Education News

The case for Twitter

01 May 2012

Twitter seems to have its fans and its detractors and a fair proportion of marketers who just don’t know whether it’s worth investing the time and effort in the network. So here’s a positive look at the tool and a summary of some of the things you can do with it.
 
Research conducted in late 2011 with over 1,000 Twitter users revealed some fairly significant insights. 1 out of 2 users who tweet a complaint about a company on Twitter expect the company to read their tweet.  Interestingly, only 29% of users who did tweet a complaint to a company received a response.

Of those 29%, over 50% say they ‘liked it’ and 32% say they ‘loved it’. Remember these were twitter complaints. Further, 34.7% were very satisfied and 39.7% were somewhat satisfied with the response. That’s a really positive result, again given that these were twitter complaints.

Not only has a dialogue started between the customer and the company (one that can be built on over time) but a resolution to the problem was achieved in the majority of the complaints.

But Twitter is obviously more than just a customer support channel. Another interesting research piece reveals the top five reasons for why Twitter users follow brands. Coming out on top is the obvious one – they’re an existing customer. This explains why Twitter is used by many brands as a customer support channel. Why else would you want to follow Telstra on Twitter unless you were a customer, right?

The second item, “to be the first to know information about the brand”, again really only the domain of existing customers. The last three are also relevant to existing customers but can be applicable to casual customers or those at the conversion edge:

• To receive discounts and promotions
• Gain access to exclusive content
• Receive content/information and share it with others

So far we’ve focused primarily on Twitter use as a customer service channel. The reason being that many organisations and brands use Twitter this way but also because of this high usage, there is a general expectation from Twitter users that that’s the default relationship between brand and customer on Twitter.

In saying that, there are of course plenty of other uses and we’re also seeing this expectation evolve to be more about the brand creating a value-add like activating meaningful content that may not actually be product or service related.

So let’s look at a few of these other uses of Twitter…

• Listening to the Twitter community is a big one. In fact you should never stop listening. There are tools out there that help you do this as it can be a bit overwhelming just using the stock standard Twitter search bar. Sometimes there’s not much you can do to help really irate customers on Twitter. For many brands, simply acknowledging that there’s an issue and taking a step towards resolution will help turn an angry customer into a satisfied customer.
• Expressing brand personality. Twitter’s new profile layout for brands means that brands can upload a graphic in the header and pin a tweet to the top of their profile.
• Link sharing to articles or discussions is another popular use. Or simply link sharing to specials or promotions you’re running to drive sales.
• Sharing to rich media such as video, infographics or podcasts is also popular on Twitter.
• Following “key influencers” within your industry is a great way to engage with individuals who have large followings.
• If your organisation holds a live event or conference, chances are your audience will be tweeting about it. You can play a role in the online discussion by suggesting a hashtag to use before the event. Another great idea is to ask for questions via the hashtag that a speaker or panel discussion can address.
• It’s also worth noting that Twitter have a powerful API or Application Programming Interface that allows your developers to access backend functionality of Twitter to deliver on your website or app.

The above ideas are a sample of the content from the social media consumer marketing course which is running in Sydney on June 13th (Tim Hill, Digital Strategist, The reading Room) and Perth May 29th  (Anna Smith, Director, Hatchd).

Top Ten Data Capture Tips

18 April 2012

Marketing has never been so dynamic: New techniques, emerging media, channel integration, cloud computing – we’re spoiled for choice. How can we fail to connect with our customers and delight them with so many clever interactive vehicles at our disposal? Simple. If you don’t have good data you’ve got nothing to drive your latest vehicle. No data, no driver.

Anyone who’s been in direct and digital marketing long enough will have a war story about the campaign that bombed because of the data – out-of-date, incomplete, irrelevant, incorrect, non-compliant, sparse – the list goes on. So make sure your driver is in good shape before you get too excited about what the vehicle can do.

Set aside the IT infrastructure aspect of database management for a moment and think about the data. Your data needs to excel in three basic ways: breadth, depth and quality.

• Breadth – the volume of customers and prospects you have on your database and can therefore have a one-to-one conversation with
• Depth – the amount of data you have about your customers to make your communications relevant
• Quality – the deciding factor. Your database may be full of customer records appended with all manner of information, but if it’s inaccurate it’s useless
• It is worth taking a long hard look at some of the practices you have in place to ensure you are maximising each of these three levers. Here are some data capture tips to help you do this:

