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Can Cookies Be Helpful?
Posted in: Behavioral Marketing, Uncategorized by admin on 11/08/2011 | No Comments
Here’s a recent article from FastCompany that briefly explains one of many re-targeting tactics. It poses the question, “Web ads know who you are — an where you go. But is that so bad?”
http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/160/web-ads-retargeting
There’s an old saying that the difference between effective marketing mail and junk mail is RELEVANCE.
And relevance is achieved by using the right data to properly target our audience. For example, I pretty much ignore all those Wednesday flyers with pizza coupons, but when I get that postcard announcing the spring sale at REI, I’m all ears.
Online ad serving works the same way. I’m fine knowing that cookies on my PC help assure the ads I see will be relevant. And if those same cookies let advertisers know my interests, I’m OK with it. I can always delete my cookies — and often I do.
The True Costs of Not Converting to Print-On-Demand (POD)
Posted in: AERIOS by admin on 10/26/2011 | No Comments
Today’s successful companies are running lean and efficiently. Industry leaders are continually monitoring revenue, expenses, and return on investment.
Often, the marketing department gets a bad rap when it comes to measuring these key business components. What’s the best way to quantify whether a particular sales promotion is working effectively? What about that logo’d tradeshow pen—did it really generate any sales? How about those brochures printed six months ago, sitting in the storage room….is the information still accurate and fresh?
There is one area of marketing that can be looked at closely, where true cost savings can be specifically measured—and it comes down to the management of printed collateral.
In a traditional marketing environment sales collateral is designed, developed, printed, paid for, and stored in a warehouse or office facility and used as the need arises. Following this process is usually at quite a risk from an expense perspective. Are there enough copies? Are there too many? Is the messaging time-sensitive? Are there unforeseen design or text changes required, making the inventoried items obsolete before they can be used?
Today’s marketers are moving quickly to capture market share, gain new clients and grow existing revenue for their companies. They are fluid, and need solutions that can provide that same sort of flexibility. Enter print-on-demand.
Print-on-demand (POD) is a business process, created to effectively manage your marketing collateral in a cost-effective and efficient manner. With a POD solution you are printing smaller quantities of only the collateral you need, when you need it. Say goodbye to storage costs, handling costs and inventory accounting fees. There is minimal waste from unused items. And, artwork can be easily modified which allows you to respond quickly to strategy and market changes.
At Aerios, we can’t tell you if the ballpoint pen generated sales at the tradeshow, but we can help you effectively manage your marketing collateral budgets by offering a comprehensive print-on-demand solution. Our technology is proven, and our clients agree: the argument for print-on-demand is clear.
So just ask yourself, “What are the true costs of NOT converting to POD?”
Shonna Falco is a client service specialist with Aerios’ workflow automation software team. She helps corporate clients take advantage of new POD technology and systems to simplify their campaigns, reduce costs, and enhance speed-to-market.
Economic Revolution: Reboot Now… Or Crash
Posted in: AERIOS by admin on 10/10/2011 | No Comments
I recently happened on this small piece in the Denver Post business section, of all places.
http://www.denverpost.com/business/ci_19068708
Remember that William Gibson quote: “The future is already here — it’s just not very evenly distributed.”? Well, this is a rallying cry that says if the future hasn’t been distributed to you yet, it’s your own fault, you’d better dive on in, and – oh, yeah – it’s both easy and free.
This was very apparent at a recent college reunion event I attended with several very successful people in their early fifties. While they were all at the peak of their lives and careers, only about half of them had ever used LinkedIn – and even fewer had a Facebook page. Wow.
I also know of a few people in the job market who are very skilled but still aren’t up on current internet technology. Hmm… coincidence?
Enjoy…
Overheard at a Key Industry Conference…
Posted in: AERIOS by admin on 09/14/2011 | No Comments
Aerios recently participated in a local symposium hosted by the Rocky Mountain Direct Marketing Association in Denver. Here are a few highlights and quotes …
DMA CEO Larry Kimmel is shown here (right) with RMDMA president Jon VanderWal (left).
- ShopAtHome.com CEO Mark Braunstein noted, “Google may offer all its analytical tools for free, but it definitely takes a lot of time and money to learn how to use them properly.”
- Troy Lerner of Booyah Advertising – “Search is great for when people are already shopping, but now it’s really Display ads and other channels that drive Search.”
- 4 quotes from Larry Kimmel, former chairman and CEO of Grey Direct global agency network and current CEO of the Direct Marketing Association –
“I spent a lot of years ‘at the kiddy table’ in conversations with the old branding leaders – discussing what they thought instead of what we direct marketers knew. As it turns out, we were right: It’s customer insights and quantifiable results that produce happy customers and business success.”
“The future is here. It’s just not very evenly distributed.” (Quoting William Gibson on the widely disparate rates of adoption and how “culture lags technology.”)
“McKinsey predicts there will be soon be a need for 100,000s of new data and analytics jobs.”
