http://www.metropolis3.com/blog Welcome to the Leader’s Blog, the official blog of John and Amanda Fildes, where ideas on innovation, exceptional experiences, competitive differentiation, and business management are shared. Wed, 16 Mar 2011 23:19:11 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Many ecommerce sites targeted at consumers understand the impact of email marketing.  They offer discounts, new product information, or other details to a set of subscribers.  However, I am surprised to see that sites aren’t making use of triggered emails.  With the increasing amount of time people spend on creating, testing, ... http://www.metropolis3.com/blog/index.php/2011/03/16/email-add-on-the-triggered-email/ Business-to-business markets often struggle with encouraging their potential customer base to opt-in to lists.  To contrast, it feels like a very straightforward effort for business-to-consumer companies.  Just dangle discounts, new product alerts, or other incentives and they’ll opt-in faster than you can click submit.  So how can a business-to-business marketer encourage ... http://www.metropolis3.com/blog/index.php/2011/03/03/the-leap-of-faith-successfully-encouraging-business-to-business-opt-in/ Lately I’ve been talking a lot about how Twitter and other social media can be used to generate actual return for businesses.  Ben & Jerry’s is using twitter.  Domino’s UK is using Twitter, Facebook and Foresquare which has translated into a 61% increase in online orders. The theme you’ve likely caught ... http://www.metropolis3.com/blog/index.php/2011/02/17/twitters-place-in-business-to-business-marketing/ This past summer Ben & Jerry’s launched a Twitter campaign to promote new ice cream flavors. Twitter followers would tweet locations to help decide the next destination of the Ben & Jerry’s “scoop truck”.  Those followers would be rewarded by free samples of Ben & Jerry’s new flavors. The campaign is ... http://www.metropolis3.com/blog/index.php/2011/02/02/turning-sweet-tweets-to-dollars-and-sense/ A study conducted by McAfee, a leading Internet security company, indicated that most customers who make an online purchase wait almost two days from their initial visit to the site to buy.  Several reasons were cited for not completing the transaction on an initial visit including cost, service, and security ... http://www.metropolis3.com/blog/index.php/2011/01/20/easy-ways-to-transform-browsers-into-buyers/ In an annual research study conducted by Razorfish respondents indicated that they way they were using email marketing was evolving.  Rather than using email marketing as a broad one size fits all tactic companies are using customer data to tailor messages and offers to their clients.  Companies need take this advice ... http://www.metropolis3.com/blog/index.php/2011/01/06/effectivelyusingemail-goingfrombroadtonarrow/ Many companies wanted to embrace crowdsourcing as low cost way to conduct research, generate content, or even offer customer support.  While crowdsourcing hasn’t been the cost free answer to marketer’s dreams, it can play a useful role. There are several examples where crowdsourcing has been quite effective.  One of my favorite ... http://www.metropolis3.com/blog/index.php/2010/12/16/crowdsourcings-place-in-the-market/ Many companies look at employee blogging as something to fear or be concerned about.  Many people think that informal or unregulated blog content will be inconsistent with the company voice or have a negative impact.  However eMarketer notes that 71% of bloggers who post for a business successfully increased visibility ... http://www.metropolis3.com/blog/index.php/2010/12/02/company-blogging-the-right-way/ Many evaluating Procter & Gamble’s (P&G) venture into ecommerce would suspect they are trying to cut out the middle man to sell their products direct to consumers but P&G has said sales are only part of the picture.    By creating an online shopping destination P&G can collect and evaluate data on ... http://www.metropolis3.com/blog/index.php/2010/11/10/understanding-procter-gambles-foray-into-retail/ This article from E-commerce times describes using “uplift modeling” to more effectively target your marketing efforts.  The predictive model is used to indicate how a customer would respond to a marketing stimulus and identify who would likely purchase because of it, who would have purchased regardless of marketing, who would ... http://www.metropolis3.com/blog/index.php/2010/10/28/is-uplift-modeling-just-a-fancy-name-for-segmentation/