The development of the Web today includes powerful applications that mimic desktop software. Google Docs has tried to provide the functionality of Microsoft Office. Picnik is attempting to target Photoshop users. And even our own Content Management System, WebGen, uses some of the basics that made Dreamweaver so popular a few years ago. Perhaps the majority of us may soon only need an Internet connection rather than a computer when Web sites mature into full online applications.
In the meantime, we will experience the migration of software evolving into websites, and Twelve Horses is expanding its boundaries with these new technologies. Recently, we created a new event planner that integrates the functionality of software but utilizes the power of the Web.
Dynamic Meeting Planner
Our client, Dynamic Competence, needed a way to transform a paper-based meeting system into a dynamic communication tool that facilitates conversations for meeting topics. To be successful, the client needed to manage and monitor meeting plan revisions, improve group communication, and use a medium that would help save time and effort for meeting planners.
In this project we developed features that we have not yet seen: the website works more like a software application than a traditional HTML site. Below I’ve highlighted some of the functionality we developed.
Features for Success
1. Drag-And-Drop Interface A planner has the ability to categorize their contacts into different groups before sending out the meeting invite. To help increase speed and usability, the interface allows the planner to drag-and-drop their contacts into the available groups before sending. This saves the planner time and effort when creating the invitee list to be a part of the meeting process.
2. Double-Click Editing Instead of making edits via a regular textbox and hitting save, a meeting planner simply goes to the topic they need to edit, double-clicks on it, and this opens up the section to be edited. This dynamic interface also allows editors to add and disable topics with one-click, saving time and effort.
3. User Feedback System The success of the system relies on the interaction of the client’s users. If, for any reason, a user has an issue with a website or wants to comment, a Feedback button is provided on every page. To provide more insight into the feedback, the user’s comments, current page, and date submitted are all tracked by the System Admin Inbox (see below). This valuable feedback data also provides insight on how to improve the application for future use.
4. System Admin Inbox The system administrators wanted to be sure all the feedback was being read and responded to appropriately. With multiple feedback messages, this could be a daunting task to make sure everyone is receiving a response. To complicate matters, there could be multiple System Admins in the system. To resolve this, the feedback items are displayed in an email inbox format (read or unread), and the message tracks which System Admin first read the response.
5. Versioning Each iteration of the meeting process is saved as a separate webpage to the website. With this, a meeting planner can see how the meeting agenda transformed from the first draft to the final version of the agenda. This tracks all comments and changes, keeping the meeting processes organized and easily retrieved for historical purposes.
Using web-based applications provides many advantages: updates and new features are rolled out across to users in real time; data is stored on the server and is accessible from anywhere that has Internet access; and custom solutions are tailored to a client’s needs, which isn’t as easily done with software.
Soon we may solely rely on the Web for our daily workflow. Until that happens, we will continue to push the boundaries of Web technology to help meet clients’ needs and increase the usability of applications.
At a recent TED conference, best-selling author of Eat, Pray, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert stated, “we have completely internalized and accepted collectively this notion that creativity and suffering are somehow inherently linked.” She goes on to further frame “the utter, maddening, capriciousness of the creative process” by suggesting that we pull from something greater than ourselves. Maybe Gilbert was thinking of the late Carl Jung who once said, “Art is a kind of innate drive that seizes a human being and makes him its instrument.”?
When it comes to email marketing, designing for your objectives can be a little maddening. If you do pull from something greater than yourself, and then translate that perfect vision to strategy and paper, you may find that your creative team is not realizing it. So, back and forth you go until there is no time left. A deadline is a deadline. But there is no doubt that the battle for the inbox – and your customer’s attention – requires engaging, actionable designs. What can you do to minimize your suffering and help aid that creative process along?
Know Your Audience
Through personalization, you no doubt consider who you’re addressing with every send. But who really is your audience, and what are they expecting from you? If you have a sizeable database with varying preferences, this is where you can not only practice segmentation, but also employ different designs and messages for each segment. What a great way to make your audience feel like you are personally interested in their needs and goals. Not to mention leveraging different designs for newsletters, promotions, events, and important notifications, as many businesses do.
