It’s free to customers and I’m happy to report I delivered the project in under 90 days. Not bad at all.

Since launch I’ve picked up on a number of bugs and areas that need tweaking but on the whole am pretty happy with this project.

For me it was a natural step to do something significant in the mobile channel this year. Not so much due to the column inches mobile has been getting or because of all those industry speakers who coined this Year of the Mobile. No, the straw the broke this camel’s back was when I saw GSMA and Comscore’s report for Internet Access via Mobiles for December 2009. Just under 16 million people accessed the Internet in that month via their mobiles. 16 million is just a little short of a quarter of the total population. That’s a staggering amount of people. As you can see the report is made up of data supplied by the network operators, compiled by the aforementioned companies so it’s very reliable.

What’s even more interesting about this report is that it doesn’t included native apps i.e. those apps that are downloaded and run locally on someone’s mobile. Considering there are now app stores for Nokia, Vodafone and numerous other network operators as well as handset manufacturers its clear to see this isn’t year of the mobile but more like decade of the mobile.

The demand for mobile presence from a brand is clearly there but I believe there are a few key things to consider before allocating budget for mobile in 2011:

- One of your main priorities should be ensuring your brand’s content is accessible via mobile. A quick check on some of my brands sites and you can see the flash homepages don’t work on iPhones therefore creating an immediate barrier to mobile visitors

- Find your customers. If there are in a retail outlet go and speak to them and tell them your plans. Ask them what they think. I’m not advocating focus groups here for various reasons. Just good honest 1-2-1 conversations

- Pick your suppliers and developers carefully. This area is still in its early days so ensure you review past work and take up business references

- Set realistic deadlines. Development of app and mobile sites is still in it’s infancy so expect there to be plenty of bugs and errors that will need fixing

- If you develop an app and if you publish in the Apple App store login in and read the feedback on there. It’s free market research

- Don’t try and do it all in one go. Plan a phase 2 of development containing a wish list of all the things that miss your development cut off date or aren’t deemed crucial to it’s initial launch. It will only delay the project and speed is of the essence here.

- Prepare a first class launch plan. There are over 150,000 apps in the Apple App store so you’ll need something to stand out. Ensure it integrates with the rest of your activities. Telling your existing customer base is a must. If you can, and you have retail outlets try to get some coverage there. It’s mobile so people will use it everywhere, not just at home or work.

- Target by mobile. I’m a big fan of Google Adwords and their content network. You can target by mobile in your Adwords account so ensure you’re covering the bases

- My final tip is to get it out there and see how it goes down. The beauty with Digital is you can put things out there, monitor, report and test at a relatively low cost.

The explosion in use of the internet on mobile and the uptake of apps are huge indicators as to the potential of this channel. We are still in the early days of learning exactly what we can accomplish in this area. I think its less like Year of the Mobile and more likely to be Decade of the Mobile.

Decade of the Mobile Related links:
Vichy Skin Health Mobile App on Apple App store
GSMA and Comscore’s report for Internet Access via Mobiles for December 2009

Based on the questions I heard from the audience there was also a lot of confusion surrounding this ‘new’ movement. Yes, everyone was interested enough to pay the £85 to attend the seminar and wanted to learn more about how to move this forward and develop further but what conclusions did we really come to? Well, really not much. I felt there was a general agreement that this could present opportunities for clients to further justify an increasingly larger outlay on Digital and of course opportunities for those agencies who have cottoned onto this new trend but what about the media owners? Will they see the opportunity? Will they move from a guaranteed income based on a set of solid metrics that our non-digital/online marketers are now finally accepting as the norm? Or will they move to a rather fluffy approach where their inventory will be filled but for a potential P&L damaging loss should the campaigns not prove a success. The talk of bonuses on top of standard fees for campaigns that surpass their objectives doesn’t sounds strong enough to get the big guys to change the way they do business.

