Digital Marketing Demystified
We would like to begin Digital Marketing Demystified , the best darn digital marketing session ever? Welcome Ron and thank you for joining us.
Hello Alexa, thanks for having me. We will have a blast today. I'm going to start this way, this is about social media and digital marketing. This has been about being real and transparent . Rather than giving you a long and boring bio , I will give you two accolades that I received.
To be fair I will give you my favorite one ever and my least favorite effort because socials about being real and transparent.
My favorite one ever is force called me a digital marketing icon and I could barely sit through doors and fortunately, a couple of months later I interviewed with the travel magazine and on the cover it says this is my least favorite accolade ever . On the cover it says inside, in interview with the grandfather of email marketing.
If you do not know me from that , you probably know me as the person that invented social media. Back in 1964 before Al Gore invented the Internet I was treating on paper and I thought there could be skeptics. I brought some photographic evidence and there I am tweeting on paper and I wrote OMG, I wish I trademarked that. Obviously Photoshop and that is me in 1964. I look back and every picture I see at that age I feel I am so serious and I am concerned about what the boy will turn out to be and I'm glad it and let being marketing. This is my handle on Twitter and right away we have a best practice for social media. If there is a platform out there that you have heard of, if you've heard of it, take the couple of minutes and register for it today . This is mine, @roncates.
Grab your business name before it is taken by someone else.
I know a lot of you when you've tried to register a website, maybe the domain you want was not available .
Do not let this happen to you. I learned this the hard way and I have to use my real name, I wanted to use my street name but 666 was gone . Don't let this happen to you .
Here is the big challenge , for any small business or nonprofit, marketing has changed and it has changed a lot. Today people communicate so many different ways. Think about this, 40 years ago if you had an advertisement in the newspaper, I read it , and I know that I read it because 40 years ago I read every page of the news or, front and back every single day.
This is embarrassing to admit that I cannot remember the last time I looked of the newspaper.
Later, if you can afford it you could do local TV ads because they were affordable but the reality is that back then I was forced to watch a commercial and if I was watching a TV program I was held captive. Today with TiVo and DVR is only 92% of us see television commercials.
People communicate on Facebook or twitter or LinkedIn, YouTube, email, some people want a direct mail piece to come to their mailbox. Tell me right now, which admit of your audience are you willing to mark, which segment of the audience can you afford to ignore? The answer is none, today we are forced to communicate more than one way. Right away, this is good news, you don't need to create new content , you pick a few and you do those well and your content can be repurposed. We heard different stages of engagement and it's a full spectrum of engagement. At one ends we have a blog or website or a web piece in your print piece and this will take a lot longer to create and a lot longer to consume so the engagement will be fantastic. It also means it will not happen as often. At the opposite end of the spectrum we have twitter and micro engagement and mosquito bite engagement and you have to do this more often. In the little -- middle of Facebook and email. I can take this print and blog piece and print a couple of paragraphs and put a sentence into twitter and people even though they follow you in different ways, they don't typically follow you on multiple channels. If on your email list I'm probably not looking at your twitter feed. If I'm on your twitter feed I'm likely not looking at your Facebook page so they don't see the same thing over and over. It can be repurposed.
Email is still the core of this . And before you think I have lost my mind, just like you, 7 years ago I read the email was dead. I will not say who the quote was from but it was from someone that had a conflict of interest with the COO of Facebook and if you want to join Facebook, you need an email address or if you want to communicate you have to do it via email. That was 7 years ago. 5 years ago I read that faced was dead. 4 1/2 years ago, the cover story of wired magazine, the Internet was dead. I thought I was tech savvy but I am using these tools every day and I bet that you are as well.
I as my life -- live audience, if there's 1000 people in the room I say how many of you have tweeted? A few hands go up and if I say how many of posted to Facebook, more hands go up. And when I ask how many of checked your email, every hand in the room goes up every single time. It is the preferred method of communication in the U.S. and around the world. It is growing at 6% per year and even though not everyone has an email address this is a sad but true facts, more people on earth have an email attack -- account then a two rush. That is the priority.
