Wednesday, August 29, 2007

10 Innovation Ideas When You Are on a Deadline

by Gwyneth Dwyer

Stuck? Feeling pressure to perform? Time fleeting? Deadline looming?

Perhaps you're responsible for three fabulous concepts that will drive the marketing of a new retail product line. Or you're charged with redesigning the controversial homepage of an e-commerce Web site. Or you need to present several great options for a new business name—with an accompanying tagline. Or everyone's looking to you to develop that emotionally appealing campaign theme that will boost a sagging fundraising effort.

Every one of those tasks demands innovation and its sidekick: inspiration.

"You can't sit around and wait for inspiration," said Jack London. "You have to go after it with a club."

Pick up your club (your pencil, your laptop, your sketchbook) and let's go. Whatever your particular challenge, these 10 strategies can help you innovate—on a deadline.

1. Zero in

What, exactly, is the task before you? State it clearly—in one sentence, if possible. This may take time, but it's worth it. "A problem well-stated is half-solved," said American pragmatist John Dewey.

2. Take off

Start thinking and don't hold back. Write or sketch everything that comes to mind. Don't get hung up on the right answer. There isn't one.

Not comfortable free-associating? Then force yourself to think in patterns: What's similar? What's opposite? What's more specific? What's more general? What does it look like, sound like, smell like?

Think hard, but go fast. And don't get too fond of anything yet.

3. Talk it over

Grab a colleague. Lose your ego. Brainstorm together, leapfrogging off each other's ideas. Innovation and collaboration are best friends.

4. Avoid the cops

Don't police yourself. And don't let other people police you, either. We've all met them: those with strong opinions, but no ideas. Ask them, politely, to leave. They can help later (perhaps), when it's time to refine your top choices.

"Big ideas are so hard to recognize, so fragile, so easy to kill," said John Elliot, former chairman of Ogilvy & Mather. "Don't forget that, all of you who don't have any of them."

5. Get reckless

Those ideas of yours? Scramble them. Those images you gathered? Rearrange them. What you created in sequence should now be taken apart.

Let's say you have a long list of names—in the order you generated them. Randomize the list, or put it in alphabetical order. You'll get a whole new perspective. And even more ideas.

6. Zone out

Ignore whatever needs solving. Immerse yourself in something entirely different. Read a book or browse through a magazine completely unrelated to your task. Listen to your iPod. Visit a different part of town.

Let some time pass. (Yes, even if you're facing a deadline.) If you've done the work in steps one through five above, your subconscious will pick up where you left off. Just make sure you have a notepad handy.

Paul Williams, founder of Idea Sandbox, advocates carrying an "idea journal" all times. It's good advice.

7. Narrow in

Pull out all your ideas and study them. Select the three best. Be decisive. You simply cannot use everything you created. (It's okay to grieve.) Then circle back to the problem statement you created in step one. Do the ideas still work? (You're nodding yes.)

If the answer is no, go back to step two and start over.

8. Get rational

Write rationales that prove the merit of the three ideas you selected. Explain how they attract your target audience. Communicate your value proposition. Clobber your competition. If you can convince yourself, you can convince others.

9. Polish and persuade

Polish your three chosen ideas, without overworking them. Add a bit more detail, consider them in a larger context, spin them out in new directions. Do they hold their own? Present them—formally—to the key decision makers.

10. Decide to decide

Here's the fun part: Get the group to commit to one idea. Don't waffle. One great idea is all you really need.

Gwyneth Dwyer is director of writing services at Larsen (www.larsen.com), an interactive, branding, and design firm with offices in Minneapolis and San Francisco.

Published on August 28, 2007

Monday, August 27, 2007

E-Mail Sender Lines: Do's and Don'ts

http://www.clickz.com/3626694

E-mail marketing secrets & lies: Building opt-in lists


Story posted: August 16, 2007 - 11:33 am EDT



If growing your opt-in email list was your goal a year ago, you may be re-evaluating that goal today. After all, as time and experience have proven, it’s not the size of a list that matters but its quality. Jordan Ayan, founder and CEO of e-mail service provider SubscriberMail, and Robert DeMeulemeester, exec VP-CFO at e-mail service BigString, discuss the issue below, identifying one e-mail marketing secret and one commonly circulated “lie.”

