The following is one of the best-of from students in David Toliver’s Georgetown School of Continuing Studies Interactive Marketing class. The following post is by David Longwell.

It‘s hard to think of a marketing tactic used these days that is more disliked by consumers than email. We all get so many emails now it has even gotten boring to complain about them (You’re just back from Florida and now you’ve got 1,000 emails to go through? – boo hoo).

Emails received from companies (other than yours, of course) are often intrusive junk, cluttering up mailboxes and adding undue stress to busy lives. Still, companies in the US spend over $1 billion dollars a year on Email Marketing, with projected growth of 11% per year through 2014 (Forrester). While that’s less growth than projected for hot channels like Social Media or Mobile Marketing (34% and 27% respectively), marketers are still committing increasing dollars to email campaigns.

But if consumers cringe at email, why are companies continuing to use it as a communication tool?

Some marketers get it – emails can (and must) be useful. The most effective emails from companies provide a kind of customer service, and always pass the ‘thank you’ test. Not only am I happy when I receive these, I’m relieved and grateful. What marketer wouldn’t covet that kind of response? It’s ok if there’s a soft cross-sell included, because the main purpose of the email is to bring value. Read the rest of this entry »

The following is the fifth post in a series of the best-of from students in Mike Sweeney’s Georgetown School of Continuing Studies Interactive Marketing class.  The following post is by Allison Kennedy, Marketing Communications Manager with The Columbia Group.

In the business world, email is still a relatively new tool that nonetheless has been rapidly incorporated into the workplace.  The timeframe of its adoption seems to have varied by industry, but most would agree that email use at work was widespread by the mid to late 1990s (read more).

And so, despite its current prevalence, there is still a generational gap when it comes to accepting all of email’s potential applications.  Professionals who entered the workforce prior to 1990 spent a great chunk of their careers without email, and have had to “relearn” how to do business with it.  For us twenty and thirty somethings, these “older workers” – whose years of experience and honed expertise make them the decision-makers we report to – may challenge us to explain the usefulness of a marketing tool that from our perspective can often seem easier to use than our own voice.

So when your Vice President of Business Development asks you to conduct a direct mail campaign that you know would be more appropriately carried out via an email (or series of emails), be prepared with the list of reasons below to justify your position.

Read the rest of this entry »

As marketers, we all know it’s important to know your audience, and critically important to know as much as you can about your customers. That’s why it still surprises me when a company you feel you have a relationship with just completely misses it. Yesterday I received a clear example in an email from my local car dealer.

Here’s a small snippet of that message below with some information [substituted] to protect the guilty:

The [brand] Model Year-End Sales Event is happening now at [dealer] and because of your status as a preferred customer, you can now get $1,000** Bonus Savings plus 0%* APR financing and a Free Maintenance Plan.+

Visit the link below to receive your $1,000** Bonus Savings today!

Now, I probably have a deeper relationship with my car dealer than most people. Those of you who know me well enough are probably REALLY sick of me going on and on about how great my Prius is. I lease my vehicle for business, so they know I’m back there every 3 years. And, with a growing family each of those last two times we’ve also swapped our family vehicle for something that can fit the kids and their ever-expanding stuff.

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Content is king from a marketing standpoint – now more than ever.  Can you really market anything without some form of content?  Think about it for a second.  Review every marketing vehicle you use, and try to identify one that doesn’t involve some form of content production.

If content is king, then what is the king’s most important weapon?  Another easy answer.  Writing.  And it’s not even close.

Writing is one of the most undervalued pieces of the marketing puzzle.

Let’s do a quick review of some marketing vehicles and how poor writing impacts each:

• Press Release: Don’t even write it if you’re not going to do it professionally.  Journalists and your consumer/business audience will stop reading when they hit the first piece of evidence of poor writing.

• Website: You know that rule, the one that says you have 10-15 seconds to capture a visitor’s attention and convince them to dive further into the site?  You know what can expedite that departure time?  Poor writing.

• SEO: Writing is far more important for SEO than most “experts” are willing to admit.  Here’s one simple reason.  Let’s say you rank #1 on an important keyword, but your meta description tag (the one that smart people read to determine whether your site is relevant to the topic) is too long, which is often the case.  Fewer clicks.  Fewer leads.  Decreased ROI from that SEO effort.

Let’s check out an example.  When I search on “copywriting” on Google, here are two description tags associated with top 10 results:

Tag #1: “Copywriting advice for bloggers and online marketers.”

In case you’re wondering, this is an effective description tag, which happens to belong to a very popular marketing blog.  No surprise.

Tag #2: “Blues icon BB King was once asked how he found his heart-warming, bone-chilling sound. It’s simple, he said. I only steal from the best. After.”

This may lead me to a very cool article or blog post, but doesn’t matter.  I’m not clicking because I don’t understand how this description is relevant to my search query.

Read the rest of this entry »