Tag Archives: web2.0

Digital shift news, May 3, 2013

Also published in the MC blog.


Friday again and time for our news roundup of the week.

  • Facebook released its 1Q13 earnings report and reception was decidedly mixed.  This analysis breaks down 5 reasons why, from rising operational costs to lowering average revenue per user (ARPU) to the huge shift to mobile where advertising might be more difficult.
  • An interesting roundup of technologies that are changing the world including 3D printing, mobile payments and software as a service.
  • 10 years ago Apple launched iTunes and the music business was not the same ever again.  Between iTunes and Spotify, when was the last time you bought a CD?
  • Rovio mobile launched Angry Birds Toons a month ago, and their cartoons have already achieved 100 million views through their own games (story in Finnish).  This has enabled the company to launch their own advertising network avoiding other established players.
  • A retailer tests an advertising concept internally for a new service offering and then makes a silent launch on the web.  Said retailer follows closely as the creative becomes a viral hit and the company decides to use it also in traditional media. When the brand involved is one that is perceived to be as boring as Kmart, one can only expect this approach to become more common.

Digital shift news, April 26, 2013

Cross-posting from the Marketing Clinic blog.

For the past few months I have been curating an internal newsletter sharing external articles on digital marketing and digital business transformation, and we have decided to start sharing it with you, dear reader.  Previous issues have dealt with Google Glass, Facebook Home, Banner & Display advertising, customer reviews, Bitcoin & digital experiences.

Please find this week’s topics below:

  • Lean Analytics co-authors on data-driven marketing:  Quotes from the article: “If you take former Coca-Cola CMO Sergio Zyman’s definition of marketing, which is “selling more things to more people for more money more often more efficiently,” then analytics is how you measure whether you’ve moved the needle on one of those five “mores.” Everything we do leaves a digital breadcrumb trail, and that trail is available for marketers to analyze.  But it’s not going to be that simple. For one thing, even with all of this data, it’s unlikely most businesses will act wisely upon it. There’s no such thing as Big Data as big companies can’t handle the cultural shifts required.”
  • How companies find out your shopping habits, case Target: Not a new article, but a great overview of how retail chain Target has managed to deeply model customer behaviour to anticipate their needs (to the point of creepiness, sadly). Marketers need to learn to use this information, but also make sure they keep a cordial relationship with the consumer.
  • Analysis: Sleeping giant Amazon finally stirs: Amazon is become a true Internet advertising network, with access to data that even Google & Facebook don’t have on actual purchases.  Two quotes from the article: ”In today’s marketing world, data is gold and Amazon is Fort Knox” / “Amazon is not a retailer anymore, it is the largest behavioral marketing company in the world”
  • CNN is scared of Twitter: What happens when the cable news cycle is just too slow, and you do not own the platform news junkies turn to for breaking news?  Quote from the article: “Last week, key moments in the Boston saga played out on Twitter, not mainstream television.”
  • Opposing views on the effectiveness of crowdsourced investigation efforts in last week’s Boston events (Wired for,BBC against): When even law enforcement organizations are looking at harnessing external innovation, what can businesses learn from their dramatic effects?  Do the benefits outweigh the risks?

Marketing automation seminar, March 2013

1st presenter: Torsti Tenhunen
Marketing-making robot or channel?
VistaPrint as an example: customised per user, not general
Measure effectiveness: attract, nurture, prioritize, sell
Marketing automation training
Questions for today:
Can we forget target segments and segmentation?
Can we forget campaigns?
What happens to creatives?
What does an advertising agency do?
Success stories?
Can it be integrated across all marketing communications?
Role in customer journey?
How does it increase sales and marketing cooperation?
Social media as part of automated marketing?

2nd presenter: Susanna Juusti, ID BBN

Iron Mountain case: Where’s your tipping point?
Different needs. Prospects helped along the customer journey with automated nurture emails.
Main objectives: 2k markering qualified leads from SMEs around Europe/ nurture leads with right messages.
Target audience:B2B stakeholders: business owners, records manager, IT manager, HR, etc.
Campaign visualized through creative execution in marketing communication.
Messages for needs mapped across audience profiles, buying journeys, job functions.
Messages for awareness, interest and consideration phases.
Campaign website: landing pages for 7 different job functions and 6 different product areas: TECS-mapped clearly which content was leading to which page, etc.
3k leads and 7:1ROI.

