I recently did a series titled “6 things to think about when…” The final post of the series was about Mobile Marketing. I hit on some of the high points but wanted to share a few more things from my research and notes on the subject of Mobile Marketing.

Mobile Marketing  1 – Marketing on or with a mobile device. Ex: Smart phone using short message service (SMS) or text messaging. 2 – Marketing in a moving fashion. Ex: Road show or moving billboards.

Interesting Facts:

- More people use their mobile devices to get on the Internet than other ways.

- Mobile is successful because marketing is now more of a time sensitive interaction.

A large reason the term Mobile Marketing came about was because in business, like our personal lives, we need to be accessible on multiple channels. Once individuals and businesses settled on the social media portals they wanted to be on and use, the attention went to consumption of the information. This is where Mobile devices came even more into play.

Top 5 things people are doing with their Mobile Devices:

1 – Checking & Sending emails

2 – Looking up directions

3 – Using social media sites

4 – Reading news

5 – Listening to music/podcasts  (Source: The 60 Second Marketer)

All Email Marketing should also be planned for Mobile consumption. Pay attention to your layout and design of emails so they can be seen and used correctly on mobile devices. Remember to streamline your content and make links and information obvious to the user. Don’t forget to set your email up to the correct scale for mobile devices.

Check out Anatomy of the Perfect Mobile Email (Source: ColumnFiveMedia) to see and learn more good practices for your next Mobile Email and things to avoid doing.

With any Email Marketing remember to use a good subject line and from line with branding integrated in it. This is very important with the lightning fast world of Mobile Marketing. Keep your message quick and to the point then direct your customer to a website or offline location (or phone number) for more information. Always have a link to viewing the email as a web version in case it does not show correctly on a mobile device. We can only control so much as the sender of emails. An entire other world of email security is on the receiving end.

The numbers are starting to come through that show the need for Mobile Marketing in the businesses world. A great visual of this is Mobile Revolution (Source: ektron).

Don’t forget QR codes. That said, I feel there has been an overload of info and articles about the entire QR code discovery. It is nice to see the ability to design and brand them is happening more but just having one for the sake of it is not that fantastic. The way you utilize the codes are the very important part.

Make sure they work first of all. Give users an incentive for scanning the code. Also, not all devices or readers work the same so make the functionality the most universal you can. If it does not work to link straight to something like a video take users to a landing page or mobile site to use as your connection point. Make the QR code fun…and informative to use.

­Mobile Marketing things you need to experience:

- Scan a QR code

- Use Google voice search (creepy at times but impressive)

- Post (check in) on a location based app

- Use a mobile card app

- Make a review on “Yelp” or another location app

- Scan a bar code to use with Amazon app (This has saved me a lot of money when shopping.)

- Click on a banner Ad

Mobile Marketing things your company needs to experience:

- Make a Mobile version of your website

- Claim your business name on location-based services (As important as claiming a .com for your business)

- Research running a mobile paid search and mobile display campaign­

Comment about your experiences with Mobile Marketing. Are their other things you would suggest doing with Mobile Marketing?

1. Create a simply designed Mobile Site option for your company website. Include a link to your full website on the mobile site. There are systems out there to use but the best way is to have your web designer create the mobile site.

2. Add QR Codes to your brochures, show displays or giveaways and direct the code to your mobile site. Customers will be able to get your information when walking by or after leaving your event. QR Codes are easy to create and free.

3. Set up a “Text To Join” option for customers to easily subscribe to your e-marketing correspondence on the go. This service is available through most Email Management Services.

4. Design a Mobile Coupon to be used at your event to give those who have it receive a prize or discount. This is a good way to increase traffic to your booth or location. Make sure to promote it well in advance of the specific event or campaign.

5. Use Mobile Keywords to direct customers to sign up to certain contact lists. These lists can be used as target marketing for certain campaigns in the future.

