iPhone Lattes
Jeff Whang
While the adoption of paying for things at retail locations with your mobile phone is widespread in Asia and Europe, the average American consumer is still far behind. Starbucks’ new iPhone app may help in changing our minds as they pilot a program where you can check your balance/reload your Starbucks Card as well as display a bar code on your iPhone that the barista can scan to get you your double tall one pump sugar-free vanilla soy latte, no foam, 165 degrees without you even pulling out your wallet.
ABC Flash Forward Alternate Reality Game
Luke Lancaster
Television has been making a move into viral marketing campaigns through the use of user-generated content (UGC) to get viewers involved and excited about the upcoming year of television. The site uses the show concept to create a fake news report that is meant to be fun and interactive for viewers.
Starbucks, Dell Aid Online Effort to Save the Rainforest
Sara Schnaubelt
Environmental activists and large corporations will soon be able to combine their “green” efforts thanks to a new social network called “Team Earth,” which is launching in November. Students, politicians and other non-governmental organizations will be able to join and gather support for causes.
Don’t Tag Your Friends… Tag Your Products!
Jill Krumsick
Recently launched Udorse is pushing social media branding to a new level with user endorsement deals. Brands benefits from increased search capabilities and personal recommendations while your PayPal account gets credited. Who knew those pixilated mobile uploads could be worth more than the memory?
Disney Makes Storybooks Digital
Brian Kress
Kids are reading less. Analysts and commentators point fingers in several directions, but Disney seems to think it’s that the behaviors have simply changed. Feeling the financial pressure to make reading more interactive, and, well, fun, the company has issued their entire catalog of children’s books online at DisneyDigitalBooks.com and made them much more dynamic than text on a page.
There has been plenty of discussion across the web about measuring online advertising campaigns. Many posts cite our industry’s current fix, the click through rate, as a good solution, but we’ve found that integrating brand metrics into our view of success makes for a more complete picture.
Historically, online campaigns have had the luxury of ubiquitous behavioral accompaniment. Along with CTR, we track other behavioral metrics (aka Key Performance Indicators) such as impressions, interaction rate, total clicks, cost per impression, cost per interaction, cost per click, leads or acquisitions, visits to key website pages, purchases, and cost per significant action; each built and widely used throughout the online marketing world to help us better understand how our media changes people’s behavior.
While these behavioral metrics are certainly important, we feel that these metrics alone don’t tell the whole story. They tend to be a narrow window into how successful our campaigns are. Instead, what we have started to recognize is that value comes from more than clicks, time, and transactions. The most valuable customer isn’t necessarily the one that clicks, interacts, or even buys the most.
We’ve found that our behavioral metrics tell us the most when accompanied by attitudinal ones, metrics that help us understand how our advertising changes our brand in the minds of the target over time. These metrics allow us to better plan and place messaging considering how it effects our brand in the long term.
We use three types of studies on a number of clients to give us a more complete look at how our advertising is truly affecting our target:
1. Online advertising effectiveness studies: These studies issue brand tracking study-like questions to gauge the brand and sales impact of our online advertising. Most providers (our preferences listed below) use a control/exposed methodology, having each group respond to a questionnaire that includes common brand metrics like awareness, preference, motivation, persuasion, etc.
Insight Express, Dynamic Logic, Factor TG
2. Buzz monitoring: Buzz monitoring studies aggregate all the conversation happening online about your brand or category – in traditional or social media – and use that data to gather insight and make messaging recommendations. See our post on capturing conversations for more info.
Nielsen BuzzMetrics, TNS Cymfony, ScoutLabs
3. Net Promoter score: The sworn tool of loyalty marketing geeks, the Net Promoter score, asks a single question on a 0 to 10 rating scale, “How likely is it that you would recommend our company to a friend of colleague?” From there, it categorizes responses into three groups: Promoters (9 to 10 rating), Passives (7 to 8 rating), and Detractors (0 to 6 rating), then subtracts the Detractors from the Promoters. “Good scores” vary industry to industry, but, typically, anywhere over 40% is strong.
