“What is the open rate?” The daunting question that never seems to go away. There is always so much stress over open rates with email campaigns. The obvious reason is the message will never be seen if people don’t open their emails. So we spend most of our time crafting a subject line that we hope would be appealing enough to increase the open rate by another 2%, totaling up to 4.5%.

As you may know, multi-channel marketing is one of the more effective methods of reaching and communicating to customers. The thing is, multi-channel campaigns tread on a thin wire between effectively “communicating to” and “blasting” customers.

As a multi-channel/cross media technology provider, we have witnessed many great and successful campaigns launched by our customers … and then there were some that… I wouldn’t call a complete failure, but are not really a success.

“Then HOW do I launch a successful multi-channel campaign?” you may ask. Well, quite frankly, there is no single correct answer to the “how” question. It is rather a series of answers to a series of other questions that will give you the answer to the “how” question.

More than often, multi-channel campaigns don’t achieve successful results, because not enough questions were answered before answering the “how” question.

Here is a list of questions I have compiled from some of the customers who have launched multiple successful campaigns…

Seth Godin has a book about the lies marketers tell, do you agree with the premise?

Yesterday, I had a refreshing conversation with a non-marketer friend about the perception of marketers and of marketing campaigns. With no knowledge of the book by Seth, she came to the same conclusion that all marketers are liars.

If you’re like me, you’ll probably disagree with this statement.

For us, every other marketer is a liar, seems to be more applicable here. Yet, the simple fact is, sometimes we get so entrenched in marketing speak, industry jargon and hype, that we forget the basic function of marketing is to engage, educate and enrich customers.

Going back to this basic function, you’ll do well to apply the “so what” test to your marketing.

Every line you write, every tagline you like, every campaign theme you design, apply the “so what” test and see if it is still relevant. Often you only have a few seconds to capture your audience, if it does not pass this simple go-no-go test, then scrap it.

Sometimes campaign data is like a clock that’s too fast or too slow. It gives you a good impression of what time it currently is, but without knowing how much faster or slower it is, you can’t be precise.
Sometimes data works in a similar way. The data you have of your customer may at times be [...]

No matter what the focus of your marketing efforts are in the new year, email will be essential. Weather it is a social media, integrated marketing campaigns, or surveys etc… email will be the core of your communication stream.
Just like you, your prospects and customers are too busy to notice and/or respond to every email [...]

There’s social media and then there is social marketing. What’s the difference you say?

Think of social media as tools (blogs, twitter, facebook, linked-in, youtube, slideshare) that you can use to spread the word about your company, product, cause or just to share the knowledge you have and position yourself as the expert. That model is still 1-to-many, but with the opportunity for 1-to-1 conversations.

Now there’s also the reverse side, there is the email message, direct mail, sales calls, sms, print ads… that you should be using to create 1-to-1 conversations. While many think of these as traditional marketing channels, they are in fact not. They are just as much tools for making a marketing campaign social.

If you honestly believe you have something relevant to say to your prospects and customers, then they’ll want to share that message with their friends. You need to make it easy for them to do that.

Most direct marketers are aware the use of personalized URLs (pURLs) can generate explosive campaign results. However, the common misconception is pURLs is a magic potion…. “POOF” and it will generate the results you want.

The truth is, pURLs are more like a bomb… if not handled with care, it will go “BOOM!” and blow your campaign into chunks of wasted effort.

On Demand Expo newsletter published an article exploring the common mistakes to avoid when using pURLs in your campaigns…