Posts Tagged 'digital strategy'

What are the plans for your office over the Xmas period? Closed for well-earned break? Nothing to worry about until the New Year? Great, time to sit back relax and slip on some classic Nat King Cole.

Whilst you’re drowning in mulled wine and Quality Street this Xmas, Google, Social Media and essentially your social and search strategy continues to work away, because Google’s not having a break for Xmas, neither is Facebook or Twitter. So what plans have you got in place for the Xmas Period to ensure your digital channels are looked after?

For those lucky enough, the business you work in will be closed between the 24^th December and the 3rd January 2012. Nearly 2 whole weeks. So in that time, have you got plans in place to keep an eye on your Facebook page? Is Twitter taken care of? If the Social Media Platform manager is off, who will be responding and posting to your loyal army of Fans? Who will be keeping them entertained, informed and up to date with Boxing day deals?

Similarly, who’s managing the search activity? Will content still be produced and published; will you be keeping an eye on PPC bid values and keyword opportunities?

If you’re reading this and mild panic is setting in, fear not, it’s not too late to act. Just remember the 6 P’s (Proper Planning Prevents Pi… you know the rest). It’s time to sit down and map the next few weeks of activity.

Like the perfect Xmas dinner. Planning is essential.

Tweetdeck, HootSuite whatever your platform of choice, the best place to start is with your content plan. What are you saying, who are you saying it too and how frequently? Once you’ve decided this, get your updates written, scheduled and ready to go.

Blog posts. Get them written in advance and schedule their release for a number of days over the two week festive period. Ensure you’ve setup up your blog posts to be automatically tweeted and added to your Facebook page too.

Crisis management. Have a plan for the worst, have a key person monitor the social platforms over the Xmas period, setup keyword alerts and ensure you have an elevation plan in case there is something urgent to respond to. Leaving a customer complaint or query unanswered is not an option.

PPC. Ensure you’ve set your maximum bids, is someone monitoring the impact that a boxing day push from a competitor might have on your performance? Just like crisis management have someone monitor performance intermittently over the festive period.

If you plan your festive support right, then roasting your chestnuts on an open fire are the only thing you’ll have to worry about over the next couple of weeks.

So the New Year is still more than 70 odd days away, but that’s no reason for us not to share with you our thoughts on the top trends that will affect your email marketing performance in 2012.

With the explosion of smartphones, social media and inbox competition over the last few years, we’ve looked at how these channels will continue to impact performance into next year. Below is Part 1 of our 2 Part series.

Inbox Overload
Email addresses have become a standard information requirement for pretty much every business when capturing a customer or prospects details. This has led to an enormous increase in inbox competition. As businesses knowledge of email marketing practices increase, so does their appetite to communicate. Making inbox standout, timeliness and targeting more important than ever.

Communication Complications
Social media has begun to threaten the effectiveness of the inbox. Faster, more up to date, easier to interact with and share, this up to the minute communication poses a series threat to email’s relevance. Compare social to email and unless you’re sitting in front of your computer with your inbox open or surgically connected to your blackberry, email reaches you when you get round to  accessing your inbox.  Being aware of the roles of both channels and their relative merits for your communication goals is essential for continued inbox success.

Portable Inboxes
Smartphone handsets now represent 30% of the entire UK mobile market and this figure is expected to grow rapidly in 2012. Optimising emails for mobile handsets, indeed creating dedicated templates for mobile handsets is becoming increasingly important. Ensuring there is a mobile optimised site at the end of a click thru is key to success with email marketing in 2012.

Smarter Inboxes
Email inboxes are smarter than ever. Providing users with automated filing, and ‘sweep’ options for mass inbox clean up. Making sure you are listed as a preferred sender or ‘starred’ as a sender they want to hear from is essential for consistently high open rates and preventing your message being deleted en mass with every other sender.

Part 2 of our ‘Email Marketing Trends for 2012′ coming soon.

So Rage against the Machine have done it. A track originally released by the band in 1992 (original chart position No.25) pips poor old Joe to the much coveted number spot for Xmas 2009.

But let’s be honest, how many of us had heard the Rage Against the Machine track before? How many of us know what the band look like? Where they’re from and what their favourite colours are? Not many (Not that we care).

Now Joe McEldrey…..

The song -  “The Climb”.

What’s he look like? A cheeky Geordie chappy with a Hollywood smile.

Where’s he from? South Shields.

Favourite colour? Anything that Cheryl likes.

So how do a band that relatively few people have heard of make it to Xmas number 1 toppling the behemoth that is X Factor with it’s massive television audience, huge publicity machine and endless marketing efforts?

Simple – Facebook.

Let’s be honest, it wasn’t the great song or the love of the band that got RATM to number 1, it was Facebook. To be more specific, it was a brilliantly orchestrated social media campaign by Jon and Tracy Morter, a couple fed up with the domination of the Xmas number 1 spot by X-Factor winners.

Their campaign highlights the phenomenal reach and influence social media channels can have. Zach le Rocha (RATM lead singer of course – c’mon guys) summed it up perfectly, “It was incredible organic grassroots campaign”. Indeed it was. A campaign started by a couple wanting a change, rapidly joined by 486,781 fans and quickly becoming the hottest topic on Facebook culminates in delivering the UK an alternative Xmas number 1 and delivring a crushiong blow to the slick marketing and publicity machine that is X-Factor.

So the platform that brought the Whispa back to our shelves, returned Monster Munch to the cupboards of children of the 80′s now has an ever greater feat to its name. A new Xmas number one.

At the risk of repeating a previous post. Social Media – Powerful stuff.