Two ways, the first of which is by using Social Media. Your brands Facebook and Twitter pages work as a direct line to your audience. Use that community that you've grown over time and tap into them. Run promotions that require the audience to get involved, and this will spread among their friends and followers, garnering you more eyes on your campaign. Your consumer base is more likely to enter contests around this time of year because it's been hardwired into our society to think of giving and gifts, so design your contest to look the part.

Check back next week for part 2, where we will discuss email marketing!

As marketers find opportunities to build audiences, conversation and conversions with clever cross-promotion between the two mediums, e-mail and social media tactics are becoming increasingly popular and intertwined.

Incentives Drive Clicks and Conversions

Dingo, a pet food company in Ohio, created a promotion that rewarded customers with a $20 coupon if they signed up for the company’s newsletter and “Liked” its Facebook Page, with the catch being that the page needed to get to 5,000 fans (from a base of around 300) for the promotion to kick in. Mike Halloran, the owner of Dingo, says it reached its goal within three days, as pet owners found out about in the Dingo newsletter and forwarded it to their friends and “liked” Dingo on Facebook.

Of all channels, e-mail marketing and social media go hand in hand better than any other, getting your customers to share your message with friends is the most effective way to grow your business.

 

The company’s e-mail newsletter — which has more than 100,000 subscribers – recently featured a promotion to win a free bike, helmet and messenger bag to fans of the company’s Facebook Page. So far, the opportunity has driven more than 6,500 clickthroughs to the giveaway, versus just nine clicks (yes, nine) to the company’s prompt that encourages e-mail subscribers to become Facebook fans.

 

Promotion Works Both Ways

These promotions can also work the other way, however. Shoe retailer Crocs not only promotes social media through its e-mail newsletter, but also promotes its e-mail newsletter through social media. For example, the company will inform its Twitter followers or Facebook fans about a special offer that’s only available to newsletter subscribers. The company also lets Facebook fans sign up for its e-mail newsletter from an app that’s built into its page, something that Andrea Stow, senior global eMarketing manager for Crocs, says has resulted in a “gigantic leap in our e-mail subscribers.”

 

Stow continues, “Our strategy is understanding and knowing that there might be duplicates [subscribers to multiple mediums] — but the more customer touch points, the better conversion we’ll have.”

That reach, says Stow, gives Crocs the ability to stay in touch with customers year round — important for a company that only expects its average customer to buy new shoes two or three times per year at most.

E-mail Will Only Get More Social

Although companies like Crocs, Timbuk2 and Dingo are still relatively early movers in the integration of e-mail and social media.

Concludes Schmulen, who was also a co-founder of NushellMail, “What we’re seeing today [is the] social call to action [becoming] the primary call to action inside of newsletters.” Expect that trend to continue as marketers start to realize the benefits of doing so and technology providers continue to integrate e-mail and social tools into one package.

However, social media offers a lot more than just discounts and deals when it comes to food and beverage. Restaurants and bars are giving social media users a backstage pass to the food and the people who make it. Chefs and restaurateurs are using social media to reveal how their dishes are made, generate familiarity with chefs and provide a means for diners to share feedback.

Revealing How A Dish Is Made

You can blame it on the rise of celebrity chefs or the success of The Food Network and shows like Top Chef, but now more than ever, people want to live vicariously through others who cook. Many restaurants, including Chicago’s Piccolo Sogno and The Bristol, are posting videos to YouTube or Vimeo of new dishes being prepared. “The general idea is to pull the curtain back,” says Phillip Walters of The Bristol. “Allow people at home to feel more involved and engaged with that you are trying to deliver.”

Getting To Know The Chefs

Instead of attracting customers with deals, many restaurants strive to use social media for a tailored, personal experience. “People love to go into a restaurant or bar and know the owner or the chef,” O’Keefe says. Think of it as instantly becoming a regular.

That’s why chefs like Joanne Chang of Boston’s Myers and Chang and Flour Bakery personally tweet photos of the kitchen staff at work. “If you’re in a PR firm, you’re not going to get the same feel,” O’Keefe says. “It’s her and you know that it’s her.”

Grant Achatz, the man behind Chicago’s Alinea — named best restaurant in America in 2006 by Gourmet — also does his own tweeting. “Who would you rather hear from?” he asks. “Me directly or some weird person I paid to represent me?” When Achatz is not in the restaurant, he continues to tweet — from where he’s eating in Chicago to where he’s visiting in Japan. It lets people get to know him better and maintains a base, he says. “I’m not a celebrity, but I have a following.”

Achatz’s approach to helping his audience learn more about him is spot on. “Who we are” is the primary message of any effective marketing campaign, says Syeed Mansur, CEO of Sentrana, a firm that uses mathematical models to determine the most effective marketing strategies for companies.

