Archive
what’s in a hashtag?
This week I talked at #gagldn about the UNICEF #sahelNOW campaign we did earlier this year. It was an intense period where we worked hard to ‘do the basics brilliantly’ and break the media quietness around the emerging crisis in West Africa. Here’s the slides. Happy to answer questions, drop me a comment!
p.s. we all agreed you can’t do a campaign just based on a hashtag!
digital stats – integration’s worse enemy
I love digital analytics, but the perceived concreteness can lead to some tricky situations…
Unless you’re only using one channel to showcase your brand (if you are I’m intrigued to hear why!?) your audience is almost certainly seeing you in more than one place. This creates a challenge for Google Analytics and other similar tools. While its easy to generate ‘last-touch’ reporting this doesn’t give you a true sense of why someone responded.
We talk a lot about this at work. We were quite aware during our East Africa emergency activity that integrated channels and messages perform best.
So we’ve been building up our understanding of multi-touch attribution, including using tools like Ignition One. But this doesn’t help if/when you include offline in your media mix. You still can’t fully understand what the impact of the full mix is.
The tricky situation this puts you in is particularly relevant if you’re still trying to build the business case for integrating digital. Individuals can interpret last-touch reporting in terms of ROI (return on investment) on a purely channel by channel basis. This can mean investment is skewed, and integration completely overlooked.
Unless you invest in regular market research studies I’m not sure there’s a real-time answer (until we all get micro-chipped!). So next step for us will probably be considering what ‘closest guess based on historic data’ models we can devise and use.
Where are you with your attribution models? Be great to compare notes!
what does a digital first organisation look like?
I often mull over whether my digital transformation work will ever been done (in a good way), and what it will look like when we get there. I was thinking this over while scanning through a e-consultancy report on the evolution of agencies. There were a couple of role descriptions which I think go some way to painting a picture of digital first organisation structures:
‘T-shaped’ people
“staff who have a strong, vertical digital skill, but have either a breadth of experience outside of this vertical area or at least a useful level of understanding and empathy with other vertical digital channels and, notably, with traditional marketing practice and techniques.”
Chief creative technologist (More on this theme in the excellent chiefmartec blog)
“The three main areas of focus for the role are:
1. Helping the Chief Marketing Officer translate strategy into technology and vice versa
2. Choreographing data and technology across the marketing organisation
3. Infusing technology into the DNA of marketing – practices, people and culture”
I’m still undecided whether digital teams will cease to exist entirely. I certainly think there will be fewer titles with ‘digital’, ‘web’ or ‘online’ within them. Like the descriptions above, digital and non-digital staff will have more rounded skills-sets all around.
digital marketing optimisation event notes
Notes from Brand Republic event 17 April 2012
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Digital strategy
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“Understand people’s lives if you want to understand how your brand fits in #dmoevent
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“We can’t treat the online world and the real world as seperate – J Gatward, Britvic #dmoevent
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“Use 1-9-90 influence model. 1 really strong endorsers get them to influence 9 others and make those 9s feels like 1s #digitaloptimisation
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“Jonathan Gatward, Britvic UK: create hackable content for your brand #dmoevent
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I like this one a lot ‘you have to embrace complexity, it’s actual not complex anymore’ #digitaloptimisation http://twitpic.com/9atmer -
“One of the final takeouts – don’t forget to do internal marketing as well as external. It’s important for buy-in #dmoevent
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Campaign examples
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“With competitor as event ‘owner’ for Olympics, Britvic goal to own the legacy instead with ‘transform your patch’ #digitaloptimisation
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“Partners needed to take digital promises into the real world #dmoevent
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“Pepsi Super Bowl saw over half of the adverts were ‘shazamable’ with shazam tv app #digitaloptimisation cc @willlord
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“Debenhams beta with content network audience retargeted using tracking on brand site, 1month 3k sales #dmoevent
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“MediaCom rep in audience says ‘t in the park’ press ad with aurasma worked really well due to video rich content link #dmoevent
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“Aurasma – results very small but can get very good PR (Debenhams experience) #dmoevent
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EA campaign…
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“Waterloo takeover by battlefield 3: 17 sites, some posters started to get stolen. That’s a great KPI!! #dmoevent
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“4k downloads from QR code, Wifi (90% of downloads) NFC in the 2 week campaign #dmoevent
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“Over 9k interactions, over 900 email addresses collected from an interactive digital 6sheet display in cinemas #dmoevent
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“Digital out of home learnings – wifi 92% of interactions and consumers still getting used to the approach #dmoevent
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Search – PPC & SEO
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“86% using mobile search while watching TV, debenhams see peak for apps around 10pm. Parts of day strategy important #dmoevent
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Debenhams using hydra platform to integrate PPC and SEO activity, but only a week in at mo #dmoevent http://twitpic.com/9atw8o -
“J Stephenson, Debenhams. Paid Search Mob Stgy: separate mob campaigns on tablets and mobiles for more control and better targeting #dmoevent
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Email
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“When and whe emails are checked makes a big difference – optimise for this #dmoevent
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“Progressive disclosure using CSS to include expandable areas in emails can help – works on most devices #dmoevent cc @teminamoledina
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“Open rate significantly improved by using social info in subject line eg ‘share with your 123 friends’ #dmoevent cc @teminamoledina
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“Optimise for snippets- gmail and outlook summary that appears before open. Use gif with alt being tagline #dmoevent
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“Segment by most responsive and target them with a social campaign to help optimise a launch #dmoevent
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“You can download the @BrandRepublic event slides by @marcmunier on email marketing here – ow.ly/akzAQ #dmoevent
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Mobile
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““Mobile technology changes so fast. Be aware, but check whether it is relevant to you” @bansahaUK #dmoevent
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“80% of ftse100 companies do not have mobile sites & 65% fail to use device detection #dmoevent
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“Get that @magusblog report about FTSE 100 mobile websites here: magus.co.uk/knowledgebase/… #dmoevent
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““Companies that optimise their mobile sites outperform those that don’t by 80pc” Tom Golden Magus #dmoevent
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“Responsive web design not widely adopted at all – tech challenges still a barrier at mo but this does seem to be the future #dmoevent
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Most #mobile sites are full of #usability errors #dmoevent #ux http://twitpic.com/9audwu -
“BMI baby being taken to court by @RNIB for #mobile website lack of #accessibility #dmoevent #ux
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Social media and insights
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“We’re speaking after lunch at #dmoevent on turning social data into social insight. Find out more about our thinking: (http://bit.ly/ztKbI1)
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“Value in social media is in the insights it gives into customers thinking #dmoevent
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When you make a promise always deliver on it. The effect of not is amplified through social like BA eg #dmoevent http://twitpic.com/9awicv -
“Pre-TV buzz is created by a digital debut – and TV debut is amplified by this #dmoevent
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RT @spirals: Sum up – use insight to plan, optimise, create .. #dmoevent http://twitpic.com/9awjmx -
Video
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“Not about keeping people in a single environment anymore. It’s about streamlining the experience for the user #dmoevent #ux
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“Successful video strategy is based on views, consumer engagement, and finding your video dubbed into Russian! #dmoevent
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“Exclusive video content might be all you need to make an audience feel valued #dmoevent
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And just for the heck of it – a few comments from the twittersphere…
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“@ActonPies @brandrepublic seems it went well – liking the skysports twitch pick up #DMOevent #PWNEDonwardsandupwards
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“So I think that went alright – lot of fun. Thank for having me @BrandRepublic #DMOevent
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“@ActonPies great energy presentation at @brandrepublic #dmoevent really enjoyed it!
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“Seeing nothing but positive comments for @marcmunier ‘s presentation at the #dmoevent – nice work! @pure360 #emailmarketing
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“At the Digital Marketing Optimisation event in London. Some interesting insights into digital and it’s future #DMOevent
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#dmoevent
social media week 2012 – my take outs
This is the first year I’ve actually managed to attend some social media week events in person. I even co-organised one too (Barcampnfp here’s my earlier blog post). I’ve got a few ideas for future posts and discussions but here are a few key take-outs rattling around in my brain.
Strategy & management
- Global organisations (all?) face challenges around Local Vs Global knowledge and leadership.
- Having a global resource to ‘mine’ and share any locally created assets is a valuable investment.
- Local teams should be trusted to understand their market, global teams should not dictate an approach.
- Be brilliant at the basics.
- Digital ownership challenges still exist. Digital intersects with many areas but specialists don’t always get the appropriate level of input or influence.
- ‘Social Media’ is a fad, it will just be a normal communication method soon. Think ‘make your media social’ instead.
- Open data is something the charity sector needs to explore, it could save money and increase impact.
Engagement in social media
- It’s easier to ‘ride a meme‘ than to create one.
- Don’t think about campaigns, think about relationships.
- Quality over quantity counts with influencer engagement; niche and upcoming Vs broad and established – choose wisely.
- Global org’s see significant difference in engagement style and tactics by market.
- For games – Females want to collaborate, Males want to compete.
- Human behaviour hasn’t changed, just expectations and the medium.
Stats and measurement
- Telemarketing wasn’t measurable when it started. Social media is already more measurable relative to its age.
- 95% of facebook traffic is to the news feed, only 5% of people return to a brand page after their first ‘like’.
- Sponsorship pages that are connected to facebook get higher conversion, 40% Vs 7%.
- Justgiving see £6 return for each facebook share.
Please feel free to add your amends, key take-outs or thoughts in the comments 
reducing your bounce rate
This week I was pleasantly surprised by an old blog post on charity bounce rates getting picked up. It sparked a conversation with @charitychap and @LondonKirsty about reducing your website bounce rate that I thought worth elaborating on.
Having assumed a view on average bounce rate for charity websites from my old post. We all agreed the key challenge is that measuring your bounce rate might be easy (and is critical) but it’s harder to know how to reduce it apart from following the generic tips out there. The conversation got me thinking about the analysis we started to consider in my last job.
We got to the stage of considering how best to segment our view of bounce rate. This came from the recognition that taking a site wide view of bounce rate might work for some websites which have a single purpose, but many charity websites have multiple purposes and so a single view isn’t good enough.
This means a good definition of your key audience groups and their goals is very important. Along with recognising that goals may vary by personal circumstance and time of year. For example, for health charities there is a clear ‘patient pathway’ view that can be taken – from diagnosis, through treatment, to recovery, and often to maintenance.
But how exactly can you take a segmented audience view of bounce rate without requiring all of your users to be logged in or personally identifiable? Well – we didn’t find a concrete answer to this. But here are some ideas:
- Use your content as an approximation of the audience; look at bounce rate by section rather than site wide and make assumptions about the audience consuming that particular section and how you might cross-sell or up-sell to that group.
- Use the traffic referral source as an approximation of the audience; look at bounce rate segmented by traffic source and see where you can make assumptions about the audience based on this eg those from BBC Vs The Sun, Google Vs Bing are different demographics.
- Segment those that don’t bounce from those that do; these are two high level segments that could shed some light on things when looked at within a content section.
Finally, of course, the best way to reduce bounce rate is to test, test and test again. I’m not sure enough testing of the ‘bread-and-butter’ online activity happens in charities. But the surest way to find out what improves your bounce rate is to test variations and find the winning combination until you start to spot potential to improve further.
own a colour UNICEF case study
I recently spoke @nfptweetup with Max (and help from Yvette) about the UNICEF own a colour project. Here’s the slides for anyone interested.
To see with speaker notes please view here and use the ‘actions’ option.
maximising mobile marketing – @Brandrepublic conference
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“#brmobile over 1billion in bets through mobile says @betfair speaker – people using dead time
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First speaker… Comscore
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“40% consumers use mobile when see an interesting ad – even if not a mobile ad #brmobile
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“10% of UK smartphone users (4.7m) accessing mobile banking now #brmobile
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“Don’t forget SMS – it can give significant response 1.9mil out of 19.9mil #brmobile
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“July 2011- 2.9mil scanned a QR code – mostly for product discovery #brmobile
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“3 takeaways from comescore-1.Mobile growing rapidly 2.consider carefully the audience you want to reach 3. don’t get left behind #brmobile
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Next speaker… Expedia
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“80% of apps less than 1000 downloads (consumer healthcare). Less than 1% branded apps pass 1mill downloads #brmobile (Deloitte research)
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“. @expedia decided not to silo mobile with a specific mobile person. Had mobile champions but integrated into core business #brmobile
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“4mil monthly mobile visitors to @expedia mobile, and it’s not cannabalising website bookings #brmobile
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Top tips for creating a mobile experience from @expedia #brmobile http://lockerz.com/s/154325602
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“Community/ gaming layer, local immediacy layer, social layer, self-service layer – the components of @expedia mobile experience #brmobile
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Next speaker… Weber Shandwick
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“Intent vs Content: @jamesdotwarren discusses the results of WS’s #smartmarketing report at #MaximisingMobileMarketing conference #brmobile
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“Mobile mkg = teenage s*x. lots of talk, not much doing, and if doing the doing is not good. #brmobile
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“44% of people feel naked without their smartphone. 36% changing way think and interact with products and services #brmobile
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“Search lifecycle- desktop 30day journey search to purchase, 1hour on mobile! #brmobile
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Next speaker… Sky
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“Sky have over 1m people viewing live tv via mobile devices every month #brmobile #skygo
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“23% of online time is spent on mobile. If you work in digital you should spend at least this on mobile too #brmobile
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“3 screen strategy is core @sky. From content build through to advertising – becoming agnostic to a degree #brmobile
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“‘integrated marketing is the output of an integrated business’ Tim Hussain, Sky #brmobile
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“Ultimately it’s still about single consumer view. Just multiethnic touch points and screens #brmobile
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“Mobile USP to a campaign- it’s personal, it’s a second shadow (always there), it’s immediate, it’s feature rich #brmobile
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Next speaker… Autotrader
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“Used 4m mkg strategy- Mindset:test,learn,iterate. Method:awareness,education,trial. Mix:mobile,ATL,partners,autotrader. Msg. #brmobile
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“Bounce increased by 20% when off season. They hit saturation with their activity. Too much share of voice #brmobile
