My ten best free iPhone apps.

Having used an IPhone (3 and now 4) for the past two years or so, I have taken to the time to share my thoughts on the ten most useful apps I have on my iPhone today.

I use my iPhone for a mixture of work and leisure and have sought out the ten apps that I not only used most often, but value most highly and have paid the least (free) for!

So, in no particular order…

1. Hootsuite. As a fairly prolific tweeter and Facebook user, I have been suing social update apps for a while. Until recently my weapon of choice was Tweetdeck (ad in fact still is for my laptop) but after Tweetdeck getting itself in a real pickle when I was trying to manage multiple twitter accounts on my iPhone version, it was deleted and a new alternative was sought.

Having trialled a few others (namely Twitter and Seesmic) first I have settled on Hootsuite as the my social talking and listen app of choice.

It copes well with multiple twitter and Facebook accounts, and also integrates into Foursquare.

The ability to choose to post one status to multiple accounts (my Facebook and twitter feed for example) simultaneously was a feature that I grew reliant on in Tweetdeck and have found in Hootsuite to work very well (other apps don’t have this feature)

Most importantly Hootsuite has not repeated the horrid bug of auto posting updates destined for my personal twitter account to my work account by mistake! Cost: Free

2. Onavo. A data-compressing little gem this one. If you have a data contract on your iPhone with a limit (even “unlimited” deals d have a limit these days) and/or travel overseas and use your phone for email/web browsing, then this app could save you a small fortune.

It simply compresses the amount of data you download whilst using 3G – the makers reckon you can save up to 75% f your data costs each month. I’ve been using this for a month or so and have managed about 50% so far – in real terms for travelling abroad using my phone that is about a £48 saving already! Cost: Free

3. Facebook. Does what it says on the tin really. If you are like 600m or so other people and use Facebook then using their mobile app is the best way to make and receive updates from your friends.

Occasionally I find the app to be a bit “buggy” with notification updates – it isn’t always easy to see the latest updates, but this is probably more down to the web servers of Facebook than the app itself. Cost: Free


4. Spotify. I’ve had a Spotify account for a couple of years now and it has meant the end of me buying CDs. The app version of this music-streaming service means I can live stream any record I care to choose from their enormous database, or I have “saved” albums suing the desktop version, then these will be available for playback via the IPhone app, even without internet connectivity. This is a real plus – essentially turning the Spotify app into an IPod-style service.

This app is not strictly speaking free – paying Spotify customers only can use the app, but assuming you have justified the £9.99 per month price tag of the ad-free service, then the app is a must.

As this app (via Bluetooth and cable) will play via my home surround sound and in-car in my Audi, it really has meant the end of CD in my world. Cost: Free (but to paying Spotify customers only)

5. Thetrainline. The National Rail have a similar app for £4.99 but I have always fund this one to be more than adequate for my train travel. As well as being able to check train times, buy tickets and plan routes, the really useful neat feature is “nearest train home” – using your location it tells you the time of next nearest train to your home station (set in you preferences) – this has helped me catch countless trains I would have been late for when travelling home from London and alone make the app worthy of this list. Cost: Free

6. Shazam. I remember wowing my friends with the Shazam music service a few years ago via my mobile. Being able to dial “2580” and let the Shazam listen to and identify the song on the radio was genius. But having that as an iPhone app makes for an obvious and very welcome progression.

Nothing is more frustrating than hearing a song you like but can’t name, especially as most radio DJs have not the time or inclination to tell the audience the names of their play lists artists – you’re just supposed to know. Cost: free

7. Sky+. Even though there are many other ways of doing so, I still find this app the easiest way to view a TV guide. But that is but a bonus use, compared to main benefit of this app.

I have Sky + at home and the fact that I can use this app to remotely record my home sky box is quite brilliant. Although I don’t watch many show, when I’m reminded or recommended to watch a great TV show, then being able to tap a few buttons and record at home means I never need miss the likes of Lose Women ever again. This ap also reduces the risk of ink poisoning from the numerous notes I used to leave on the back of my hand! Cost: Free

8. Dropbox. The lack of open storage on an iPhone is overcome brilliant with Dropbox. Essentially cloud-based storage system for files (be them music, data, photo, video etc) you can access your “box” from any web-enabled device.

