Marketer's Lab

Whoa There Trigger! The Next Wave in Email?

In my recent post on the Marketing Technology Top 5, I called out triggered email as one of the key marketing technology areas that should be on every marketers radar.  As if on queue, I received a marketing email from ExactTarget touting their triggered email capabilities.  They're certainly not the only email service provider to offer this kind of functionality, but they do seem to be leading the way in evangelizing the benefits of triggered email and appear to have a strong set of capabilities in the area.

Embedded within the email is a video pitching a little about what they're doing and promoting an upcoming web event they're producing on the topic.  Most importantly the piece promotes the fact that Scott Roth, their Director of Product Marketing, is a chicken wing aficionado, which means he is good people and anything he has to say about triggered email must be of the utmost significance.  (Digressing even more for a moment, kudos to the ExactTarget marketing team for a humorous, well produced video piece and the relaunch of their web site).  Also a couple good blog posts on triggered email here and here. 

To reinforce my previous post on this, triggered email is an extremely important element to begin understanding and integrating into your email efforts, this ExactTarget web event looks like a nice way to learn more about what's possible and how it might work for you.   

   

Podcastic Results

Wondering if advertising  in podcasts is worth your time?  New studies from Podtrac and TNS highlight truly stellar recall rates for podcast advertisers.  Ads in podcasts are seven times more effective than television ads and three times more effective than traditional online video.  Marketing Charts has a full write up featuring more details from the studies, I encourage you to read their piece on the results. 

Measuring the impact of podcast advertising can be a little "squishy", which can make it difficult to justify the cost and effort to jump into podcasting, as a podcaster or advertiser.  Even so, Podcasting has emerged as a mainstream marketing tactic, sort of.  The Jacobs Media Tech Survey IV , which is very radio market focused, provides a little validation on the size of the overall podcast audience stating about 28% of radio listeners are consumers of podcasts. 

So check out the Marketing Charts piece, and maybe rethink podcasting or advertising in podcasts.    

The Marketing Technology Top 5

One of the challenges with the huge number of marketing tools and technologies is figuring out which technology areas are most likely to deliver the greatest value.  Certainly no absolutes to be sure, but there are a handful of technologies I believe should be at the top of every marketers list to either be actively utilizing or at minimum learning more about.  In no particular order, my Marketing Technology Top 5:

1. Web Video - This goes way beyond trying to hit the YouTube lottery with some clever viral piece.  All the technologies for creating, editing, distributing and tracking web video have evolved exponentially.  Web Video is now an incredibly versatile tool that's viable even for marketers without huge budgets.  The applications for web video are almost limitless.  The approach can be really simple and straightforward (commoncraft) or done in a more sophisticated way (Accela).  The challenge is to begin thinking about how to use video as a medium.  For many marketers thinking about telling your story via video is new.

2. Intelligent email - Gone are the days of the batch and blast email approach.  Despite the "email is dead" sentiment that continues to bubble in pockets within the marketing world, email is still an extremely viable, dare I say vibrant, method of communication.  The key is relevance, relevance, relevance.  Most people in the email space agree relevance is typically driven by both demographic knowledge of the recipient and awareness of the actions they undertake.  Intelligent email involves integrating activity triggers or using other behavioral queues to drive dynamic, customized messages. This type of functionality is becoming more commonplace with the leading email vendors and seems essential to build or maintain an effective email program.

3. Marketing Super-Platforms - What's a Marketing Super-Platform?  Good question.  These super-platforms are the emerging converged platforms which integrate email, analytics, content management, behavioral targeting and depending on the provider a whole host of other stuff.  Companies like Eloqua, Manticore, Valtira, Vtrenz and others have created these platforms to provide a one stop shop for marketers and provide a more holistic set of tools.  There is tremendous power in these applications and I believe this is where we as marketers are headed over the next few years.    

4. Social Media Measurement - At this point most marketers know participating in the social media arena in some shape or form is block and tackle marketing.  With participation becoming more common, the measurement and effectiveness of social media programs takes on a whole new significance.  Tools like Buzzlogic, Techrigy, and SentimentMetrics provide information on who's out there, their influence and specifically what they're saying.  FYI, check out "Distributed Influence: Quantifying the Impact of Social Media" a great piece addressing the larger issue of social media measurement.

5. Insight Tools - Wrapped into this category I would put everything from simple online survey tools to some of the more sophisticated insight gathering/market research tools.  The big idea here is to learn as much as possible about clients and prospects.  Knowing more improves your ability to select media, tune your messaging and do a better job of being relevant.  A subset of this category would include competitive intelligence solutions and tools.  I'll post some specifics on competitive intelligence soon. 

That's a wrap, my two cents on the Marketing Technology Top 5, the key technology areas I believe are deserving of your attention.  Let me know if you agree/disagree or have other ideas around this. 

Great Slidecast on Blogs and Social Media

There's so much noise out there about social media and how we marketers need to be embracing these new technologies.  I've contributed to that noise myself, being pretty passionate about keeping the proverbial marketing saw sharp and just being smart about reaching a target audience.  I came across this slidecast from Illuminea that does a nice job providing an overview of blogs and social media from a marketing perspective.  Not the "this is a blog" condescending tone I've seen with similar pieces, but also not diving right into a bunch of tech-speak and marketing jargon that often accompanies a lot of marketing/social media materials.  Worth the few minutes to review, some good examples and reminders why social media is really now part of the fabric of all marketing activity.

Marketing Superplatforms and Customized Coffee

Are you "Smooth and Bold" or "Smoky and Robust"?  Caribou Coffee uses a marketing platform called Valtira to segment the smooth from the smoky and then delivers a custom message based on visitor preferences.  Valtira is a "Marketing super platform" (my words not theirs), a set of technologies which integrates many of the traditionally stand-alone marketing tools.  Things like content management, analytics and email marketing often sold as separate solutions come together into a single solution.  Specifically the Valtira platform includes; content management, email, campaign tracking, personalization, blogs and forums, social networking, ecommerce and a sales portal.  All this is manageable and viewable from a single dashboard.

George, Hadjiyanis, VP, Sales and Marketing for Valtira, also shared they provide integration with Salesforce.com and ExactTarget.  Pricing is based on an annual subscription model and varies based on which modules are used and number of users.  Pricing ranges from $1,000 to $10,000, currently they have about 100 clients including the aforementioned coffee gurus, the US Marines, United Healthcare, Zomax and a host of others.  The platform is obviously most powerful when used as the foundation for a web site, but George shared they also make available specific components for use in existing sites not built on Valtira, more of a widget model.

The web site user experience bar continues to get higher and higher, fortunately it appears Valtira is a solution that makes it easier to provide both a great user experience and optimal marketing impact.  Learn more at www.valtira.com