Beginners Guide to Twitter

Having a profile for your brand on the popular microblogging site isn't enough. You have to create a real presence. Our expert shows you how.

It is important to recognize and understand the nuances of Twitter as a communications channel. The genius is in its simplicity, but it's still a tool that consumers and businesses can leverage many ways.

My team conducted an exhaustive and extensive survey of the Twitterverse and how consumers use the platform for their needs. Check out some of the ways people use Twitter.

It is significant to note that 56 percent use it in some professional, marketing, or work-related capacity.

Conversations on Twitter happen quickly, and there are many benefits to your brand. Below is a tweet from Scott Monty from Ford on the value of Twitter as Ford sees it.

So how can and should your brand use Twitter? And more importantly, what are the most common mistakes and pitfalls on Twitter that could have a negative impact on your business or brand?

Let's take a look.

You need to have a unified experience consistent with your brand so as not to confuse consumers. Your Twitter profile is where people go to quickly discover how you are using Twitter and learn more about your business. Make sure that you get your brand or business messaging across using the 140-character descriptor field.

It is acceptable to tell them how you are going to use this Twitter channel and set expectations. For example, if your account is strictly for distribution of an RSS feed and there will be no human interaction, tell them so. Companies like SUN and Dell have multiple Twitter channels -- each specifically geared to deliver niche content to a target audience.

Tip: Update your Twitter page background with an image that conveys the positioning of the brand. A good example is Dunkin Donuts.

Notice how the company uses a visually branded background, page font, color, and an icon that are all consistent with its brand. Also note that the bio is descriptive, concise, and links to the Dunkin Donuts' homepage.

"Bio: Dunkin' Dave here, tweeting on the behalf of the DD mothership. I'm an American and I'm certifiably running on Dunkin."

Twitter effectively allows you to be the "fly on the wall" at a cocktail party. When an opportunity presents itself to join a conversation and interact, you should be ready. But you have to listen in order to do this efficiently.

Listening is a critical part of using Twitter if you want to be relevant and add value for the people who matter the most to your business. You can search Twitter as a lightweight form of brand and reputation management. Go to http://search.twitter.com/ to set up a number of persistent searches for your brand, as well as keywords that your users might be tweeting, and monitor them so you have the relevant knowledge of what is being said. This will allow you to respond and react accordingly in a timely fashion. You can also set up these searches as an RSS feed to monitor with something like Google Reader.

When users tweet @yourcompany, they are specifically reaching out to you and expecting some sort of response. User expectations are that if a brand or company is on Twitter, then it is there to interact. Failure to respond can have negative ramifications and is most commonly looked upon from a consumer's perspective as a sign that you don't care enough to respond. This is not what you want to have happen.

Responding in a timely manner and in a public fashion can have a very positive impact, as your followers and the followers of the person that you are interacting with will see that your company is engaging.

The bar has been raised, and the expectation for response from your brand has been increased dramatically. Now is the time to take this opportunity to increase your brand's engagement levels.

Most marketing people create a "message" and push it to multiple distribution points. That tactic does not work well in the Twitter ecosystem. While using Twitter to push press releases or automatic distribution of an RSS feed from your company blog might be appealing, the consumption model is minimal. Only linking to your website in your tweets will quickly become boring to your followers.

When you have people follow you, they follow for a reason. They have effectively "opted in" to hear what you are publishing and sharing. Focus on adding value and giving them what they want. Use this channel as a way to communicate industry news and trends -- insights that are valuable to your target audience.

Interaction is the key to building influence on Twitter. Share openly and don't only talk about your services. Find a way to mix it up and be interesting and human in your interactions.

Tip: Focus on adding value to the people who matter most and you can't go wrong.

There are several ways to measure the ROI of your efforts on Twitter. You need to choose clearly defined metrics for how you will measure and rank key criteria. The easiest -- but least valuable -- metric is how many people follow you. While this is a general indication of "popularity," it is not a good metric of influence, customer interaction, or customer satisfaction.

You will want to measure the number of interactions, the number of people you touch, and the net outcome of those interactions and conversations. For example, did you take an initial negative brand detractor and move that person to a higher satisfaction level, or to the point where they have become a brand evangelist?

You might also want to consider looking at the number of mentions of your brand as a general way to measure buzz or velocity as a topic of conversation in the ecosystem.

Also, consider the number of times your content is re-tweeted (noted on Twitter as "RT @yourbrand") and pushed through the network by multiple people. What is the effective "reach and influence" of the people that re-tweeted your content? This is actually an important metric when you look at how often people find your content interesting and "sharable." Interesting and valuable content is more likely to get re-tweeted by your followers.

You should also track the landing page of your site and how many people come from Twitter and what they do once they are on your site. This will help you to determine the behavior of the people that come from Twitter and what they are interested in.

It is important that, somewhere on your main site, you have a "directory" of people from your business that tweet on behalf of the company. It is also important that these people's bios are descriptive.

Companies like Dell use the word "Dell" in the user name (richardatdell, lionelatdell, etc.).

Kodak employees clearly identify themselves on Twitter via a visual branding profile image. Note the brand logo on the lower portion.

Many marketers make the rookie mistake of setting up an account on Twitter and not clearly defining how it will be used. Just because you are "on Twitter" does not mean you are using it in the most valuable way.

In fact, your company might need several different Twitter accounts that align with the target market and desired communication/business outcome. The low-hanging fruit that most companies are using it for is customer support or brand and reputation management. This is far from the only way that Twitter can be used.

As an example, Ford has six different Twitter accounts. Each account serves a specific purpose as a communication channel to address different market segments:
• FordTrucks
• FordDriveOne
• FordDriveGreen
• FordCustService
• FordMustang
• FordRacing

Here are just a few examples of how you might want to use Twitter:
• Customer support and service
• Brand reputation management
• Polling and product feedback mechanism
• Lead generation
• News distribution
• Brand awareness and establishment
• Product promotion and launch
• Humanizing of a brand
• Public relations

What Are The Right Social Media Networks For You?

More than 30 million baby boomers now connect on LinkedIn, and even more are on Twitter. And it doesn’t stop there. According to recent data from Inside Facebook, the number of U.S. Facebook users over age 35 doubled in 60 days–and is still on the rise.

No longer dominated by tweens, social media is a viable channel to market to business and family decision makers. And that means long gone are the days when you could just optimize your Website content and create meta tags and expect serious results from the Internet.

You need to get involved in social media and optimize your entire online presence. Before you begin, though, you must understand where your target audience resides online.

With the many options available to companies in the social media realm, it’s important to first learn about your audience. Where are they most likely to be engaging in social media?

Today it’s no longer enough, or even smart, to post a profile to MySpace and Facebook just because those are popular, and call that good. Your audience may be on Facebook or MySpace, or maybe it’s LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitter or something else entirely. Do a search to see where your brand is being talked about.

How? You can do this directly from a major search engine or by using the search capabilities the social media outlets provide. For example, you can search twitter using http://www.search.twitter.com. And a great way to view your brand’s social media presence is to use http://www.prmetrics.com.

Is your company being discussed on any of the social media sites? If it is, you need to be there engaging in the conversation.
Coca-Cola is a great example of this. Did you know the Coca-Cola business page wasn’t actually set up or controlled by Coca-Cola? Two of its fans actually got there first.

But instead of getting angry about it, Coke used this to its advantage. It embraced its fans, inviting them to talk to them personally.

Think of the insight Coca-Cola gleamed from this meeting! And today, Coke has the second highest number of fans on Facebook for its corporate page–topped only by Barack Obama (http://www.allfacebook.com/statistics/pages/).

Can’t find any mentions of your company? Don’t panic. That means you have the unique ability to start the conversation—the way you want to start it.

But don’t wait. Get involved now and start talking about your company positively in social media channels.

Social Web Crisis Communications

Businesses, individuals, and organizations will, from time to time, make honest mistakes or in some unfortunate cases, intentionally support unethical decisions to dissuade or conceal something significant from its public.

Whether it's an oversight or a matter of deception, savvy companies usually employ and deploy a crises response team to prepare for, manage and attempt to positively spin the potential backlash from customers, partners, and employees related to almost anything.

Crisis communications is a branch of PR that is designed to protect and defend an individual, company, or organization, usually from a reactive response, facing a swelling public challenge to its reputation, brand, and community.