Each of these fills a gap of knowledge that the behavioral metrics certainly do not. When used in conjunction with those behavioral metrics, particularly when balanced per the objective in an index, we’ve been able to spend smarter and persuade more effectively.
What other methods have you used to find the attitude behind the behavior?
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Did You Know? Updated for Fall 2009
John Keehler
Did you know that the average American teen sends 2,272 text messages each month? This is the official update to the original “Shift Happens” video. This completely new Fall 2009 version includes facts and stats focusing on the changing media landscape and was developed in partnership with The Economist.
Online Market Research for a Cause
Karen Sznajder
The Chief Marketing Officer Council has an initiative called Pause To Support A Cause. The effort is a method of Online Market Research that reaches out to willing participants to complete surveys in exchange for a donation to their favorite non-profit organization. The idea is for companies to take the money they would have paid participants for market research and turn it into a donation towards a charity.
New MySpace CEO Vows Comeback
Jeff Whang
Jon Miller, hired as CEO of MySpace just a few months ago admits that the social network fell behind others on innovation but is focused on finding new ways to marry technology innovation with media, citing examples like Hulu. He hints at MySpace committing more resources to paid premium high quality content and thinks that that social networkers are ready for it. Does MySpace have a shot at reinventing itself or will it soon join the ranks of unsocial networks?
Will Amazon become the Wal-Mart of the Web?
Brian Kress
Amazon, famous for selling books, CDs, and DVDs, is now being described as the “world’s general store.” Its expansion strategy has allowed it to be one of the few retailers to thrive during the recession, growing purchases of electronics and general merchandise by 35% last quarter.
“I have a dream… that all websites get equal Internet speed.”
Jill Krumsick
On Monday, the FCC passed a regulation that all content be treated equally. Internet Service Providers expressed interest in offering consumers a faster connection to their site for a fee. Had the idea of tiered service pricing been approved, not only would there be a barrier for smaller sites but basic internet connection would remain stagnant while technology advances would go to the highest bidder.
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Social Business Design is the idea of utilizing social media and emerging technology to transform the organizational structure of a business. Its not just about connecting with consumers, although that’s a great part of it, but moving beyond and applying these ideas to create a dynamic business culture with more seamless connections.
Businesses are using technologies such as wikis, blogs, tags, social networking, RSS feeds and other social software to streamline internal and external communications. Employees at Ikea uses SocialTexts, a private micro blogging network. Shell transferred official documents to a wiki format. With the ability for real-time information and collaboration, real efficiencies are created.
Not only does it make sense in terms of speed, connectivity and cost reduction, but there is something more intangible that comes into play. With a more open communication design comes the opportunity to become a more flat organization. And not just become more flat, but really feel flat. We have begun to see the impact of social media on businesses and how this sense of direct connection can change consumer behaviors. Now imagine the benefits that would come from creating that connection with your employees.
As always, there are cons to the aforementioned pros. The hurdles stem from risk, trust and control. For some companies, the idea of freely flowing information might induce sweat, heart palpitations and nausea (for example, check out this list of company’s policies on technology and social media use.)
To help ease the transition, some “best practices” are coming to the surface. For a high level perspective on how to navigate this arena, check out Dion Hinchcliffe’s blog. And for a more tactical view, Michael Faber outlines a few types of tools paired with various goals here. As well, the Dachis Group and Altimeter are consulting organizations pioneering this field as it grows and entities look for support.
We have integrated technology into our daily routine through our intranet portal, open database system, blog and twitter account, and continually work to improve processes (No, seriously. Standing weekly meeting.) But whether innovating or barely keeping up, its important not to lose focus. The goal is to empower the company’s best resources – human capital.
So, what technologies would empower you in your job?
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Facebook Lite… Your Twitter Replacement?
Jill Krumsick
In an attempt to increase monitoring and encourage engagement, Facebook continues twitterifying by adding tagging capabilities and “Facebook Lite,” a slimmer, trimmer version of the original.
Bing Introduces Visual Search
Brian Kress
Imagine a search engine that served up results in images instead of text and had easily-recognizable pictures which you could narrow down until you found what you were looking for. That dude, with the hair, in that movie? Done. That phone with the big ol’ screen? Found. That guy that usurped the mic at that awards show? Binged.