6. Do not saturate your customers with Mobile Marketing. Limit to sending something unique every 2 to 3 times a month. That way you will avoid your redemption rates from going down and increases in opt-outs. Also, only a few times a month will get customers to take action more often since another offer is not coming in a few days or weeks.

What has your experiences been with Mobile Marketing? Have you scanned a QR Code yet? Please leave your comments.

Surveys and Polls are a great source to collect customer feedback on subjects you want to measure and know their opinions about. Those who respond can be put into a targeted list to market to in future correspondence. The results and comments can also become content for future emails and marketing campaigns.

SURVEYS

1. Make your survey 6 questions or less and/or 5 minutes or less to take the survey.

2. Have a link at the end of the survey to direct the customer to useful information or to your website/blog.

3. Set your survey up to logically skip certain questions depending on how things are answered to avoid redundancy.

4. Add a comment section to each survey question to collect vital information.

5. Give an incentive for completing your survey. It does not have to be an expensive gift it can be helpful tips or other useful business information.

6. By including some simple demographic questions you can collect information to select certain contacts to target.

POLLS

1. Design your poll to get the answers you want so you can utilize for your Marketing.

2. Add your poll to your website and or corporate blog.

3. Insert your poll into the company’s monthly newsletter.

4. Set the poll up to show the total results after is has been taken.

5. Put links to your poll into your Social Media portals.

6. Test your poll answers around the office. Bi-Monthly could mean twice a month to one person and every two months to another.

Do you prefer one over the other, Polls or Surveys? What unique targets have you collected from a survey/poll? Please share your comments.

1. Send Monday emails late in the day so inboxes will be cleared out and ready for you.

2. Send emails out Tuesday that need action taken during the week.

3. Send Weekend notifications and Leisurely emails on Wednesday/Thursday.

4. Send Friday emails early in the day. This helps from having emails go unopened or to the bottom of the inbox.

5. Send Offers and Promotional emails mid-day or mid-week.

6. Try sending some of your emails on Weekends. Set them up Friday for early distribution on either Saturday or Sunday. A lot of business people have one email account for both business and personal and they check them on weekends.

What day(s) of the week were the most successful for your marketing? Please share your comments.

The Email Subject Line is the password to get into the club called “Open My Email”. Over the last three years of doing Email Marketing I have experimented with a lot of trial and error in regards to subject lines. My experiences and the research I have done has been sifted through to bring you the list of six you see below.

 1. Think of the subject line as a headline.

Write your subject line in an engaging and read worthy way. Keep it to 6 words or less. Also, watch your character count. Some email clients cut off subject lines after 40 characters. Plan the subject line as you do your Twitter or LinkedIn post only shorter and sweeter.

2. Use words like We, Your and Our etc.

This will help personalize the subject line and increase your opens and responses. Using them will make your subject line stand out in the crowed inbox.

3. Bring the Branding.

Add your company name or part of your tagline to the subject line. Recipients will automatically know who the email is coming from and will get them to open the email sooner.

4. Include numbers.

When appropriate include numbers in your subject line. This will help drive home the topic and help give the reader an idea of the time commitment needed to read your email. It works. How do I know? You are reading this.

5. Time sensitive material.

If you are running a sale or contest or anything that will be ending at a certain time mention that in your subject line. Urgency will motivate and inform the recipient to check out your email content.

6. Don’t forget ‘From’ and ‘Reply’.

This is also called ghosting. It is possibly more important than subject line itself because it is listed before the actual subject line of an email. On smart phones it is bigger and bolder text so it gets noticed quickly.

Make sure to put your Company Name or Celebrity Sender’s name in the ‘From’ & Reply sections of your email set up. A Celebrity Sender is your CEO, VP, Sales Executive or a know person at your company that recipients will recognize when the email is delivered.

What Subject Lines have worked best for you? Share some of your favorites? Please share your comments.

