Last week, I explained that videos and email marketing messages go together like chocolate and peanut butter. Click-through rates for marketing emails increase two or three times with the inclusion of video! This is in part because increasingly larger numbers of consumers (we’re talking trillions!) want to spend time watching online video, and also because it’s becoming easier for them to watch videos sent via email.

Today, I’ll offer some tips on how marketers can create videos that consumers will want to receive via email and watch online. I’ll aso explain explain how marketers can analyze the results of their video email marketing campaigns with mobileStorm’s technology.

Because some companies might not have tried their hand at creating videos, here are some things we at mobileStorm learned while making our online commercials and comedy shows.

• Online video is not the same as a feature-length movie or network TV show. Its purpose is to quickly pique interest in a brand. Thus, it should start off with a “bang” and not be much longer than a few minutes.
• Links should either lead to a video posted on a site like YouTube or MySpace, or else should lead to specially-designed landing pages. Never use embedded video in email!
• Providing your video in the smallest file size possible, but still retaining a satisfactory image quality, is part of best practices for all Internet video. Flash compression is often the best comproise of file size and quality, making it ideal for online media.

Once you’ve deployed a video email marketing campaign, you need to determine how well it did. (more…)

mobileStorm’s six messaging types for marketers are all conducive to our stance that multi-channel campaigns are best. We’ve also long suggested that marketers be multi-channel within a single message–for example, by including video in an email marketing message, which engages the recipient and also makes the message viral.

We’re so forward-thinking that it’s only been recently that the rest of the marketing industry has caught up, and realized that–like chocolate and peanut butter–video and email can be combined into one message to really entice consumers. Two great tastes taste great together, indeed!

• According to analyst David Daniels at Forrester Research, putting a video link within an email, such as a clickable screen shot, “can increase click-through rates by two to three times.”
• Mr. Daniels also notes in his recent report that between July 2008 and July 2009, 17 percent of marketing executives surveyed planned to use video in email. Marketers are getting competitive with video email!
• Meanwhile, Nielsen Online reported that in April of this year, 119 billion unique viewers watched 7 trillion total streams during the month; total streams were up 24 percent from a year ago, while streams-per-viewer are up 27 percent and time-per-viewer is up 58 percent. Consumers love watching online video!
• Technological advances make viewing video in an email more seamless for the consumer. For example, Gmail Labs now has a feature that allows users to turn on previews of YouTube videos. Once consumers set this on their accounts, they’re able to watch YouTube videos from inside the email message. As word spreads, marketers will reach increasingly more Gmail users with video emails!

So savvy marketers will want to beat the competition before it beats them. This requires them to: (1) post videos where they can easily be found, and (2) incorporate video into their email marketing messages. This may be easier said than done, but with mobileStorm’s technology and expertise, it’ll still be relatively easy. (more…)

Many have heard about Girl Scout Wild Freeborn. Her father tried to aid her lofty goal of selling 12,000 boxes of the organization’s famous cookies, by creating a YouTube ad and an online order form. The scheme was successful–until Girl Scouts of the USA forced the little Brownie to shutter her Internet campaign, saying it went against Scouts rules. But the real story is, why have such a ban when current technology and best practices ensure both safety and big revenue?

I definitely understand the group’s concerns. As spokeswoman Denise Pesich said, “We want to make sure that whatever the girl is doing is integrated into the program that she’s studying, we want to make sure we are in the development stages of a technological platform that will integrate it and be fair and equitable for all girls. But more importantly, it’s girl safety at its core.”

However, everything Ms. Pesich noted absolutely can be achieved in a digital marketing campaign, as long as best practices and the right technology platform are used. Here’s how:

• Create an online form in which the customer has to input his or her contact information, including email address and perhaps cell phone number, as well as order information such as what kind of cookies and how many boxes. The form should be sent to a database for cookie campaigns. In this fashion, no personal contact information for any girl or troupe is ever given out.
• To make sure that sales are attributed fairly, the orders can be sorted via zip code or city that the purchaser inputs. Thus, each sale would be credited to the scout troop that is local to the buyer.
• If revenue is supposed to go toward a specific program for a certain troupe or individual scout, then instead of having a generic online form for the entire Girl Scout organization, the Scouts’ website should first ask a potential buyer where he/she resides. Then the buyer should be served up a form that was created for the troupe closest to his/her location. This way the form would earmark that order for that particular troupe’s coffers.
• Have a messaging system in place that, once the cookies have come in, will notify customers that their orders are ready, via email or SMS (whatever method the customer chooses). This message can also specify the time and place where they can pick up their goodies, perhaps in front of a local supermarket or another public place. Since the orders are sorted by locale, it will be easy to give each consumer the proper pick-up location–outgoing messages too can be sorted according to zip code or city. Troupe leaders and parents can hand out the boxes along with, or instead of, the girls themselves.
• The Scouts can save customers’ contact information and, come next cookie season, can send out an email or SMS message asking if they’d like to pre-order their Thin Mints and Tagalongs.

The preceding can be used for both pre-orders (the traditional method of hitting up friends and neighbors and asking them to order what they want) as well as for the buy-in-bulk method (in which troupes buy loads of boxes and then sell them at public places). As a consumer who doesn’t personally know any scouts, I’d love the latter–that way I don’t have to worry about driving around supermarkets and shopping centers trying to find a cookie table.

Meanwhile, I think Wild’s dad was on the right track with the online video commercial. After all, 700 boxes were sold before it was yanked! Such an ad could be created by an entire troupe; this would make a great project, as would creating the order form. And if using the right platform, the advert could be distributed to the top video upload sites with the same technology that handles the online sales form and order notification messages.

Too bad this isn’t happening already. I’ve got a hankering for Samoas and Lemon Chalet Cremes!

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

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