Month: March 2011

• Agencies

  Customer Input Pays Off For Revamped Marriott E-Newsletter

  At first blush, rewards statement design should be a no-brainer. By definition, a marketer is communicating with its most engaged customers. To paraphrase an old saying, any communication is good communication as long as the customer’s name is spelled right. Right?

  Marriott International found differently when it reconfigured its rewards e-newsletter. The new design highlights features members are interested in, strips down verbosity, offers a cleaner look and adds personalized rewards to its communication.

  As a result, this group of engaged recipients has become even more so, with revenue per e-mail initially jumping by 25%. Since the new design has rolled out, monthly per-message revenue has consistently been 10%-25% higher, according to Kristen Barletta, Marriott International’s email marketing director.

• Social

  Optimizing Facebook’s News Feed to Get More “Likes”

  As brands come to use and understand Facebook more, they learn the best promotional strategies and tactics for them to best engage their audience like these promotions run by Speed TV and Miller Lite. one of the most important techniques a brand must learn is how to optimize posts to make them more “likeable,” or worthy of clicking “like.” There are many ways to do this, but the method that is by far the most mysterious to brands is the often misunderstood News Feed.

• Email

  Purdue Engages New Students With ‘Makers’ Email Effort

  Purdue University boosted the open rate for follow-up emails to accepted students by 7%, and increased the clickthrough by an impressive 33%.

• Mobile

  Augmented Reality Sweepstakes Helps A&E Debut ‘Breakout Kings’

  A&E is promoting its new series, “Breakout Kings,” with a sweepstakes where players hunt down augmented-reality fugitives on their iPhones. The “Catch a Con” sweepstakes, run by augmented reality platform GoldRun, pulls players into the plotline of the show to hunt down escaped prisoners hiding out in New York’s Union Square, Chicago’s Magnificent Mile, Philadelphia’s Rittenhouse Row and in Los Angeles and San Francisco.

• Chief Marketer Listline March 7

  Chief Marketer and NextMark offer a selection of files new to market.

• Agencies

  Broker Roundtable: Popular Direct Mail Formats for 2011

  Welcome to Broker Roundtable, where each week we ask list brokers to give their opinions on issues that matter to the marketing community. This week’s question: What direct mail package designs are going to be popular in 2011?

• Email

  Engagement is a Strong Measure of Email Success

  As email marketing has matured, the ability to measure the channel’s performance has evolved substantially. Yet all too often, marketers rely on rudimentary campaign metrics from the batch-and-blast days of the past to judge effectiveness.

  Instead of thinking exclusively about how well a particular offer or piece of creative performed, marketers should additionally look to longitudinal metrics—measurements of subscriber engagement over time—to determine whether or not an email program is successful.

  One of email’s greatest strengths is its measurability. Marketers regularly evaluate campaigns against standard response metrics such as delivery rates, open rates, click rates and conversions. These are all excellent criteria for how well a particular offer or message resonated with the target audience. Further, those who are willing to test multiple combinations of copy and presentation (from lines, subject lines, content, creative, layout, etc.) can achieve highly optimized rates of response at a campaign level.

• Digital

  What Brand Marketers Should Ask Their Search Agencies

  Google considers its search algorithm a rather nimble moving target and makes prominent public mention of the fact that the formula it uses for calculating which pages come out on top in organic search undergoes approximately 500 annual revisions, large and small.

• Agencies

  Retailers Make Hay By Responding to Negative Comments

  We all know that “listening” to conversations and comments about our brands on the social Web is very important, which is why social listening tools have become an indispensible part of marketing. But what marketers do with that information is even more important.

• Agencies

  Older Baby Boomers May Hold Surprises For Marketers

  Age is an essential data point when targeting consumers. But advertisers who have pre-fixed ideas about what a baby boomer looks like may be in for a rude awakening as younger-thinking citizens age into this cohort.

  Take the oldest boomers, those born between 1946 and 1954. They’re a lot more active—and a lot more computer-savvy—than previous generations of consumers in their mid-50s and mid-60s. Linda Armstrong, an executive vice president and practice leader at DMW Direct who specializes in health and age-targeted product launches, spoke with Chief Marketer about specific considerations marketers should mull when appealing to this group.