Throughout the course of history, we've learned that all that's required to ignite a negative firestorm is a spark from a single voice or an organized congregation.

If a conversation takes place on the Web and you're not there to hear or see it, did it really happen?

More often than not, we miss the very things that provide insight into a future response simply because we're not conditioned or trained to proactively discover and diffuse threats or negative experiences.

Our weakness, however, is also our opportunity to manage and also respond to any potentially damaging or menacing public groundswell.

Conversations related to your brand, company, executives, products, and competitors take place each and every day, without our knowledge and perhaps worse, without our participation.

In the era of the Social Web, a story, and the ensuing public recruitment, rallying, and support, can rapidly spread unlike any crisis wildfire witnessed or experienced in previous generations.

Social Media is pervasive. At the very least, it is transforming how we communicate with each other and also how we discover and share information. As the adoption of Social Tools and applications progresses from the left to the right of the bell curve, Social Media will simply coalesce back to "the Web." But, its migration, exploration, experimentation, and education will only contribute to its significance and resilience and ultimately change behavior and expand the infrastructure for corporate communications in the process. Regardless of genre, the sum of all social channels today equate to a powerful, influential, and revolutionary archetype for exposing and diffusing public opinion.

Perception is formed through the unique, individually-filtered experiences we each bring to the table. In that regard, our brand, and more specifically, our actions are open to public interpretation, support, and dissection. It’s what you say about you, what they hear, how they share that story, and how you weave that insight into future product and service iterations, communications, corporate infrastructure, and public conversations.

The tools and platforms available today are sophisticated, evolved, and designed for social distribution and redistribution. The Social Web forces a new level of understanding and participation in order for all communications professionals, in addition to crises response and reputation management teams, to understand its dynamics and the prevalence of information, positive, neutral, and especially negative.

To date, crisis communications and reputation management were relegated as a reactive response, while the groundwork for a potential predicament and the development of strategic communiqué is among the best practices for proactive crisis planning.

The traditional crisis communications planning and response workflow:
• Crisis Planning
• Negative Groundswell
• Crisis Response
• Public Relations
• Assessment/Monitoring

In the Social Web, I propose that many, if not a majority of potential crises are now avoidable through proactive listening, engagement, response, conversation, humbleness, and transparency (repeat).

I'd like to introduce you to an old, but new again, dynamic process to integrate into the existing corporate communications and marketing workflow. Today's social tools and communities that can work against us can also work with us, when proactively managed and embraced with an open mind, sincere intent, and genuine participation.
• Active
• Listening
• Observation
• Conversation
• Learning
• Planning
• Continued Adaptation and Engagement

The art and science of proactive listening, observation, and participation will not only inspire the creation of in touch, relevant, and poignant PR and marketing strategies, but will also dramatically reduce the potential for reactive response and crisis communications programs. Crisis communications teams can also partner with those responsible for monitoring online brand reputations (ORM - online reputation management) or vice versa, to jointly listen, respond, and incite change from within. This creates a more effective "public relations" organization.

The point is that this is about proactively diffusing visible, but not yet large-scale predicaments before they're full-blown public crises. And, also through direct listening, engagement, and actively addressing concerns both inside and out of the organization, we're diverting the momentum from tropical storms before they have an opportunity to form unforeseen and unanticipated hurricanes. It's the ability to avoid a storm without knowing a storm was brewing by identifying weaknesses and opportunities as they emerge.

This is community-driven communications in its purest form which begets a community-focused and customer-centric organization.

Everything starts with openness and the ability to learn and adapt. It's the acceptance that it doesn't matter if the customer is always right. After all, a happy customer will share their good fortune with a group of friends and peers, but an unhappy customer will tell everybody.

Perception is everything.

For communicators, it's our role to actively listen and translate conversations into actionable next steps. It's not an automated process. It requires dedication and empowerment. Much of this responsibility is falling upon community managers and the new role of research librarians who are quickly acclimating to online conversations and how and where they apply to the internal decision makers, traffic coordinators, and metrics analysts. By partnering with these new, socially adept resources, Public Relations can…can more accurately and genuinely participate with influencers, whether they're media, analysts, bloggers, or tastemakers. When we step back and assess our markets, we just may find that they're collectively one in the same.