1. Every contact is a data capture opportunity
   Review your customer touch-points. Some are anonymous, like a quick visit to your website, but some are not, like a service call for example. The number one focus of your customer support staff will always be to deal with the customer’s needs but it’s also a valuable opportunity to check and confirm details and perhaps add depth. Also, which of those anonymous visits could be turned into a more significant contact with the potential to capture more data?
2. Make it easy for customers to give you information
   Website usability has an important role to play here. The percentage of website visitors who actually do make contact and leave information is greatly affected by the ease of navigation, the logicality of the path to action, and the simplicity of the data capture form. Don’t make your customers have to think!
3. Incentivise your customers to part with their details
   Let’s face it, unless there is some benefit in someone giving you their contact details and perhaps something else about them why should they do it. Incentivisation need not be costly. It could be instant – such as a download of a white paper or a useful piece of research, or a piece of information which the customer needs to help them with their purchase decision, or it could be the promise of a future benefit if they place an order.
4. Collect data in-line with privacy regulations
   This is a whole topic in itself, but this could be your downfall. Probably the most important factor is consent. There are a multitude of other conditions and considerations but the number one golden rule though is this: As long as you tell an individual up-front why you are collecting their data and what you are going to do with it, you’re covered.
5. Decide what data you need and prioritise
   Distinguish between must have and nice to have. What are you actually going to do with the data you are collecting? It’s tempting to collect date of birth for example and in many cases it is very useful, but unless it’s going to help you with segmentation or triggered communications for example, do you really need it. Don’t fall into the trap of collecting data because it might be useful in future. If you can’t think of a use for it now, don’t gather it. It’s a waste of your time and your customer’s.
6. Don’t ask for everything at once – build it up over time
   This follows on from the previous one. Customers don’t have time to fill in forms or answer a long list of questions on the phone. If they are making a purchase or an application then they have committed to providing a fairly substantial amount of data, but in most other situations try to avoid asking for more than 3 pieces of information at a time. This is especially true in the early stages of a customer relationship, when they have not invested any loyalty with you.
7. Set targets for breadth, depth and quality
   Try to establish a figure for what a customer record is worth. An additional record can be measured in terms of additional sales potential, but it’s harder to put a value on the additional data you hold about them. Try to measure the value to your business of improved segmentation, targeting and triggered communications, and therefore the value of collecting additional information. The easiest measure of quality is accuracy, normally expressed as a percentage, which can be monitored in a number of ways, and has a direct impact on value of the other two levers. Your targets are then based on a trade-off between the value and the cost of acquisition and quality control.
8. Collect data in a standardised format
   Wherever possible reduce creativity! If you present a customer with a free-form question, you’ll get a free-form response and in many cases this means either bad data or reformatting. Use very specific fields and drop-down boxes wherever possible to standardise data such as phone numbers, dates, address details, names and titles. Present customers with categories to guide their answers. A tick in a box is much easier to process, record and use than a typed word or phrase. Likewise, ensure that call centre staff are properly briefed and controlled so that their data entry is as controlled as the customer’s.
9. Streamline the process from point of capture to storage
   You may have followed all the rules to drive up breadth, depth and quality, but you still need to ensure that the data finds its way to a place where it can be put to good use. It’s very easy to miss out this vital step when you are in a hurry to get a microsite up and running, or launch a campaign with multiple touch-points. Very often in these situations you’ll make do with a work-around solution for data upload, or in the worst case, no solution at all which means otherwise valuable data can languish in a csv file perhaps being used for that campaign alone but having no further use in future. When capturing data, think carefully about its final destination and what rules and processes you need to put in place to upload efficiently and with high quality.
10. If you can’t collect it, buy it!
    There are many sources of data for sale whether you are in B2B or B2C. It comes at a cost of course and therefore it’s vital you know how much it’s worth to acquire a contact. One of the best ways to obtain good data in this way is “data-cloning”. This entails matching your database to that of a data supplier and building a profile from the overlapping portion of the two datasets, then selecting records from the supplier’s database which most closely match the ideal profile.

Database management and privacy is one of the topics that is covered in Multi-Channel Marketing – The Essential Toolkit which runs in Sydney (26-27 April), Melbourne (8-9 May) and Brisbane (31 May – 1 June) this semester.

ADMA also runs the annual Data Day event. Held this year in Brisbane (10 May), Sydney (15 May) and Melbourne (17 May). Find out more about Data Day.

 

Who’s interrupting whom?

12 April 2012

We marketers display a broad range of talents. We’re project managers, negotiators, creative briefers, budget managers and deadline meeters – to name a few! And whether we like it or not, we’re part-time copywriters for all manner of copy – print, email, web, etc. so it pays to have some basic skills in this area.

Jon Maxim, one of Australia’s most experienced copywriters, and tutor for ADMA’s three copywriting courses, explains that there is a fundamental decision you need to make before you put pen to paper – who is interrupting whom? To illustrate this he asks us to consider an example:

“I want you to imagine walking out into a street and trying to get $10 out of a complete stranger. How much time do you think they’d give you? A matter of seconds, perhaps, before the hand went up - ‘No, thanks!’.

If you wanted to grab their attention, you’d have to do something like entertain them - busk, sing, dance - or try and find a connection (empathy): ‘Been a long week?’

You’d also try to pick the more likely candidates – well-dressed people might part with $10 more easily, or tourists who will have the time.

Because the reality is that you are interrupting someone’s life.

