Harnessing the power of social advertising
July 20, 2011 by admin
Filed under Latest Lingerie News
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Forward by Jonathon Beeston, global marketing director, Efficient Frontier
Performance-based marketing – search, advertising, direct marketing, and now social marketing – used to work within reasonably clear boundaries. Good marketers would link them by creating unified messages, sharing insight from each discipline, and even getting all the various agencies round the table to slug it out for budget based on whose campaign was generating the best leads.
But now those boundaries are blurring. We see advertisements on our social channels, social influence impacts the performance of direct marketing, we search for information within our social networks as well as on Google. We are even prepared to help brands market themselves to our networks of friends, as long as we get something back from it. (For a great example of this, see the Expedia case study below.)
The result is that brands have to become far more responsive in the way they manage budgets. People talk about ’viral campaigns’ but the truth is, no one knows what’s going to be a hit until it is. What brands can (and must) do is create relevant and targeted social campaigns and then respond to the reaction of their audiences quickly in order to capitalise on the campaigns that are working well and ditch the ones that aren’t.
While human engagement is, of course, an incredibly important part of social marketing, it is only by using technology that it is possible to segment and target audiences effectively on social channels (which offer the most sophisticated user data for audience targeting of any other channel), and use the insight from campaigns to inform spend as the campaign develops, not after it is all over. This is following the same pattern as search in many ways: as technology is used to optimise performance, target specific audiences and bid the appropriate value in search campaigns, so it is now possible to do the same with social campaigns. And have no doubt, Facebook is a serious advertising channel these days, particularly when integrated with other performance marketing channels such as search.
It is for this reason that Efficient Frontier acquired the social media management platform Context Optional earlier this year, to combine with our own Facebook ad management platform. This has created a unified advertising and page management product that helps advertisers both acquire and engage audiences, by automating campaign management on Facebook and other social channels (such as Twitter and YouTube). Brands have long understood the power of word-of-mouth marketing, but technology used on social media (and Facebook specifically at the moment) has the potential to amplify a brand’s message through the social influence of each of that brand’s fans, through their network of trusted contacts, on a scale we could hardly imagine a few years ago.
Acquiring the right audiences efficiently, building critical mass through social marketing and using social influence, and targeting those audiences with highly relevant, specific and engaging messages, combine to create one of the most potentially viral, cost-efficient and effective marketing channels we’ve ever seen.
Case Study: Expedia
Expedia soars to success on Facebook with Efficient Frontier and Context Optional
In six weeks, Expedia accelerated its presence on Facebook by energising brand enthusiasts, attracting new brand advocates, and creating new value for partners. With a fun and innovative Facebook campaign called The FriendTrips Game, Expedia reached 1 million fans (a 750% increase) and achieved 15 to 30 times more mentions of Expedia on its wall.
This was the result of an integrated approach to acquiring and engaging fans on Facebook. Partnering with Efficient Frontier and Context Optional, the teams created, built and optimised an innovative social application and marketing campaign. FriendTrips was an interactive Facebook sweepstake to win holiday packages. Users entered by piloting a virtual plane bound for a specific destination, and inviting five friends to join them. Invitees were encouraged to create
planes of their own.
FriendTrips was inherently social, requiring friends to fill planes with friends in order to enter contests. An important source of traffic to the application was friends clicking on friends’ invitations in the Newsfeed. To maintain momentum, Expedia gave away daily prizes based on votes on user submissions of photos and stories.
This was supported by a unified multi-channel marketing campaign that integrated print advertising; celebrity endorsement; email marketing; Expedia.com and supplier partner sites; and Facebook advertising using Sponsored Stories, standard marketplace and premium ads. Facebook marketplace and sponsored story advertising drove the majority of users. During the campaign, Expedia’s cost-per-fan was reduced by over 400%. As the number of fans rose, the efficiency of acquiring a new fan improved. The power of social influence is clear in the relationship between total fans and cost per-fan.
Social clicks (clicks that originate from an ad and include the social endorsement of a connection) were critical in achieving scale and efficiency. More than half of Expedia’s ad clicks in Facebook were social. The Facebook ad campaign’s optimisation spanned targeted audience segments, the creative and the bidding. Audience segments were refined using insights from FriendTrips data. Engaged segments were added and split for more granular targeting, while segments with low engagement were removed. Creative assets were built and tested to capitalise on events such as the Royal Wedding (using associated images and copy such as ’Travel Like a Royal’); and strong-performing segments were targeted with interest-specific creative. Bids were automatically set by the Efficient Frontier platform to reflect the value of the segment.