Get Your Rendering Right
There is nothing worse than a well-designed email that just doesn’t render right. Ask yourself whether your recipients are primarily businesses or consumers? This will determine if the majority is using say, Microsoft Outlook vs. Gmail or Hotmail, or perhaps even receiving their emails on a mobile device – keep in mind that 30% of B-to-B recipients are receiving emails on their mobile devices. Regardless, it is impossible to get an email design, or the content offer itself, to render perfectly in all email clients, so you want to shoot for the top 2 or 3 and then make sure you test – test – test before you launch.
Avoid Graphical Overload
Remember less can be more. It’s especially important not to overuse graphics in an email to the point that images constitute the entire message. It is that much easier to delete an email message if nothing at all captures the consumer’s attention before they have opted to download images. Ask yourself, what are recipients going to see above the fold? Does it stand out? Does it speak to their needs? Call upon Maslow’s hierarchy of needs if you need some help with this.
Content is King
Great designs fall flat without good content. No amount of slick design skilz are going to carry your customer over the line if the message doesn’t add value to the recipient’s life. Subject lines, headlines, offers and calls to action are all crucial to a successful campaign. With one quick glance of these elements a recipient will understand what the value is immediately upon viewing the email. Easier said than done, but if you solidify the messaging first, establishing a strong supporting design can be made much easier.
The Beauty is in the Data
Don’t be afraid to test a few different designs early on in the game. Many email marketers get their template and design down to a point where everyone internally is pleased with the outcome. But no one has any idea what the customer really thinks! Each time a client has pursued A/B testing, it was completely obvious which email design performed the best. Also, don’t be afraid to test offers and subject lines. As you achieve greater relevance it will have a direct result on your clickthrough rates. Yes, you may have to invest more time in creating additional versions at the outset, but the payoff will be greater conversions with the final send.
Break the Rules
The email marketing industry loves to apply various rules and best practices by which we should guide our “online lives”. While it’s great to have a foundation to work from, don’t let best practices become a burden either. At the end of the day, your job is to move the needle more than you did the last time, so don’t be afraid to experiment with the experiential and maybe even defy conventional wisdom.
Considering these factors during the early stages of an email marketing campaign will lessen the suffering and assist you in finding the drive to make email a more effective instrument.
Last Saturday I gave a presentation at the Nevada Interactive Media Summit at the Reynolds School of Jounralism at UNR in Reno. It was a beautiful bluebird day and while I really wanted to attend more of the conference, the powder was calling. Thankfully they switched my time from 11:30 to 4:15 so I was able to get out with my sisters and make some tracks up at incline peak before heading in to give a talk on podcasting. It went really well! There were a lot of people interested in online storytelling. Thanks to Mike, Bryan, Drew, Guy, Charlotte, John and Elisa for sitting in. Great to have friendly faces in the crowd!
What is a podcast?
Almost everyone is familiar with online video, but a podcast, whether audio or video, is more than that. Podcasting is even more on-demand, and mobile than streaming video because you don’t need an internet connection to watch it, and you can take it with you and consume the content in smaller segments returning to view more later. The key thing here is that you can consume podcast content while driving through the middle of Nevada or on an airplane where you have no connectivity.
Great Podcasts
Since I got the digital converter box for my TV, which brings web quality streaming video and more infomercials into the home, I’ve appreciated and watched video podcast more and more. And with all the bike commuting and road tripping i do, audio podcasts have been a favorite of mine for quite a while. Here are some of my favorites:
Video
MidWest Teen Sex Show: A hilariously funny show intended as an educational resource to communicate sex ed topics to teens. It’s smart, clever, creative, and incredibly entertaining.
Slate V: A short news and entertainment show with varied content from Slate Magazine. It’s a quick little bite of info and perfect for the podcast format.
Freeskier: A great podcast, if infrequently published. They show reviews, athlete interviews and full on ski movies made by independent filmmakers. There is some AWESOME ski content there. Check out the “44 days” episode from October, 2008.