The debate didn’t have the answers when is came to discussing the specifics of how this can work for individuals in the room. I felt there was too much of a diverse audience who as per usual want answers to their particular challenges in this area, regulations in banking sector or the creatives who wanted more clarity on the role creative has to play. The only solid conclusion I could draw, in terms of next actionable steps, is really that everyone will have their own unique approach to developing a CPE model. Defining what that form of ‘engagement’ entails will really need to build on the objectives of your campaign. Engagement could be a video view, a download, an upload or some form of advocacy-led action.

So, despite the one outstanding presentation from Anthony and a lot of questions answered with woolly high level responses I came out of the seminar feeling positive. Positive that this new movement has legs. The reason behind this positivity has nothing to do with opinions of people from media owners, agencies or even brands but more to do with the customer themselves. If engagement delivers better targeted, more engaged campaigns with compelling creative and rewards for those taking part then this is sure the succeed. If there’s one commonality that works well in the digital world it’s something that is done for the benefit of it’s users and Cost Per Engagement has potential to do this.

Moving forward I will be challenging our media agency and media partners to deliver on this new model. Will I change the way we pay for online media on the back of this? No. Probably not. But failing progress in this area just gives me an excuse to look elsewhere. If nothing else the NMA live event showed there is a great will in this area and as they say, where there’s a will….there’s a way.

Read the NMA article about this event:
http://www.nma.co.uk/news/nma-live-cost-per-engagement-is-still-in-early-stages/3009057.article

It’s a real handful sometimes especially when you consider virtually all of those main areas use different agencies, suppliers, designers, techies and contacts at head office. Oh, and did I forget to mention that I am also responsible for the governance and compliance of all of those areas.

Enough of the moaning. I am trying to look back at the way I have learnt to deal with the plethora of activities and responsibilities that fall under me. About a year ago I looked at my official objectives and accountabilities and said to myself that if the task I was working on wasn’t on didn’t relate to one of these objectives then I should stop what I’m doing. That might sound obvious but I remember how easy it was to get distracted. A new technology, a bit of software or a new functionality and existing supplier had developed. All great and all very interesting but unless they can prove, quickly, easily and cheaply that they can contribute to my aforementioned objectives then it’s a no.

Some people may not work for a large company and may not have this level of accountability or it may not come in this form. If at all possible I’d encourage you to adopt some. They help you re-focus, especially at times where there is a lack of clarity on what is important to your job function and therefore what is important to the business. And, after all, that’s what we are all here for….apart from just for the love!

Do you love your job?

Final tip which I learnt the hard way, is find a way to quickly and easily remember your objectives and accountabilities. It’s all very well saying you are going to work toward them, but how do you remember what they are?

I had too many of them so dropped them all into four categories then created a mnemonic to help me remember them. Alternatively save them in your calendar so you get a reminder every week or every month. There is nothing worse that digging them out half way through the year or just before your end of year review. I guarantee if you do that, you’ll end up struggling to find evidence and examples to match your objectives. Much better to keep them front of mind and go in full of confidence.

The Performance Management section of the Chartered Institute of Personnel Development has some good information on Appraisals, Business performance & Competencies

Well, the people at Nielsen have come up with a model that does exactly that. Using a series of electronic boxes, similar to those used in TV, connected to your computer they monitor and record every click and keystroke on your PC or laptop. This they have used to analyse users online behaviour much in the same way they do for TV.

Matt’s presentation demonstrated how they analysed a campaign by Danone from earlier this year. You’ll probably have seen it yourself; it’s the Evian Rollerskating Dancing Babies:

