By Pilar Bower, Senior Email Marketing Strategist
Featured in eM+C

June brings the end of another school year for many kids and thoughts of carefree and fun times during long, summer days. The learning environment takes a hiatus for a few months. Adults in the “working world” will try and follow suit by leaving work early, hitting the links, or catching some rays at the beach or neighborhood pool.

I know many email marketers — myself included — will most certainly take a few days off before Labor Day weekend. However, the summer is hardly a time for email marketers to take it easy. In fact, it may be one of the busiest times of the year for us. Summer has proven to be one of the best times to keep up with new technologies and tactics.

Here’s why:

Many product launches occur in late summer and early fall. June and July have historically been good times to reach out to customers and launch products. It’s understandable as to why: more people have the time and money to make purchases and find new deals. With new products come promotion campaigns to customers and prospects. Email initiatives will most certainly be counted upon to generate interest and begin the sales cycle.

Interns will give you more resources. Many firms will undoubtedly have fresh, eager students running around the office during the summer months. They come with new ideas and perspectives if encouraged and supported. Before you assign them another boring administrative task, pick their brain and learn from them. You’ll find the time very much worthwhile.

The holidays will come much sooner than you think. For many companies, the busy season comes in the last two months of the year; that means things start to kick into high gear by late September. Devising successful holiday campaigns means planning should start when the weather is still balmy. Summer is a good time to do some controlled testing to see what email promos might work when they’re needed in a few months.

While I’ll stop and smell the freshly cut grass every now and again this summer, I’ll be sure to keep up with the latest in my industry as well as prepare to roll out some successful email campaigns. It’s what we as digital marketers do this time of year — and I wouldn’t have it any other way!

Read the article on eM+C,here.

Featured on eM+C

With the NCAA tournament winding down and the Final Four set, I’m basking in what was a great field of teams all vying for the same thing — a championship.

Email marketers can learn something from the last three weeks. The beauty of our profession is that everyone with the right game plan has a shot at generating positive returns. It’s not just limited to the big players. However, getting to the dance is one thing, converting the opportunity is quite another. Before hitting the send button again, make sure your playbook has the following edicts:

1. Prepare to win. No team ever won a game without having a plan. That strategy plays to organizations’ strengths while doing their best to shore up weaknesses. This is true in college basketball, but also in marketing departments. Be sure you understand your customers’ wants and needs. Emphasize in your emails the features, functions and benefit attributes of your products that meet this demand.

Try setting up an email schedule that will be well received based on your target market’s demographics and psychographics. Younger individuals may want to view emails later in the day, while baby boomers may choose to view such materials before their day gets into full swing.

2. Don’t be afraid to adjust your game plan. Good basketball teams recognize unique conditions on the floor and modify their strategy accordingly. If for some reason the opposing players are defending the paint well, more outside shooting may be needed. A faster squad will require the other team to keep a couple of players back to counter quick transitions. Whatever the situation, teams that can adjust on the fly have a much better chance at winning the game.

Marketers are no different. If an email campaign didn’t elicit enough people to the stated call to action, changes might be needed, be it in the content, link placements, timing of the promotion or all of the above. Whatever the case, doing nothing in the face of a low response isn’t an option.

3. Focus on the now. What I love most about basketball is that even if a team loses by a wide margin one night, it has a chance to redeem itself only days later. No sense crying about it; the contest is over. The only thing left to do is learn from it and move on.

Similarly, marketers shouldn’t get too down on themselves when campaigns don’t go as well as planned. It’s part of the highly visible profession in which you operate. The key is to figure out why the campaign didn’t work, then set up the next one to address those mistakes. It will all work out in the end if the people involved don’t give up on themselves.

I can’t help but draw a correlation to how the NCAA tournament and its players have many things in common with email marketers. Developing a game plan, adjusting to current conditions and staying well grounded in the here and now are essential for any team’s success, even if one’s home court is a corporate office environment.

Read more on eM+C.

September 2, 2011 – Welcome to another RDI Click! post. Click! is a weekly collection of digital news highlights from Red Door’s most inquiring minds.