An Email Management Service (EMS) is a great tool that can be a huge resource to your E-Marketing initiative. There are many systems out there and they basically work the same or soon will.  Below are a few things to think about if you are just starting out or are years into an EMS.

1. Plan where you want your Email sign up button or link located.

You want to make sure you have a link or button so new customers can sign up for your E-Marketing. The main place would be your website and/or corporate blog.

Others: Email signatures, Social Media about pages, Product literature, Business cards, and Post-it-notes

2. Plan the naming of your contact lists for Email sign up.

When you are setting up your contact list take a minute and think about how you are naming the lists. Try to give them names that are somewhat generic and will make sense to the customer. Reason is when a customer joins your mailing lists they want to understand what lists they are subscribing to by the name.

Example: GOOD: Monthly Newsletter  - BAD: 7_12_2009-July/Month(newsletter)

3. Do Not *require* everything on the Email sign up page.

Everyone wants to collect all the information they can at the Email sign up stage. However, you should not overwhelm the new contact. They might not join if you make items like their Industry type and Company size a required part of your email sign up information. Stick with basic like Email address and name…and maybe website. Set up all the fields you would like to collect information from in case they do fill them all out but don’t make them all required.

Plan: In future email correspondence you can work in the other information you would like to collect. A specific campaign to collect that information can be created and administered.

4. Add an update profile link to all Email footers.

Customers will need to change their profile information from time to time. Their job title, email address, physical address etc. Add a link in your email footers to direct them to your “update profile” form to keep connected to them.

Schedule: Plan a yearly email campaign to give customers the ability to update their profile information. This is very important to do if you have added or changed contact list names and functionality.

5. Design & personalize all automated profile forms.

EMS come with a lot of helpful things and most have defaults set. When someone signs up for your email list(s) they will get a welcome email. And a verification email might be sent when they update their profile information. Make sure to check out what is being sent to them. The default will probably be good enough but personalizing/branding it will give it the “we care” look.

Help: Print out the form and have others in your office review it and give opinions.

6. Set up a text to join system

Smart phones and other devices have catapulted texting to be the way to communicate. Take advantage of this by setting up a text to join system. Make it available for new customers or existing. When a customer is on the run and they see your special code on a sales flier, printed on a graphic display or a show give away they can text it to your email sign up system and join all while on the go.

Motivation: As an incentive give away free helpful information, product discount or special access.

What Email Management Service do you use? Why do you like it?  Please share your comments.

Now that the show is over and you are back at the office it is time to see how well you did. Time to check all the responses and activity of your Social Media and follow up on it.

Put together a recap outline of the show. Collect information form all of your team. Write down everything and weed through to look for those things that would be of importance to your customers. Items that would benefit your company can be compiled and organized to meet on in a week or so.

Marketing Email:
Send a quick recap email to all of your customers with an image or two and links to all content posted on your SM portals. Make sure to add all new registers from the show to your email list before sending.

Create an Email campaign specific to those who dropped by your booth. Thank them for coming by and give them a quick outline of your show notes and let them know you will be contacting them in a couple weeks to see if they have any questions or requests.

Blog/Website:

Post interviews and images you collected from the show on your website or blog or both.

Discuss a one on one that you had with a customer about your products or their needs that your product fulfilled. Create it as a case study and add to your main website or on your show mini site/landing page.

Publish multiple views from the show by having others in your team do a paragraph or two and post them on your blog.

Twitter:

Check for new Followers, Direct Messages and look over your feed again to make sure nothing was missed or if something should be addressed.

Look at your hashtag posts. It may have been going on longer than you thought. If it will benefit your customer retweet them and add some of the comments to your email campaigns.

Story: I followed a hashtag during and about an hour after a webinar once. I checked the feed again two days later and even though the activity was calmed an audience was still communicating about the webinar.

You Tube:
Create “Wrap Up”, “Thank You” and “Sorry we missed you – here is what happened” videos to your channel. Add the video links to emails, post them on your Twitter feed and add them to your Blogs or show landing page. You may want to mix up the information so all of your SM portals do not have the same info.