Google Introduces Fast Flip
Jeff Whang
In a counterpoint to Bing’s new Visual Search, Google launches Fast Flip, a new online reading experience that makes reading news online a bit more like print, but with the aggregation of content from lots of different sources. Currently lauded in the business community as a step in the right direction and blasted by the tech community for its usability issues and slow page turning. Curious? Check it out for yourself.
Facebook Fans for Sale
Michele McDonough
uSocial.net, a company founded on the idea of taking advantage of flaws in the systems of social bookmarking sites like Digg, Yahoo! Buzz, StumbleUpon and AOL’s Propeller, announces that you can now purchase Facebook fans or friends directly from them. Will Facebook be able to stop them?
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Recently, I’ve taken on a few clients for which raising money online is a big part of how they operate. And while most organizations we’ve worked with and have seen out in the marketplace have long understood that an online strategy is an important part of growing their donor base in today’s philanthropy world, just a select few are doing really innovative things in the space.
Here’s a short list of unique tools brands are using to connect with donors in new ways.
1. Online widgets/microsites that encourage interaction and competition
Online widgets have become a powerful way to connect with your donor base and give them a different way to participate in the cause than your typical donation page. We had the opportunity of working with an extremely well-known brand like the Salvation Army to develop the Online Red Kettle during their Christmas campaign in 2008. The campaign is idle now until the holidays ramp up again, but this past year was an incredible success. The keys to why this worked so well included its seamless interface, the ability to share news about the online red kettle easily from the site itself, and the competition it drove by highlighting the top teams and individuals.
Here’s what the site looks like now:
2. Smart website improvements that engage donors minds and hearts to where their dollars are going
We often see philanthropy websites built on a template that looks like every other donation site out there and has very little unique content. In a world where you’re competing for the limited dollars out there, we believe the keys are to create engaging experiences on your website and give the potential and existing donor a glimpse into where their dollars are going. There are a couple of examples of website that are doing a great job of this – one of them being my alma mater, Emory University and their capital campaign, called “Campaign Emory.”
Instead of a canned website, they have developed a unique look and feel and addressed the unique needs of touting the reasons to give for various schools within the university.
Another example of a philanthropy engaging donors through smart website improvements is NothingButNets.net, an organization dedicated to raising money to send anti-malaria bed nets to Africa to help prevent malaria, the leading killer of children in Africa. They’ve developed online game called Deliver the Net and an Interactive Net Distribution Map. The online game, while simple, is a fun way to get immersed in the experience of participating in the cause.
And the interactive map gives you the feeling that it’s real time and things are happening in Africa right now. Both engage potential and existing donors like few philanthropic organizations do on their websites.
3. Leveraging social networking for transparency and cross-platform sharing
This last one should be obvious. Social networking and philanthropy seem like the perfect match. But it isn’t as easy as developing a fan page that links to your donation page and waiting for the dollars to pour in. The most effective ways we’ve seen philanthropies use social networking is to leverage the transparency it offers and make it easy for users to spread the cause. The Humane Society has done quite a bit in the social networking space and has over 100,000 fans.
They utilize their page to share news stories that would be relevant to their audience as well as setting up events in local communities that users can RSVP to. Social networking is also the platform where users can easily find out pretty much all they need to know about the cause, through its Facebook page, Twitter feed and YouTube channel. There’s obviously much more happening in this space, but the Humane Society is one good example.
As innovations keep expanding the power of online, particularly in the mobile space, we hope more philanthropic organizations pursue these new methods of reaching potential and existing donors. The old rules of direct mail and cold calling may not go away anytime soon, but peoples’ taste for receiving those kinds of communications look like they’ll continue to decline as their receptivity to new and innovative ways of communication increase.