Aside from the fact this viral campaign was a huge success they were able to employ this model to prove that brand engagement was not only higher in those who were exposed to the campaign but this engagement lasted for longer than other more traditional forms of advertising. Personally I think this really demonstrates the power that a viral campaign with really strong creative can have. It also highlights how different this interactive media is. I mean thinking about it, this campaign just wouldn’t work in quite the same way if it was on TV. The problem with using this campaign is that it generated over 12 million views. Ok that brings it into line with some TV adverts shown during peak viewing hours but it’s also makes for an unfair trial. I’ve had some fairly successful viral campaigns but none that have (yet) generated over 12 million views. I’d really like to see this model applied to a number of other campaigns, perhaps ones that haven’t been as successful. Really, to prove the case for this model we need to see it applied to several dozen campaigns. Only then when we are seeing campaigns that fail to have the same, if not a better impact than TV campaigns will be truly be able to see the impact of this movement. This will enable us to retrospectively see how & why some online campaigns fail. Only when we can look at these campaigns in the cold light of day, retrospectively and in a quantitive way can our industry evolve and mature to a level that we can truly compete with traditional media.

Whilst I can comment on how individuals might use this is what I have undertaken in my department:

1. A dedicated individual to constantly monitor twitter and of course Monitter. This individual is not a member of my team but someone from our Consumer Advisory or Customer Services. Without a dedicated individual who is trained in handling customers I was not prepared to launch this project.
2. Updates are peppered with actual new developments both from my brands but also the industry as a whole. This with a specific interest in following a company that make Lemonade might also be interested in the wider issue of how Lemon farmers are treated in sub-Saharan Africa. So, we post relevant tweets
3. Users tweet us on any number of items. It can be questions about our products, our brands or advice on issues they have which our products solve. Our advisors respond to these tweets
4. We actively encourage users to tweet their experience of us instore and online. We then actively respond.

This is my basic set up. Using Twitter in a manner I hope those following us (over 1,000 after 30 days) will find useful and we hope will add value to the relationship…eventually resulting in higher satisfaction, increased awareness and greater likelihood to purchase and re-purchase. Simple really. Just taking the benefits of Twitter and applying it to our business.

In regards to the original issue, of how to generate revenue, we have incentivised quarterly emails using preselected groups of Twitter and non-twitter users rating their Net Promotor Score.  An increase in their score over time for Twitter users vs non Twitter users will be added to our Customer Value model (more on that another time) to demonstrate the return.

Has anyone else had success on Twitter that they would like to share?

This time last year at work we launched several campaigns which included micorsites, online pr. Online bloggers, competitions, PPC on Google and of course an email broadcast to our base. We also wanted something more visual to show off to the sales team and senior management so we created some flash banner ads and looked at where we would place them. As a global company we employ one of the worlds largest media agencies to help us in this task so w e duely went with their suggestions on placement.

The campaign was a huge success. The minisite i set up got close to 100k visitors. PPC generate a 7.5% CTR.  The email scored the highest click through and conversion rate and I was overall very happy…and then i saw our banner results.

We placed on four separate sites in the UK and Ireland an average 0.16% CTR. Good according to others but poor in my book.

I’d always been told you can’t compare your banner ads with PPC.

Banner = increase brand awareness & equity through association with these popular media sites. PPC = relevant target market, cost per click model etc.

Well, despite the status of my company i don’t yet have money to burn on increasing brand equity (or for that matter the money to measure if i am growing it!)

So, this year all my search budgets now include a 10-15% allowance to add banners and video ads which are placed via the Google Content Network. Via this network we get access to hundreds of qualified sites. We can pick and choose which sites we appear on choosing to favour some sites over others. We also control these ads accoding to where people are. I represent the UK and Ireland but sometimes just want to target one of those countries, sometimes just a city within one of those. But the bit i love about it most is the fact that unlike previous campaigns direct with media owners i only pay for the Click, not the impression. Wow! It’s a small miracle. The Google PPC model of payment has been applied to placement of ads and it’s brilliant. One example i love to share; we created a short video ad and placed it on a variety of sites. The video plays automatically so again, you only pay if you get a click. This video was ‘viewed’ a total of 16,000 hours of viewing time.

Has anyone else had success with the Google Content Network? What do you think about the quality and quantity of sites available. Are you a owner of a site registered with the Google Content Network? I’d love to hear your thoughts

As you can see from the table below even adding the three different versions of IE still doesn’t topple Firefox from the top of the tree.