In reality this means that I can work on a PowerPoint on my laptop and view it via Dropbox on my iPhone. This principle, although very straightforward, makes accessing files on-the-go very quick and also means that you are storing your precious files in a much safer environment on an easily dropped, broken or lost laptop/hard drive etc. Cost: free (for the basic service)

9. iMapmyRide. I spent a small fortune a few years about for a watch that tracked my location and run/race/bike times when I was out and about. As well as having to wait a good 5-10 most days for it to “triangulate” with the GPS satellites, it had a poor battery life and was the size of a small calculator!

iMapmyRide is one of many IPhone apps that does essentially the same thing, but with the minimum amount of fuss and zero cost.

Once the app is started it picks up my location very quickly (seconds) and with one hit of the “start” button it is tracking my route/distance/time.

Once you have completed your route, it then will save tat data as a run/walk/cycle etc and you can either keep it for your own training purposes, to better next time! Or share publicly to other users of the app who may wish to follow your route. The app works very well with social sites, allowing you to post your times/route to Facebook/Twitter. Cost: Free

10. BA. It is fair to say that I am reluctant fan of this app. I travel quite a lot and use BA often – nothing to do with their service (I can find many places on the ground where I am treated like an inconvenience by a middle-aged woman called Sheree) but all to do with their air miles.

Travelling a lot means carrying unnecessary pieces of paper, planning ahead to access printers and being near my laptop to check in exactly 23 hrs and 58 seconds before takeoff, to get the best seat.

Thankfully the BA app des all of the above for me very neatly. The big plus for me being able to go from check-in to seat without anything more than this app.

It still feels kinda neat, but of course relies on having enough battery on your iPhone to wave your boarding pass at each stage! Cost: Free

Does your marketing give them time to think?

I’ve recently returned from a trip to Malaysia. Whilst driving along the main Expressway from Kuala Lumpur to the North of the country, I travelled past many huge billboard ads for various Malaysian and Worldwide brands.

Nothing particularly new in this, or interesting, expect for with one of the adverts I went past.

It was for a clothing brand, that much I recall, and was advertising female fashion. Travelling at the legal 110 km/h, of course, I didn’t have time to take in much more than and don’t even recall the brand name.

I did, however, spot that the ad had a QR code in the bottom right corner of this ad. If you’re familiar with QR codes, then you’ll know that you need to open code-reading software on your Smartphone and line your camera up to the code, for it to trigger a signal to open your web browser to a certain website location.

Fairly useful technology in magazines, lampposts and other static locations, but not particular clever when you are travelling past said advert at 110 km/h – I reckon the average Malaysian that sees the advert and QR code firstly probably wouldn’t know what the small barcode thing is anyway, but for any that do recognise it, and have the right software on their Smartphone, well they certainly don’t have time to patiently line the camera up to the code as they hurtle by!

This struck me as an interesting parable for a lot of marketing that I see back in the UK (or in any other country to be fair) and particularly in Business to Business marketing.

Often marketers don’t give enough time, information or care to their prospects and their marketing can pass those prospects by before they have had time to think or react.

The kind of traps I mean...

If at first they don’t read…don't give up

Email and social are good ways to get your message across to your audience. But just because you sent it, doesn't mean they read it.

With open rates on email dropping month on month, you need to ensure that you keep going back to your audience if at first you don't succeed.

Use remarketing techniques to encourage opens on a later date. Simply adding “reminder” to a resent email can be all you need. Schedule re-posts of your tweets/messages, particularly to take into account different time zones around the world and the fact that your prospects won’t all read every tweet they see the minute it arrives – they have day jobs to do!

How easy is it to buy?

If you are selling to a business, then ensure that you understand and answer all of the pre-sale questions they will have, and help them answer them.

The more expensive or complex the purchase, the more decision makers will be involved, and the more information they will need (and encouragement and confidence) to make the purchase.

Consider what questions IT director would have, compared to the CEO, or the Finance Director, and ensure they are all answered - ideally online.

Who else will be involved in the decision?

Continuing that same theme - who else in the organisation is going to be involved in saying yes (or no) to your product or service? How can you reach them and ensure they understand what you are selling and why they should say eys to buying it. Typically, the five main areas to consider are:

• Management (the board)
• Finance
• IT
• Sales & Marketing
• HR/Personnel

Learn from a salesperson

Marketers can learn a lot from the tenacity of a good salesperson. They know that they will often have to work hard and keep in regular contact to encourage a prospect to become a customer.