And that’s what marketing material does, too. A TV ad interrupts your favourite program. A print ad interrupts an interesting article. A mail pack interrupts your journey from post box to the front door.

So instead of interrupting someone’s busy life and talking about you, talk about them. Start in their world, with something they would agree with.

And that’s the Socratic copy style. Named after Socrates who won his arguments by asking opponents something they would have to agree with.

Interruptive copy does the same. Start with something the reader will have to say ‘yes’ to - a series of statements that start in the reader’s world. Been a long day. You deserve the best. Looking for an easier… for example.

If you do your research on the audience (to understand their issues and concerns in their life) and think about when and where they will be when they read the copy, then the Socratic opening should acknowledge that.

Now, that’s fine for mediums that interrupt. How about when the reader chooses to interrupt their life: online.

Imagine going to a website looking for car insurance, and the copy starts: ‘Been a long day. You must be tired. Wouldn’t it be great…’

No, the Socratic style doesn’t work if I choose to interrupt my life to find information. So, digital copy needs a different structure: the inverted pyramid.

The inverted pyramid starts with a summation of the information they’re looking for. If I type ‘car insurance’ into Google, I want to see an opening piece of copy that says ‘Looking for the best deals on car insurance? You’ve come to the right place.’

Great: I now know I’m in the right place.

The copy then goes on to flesh out the information, bit by bit - for those readers who are interested. There’s still a place for the empathetic copy: it’s just at the end, rather than the beginning.

So we now have two styles of copy, depending on whether we interrupt or the reader chooses to interrupt.”

This is just the beginning. There are many more skills to acquire before you can confidently write compelling sales copy which your busy customers will happily read and act on. But it’s a good place to start.

Find out more about our range of copywriting courses. Copywriting Essentials, Digital Copywriting and Copywriting Advanced.

The case for blogging

04 April 2012

In a recent education video created for ADMA by Tim Hill, Digital Strategist from Reading Room Australia, he explains why blogs are one of the most powerful online marketing tools at your disposal. So much so that you are placed at a disadvantage online if your competitor creates blog content and you don’t.

The case for blogs is actually quite straight forward. Blogs are about creating content. Fresh content is what gives you higher rankings in Google search. High rankings on Google search gives you higher traffic which ultimately leads to higher conversions.

In 2011, Google significantly changed the way they rank websites. The old PageRank system is still in play but there are a number of other algorithms that Google have thrown into the mix to rank websites. The most significant algorithm is known as Panda.

It’s named after its creator, Google engineer Navneet Panda and is basically a machine-learning algorithm which attempts to find similarities between websites in Google’s database and pages found to be of “high quality” from human quality testers.

These human testers focused on 4 main elements – design, trustworthiness, speed and likelihood of return visit. How exactly these were tested, and how exactly the algorithm works is all unknown. But what is known is that ever since the roll-out of Panda, Google search has become more date centric. So the more frequently updated the content is on your site, the higher quality the perception is of your content. Of course for organisations, the easiest way to achieve this is to publish blog content.

So what other good reasons are there to blog?

A good reason to blog is to express the brand or organisation’s personality beyond the corporate website, and it’s also a great opportunity to showcase the contributing staff. Content expectations are for text content so it’s an ideal medium to communicate longer pieces free from the restrictions and distractions of Facebook and Twitter

Most blogs aren’t just about one narrow topic. Instead they may cover several topics which are part of a broader subject. So to categorise their content, blog creators tag their blog posts to make it easier for readers to find all posts around a particular topic.

Creating shareable content is best practice content development. What currently works well are article titles that suggest a list, for example “the top 10 reasons why you should exercise”. That’s a much more effective article title than “exercising is an important part of life”.

Google+ has fairly significant implications for blog owners who link their blog and Google+ profile. You may have recently seen little avatar icons popping up in Google search results. Directly next to the avatars picture is the author’s name and a stat from Google+

This particular search result is in fact a blog post. The author of that blog post has linked their Google+ account to their blog and vice versa.  What’s significant about this though, is that the avatar icon of the user has made its way on to the Google search results page which is typically a very text heavy page so any kind of imagery or iconography is immediately going to make that result stand out from the other results despite the order in which it appears on the page. If we conducted eye tracker testing on this page we would probably see a heat-map forming around the avatar picture. And for that reason, one can only assume that this particular result will be yielding comparatively higher click-through rates.

One caveat, avatar pictures in Google search is not automatic. As with everything in Google-land, it isn’t known how Google determines when to display those avatar pictures. There are some bloggers who linked to their Google+ profile and didn’t get their avatar picture appearing next to their articles in search. Then months later, their avatar pictures showed up. The recommendation would be to implement this way in the hope that Google will display it eventually. It will definitely worth it from a traffic perspective.

Always remember, the case for blogging goes beyond customer engagement and has significant implications on search visibility. As with social media, the way Google ranks content, changes all the time. In fact Google’s search team meet weekly to discuss changes to ranking algorithms so make sure you keep up to date with developments by regularly visiting searchengineland.com – it’s a great resource for keeping up to date in the search engine world.