I would recommend having all of these browsers installed on your computer and testing all new applications and sites in all browsers.

I just discovered a store locator I developed doesn’t work in IE8 as it was developed pre-release so as popularity of IE8 increases you might want to double check your existing sites, or at least the really important bits, before moving onto the next project.

Browser statistics taken from the invaluable W3Schools

So i took our consumer data and segmented it according to their postal code (zip code) with Microsoft MapPoint and proximity to the events we were running. I then, on an individual location basis, tweaked the distance to event using my own knowledge of the areas. For example i increased the drive time radius for an even that was based in a small town next to a motorway and reduced the distance for one that was on one side of a large city (taking into account public transport).

The emails these consumers then received made reference to their nearest event, not forgetting to tell them there are more events around the country. I merged in not only the event name, date, time etc but an image of where the event was taking place.

The email itself contained a downloadable invite they could bring to the event with an incentive attached to it.

Results in one month after the last event show that those people who were nominated an event that was local to them vs those that were told just of a National event were x2 more likely to download the invite. 16% of those that did get a local event nominated and downloaded  an invite turned up at the event.

Lesson for next time: Put the event details in the subject line to increase open rates and response rates further. This just proves no matter how simple there is always something you can do better.

Given the obvious difficulties I always turn to Bronto.com – an email marketing service provider based in the US. The publish results from their clients recent campaigns by industry.

These Click Through Rates (CTR) are based on 331,040,626 emails sent by clients of Bronto as of 26.04.09:

11.7% Legal Services
11.0% Travel/Hospitality
7.6% Government
6.6% Publishing/Media
6.6% Non-Profit/Association
5.9% Education
5.7% Healthcare/Insurance
5.5% Real Estate
4.7% Manufacturing/Distribution
4.7% Services/Consulting
3.7% E-Commerce/Retail
3.5% Advertising/Marketing
3.4% Technology
2.7% Entertainment
2.7% Financial Services
1.7% Unknown

4.6% Overal

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Source: http://bronto.com/stats

Simply enter your keywords and it will show you all the live tweats relating to your search criteria. You can set yourself up to receive these as rss feeds. Add a bit of intelligence to your search criteria so you don’t get swamped considering what you will get most value out of.

For example, instead of just searching: Company name + Brand name, add in some negative keywords as well. For true customer service send this live feed to your customer service reps or publish on your site and then get your customer service team to respond to the comments on your site as well as comment on their tweat.

Remember that if you actually listen to negative feedback from customers not only will you learn really what they think AND be able to respond but other customers perception of your company will improve. Reactive customer service.

Alternatively, instead of negative keywords, add in some keywords from a recent offline campaign to attempt to measure it’s impact. You can then add any relevant tweats to your campaign reporting citing them as stimulating Online Brand Advocates who are helping you drive awareness of your product or service.

I love the title of this post ‘ Hello world’. It reminds me of my first few lectures at university on programming. We were learning ‘C’ which was shall we say, not my strongest subject! Anyway, the first programme we built was to print to screen the words ‘Hello world!’ I remember thinking at the time it’s a bit of an optimistic statement. I mean i was going to run this programme and then show the result to at least…oh about two people. Not exactly close to the 2.9 billion people on this planet

I then read an article in a magazine on this subject questioning the use of this phrase and whether this was more to do with the personalities of a programmer. Do they think they are on the brink of world domination? Is the power they glean from a few lines of code really comparable to the most well known person in the world (reputed to now be the saviour that is Barack Obama)? Or is this just a nod back to the great inventors in recent history? Maybe they thought Alexander Graham Bell’s first words in the first ever telephone conversation weren’t quite as catchy “

I’m not sure programmers really have world domination in mind but while we’re at it. let’s make a call for a different line of text for them to use. To kick things off and spread a little love in the world what about the kinder and softer, “Hello friend”…