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Audience Targeting Strategies for LinkedIn Ads  - Search Engine Watch
“The current targeting options within LinkedIn are robust and well-suited to the audience on LinkedIn: they focus on professional affiliations, rather than personal attributes/interests/likes such as Facebook. Unlike Facebook, where you determine the targeting at the ad level, within LinkedIn, your audience targeting is established at the campaign level.”
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Supercookies: What You Need to Know About the Web’s Latest Tracking Device - Mashable
“Recently, online properties like Hulu, MSN and Flixster have been caught using a tougher version of the common cookie. These “supercookies” (aka “Flash cookies” and “zombie cookies”) serve the same purpose as regular cookies by tracking user preferences and browsing histories. Unlike their popular cousins, however, this breed is difficult to detect and subsequently remove. These cookies secretly collect user data beyond the limitations of common industry practice, and thus raise serious privacy concerns.”
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What Google Must Do To Not Make G+ Evil - Social Media Explorer
“If Google chooses to weight its own content greater than that of its now social competitors, it crosses the line and becomes what it set out to avoid becoming: Evil. Prioritizing Google+ activity in search results would, by definition, make Google+ a more important social network than others. This would inevitably drive more activity on Google+.”
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Fashion Brands Have Started to Air Grievances About Fashion-Hungry Tumblr - New York Magazine
“For the second season in a row, Tumblr is sending bloggers to Fashion Week, where, with the help of some partner brands, the young writers and photographers will get to do fun things with designers, like meet them or go to their shows or eat scones at their apartments. Then they can put posts about their frolics on their blogs, making them look like they hit the big time and giving Tumblr an edge in positioning itself as the blogging platform you use if you want to post about fashion. So the bloggers win, Tumblr wins, and the brands — do they win?” 
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A comprehensive list of noteworthy news can be found at http://bit.ly/nuUyKP . Also, be sure to follow us on Twitter if you’d like up to the minute updates on our latest posts @reddoor.

August 26, 2011 – Welcome to another RDI Click! post. Click! is a weekly collection of digital news highlights from Red Door’s most inquiring minds.

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How Google+ will succeed and why you’ll use it whether you want to or not  - The Next Web
“After the initial rush of delighted surprise that G+ didn’t suck, the second wave of journalists have arrived. This group — who mostly don’t understand G+ — have indicated that they see no future for Google’s new baby. Mostly, these critics don’t understand that G+ has a public, Twitter-like component to it.”
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Revamped MySpace Will Have iTunes, Spotify and Vevo in Its Crosshairs - Ad Age
“Forget Facebook and Twitter. When MySpace relaunches later this year under new corporate parent Specific Media and creative director Justin Timberlake, the former News Corp. social-networking site will emerge with new competitors like iTunes, Spotify and Vevo in its crosshairs.”
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4 Surefire Ways to Get Your Emails Read - ClickZ
“Subject lines are a craft that often get little love in the email space. They often get the attention of your subscriber, or fail to do so, when they are unimaginative, tell too much, or don’t stand out in a crowded inbox.”
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Steve Jobs Steps Down as Apple CEO – Adweek
“Steve Jobs, the tech titan who co-founded Apple in 1976, was forced out of it in 1985, only to return in 1996, announced Wednesday afternoon that he was stepping down as CEO after nearly 14 years in the job. “I have always said if there ever came a day when I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple’s CEO, I would be the first to let you know. Unfortunately, that day has come,” he wrote.” 
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August 5, 2011 – Welcome to another RDI Click! post. Click! is a weekly collection of digital news highlights from Red Door’s most inquiring minds.