Tim Hill is author and tutor for ADMA’s Social Media Consumer Marketing course which runs in Brisbane, Melbourne, Perth and Sydney this semester.

Prepare for the Kony Effect

20 March 2012

The online viral campaign to bring down Joseph Kony, leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army of child soldiers, has generated extraordinary global coverage: everyone is talking about it. Whether or not you agree with the message and means used in the “Kony 2012” campaign, it has been extraordinarily successful in raising awareness of the child soldier issue. Over 83 million people have viewed their online video in the space of two weeks, making it the most successful viral video in history.

Public reaction to the campaign highlights key challenges for any organisation engaging in social media marketing – how do you prepare your brand for public criticism, when the purpose of any campaign is to generate support? In addition, how do you measure success? So what if you have hundreds of facebook “Likes”? What’s the point of widespread publicity if it doesn’t prompt people to take action?

The newest episode in the Kony drama emphasises another social media marketing challenge.  Three days ago TMZ posted a video of Jason Russell, one of the organisation’s three founders, having a very public breakdown which saw him naked and shouting on a busy intersection in San Diego. Related footage on YouTube has already had in excess of two million views. As has been proven by the success of the Kony campaign, having a real face and personality to represent a brand can be very powerful in inspiring a human connection in the digital environment. However, any organisation that uses an individual to represent their brand and message to the public through social media opens themselves up to numerous risks.

The Kony 2012 campaign is a great illustration of what marketers need to understand when engaging in social media:

• the risks involved
• the strategies that can be used to manage these risks
• how to set clear goals and KPIs
• how to measure success
• how to choose a communication strategy that is consistent with the company’s goals and brand
• how to allocate resources
• how to adapt as the campaign evolves: it can take on a life of its own.

ADMA’s short course in Social Media Marketing Strategy will help you address these points to prepare for successful, effective use of social media, while the Social Media Consumer Marketing course will teach you the tools of the trade and how to measure and monitor success.  Places are filling fast and the courses commence soon.

Lights, Camera, Action!

07 March 2012

The ADMA office was transformed into a studio recently as a cast of digital and direct marketing gurus were recorded for the upcoming certificate course content. Throughout the next month around 50 recordings will be made to cover a wide range of topics from the basics of database management to the importance of social media monitoring.

The recordings will form an integral part of the revised Certificate courses due to commence in two weeks’ time. The recordings are normally around 10 minutes long and consist of a combination of filmed presentation with voice-over slides and in some cases, in the form of an interview. Each recording will provide students with a grounding in a specific topic and prepare them for the class which will be more interactive than ever before.

They will also form the principal components for the online version of the Digital Marketing Certificate which can be studied remotely for the first time this year. Students will follow the course week-by-week with their classroom counterparts, watching and listening to recorded presentations, working on exercises and assignments at their own pace, but still logging in to view the guest lecturer live each week. This is the first online certificate with all-Australian content.

Although they will be studying remotely students will be required to participate in discussion forums as part of the curriculum when assessing a case study or commenting on some research. They will also be able to meet up online at regular intervals throughout the course with a tutor and the other online students for support and discussion.

ADMA Certificate courses starts on March 19th in Melbourne and March 21st across the rest of the country. The online course will start at the same time to keep pace with the offline classes. Places are still available, find out more or enrol here.

How to get the most out of your digital marketing training

22 February 2012

There is much talk within the industry about a skills gap in digital, on both fronts – technical and marketing. If there is a skills gap it can only be down to the fact that organisations can’t find the training they need or they’re not going about it in the right way.

While it’s hard to keep pace with the speed of change, there is a lot of good training out there if you look for it. There are always new skills to teach and better ways to learn and here at ADMA we’re constantly trying to improve. There are a lot of organisations who spend very little on training, and the reason most often cited is they can’t see the ROI.

Many organisations are not going about it in the right way. Benefitting from training depends on far more than just staying awake in class; it’s a combination of what goes on before, during and after the training. Here are some guidelines on how to make the most of your training budget.

Before you train

1. Commit to training:

The most frequent excuse for not training apart from cost is time out of the office. This is a very short term view, and it is mostly because not enough thought is put into what the organisation needs in terms of outcomes, and not enough research is put into the training available and what it will deliver. Also as ADMA is now introducing online learning there is no need to interrupt the working day in many instances. Many organisations unfortunately pay lip service to training and allocate budget out of a sense of obligation rather than a commitment to developing staff.

2. Analyse needs and research:

The catalyst for employing the services of a training provider ranges from a full scale training needs analysis to the need to use up some budget! For most businesses it’s somewhere in between, but whether you analyse your requirements in a formal way or not you need to start from the business needs – what is the business reason for the training? And what do we need to do differently after the training that we’re not doing now? It’s hard to define, especially when you don’t know what you don’t know, so researching courses and providers helps to crystallise your thinking. ADMA can provide a training needs assessment form to help with this. When it comes to selecting a product you need to consider whether you want breadth or depth – an overview of the topic or drilling down into the detail.

