Category: Digital Marketing Best Practices

Local traffic is always more targeted, and thus more likely to result in conversions. That is, consumers will more likely purchase what’s being offered to them. Always remember that you have this great advantage over national (and thus non-locally-friendly) businesses.

If you missed my previous posts about local search marketing strategies, you can find them here and here. After you get caught up, check out the following additional suggestions.

Create a directory—or better yet, a portal—devoted to your location. You can base it on your own site or have it as a separate resource. If your marketing budget allows it, you might want to consider buying such an existing portal. This solution is great even though it takes time and can be costly. It will allow you to drive targeted traffic to yourself easily. And then you can sell to this audience all day long.

Create a newsletter about local news related to your niche, as well as news about your own business. This will definitely increase conversions or revenue. Even a monthly newsletter can bring great results—there’s no need to bother the people on your list too often.

A great idea is to always include your local data in your signatures. And I don’t just mean email signatures, but also in blog post signatures, forum signatures, signatures used when you write articles for external resources, etc.

The web is increasingly moving towards video. People like watching information rather than reading it. So it’s time for you to get involved. Start making videos about your local business, place them on your own site, and also promote them through a good number of video resources available on the web. (A comprehensive list of video-sharing websites can be found here.) By the way, a little-known fact is that video results in the general search results page (SERP) are clicked much more than the text results, no matter what position they take on the page. Little video windows do stand out from boring texts, and that alone attracts people to click on them. (Read more about this fact here.) Because of this, it may be worthwhile to use a solution that posts a video to all major sharing sites at once.

One more interesting trick you can use in local marketing: Offer a locals-only discount. This is especially good if most leads you get are locals anyway. They’ll feel special and that will increase their signup chances for you. When I planned to go to Sea World in Orlando, I was pleasantly surprised that there is a permanent discount to Florida residents. Of course, I purchased the tickets right away.

More strategies are coming soon! Until then,

Shavkat Karimov, Internet Marketing Manager, mobileStorm
“Every problem comes with a solution”
SEO Consulting

As U.S. President Barack Obama was inaugurated this month, his promises for “change” echoed in media coverage nonstop. Mobile marketers, though, have actually seen President Obama usher in change for their industry.

The former Illinois senator hit the ground running, implementing SMS alerts a year and a half before the November 2008 election. While other candidates were fiddling with Web forms and email newsletters, President Obama enticed supporters to sign up to receive news and updates about his campaign via text message. The campaign used SMS for everything from announcing last-minute rallies to declaring now-Vice President Joe Biden as the candidate’s running mate.

Moreover the 44th American president’s heavy reliance on his BlackBerry was something consumers red or blue could understand. (He almost had to give it up due to both security reasons and a federal open records law for presidential documents.) It underscored just how much every citizen relies on his or her cell phone these days. Smartphones like BlackBerrys allow the consumer to be contacted not just by voice and SMS, but also by mobile email and mobile Internet. (Although texts are the most urgent type of message, since they’re instantly viewable by the recipient even if he or she is doing something else.)

Thanks to President Obama, marketers understand more than ever:

• That mobile messaging is the best way to reach a consumer with urgent news, such as information about a sale on an item that the consumer has been interested in buying.
• That email is increasingly becoming a mobile message type, and so marketers should tailor their emails (whether a short notice or a newsletter) to the specs of a smart phone. If customers are mostly business clients, these emails should be tailored to the BlackBerry.
• That the mobile phone is an indispensible part of a consumer’s life, and so marketers must treat it with respect—most important being that they only engage in opt-in campaigns.

Hail to the cell!

The Mobile Marketing Association has extensive plans to boost itself–and the mobile marketing space–for the coming year, with a new leader, a soon-to-be home base in New York, and work on creation of updated best practices for U.S. marketers.