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Spotify, Spokeo, AOL, Others Sued Over Web Tracking  - Epicenter
“Website analytics firm KISSmetrics and more than 20 of its customers, including Spotify, AOL’s About.me, Slideshare.net, Spokeo and the news site Gigaom.com were sued Monday on the grounds that KISSmetrics’ tracking technology violated federal and state privacy laws.”
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3 Ways to Spark Your Job Search Using QR Codes - Personal Branding 101
“For job-seekers today, the most difficult hurdle to overcome is simply getting noticed. Even with impeccable credentials, you will need something extra to separate yourself from the stack of identical-looking resumes or business cards on the hiring manager’s desk. Why not try something innovative? Including a personalized QR Code just might catapult you to the top of the stack.”
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Google & Microsoft Trade Jabs Over Patent Claims- Mashable
“Frank Shaw, Microsoft’s lead corporate communications, also posted a letter from Kent Walker, Google’s general counsel, refusing an offer from Microsoft to bid on the Novell patents. Then Walker tweeted.”
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House Committee Approves U.S. Internet Spy Bill- Advertising Age
“The House Judiciary Committee passed a bill through to the House that would mandate American Internet providers retain their users’ information for 12 months. H.R. 1821 would require ISPs to keep personal information that could be used to identify what Web sites you visit and what content you post online.” 
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June 24th, 2011 – Welcome to another RDI Click! post. Click! is a weekly collection of digital news highlights from Red Door’s most inquiring minds.

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Get Satisfaction Gives Customer Service on Facebook an Upgrade - Mashable  
“Facebook is increasingly becoming a front-facing interaction point for customer service. Users expect to be able to ask questions, send suggestions or get help from a company Facebook page. The problem is, the Facebook Wall was never designed to really manage that type of interaction. Get Satisfaction is addressing that problem by making it possible for administrators and customer service agents to take data from the wall and funnel it into their existing CRM system, be it Salesforce.com, Oracle or even a separate Get Satisfaction community page.”
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AmEx Expands Foursquare Pilot - MediaPost
“American Express members who link their foursquare profiles to their cards can “load” and redeem merchant specials without the need for coupons, special codes, or showing their mobile devices to cashiers. The functionality is powered by the American Express Smart Offer APIs.
The national launch kicks off with Specials from H&M, Sports Authority, and Union Square Hospitality Group, and is expected to expand rapidly to include additional national and local merchant offers in the coming weeks and months.”
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Study: Within Four Years, 70 Percent Of All Mobile Ads Will Be Local  - PaidContent.org
“U.S. mobile ad spend is expected to balloon to $4 billion in 2015, up from just $790 million last year, according to the latest projections by forecaster BIA/Kelsey. One of the key drivers of the growth will be targeted local ads, which will account for $2.8 billion, or 70 percent of total spend, compared to $404 million, or 51 percent, this year.”
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Google Rolls Out Behavioral Targeting - Search Engine Land  
“Google is finally rolling out the ability to target ads to users by interest — based on their previous browsing activity, or behavior — to all of its advertisers. The company first announced a beta test of this capability more than two years ago, back in 2009, and it has slowly been introducing it to larger groups over time. The company says the capabilities are available today. The announcement marks Google’s full entrance into the world of behavioral targeting in AdWords.”
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Twitter Moves Toward Promotional Tweets - AdWeek
“Twitter may be one step closer to introducing advertisements on the main feature of the site, the streaming tweet timeline. The plan to place promotions in the tweet stream has been in the works for more than a year and now it looks as if the idea is gaining traction on the sidelines of the Cannes Lions event.” 
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June 10th, 2011 – Welcome to another RDI Click! post. Click! is a weekly collection of digital news highlights from Red Door’s most inquiring minds.