What if you don't yet have these roles or resources to help you listen and follow meaningful conversations? It's not impossible for you to proactively monitor conversations and the cultures and behavior associated within each digital society in order to identify and prioritize opportunities for engagement, reform, and evolution.

Start with using free search blog search tools such as:
• blogsearch.google.com (set up Google Alerts via RSS or email)
• Technorati
• Blogpulse

As we all know, or should know, the social web extends far beyond blogs, relevant online conversations are pervasive and rampant in social networks and microforums as well. In that regard, be sure that your initial waves of search include:

• search.twitter.com
• Ning
• Facebook
• Google and Yahoo Groups
• Uservoice
• Getsatisfaction

For those with a moderate budget to evaluate dedicated SRM (social media relationship management) or ORM tools, consider:
• Trackur
• BuzzGain
• Radian6
• BuzzLogic
• BrandsEye

Search for keywords related to your business, such as the company and product name, key executives, as well as scouting discussions for the "suck" or "die" factor. This includes adding a combination of the following criteria in your search process:
• "product+sucks"
• "company+sucks"
• "die+company"
• "i+hate+company"

As the Web itself grew in pervasiveness, it also paved the way for customers to easily launch sites to vent publicly. Examples already number in the thousands, with some capturing significant public attention including starbucked.com, ihatestarbucks.com, boycottwalmart.org and againstthewal.com.

Fairwinds recently released a study that documents the power of Internet gripe sites. The Wall Street Journal explored the topic with an in-depth article, "How to Handle 'IHateYourCompany.com,'" which explored what some companies are doing, or not doing, to protect their brands online.

In its study, FairWinds researched the Web to identify gripe sites specifically containing "sucks.com." The study uncovered over 20,000 domains with only 2,000 ending in the phrase "stinks.com." Of the major consumer-facing companies surveyed, only 35% own the domain name for their brand followed by the word "sucks."

But domain names are only one of the many opportunities for customers to share their discontent, and in the new era of the two-way web, communications, customer service, and brand and reputation management teams must all work together to actively survey the landscape to detect and diagnose negative experiences.

The Social Media and conversation landscape is a diverse universe. In order to identify a potentially dangerous asteroid on a glancing or full-blown collision course with your brand, you'll also need a powerful telescope, or, a "Conversation Prism."

The Conversation Prism was designed to provide a snapshot view of dialogue within mainstream and vertical social networks and communities that may be consequential to your brand. Every network provides a search box to unearth threads of discussions tied to connected keywords and inherent developments, negative or positive that may affect the company brand and reputation.

Conversations and developing crises are probable across a multitude of online channels, including:
• Blogs and Comments
• Microcommunities aka Microforums
• Social Networks
• Lifestreams
• Customer Networks
• Groups

The ensuing conversations tied to your brand can quickly and easily amass, across multiple networks simultaneously. Don’t let those conversations fall upon deaf ears.

For the first time, we have the ability to identify and address potential crises as they surface. And not only do we have the ability to engage with people to address their grievances or discontent, we can also learn from each engagement and feed the corresponding lessons, experiences, and criticisms back into the sales, service, and product development departments to change everything for the better.

It's the difference between simply placating customers and improving our business and products to satisfy many others who would have been potentially exposed to a potential deficiency.

Customers are among the new influencers and have the tools and platforms readily available to them in order to share their experiences and potentially incite the masses.

It's not just about the gripes we've identified, it's about the dialogue and actively and publicly addressing each issue to minimize the unforeseen eruptions from those who have yet to publish or rally others against us.

While our control has been crowd-sourced, perception management and crisis communications are ours to lead. Perception is reality and it's our responsibility to invest in the relationships and the correlated activities that will help us cultivate and manage an industry leading, market relevant, and in-tune brand.

Listen, learn, and adapt. In the Social Web, and in the real world of business, companies will earn the relationships, and the crowd-sourced brand, they deserve.

Twenty (20) Success Elements When Translating Your Web-site

Over the past 20 years of building successful Spanish language websites our team has put together key design and language elements to help you be success in building a Spanish language website.