95% of us check our email every day, multiple times per day. On average we check it 17 times per day. Small business owners check it 31 times per day. While traveling up to 60 times per day and it is the most use back on and iPhone or android phone. And that is not 90 -- 95%, it is 95% under this age. If you have those under 19 they don't do a lot of email until they go to university or get a job. The number one reason that they get an email account in the first place is not to join a social network, it is to buy stuff online. Even though it is a smaller group it is a golden group, about 65+, if you have me there, I got you back. It is the fast is growing each group by more than double over any other category. And a lot of the sole reason that they own a computer. Then go about this, your 75 and you don't want to grab the left top to master PowerPoint. Maybe you don't pop out period . If you want to communicate with friends and family and you would buy a computer just to do email.
And I can do about 51%, more than half of us are doing email on a phone or tablet or smart device . The fastest adopted issue period is 65 plus here today instead of buying a computer they are buying a smart phone or tablet.
This will blow your mind, Laster email targeting had the highest return on investment of virtually any form of marketing, the average was $38 for every dollar that you spend. I know that this audience really understands ROI. You are sophisticated with this but let's put this in human, what if there a bank today and what if there was a bank in Antarctica having a special promotion today, today only and for every dollar you turn in they will hand you $38 back. Where would you be right now? Sorry SCORE, I would not be doing this either. I would be in line and we would be chilling in the longest line in history of the earth. And when I got to the front of the line I would go to the back to do it all over again and that is a crazy return on investment, but that is average. Let's be honest, what is the average email marketing piece like that you getting your inbox? Is it fantastic, is it the right number of characters, is it a great subject line? No. The truth is it is the week the average piece. It is not great. If not greatest getting this phenomenal return on investment, what happens if you do email well? Then it is astronomically high. Almost incalculably. We will not spend a lot of time on average. We will leave this session ready and able to do email marketing better than some of the world's biggest.
I have dozens of examples of those that do not do email well . I won't share any of them but I will talk about if you and you will walk out ready to do email better than some of the biggest companies on earth. That is exciting and I know that is a lofty promise but I will deliver.
First, the front-line . Can you pick the least sexy ever, turns out the front-line is the number one determinate of whether the recipient opens it or not. 65% of us decide by the front-line weather to open it or not on the from line.
The reality is there are a couple of pieces to this, the from name and the from email address. If you use Outlook it will show you both. I send you an email and it says it it is from Ron Cates . Not everyone uses Outlook, a lot of people, millions for example still use America online webmail. They do not display the from name, only the from email address. Other email software does the opposite and only shows you the from name and not the email address. Think about this. If I send it from a big company and my email address says Ron and that is all you see, you will not open it. A good email address, the kind that gets open the most tends to come from a real person and they come from it.com or.net . You deftly want to get that.
It looks more professional rather than using yahoo.com or Gmail.com. Those are services that you want to serve your brand and show it off. The bar has been raised by consumers when it comes to marketing, especially digital marketing in several ways.
They expect everything to look professional and years ago I was one of the first large-scale email marketers and when I started you could only do plaintext email.
Later when you could do nice-looking HTML emails I had to learn how to do the code by hand.
Today there are lots of companies out there, constant contact. I contact, mail chimp, they have templates and you can paste or type in your copy and it looks great in minutes. You need it to look good. If it does not look good, if it is a plaintext email, we assume that something about the product or service is secondly and effective. It is important that looks good and today it is easier than ever to look good. This is why you want to use the service . Second, you want to make sure this the mine is professional. If it comes from a real person at that.com or.net, it is more likely to get opened then it coming from something generic. In fact, some email service providers, ISPs , who are starting to block
bulk email that comes from the generic email address like news at or list at. > Gonna talk about the subject in a moment. If you think wait a minute, I tried to get a.com and my name was not available,.com and.net will both work and there are more .net available then.com. The reality is, you should have told and use both of those.