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HOW TO: Start Marketing on SCVNGR - Mashable
“What do Neiman Marcus, HP and Buffalo Wild Wings have in common? Not a lot, except that they’ve all created marketing campaigns on SCVNGR. The breadth of industries above showcases exactly why SCVNGR might be a good tool for your business. Mashable spoke with Chris Mahl, SVP of marketing at SVNGR to find out how businesses can get involved with the platform and start cashing in.” 
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Google Buys PostRank to Boost Social Analytics - Search Engine Watch 
“Last week, Google bought PostRank, a social analytics service that tracks and measures social posts. With this acquisition, Google has gained a resource to better understand the social web, and that resource can be applied to great impact in several of Google’s key social arenas. What Is (or Was) PostRank? PostRank, in their own words, “is the largest aggregator of social engagement data in the industry.” The service allowed users to get real-time data on trending topics, high-volume conversations around the web, and their own posts.”
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Mobile Display Ads More Than Doubled in Last 2 Years - AdWeek
“According to a study from comScore, display advertising on mobile devices has more than doubled over the past two years. The study found that in April 2011, 689 advertisers used mobile display ads to reach consumers on their smartphones—an increase of 128 percent from two years earlier. According to the report, 50 percent of all ads were for mobile content and publishing, while 26 percent of ads were for consumer discretionary goods, 7 percent for information technology companies, and 6 percent for financial services ads.”
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Why Email Marketers Need To Pay Attention to Mobile  - MediaPost
“Ignoring mobile may have real consequences. If your subscribers are mobile-savvy, and your email isn’t optimized for these environments, you run more than just the risk of missing out on communication. By not reaching customers the way they prefer, your emails will go unread, marked as spam and your messages will be ignored – all greatly impacting your reputation and deliverability.”
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Facebook Face-Recognition Tool Under Fire - MediaPost  
“Guess we were wrong to assume that Facebook had grown too powerful for privacy-related criticism. No, the social giant is now being forced to apologize for the way it rolled out its face-recognition system. “A group of privacy watchdogs drawn from the EU’s 27 nations will study the measure for possible rules violations,” Bloomberg reports. “Tags of people on pictures should only happen based on people’s prior consent and it can’t be activated by default,” the group tells Bloomberg, before promising to “clarify to Facebook that this can’t happen like this.”
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May 20th, 2011 – Welcome to another RDI Click! post. Click! is a weekly collection of digital news highlights from Red Door’s most inquiring minds.

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Share Of Email Use On Mobile Phones Expands - MediaPost  
“Mobile still makes up a small proportion of the email audience, but is growing quickly, according to a new study. The proportion of people who access email on mobile phones has nearly doubled in the last six months to 16% from 9%, even as checking email via Webmail services like Yahoo Mail and Windows Live Hotmail fell 10%.”
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Is Your SEO Program Chasing Unicorns? – Top Rank Blog
“Often times, brands think of themselves as the leader in their category and therefore think their website should top Google’s list for queries on generic industry terms. The trouble is, leading an industry offline isn’t the same thing as being the BEST answer for a search query online.  Chasing after such terms is very much driven by ego and not unlike a fairy tale of chasing after unicorns where there’s an expectation that being #1 on a single word will magically solve their problems.” 
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So You Like My Brand on Facebook. Now What? – AdAge Digital
“In the year since Facebook began encouraging businesses to deploy the thumbs-up button across the web, brands have been racing to rack up “likes.” Now the question is: With thousands or even millions of likes, what next? Research has shown that people who voluntarily click the like button are more willing to purchase the brand and are apt to recommend the brand to friends or share branded content on social networks. But at the same time, the button’s simplicity means that there may be no actual engagement at all beyond the fleeting moment of the click.”
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Content best practices for 5 marketing channels - iMedia  
“Both direct response and brand-focused marketers can benefit from developing informational or entertaining content that is based on strategic themes. Putting content at the center of your integrated digital marketing strategy can increase your traffic, improve your conversion rate, and build brand affinity and awareness. To achieve these results, marketers have to develop storylines that communicate, either directly or indirectly, the brand positioning and messaging, while creating dialogue with (and among) consumers.”
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The Case for Creative Integration – Ignore at Your Own Peril  - ClickZ
“Good digital creative requires the integration of media planners, UX pros, social community managers, the search team, technology experts, research folks, the client or account team – in fact the whole agency or team must think creatively and in concert to ensure a solid strategic foundation and the desired impact. The “creative department” is or should be the whole agency as we are all in the business of creating powerful digital experiences that support a business objective.”
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May 13th, 2011 – Welcome to another RDI Click! post. Click! is a weekly collection of digital news highlights from Red Door’s most inquiring minds.