“Data is the new oil. It drives the new economy and all products and services within it. And in terms of it now being the impetus of most marketing campaigns, many say that ‘data is the new creative.’”
- Mike Belasco, local guru in SEO and conversion rate optimization (CRO) – “Websites are like great salespeople. Marketing drives the traffic, but the website is what drives the sales.” And, “It’s always cheaper to increase conversion than it is to drive more traffic.”
- Pat McGrew of Hewlett Packard in her presentation called “Paper or Pixels: Well… it depends!” asked the audience what “takeaway” they’ll use from IKEA’s marketing director Annie Boeckman’s presentation on the retailer’s impressive launch marketing. Someone from the audience answered, “We’re gonna serve meatballs!”
Speaking of meatballs, it’s time for dinner. Until next time…
Is Direct Mail a “Knight in Shining Armor”?
Posted in: AERIOS by admin on 09/13/2011 | No Comments
With all of the hype lately around the U.S. Postal Service losing money and cutting back, here’s an interesting observation from EJ Schultz at Ad Age. In a nutshell, direct mail is on the rise and viewed as a highly-dependable medium. It’s also what many believe will be the financial savior of the USPS. http://adage.com/article/news/junk-mail-hope-saving-usps/229727/
My favorite excerpt: “You can’t make me open your email…But if you send me a mail piece, you can compel me…”
Interestingly, the USPS was the one huge federal agency that actually MADE money — or at least broke even — for decades up until a few years ago.
At Aerios we consider ourselves to be “channel agnostic.” While some of our team’s roots go way back in the offline world, we provide plenty of online tactics to help clients achieve their marketing goals. Yet having said this, we are seeing direct mail response rates now that are higher than they were pre-Recession. We believe it’s due to fewer companies mailing and less clutter. (Not to mention our advanced data targeting or cross-channel engagement techniques.)
Another interesting opinion from A. Lee Fritschler, former chair of the Postal Rate Commission:
“…from the earliest days, the Postal Service was a means of communication. …It’s now become, thanks to the Internet and telephone, a broadcast medium. It is doing the same kind of thing that newspapers, magazines, radio stations, TV stations do, that is — it carries advertising. … It’s broadcasting, not communicating… and its broadcast function is in competition with other media.”
More on this in future posts…
USA Pro Cycling Revival Near Aerios HQ
Posted in: AERIOS, Behavioral Marketing by admin on 08/29/2011 | No Comments
For the first time in several years since the renowned Red Zinger and Coors Classic events, professional bicycle racing has returned to the US in a big way. After several days of grueling races through the Colorado mountain towns of Aspen, Vail, Breckenridge, Crested Butte and Steamboat Springs – the sixth and final stage was just a stone’s throw from Aerios’ offices in Golden.
Roughly 136 riders competed – including many household names for fans of the Tour de France and Olympics. An estimated 250,000 lined the course from Golden’s start and steep foothills to the grand finish in downtown Denver – in addition to being televised on NBC and VERSUS.
It was a first-class example of event marketing and very well executed. Sponsors did a good job of leveraging their investments. They seemed happy with their visibility, sampling – and of course the chance to schmooze and impress their customers. (Their marketing analytics are a bit more qualitative than we use in direct response.)
Here’s a snapshot coming out of the start, well before they reached their high speeds. Imagine coming down a mountain road at 50mph on a 12-lb bike with little 1-inch tires! To learn more and see the final standings, go to www.usaprocyclingchallenge.com
What’s Ahead for Social Entrepreneurship?
Posted in: AERIOS, Behavioral Marketing by admin on 08/15/2011 | No Comments
Imagine the results if you combined some of the strongest forces in capitalism, marketing and social networking to make the world a better place.
We had the opportunity to attend Common Pitch the other night at the historic Boulder Theater. It’s a key event of COMMON, a creative community for rapidly prototyping social ventures. http://www.common.is/about-common/
COMMON’s co-founder, Alex Bogusky, is a name familiar to most marketers. He’s one of the most famous ad men of all time who grew agency Crispin Porter + Bogusky to worldwide fame and inspired many of the branding world’s top talent to re-locate to Boulder. Last year, Alex gave up all the $ millions from big clients like Burger King and Volkswagen – now dedicating his life to building a larger movement around the principles of sustainability and using business to do social good.
(Alex’s “FearLess Cottage” HQ also happens to be right around the corner from the little 100-year-old building that houses Aerios’ Boulder field office.)
Wow! The event was like a night of “Dancing with the Entrepreneurs.”
Ten young “social entrepreneurs” from Europe, India and the US each got 5 minutes to pitch their business idea to an audience of 500 imbibing revelers (+ thousands more via the web) – all in an E-Town like atmosphere of “doing good” – complete with a love-fest critique by a panel of four judges reminiscent of American Idol. The audience was a mix of creatives, suits, groupies, and venture capitalists – who likely appreciated the anonymity of the big party style event.