A client of mine told me that they managed to sign a new customer (for a high-end golf club) because after the various calls and emails from them, the customer thought that "they must really want me to be a member"!

Perseverance pays off. Map regular contact to your expected sales cycle length, and regularly send your prospects the information they need to keep answering those questions they have.

Bread crumbing not bombarding

Once you have mapped your messaging to your sales cycle, then start to drip feed out the key messages on or two at a time. Nobody has the time or inclination to read chapter and verse on your offering, particularly not at the early stages.

Remember to use a model such as AIDA to help feed the right type of messages out, based on the sales cycle.

Don't just bombard them with one big message, sit back and prey they come - that QR code on the Malaysian highway is never going to get any response, and increasing lazy marketers, on or offline, are being found out too.

5 social media strategies every b2b business can do today (and should be)

Having been asked so many times recently about where to start, I thought I would share a few thoughts on how B2B businesses can kick off their social media strategy.

The key to this is “listening before you speak”. I would advise that a business spends the first few months building up a knowledge of what is being said. To help them understand the size of the opportunity within Social Media (as nearly all marketers have to balance this against all the other tasks they have to complete) and to help prepare the right kind of proposal for your business on how you will harness social media in the long term.

1. Protect your brand – register your Twitter account

Simple. Even if you are not sure yet if you will ever use Twitter for your business, make sure your protect your brand and register an account for your business now. Not only does it protect from competitors/similar named companies using it, it is also hard work to move a brand squatter from your twitter name once they are on there – we have been trying at Cyance for nearly 12 months with no success!

2. Listen to what is being said about you.

This is always the place to start, and every business can do this today. There are a plethora of excellent (free) tools to start you off.

Use tools like whostalkin.com, blogpulse.com and Twilert to start to understand what is being said about you, your brand, your competitors and the wider market. For certain b2b businesses it may be that little or no conversation is out there, which is a very useful thing to know before you try and spend time and money on all singing and dancing social media programme – for some it may simply be not worth the effort, when compared to other channels.

3. Find and scale your market

As well as listening to what people say about you, it’s well worth monitoring phrases, terms and words that are about your market – for example if you are email marketing company, phrases like “email marketing” and “deliverability” are phrases that you may want to know the author for.

If you target particular markets or job titles, then using the Linkedin people search is a great way of finding your existing customers as well as trying to size the market that is out there. For example, if Finance Directors are your target audience, then search for that title on LinkdIn and you’ll be faced by a list of all matching LinkedIn profiles. Now it’s too early to start to try and target them, but it gives you a good idea of who and how many are out there and if some of those are your customers, you can start to listen or connect to them straight away.

4. Monitor trends (and fads)

With the news this week that Google is about to pull it’s much trumpeted product Google Wave, it’s a timely reminder that not every new kid on the social media block will be the next Facebook or Twitter. In fact, for a lot of B2B businesses neither of these sites will be relevant to them at all. But social media is much wider than just those superstar sites. Again, niche markets can benefit from easily identifying bloggers or forums where your customers do spend their time.

It is not yet the time to jump in on those forums and talk, but it is very easy to monitor what gets said, to start to build up a view of who is in your market and what the current trends, issues and thoughts are. Once again blogpulse.com is a good place to start to find these bloggers, as boardtracker.com is excellent for forums.

5. Do It Yourself

The easiest way to really understand Social Media and how it can be utilised for your business, is to start by using it for yourself. Ensure you have a full LinkedIn profile, register a twitter account in your name and start to follow people of interest ; be these work people, or based on your hobbies/interests. Once you have got a better feel for the nuances of how it works and how you can make it work for you, it is a lot easier to do for your business, allowing you sell the idea internally more eloquently also.

"Reports of my death are greatly exaggerated" - email acquisition does still work!

Email acquisition doesn’t work, right?

Well that was certainly the experience of Sodexo Prestige before we worked with them on a recent project for The Open Golf Championship at St. Andrews.

As official corporate hospitality partners for events such as Royal Ascot and The Open Golf Championship, Sodexo Prestige had previously used email marketing to acquire new customers, with little or no success.