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Elevate Retail Experience With New Mobile Tech – MediaPost
“Over the next five to ten years, emerging mobile technologies will deliver new and unprecedented retail experiences as in-store and online shopping converge. Technologies, including location-based services, intelligent mobile search and mobile advertising will deliver an enhanced experience for shoppers and tremendous opportunities for retailers, manufacturers and marketers.”
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Email Copy: Half the words, 16% higher clickthrough rate - MarketingExperiments Blog 
“Often, marketers confuse the purpose of an email message with that of a landing page. Our research shows that selling your product twice – in an email and then the landing page – disrupts the reader’s thought sequence and could possibly hinder conversion. By focusing an email on a single goal – such as inviting recipients to an event or location – you can see whether there are distracting elements driving recipients away from the desired action.”
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Two Thirds Of Moms Shop With Their Smartphones - Mashable
“Most smartphone-wielding mothers put their phones to work while they shop, according to a survey by mobile ad network Greystripe.
In a survey of 239 mothers, whom Greystripe recruited using mobile banner ads in its network, 66% acknowledged that their smartphones play a role in their shopping trips. Around 45% said they use their phones to locate the nearest store. The next most common use of smartphones was to compare prices. Only 15% of the women surveyed said they actually made purchases using their phones..” 
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QR Codes Gain Critical Mass - ClickZ
“More surprising, though, is who is scanning these codes. If you thought something like this would only be interesting to the young and nerdy, you would be incorrect. Mobio’s research shows that the largest age bracket that is scanning QR codes is the 35 to 44 set. Coming in second is a tie between 25- to 34-year-olds and 45- to 54-year-olds. I was surprised at how many older folks are latching on to this technology, to be honest. More interesting is the finding that 68 percent of QR code scanners are female.”
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LocalResponse eyes big brands with full-service check-in advertising  - VentureBeat
“LocalResponse is a company that lets businesses monitor and respond to check-ins. The company aggregates what it calls “explicit” and “implicit” check-ins across multiple social networks, including Facebook, Twitter, Gowalla, Foursquare and others. Explicit check-ins refer to those from sites like Foursquare and Gowalla that announce a specific location and time, while implicit check-ins are found through natural language on sites like Twitter in real-time.”
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April 22th, 2011 – Welcome to another RDI Click! post. Click! is a weekly collection of digital news highlights from Red Door’s most inquiring minds.

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Meet Foursquare’s Newest Competitor: Visa - Ad Age Digital
“Visa has unveiled a new mobile service for retailers that brings the credit-card giant head-to-head with mobile deals players such as Foursquare, Groupon and, now, eBay. So far, Visa has tested a pilot with the Gap, where the retailer’s customers can sign up to receive text-message offers based on spending habits or when or where they swipe their Visa. Here’s how it works: You’re out to lunch and pay with your Visa card. That transaction triggers a deal, because you are already enrolled in a Gap program online with your Visa card and phone number.”
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iPhone Knows Where You Live (And Everything Else, Too) – MediaPost
“The Guardian broke the story that has every niche and cranny of cyberspace — down to the precise longitude and latitude — abuzz this morning, so let’s give them first dibs: “Security researchers have discovered that Apple’s iPhone keeps track of where you go — and saves every detail of it to a secret file on the device which is then copied to the owner’s computer when the two are synchronized.”
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TV advertising is back, thanks to social media - Creativity_Unbound
“It wasn’t much of a revelation in January when Nielson and Yahoo let us know that 86% of U.S. mobile Internet users watch TV with their devices in hand. But when you consider that 40 percent say they’re using their devices for social networking, or take note of the fact that the Super Bowl inspired upwards of 4000 tweets per second during parts of the game, it becomes apparent that instead of steering people away from TV, social media — the desire to weigh in, converse, and see what your community has to say — is helping resurrect it.”
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Confidently Projecting ROI for SEO: Can it be Done? – Search Engine Watch
“To confidently measure ROI for SEO, you have to temper expectations of high accuracy within exact number of visits or conversions, and lean more toward the school of performance growth as measured by trending lines. The models which I will discuss below have worked well and have proven to be in some cases surprisingly close to numerically accurate, and have certainly shown the ability to be trend-predictive.”
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8 Questions About the State of Email Marketing - ClickZ
” Many of the questions stay the same (best day to send an email, good open rate, etc.), but many new ones are popping up as the industry evolves. Here are eight (and one history nugget) that are relevant to today’s inbox that are good to have in your back pocket.” 
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