How often have you signed up for an e-newsletter or a webinar and never received anything special?  The relationship with your brand does extend to inboxes and online communication. This can be special and perceived as being part of a private group who get specials for allowing the online contact. However, all too often, the communication is merely one-way. In terms of social media, a “Like” of a brand comes with an implied contract of gaining special interaction for providing the …

With the rise of social media use over the last four years, the have been many comments about the impact of the viability of email to grab a customer’s or member’s attention.  However, according to research on the Marketo Blog, 94% of Americans, 12 years or older who are active online say they use email regularly. In addition, 77% of consumers reported that they prefer to receive permission-based marketing communication through email, also the preferred channel for Millennials: http://blog.marketo.com/blog/2013/07/email-wanted-dead-or-alive-infographic.html Yet, …

It is so easy to identify with your own demographic profile in terms of age, sex, race and economic or social status.  As marketers, it is an imperative to look beyond our biases and reach out to those that are dissimilar to find out what works best. The one group that is most dissimilar to working marketing people is teenagers!  Here are a couple of ideas: “Textiquette” – Do a workshop on texting for parents; have teens provide translations and …