The reason I love.net so much is is it is oldest.com and those are the two largest..net is more than 30 years old. It is used in more than 200 countries and more than 400 languages. It is the perfect alternative and works well to amplify a.com .
The second most important reason that someone will decide to open an email is the subject line. About 35% of us decide by this. It is more difficult than ever to come up with an ideal subject line. You might have to let ideal go, but we do want to get as close as we can. The ideal subject line is going to be pretty short. I will recommend 40 characters
or less and that does include spaces. The ideal subject line has a call to action. What is in it for me? Why open it now?
The ideal subject line has the brand. If a brand-new mission what you can do this. I did some work with YMCA of the USA. Their subject lines were typically the same as YMCA news, YMCA news. If you change that to YMCA : three spring swim tips and open rates go way out because I know exactly what the email is about. It is more interesting . The reason I say short, 40 characters or less, I don't want you caught up in this that you throw common sense the window. If it gets shortened or cut off or truncated on a mobile device, will it make sense or does it become silly? This one is real and not from the clothing store, this is a really big retailer whose name I will not mention, winter fashions you can't afford to miss became winter fashions you can't afford . That could be truth in advertising but that is not the message that they intended. Really important and fairly new , a big study a couple of years ago said that about 31% of us are take action on an email. Buying from you because of an email that we did not even open. I thought about that, I mix cup Dick -- I am a skeptic and it finally hit me. I'm a serious tennis player, not good but serious. My favorite tennis store sent an email in the subject line was 40% off clearance shoes this weekend . I did not open it, I did not touch it but I was in line Saturday morning and is is a few hundred dollars. People definitely take action on emails they do not open because of the subject line. Does the subject line make enough sense that if you do not open it they will still take action expect that is a good subject line.
If nothing else you stay on top the reality is we get 60,000 marketing impressions per person per day.
I can love you and your product and your service in your store. I can be a big supporter of your nonprofit but I get distracted and I forget about you. Not because I don't love you, I just forgot. >Reporter: If you have permission to get in front of me on a regular basis and get into my inbox your friends -- your from line will remind me of a great experience or I love the chicken sandwiches or staying on top of that is powerful. Email allows you to do this. > Here is a step that I love and hate. We will talk about how to grow your list. This is amazing to me, 67% of us consumers will give up our email address to accompany if they ask for it. 67%. Two thirds say yes. The reason I find that shocking is I don't know about you, but for me, the average ask is terrible. It goes something like this, I by myself, go to the counter, and here's how the ask, the person behind the counter says , you don't want to give me your email address do you? If that type is getting 67% , what happens if it is done well? I can tell you I know of a real business, a guitar store and they get phone calls all day just like you, they get inquiry calls and there's are do you have Gibson guitars, Yamaha guitars? They say yes, come have a look and they hang up the phone and hope that the prospect came in.
Hope is not a great business strategy.
Mandatory policy the last 3 years as they have to ask every time or they get fired. It is that simple. Not only do we have Yamaha guitars, we feature Yamaha guitars on the list can we add you to this? 93% say yes over the phone. 98 percent of walk-in traffic, you have to ask every time.
The other thing I find amazing is 60s 7% say yes and here's how many of you ask back only 34% . I don't know why this is not 100 but you are going to go change that tonight, today, tomorrow.
You and your staff are going to ask every time. > When it comes to collecting email addresses, everywhere that we connect with the customer or prospect we need to ask your that is over the phone, on our website. Prominent location. You can text to join if you use a service. A lot of services have a feature where you can test your -- text your customer to join the list. I would have that at the end of my answering machine message. We are open on AM until 5 PM, text this number to join email list and put it at the bottom. Anywhere that I connect I would make it simple. On your website, on every page, in a prominent location . A way that they can join list .
For sell side cycling in the upper left it says during the email list and get 10 great cycling tips . Click to join.
If you give them an incentive to join, they are more likely to sign up. > This is an automatic welcome email that goes out when someone signs up if you use a major service.
You could have hints, or tips , and you can decide not to do this and they make it easy for the sign up tug on the website. It should be on every page and it should be in a prominent location.