However, after an initial strategy meeting, Cyance and Sodexo Prestige devised a programme to acquire new customers for their corporate hospitality packages for The Open 2010.

The target audience were businesses in Scotland and North England, areas that historically have been difficult to target and reach.

After some detailed data analysis by Cyance, to help find the right business types by size/industry and region, the campaign commenced with an email programme to 62,000 selected contacts. Each email used personalisation in the subject line and main body of the email. There were 5 segments of data, that all had a different tone of voice with copy/images used to relate to them differently.

For example, the data cell for businesses in North England had to be within 45 minutes drive-time of either Manchester or Leeds Bradford airports, as these both fly to Edinburgh airport, the largest airport that is close by to St. Andrews.

The click activity (opens, clicks etc) from the emails to the website were monitored by the Sodexo Prestige sales team. Meaning they were able to target, via telephone, recipients who showed the most interest in the products (based on where they clicked on the accompanying website).

As well as this, there was a unique telephone number for this campaign, ensuring they could track all inbound calls from the email recipients.

After the 5th email send, just before The Masters golf tournament in April 2010, a Direct Mail brochure was sent to 1,000 recipients who had not yet been contacted via telephone, yet had shown interest through their click activity. This helped to encourage further engagement via in and outbound telephone conversations.

Although there is a lot more detail to this campaign, it was all pulled together in short timescales (first strategy meeting in early January 2010, first emails late January 2010. The last Direct Mail was sent in mid April 2010.

Most important this campaign achieved results. Although we can’t share all of the finer points of the budget, we can tell you the important bottom line:

The campaign achieved a staggering 24X ROI

It was this that we think caught the judges eyes at the B2B Marketing awards judging table this month, as the campaign has now been shortlisted for “Best Use of Email” for the 2010 awards.

So, still think email acquisition doesn’t work? Well for the vast majority of campaigns it probably doesn’t, but when you step back and take strategically-led approach and combine it with other complimentary channels, it can deliver outstanding results.

Emails from the folder marked "bad"

In my Outlook personal folders I have two folders that i review sporadically. “Email examples: good” and “Email examples: bad”.

Somewhat depressingly I tend to add to the latter folder far more than the former. From time to time, like today, I review what I have put in there and share some thoughts on the stunning array of email marketing incompetence that has been slung my way.

So, with no axe to grind other than the asking that we all try to make email a little more clever and strive for “relevance” over “bombardment” so that email marketing has a future, i wanted to share a few of my all time favourites bad emails...

“Sorry, do I know you?”

This is the most common sin of email marketing that I see, and the most easily fixed too. Below are a few examples where the senders have used their own names in the “sender name” field. Now this is a very good strategy IF your audience know who you are.

If not, then you really should be using the most recognisable name/brand you have. For example, with both the Haymarket emails (and i have many from them from nearly every employee in their b2b events team) they should use the brand name of the magazine-related event they are promoting.

It is as simple as changing it to say “Brand Republic” in the sender name.

Why is this important?

We all receive so much email that we have precious little time to ponder who somebody is and what they are sending us. Especially important when somebody returns to a bulging inbox, we must ensure that the sender name (and subject line and preview pane) make it clear exactly who the email is from and what it is about – to help somebody make the decision to keep the email and not simply delete alongside the many others they are not sure about or don’t have time for.

Speling mistekes happen

Your email marketing is only ever as good as your least literate marketer. These few examples show why it is so critical to ensure there is a good sign-off process for any emails you send out. It is so easily done – that misspelt word here, that data error here.

It’s a weird anomaly that Direct Mail gets far more love and attention at sign-off than email, but tat email will likely be seen by far more people than the DM.

Ignoring what your data is telling you, or just making wild assumptions

This first one was actually sent to an old colleague of mine. This colleague is 32 years old and received this email having bought two tickets to see the Kings of Leon in concert. He did not at any point express any interest in the theatre and he certainly didn’t age some 33 or so years between the booking and this email being sent to him, to make him a senior!

Do I really look like a woman to you?

I am nearly two metres tall. I weigh about 90 kilo’s. My name is Steve and i am a man. I signed up to the Boden email newsletter having bought some men’s clothes from them recently.

Now Boden may not know all of the above, but they certainly know my title (“Mr.”) and my previous purchases, neither of which gave any indication that i may be enticed by an offer for 25% off ladies jeans...

