TimesTwoMarketing

Finding a Home For Social Web

It has been quite a crazy few weeks over here at the T2M offices. We've moved into some new digs (very exciting!), kicked off a white paper-worthy project with a new client, and attended the NRF show in New York. 

Nine meetings in three days cemented for us just one unwavering fact: Multichannel marketers are champing at the bit to figure out the optimal marketing mix in 2010, and they are becoming increasingly aware that Social Web is going to have a role. The conversations we're having now will help to shape and define where Social will live in an organization's P&L, and how the channel will be used for each individual company -- and believe us, it IS an individual decision.

In the case of an organizational products company we work with, we've decided that Social Media lives in the world of customer service. It makes the most sense, given the demographic of their customer file and the fantastic opportunity they have to create a position of authority on all things home-organization. Will we drive incremental revenue? Most likely, yes. But the greater goal is to identify the difference between those customers who are engaged with us Socially, and to drive deeper loyalty using the fourth channel.

On the other hand, we have another client who produces gorgeous, handcrafted and collectible children's toys. In this case, we've been charged with identifying and communicating with the purchase influencers -- the children and collectors -- as opposed to the final purchaser of the product. This approach falls somewhere between PR & Web Marketing since our goal is most definitely to drive purchase behavior by creating desire on the side of the product's user.

How do we make these determinations? With lots of open dialog between departments, and deep analysis of customer profiles and personas. It's like one of my bosses used to say about multichannel marketing: "Part art, part gut, part science, part luck." 

So as you explore Social Marketing, and its best use for your organization, be sure to challenge the paradigm that it must live under the purview of your eCommerce Marketing team. 

Five Dirty Truths About Social Media Marketing

We know you’re probably sick of reading about Social Media, and yet you probably still don’t have a handle on what you should be doing, where you should be doing it, and who in your organization should be responsible. We get it.

So instead of telling you, for the umpteenth time, how very important Social Marketing has become, and how critical it is that you be engaged, and all the things you’re missing out on, we’re going to share the five ugly truths that no one talks about: the landmines, pitfalls and challenges that make this medium so difficult to embrace for an industry that’s used to “test, measure, execute, and repeat.”

1. Maybe the first and most challenging truth we all have to face is this: Social Marketing is simply not measurable – YET. Remember back in 1999 when everyone was starting to build websites, and matchback didn’t exist, and we were all scratching our heads wondering whether ecommerce was cannibalizing our catalog business? It’s kind of like that – only harder – because now we may only have a Twitter handle to associate with someone until they place an order, and that handle may not correlate in any way to any other information we collect about them.
2.  The second truth is a corollary to the first, and that’s this: just because you can’t do anything with it now doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be capturing as much data as you can. If you’re committed to your Social Marketing program (more on this later), you should consider adding fields to your marketing database, and adding your Facebook Fans, Twitter followers, LinkedIn Group members, etc. as accounts. Eventually, you’ll be able to tie those records back to transactional records, and won’t you be glad to have that data then?
   
   
3.  Commitment. This is a big one, so listen carefully: don’t start a Social Marketing program unless you’re willing to commit to it in earnest. Bringing on a summer intern and letting her go wild with a blog and a Twitter account and instructional videos may sound like a great way to test the waters, but what happens when that intern is gone? Which department will be responsible for managing the ongoing program? Search engine algorithms are heavily dependent on consistent and new content, so letting 3 months lag between blog postings will not only hurt your Google Page Rank and natural search results, it will also hurt your authority with consumers and followers. Have a plan, make a commitment to the plan, and if something changes, LET YOUR FOLLOWERS KNOW.
   
   
4.  Another secret of Social Marketing? You can do it pretty well on a shoestring budget, so long as you build that plan we talked about earlier. From blogging to videos to creating community sites, the majority of tools you’ll need to manage and monitor your profiles are free (or nearly free), and with the right strategic plan and training, you very likely have someone in your organization who can allocate a few hours a week to maintaining the program you’ve set up.
   