3. Prepare for the training:

Don’t just turn up on the day. Start thinking about what you want out of it beforehand and make notes on your expectations and desired outcomes. If you want to – speak to the tutor or training provider with questions, they are more than happy to talk to students in advance. If you are a Manager putting your staff through a course, brief them beforehand. Tell them what you want to get out of it and the reasons why it’s important. Let them know they will be de-briefed afterwards – it helps to focus their minds!

The training

1. Manage your own expectations:

Remember that you will be familiar with some of the material already. Feedback suggests that students are typically familiar with up to 50% of the material imparted during the course, but this is not a bad thing. Familiarity makes it easier to add new knowledge and skills to your existing platform of knowledge. In a public course you’ll also be amongst people who know more or less than you do and have different roles and desired outcomes, so not everyone will be on the same page. This is also not a bad thing. The scope for learning from each other is massive – new perspectives, experiences and applications, as well as finding people who have exactly the same issues as you and learning from them how they handled it.

2. Keep it practical and interactive:

This is more for the training provider than the learner, but good training courses have to be practical otherwise the learners have no chance of using their newly acquired skills back in the work-place. ADMA’s courses are typically around 40% practical in the form of structured exercises and discussions, some even higher.

3. Focus on the goal:

Note for training provider and learner – if you the learner have clearly set-out what you want from the course you stand a much greater chance of getting it. The training provider needs to structure the course in such a way that students are guided towards their desired learning outcomes. Most of our courses now have a simple action list built-in to the course with regular check-points throughout the course for students to consider what they want to take out from each section and use later.

Back in the work-place

1. De-brief and share:

Managers should de-brief their staff after training based on the outcomes set beforehand. Find out what they have learned – are there any interesting and relevant new insights? Are there any tips we can adopt immediately to get some quick wins? Are there any things we are doing wrong which we need to stop? Are there some case studies and examples we can copy? What changes do we need to make over the long term? Who else should do this training, or share in its learnings?

2. Evaluate and feedback:

If the training didn’t match expectations tell the provider – it’s the only way they’ll ever improve so you and others like you get better training in future. If the training was good tell the provider so they can keep doing the good things. Did the training highlight other training requirements? Is there some way the provider could modify or customise the course to improve it? Would it be beneficial to have a customised version for the whole team delivered in-house?

3. Reward new behaviour:

Managers should check-in with their staff’s performance sometime after the training has been delivered to see whether they have adopted the learnings and are using their new skills in the work-place. Positive changes should be rewarded either as they happen or at review-time.

ADMA’s Digital Marketing Certificate and Multi-Channel Direct Marketing Certificate courses start in mid-March Australia wide. Secure your place by Friday 24 February and save up to $300. So if you are intending to study either of these benchmark certificate courses, now is the time to enrol.

A greater demand for practical marketing education

15 February 2012

This semester’s certificate courses are just over a month away and places are filling fast. Next week is the busiest period for registrations as students rush to get their enrolments in before the early bird discount ends on 24 February.

“There’s a greater demand for the kind of practical marketing education we offer than ever before – particularly in digital” says Richard Pester, ADMA’s Director of Education and Training “There is a lot of interest in the changes we have made to the course structures and the wider choice of formats than before.”

The structural changes seem to be the most attractive new feature of both certificates. In a nutshell this means a lot of content is moving online freeing up the classroom sessions for more activities, exercises and discussions. Around 40 separate modules are being created for online consumption involving an impressive cast of industry leaders in every aspect of digital and direct marketing.
The new year is usually a good time for bookings as people naturally start making plans for their future and will consider their training options. The surge of enquiries has been noticeably more substantial than this time last year.

This year’s courses are the culmination of a year of experimentation in content and delivery formats. In all states the courses are run as evening classes, and Sydney students have the option of daytime classes. Also for the first time this year the Digital Marketing Certificate is available online, so wherever you are you can now do the course from the comfort of your own home or office.
The early bird rate gives you a substantial saving of $300, so if you are intending to study either of these benchmark courses now is the time to enrol. Find out more about ADMA’s certificate courses.

Email – Small changes with a big difference

25 January 2012

Last year there was talk about a downturn in email marketing as the popularity of social media for one-to-one communication rose. However as we start 2012, email continues to be an effective form of personalised communication with customers, as long as it remains relevant. So here are a few suggestions to help you on your way.

To improve your email marketing it’s useful to tackle each component – delivery, open, read and click. If you make small changes at each stage, then the combined effect is far more impressive, for example:

Delivery
Lots of technical advice could be imparted here, but why not start with your list. Believe it or not we’ve just reduced our bounce-rate at ADMA from double figures to less than 2% through sheer diligence in recording and cleaning up data. Quality is about processes and validation; nothing fancy. The other side of the coin is quantity and the key is offering value in return for a customer’s address and consent.

