A Checklist of Digital Marketing’s Deadliest Sins

Digital marketing can be challenging. But your chances for success are much greater when you can avoid the (sometimes) simple pitfalls that sabotage response. So we have decided to start a checklist of “response killers”– things that can ruin your chances for productive digital marketing results.

This list is intended as a reference to help assure better performance from your Web, email, mobile, and social media efforts. We’re leading off with 25 deadly sins, in no specific order, and we’re looking for the input of our blog readers to add to the list. So read on…and contribute your own ideas for things to avoid if you want to achieve “killer response”. Read more…

Think about this when developing your marketing campaigns.

Who would you respond to? Someone who tracks you down, cajoles you, and relentlessly lurks in the shadows, or someone who makes you feel special in their presence?

For years, most marketers have been stalkers. We define and segment our target consumers, follow their every move so our marketing messages can reach them through whatever media they use, and hit them repeatedly with “act now” messages. As a result, our stalked audiences turn to media where they think they can escape marketing messages, like digital social networks and mobile channels. Of course, they can’t escape for long, because advertisers are always trying to get their messages wherever consumers’ eyeballs are. (And the media owners are usually all too happy to cooperate for the advertising revenue.) Read more…

In my previous post on this subject, I stressed the importance of making it easy for consumers to take action by clearly indicating in your advertising what it is you want them to do.  You need to lead consumers with verbal and visual cues to generate a desired response.

Experienced direct response copywriters know that a call to action is strongest when repeated.  Some espouse to a “tell ‘em what you want ‘em to do, tell ‘em to do it, and tell ‘em again” philosophy.  Experienced direct response art directors like to employ techniques like “handwritten” margin notes, highlighted copy blocks, and graphic design elements that grab attention and move the consumer’s eye towards a call to action. Read more…

Did you see the latest proposed changes to the Facebook? They have a new feature called “Instant Personalization” that shares data with non-Facebook websites. My issue is that it is automatically set to “Allow.”

Or in other words, to protect my privacy and not have my content automatically shared with someone outside, I need to do something, I need to opt out. Not opt in to allow it. Read more…

Facebook is all the rage; we can share our personal content with all our friends, now that they are all there. We might feel protected because we made a conscious decision of who to “friend” and where we’d join. Facebook says our content is private and they do provide warnings when you post.

But, have you accepted an application lately? Did you notice what permissions you were giving to get the benefit of the application? After digging under the covers a little, I am thinking that Facebook looks like the largest data mining, contextual advertising platform in history.

And I wonder if it’s a tinder box about to go off. Maybe we should all be very careful… Read more…

…just like the Michael McDonald, James Ingram song.

When print comes back, it won’t be “like it never left”. There will be far fewer printers, budgets will be even tighter and volume will be smaller. Many printers will not have survived the recession and the sobering declaration of 2008, “Print is Dead”.

Mass mailings, elaborate annual reports, and newspaper ads… OK, those ARE disappearing. But, targeted, personalized direct mail and print advertising…
Not going away. Not ever. I talked to a printer last week and he framed the situation by pointing out the shift from ink to toner. That’s an enormous change, (and it’s certainly not for everyone,) but I find it encouraging because it means that personalization is very much alive in the printing world.

And when print comes back, I’m going to be there with a grin on my face, complete with my Pantone books, paper samples, metal rulers, #2 pencils with erasers, graph paper thumbnails, circle templates, folding dummies and business reply envelopes. Believe it! Read more…

A year ago I was recruited to test a digital kiosk application my agency had created for a major telecom client.  (I guess the team wanted to test usability on a lug-headed Boomer.) I went through the stages of touching elements on the screen to learn more about the client’s offerings until I came to a screen with four pictures in four quadrants.  That’s where I stopped.

“What would you do next?” asked my young host.

“I’d walk away” I replied.

“Wouldn’t you touch one of the images in the quadrants?” he inquired.

“Why should I?  I just see four pictures, and nothing is telling me what to do!” I explained. Read more…

If your Web site has stock photos of good looking young business people “at work”, do yourselves a favor and replace them with photos of the actual people.

Innumerable organizations fill out their Web page layouts with these fake images and it makes me cynical. I’ve made this egregious mistake myself in order to expedite a design solution and it’s just not an acceptable visual answer for your company’s Web site or capabilities brochure.

These insipid stock photos are widely used and easily recognized as meaningless placeholders. If you are concerned about credibility, take the time to take a photo that shows real people… or don’t bother at all. Show nice photos of trees or sailboats or puppies — but please, enough already with the stock photos of “business casual” people.

A discussion of what we really want out of this overwhelming trend to “do social media” and the question of how to measure whatever it is we are doing…

During my career I worked at a sales promotion agency, helping them to master the art and science of direct marketing. One of their production folks, Joe, was particularly adept at coming up with unique descriptions of things. One afternoon I came in to his office needing a quick measurement of a piece of card stock. With a smirk on his face,  Joe sat back in his chair and began to question me on really what I needed to know and why. Frustrated, I had no choice but to go along as Joe went through several measurement options with definitions on each – thickness, size, weight for postage, or to calculate machine-ability. Read more…

This blog entry picks up on a topic I covered in a recent presentation at the DMA Agency Council Winter Executive Briefing conference..

Having been deeply involved for many years on the Boards of the DMA International ECHO Awards and the John Caples International Awards, I’ve become a pretty knowledgeable observer of trends in effective direct marketing campaigns.  A review of the past year’s awards season shows that many of the world’s top award winners put participatory digital media at the heart of their campaigns. Read more…