefit-oriented, skimable copy your goal, and you too will see big lifts in your response rates.

How to write a briefing for e-mail marketing

Audience Segment Objectives. How many of you have received an e-mail selling ladies' shoes to gents or vice-versa? Not smart. You can segment by lots of criteria, but you should set these goals discretely and keep track of them.                                                                  
Audience Personalization. When does "Dear Sir" become "Hi Joe" (or even "Hey Dude" for Gen Y)? How personal do you get, and at what stage? Should it differ by segment?                                                                                                                                  
Audience Segment Attitude. Does your segment live for e-mail (checking it ten times a day), or do its members experience inbox rage at every ad that comes in? Communicate the "e-mail" attitude of your audience segments.                                                                              
Environmental Consideration. Are all inboxes created equal? You may need to talk to other considerations at the inbox level based on different experiences (e.g. AOL, Yahoo, MSN/Hotmail, Outlook, Eudora).                                                                                        
Testing. Include a test matrix that you can draw from. But remember, you should only test what you are willing to change or improve. The point is to set the ground rules for testing up front.                                                                                                          
Subject Line. This is the first thing your customers see. Is it the last thing you write before you hit send? Remember that the subject line introduces the creative and sets the context for the main message. Don't wait to do it at the last minute.