1. Clear headlines giving a substantial reason to continue reading
2. Shorter paragraphs and clear bullet points
3. Use a quote to pique interest for videos
4. Maintain a minimum column design with more emphasis on the left side
5. Use influencer logo/name to increase credibility and interest (i.e., Univision, Shakira)
6. Use a more active tone in the copy and simplify terms
7. Accurate translation is not only about language – focus on clearly expressing a value proposition and offers that appeal to your ideal segment prospect
8. Increase relevance by having all pages, configurators and shopping cart in Spanish
9. Increase time spent on page by adding Spanish-language content summaries to the links
10. Have search box functionality in Spanish to simplify the browsing experience
11. Consolidate themes and categories to reduce the navigation bar size
12. Call to actions must be specific and translation must be clear
13. Remove any English frames so visitors can focus on the page objective
14. Translate logo tag line when possible
15. Inform users about the product characteristics
16. Test different calls to action (improve semantics)
17. Don’t use an online translation service (i.e.; Google, Prompt) use a professional agency or advertising translator
18. Clearly state the company’s value proposition in the welcome message
19. Simplify navigation structure
20. Quantify value or cost savings

2009 Online ECPM Planning Costs - U.S. General Market/Hispanic Market

Designing the Modern Agency

Once upon a time, the phrase "advertising agency" conjured up a very definite image -- one of smoked-filled rooms and mile-long conference tables, across which creative geniuses would rapid-fire pitches at one another in hopes of hitting on that one "big idea." It's the nostalgic scotch-soaked notion of the ad agency famously portrayed on the hit show "Mad Men."

But that's not the modern agency. In fact, most industry participants today would be hard-pressed to define what exactly the phrase "the modern agency" means. However, few would argue that the digital revolution has forever changed the marketing game. And it's little wonder that many of today's advertising agencies are going through an identity crisis.

Large traditional creative shops are rethinking their offerings, expanding into all things digital. Agency holding companies are restructuring to better leverage their digital resources. And all the while, new digitally focused agencies continue to spring onto the scene.

What Agency Model is working?

1. The first model is one in which a client selects one lead entity -- at either the holding company or agency level -- and grants it the power to oversee all marketing efforts and partners.
2. The second model is one in which the client itself assumes that leadership role.
3. And the third model is one in which a client hires a slew of agencies and tells them to go collaborate.

Two of the models work, and one of them absolutely does not. The third model, is destined to fail -- and yet it's the model being used most often. And that's where the fighting comes in because there is no clear mission, it's imperative from a marketer's perspective to have one throat to choke at the end of the day.

Whether it's a specialized digital agency looking to broaden its client base or a traditional agency looking to expand its offerings into the interactive realm, few industry participants dispute that much of the future growth in marketing will come on the interactive side.

In spite of the lack of available digital talent, everyone I have talked to has an open head count and is hiring. The trick is making the agency side of the marketing business attractive to candidates with the needed digital expertise.

It's not all about recruiting new digital talent to the agency side of marketing. It's also about retraining industry veterans. We have people with 15 to 25 years in the business, and they are making a choice to change and adapt into this digital culture. Smart digital agencies are the ones that are embracing these people, involving them in the process, and training and educating them. They have a lot of intangible assets, and they bring a level of talent that some of the new digital folks just aren't going to pick up on the fly.

Agencies must also find a way to clearly convey their value in an increasingly cluttered marketplace. When it comes to agencies clients are getting tired of having to listen to so many voices.

Traditional agencies see the handwriting on the wall...that they're going to be out of business if they don't jump over to digital media and digital technology. Marketers today are less likely to simply hire a traditional agency and a digital agency and then tell them to play nice together. The lines are blurring, and so are agency distinctions.

It is about being relevant and not losing a seat at the table.

To Our Brand Manager Friends: Keeping Your Marketing Budget and Your Job

Your marketing budget is an investment, not an expense…

To our marketing friends, I am writing this after a discussion with my wife. She is a marketing director and her company is looking at cutting the marketing budget. If possible, I would like a few moments with your CFO. It’s OK, I will wait while you go find him or her.

Stuck in a budget meeting? Well, maybe you could take a message:

We just want to say that something about staring at numbers all day must affect your vision, because we're hearing from our marketing brethren about shortsighted attempts to reduce company expenses by cutting the marketing budget.

Far be it from us to explain to those in offices that marketing spend is slightly different from the costs associated with the office coffee service, but let's just say your hell bent to put a dent in these "outrageous" costs for promoting your company's products and services.

We can only assume that to this belief means you'll lay off all those "money-grubbing" employees, shut down those retail outlets and then put all those savings into a nice bank CD where it can earn a staggering 5.4 percent.

Or maybe, just maybe, you don't want to do that. Maybe running a company can generate a return slightly higher than that stellar 5.4 percent and you see the value in keeping the doors open, the offices staffed.

Super, then why, do you refuse to see that what you spend on marketing is not an expense of doing business, but an investment in your business. Done properly, your marketing has an effective ROI yes, that's return on investment that generates additional revenue.

Of course, there's nothing wrong with altering your marketing mix to get the most efficient use of your dollars…that makes sense. Recent numbers show that every dollar spent on direct marketing generates $16 in revenue - three times higher than general advertising.

Cutting your marketing budget may save you $1, but it's costing you $16, on average, in revenue. So be sure to lower your revenue targets for the coming year.

Or better yet, regard this as the way you would any business investment - something you need to do for the good of your company. Oh, and while you're at it, give the members of your marketing team a bonus.

How Brands Become Part of People's Lives'

All brands can gain consumer respect. But how do you identify which elements you need to put in place to become a part of the brandthread of people’s lives’? A brand doesn't just get respect, it depends on three criteria:

Performance
Does the brand offer better quality in comparison with its competitors?
Does the brand strive constantly for innovation, improvement and flawless service?
Do you have the feeling you're getting value for money?

Trust
How trustworthy is the brand?
Can you always count on the brand?
Does the brand always meet your expectations?

Reputation
What is the brand's reputation like? Is it a leader in its category?
Is the brand honest and does it own up to any mistakes?
Does the brand operate as a “good citizen” and does it work for a better world?

For brands to become part of peoples’ lives' they need to use these life pillars (Language, Music, Fashion, Sports, Food, Family, Activities) to diffuse their message. Brands must associate with these pillars, each of which can influence one another:

Creating Interest
Are there any brand myths?
Does it have a rich tradition and history?
Does the brand make you dream?
Does the brand have a recognizable logo, symbol or icon?
How much does the brand play on the senses?

Thread of People’s Lives'
How close to its consumers can the brand get?
Is there two-way communication between the brand and the consumer?
Does the brand exhibit interest in its consumers and their individual needs?

When Targeting Multicultural Audiences

Doing It Wrong Is Worse Than Not Doing It at All
When it comes to making ads relevant for multicultural audiences, doing it wrong is worse than not doing it all.

A new study from OMD Worldwide found that ethnic groups are turned off by ads that rely on stereotypes and caricatures rather than meaningful cultural cues. "The respondents were saying, 'We want to see ourselves represented in ads, but not in a stereotypical matter,'" said Pamela Marsh, group director-primary research and insights at the Omnicom media agency.

Multicultural Consumer behavior
The OMD study, a telephone survey of 1,453 respondents 18 and older, sought to understand how ethnicity affects consumer behavior and advertising receptivity. Four different groups were represented: blacks, Asian-Americans, Hispanics and the general market (which was about 76% Caucasian in the study).

The ethnic groups agreed that messages should be culturally relevant, but they responded more positively to ads with multicultural cues, such as ethnic characters, phrases, expressions and values, than ads that were simply translations of general-market ads. "Ad relevancy is more about communicating in kind than speaking in a language," Ms. Marsh said. Cultural relevance is also important for media placement, the study said, noting that ad models created on the basis of general population statistics, such as channel planning, are likely to fall short if they do not take relevant ethnic differences into account.

How to Reach Multicultural Segments
Though all segments in the survey gravitated toward the same top four media -- TV, radio, internet and mobile -- different ethnic groups spent different amounts of time with each of them. Blacks, for instance, spent the most time with TV; Hispanics spent more time with radio; and Asians used the internet at significantly higher rates.

