Ex3 Café

Is Twitter Losing Its Tweetappeal?

Based on the recent articles below, one could very easily come to this conclusion:

• Information Week: "Twitter at the Vanishing Point"
• eMarketer: "Time to Write Twitter's Tombstone?"
  
• iMedia Connection: "Why Twitter will soon become obsolete"
  

Whether Twitter is here to stay or gone tomorrow is anyone's guess. This recent hiccup in Twitter's unique visitor numbers should make us pause a bit, though, to ponder a few key points.

The "Next Big Thing" May Not Be For You

If you're a CMO or other senior executive and were recently seen running down the hall in hysterics asking everyone "what's our Twitter strategy?, what's our Twitter strategy?..." you're probably feeling a bit silly now.  Like any new marketing channel/platform, before diving in head first, you should first ask yourself the following questions:

• What does this new channel enable me to do that I couldn't do before?
• Who's the target audience for this channel?
• Are any of my competitors using this channel?  If so, how are they using it and what's their success been?
• What are the hard and soft costs associated with using this channel?
  
• How is marketing ROI calculated when using this channel?
  
• How does this channel integrate with my current marketing infrastructure?

After answering these questions you may decide that Twitter isn't feasible for your organization.  THIS IS OK, because not doing this type of due diligence may end up costing you a lot of time, money and embarrassment down the line, should you decide to jump into "the next big thing" without doing your homework.

Don't Put All of Your Eggs Into One Basket

Like any smart investor, you never want to put all of your money into a single investment vehicle.  This same concept also applies to marketing channels and channel platforms.

• Marketing Channel Diversification:  In most instances, it's best to adopt a multi-channel approach where you leverage the right channel for the right audience at the right time.  Leveraging this approach better ensures that your message is received in the most effective and cost efficient manner.

• Marketing Channel Platform Diversification:  In this case, you don't want to "hard wire" yourself to just one channel platform (i.e. Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn...etc.).  Here it's best to publish your content once and distribute it to multiple channel platforms through a content distribution service such as Ping.fm or Sendible or through a standard content distribution format such as RSS.  This approach yields to key benefits:

1. You can communicate with your customers on their preferred platform

2. If one channel/platform goes out of business (i.e. Twitter goes under), you don't have to change the format of your content to "plug into" another provider's platform

The Viral Effect Can Go Both Ways

Twitter's exponential growth grew mainly through the "viral effect."  Just as easily as Twitter's growth can skyrocket through the viral effect, it's growth can also tank via the viral effect as well, as negative publicity (via viral distribution) can be a self fulfilling prophecy.  This is an important reality to keep in mind as more companies incorporate viral marketing/social media into their overall marketing mix.

So, is twitter losing its tweetappeal?  We'll find out more in the next few months.

Campaign Prioritization - The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

So, you spent the last two years building a corporate wide, state-of-the-art campaign management system and you convinced all of the different marketing groups in your company to ditch their individual e-mail vendors and go through your centralized system.  The benefits of your campaign centralization pitch were certainly compelling:

• A history of all outbound customer communications can be stored, referenced and shared from a single location
• Centralizing campaign management operations for all product groups can create economies of scale for campaign design, execution and reporting
• Legal and corporate branding guidelines can more easily be adhered to
• Data for all campaigns can more easily be pulled from a centralized data repository thus reducing data errors and inconsistencies
• Recency and frequency of customer communications can better be controlled (via campaign prioritization filtering) thus reducing the chance of over communicating to customers and driving up optouts 

The last benefit often doesn't play out as well in reality as it does on a PowerPoint slide though, as internal clients can be disturbed when list counts are lower than expected due to prioritization filters being applied during the list selection process.  While this prioritization filtering is essential at a global/company level, to reduce the chance of over communicating to customers, tell this to a marketing program manager that still believes list quantity is better than list quality. 

To better deal with the inevitable backlash that will ensue when program managers see lower list counts than expected, I would recommend that you be prepared to respond with the following:

• The logic employed in the prioritization filter.  This helps program managers to better understand why certain people are suppressed from the final list.  This also helps to show that no favoritism is taking place when the prioritization filter is applied
• The danger of over communicating to customers.  This can drive up optout rates, thus reducing the number of "marketable" customers to market to in the future
• The concept of list quality versus list quantity.  If you have hard numbers available to demonstrate this benefit, this is even better

And if all else fails, tell the program manager to go complain to the CMO. :-)

Who Benefits Most From Mail-in Rebates?

If you're thinking the customer, think again.

After writing my last blog post, I decided to do some further "behind the scenes" research on mail-in rebates.  In addition to discovering a multitude of complaints and horror stories from pissed off customers regarding the hassles of the rebate redemption process, I also gained a better understanding of who benefits most from mail-in rebate programs.

As I see it, here's the benefits to each of the parties involved:

Product Manufacturers

• Can show increased sales/profits due to the time lag between when products sold and when rebate expense payments are made 
• Can use information collected from rebate forms for marketing research and for future direct marketing campaigns to stimulate additional sales
• During the "turn around" time, can earn interest on rebate payment(s) due to the customer

Retailers

• Can display a lower price for select items (i.e. price after rebate) but still charge the full amount at purchase
• Can reduce the price on certain items without having to change the price in the inventory/POS systems or on in-store signage
• Could make rebates conditional upon other criteria (i.e. other than the standard submission of UPC code, receipt, and other info. within the required time frame).  For example, a computer retailer could require that a customer sign a long term contract with a particular ISP in order to get the rebate.  The ISP could in turn give the retailer a "kick back" for every customer signed up.

Rebate Processing and Fulfillment Companies

• Make money from each rebate processed for a manufacturer or retailer.  Some rebate fulfillment companies may even be rewarded by the number of rebate claims that they actually deny!

Customers

• Can get money back, but have to be willing to jump through hoops and wait several weeks to get the money.  Must also be OK with the fact that rebates could be processed much more efficiently.  This excerpt from an article in Slate.com explains how:
  
  "All of this hoop-jumping fuss—the paperwork, the postmarking, the sales slips—is quite unnecessary, says Leonard. Fulfillment centers can now do it all online—whether or not the purchase was online, with a credit card, or with cash. They don't need the UPCs or the old phones or any such nonsense. The sales receipt could contain a unique code number that the consumer could enter into a Web site. Think of that the next time you are dissecting a box to get a lousy UPC code."

Obviously, customers appear to benefit the least from mail-in rebates.  That said, if you're a "customer focused" company touting a great "customer experience," you may want to think twice about rolling out mail-in rebates.  If you're dead set on rolling out mail-in rebates or if you already have mail-in rebate programs running, at least make sure you have an efficient and timely process to manage the rebate redemption process.  Otherwise, in the long run, you may be doing more damage than good to your companies' reputation.