Marketing Commentary from interlinkONE
Marketing. Web-to-Print. Warehouse Management.
Google and Personalized Search Results
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on Tuesday, January 10, 2012 
at 12:54 PM 
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Over the past couple of years, Google has made changes to its search engine to personalize the results that it presents. For instance, Google rolled out changes in 2009 to start integrating a user’s social media data on the Results page.
Today, they have announced that they are making more changes to integrate search and social.
What Do The Changes Entail
A huge part of today’s announcement (which Google is labeling “Search, plus Your World”) involves utilizing capabilities of Google+. A person’s search results may now be affected by the Google+ data that they are connected with. This could include:
- People: Users may now see people that they may want to follow based on what they are searching for
- Pages: Search results may now display pages (or profiles) that are related to a specific topic or area of interest that someone may have searched on
- Photos and Posts: Google may now display photos and information from Google+ posts that you have access to within search results
How Can You Prepare for these Changes?
Google has announced that they will start rolling out these changes in the next few days.
Thus, there are things that you can do now to take advantage of them. Here are a few:
- If you don’t already have one, create a Google Profile.
- Once you have a profile, make sure that you log-in to Google before you run your next Search.
- Get on Google+!
- Google+ allows you to have a personal profile, of course. But you can also create Pages for your Business, Products & Services, Events, and more.
- Start creating and publishing content on your Google+ profiles and pages
- Build your Google+ community: Take the time to add people and Pages to your Circles and invite others to do the same for your accounts.
It certainly will be interesting to see how users adapt and benefit from these changes. If you have a free moment, check out the video that Google has released regarding the “Search, plus Your World” functionality:
Tags A Holiday Card Worth Imitating
Alright, before get too far in this post, I must say this: I received a lot of Holiday cards this year. And I loved them all!
But I just want to take a moment to highlight one that stood out to me.
The Holiday eCard from Fabcom
FabCom is an interactive marketing agency. I love their company and their staff for many reasons. They are energetic, creative, and extremely hard-working. And, they use interlinkONE’s multi-channel marketing software to help them build, manage, execute, and measure marketing campaigns for their clients, which also gives them extra points in my book.
They sent an eCard to a number of employees here that combined a number of things that I like: personalization, humanizing a brand, and gift-giving.
Here is a screenshot of the email that they sent:
Within the email, they did a great job of including a human touch. As an agency, their people are among their most important assets. Thus, by exposing employees faces, they are helping to “open” themselves up to customers, prospects, and vendors. And of course, they did a great job of incorporating a humorous and seasonal touch.
The Landing Page
After clicking the link within the email, people were directed to a landing page. It incorporated video, personalized text, and information about the donation that they were making on the behalf of the individual the email was sent to.
Here is a screenshot of the landing page:
The Inspiration
When it comes to sending holiday cards, companies often have multiple goals. For one, they want to say Thank You to customers, prospects, vendors, industry leaders, friends, and others. But also, they want to do something that will help make an impression about their company on someone’s mind.
I think that Fabcom did a great job of this. They utilized multiple channels and medias to make the recipients feel special in a number of ways.
3 Tips for Succeeding with Direct Mail
One of my favorite people in the print industry, Margie Dana, wrote a fantastic piece this week that was titled “How Direct Mail Packs a Punch in 7 Ways“.
If you are looking for ways to improve your marketing efforts, her article is a must-read. It provides inspiration and incentive for companies to use direct mail to reach their prospects and customers.
If Margie’s post does inspire you, I’d like to share a few tips with you as well. Here they are!
3 Tips for Succeeding with Direct Mail
For companies that run direct mail campaigns, the ability to effectively measure the highs and lows of those campaigns is vital to the success of their advertising as a whole. The following tips will have you well on your way toward making the most out of your company’s direct mail marketing:
- Utilize a tracking software system that will measure the statistics of your campaign easily and efficiently: Yes, there is no denying that it may cost less money to send emails than it does to send direct mail. However, if the act of sending direct mail to your audience could bring you better results, wouldn’t you want to do that? Of course! However, we must put forth the effort to prove that is true.This may primarily mean that we set up our campaigns and landing pages in a way so that direct mail responses are measured differently than responses to your emails, social media posts, or activities on another channel.
Response mechanisms such as QR Codes and personalized URLs can help us measure direct mail effectiveness as well!
- Select a focused audience versus conducting a blind mailing effort, thus increasing the potential for successful contacts: The days of spray-and-pray must be a thing of the past. This is certainly true from a budgetary perspective. But it also should be true from the fact that technology makes it easier than ever to create targeted, personalized materials and by doing so, we can increase our response rates.By segmenting our audiences, we can deliver direct mail pieces that may have text, images, and offers that are relevant to each individual.