Alpine Meadows: This is a podcast that we at Twelve Horses have produced for Apline Meadows Ski Resort. It is meant as a way to communicate the marketing messages of the resort, while providing high quality, exciting ski footage to communicate the SkiAlpine experience and entertain viewers.
Audio
The Moth: True stories told live without notes before an audience. This is the perfect content for an audio podcast. The stories are great and the format is cool.
NPR: Most emailed and shuffle: My mom sends me links to the stories she hears on NPR that she thinks I’ll like. She’s usually right, but you can’t download them until they get on the Most Emailed Podcast. So it works for me! Shuffle is a random selection of stories every day.
Dirtbag Diaries: Stories and interviews about climbing, skiing and mountaineering from Fitz Cahall. A great podcast if you’re into adventure, and a great model for a business (Patagonia) sponsoring content that resonates with their brand and customers (dirtbags).
Ritmo Latino: Basically this podcast is anything that it’s producer, Neil Hohman, thinks sounds latin. It’s great and features everything from “boogaloo and beyond,” as he says, which means accordion Mexican ballads to progressive latino hip hop.
Dishy Mix: A great and eclectic podcast from Susan Bratton on entrepreneurship in media and the internet, featuring interviews from high power business execs.
How do i start Podcasting?
The web isn’t a 5 star restaurant. You don’t have to find a sport jacket to get in, and you don’t have to drop mad coin on a camera, microphone, and spend years learning the trade to get into it. The big thing is ideas, content and passion. So jump in and start creating and learn and improve as you go. If you’re a business looking to use podcasting as a way to enhance and extend your brand, you’ll want to be a little more deliberate.
Audio
You can record an audio podcast over the built-in microphone on your computer if that’s all you have. There are plenty of mics that plug into the mic port that do fine too. Or you can step it up an get a usb microphone and that should get you some primo sounding audio for interviews and monologues. The Snowball USB Microphone gets a lot of good reviews and is pretty damn cool looking, but there are others.
Once you have an audio file, you’ll need to cut it up, unless you’ve rehearsed and scripted really well. Audacity is the most recommended program out there and is free and fairly easy to use to cut in music, re-order clips and cut out spurious comments and unintended eff-bombs.
Video
There’s no way around the fact that creating a video podcast is WAY more involved than audio. The files are bigger and they’re more complex to record, edit and distribute. But video can be a far more powerful medium for storytelling and communication on the web, so if you have any interest at all I encourage you to jump in.
Chances are you have a point-and-shoot digital camera that has video capture capability. This is the easiest way to start since the video files are small and usually come in a format that is easy to upload and edit.
For the next level you can get a camcorder. I recommend something with HD capability or that captures at 720P or 1080i resolution. You may have seen those numbers on the box for your new HD television, so the videos from an HD camcorder will fill the screen and look great!
The videos we shoot @ Twelve Horses are shot with a Panasonic HVX200 ($3000) @ 720p. Most of my personal videos are shot with a Canon VIXIA HV30 ($599). We also shoot with a VIO Sport POV.1 helmet cam (which is AWESOME!).
In the end video quality is video quality and content is content. People watch videos for the content and good ideas will trump quality every time, so as you get started in video podcasting, focus on the ideas.
Tips to improve your video
Since most of us have grown up around television and movies, we can all recognize good video production from bad. But it’s not always clear what factors make for good shooting. Here are some tips.
Use a tripod. Remember the Blair Witch Project? Remember wanting to puke?
Scripts and shot lists: You don’t have to go so far as to line everything out and be rigid, but if you have a plan you’ll get better content and have more fun doing it.
Multiple takes: If you think it didn’t work, do it again. You won’t regret it.
Hold a static shot for 8 sec: It’ll be easier to edit in those establishing shots and landscapes if you have a good chunk of footage to work with.
Don’t run scenes together: If you’re doing multiple scenes, be sure to pause before and after. When you’re telling your subject that you’re recording, have them pause for a second or two before beginning. This will be easier to edit.