Mike Wehrs last week was named MMA’s new president and CEO. The former vice president of Nuance Communications, which is known mostly for its voice-recognition technology, seems to have hit the ground running. Reports indicate that he wants the organization to offer its members concrete ways that they can meet strategic goals. This includes the move to New York, home of Madison Avenue, making it easier for the MMA to interact with marketers and advertisers. It also includes educational initiatives, since as Mr. Wehrs said, “Right now it’s very difficult to put together a mobile campaign… there are lots of things an advertiser has to know just to do a text message campaign.”

(Note: We at mobileStorm understand this, and like the MMA hope to help mobile marketing newbies with the whitepapers titled SMS Or Die and Digital Marketing Best Practices For Geniuses, and with the webinar titled Making Money With Mobile Coupons.)

As far as growth, Mr. Wehrs noted the evolution of mobile marketing in new industries. Besides interest from consultant and content companies, he said, “Mobile banking is another example where we are seeing some of the banks coming to us and asking what can be done for their set of applications. Financial institutions in general are mobilizing.”

Meanwhile at the MMA’s Best Practices Forum, a diverse group of mobile industry professionals gathered to suggest what should be included in the organization’s upcoming set of best practices for the United States. The MMA releases updated best practices every June and December.

One of the biggest developments discussed at the forum was the CTIA’s plan to start monitoring every short code campaign, to check for compliance with both the MMA’s best practices and with individual carriers’ requirements.

Marketing experts also talked about creating not just standards, but also punishments regarding compliance with CBP and carrier requirements. They also noted that privacy standards will be more important than ever: As revenue from mobile campaigns increases, so will scrutiny into marketers’ behavior.

Sounds like the MMA is thinking ahead, not just for 2009, but beyond.

Eydie Cubarrubia, Marketing Communications Manager, mobileStorm

“I’d rather you text me”

Californians woke up to the new year with a new law that bans text messaging while driving. The Golden State isn’t the only one; according to the Governors Highway Safety Association, texting is prohibited for drivers in Alaska, California, Connecticut, Louisiana, Minnesota, New Jersey, Washington state, and the District of Columbia.

Recalcitrant marketers might use this as an excuse to not use SMS campaigns. But they shouldn’t!

The benefits of SMS–high ROI that results in bigger revenue–are what all business will need during this recession. So it’s worth marketers’ efforts to create campaigns that effectively reach customers, stay within the law–and don’t cause accidents.

Foremost, try not to send messages out during rush hour or other periods when consumers are much more likely to be behind the wheel. Instead, text them just before they hit the road. For example, a restaurant promoting a lunchtime special should send the SMS at 11 a.m.–right when people are starting to wonder what they’re going to eat. A coffee place would do well to send an SMS coupon or other promotional message at 6 a.m., just before the big morning drive.

Also, if you have a campaign about a day-long event such as a sale or festival, it makes sense to send texts about it the night before–say, 9 p.m. on a weeknight. You’ll still generate the excitement of timely messaging (“there’s a 50% off sale on bedroom furniture tomorrow only!”)–and even give the consumer a few more hours to prepare. If you believe you’ll make a bigger splash by sending such messages the day of an event, then follow the early-morning rule that I suggested for coffee houses.

Weather, traffic, and news alerts can still be sent as usual. But if you haven’t already, consider offering the subscriber the choice of when and how often to receive such alerts–such as “every four hours” or “at 7 a.m. and at 7 p.m.” If you really don’t trust their judgement, then limit the choices to timeframes when they’ll be less likely to drive.

Anyone have any other ideas they’ve implemented? I’d like to hear about it!

Eydie Cubarrubia, Marketing Communications Manager, mobileStorm
“I’d rather you text me”

Contextual ads are placed based on an algorithm that studies the words that the user is writing or reading. It’s a great theory in practice. But it can go horribly wrong. Check out what iMedia Connection published that exemplify these kinds of disasters:

(If you don’t understand what’s the big deal: First, read the headline of each news article. Then, look at what the ad copy next to each article says.)

You won’t get these kinds of mistakes if you target consumers with permission-based emails and texts. As I’ve said before, unlike online ads based on algorithms, opt-in messaging is the best targeting tool of all.