Open
People read the sender first and filter accordingly, and it’s fair to say that what people think about when they see your organisation’s name is outside the realm of email advertising. The subject line is the next most important factor and there are plenty of copy guidelines around length (<50 characters works best) and words to avoid, but here’s where segmentation comes into play for the first time. What you say in the subject line is like a headline. If it grabs me I’ll read on. If you’ve picked a headline which appeals to me because it’s relevant to my segment (whatever that may be) there’s a greater probability that I will open it.

Read
Segmentation again plays a major part. The more customised the content to the reader based on what you know about them the better. Also make the content more conversational rather than the “buy now” approach, by including user-generated content such as testimonials, ratings and links to social networks.

The other thing to consider is that around 20% of emails are read on a mobile device and this is considered to be the number one thing that people do with their smartphones. Having said that conversion is 5 times higher for tablets than smartphones and that’s partly to do with legibility and partly to do with the fact that you’re usually more stationary and it’s easier to browse with a tablet than a smart phone. Seeing as iPhones and their clones are HTML friendly, there’s a great opportunity to be more creative and engaging with your messages. Having said that, download speeds are slower with mobile so don’t go overboard.

Click
If the email is relevant then the click rate will be higher so all the above – segmentation, content, style, creativity apply. But the call to action in particular affects the click rate. There are two components - Easy instructions on how to take the next step and an enticing reason to take that step. Here’s also where social media and email work hand-in-hand. By adding social sharing buttons you’re in effect allowing the customer to respond and hear more from you in future.

Perhaps the biggest thing you can do to improve click rates though is relating the email to the customer’s behaviour or life-cycle. Are there events or patterns of customer behaviour which signify that they are more receptive? Identify them, work out how to detect them and set up the appropriate response. Because email has the advantage of speed, you could get an offer to the customer at the perfect time – and again the importance of this cannot be underestimated if the message is read on a mobile device, which they’re more likely to have on their person at the buying decision moment.

It’s a big topic – moving your email marketing up to the next level – and you can learn far more from the experts, as well as other marketers, by attending ADMA’s one-day Advanced Email Marketing course running in Sydney and Melbourne in April and May this year.

Mail: Does it pass the ROAD test?

18 January 2012

Whilst digital marketing topics are by far the most sought after when it comes to marketing training, we still have a lot of interest in how to deploy direct mail effectively. It does after all still represent an estimated $500m of marketing spend per year by Australian businesses.

In spite of the ever-improving and expanding world of digital, mail has appeal for many marketers because of the scope for personalisation, creativity, range of formats, customer involvement and targetability. However it’s not cheap and it takes time to develop and produce. Many marketers new to direct mail take a stab at it, make a few basic errors through lack of experience and then wonder why the results are underwhelming.

It’s important therefore to make sure the basic conditions for success are met before diving in. Ask yourself whether the situation passes the ROAD test?

• Relationship – The stronger your relationship with your customer, the more likely you are to get a response. This sounds like a no brainer but many inexperienced marketers still attempt to solve their acquisition challenges simply by buying a list of prospects and sending them a letter. Yes it can and does work with good lists and a well-crafted pack, but existing customers will always respond better than prospects, and enquirers will always respond better than people on a cold list. So for the best ROI, use it on warm prospects or regular customers and test cold lists to learn.
• Opportunity – What’s the value of the opportunity? Another reality check here. If my mailing gets a 2% response and only half of those people actually go on to buy something will I make a profit? Yes if I’m selling cars; no if I am selling Kit Kats – but if customers ended up buying 50 Kit Kats a year for 10 years and bought a range of other products from me – then yes. As for those big 3D packs that grab attention and win awards – send them to important decision-makers with big budgets – and have a great contact strategy built around it.
• Audience – How niche is your target audience? If you’re trying to find men aged between 40 and 65 who like cooking and all you can find is a list of men in the right age bracket, then you’re taking a big risk sending all of them that tempting offer for a new set of saucepans. On the other hand if it’s a product with broad appeal the risk is lower. Also is the target audience receptive to mail? There’s actually a fair amount of conflicting research on this and it’s probably better to test than assume, after all we get far less unsolicited mail these days so there’s a good chance your pack will get opened.
• Data – Is it accurate and up-to-date, and how much depth do we have? Do we have anything in our database to help us understand these people better? And with this information offer them a more relevant product, with a more relevant incentive at a more relevant time and find a better way to talk to them.

If this sounds like direct marketing 101 well it probably is, but based on the number of times marketers ignore the basics it’s worth re-iterating.

For more useful tips, hints, profit-generating techniques/strategies, interesting case studies and a network of marketing gurus to learn from – visit our website to find out more about ADMA Education and Events.