Make a video montages of your images and videos you collected from the show and do a 2 to 3 minute mini movie of your experience.

Upload a video of an interview with your contest winner if your had a give away at your show.

LinkedIn:

Make mention in your “Share an update” box that you attended the show. In your comment add links to your show mini site, blog or hub where information and links to other ancillary SM is located.

In the appropriate group ask others if they attended the show. Also, post a link to an image or two of either something at the show or your own display to get a discussion started.

Previous: At Show Social media – Let’s Do This!

The “At Show” duties will be working your Social Media (SM) plan and having fun while doing it. Just like at any show you want to engage with the audience. You now have another tool in the form of SM.

Important: Ask permission and explain to individuals what you will be doing with the pictures and videos you are taking. Not everyone wants to be on the internet nor do they completely understand what can be done with the information.

A few ideas before show starts:

• After booth set-up post on SM portals (or text message)  your GPS location. As an added benefit give a gift to the first person to find you.
• Designate a specific someone to oversee the SM effort. This might be you or someone else. Everyone should participate but one person in charge will help.
• Announce to your group the certain time each day that you will all get together and discuss what should, shouldn’t and hasn’t but needs to be posted on SM portals.
• Set up an example of your Newsletter and other marketing emails at the show so customers can sign up for them. This is a great source for registration.
• Make sure all QR tags and other directional SM links are all working and going to the accurate information.
• Step back from your booth and check to see that all your QR tags, Hashtags, links, web addresses and any other important SM info is easy to see and get to for scanning.

Email Marketing:
Send one, possibly two, emails related to what has happened at the show and things still to come midway through the show week. This might be something you can plan but being spontaneous while the show is going on will really get your email subscribers attention. Make sure to give it an engaging and eye catching subject line.

Blog / Website:
Upload photos of booth attendees, product demos and anything interesting during the show to your Blog / Website. If you cannot do this during the show do it in the evening or send to your office to have someone do it for you. A recap after the show is good but if you can get info up during you are ahead of the game.

Twitter:
Post links to relevant content of things happening at your booth and the show. Tweet about other websites, blogs, pictures, other hash tags and videos on-the-fly to inform and engage your followers on your Twitter account.

You Tube:
Ask visitors to do a thirty-second commercial about their use of your products while at the booth. Then upload to your You Tube channel. Direct others to the video with your other SM portals.

Don’t let Social Media become overwhelming. Follow your plan and if you have to scrub an idea then do it. This marketing medium is based on fun engagement so have some fun while working.

Previous: Pre Show Social Media – What’s The Plan?

Next Up: Post Show Social Media – Gone Not Forgotten

The Pre Show step of Social Media (SM) for an event or trade show is your Planning stage. This is where you set up all of the ideas to accomplish your SM goals and put them into a game plan. Integrating your SM ideas into your display or booth graphics, videos and structures will also be decided during this stage. Always keep your customers and their needs in mind when planning. It would be a good plan to post on SM portals every other day 2 weeks out from the event then post once a day the week before. This will help to make sure you let all of your fans know you will be at the show and how to locate you.

Reminder 1: If you have not already read the section Social Media Portals – Toe Dippin’ Time check it out now.

Reminder 2: If you are going it solo check out the previous section Social Media – Population You where I discuss a solo plan.

The following ideas are for companies who are having a team or large group of individuals at a trade show or event.

Graphics:

• Design your booth graphics, sales literature, catalogs, white papers etc. that you will display or hand out with SM information. This way your visitors or others walking by on the show floor will be able to engage with you.

• Add Quick Response (QR) codes to your graphics and other ancillary show materials. Direct your QR codes to specific information like product demos, surveys, special pricing, suggestion boxes etc. to continue the engagement with your visitors.

Email Marketing:

• Design four email marketing campaigns about the event you will be attending. Send two of them two months out from the event. Send the other two the month before the event.

