The New Inbox: Charting The Intersection of Email, Mobile, & Social Marketing @ #SESSF

Posted In Conference Coverage

Welcome back to AIMCLEAR‘s 2012 coverage of #SESSF! This morning, attendees had the absolute pleasure so sit in on a session called: The New Inbox: The Intersection of Email, Mobile, & Social Marketing. ModeratorÂ Sundeep Kapur, Digital Evangelist at NCR Corp introduced us to BrightWave Marketing’s Director of Strategic Services, Jay Jhun, and The VP of Marketing at Lyris, Alex Lustberg. Together, they enlightened us with tons of facts, figures, and case studies about our digital world today.

Alex started things off with an excellent analogy about the current state of marketing chaos. HeÂ encouraged attendeesÂ to think of their audiences the way they think about the weather… it’s relatively easy to predict for the next two days, or even two weeks. But long termâ€¦ anything can happen.

Alex went on to point out a few fun facts about where our industry is sitting at the moment:

1 in 9 in the world are Facebook users
Twitter receives 340-400Million tweets per day
Pintrest is the fastest social site in history to reach 10 million users

And some more cool stats about email…

Now days, 36% of people receive and open emails on their mobile device.
Meanwhile 33% reach access through their traditional desktop or laptop.
Even less (31%) use webmail to stay up to date.

It’s important to remember, email is still the #1 driver of communication! This means, we have to adapt. And do it well. Our busy lives are moving away from the tradition setting of sitting at a desk with two monitor state-of-the-art set up, and moving towards standing in line for coffe while accessing everything from your mobile or notepad.

Now days, 84% of people are using their mobile phones while at home instead of a desktop or laptop!

Whoa!

It’s essential to start out with a STRONG email customer base. Here are some tools to help you find customers:

So, the key questions Alex recommended we ask are:

Where are your customers?
What is being discussed?
What is being shared?
What is moving subscribers?
Can they find YOU?

In order to answer these questions, Alex shared 10 awesome tips:

1. Leverage social for customer insights.

Drive better engagement
Create more targeted messages

2. Use social for growing lists.

Ask your customers to sign up for a subscription list on social (Facebook, Twitter)

3. Embed social in email.

Direct your customer to your social sites through an email

4. Use social for one-to-one connections.

Post customer questions, or comments

5. Share all content to social.

Post all of your new and relevant content to your social sites
Customers can then access and re-share your content

6. Integrate to further leads along.

7. Design for mobile!

Optimize your content to be shown on mobile devices. This can increase open rates by 8%!
Don’t send it if it’s not optimized, you’ll lose 40-50% of engagement!

8. Redeem email promotions via mobile.

Convert coupons via phones
Immediately engage with your customers, eg.: airline boarding passes or Groupon
It’s convenient and it adds value to your brand.

9. Stay ahead in social!

Join up and coming social sited, e.g.: Pinterest!
Curate your content. Make sure it’s relevant and interesting to your audience.
Set yourself apart… unique is good.

10. Develop KPIs (Key Performance Indicators).

Raw communication growth
Subscribers list growth
Social sentiment
Site traffic
Email/text condos
Site Conversions!

Last but not least, Alex shared a case study with us. It involved a company called Dacor. Dacor produces high-end kitchen appliances and equipment. They wanted to grow their social presence, so Alex’s company recommended they start a sweepstakes entry stemming from their strong email customer base. The company sent out an email asked consumers to “Like” them on Facebook for their fist entry, and could then retweet a message for yet another entry. The result of this email to social strategy grew their social network by 500%!!!…how about a few more “!!!!” !

Alex left us with a few best practices to keep in mind, like:

Remember to deliver a unified message across channels and utilize tools to quantify your ROI!

Up next to saturate our brains was Jay. By the wayâ€¦ his Twitter handle is @emailrocks! How cool is that?

Hay started things off by asking all of the Droid phone users to please stand up. And so about 30% of the audience stood. Then he asked the BlackBerry users to stand. About 3 or 4 other joined the standing crowd. Then, he asked for iPhone users to stand. At this point pretty much everyone else took the laborious journey to join the rank. Well, except for the one or two Windows phone users…

Jay went on to explain that in the US, it’s about 50/50 for Droid vs. iPhone, whereas overseas, Droid has a major upper hand. He stresses that mobile now transcends other channels. So the big question is:

Where does email fit into all of this?
Jay explained the different channels in which you MUST have an email address to access. These would be sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or local social like Yelp, Foursquare, etc. Jay considers an email address like a digital drivers license. It’s never going away.

Why should we take email action right now?
Here are Jay’s HOT 5 action items:

1. Identify and target your mobile audience.

Do you have a mobile audience visit you site? Get the tools, get analytics and use the numbers.

2. Get serious about subject lines and preview text.

Use incentive language, e.g.: Free Shipping!
Utilize the preview text. Make them want to open your email (add pricing information).

3. Get smart about context.

Leverage video content. Let a video tell your brand story.
Post blog content. Personal experiences will compel your audience.
Make sure your content is SHARE WORTHY.

4. Design for mobile NOW!

Allow users to access your content from their mobiles.
97% of users will NOT go back and reopen an email on a desktop devise, so capture their attention the first time!

5. Use mobile landing pages to drive conversions.

1 in 3 people now make purchases from their phones. If you’re in retail, your site better be optimized-at lease the landing page.

Jay reminded attendees to keep in mind our KPIs. Here are a few examples:

Email growth
Facebook “Like” growth
Increase online traffic
Increase conversions

Don’t forget QR codes! Direct people from email to social with one quick scan. And remember, people are voluntarily giving you their email addresses. Utilize them! If they’re opting in, they want you to market to them.

Jay rounded up the session with a little game. Last night he tweeted a quote, and whoever asked the quote at the end of the session today would get a prize.

*Drum roll*

“Email is to chocolate what SEO is to peanut butter.”Â Yup. They’re a great combo.

Thanks it for this fine session. Things are winding down here, but we’re got more from day 3 of #SESSF to come! Stay tuned!

Post photo credit:Â vvansanten on Flickr