One of the winning entrepreneurs has a cheap, simple solution to boosting solar power efficiency she prototyped in an African village. Another is introducing a new solar/LED multi-use light that has potential to replace all the toxic kerosene lamps in the Third World. Another has a quick/easy/cheap shower system that can provide a new source for village- or tribal-level commerce – while significantly reducing the astounding number of deaths worldwide from diseases resulting from low hygiene. You can check out these and other great ideas here http://www.common.is/pitch/entrepreneurs/.
This Social Entrepreneurship movement shows that capitalism can be a tremendous force for social good and helping the planet – and still make a TON of $ for all its stakeholders.
Net-net, it was a very inspiring evening.
Contact Frequency: How Often to “Touch” a Cold Prospect?
Posted in: AERIOS, Lead Generation by admin on 08/09/2011 | No Comments
We’ll explore this popular question with our final post under the topic of Lead Generation.
Traditional media reps say that “a prospect has to see your ad 3 times to be “effective” – i.e., they can recall both the product and your brand.” Some will say 7x, and others will quote London businessman Thomas Smith, who in 1885 said it takes up to 20x from initial impression to purchase.
Of course the media reps make more $ when they sell frequency – whether they can track it or not.
In the direct response world, we know quantitatively how things perform. And we’ve uncovered a paradox:
Awareness increases with frequency, but campaign response rate drops off exponentially.
In this direct mail example, the response rate for each “hit” is half of the previous one (without varying the package, list or offer).
So for clients with a very large target audience (e.g., the state of CA), we use a “skim” strategy. We touch prospects only once with DM – reserving other, lower-CPM media to provide frequency.
And for clients in smaller niches, traditional media often has too much waste. So here we use multiple hits of direct response to drive both awareness and sales. By continually varying the package and offer, we keep it all “fresh” for prospects. The result is a much smaller trail-off in response, and we maintain our client’s campaign ROI.
So the number of “hits” varies by client and situation. And the best way to assure optimal frequency is with Frequency Planning. This process pinpoints how to measure the effects of frequency, how often to contact prospects, how much to spend, and at what point one may see diminishing returns.
More on that in a future post…
Offers & Incentives – There’s More Than Meets The Eye
Posted in: AERIOS, Lead Generation by admin on 08/03/2011 | No Comments
Continuing last week’s post on the unsung hero of direct marketing, the Offer…
Of course, it’s very important to choose the offer to fit the target audience. One of the major airlines offered a catalog of home and kids products that their Platinum awards customers could buy with their points. Well, that is until a colleague of ours analyzed their data.
She found that most Platinum customers were single with no kids. Makes sense.
They travel 100,000+ miles a year. So the airlines changed the content of the catalog appropriately. And guess what? The formerly lackluster campaign performed a lot better.
If you have a luxury brand targeting highly-upscale buyers, you need to take a lot of care to balance the Offer’s immediacy and promotional nature with the need to reinforce the integrity of the brand. And you need to carefully structure the Offer so that it won’t produce a lot of unqualified leads.
One way to do it: Tone down the language. Remove superlatives. Offer something that “the person who already has everything” can’t get anywhere else. Like a private party catered by a renowned chef. Or a half day with a well-known golf pro. (More on the power of experiential marketing in a future post.)
If you have a multi-step sales cycle, it’s important to consider the proper incentive for each step. There may be an incentive to engage on line. And another one to respond or inquire. And another to attend an event. And another to close the sale. And yet another to refer friends or family.
The economics can get a bit complex. We typically distribute a campaign’s incentive budget across all steps of the sales cycle. This gives the sales team flexibility to use the funds where they will have the highest impact on a particular prospect.
But more on that in a future post. Until then…
The Importance of Including an “Offer”
Posted in: AERIOS, Lead Generation by admin on 07/27/2011 | No Comments
In keeping with this month’s topic of Sales Lead Generation…
The “40-40-20” Rule of direct response marketing says that a campaign’s performance can typically be attributed 40% to the list and 20% to the creative. What do you think accounts for the other 40%?
I will OFFER you a hint…
Yes, it’s the OFFER. The offer (not to be confused with the product OFFERING) is basically an incentive for taking action. In the phrase “Do this and get that,” the offer is the “that.”
Offers are especially important in lead gen. Best practices require that a lot of thought, planning and creativity go into it. After all, in direct response, almost all design and copy are driven by the Offer.
So it has to be chosen with care. It has to reinforce the brand and positioning of the product or service being sold. If you’re selling home wireless Internet service, which incentive do you think will perform best? A cheap trip to Vegas? Or an Apple iPad?
Of course it’s the iPad, because it reinforces all the great things the home wireless Internet allows you to do.
What about discounting? We advise our clients to use value-added offers and avoid discounts. Which will respond highest, a “FREE iPad” or “30% Off Your First Month’s Bill” or a “$50 Rebate”?
Yep, it’s the iPad.
It borrows on the brand equity of Apple. It’s more exciting to consumers than a discount. And it’s more difficult for your competitors to simply copy.
OK – all for now. Stay tuned. Next week we’ll explore how to tailor offers by audience, and pairing offers with each step of the sales cycle.