Sponsored Stories became a growing campaign component as the number of fans rose, and drove a significant portion of all ’likes’. Sponsored Ads drove a more efficient cost-perlike, compared to standard marketplace ads. Getting to critical mass on Facebook requires an integrated Facebook marketing experience which optimises the performance of Facebook paid media and delivers a compelling social and viral experience for users. With critical mass, marketers can capitalise on social to drive brand awareness, loyalty and advocacy. Expedia can now deliver compelling offers and relevant content to its new community of over 1 million fans on Facebook, extending the investment made in Facebook marketing.
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VerticalResponse Honors Top Small Businesses That Demonstrate Email Marketing …
July 20, 2011 by admin
Filed under Latest Lingerie News
VR500 Awards Recognize High Engagement Rates in Email Marketing Campaigns
SAN FRANCISCO, July 20, 2011 /PRNewswire/ — VerticalResponse Inc., a leading provider of self-service email marketing, social media, online survey and direct mail marketing solutions for small businesses, announced the winners of its quarterly VR500 Awards for Email Marketing Excellence program. The 500 small businesses honored represent the top 2 percent of a qualified pool of approximately 21,000 companies. The winning businesses span a range of industries, from real estate and retail services to insurance and non-profits.
To qualify for the award, small businesses must demonstrate high engagement rates in their email marketing campaigns. Requirements include:
- Sent at least four email campaigns in the second quarter of 2011
- Have an opt-in subscriber list of between 100 and 500 recipients
- Achieve open rates averaging above 20 percent
- Achieve click-through rates averaging above 4 percent
- Be a VerticalResponse customer
“The VR500 awards highlight small businesses that have truly impressed us with how they’ve consistently kept their customers active and involved through creative email marketing,” said Janine Popick, CEO of VerticalResponse. “These companies prove that email marketing makes a measurable, lasting impact on customer engagement and, in turn, the bottom line.”
“Our email campaign has helped us improve our communication with our customer base and increase customer satisfaction,” said Suzan Taylor, owner of Taylor Dance Center in McKinney, Texas, which ranked No. 6 on the VR500 list. “For us, it was a low-cost way to keep our customers happy and informed.”
Reporting and Metrics Important to Small Businesses
For many VR500 winners, the easy-to-interpret tracking reports and data provided by their email marketing campaigns have been critical to their business.
“Email marketing is a key way I stay in touch with my clients and those interested in my services,” said Terran Bayer, owner of Westway Studio, a San Diego, Calif.-based fine art pet photography and graphic design firm that ranked No. 10 on the list. “VerticalResponse allows me to easily reach out to them while providing comprehensive data that helps make my future campaigns stronger. My last campaign increased my blog traffic by over 4,300 percent – and I couldn’t have done it without VerticalResponse.”
“VerticalResponse was the perfect email newsletter solution for me as a small business,” said Mary Frost, owner of The Gardening Tutor, which provides hands-on gardening instruction and consulting in Sonoma County, Calif. “I love being able to track and see how many – and when – people are opening my newsletters, and that type of data has helped me dial in on what day and time to launch my emails for the best results.”
VerticalResponse will promote small business winners of the VR500 awards extensively through social media such as Twitter and Facebook. All winners receive an online badge to use on their website, blogs and Facebook pages.
Fore details and updates on the VR500 Awards for Email Marketing Excellence program, visit www.verticalresponse.com/vr500.
About VerticalResponse
VerticalResponse Inc. is a leading provider of self-service email marketing, social media, online surveys and direct mail services empowering small businesses and non-profit organizations to easily create, share and analyze their own marketing campaigns. Users can benefit from a wide variety of features including more than 700 free email marketing templates in a variety of categories; the ability to share their content over several social media networks; and tracking on everything from email marketing to social media responses so that they can understand campaign success. VerticalResponse offers customers an integrated Web-based marketing solution that’s intuitive and affordable. VerticalResponse is headquartered in San Francisco, Calif. For additional information please visit www.verticalresponse.com, and connect with us on Twitter at @VR4SmallBiz and Facebook at www.facebook.com/verticalresponse.
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Janine Popick
https://profnet.prnewswire.com/Subscriber/ExpertProfile.aspx?ei=92010
SOURCE VerticalResponse Inc.
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