Secret: Your existing customer may yield new sign-ups—and significantly more revenue—so external list building isn’t always your best bet.

“The value of an existing customer is 20 times as much as a new customer,” DeMeulemeester said. “The best way to manage your opt-in list is to retain your existing base.”

In fact, he said, a 5% increase in retention can yield profit increases between 25% and 100%. To that end, you should be focusing on creating the best customer experience possible. Once you know who your best customers are, offer them timely promotions and personalized content. Also, use incentives to tap them for referrals. People are more likely to read and sign up for a marketing message if a friend or colleague passes it along.

“People need to feel like it’s a one-to-one marketing message,” DeMeulemeester said. “You want to create that conversation between you, the marketer, and your customer and friend.”

And don’t forget the entertainment value, he said. “If you look at the e-mails that people forward, they are most likely going to be the ones that are entertaining,” he said.

Lie: Prechecked opt-in boxes build e-mail lists quickly.

While it might seem smart to precheck opt-in boxes and automatically get people to sign up for e-mail newsletters, doing so will only build an unresponsive—and possibly angry—list, Ayan said.

“The concept behind e-mail is that you want to build relationships,” he said. “A prechecked box is trying to trick someone into being in a relationship with you. You’re just setting yourself up for failure.”

If you use an ESP that belongs to the Email Sender and Provider Coalition (ESPC), you probably already know this because one of the tenents of membership is not permitting prechecked boxes.

A better suggestion is to put a prominent sign-up box on every single page of your Web site, making sure it’s above the fold, Ayan said.

“If you can, make the location a constant. You can also—if you have the technology in place—make the box disappear once someone signs up for your list,” he said. “And offer a link so people can see what they are signing up for before they enter their e-mail address.”

Five Phrases Every Web Site Should Include (Especially Yours)

Even the most sophisticated Web site will underperform if you don't pay attention to the fundamentals that lead to sales. Nick Usborne believes that no site is complete without these five phrases:

Free. Despite its ubiquity (a Google search on "free" returns nearly two billion results) it continues to tantalize online visitors. Offer free downloads, subscriptions, trials, shipping or consultations.

Sign Up. Invite visitors to subscribe to an email program or newsletter. People check their email much more frequently than they surf the Web, and this is a great way to reach prospects.

Buy. Asking visitors to make a purchase is critical. "The word, buy is an instruction," writes Usborne. "It tells people to do something."

Now. "The Web is an easy-come and easy-go environment," he notes. "If you can't get people to act immediately, forget it." You want people to act now. Sign up now. Order now. Buy now.

Thank You. Just as those who sign up for newsletters might unsubscribe, those who order a product might return it. When visitors become customers, your work is just beginning; and the first step in building a relationship is saying thank you.

The Po!nt: Look at the areas in your Web site where these words might make a difference. Then make some changes, and test the results. "As always," writes Usborne, "the proof is in the testing."

Source: MarketingProfs Today. To learn more, read this article.

How to Help Customers Remember Your Brand

We all recognize some taglines. Think about “We try harder," “When you care enough to send the very best," and “The quicker picker-upper” (Avis, Hallmark and Bounty). The moment you hear those taglines, you get a mental image of a product or service.

Michael Goodman states, “A tagline is used to communicate or explain the main benefit the company or brand provides, especially when the company name or brand name doesn't do a particularly good job of communicating that message. In these cases, it's important to review the positioning statement to make sure the target audience is clearly and narrowly defined, and the benefit is one that's important to that audience.”

Goodman offers these guidelines for creating taglines:

  • They should contain no more than 8 or 9 words.
  • Communicate or enhance the positioning benefit.
  • Paint a word picture. Choose words that are easy to remember.
  • Cute and catchy is not as important as meaningful. People remember big ideas about things that are important to them long after they forget cute phrases, puns or jokes.
  • Try including the brand name as an integral part of it—like Procter & Gamble did with “Please don't squeeze the Charmin.”

The Po!nt: The right tagline can lock your brand in the minds of your customers. Craft one that tells your audience what you will deliver.

Web Analytics

Web Analytics is the objective tracking, collection, measurement, reporting and analysis of quantitative Internet data to optimize websites and web marketing initiatives.