• If you do a monthly newsletter make sure to start hinting to the upcoming show in it starting two months out from the show.

• In your pre show email campaigns and newsletter show photos or renders of your booth display that you will be using at the event to stir up buzz.

Blog / Website:

• Add SM buttons to your blogs and websites so customers can begin to follow you and start the engagement process.

• Create a mini website or landing page dedicated to the event or about your appearance at the event.

• Leading up to the event add posts & photos to your blog showing your display being produced at different stages of development.

• Post a pre show article on your blog or website about things you will be showcasing or displaying at the show.

On LinkedIn: (Discussions can help with the planning process.)

• Post your show appearance as an event on LinkedIn.

• Get a discussion started by asking others if they are going to event or difficulties about events.

• Post a news release about the event on LinkedIn with a related group then invite followers to see it. Check the News area of a group to promote.

Twitter Time: (Plan some content but also be spontaneous with your posts while at the show.)

• Two weeks out from the event begin posting on Twitter once a day about attending the event. Then post twice a day the week leading up to the event.

• Schedule Twitter posts to go out two times daily during the show about the event itself, your booth location or special booth events you have scheduled.

• Create a hash tag (#) on Twitter to use during the event. Use it in conjunction with the official event’s hash tag. Post links to the event, your booth info, and photos of your display along with booth activity.

• For your Twitter followers exclusively start an online scavenger hunt. Put clues in emails, on your websites / blogs for people to follow and come in with a completed scavenger hunt form to the event. Advertise early to get people to sign up if they do not already. Give first 3 visitors to your booth with the correct information a nice gift.

• Decide on a good place to meet up with customers after the event and organize a “tweet up” and invite them through Twitter. Advertise the “tweet up” with graphics at your booth.

Using You Tube: (Using video increase traffic to your booth)

• Take a video of someone by your display for the show teasing your appearance at the show or make a video “news release”. Upload the video to your You Tube channel and link to it from all your other SM portals.

• Make videos of product demos, time lapse of a project etc. and upload to your You Tube channel.

• Mention specials and contests you will have at the show with a You Tube video.

• Make a short video dedicated to letting your customers know about your SM portals. Then tell them to follow you.

Other Ideas:

• Invite bloggers from relevant sites to your booth to get the scoop on new products or services you are introducing.

• Decide on an exclusive group of customers to meet with at the show and send them a “text message” during the event.

• Create a “back stage” pass for a few people to get a one-on-one with your companies CEO, VP or Salesperson attending the show. Do this away from the traffic of the booth attendees possibly in a separate section of the booth display.

• Plan and schedule videos or interviews to record at the show so you do not forget them.

Previous: Solo Social Media – Population You

Next Up: At Show Social Media – Let’s Do This!

If your company is attending a trade show and you are the ONLY person working the booth you do not have to avoid Social Media (SM). While planning out the graphics and space think about sharing information on the SM Platforms. It would behoove you to set up some tweets or posts before the show. Schedule these on sites like Hootsuite or Tweetdeck or whatever SM scheduling service you prefer. If you set up a minimum of 3 to 4 posts to go out each day of the show that should keep you in your followers feed eye. In addition to those scheduled post going out you can post additional content as they happen when you have the time throughout the show.

Here are a few ideas of things you can schedule to post:

- Reminders about your booth location on the floor

- After show meet up details and directions

- Scheduled speakers or special attendees

- Gift giveaways and contest details

- Video ads by you about going to the show

If you find you just cannot post during the show gather information each evening and send it to someone at home base to post through out the next day.

Worst scenario. You have scheduled your pre-show posts but cannot get anything out during the show. Do a recap when you return by posting pictures and content on your blog or website and link to it from your SM platforms.

If you have any questions  Contact Me   & Leave a Comment on this post.

Previous: Social Media Portals – Toe Dippin’ Time

Next Up: Pre Show Social Media – What’s The Plan?