If you haven’t heard, Google has a new feature to prevent people from sending late-night drunken emails. Good to know the Labs works hard on things whose value is mere publicity hype.

Called Mail Goggles, though it’s actually meant to IMPEDE the drunk’s vision of the world, the feature allegedly ensures a person is of sound enough mind to send an email. It proffers a series of math problems, to be completed correctly within a short set amount of time, before it allows the message to go through.

The whole thing, while good for a laugh, is silly:

• I had a coworker in college who could edit news copy while drunk. He’d always find an error that a sober person had written, no matter now many Three Wise Men or dollar drafts he’d had. So solving math problems wouldn’t be that big an impediment to users with a calculator.
• You have to personally enable and set the feature ahead of time. But no one ever PLANS to drunk-message or drunk-call; it just happens.
• Mail Goggles is only active on late weekend nights. So it’s not going to help the person who really needs this feature: The perpetual lush.

I do think such a feature would make more sense for SMS. After all, you keep your phone with you while bar-hopping, and it’s a lot easier (not to mention more likely) to dash off a late-night text than it is to stumble home, turn on your computer, wait for it to boot, and start sending emails to ex-paramours.

But there IS one thing that Mail Goggles might be good for: Preventing spam. There are studies that show when spam is most often sent (for the life of me, I can’t remember, but it was something like between 3 and 5 in the morning on certain weekdays). Mail Goggles could be activated by Google during those times, preventing robots from sending mass unwanted emails.

They could even call it Marketing Goggles.

Eydie Cubarrubia, Marketing Communications Manger, mobileStorm

“I’d rather you text me” (while sober)

The couple that spams together gets successfully sued together.

This week a federal court ordered spam marketing husband-and-wife team Henry Perez and Suzanne Bartok to pay a small Internet service provider (ISP) more than $236 million for sending out some 23 million emails advertising loan refinancing services. The messages were sent to the servers at CIS Internet Services in 2003–using the ironically-titled program called Bulk Mailing 4 Dummies.

Happily, this is just the latest news about spammers getting theirs. What I like about this story is that the little guy (CIS is a tiny ISP based in Clinton, Iowa) is fighting spammers one at a time–and winning. CIS’ triumph in the U.S. District Court in Davenport marks the tenth lawsuit in which it has prevailed, company owner Robert Kramer III said. Mr. Kramer has been at it for years: Wins include a $11.2 billion judgement against a Miami spammer in 2006, and a combined judgement of $1 billion after winning lawsuits against three spammers in 2005.

Mr. Kramer said during the most recent trial that the spam messages cut into his company’s bandwidth, making it harder for his customers to go on the Internet and costing CIS a lot of business. The number of CIS clients dropped from 5,000 in 2001 to 1,200 by late 2004.

For CIS, the drop was significant enough to prompt Mr. Kramer to go after those who messed with his bread and butter. Nevertheless, his successful lawsuits should prompt larger ISPs to follow through in their own anti-spammer actions. Even if it’s unlikely Mr. Kramer will collect the cash judgements owed him, he’s won on another front: CIS now gets only 10 to 15 million spam messages daily, down significantly from the 500 million it did in 2003.

Eydie Cubarrubia, Marketing Communications Manager

“I’d rather you text me”

When I added a burgeoning rock band to my MySpace friends list recently, I got a pleasant surprise: A personal “thank you” that was a bit more than the usual “thanks for the add” that litters MySpaces. Though I already liked the group, this thoughtful attention to detail really made me believe they appreciated their growing fan base.

This wasn’t an anomaly on MySpace, however. These days, lots of bands stay online all day, every day, in order to stay engaged with listeners. At least with the bands I like, it’s not unusual to see comments on pages like “I can’t believe you wrote back! That’s so awesome!” in response to musicians sending a personal “thank you” for a friend add.

Though they likely wouldn’t say it in so many words, these entrepreneurial struggling artists are engaged in the best type of message marketing, keeping it personal between the consumer and the brand, and reaching to the consumer the way he/she wants to be reached. Best of all, they begin the marketing message relationship with a personal welcome–something that ALL marketers should do, especially when someone signs up to receive their messages.