Sunday, August 26, 2007

The Three Levels of E-mail Perception


By Jeanniey Mullen , July 9, 2007

Think you understand how to discuss e-mail? Think again. E-mail has somehow become one of the simplest elements to execute but the most complex to justify, explain, or successfully engage in. Over the past few months, I've noticed three distinct levels of clarity in how e-mail is perceived within organizations. Today, I'll share those levels and see if you find the same trend.

Let's focus on open rates, a seemingly simple concept.

If you're at level one in your organization, you're responsible for day-to-day efforts in getting e-mail out the door. You care a lot about open rates. It's how you cross- check yourself against competitors, justify effective deliverability, and validate targeting and segmentation. It's also a key testing metric.

If you're at level two, you're responsible for more than tactics; you oversee the interactive department or general direct marketing initiatives. Open rates mean something totally different to you: branding's impact and power and the channel's cost justification. You want to know e-mail's effect on lead generation, qualification, and effective closure. If someone tells you the open rate was 5 percent higher this month than last, it's like telling you the temperature outside is 3 degrees higher today than the same day last month. Who cares?

If you're at level three in your organization, you lead all marketing, and possibly advertising efforts. Open rates mean very little to you unless they're positioned in a manner that justifies significant business impact. Think of it this way: your e-mail database is 25 percent of your entire marketing database, a mere percentage of the people who patronize your company.

Your e-mail campaign gets a 50 percent open rate, a huge news for the level-one person. But that's only 12.5 percent of the marketing community. Of that, even if 25 percent of those people click on an offer, it only affects 3 percent of your marketing database, even less of the total audience.

From that view, e-mail looks fairly grim. But position this information correctly, and you can make a big impact. Think about rephrasing the news this way:

"Statistics show we can expect our active e-mail list to increase its purchase size by 139 percent this year. This month, we increased our open rate by 5 percent, which in turn should drive incremental sales by 1 percent (the percentage of the overall marketing database the 5 percent accounts for). If we increase funding for e-mail, we can achieve that level of business growth and advocacy, at a minimum, every month."

Say it that way and all of a sudden, e-mail is a key part of the plan.

These days, understanding how to build the best e-mail campaign isn't enough. Understanding how to position and discuss it is a critical element of success for our industry. I'm curious to see how this will continue to evolve.

Thursday, August 9, 2007

ansoff's product / market matrix

Introduction

The Ansoff Growth matrix is a tool that helps businesses decide their product and market growth strategy.

Ansoff’s product/market growth matrix suggests that a business’ attempts to grow depend on whether it markets new or existing products in new or existing markets.


The output from the Ansoff product/market matrix is a series of suggested growth strategies that set the direction for the business strategy. These are described below:

Market penetration

Market penetration is the name given to a growth strategy where the business focuses on selling existing products into existing markets.

Market penetration seeks to achieve four main objectives:

• Maintain or increase the market share of current products – this can be achieved by a combination of competitive pricing strategies, advertising, sales promotion and perhaps more resources dedicated to personal selling

• Secure dominance of growth markets

• Restructure a mature market by driving out competitors; this would require a much more aggressive promotional campaign, supported by a pricing strategy designed to make the market unattractive for competitors

• Increase usage by existing customers – for example by introducing loyalty schemes
A market penetration marketing strategy is very much about “business as usual”. The business is focusing on markets and products it knows well. It is likely to have good information on competitors and on customer needs. It is unlikely, therefore, that this strategy will require much investment in new market research.

Market development

Market development is the name given to a growth strategy where the business seeks to sell its existing products into new markets.

There are many possible ways of approaching this strategy, including:

• New geographical markets; for example exporting the product to a new country

• New product dimensions or packaging: for example

• New distribution channels

• Different pricing policies to attract different customers or create new market segments

Product development

Product development is the name given to a growth strategy where a business aims to introduce new products into existing markets. This strategy may require the development of new competencies and requires the business to develop modified products which can appeal to existing markets.

Diversification

Diversification is the name given to the growth strategy where a business markets new products in new markets.

This is an inherently more risk strategy because the business is moving into markets in which it has little or no experience.

For a business to adopt a diversification strategy, therefore, it must have a clear idea about what it expects to gain from the strategy and an honest assessment of the risks.