Oxford. Now part of Lancashire?

Oddly this has happened to me twice recently, and embarrassingly the culprits are the IDM and the DMA.

Segmenting your recipients based on where they live is an excellent idea. It is not such an excellent idea if the underlying data is wrong, not been captured or whoever maps the segments doesn’t know their geography.

I am still pretty sure Oxford, my home, is not in the North.

Stuck for what to buy that tricky Mum that has it all?

I am a member of the Staples business rewards programme. I occasionally buy stationary from them; pens, paper, paper clips and ink, that sort of thing. At no point in time have I ever expressed a desire to shop for my loved ones in their store.

Ok, so although this has not misused data it does grate me that such a blanket email can go out to their entire base. Do they really believe that many of their recipients will be inspired to buy Mother’s day gifts from them?

I don’t fault the enthusiasm but i do fault the damage this kind of email does to the long term value of the email base. Nothing turns a recipient off more than irrelevant nonsense. Sure they may not unsubscribe, but as the vast majority of every email base is dormant, simply deleting without reading, you can’t afford to alienate anyone.

Vans. They often deliver me internet shopping. That’s where my interest ends.

Somehow I have ended up on the email list for the GoCompare vans newsletter. Hmm. Now I have used them to quote for insurance (i don’t recall if it was for car of home or both, but i know for sure it was not to quote for van insurance)

I have never owned a van. It is highly unlikely I will ever own a van. More importantly Go Compare, i have never, ever shown any interest in vans to you, so why would you taint our relationship and send me a series of emails about vans?

Being too smart for your own good.

As a lecturer on digital marketing I like to shoe-horn an email from Expedia into every session I do. It is their “Welcome back” email. Simply sent the day after the date of your return flight you bought from them. It is a wonderful use of a triggered email. It goes to the heart of using collected data to personalise a relationship and to make you feel like you are special.

Alas when this goes wrong, it goes very wrong. This trigger email was sent to a colleague of mine who was trapped in Spain for over a week, due to the volcanic ash clouds. This email was not a welcome sight for sore yes. Sore eyes from the 39 hour coach and car journey home.

Many brands now use this form of technology, and very powerful it can be too. BUT, the rules that govern the timing of the trigger messages is key. From time to time you need to be able to stop them. Or review the timing of when they are sent.

This email on the left was sent to me by UBM, organisers of Internet World. according to them I did not show up for day one of the event.

Alas they auto-sent this email at 3.15 pm. I turned up some 10 minutes later to give my keynote presentation at Internet World at 3 .45 pm and i can probably ask about 150 people who saw me speak to vouch for me!

Why is this important?

As you can see form the examples, when triggers go bad, they go really bad. The vast majority of recipients will not have a clue that the message they are receiving is a triggered, computer-generated message. This allows an excellent opportunity to use email for a 1:1 relations ship. That’s until your trigger messages go bad and make it very obvious that your well thought-through programme is nothing more than a line of code and “if” statements written by a developer.

The one email that makes me angrier than any other.

I have a rocky relationship with HSBC. It is a subjective thing, but they are my super-hate brand. We all have one, the brand that has done enough in the past to leave you with a biley aftertaste at the very mention of their name.

However, HSBC are not alone in this heinous crime. For years and years we customers have put up with this kind of lazy marketing behaviour from many institutions, but do we have to put up with email too?

This email offers an enticing credit card deal. However there are two critical flaws to this campaign:

1. I already have this HSBC credit card. I am a customer and have had this product for year. I don’t need two. I doubt they will give me two anyway

2. The interest rate I pay as a long-standing customer is much higher than the rate they are peddling to any other Tom or Dick who happens along. What about customer loyalty and reward huh?

The reason this email makes me so annoyed is not that it is from HSBC. It is about the fact that this could so simply be avoided. By referencing their email recipients against their “products bought” database they could easily spot that i have this product and instead send me an email to up or cross sell me another service.

Alas this is not the case, and is so often not the case. Many marketers prefer the “Have to get this bloody email out by 3 pm otherwise my boss will kill me” approach which results in poorly executed campaigns and even more apathetic people in the email base. Apathetic recipients that they will find it nigh on impossible to reengage and who will do little more than “delete without reading” any future emails from that company or organisation.