Atos case
Partner in the London Olympics
Personal bests: 5 different solutions using every possible channel, but digitally-led.
Bilt to take advantage not only of the event itself but a huge before and after contact plan.
Eloqua used for automation:41k mails, 140 different mail creatives, 130 landing pages, 6 languages, 5 solutions.
Results: 5k contacts, 10% new, some became active, 2.5% super active. 1bn€ pipleine, 100m€ already sold.
No more digital marketing as a separate channel.

Tecnology-enabled contact strategy (TECS)
Framework for contact strategies to help clients see big picture and build up and integrate all marketing channels.
Systematic working process.
Content, content, content.

3rd presenter: Heikki Karjaluoto, Jyväskylän yliopiston kauppakorkeakoulu

Has traditional marketing reached the end of the line?
Moving from leads to quality leads.
Nike: our best athletes help us create better products, at the end of the day, it’s all about the product.
Connect with the customer: let’s be where the consumers are and prove them with great content and great stories.
From one to many (product, price, place, promotion) to many to many communication (customer solution, customer cost, convenience, communication).
Marketing: managinng profitable customer relationships: CRM
Keeping customers and acquiring customers.
Social corporation, social CRM in the future: because customer is in power
Marketing auitomation: customer recognition, customer classification, communication and offering customisation.
Inbound vs outbound marketing: soft sell vs hard sell.
Example: ollijunes.com, micro company creating leads through social.
Case: HubSpot, 50k leads/month!
Marketing has changed, focus on relationships, service and digitalization.
In a nutshell: Strengthening of multichannel comminication, customer dialogue facilitation and measurement.

4th presenter: Riina Kirmanen, Vaisala
Why is marketing being reborn, marketing automation, digital ecosystem, case studies and measurement.
Vaisala has a Digital Center of Excellence!
From traditional marketing to relationship/digital/content marketing
From sales support to lead generator to business partner.
Marketing objectives in line with business strategies.
Roles of sales and marketing are changing because of: marketing technology, engagement, targeting, conversion, analytics.
Marketing digital ecosystem
Marketing automation training
Content marketing: leads/sales opportunities from all sources (see picture)
Marketing automation training
To be developed vs. sales-qualified leads.
Case Vaisala knowledge eNewsletter programme: small reach but very well targeted, unsubscription rate below 1%. Planned with conversion points. Integrated with sales so that salesperson knows when visiting a customer what he/she has done on website for the last year and a half.
Case Vaisala nurturing programmes: what is the path that I want a customer to take, depending on solution? Content assets. Not campaign thinking here, just keep it going! SEM campaign thinking of triggers. Thought through together with sales in terms of messages and role of each.
Lead scoring: explicit and implicit data!
Webinars: 50 per year, excellent assets for conversion.
Social media: not a priority channel, but gives good leads and helps with thought leadership.
Measurement: how well do we help implement execution. Currently 445 active campaigns, less than 1% hard bounces. 6k€ company subscriber value for newsletter. 2/3 of leads through digital channels. Some segments more mature to start the customer journey digitally than others.
Change management by flying below the radar, get results, then tell everybody.

5th presenter: Mika Autio, Ruukki

Installation service, ruukkiroofs.com
Ruukkiroofs before used to be about getting a roof off through a form. Now it has approachable, professional and local. Built on top of eloqua and salesforce. Etsi kattomestari or tilaa kattomestari. Traffic driven from display, sem, newsletters, own webpage, exhibition materials, facebook.
Automatic email confirmation to customer and lead sms to roof installer.
Campaign planned and ready-made for different scenarios, sales on board for a developing campaign, ab testing done, deployed in under 6 weeks, 100% sales increase YoY.
Measurement to be improved, as it wasn’t defined in the beginning. Do now, ask for forgiveness later ;-).

