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Research Shows Lifecycle Email Campaigns Work

New research from StrongMail (as reported by eMarketer) provides proof that automated lifecycle email campaigns really do work. Currently, 46% of companies around the world use lifecycle email marketing. Does your brand?

In case the term “lifecycle email campaign” is new to you, let me explain. These are the email messages that consumers automatically receive from a company after they submit an inquiry, make a purchase, or perform another action. For example, if you’ve ever registered a technical product online, you may have received a series of automated messages afterwards welcoming you as a customer, offering other products, and so on. Those automated messages are intended to keep the brand in the consumer’s mind and generate brand loyalty and additional sales.

StrongMail’s research provides the following breakdown of how companies are currently using lifecycle email campaigns:

  • Welcome program = 76%
  • Post-purchase program such as product reviews, customer service survey, etc. = 45%
  • Cross-sell or up-sell program = 44%
  • Win back program = 33%
  • Website action program (browsed items, visits, etc.) = 28%
  • Cart abandonment program = 24%
  • Event countdown program (message series leading up to an event) = 24%
  • Price-drop alerts = 9%
  • In-stock notifications = 6%
  • Other = 9%
  • Don’t know = 2%

Of the surveyed companies, 57% claimed that automating lifecycle email campaigns increases open rates, clicks, purchases, and registrations, and 3 out of 4 companies believed that automated email campaigns perform better than email blasts and other outbound marketing initiatives.

Specifically, respondents reported that automated lifecycle email campaigns improve the overall customer experience which leads to better brand perception and loyalty. 67% claimed these programs increase subscriber engagement and 54% believe they increase customer satisfaction and retention. 46% of companies cite increased revenue, and 45% cite higher ROI from automated lifecycle email campaigns.

If you ever wondered if automated email campaigns work, let this survey provide your answer. There is no doubt that these campaigns can drive positive results for brands. However, the emails must be useful and meaningful to recipients and the timing has to be right. This is about real-time (or as close to real-time as possible) engagement with customers based on actions they performed. Sending irrelevant information or delayed information won’t help customers or your brand.

What do you think? Are you using lifecycle email campaigns to market your brand? Leave a comment and share your thoughts.

Image: stock.xchng

Google Rebrands Blogger and Picasa

Two well-known online brands are living their last days. According to a post on Mashable today, Google is rebranding both its blogging tool, Blogger, and its photo uploading and sharing site, Picasa. The rebranding is expected to launch in approximately six weeks.

It’s always troublesome for loyal customers to accept a rebranding, but Google’s business plan in recent years (particularly with the new Google+ social efforts) demonstrates that the Google brand is set to take over the world.

Okay, I’m exaggerating, but I do have a point. Google is about brand centralization. Sub-brands will be assimilated into the brand family, and that’s an intelligent move by the Google leadership team. Google is no longer just a search company, and it’s time the sub-brands joined the family. I’m actually surprised this type of rebranding didn’t happen earlier.

However, are there sub-brands in the Google family that are strong enough to hang onto their own brand names? What about YouTube? Only time will tell.

Google has rolled out a number of products in recent years that failed while products like Blogger and Picasa (that until now didn’t have the Google brand name attached to them openly) stayed on the periphery. Google’s new focus on social initiatives is changing things and social destinations like Blogger and Picasa need to come into the fold.

What do you think of Google’s expected rebranding of Blogger and Picasa? Leave a comment and share your thoughts.

Social Games Put Brands in Front of Consumers Who Welcome Them

A lot has changed since the days when Second Life was the cool online game. Today, social games are integrated into top social networking sites and have created a new avenue for brands to connect with consumers. In fact, according to eMarketer, 1 out of 2 U.S. Internet users between the ages of 18-44 play social games every day, and U.S. social gaming revenues will pass $1 billion in 2011.

Research from Saatchi & Saatchi and Ipsos OTX MediaCT tells us some more about the people who play online social games daily:

  • 54% of men play social games daily.
  • 46% of women play social games daily.
  • 66% of tablet owners play social games daily.
  • 53% of smartphone owners play social games daily.
  • 14% of people who play social games do so at work for at least one hour each day.
  • 2 out of 5 social game players prefer to receive new product information via social games (that’s lower than e-mail but much higher than traditional advertising).

One of the most important takeaways from the research is this — players like “social challenges features of the games they play.” In order to get the best results from brand integration into social games, consider how you can integrate your brand as part of a social challenge. The research offers the following statistics:

  • 57% of respondents believe that product discounts are a “very compelling” incentive to complete a social challenge.
  • 37% of respondents believe that product discounts are a “somewhat compelling” incentive to complete a social challenge.
  • 88% of respondents believe that loyalty programs are at least “somewhat compelling” incentives to complete a social challenge.
  • Challenges that can result directly in social action were also found to be compelling incentives for many social game players.
  • 33% of respondents believe that challenges which result in changes to a player’s status in the community were not compelling incentives.

The important thing to understand is that people are using social games and they are open to receiving brand messages and experiences on social games as long as those brands add value to the overall gaming experience. The worst thing you can do is interrupt players with your branded messages. Instead, enhance the user experience. Of course, that means you need to spend a significant amount of time actually playing the game and learning about the community of players before you can truly integrate your brand in an effective manner. That’s a big step that is too often skipped.