Certificate courses deliver a richer learning experience

10 January 2012

This year, in an effort to deliver a training experience which takes into account not only the learning style preferences of each student, but also their current level of experience, ADMA’s Certificate course students will participate in an entirely new delivery format – one which is both more engaging and more customised than ever before.

As desirable as it may be, just how possible is it to customise a generic training course? Typically your tutor will take the class through pre-prepared slides and exercises delivered in a set structure and the degree of customisation usually depends on the flexibility of the practical exercises and the adaptability of the tutor. But students learn in different ways – some are visual, others enjoy discussions, some need to apply their skills to a task to learn and some prefer to learn alone and in their own time. Some arrive at the course with several years’ experience under their belts, others have none. Here’s how it works:

Each topic or module (there are 10) starts with a preparation component. This should take a student no more than 30 minutes, is delivered online and typically goes like this:

• A short questionnaire will help them decide how much they already know about the topic
• They can view items from a list of pre-recorded presentations, interviews, articles, case studies, research or videos
• In this way students with no experience of the topic in question can get up to speed with the basics, whereas experienced students can skip this part of the module if it’s not needed.

Thanks to the preparation stage students arrive in the classroom primed and ready for practical participation. The classroom experience will go something like this:

• A guest speaker will share their expert advice and case studies
• Exercises and discussions will challenge students to apply their knowledge
• Students will tackle case studies in groups
• Student can volunteer their organisation for critique by the class in an “open surgery”

Following the classroom session students go online to complete a quiz or consult and make comments on a case study. Again this should take no more than 30 minutes.
This format will be the same for both the Digital Marketing Certificate and the Multi-Channel Marketing Certificate. For Digital Marketing students a completely online version will be delivered simultaneously. In the first semester students will follow the weekly schedule of the classroom version so that students can log-in and watch the guest speaker presentations (which alternatively can be downloaded afterwards).

This is a major step towards delivering a much wider range of our courses in similar formats and through the completely online delivery mode, offering them to a wider market who either find it hard to get to a venue or don’t have the time to devote to training at set times and dates.

Find out more about our certificate courses and how to reserve a place for Semester 1 which commences in March by clicking here.

Education Year in Review

15 December 2011

There are two themes which summarise 2011 – one is the significant shift in the type of training being demanded by customers; the second, essentially a consequence of the first, is the gradual but comprehensive evolution of product offerings.

Comparing this year with the previous 12 months reveals some interesting stats. Enrolments for our certificate courses were almost exactly the same, with roughly twice as many students studying for the Digital Marketing Certificate as the Multi-Channel Direct Marketing Certificate – no change from the previous year. We’ve also had very similar levels of enrolments for short courses overall year on year, although within those figures there are some noticeable shifts:

• Digital Marketing courses are now the most popular category overall
• Social Media Marketing courses have grown quickest in popularity
• The number of enrolments for strategic level courses has doubled

The most dramatic shift in demand however has been for in-house training which has doubled year on year and now accounts for a much higher proportion of our sales revenue. Within this category we’ve delivered some very interesting and sometimes quite complex solutions:

• Flight Centre – a customised in-house version of the Digital Marketing Certificate
• Kwik Kopy – a nationwide course to help franchises sell marketing services
• News Ltd – a nationwide course on digital and direct response marketing
• Macquarie Bank – monthly seminars on a range of marketing topics

But it’s not just big brands that are coming to us for in-house training. A large number of smaller organisations from a variety of vertical sectors have run 1 day and 2 day courses on topics including copywriting, retention marketing, social media and digital marketing.

Hand in hand with this has been the shift in the make-up of the products on offer. Of the 20 or so short courses on our menu a year ago practically half have been replaced or have evolved into new courses. The new short course list for 2012 offers a more streamlined suite of courses covering a combination of popular topics and new ones.

We have also been testing online learning with one short course – copywriting – and on the strength of this have developed a new online learning platform where customers will be able to study an online version of the digital marketing certificate. It can also be used to deliver in-house training where appropriate.

Major Education revisions for 2012

06 December 2011

Education 2012 courses are now confirmed, with new dates, new courses and new delivery formats.

The certificate courses have been subjected to their biggest overhaul for many years and have been updated to reflect student and industry feedback - ensuring they are relevant, interesting and practical.

There is also an early incentive offer. For anyone who registers their interest before Christmas online they will receive a free Kindle when they enrol and pay for a certificate course. This is in addition to the $300 saving for the early bird rate before 24 February 2012.

For more details visit www.adma.com.au/education

So both the Digital Marketing Certificate and the Multi-Channel Direct Marketing Certificate will be delivered in a brand new format. Classroom sessions will be 30% guest speaker, 50% discussion exercises and workshops and 20% PowerPoint. Each session will be supported by a series of pre-recorded lectures, presentations, online case studies, research and videos.

Students can check their experience levels by reviewing a set of simple questions before the classroom session and if necessary can view short pre-prepared presentations or interviews online to cover the basics, leaving the sessions free for interaction and practical application. The online material is available for a refresher throughout the course and is useful for pre-exam revision.

The natural extension to this is to deliver the whole course online and this is exactly what will be available for the Digital Marketing Certificate from the start of semester one. Students who are too far from the venue to attend face-to-face classes can study through a combination of self-paced learning and scheduled log-ins for interactive tutorials and discussions.

When choosing a course there are usually two key questions – is the topic relevant and is it pitched at the right level? So in next semester’s short courses there is a new streamlined menu of options which makes it easier to choose the right course at the right level of experience. Courses will be sorted into Core Principles, Creative and Digital topics and categorised as either Essentials, Advanced/Niche or Strategic.

We’ve combined some courses and introduced new ones. We now have a two-day course devoted entirely to B2B Digital Marketing (an extension of the B2B Social Media Marketing course). There will also be an Advanced Email Marketing course to help marketers take their email marketing to the next level. For experienced digital marketers a Digital Marketing Masterclass has been introduced - with a new format which allows students to steer the course content by providing input before the day.

As always ADMA will be offering these courses as in-house training as well as scheduled classes, so if you have several team members who you need to get up to speed in one or more areas, the content can be customised to meet your specific needs. Increasingly ADMA can also offer training online as individual modules or bundled components.

Full for details on what’s available visit ADMA Education

ADMA online learning takes off

01 December 2011

After many months of scoping and development ADMA’s online learning products have received a boost with the confirmation of an Asia Pacific-wide training deal with Baxter Healthcare. This will commence in January with a series of six online training modules covering a range of topics including understanding integrated marketing, managing and using data and a range of digital marketing topics.

The format for each module is part self-paced, part scheduled. The self-paced elements involve reviewing articles, research, pre-recorded presentations and evaluations on relevant topics before and after the scheduled sessions. Webinars will broadcast live to a large team of marketers in over ten countries across the APAC region.

This model is in many ways a template for other organisations wanting to do in-house training. Organisations with geographically dispersed marketing teams who want to run training across the entire company could consider this approach. Rather than bringing everyone together in a single venue at a specific time the training can now be brought to the individual wherever they are, to be consumed whenever it’s convenient for them to do so.

The ideal format will vary from one organisation to the next. There are certain classroom learning styles which cannot be replicated online and vice versa, so the outcome for many companies will be a mix of styles and learning formats.

The Baxter contract coincides with the imminent launch of several online courses including the Digital Marketing Certificate. By early 2012 ADMA will have a menu of modules which can be purchased by themselves or bundled and tailored to suit an individual organisation’s training requirements.

Clearing the Social Media hurdles

23 November 2011

Has social media become mainstream? Figures from Econsultancy’s “The State of Social Media Report 2011” published this month, suggest it’s clearly heading that way. From a survey of more than 1,000 respondents only 5% said they did nothing at all, 31% had experimented with social media, while 43% did an average amount (up from 37% in 2010) and 21% were heavily involved (up from 18% in 2010).

But how well are they using social media? In 9 out of the 10 aspects of social media usage surveyed only a small percentage felt they were doing it well. This included listening and monitoring, using Facebook, engaging customers in dialogue and having a content strategy. Only when it comes to using Twitter do more than a third feel they are using it well (37%).

So more and more organisations are getting involved, but by and large they haven’t got it right yet, although they are steadily improving. Those stats are hardly surprising given the recency of social media marketing and the unique qualities which distinguish it from other forms of marketing.

So what are the most important barriers to adoption and effective use? As the chart below shows, lack of budget and resources are the main ones with measurement, lack of understanding and company culture following close behind. Access this Econsultancy report.

 

 

Lack of budget and resources is closely linked to the ability to measure ROI. 41% of respondents said they could not attribute an ROI figure to any of the money they spent on social media. This in turn is linked to the ability to measure. Lack of understanding may be on the way down in the view of most organisations but interestingly, when respondents from agencies were asked what prevented their clients from being more effective with social media 47% of them cited lack of understanding.

This comment is echoed by many digital agencies who, being the experts in all things digital, feel they have to constantly educate clients to adapt and adopt. "A recurring theme" says one ADMA tutor "is the misconception that social media is just another channel. It’s not! It’s fundamentally different in many ways, not least of which is the fact that we, the advertisers, don’t control the content or 99% of the interactions that take place on any given platform. Once they (clients) start to treat it differently, they start to look for different and unique outcomes and then we get to progress".

ADMA's own Social Media short courses are designed to help organisations tackle these barriers. Social Media Marketing Strategy helps organisations to think about what they want to do with social media and how to do it with available tools. It also specifically deals with the question of what to measure and how to use this to determine how much in terms of money and manpower to allocate. Social Media Consumer Marketing helps organisations who have already dipped their toes into the water get a hands-on practical tutorial in the most popular tools – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and others.

Both courses are still available before the end of the year in Melbourne, Sydney and Perth. More information on these courses can be found here.

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