6th presenter: Susanna Repo, Veikkaus

Systematic customer feedback for improving customer service and business results.
1000 customers every day. They cannot advertise, but need to differentiate through product and service development.
Case Jokeri: huge customer feedback numbers when the game changed, advertising changed, character changed, but didnt’t immediately analyse so lost two months since feedback was quite bad. How to change?
Worked with Etuma to change situation and do proper feedback analysis.
Case Lotto & Viking Lotto: smaller prizes available after customer feedback, increased sales and revenue. Later expanded to all players.
Bettable events: added NBA & Jukolan Viesti after customer feedbaack. However, cannot do everything: Indian customers asked for cricket.
Custom benefits: no more codes, only click a button for customer recognition.
Customer service: while customers wanted longer hours, it was not profitable.
Customer feedback processing further automated in real time in the future, included in business processes! Currently using Whitevector for monitoring.

7th presenter: Timo Kruskopf, Idea Development Oy

Marketing automation and creative
A idea is always needed, brands still need a story, a point of view, automation helps with message repetition.
Now it is simply easier to reach more audiences through different channels.
Content needs to be planned to for use at different parts of the consumer journey.
Idea needs to work at each stage of the consumer journey.
Evaluating big long ideas: head, heart, holy shit.

8th presenter: Heikki Karjaluoto, Jyväskylän yliopiston kauppakorkeakoulu
Measurement needs to not be too much, or danger is to lose the forest for the trees (no red thread).
On the contrary, measurements can give peace for creativity.

9th presenter: Torsti Tenhunen
A brand needs to have a personality and a story.
Long, reactive campaigns that are always on.
Simpler to get different leads.

Digital marketing framework

My friends and former colleagues at Nokia have been talking about the own, bought and earned digital media model for a long time, and it has significantly evolved from its earlier incarnations (for reference see 1, 2, 3 & 4). While the thinking behind the models has been very useful to me when planning and executing marketing campaigns, there is something that has been bothering me for a while about the whole thinking of digital, brazenly exemplified in these columns in the Finnish Marketing and Advertising site (here and here, suomeksi).

The fact of the matter is that both the digital and traditional channels of a brand are at the end of the day talking to/with the same consumer. Furthermore, digital channels, techniques and more importantly, thinking, can and should become embedded in the overall marketing strategy and executions. Nowadays there are different digital activations applicable for outdoor (interactive outdoor), events (solutions such as Uplause), TV (social media as a backchannel), and even print (see Kooaba Shortcut). Therefore digital is not separated from traditional channels, but becomes either the glue that binds them or the spread you put in your bread to give it flavour, be it butter, cajeta, mätitahna or Créme Bonjour ;).

I’ll have to turn this eventually into a deck for further clarity.

Massification of social media

I was definitely surprised by the way social media has been taken up by the Mexican mainstream given that we don’t have a great history of technology adoption ahead of the curve.

I mean, when local medical creams and condoms advertise their YouTube channels in their TV ads and even city bus lines promote their Twitter accounts you know it’s definitely been picked up by the public.

Using an iPad

I waited to buy an iPad until the second version was released as I’ve had issues before with buggy software as an early adopter of technology.  It won’t replace your PC nor your mobile phone, but occupies a very sweet niche in between.  It has certainly modified the media consumption landscape in my household, so let me explain.

Boot-up time is not an issue, so it lives with us in the living room and is available at any time.  I can check e-mail or the web while watching TV or show videos to my son in the screen.  Paired with services such as Skimm.tv I know exactly what I want to watch and when I want to watch it.  My morning routine now includes watching the football highlights from the device with my son while having breakfast, in a win-win situation for us all.

Everybody talks about apps and games for the iPad (and yes, whatever you’re thinking about doing, there’s an app for that) but the other use it really has helped me with is with reading books, magazines and comics.  If you travel and read as much as me you hate the weight of that 900-page book you can’t finish at home or carrying all those back issues of the Economist you haven’t had time to read and with a pretty decent catalog of Marvel and DC comics I have something to do besides work when on the road.  Even better, if I’m traveling with family we can watch TED talks together in the train or plane and the journey becomes that bit shorter.

A person I met in Argentina was trying to understand what is the use for it as it’s too big for a smartphone and too small for a computer.  Writing a blog post or working on a presentation on an iPad, while possible, is not particularly easy.  However, consumption of information is a breeze (as long as it’s not in Flash :P).

Just make sure you leave home with a full charge. 🙂

N2 Social Media Hub 3: Social media measurement

I attended #n2hub last week and was originally planning to post my notes, but noticed the full presentations are now available online for your viewing pleasure. Enjoy: