With all the hype around social media and social media marketing, it seems that E-mail marketing isn’t really used. However, after class yesterday with our guest lecturer, Stefan Lorimer, I realised that E-mail marketing is still a crucial part of a business. The reason E-mail is still such a large part of marketing is because 91% of consumers still use E-mail. According to an article by McKinsey & Company titled “Email Marketing: Think Inside the New Inbox“, email conversion rates are estimated to be around three times higher than social media conversion rates.

This graph shows how much time consumers spend on different communication activities. It  shows that email has the highest proportion over the years.

Adding to that is the following graph, which shows that as far as e-commerce is concerned, E-mail is a far more effective customer acquisition channel.

Since E-mail marketing is such a vital component of marketing, marketers need to focus on not just the click rate. There are other aspects which they need to focus on according to the article to have this form of marketing be successful.

One way marketers can make the E-mail channel successful is through focusing on the entire journey or process, rather than just focusing on the click-through rate, as it is only the first step in the consumer decision journey according to the article. This is because E-mails are a series of interactions between the brand and the consumer. Having identified the correct landing pages for consumers based on their interests can increase the conversion rate. Having a more customised and personal email allows for consumers to relate to the brand, and form a relationship, going further in the consumer decision journey.

There are various other steps marketers can take to ensure their E-mail marketing campaign is successful. The article describes these in detail. However, this blog shows a snapshot of E-mail marketing and how it is still an important and large part of marketing activities today.

Community forums have become a great way for consumers to ask questions, voice their opinions, help other consumers, and just learn more about the brands and their products. Community forums have become an essential part of a brand’s website and provide companies with an advantage over their rivals. There are many advantages of having community forums, some of which I will discuss in this post.

Through well-developed and popular community forums, brands can significantly reduce their customer service costs. This is one of the biggest advantages of having an online discussion forum. Community forums allow for other users, whom may be more experienced, to provide help to others on the forum with questions or concerns. By helping others online and by answering their questions, the experienced consumers can get some sort of status on the forum, something similar to badges on FourSquare. This now creates this “gamification” aspect within the site. By doing so, consumers are more willing to give advice, answer questions, and help users. A great example of this is Apple’s community forum, where most questions or concerns regarding products get answered by other users on the discussion forum. It reduces customer service costs because Apple doesn’t need to have many call centres operating to answer basic questions. This is where the major costs savings take place.

The second advantage of community forums is that it helps foster and build brand loyalty. While it is true that a product plays a large role in that, the services offered by a company, whether offline or online, also play a role. A brand that has a well-developed community forum fosters brand loyalty because many customers are inclined on not leaving the brand for another, as they know they can always get help from the online forums without having to wait on the phone for hours trying to speak to a customer service representative. Thus, customers are less likely to leave the company. A great example of this is Apple.

While many more advantages exist, these two are the most important advantages as they help foster brand loyalty and assist brands increase their bottom line.

Consumers already view businesses in a negative sense. They see them as a group only focused on profits and increasing its bottom line. Trust is a very important aspect of business. Successful businesses have established a level of trust with their consumers. These businesses have created a loyal customer base and following. Factors discussed below allow for businesses to develop a trusting relationship with their consumers. These were posted Seth’s blogs.

According to Seth’s blog, word-of-mouth is a big factor in establishing trust. What we hear from our friends, peers, family members, and others really shapes how we perceive the brand. If we hear good things, we tend to search or look into the brand and its products. If we hear bad things, we immediately decide to shun the product, without doing any research for ourselves. That is how big of an influence word-of-mouth has on a brand.

Additionally, Seth mentions social metric or ranking as another way customers start to trust a brand. A person is more likely to trust a brand if it shows up within the first page of a Google search, than they are if a brand were to show up in the fourth or fifth pages.

The last thing I will discuss in this blog is the offer a brand is making. If the offer is attractive for a consumer, they are more likely to trust the brand rather than an offer that is not appealing to the customer. An attractive offer hooks them in and once this is done, a customer moves through the consumer decision journey, learning more about the brand as it moves through the consumer decision journey.

Increasing sales is directly tied to brand loyalty and the value a brand places on its customers. Both these variables can be increased using social media. An article by Lousie Julig on Social Media Examiner examines how a Winery used social media to increase sales and brand loyalty.

Whitehall Lane is a 20-year-old winery located in Napa Valley. Using social media they have increase brand loyalty and there by sales. The social media channels they have are a website, a blog, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest. Wineries face challenges in promoting or using social media to advertise their products as they are regulated by the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau, TTB. The regulations disallow wineries to run contests in which they will be giving away wine, as well as they limit user-generated content as it may promote irresponsible drinking. However, through the following ways, Whitehall has been able to achieve significant results, such as increasing wine club member sales by 39% in September 2012 to September 2013:

• Partnering with complementary brands, such as companies that sell wine glass and partnering with them to run contests

• Rewarding loyal fans and focusing on quality and conversation
• Use twitter to educate their fans about wine and giving tips on pairing wine and food

Throughout this term, these were all tools we learned about in order to create value for brands using social media. The Whitehall Lane winery has served as a case study to demonstrate and explain such topics.

On November 7, 2013, Twitter finally went public, with the stock closing at $44.90 on the first day.  This post discusses why Twitter has become such a valuable channel over the years.

Social Media is now playing an ever-increasing role in business. According to Alyson, a blogger on Nimble, Twitter has taken a “Center Stage as a Social Business Worktool”. For many reasons, twitter serves as a great tool for business to connect with their customers and get their brand message across. As Alyson mentions, on Twitter, companies can act quickly, naturally, and casually.  It is an informal way to talk to consumers, sending them reminders, quickly and efficiently.

Additionally, twitter allows for businesses to effectively monitor the problems or negative word-of-mouth and be able to quickly respond to them. This ensures that timely and effective measures are taken to control any issues so that they don’t further effect the brand in a negative way.

Moreover, through twitter, brands can create relationships and partner up with other businesses to grow their business or to create or change their existing brand image. For example, a brand can associate or partner itself and build a relationship with a company specialising in ethical and sustainable practices through twitter to change perceptions about its brand.

There are many more aspects to this topic, however, the major aspects have been discussed in this blog.

The following video explains Twitter’s revenue model and I have shared this because it firstly shows how important of a marketing tool Twitter has become and also because there are aspects of the video that show how businesses interact using Twitter.