Don’t pan or zoom too much: It makes people sick.
Subscription management
You can subscribe to an RSS feed of almost every video player available, but an iTunes compatible feed is what you’re looking for to synchronize downloading of media do devices to make it available whether you’re online or not.
For an audio podcast you can just use a wordpress plugin like Podpress to create an iTunes compatible feed and upload the files to your server. If you run into storage or bandwidth issues, there are plenty of good options for syndicating your podcast elsewhere.
Video files are too big to host yourself for the most part. I recommend using blip.tv to host your iTunes video feed. just upload a video and follow the instructions in the dashboard.
Promoting your podcast
I get asked a lot which video hosting service is my favorite and which one I think is best for generating lots of views. The answer is Viddler, because of the cool commenting features, quality of the video player, “vidgets,” and the fact that I think Rob Sandie and the others @ Viddler are cool people who understand why people like me love creating communities around video content. But Vimeo is slicker than snot too, and since YouTube has HD, large files and longer video now I like it too! So the answer is all of them!
I use Tube Mogul to blast my videos out to as many sites as i can to get the most eyeballs on my content, and we do the same for our clients. (The dudes behind Tube Mogul are really cool too!) Tube Mogul also lets you upload to blip.tv which gives you an iTunes feed that you can submit to the iTunes directory.
Copywriting and Meta Data
The fact is that whatever channel you promote the most will get the most traffic. Your video is a needle and YouTube is a gigantic haystack. Viddler, Vimeo, Blip.tv et. al. are slightly smaller haystacks. So just posting something to the biggest video site isn’t going to get you anything special.
Before you blast the video out make sure you’ve written a good title, description, and tags for it. Once it’s posted, be sure to craft a good blog post about it that will draw people in from your feed or search results and get them to watch your video. Then follow it up with a really witty and enticing Tweet. Then Digg, stumble, post to facebook, rate favorite, send to friends, etc. Don’t be annoying, but don’t just set it and forget it. This isn’t a counter top rotisserie! You’ve got to stoke the FIRE!
Shameless Self Promotion
So I may say that podcasting is easy, but that’s because I enjoy it. I love the creative and the technical aspect of telling a story with words, pictures and people. But I don’t really care for running ski resorts, curating museum galleries or streamlining the manufacturing process, all things that our clients are really good at. If I can help you get a video podcast going, please drop me a line!
We live in uncertain times. Volatility in the market place caused by inflation, the mortgage crisis, and rising fuel prices have placed considerable downward pressure upon the average consumer. These factors have a direct impact on the bottom line of most businesses, and play a significant role in how marketers allocate their budgets. Now more than ever sales and marketing strategies must achieve the greatest reach and return on investment possible.
Print buys and traditional media spends require considerable investment and frequency to produce results. Not only are they expensive, but they typically limit engagement to direct pitches as opposed to two-way dialogues with customers. While metrics such as circulation, GRPs, and Nielsen ratings are good, they are hardly exact. Coupons, barcodes, and phone numbers can be put in place to track return on investment, but what if the amount of people that are actually seeing and using them is going down?
Everywhere you look these days you read headlines like:
Major brands are shifting their marketing and advertising dollars to the web because, why?
The Web is THE source for information and interaction.
It represents the largest consolidation of customers with expendable income.
You can reach customers at the point of making a purchasing decision.
The online shopping experience is more valuable because of product comparisons, ratings, and feedback.
You can engage your customer on a personal level and have meaningful dialogue that forms a positive relationship.
The scale and extensibility of the Web, and web applications, is practically boundless.
You can target campaigns based on niches, social networks, groups, keywords, customer type, and geography.
Creative and messaging can be dynamic, interactive, and actionable.
Companies are not bound by 3rd-party deadlines and campaigns can be launched quickly and cost-effectively.
It is easy to append, shift, and replace an online marketing campaign at any point in the cycle.
The shelf life of a web page, blog post, video, or campaign is potentially limitless.
And most important of all, you can Track, Measure, and Analyze everything.