"Breath and count to ten, slowly"

There, you get the idea. In the interest of my temper and your sanity, I will not go on endlessly with the examples I have in my possession.

The above examples were chosen on the basis that every single mistake could have been easily avoided if the sender had taken the time to step back, think and recheck what they were sending and why they were sending.

With our inboxes being bombarded by more and more emails every day, it is vital that the channel is used respectfully and that email marketers use a bit of clever (where I work we would advocate using a bit of “Cyance”) to cut through the dross and continue to use email as an effective way to a personalised relationship with customers and prospects alike.

Ten key focus areas for Social Media in 2010

I was recently asked to contribute to a book that was being compiled by Aprimo. They have been handing out said book at TFM&A, London, and will be doing likewise at similar events in the next few weeks.

If you want a copy then get along and are at TFM&A then go pick one up.

Otherwise, sign up to their twitter feed for news on further issues.

If all of that fails then read on for my ten key focus areas for Social Media in 2010...

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------


A highly regarded speaker, lecturer and writer, Steve has worked with the Institute of Direct Marketing (IDM) since 2004 on various courses and events and has been invited to speak throughout the world on the subject of digital marketing.

He has worked on digital marketing and strategy with many global brands including Cisco, ITV, IOD, npower, Skype, British Airways, Random House Publishing and Oracle.

Steve chairs the IDM Digital Council and is Director of Cyance, a leading data & digital marketing agency.

Have a strategy
Like any other marketing discipline, it’s vital that you resist the urge to dive into Social Media without a strategy. It’s not good enough to simply create a Facebook fan page “just because”.

Social Media can work very effectively, but you need to understand your objectives first.

Work out what you plan to do: be it to build your brand, drive leads/sales, improve your search visibility or perhaps to communicate with the market, your objectives will heavily influence the sites and tools you will use when you get going.

Work out where you are
What is already happening with social media in your business? Use monitoring and search tools (many are free, such as whostalkin.com) to see who is already talking about you (be them employees or the wider world) and use that as a starting place to build upon. Remember that some may be talking about you negatively as well as positively! And just because you are not looking, does not mean they are not there already!

Get the skills
With a well thought out strategy, the tactical side of Social Media is relatively easy to get into. The barriers to entry are low, especially to try and trial or target niche areas. But it is important to make sure there is a base knowledge for everyone involved in your Social Media activity. PR, Search, Email, Sales, Customer Services, Stores can all help or hinder so make sure everyone involved understands the basics. Organisations such as the IDM have a number of excellent courses that will help with this.

Get the tools
Although many social media tools are free to use, don’t underestimate the resource cost involved. A simple tweet once a week and getting on with your job is not enough. Social networks are fast-moving and evolving so being regularly involved in the threads and conversations is important. Using tracking tools to monitor buzz on your brands or areas of interest is important. Remember that social media is more than just Facebook - it’s important to have a toolset that will watch where the traffic moves to : driving email sign ups, website traffic, downloads etc

Find your influencers
Whatever your market, whatever it is you are selling, there will already be an established set of influencers. These people or bodies of people will already be talking about you and/or your market, so latching into this finite set of “Creators” (as classified by the excellent Forrester Groundswell work) is a highly effective way of virally spreading your messages.

Start to find these influencers by searching sites like blogpulse.com or Twitter search but don’t forget to look closer to home. In all web analytics packages you will be able to view the “referrers” report; showing which sites your website visitors were on before they arrived at yours. At the top of the list will always be search engines, but if you go further down this list you will start to uncover the sites - bloggers, customers or other interested parties - that are already talking about you and driving traffic to your site for you. These people are not only great places to start your social media, they are helping your search rank at the same time.

Industrialise video and welcome UGC

Many businesses have experimented with video in the last few years. 2010 will see them moving into a more mature way of producing videos. Making the most of high quality User Generated Content (UGC) videos will soon become easier and more frequent, due to the introduction of new generation HD hand-held cameras such as the Flip, meaning that employees as well as your audience can easily produce content via this medium. Think about what video can do for pre sales, post sales, training and brand building, especially pertinent given the ubiquity of mobile phones with video capability.