Consider the growth in e-commerce on mobile devices – already popular in some European countries and Japan, it seems like only a matter of time before it becomes commonplace here (remember a few years ago when it was hard to fathom entering your credit card information into a computer?) When that shift happens, philanthropies would be smart not to ignore this trend of people making these kind of financial decisions on the move. Other cutting-edge trends that philanthropies would be wise to keep an eye on:
- Facebook Causes: While these primarily bring in supports but few dollars, this is certainly an area not to ignore for general awareness of your cause and possibly in the future, as a regular source of donations
- Location-based social networking: Partnering with new social networks that find like-minded people near you geographically, philanthropic organizations could quickly put together events that bring these people together to support the cause
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The New Youth Couponing
John Keehler
While coupon use has been declining since the early 90s, they are making a comeback with a younger audience due to the economy and new delivery channels such as mobile, Twitter and other digital media.
The Real-Time Web
Jeff Whang
The blog ReadWriteWeb is running a series looking at the 5 top web trends to emerge in 2009, and today is “the real-time web.” At the end of the week, we’ll look at the top 5 that they came up with.
America: The Digital Nation
Brian Kress
Congratulations, you, as an American, are officially a geek. A new Forrester study finds that more and more of the mainstream is adopting technology each year – despite the recession. In fact, people continue to buy more, play more, and connect more on their digital devices.
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Every year, for the past 3 or 4 years, someone proclaims the next twelve months will usher in a new era for mobile marketing… but it never happens. Despite the fact that mobile is one of the most widely adopted consumer technologies in the world, 2010 may once again not be the year of mobile.
However, I’d suggest that smart brands who want to stay ahead of the curve will notice that the mobile revolution has reached a crossroads, and it’s being driven by Facebook.
Just today, Facebook announced that 1/4 of their monthly worldwide visits or 65 million visits, are via mobile. You heard me right… Facebook has twice as many mobile visits as Twitter has overall visits, and this number has tripled since December of last year!
We will continue to see these numbers rise, and with Facebook’s release this week of the new Facebook iPhone App. Here are some of the new additions, and what they might mean for your brand:
1.) Mobile Access to Brand Pages
The Facebook Page is turning into a truly versatile platform. They are already functioning for many advertisers as microsites, since custom tabs can be created and linked to directly. With the launch of mobile access to Facebook Pages, is this a stand-in for a mobile website?
2.) Favorite People… and Pages
Another new feature introduced in the latest version of the Facebook iPhone Application is the ability to create a “favorites” page for friends you most often interact with, or pages that you visit most often. This is another great testament to the power of the Facebook Brand Fan Page, that someone might include a brand amongst their friends. This is also a rare opportunity, since Facebook has mostly kept user “profiles” and brand “pages” separate.
3.) Mobile Chat
This may be on the of the most powerful new features offered on the Facebook iPhone App, and one that makes the most sense for a mobile device.
The use of mobile phones for voice calls is dwindling and text messaging is on the rise. Text messaging is already being replaced for some due to the tough economic times. In fact, many consumers are turning towards mobile instant messaging platforms to replace text messages, particularly if they don’t have an unlimited plan. So the question becomes, will consumers at some point choose to chat via Facebook rather than sending a text message? Or perhaps Facebook will allow brands to eventually chat with fans.
It’s easy to see that Facebook is becoming much more than a destination, and much more than a social network. 2010 may not be the year of mobile, but it will certainly be the year that marketers see how important mobile has become to the users of one of the most powerful platforms online…
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Social Media Grows to the Next Level
Brian Kress
More than four in five US online adults now participate in or consume social media at least once a month. This post from Forrester gives us an update on the growth of social media over the past few years – which has been led mostly by those joining social networking sites like Facebook.
Linens n’ Things: Now Without Bricks and Mortar
John Keehler
Linens n’ Things shut the doors on the last of their 589 stores in January, but the business re-launched earlier this year as an online-only retailer. The online store will carry a much larger selection of merchandise than could be carried in the store, and will be starting off with a list of 5 million email addresses to communicate with. Will things be different?
Yahoo Upgrades Core Products
Katie McCracken
Yahoo recently announced improvements to a few of its core products – mail, messenger and search. Some of the mail improvements include sending and replying to Evite invitations directly from your mail account, dragging large files of photos to share with a group of friends via a new mail app. Messenger now allows you to track friends updates on other communication platforms such as Twitter. Finally, search promises to deliver more relevant results based on users’ recent search histories. Users will also be able to filter through search results by content source and file types.
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