   
5.  And the last ugly truth the so-called “social marketing gurus” rarely talk about? The separation between personal and professional personalities. We have a client whose personal Twitter account has become a dumping ground for every bad meeting, crummy deal, and employee complaint he has. Imagine his employer’s surprise when she realized that this guy was publishing this protected feed to his personal blog – which was posted on his LinkedIn page. We’re not suggesting you shouldn’t have a personal life in social networks. We’re just saying you need to be hyper-vigilant about insulating it from your business and your brand.

We hope these tips are a bit of a welcome break from all the hype surrounding Social Media Marketing. There’s no question that this medium is here to stay, but it’s important to keep your expectations grounded and your strategy on-point, all while avoiding the landmines in your path.

This piece originally appeared in The Cross Examiner, Cross Country Computer's quarterly newsletter.

CyberMonday Roundup

Between 2001 and 2004, I kept a running log of the catalogs I'd receive during the holiday season. It was fun to see the new books coming out (eLuxury! eve.com! RedEnvelope! eZiba! Ashford.com!) as well as the changes that the old standards were making. 

But never in that time did it occur to me to track "offers" during this season. Before 2006, promotional offers at holiday were rare, and limited to a handful of segments -- reactivation offers for formerly high-RFM households, for example -- and post-Christmas sale drops. In fact, I recall a time when I summarily declined all November/December list rental requests if there was any kind of promotion attached to the mailing. 

My, how times change.

Today, the volume of new and refreshing catalogs in my mailbox are dwindling, while those I do receive are rife with promotions: Free Shipping, 10% Off, Tiered Discounts. Conversely, the sheer quantity of "Cyber Monday" emails in my Hotmail account in the last 36 hours or so have been overwhelming.

So in the interest of old traditions (and new technologies), I thought I'd do a roundup of the offers we received today in our collective TimesTwoMarketing emails accounts.

Tell us, what offers did YOU receive for CyberMonday? Who did a good job, and who let you down?

Also, come back Thursday for our roundup of the quality of the communications we received, and which retailers did a good job promoting an offer while protecting their brand.

Loyalty's Changing Face

We've all heard a story or two about Zappos' customer service, and about how their executive team has built a culture that values customer satisfaction above all else. Many of us have heard Tony Hsieh talk about how they have enable every CSR to make a customer happy without the need for escalation to a supervisor. 

But as more businesses start embracing that model, what happens when a consumer is faced with exceptional service from two competing retailers? What's the winning strategy to keep or maintain a customer's loyalty in a climate where many merchants are reallocation resources to "customer satisfaction"?

Here's my recent story.

I was scheduled to run the US Half Marathon Women's 10K on November 1st. It was my first-ever race, and I was both excited and tremendously nervous about it. Early in my training, I'd visited a local chain of fitness stores, Sports Basement, for a gait analysis and help picking out a pair of running shoes. They did a fantastic job putting me in a pair of Mizuno Wave Elixirs which fit me so perfectly that they never needed to be broken in. And, because I have a friend who's a buyer there, I enjoy a year-round 15% "Friends & Family" discount on everything I buy. Their service and selection combined with the discount has long made Sports Basement my go-to store for all things athletic.

As race day approached, I made the rookie mistake of not realizing until too late that my shoes badly needed to be replaced. I headed over to SB only to find that they were out of my size in that store as well as their three other locations. When I explained that I was a mere 10 days away from a race, they did everything they could to help, INCLUDING calling a dozen of their local competitors to see if they could source me a pair locally.

When that failed, they got me into a pair they thought I might be happy with, and told me to take a test run in the next couple of days, and if I didn't like them, to bring them back no questions asked. 

After a four-mile run the next day, I realized those shoes would never work, and found the Elixirs on Zappos.com for a few dollars more and placed the order.

Well, on Halloween Day, the shoes still hadn't arrived, and UPS.com showed they wouldn't be delivered until the following Monday, after the race was good and done. I posted this pathetic missive on Twitter:

Dammit dammit dammit. My running shoes from @zappos have a "rescheduled delivery date" of Monday, which is too late for the 10K. Near tears.

Within five minutes, I had a response from Zappos asking for my order number so they could track it. I sent it (via Direct Message) along with an acknowledgment that this was not their fault, and not their problem to fix. 