We all know the importance of sending a “thank you” message to a new subscriber: At the very least, it can be incorporated into the double opt-in process, in which the person must click on a link or respond to a message in order to activate his or her subscription. But by saying thank you, marketers also show appreciation to the consumer, especially in light of spam concerns.

Making that message a bit more personal adds infinite value for the consumers. You’ll have them at hello.

Eydie Cubarrubia, Marketing Communications Manager, mobileStorm

“I’d rather you text me”

When you’re an elementary school kid, Thursday is “Opposite Day.” In that same youthful spirit: Instead of offering tips for effective messaging that adheres to best practices and pleases–rather than angers–consumers, we’re going to showcase an example of what NOT to do.

Recently our office received this email (two screen shots are of the same message) from what seems to be a company called Believe Audio:

First off, the message didn’t even come to the specific email address; it came to something called “Believe Audio Mailing List.” We have no idea how our accounts got on this list to begin with, nor the email address/addresses to which these guys were actually sending.

It gets better. The top of the message says that recipients can remove themselves from the company’s mailing list by replying to the email with REMOVE in the subject line.  However: In the first screen shot notice that the sender leaves out the “from address”! There is also no “reply-to address” when you try to reply to the email. Thus, when you add REMOVE in the subject line, it doesn’t matter because you can not send the email to anyone.

To be sure, you can see in the second screen shot that a “mail-to address” does appear in the header stamp further down, in Outlook. So yes, the recipient is able to send the sender a message asking to be removed. But the company sure made it hard to do so.

The kicker? These guys use Spam Arrest, a program that makes message-senders confirm they are not a robot spamming. Thus, you need to enter in a word that is displayed on the screen in order for your removal request to be sent–to the person who spammed YOU in the first place!

Now it’s time to state the obvious:

1. This company should only send email to addresses whose owners have opted-in to receive these specific types of messages.
2. The message should show the address to which the message is being sent.
3. The message should show the company’s “from address” and let someone reply easily, without having to go through a challenge response system like Spam Arrest.
4. This company needs to provide an opt-out link in all its messages that will–RIGHT AWAY–remove recipients from the mailing list.

Here’s a fifth fact: Believe Audio should read up on best practices for email marketing, and then stick to them. We suggest our white paper, Digital Marketing Best Practices for Geniuses. A more ironic title was never written.

Eydie Cubarrubia, Marketing Communications Manager, mobileStorm

“I’d rather you text me”

The other day I received yet another political email message sent to my personal account. I’ve grumbled about such messages before, and was about to get irritated again over getting an email regarding a city where I no longer even live. Irrelevant emails are the worse kind!

But then, as I scrolled to the bottom and prepared to hit the “report spam” button, I noticed it: “Unsubscribe to this list.” I hit it, and was told I would no longer receive emails from this political organization. Yay!

The moral of the story: You should always, always act in the interests of what the consumer/message recipient might want–even if you’re not legally bound to do so.

See, while we’re all familiar with digital marketing laws and best practices (if not, check out this white paper for all you need to know), political groups don’t have to be. They’re exempt from the permission requirements of commercial email. Thus, they can send all the email they want, whether or not denizens are active voters. Because of their exemption status, such senders don’t have an “opt-out” on their messages.

Although they don’t have to offer opt-out, political message-senders should. After all, they’re trying to get on the message-recipient’s best side and convince them to vote their way. If they’re courteous enough visibly allow opt-outs, they’ll generate goodwill from the contituent. Even if the voter opts out of future emails, the voter may still agree with the message–and vote as desired come ballot time!

Or in my case, I just might mention the message-sender’s concerns to friends who still live in that town. Good word-of-mouth from a satisfied member of the public: That’s something all marketers strive to achieve.

Eydie Cubarrubia, Marketing Communications Manager, mobileStorm

“I’d rather you text me”