- Ensure that your direct mail pieces are both informative and aesthetically pleasing: We must never forget marketing fundamentals. Sure, it can be fun to get excited about new marketing channels (i.e. I’m so excited that I can add a PURL to my mailers!) However, we must not neglect putting forth an effort to ensure our direct mail pieces look good and tell a compelling story.
These are just a few of the ways that companies can successfully incorporate direct mail into their marketing mix. If you’d like to learn more or perhaps see how interlinkONE’s software can help you in that regard, click here.
Data-Driven Marketing: 3 Ways to Make it Succeed
Many companies will acknowledge that it’s easier than ever to build up a customer or prospect database. We have the ability to run personalized campaigns that make it possible for people to append information to their records, often in exchange for something of value (i.e. “provide your email address and we’ll give you this white paper”).
We can research our contacts through social networks and start to understand their passions, interests, likes and dislikes across professional and personal lines.
However, even with all that data, many marketers are still creating and distributing materials that are not really targeted to the individual they are sending them to. One reason for this may be that it takes more time to analyze data, plan what you could personalize, and then execute than it does to send out the same message to everyone. (I will completely admit that I’ve fallen into that line of reasoning more than I’d like to admit!)
But at the same time, we know that we could experience greater results if we produced data-driven marketing efforts.
Here are three steps on how we can start pushing away the excuses and start executing data-driven marketing efforts:
Have the Right Mind-Set and Commit to It
Most of us would probably admit to feeling pressure to “do more with less”. Because of that, we may feel that developing and executing a data-driven marketing effort might be more than we can handle. However, if we recognize the potential benefits of doing so, then we should develop the mind-set to push other things aside to get it done.
If we increase the priority level on things such as analyzing data, brainstorming, and executing, we will be on the right path to creating highly personalized materials.
Consult with your Customer Service and Sales Teams
While a lot of the data we collect may be from external sources, we should take time to talk to our customer service and sales folks to see what data elements they think are truly important. They may also be aware of current trends or issues that could trigger a response from our customers and prospects.
Armed with that information, we may be able to then better look at the data that we do have and identify the best way that we can appeal to those people.
Be Ready to Test and Measure
Will data-driven marketing efforts really improve your response rates? There’s only one way to find out — you must be willing to test and measure them!
Fortunately, many marketing software applications make this easier than ever to do.
We just need to be willing to put in the time to set our campaigns up properly ahead of time, monitor their results, and then adjust accordingly.
Three Trends That Will Affect Your Email Marketing Strategy
Are you looking to improve the effectiveness of your email marketing program?
If so, there are always different things that we can look at — this might include content, deliverability rates, Subject Line testing, and more. Along with those items, I wanted to share three trends that may help companies to experience more success in their email efforts.
P.S. These trends are not necessarily new. But even though people may have been aware of them for a little while, many of us have still not taken any action.
Mobile Devices and Reading
As the number of smartphone owners continues to rise, more and more people will become quite acquainted (and addicted) to having the ability to check their email at any time, wherever they may go.
This will mean that marketers will need to invest time and effort in doing the following:
- Testing how their current emails appear on various mobile devices
- Finding ways to tinker with their content, layout, and underlying HTML/CSS to ensure their email looks good across as many devices as possible
Of course, many will acknowledge that designing emails for typical desktop and laptop viewing was already a challenge, due to the fact that various email clients render the code differently!
However, there are various resources popping up that do provide some help on how you can design your emails for mobile devices. Here’s a great one from Smashing Magazine.
Social Networks and Sharing
We all know the power of word-of-mouth marketing. We want our content to go viral. But do we make it easy for people to start sharing and spreading our messages?
When it comes to creating and designing emails, we often spend most of our time worrying about the content and layout. And while that is important, we certainly do not want to overlook adding features that might encourage people to share our content. This may include:
- Adding a “Tell-a-Friend” link or button
- Displaying icons and links for sharing specific articles on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.
- Dropping subtle hints that might remind someone to pass along an article to someone else
Personalization
Technology has made it easier than ever before for marketers to build & manage databases. It has also made it easier for people to create emails that will have variable content based on the data that you may have.
However, this is an option that is often ignored. Many marketers feel the pressure to simply “get the email out the door”. Thus, taking the time to plan and create multiple versions that will offer up unique content might seem like a tactic that could stall a project.
But it may be worth investing the time to try and test out some form of personalization in your next email. Whether it’s simply serving up an article that might appear to specific industry that is represented in your list, or customizing your wording based on the types of products & services that your subscribers may offer, you may be able to increase the effectiveness of your emails.