Use the right sites for your audience
Sites like Facebook and Twitter command an awful lot of traffic and therefore a lot of interest for social media marketers. But these sites might not always be the best place to start for your business. Use search engines to find the websites out there that have the best concentration of your target audience already using them. Industry groups or forums are particularly good; try LinkedIn groups for example. An example I love to use is www.countrychannel.tv – a special interest site for those interested in the countryside (think rambling, farming or agriculture). This may not interest you, but it’s a hub for like-minded people. If your brand or products fit this market, then spending time on the forums and discussions on this site will be far more beneficial than that Facebook fan page.

Integrate with other channels
The debates rage as to whether social media will kill email, and other channels. For me it is simply about complementing other channels. Email offers a more in-depth and personalised route to your audience, so use it alongside social media. Add your best tweets to your emails; make your email sign up page prominent on your social media sites and comments. Use affiliates sites and Search to drive traffic to your social media “noise”.

Monitor and review
By nature of it being a social media, your blog, website or fan page will start to grow a life and direction of its own. As more and more users come on board then so the conversation and direction of the site can progress. It’s therefore important that you keep a regular eye on what’s being said. It’s not enough to simply post a blog article and vanish until your next piece. Make sure you are monitoring the comments and noise, so you can stay involved and add value to the discussion.


The same should apply for other sites too. Start using alerts on certain topics, brands and words meaningful to you, so you can get involved in communities and sites that are talking about your brand and market.

Be ready for the next big thing
New social media innovations appear almost on a daily basis, but not all of them will be relevant for you and your brands. Be selective and yet open-minded. Most importantly, make sure you keep up. The name of the most popular site will continue to change, but the concept of social networking (and media) will not go away. It’s not a new thing after all, we have being doing it since the beginning of humankind, it’s just the web has made the world smaller and brought more like-mined people together.

How marketers can (deep breath!) learn from Sales on how to do marketing

Cats and dogs, Shi'a and Sunni, Mods and Rockers, Windows and Macs, “Subo” and The Brit Awards shortlist committee, throughout our lives we will always encounter rivalry’s and dislike between two parties. A polarised right or wrong depending on which side of the argument you sit.

In work it’s the same, and having been employed as a marketer for the past dozen or so years, I have been conditioned over and over that my own professional enemy is the sales person.

Marketing and Sales aren’t supposed to get on. Marketers spend (squander?) their time and the company’s money on generating leads that are barely qualified and amount to nothing more than a vague list of people who might or might not have said they are interested in something we might or might not sell.

Sales spend their time burning out every single Marketing Qualified Lead the business creates. They fail to understand subtlety and blame marketing for them not earning enough that month to buy the good lady wife a new fur coat.

And that’s how it shall always be. Period.

That’s unless a marketer wants to learn from sales people on how to finish what they started, all on their own.

In my experience the most successful sales people I have worked with (or been sold to by) are the ones that never give up. They follow up on meetings, they drop you an email two/three/four/five times until you are ready to see them or to sign off what they are selling.

But most marketers, by nature, shy away from this behaviours. Preferring instead to ask once very politely if I would like to buy and then not following up for fear of offending me.

Consider how we can take a few sales-esque techniques into email marketing and achieve incredible results.

This table is an exert of a case study from Email Service Provider Adestra, and illustrates the point perfectly.






The first line (Send 1) shows the results of an email send (for an online camera/accessories provider) and the second (Send 2) the email that was sent to all of the recipients who opened but didn’t convert from Send 1. This second email was the same message again, bar the addition of “Reminder” to the start of the subject line.

Clearly the first send generates a far greater Open and Click Through Rate, but what really makes the point for me is the %age of sales that came from Send 2 – 31%.

That’s nearly one in three sales in total that came from the owner of this campaign taking the time to go back to those that had shown interest (had opened) from Send 1.

I have seen these kind of results so many times before but am still staggered by how few companies take the time to use this simple yet effective method – remarketing.

We are all busy, we are all easily distracted and so using reminder messages (be them emails or sales calls, or DM drops or etc etc) we are nudging people to follow through on what they intended to, or what they were intrigued by before the phone rang, or they were called to that meeting or they lost their Internet connection on the train.

Use the example of the above to experiment for yourself. How can you learn from the dogged persistent of a sales person to go back to your audience and encourage them to finish what you and they started.

This may not end that great business divide, but it might just make you a more successful marketer.