Obviously, they disagreed. I have no doubt that they would have shipped me another pair Priority Overnight if this had all happened a day earlier, but since they had no such options, they apologized profusely, wished me luck on the race, deposited a $30 credit to my account, AND invited me to Zappos VIP. Of course, I thanked them publicly on Twitter. 

But what now? As a consumer, how do I balance my business between Zappos and Sports Basement? In this case, it's easy -- athletic-wear at SB, all other shoe purchases at Zappos. But what if these two companies were truly direct competitors?

Both companies exhibited the ultimate in customer service, but in very different ways. So tell us, who would have won your future business?

Social Media Marketing: To Outsource or to In-House?

Talk about a loaded question. There's a sense amongst some people that the term "Social Media Expert" is a bit of malarkey. That those of us who make a living developing, implementing and executing Social Media Marketing Plans are "snake-charmers," and that anyone can use free and readily available tools to create their own SMM programs.

And perhaps there's a bit of truth to that. If you have the right person in your organization, you probably can run a Social program well and they'll probably do a better job than someone on the outside. But here's the rub: the "right person" can be quite elusive. Here's why:

• They must be a fantastic researcher, and an even better writer. Maintaining a blog requires the ability to write frequently, engagingly and with relevance. Identifying the right topics or products to write about requires sleuthing both inside and outside your organization. It can be a nasty shock for the online marketing assistant who thought starting a blog would be "fun and easy."
  
• The person you put in charge of your Social Marketing plan must be a self-starter, and somewhat entrepreneurially-inclined. They must have the discipline to keep abreast of industry issues and what is being said about your company, then respond to those post commenters, tweets, and message threads in a timely fashion.
  
• At the same time, they must also be able to multi-task like mad, and not get overwhelmed by the sheer volume of information that will be thrown at them in the process of building and managing your Social Media program. Seriously, folks, we have separate, unique RSS feeds for our clients, and each one reads like the visual effects crew of a Pixar film.
  
• Finally, the person you task with this endeavor must have enough expertise about your brand and authority about your industry to understand what's relevant, and to react appropriately. Without that, his or her every word will be questioned by your customers AND your management.
  

Listen, we're all for building an internal culture of Social Media acceptance. We like to see our clients embrace the medium and we love helping them find (or hire) the right talent internally. But you wouldn't ask your customer service manager to write your press releases, so why ask her to write your blog?

Have you hired a Social Media consultant to help your team, or did you build the skill set internally? We'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments!

Martha Stewart's Omnipresent Message

Her self-important "My Life" opening segment notwithstanding, Martha Stewart's keynote address at DMA09 in San Diego sparked some interesting questions and discussions for a number of people I spoke with this week. While it has been dismissed as "too obvious" and "nothing new" in plenty of venues, our perspective is this: As direct marketers struggle to find their way in the increasingly-important landscape of Social Media, it is helpful to hear from "early adopter" business leaders.

Even though many of us are preaching Martha's message to our clients, there are plenty of CEOs, Presidents and Founders who have not wanted to face the reality of this new media channel. We talk to Marketing Leaders every day who are fighting tooth-and-nail to put Social on their marketing roadmaps, to get their executives to commit resources, and to find partners that will help them navigate a path to effective execution of a Social Media Marketing Plan. They end up with a half-baked program without any parameters or guidelines, and soon discover that the customers they've worked so hard to engage have given up on them. Or they land a savvy summer intern who, come August, leaves behind an active and engaged Twitter account with no one to follow through. Worse yet, they discover a branded Facebook Fan page started by a rogue store manager that now has a few hundred followers and an unmonitored message thread.

It's the CEOs of these organizations who needed to hear Martha's keynote. It's the executives and business unit leaders who needed to hear her say, "Our goal is to be where consumers need and want us," and realize that she isn't talking about mailboxes or inboxes or shopping malls.

Update: We've added a few links to other write-ups of Ms. Stewart's keynote. If we're able to find a video or podcast, we'll be sure to add that as well! (All links open in a new window.)

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