Josh Bernoff from Forrester Research recently stated, “In the last recession, online spending cratered along with the rest of the advertising industry. But since interactive marketing programs are now fueled by measurable results, not dot-com madness, we believe that they can thrive in a recession.” Bernoff added, “Social applications in particular, such as communities and social networking sites, are cost-effective and have a measurable impact on prospects’ decisions in the consideration stage, which will be important to companies under recessionary pressures.”
Enter Social Media Marketing:
Businesses are increasingly realizing they can start a business blog, build out a YouTube channel, and join a few social networks for a fraction of the cost for a TV ad; and there is an audience. Joe Mandese, editor of MediaPost recently cited a study stating, “for adults 18-34 – social media now is the dominant form of personal communication media, with 85% of this influential demographic group relying on one or more Web 2.0 platforms to stay in touch with others.”
I guess you can call it Viral Marketing…if you want.
What has long been described as viral or buzz marketing is really the practice of getting customers to take action on a particular message by consuming it and passing it on. Because of the extensive reach of the web, a successful campaign can achieve tremendous success for your brand. But how does that relate to ROI? How much does a friend cost or a video view worth? The answer is, it depends. It depends on what you do with the relationship. Did you capture an email address from a sign up form? Did you overlay a link in your video that directed people to shopping cart for a particular product? Did it inspire enough motivation for someone to come down and test drive the latest model of car? Social marketing must consider all of these aspects and then some.
Some Words of Caution:
There is a right way and a wrong way to delve into the practice of social media marketing. If you do not have a clear strategy combined with a creative delivery your campaign will fail. People will not immediately eschew a social campaign because it is a business, but they will have higher expectations and be hyper critical. A few things to consider about a social marketing campaign:
It must be clever, and it should resonate on a psychographic scale.
It should be architected to persuade customers down a certain path but never force them.
It should deliver on its promise.
As the Social Graph demonstrates, not only are you going where your customers already are, but you are giving them the means and the reasons to come back to interact with you. Done right, not only will it raise brand awareness, but it will also boost revenues by increasing direct and indirect web traffic.
Move Forward or Fall Back.
In an uncertain economic climate it is typical for many businesses to batten down the hatches and wait out the storm. They become conservative and unwilling to experiment. They worry that any marketing efforts will simply fall on deaf ears. These are legitimate concerns. Fortunately, the evolution of web applications, and our ability to get a message out quickly, cost-effectively, and with the right measurement tools in place means you don’t have to bind your hands with complacency. You can proactively get your message out and build your web base. Test, Tweak, Rinse and Repeat. Find the people that are searching for what you have to offer.
If you would like more information on social media marketing Click Here or Contact Us.
A planner has the ability to categorize their contacts into different groups before sending out the meeting invite. To help increase speed and usability, the interface allows the planner to drag-and-drop their contacts into the available groups before sending. This saves the planner time and effort when creating the invitee list to be a part of the meeting process.
Instead of making edits via a regular textbox and hitting save, a meeting planner simply goes to the topic they need to edit, double-clicks on it, and this opens up the section to be edited. This dynamic interface also allows editors to add and disable topics with one-click, saving time and effort.
The success of the system relies on the interaction of the client’s users. If, for any reason, a user has an issue with a website or wants to comment, a Feedback button is provided on every page. To provide more insight into the feedback, the user’s comments, current page, and date submitted are all tracked by the System Admin Inbox (see below). This valuable feedback data also provides insight on how to improve the application for future use.
The system administrators wanted to be sure all the feedback was being read and responded to appropriately. With multiple feedback messages, this could be a daunting task to make sure everyone is receiving a response. To complicate matters, there could be multiple System Admins in the system. To resolve this, the feedback items are displayed in an email inbox format (read or unread), and the message tracks which System Admin first read the response.
Each iteration of the meeting process is saved as a separate webpage to the website. With this, a meeting planner can see how the meeting agenda transformed from the first draft to the final version of the agenda. This tracks all comments and changes, keeping the meeting processes organized and easily retrieved for historical purposes.