Image: Flickr

How to Build a Successful Branded Mobile App

There are a lot of mobile apps available to consumers, but only a small percentage of those apps become highly popular. However, apps are extremely important to companies and brands because consumers spend a lot of time using them. Research by Nielsen breaks down the average daily mobile activity on Android smartphones as follows:

  • Apps = 56%
  • Emailing and Messaging = 19%
  • Phone = 15%
  • Web browser = 9%
  • Camera = 1%

Now, consider how many people are purchasing new tablet devices such as the iPad. You can bet these consumers are spending even more time using Apps than Android users. Bottom-line, mobile apps are important, but you need to plan ahead to build an app that has a chance for success.

In its recent Consumer 360 Conference, Jonathan Carson (CEO of Telecom at Nielsen) and Heidi Browning of Pandora offered the following tips to help businesses create the types of mobile apps that consumers want and need. Some of those tips include the following:

  • Apps that “give back” are more popular than other types of apps. For example, rewards apps are very popular.
  • The app must be extremely easy to use.
  • The branded experience should be seamless across all devices.
  • The app should be personalized.
  • Provide something useful such as price comparisons or helpful tips.
  • Make sure the app works perfectly.

Once you develop your app, you need to promote it so consumers can find it. If they don’t know it exists, it won’t do them or your company any good. Nielsen’s research states that consumers find branded mobile apps most frequently through:

  • A friend or family member = 28%
  • Searching the app store on their phones = 21%
  • Third party website = 17%
  • Television advertisement = 15%
  • Newspaper, magazine or radio = 13%
  • Apps promoting other apps = 9%
  • Email tips from mobile carrier = 6%
  • Device home page = 5%
  • Carrier home page = 5%
  • Sync software (e.g., iTunes, etc.) = 4%

It’s important to note that the ways that people find branded apps differ significantly from the ways people find non-branded mobile apps. Advertising plays a much larger role in spreading the word about branded mobile apps. For non-branded mobile apps, 45% of people claim to find them through a friend or family member and 58% claim to find them by searching the app store on their phones. Advertising plays a much smaller role in spreading the word about non-branded apps.

Before you develop and launch a mobile app, consider the tips and research provided above and be prepared to create a useful app and to promote it as part of your overall marketing and branding strategy.

Image: Flickr

Mobile Content Consumption Positioned to Surpass Online

Does your brand have a mobile strategy? Is your brand’s mobile strategy a top priority for your company? It should be.

Predictions say that mobile content consumption is expected to surpass online content consumption as more people purchase smartphone and tablet devices. With price points coming down on popular mobile devices, this prediction is poised to come true sooner rather than later.

At a recent ELEVATE conference panel session moderated by Will Richmond of VideoNuze, Major League Baseball Advanced Media’s executive vice president, Noah Garden, offered some statistics about branded mobile content consumption and demand that might surprise you.

  • Garden stated that Major League Baseball’s page views from mobile devices will exceed page views from online within the next 12-18 months.
  • For Major League Baseball, Garden revealed that mobile is a significant growth driver, increasing from just 8% of use in 2008 to 37% in 2010.
  • Major League Baseball expects to sell 2 million subscriptions to its MLB.tv and mobile services in 2011 — a 33% increase over the 1.5 million subscriptions sold in 2010.
  • With the increased demand for mobile content, Major League Baseball responded by offering 100 million streams of games in 2011, which is up 47% from 2010.

If a mobile branding strategy wasn’t a top priority for your company before you read the above statistics, I hope it is now. Your customers are using mobile devices more every day, and the growth rate is staggering. Your brand needs to be there, and you need to be offering the types of branded experiences and content in the mobile environment that your target audience wants and needs.

At the very least, you should be researching what those wants and needs are and evaluating what your competition is doing in the mobile space to develop your own mobile branding strategy. If you aren’t already doing that, you already need to catch up. Do it now before you fall so far behind that your brand becomes irrelevant.

Image: mlb.com

Marketing Branded Mobile Apps

Mobile is here to stay and brands need to be represented on mobile devices to stay competitive in the future. That means your brand needs a mobile website and a mobile app might be a good idea, too. However, developing a mobile app for your brand is just the beginning. You need to market your branded mobile app to ensure people know about it, download it, use it, keep it, and tell other people about it, too.

In other words, you can’t look at your branded mobile app just as a tool to market your brand. You also need to look at it as a product unto itself, which needs to be marketed. The 4 Ps matter when it comes to marketing a mobile app, so make sure your price, place, product, and promotion are right or your mobile app won’t help you meet your overall brand and business goals at all.

To that end, let’s talk about promoting your branded mobile app. Simply getting it in the iTunes App Store or Android Market isn’t enough. According to research from MTV Networks, the vast majority of mobile apps that people download and try are chosen based on friends or acquaintances’ recommendations or based on user reviews and recommendations published online.

Another important finding in the MTV Networks study reveals that consumers are fickle when it comes to mobile apps. They’ll quickly replace one app with another that does the same thing but is newer or offers better features. There is very little loyalty when it comes to mobile apps and even favorite apps are replaceable to mobile audiences.

The MTV study focused primarily on entertainment apps, so it’s highly possible that business-oriented apps have longer lifespans on consumers’ mobile devices. However, the fickle behavior of mobile customers is likely to permeate through most consumer segments. This is a fast-moving audience that wants access to information quickly and easily. They’re very willing to try the next great thing, so brands need to continually research their competitors in the mobile space and make sure their mobile apps continue to deliver the features and functionality that consumers want. There is no time to “wait and see” in the mobile market.

Bottom-line, app users listen to other app users, and they’re always looking for the next app that will make their lives even better. Social media and content marketing can help you listen to the online buzz and jumpstart conversations about your own apps to ensure they’re meeting consumer needs and beating the competition at all times.

Are you marketing your branded mobile apps? Leave a comment and share your thoughts.

Image: stock.xchng