The study also found that black consumers place a higher premium on word-of-mouth information before making buying decisions -- particularly when seeking feedback about a product. Asian-Americans also rely heavily on word-of-mouth because they are less receptive to ads than other segments of the population, according to the study.

Marketers have a significant opportunity to influence the purchases of blacks and Hispanics, the study said, because they are more open to advertising than other groups but feel as though most marketing messages are not relevant to them.

Win Back Inactive Subscribers

A reactivation campaign can help you revitalize your list
How many email messages did you send out in your last campaign? Really? That many? Wow! Now, how many of your recipients actually opened or clicked on your email?Yeah, that's a different story. Remember that with email, size doesn't really matter. Performance is what counts, not just for your email program and its bottom line but also for your sender reputation.

A reactivation campaign is the answer here, and it's just as important as any acquisition campaign. It will help you clean out the dead wood, re-energize your list and reclaim some of the money you spent acquiring and engaging those addresses in the first place.

Why reactivation works: Your email service provider might be thrilled that you ship out millions of messages in each campaign, but you could actually hurt yourself and your sender reputation and spend money you don't have to when you send to people who never bother to open or act on your messages.

Sure, maybe they did sign up with you once upon a time. Since then, though, they abandoned those mailboxes, and you never noticed. The ISPs are noticing, and they'll treat your email accordingly.

Many use these long-dead email addresses as spam traps to monitor your list hygiene and measure your sender reputation. The dirtier your list, the more likely they'll route your email messages to the junk folder or block you.

Just by looking at your database, you can't tell which subscribers actually abandoned their mailboxes, who deletes your messages without opening them or who still is sort of interested in you but hasn't seen any reason to open.

A reactivation campaign will identify which addresses you can safely drop from your list without killing off live ones and re-establish connections with past customers. Think of it as going on a second honeymoon. Just like a tired marriage needs a spark to keep it going, your subscribers who take you for granted need a fresh, new reason to keep opening your messages.

You know you get the most action from your newest subscribers. Apply the tactics you use on them to rejuvenate the inactives on your list instead of spending more money to replace them.
Ready with the virtual flowers and candy?

First, identify your inactives. This takes a little database work. Create a separate mailing list, and add anyone who hasn't opened or clicked on a message in, say, six months or longer, to it. Send a message with a pleading subject line, such as "We miss you! Please come back!" Go ahead, grovel a little. Include a special offer or invitation to fill out a new profile or encourage them to unsubscribe once and for all.

Move any responding addresses back to your active list. Send the message again, this time saying you'll take them off your list if they don't respond in, say, a week. Then, scratch them from your list if they don't respond. It might kill you to do that, but a smaller, more vital list will do you more good than one where nobody's home anymore.

Keep everybody interested...
These tactics will keep your whole list engaged and energized:

1. Ask them what they want to get. It could be you have lots to offer, but your subscribers aren't getting what they really want. For example, if you're a book seller it may be that someone subscribed to your general list is really only interested in mysteries. Ask recipients to take control of what they want to get, and you may see renewed interest.

2. Make them an offer they can't refuse. Discounts, new products, samples and free shipping can work wonders for retailers. B2B marketers can renew interest with a special white paper or discount on a conference or webinar.

3. Incentivize! Ask users to update their profile, and give them a chance to win a big-screen TV. (iPods are, well, kind of over unless it's a really upscale one.) Be careful to keep the focus on the email, though. If the prize is too good, people will re-engage, only to click the spam button when your email actually arrives.

4. Threaten to break up. Tell subscribers if they don't click, you're going away. It's possible that your heavily texted message is in fact being read, but you can't know it because recipients don't enable the images. It's fair to say that if recipients don't let you know somehow that they're still there, still breathing, that you'll drop them from the list.

5. See what's on their minds. Simple surveys, sweetened with a little incentive (see No. 2), can help you find out what's going on. Maybe you're sending too often and they turn a deaf ear. Or, you're not coming around enough and they drift away.

6. Change your format. Are you sending long, chatty emails to people who read them on their phones and don't get down to your offer? Or, do you stuff all your content into a single large image that won't show up? Offer a text format to people who read email on alternative platforms and make it short and sweet.

The effort you spend now to wake up your list and re-engage with them will pay off in better deliverability and a higher ROI.