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Why more emails at Christmas almost always means more money

On Monday, I answered some questions for Econsultancy about optimal email frequency at Christmas, and apparently I ruffled a few feathers.

What can I say, I’m a Parry-iah  (see what I did there?). The following blog post will rub some people the wrong way. My good name may get dragged through the mud. But, what can I say, with playful glee here comes an erudite, iconoclastic viewpoint.  

My point is this: retailers who send out more (not crappy) emails this Christmas period will drive more revenue from all their channels, both online and offline. 

This Christmas, give your customers a present. Give them the gift of more emails. 

The LEGO Movie’s solid social marketing strategy

Firstly, yes, Warner Bros. has made a LEGO Movie. A big budget, Hollywood, CGI motion picture starring (the voices of) Chris Pratt, Will Ferrell, Liam Neeson and Morgan Freeman.

The film isn’t out until February 2014, and yet Warner Bros. began the marketing push earlier this year with a great looking trailer and various teaser posters.

This shouldn’t be a surprise being as LEGO has a great online strategy and has shown previous form in building its own online customer community.

Recently though, the marketing push has begun through closer engagement on social network sites, clearly having learnt lessons from LEGO’s own social interaction via its CUUSOO site.

Let’s take a look at how Warner Bros. and their digital agency Substance are marketing LEGO’s biggest new construction yet using social media…

Five examples of charities with excellent Twitter feeds

A new report has found that more than 80% of charities now use social media for marketing and engaging with supporters.

Facebook (87%) and Twitter (84%) predictably proved to be the social networks most commonly used by charities, followed by LinkedIn (49%).

The report from Blackbaud found that charitable organisations are also taking action to improve the impact of their social media efforts, with 63% adding staff roles or new responsibilities that focus on social.

Smartphones and tablets: five key differences

Lumped under the collective heading of ‘mobile’, a lot of marketers think that smartphones and tablets are the same thing when it comes to mobile marketing.

The truth is, people use tablets in a completely different way than they do their smartphones, and your marketing should reflect that.

Here are five reasons why tablets are different than smartphones, and why they should be treated as such by marketers.

Six ways travel brands are using social for content strategy

If content is king, then social is definitely queen. With a fast growing digital society that loves to post and boast, social media has become a fundamental tool in a content marketer’s kit.

And for the travel marketers, social has been a gift. Done well, a great campaign can far outreach any traditional marketing activity in terms of audience and influence.

Social, no longer seen as a bolt-on channel, has become an integral part of travel marketing, from PR, reputation management to customer engagement. And in many ways, it’s also the voice of the brand. 

Virgin Atlantic’s ‎director of brand & customer experience, Reuben Arnold says: ‘Social media helps us demonstrate our personality and what we’re about’.

Five interesting examples of social campaigns from Bloomingdale’s

Department store Bloomingdale’s recently announced the winner of a selfie competition that it hosted on Instagram, proving that it’s a fashion retailer very much in tune with its customers.

To find out whether this was a one-off or whether Bloomingdale’s has an illustrious history of creative campaigns I trawled through its various accounts in search of more examples of interesting social initiatives.

It proved to be quite a difficult task, though I did turn up one or two useful examples. So read on to find out more about the Bloomingdale’s selfie contest plus four other social campaigns.

Buy to give: is philanthropy a natural fit for ecommerce?

The feeling of leading a charitable and sustainable life is one that most of us want. For those of us that don’t straight-out donate to charity, making the right choices is essentially the best way to give back.

Sort of like that decision not to go to McDonald’s but to use the local bakery instead or buying a pair of TOMS, for example, we feel as if we’ve given something back without making any effort. Guilt-free consumption, if you will.

If you’re not familiar with TOMS, it’s the shoe and eyewear brand with the ‘One for One’ philosophy. For every product bought, TOMS will help a person in need.

Of course, this reads a little like cheating on the part of the customer that wants to feel like a saint whilst getting those in vogue boating shoes. Well, actually I don’t think it is.

I think ecommerce and philanthropy are a natural fit, allowing customers to give something back simply by making the right choices.

In this post, I’ll be listing eight buy-to-give ecommerce companies and explaining why I think this movement might fundamentally change company culture.

Are companies burying their heads in the sand about digital?

Our Modern Marketing Manifesto makes the bold declaration that social media are changing business culture with the onus now on marketers to help create businesses that ‘have social in their DNA’.  

For many organisations, attitudes within the boardroom towards social are a microcosm for ‘digital’ more broadly. An appetite for embracing social is often indicative of a C-suite understanding that changing consumer behaviour necessitates a focus on digital. 

As Econsultancy CEO Ashley Friedlein explains in this post, digital stands for a focus on the customer experience, irrespective of channel, and a move towards a digital culture.  

What is native advertising and do you need it?

To begin I’m going to repeat a headline I read last week: ‘Facebook is more popular for native advertising than Twitter’.

This headline derives from Hexagram’s latest report on native advertising. The report elaborates: Facebook is the third most-popular channel for native advertising, with Twitter still lagging far behind. 

However… if you’re anything like me, you might not know what native advertising actually is, and all of the above information may just merge into the background of data white noise.

As a relative newcomer to the digital marketing world, I’ve decided to begin a series of ‘beginner’s guides’ to uncover what is meant by certain terms, trends and technological advances in digital; being both a travel guide and a personal investigation.

So if you’re tired of being the person nodding and smiling at the back of the room, feeling increasingly powerless in the face of overwhelming jargon, come with me and we’ll embark on a voyage of discovery together.

Don’t worry, you don’t have to talk to me or look me in the eye, you just have to sit there.

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