When management teams mention social media, they seem to focus on the aspect that it is a free way to get their brand message out, but it is very tricky in terms of how bold consumers can be on any Facebook page or Twitter feed. There has been more emphasis on either monitoring social media for customer service issues or to post their community involvement pictures. However, there is another side to the use of social media. Take for example, …

While we all seem to be online a lot, it still is amazing how often the design of e-marketing and online advertising is not as reader friendly to the delivery your marketing message as it should be! Here are a few scenarios to test you! Avoid putting text over any picture. We look at pictures differently than text. In essence, you look at a picture and read text. Combining the two usually ends up with the text losing out. Split …

Have you heard mentions of the new world of Instagram Marketing? With the advent of texting and social media came the intense focus on sound-bytes in our communication with each other.  While it is often hard for marketers to pare down their messages, the online and mobile world are focused on quick bursts of facts and information. So, how much time do you have for an online message?  8-10 seconds? Try 2-5 seconds as a person scans the web page …

The senior management team is interested in two things: reaching their goals and feeling comfortable that Marketing is doing its job to help them do that!  To get in front of questions from senior management of what marketing is contributing towards these goals, you need to find the right mix of items that help build credibility and accountability. There are ways to create your own dashboard of items that you are tracking to report back the results of Marketing’s contribution …

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 …

According to a study by comScore.com as noted in NetBankerByEmail, over 27% of mobile phone users have accessed financial services content in the last month.  That is the rising indicator of a switch by consumers that is forcing change in how to reach them with marketing messages and content.  To help set up a mobile strategy, here are some questions to consider: How easy is it to use our website on a smartphone?   If we use mobile ads on our …

Convenience does help the consumer deal with the stresses of everyday life.  One increasingly popular way to bank is on a mobile smartphone.  While it is a great offering, ING Direct Canada has taken their online banking to Facebook.  It is “letting customers who opt in view account balances, history and pending transactions and receive real-time account alerts within Facebook, all in read-only mode.” For financial institutions, security is still a bigger issue in America with the use of social …

Social media is called that for a reason. It is meant to be socializing for people across the Internet. So, as much as many businesses jumped in to try and capitalize on it as a “free” way to get more business, many have found little success in trying to connect with customers/members. When monitoring and uploading new content, it is easy to get distracted by other social media conversations or topics or links and spend way more time than expected! …