Do you follow your favorite chefs or restaurants? Share your thoughts in the comments.

1. Best Time of Day

On the other hand, perform some basic analytics about your business’ customers or users. Does your blog or business target parents? Send an email update on Sunday evenings when the family is relaxing with a movie. Do many of your purchases come from another country? Consider setting your email updates to that time zone. Does your service list weekend events? Don’t wait until 4:55 p.m. on a Friday afternoon to send invites.

Sure, many of these tips seem to follow common sense. But as an avid online shopper, you’d be surprised how many emails from Urban Outfitters I delete while feeling the crunch of a Tuesday afternoon deadline. Perform basic demographic analysis: as a gamer, financial analyst, retiree, college student, etc., when would you be most likely to click through promotional emails?

2. Best Wording

First off, encourage customers to opt-in by advertising what your company’s email newsletters will include. Maybe your company allows its customers to subscribe to specific lists, designated by interest or gender, for example. Can they expect promotions, deals and product updates? Make sure to emphasize the inherent value in receiving regular email notifications from you.

Second, use punchy language to turn vague into enticing. Subject headings are key in this regard — weekly newsletters with identical subject lines lack click appeal. If customers get the feeling they’re about to read the same thing they read in a previous email, they won’t open it in the first place. Instead, highlight the most important or eye-catching piece of news or product update in the subject line. After all, SEO is key these days.

Finally, customers love a good deal. When inviting customers to subscribe to or open an email newsletter, be sure to emphasize savings. Not only do JetBlue’s $39 flight subject headings get me every time, they inspire me to daydream about travel in the first place.

3. Best Unsubscribe Etiquette

Consider that 91% of email users who have subscribed to a company’s email newsletter later decide they no longer want to receive the emails. Bleak, but useful data.

Even more telling, 54% of email subscribers say they unsubscribe when they feel the emails come too frequently. It’s important to be upfront with subscribers about the frequency that email newsletters will appear in their inbox. Depending on the customer’s interest level, even weekly may be too often. Consider offering several options for email frequency. If a customer clicks the unsubscribe button, try to sell them on a lower frequency mailing.

Which brings me to my next point: Sooner or later, you are going to get dumped. But, you can go out the bigger person. My biggest pet peeve is having to search for or jump through hoops to unsubscribe. Etiquette, business integrity — and most importantly, the law — demand that you always give customers the right to opt out.

That doesn’t mean, however, that you can’t ask that customer her reason for unsubscribing. A simple check-box survey can provide information as to why your audience is vacating: unsubscribe explanations can include email frequency, irrelevance, repetition or product dissatisfaction, and they can help you improve the experience for remaining and potential subscribers.

4. Best Ethics

Not only will the unethical use of email addresses earn your business a bad reputation, but chances are those users will be part of the 91% who unsubscribe anyway.

The trick is making your newsletter’s content engaging and valuable while maintaining your integrity.

:Courtesy of Mashable

In this age of social media and news aggregators, it has become almost impossible not to be bombarded by information daily. So how can we as marketers sift through it all to make a better consumer experience? Listen and organize.

The advent of social media and other services has allowed marketers to listen and respond to data being created by consumers like never before. A few years back most companies would kill to have this avenue of communication with their consumers. Now that the connection is built, we must make sure to use it correctly, because it is a very powerful channel. While you can gain knowledge about your audience in a way previously impossible, you can also barge into the conversation blindly and destroy your image. This information combined with site analytics from your webpage can help define the personas that are interested in your brand.

What can you do with this data? You must first stop thinking that everyone views your brands message the same. Things like your homepage and website should be tailor made for a variety of market segments. Whether they get different navigation, different search data or look is up to you and your designers. One thing is for sure though, the days of mass impersonal messaging in advertising and marketing are long gone.

Also! This is a great way to use QR codes, not just for finding a job but for interactive advertising. The only limit to what you can do is your own creativity.

While this seems to suggest everyone should target their messages to the end of the week, that also isn't always the case. If you are a B2B company, this would be a terrible time to reach out to your audience since they're no longer thinking of work. Now if you're a B2C company, then go ahead and reach out and get some good conversations going with your audience.

One thing is for sure for every company though, Monday is the WORST day to reach out to users. It's the "noisiest" day on social networks so your message will probably be lost in the static.

I think Ari is absolutely right. The proliferation of video content of all kinds makes the use of in-stream advertising inevitable. I think this will become the primary method of advertising for many companies both large and small. Forget about expensive TV and radio ads, that stuff is expensive and outdated. Internet video is the way to reach your audience. Create new opportunities for your business in 2010 by calling Digital Street and setting up a free consultation. We can create a killer video marketing campaign that will rival anything you see on TV.

SME-TV: An Ad Agency Doing Social Media Right from Jason Falls on Vimeo.