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Maturing the mobile strategy from autotrader #brmobile http://lockerz.com/s/154340838
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“300k year 1, 500k year 2, 1mil year 3, next years target is 2mil mobile users of autotrader #brmobile
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Next speaker… Pizza Express
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“Now up- pizza express: In oct 27% of all traffic to pizza express sites came from mobile #brmobile
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“Optimising for mobile search by creating restaurant pages for local sites. To avoid bouncing people into a location search #brmobile
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Next up a panel discussion
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“panel with @nicholascumisky – says don’t forget Nokia is still biggest handset producer #brmobile
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“French connection fail – build an app before a m.site and it didn’t work. So now building one. Doh! They needed proper analytics! #brmobile
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“HTML5 offering new innovations. Yodel mobile working on an interactive ad unit for the reader Kobo #brmobile
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“Unilever lynx case study means they now see mobile as a horizontal not just an add-on. They ask how mobile can extend the story #brmobile
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“3G vs 4g question is diluted by fact that huge amount of mobile connectivity is via wifi. Cloud is on the rise instead of apps #brmobile
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“By 2015 estimated 1.5bil mobiles will have NFC built in. Perhaps some will be dormant – but it’ll be there #brmobile
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Next speaker… Debenhams
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How @debenhams see mobile in their business strategy #brmobile http://lockerz.com/s/154371429
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“mobile providing link between channels as always on @debenhams #brmobile
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“700k downloads, £3mil sales, over 1/3 use @debenhams app repeat times #brmobile
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“Use push notifications when people close to store – result in 67% app open #brmobile
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Next speaker… WWF
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“Goal to increase fundraising by £1mil so @wwf targeting countries where mobile already surpassed desktop use #brmobile
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. @wwf sms conversion case study – Austria 2007 #brmobile http://lockerz.com/s/154377697
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Text num on @wwf street team shirt low rsp but ‘text facing’ good #brmobile < note @UNICEF_uk pic http://lockerz.com/s/154379603 http://lockerz.com/s/154379620
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Next speaker… FT.com
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“Mobile users 20% of FT traffic, 30% page views from mobile. Overall 4mil reg users, 250k subscribers #brmobile
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“15% of subscriptions direct from mobile. Mobile users twice as likely to consume content at wkds #brmobile
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“Last year FT kept launching apps in response to market. But not sustainable. And then apple changed subscription payment journey #brmobile
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“So took a risk – June launch of HTML5 site – within a week 100k downloads so removed apps from iTunes #brmobile
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“Big marketing benefit – can send people straight to content in web app. Not to an iTunes download page #brmobile
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Next speaker… Visit Britain
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“First Mobile @visitbritain app in 2008. Too expensive but learnt. 2009 next app learnt need PR to have app found. #brmobile
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“Found more success by tying in mobile to bigger picture – overall digital and marketing strategy rather than just a silo app #brmobile
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“Love UK @visitbritain app used Facebook places. Users 50% more likely to buy and 20% had bigger basket value #brmobile
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Last speaker… Barclays
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Mobile payments and services @barclays #brmobile http://lockerz.com/s/154395549
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“Big challenge is awareness and education about mobile payment options #brmobile
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“Digital wallet is not just a replacement of physical wallet-bump you phone to share money-identification is key #brmobile
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Mobile wallet should do more than your usual wallet – @barclays ideas here #brmobile http://lockerz.com/s/154397648
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Parting thoughts …
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“Fair to say native apps haven’t fared well at todays #BRMobile conf- scope for them certainly- but mobile internet has more potential
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“#smartmarketing #brmobile ROI anyone? 80% of branded apps get less than 1k downloads
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“Great loyalty case studies on Starbucks and Pizza Express. Shows what can be done with mobile loyalty. #brmobile
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“Very thought provoking day at #brmobile mobile marketing conference. Glad to see we’re not alone in our barriers
what should your bounce rate be?
I’ve been pondering bounce rate. Bounce rate is when someone visits your site but then quickly exits without clicking into any other page. It’s natural to aim for the lowest bounce rate possible. Low bounce rate generally means a more engaged audience.
At the British Heart Foundation our bounce rate is currently around 40%. But this has been playing on my mind since a committee member from a well known commercial brand said they thought it was high. What should charities be aiming for? and is it really a bad thing to have a higher bounce rate? why might commercial and charity sectors differ?
According to my quick twitter poll 40% is similar to other charities, one person even said for their health professional information bounce rate is more like 100%. Taking a quick sweep of the internet – advice seems to be that 40% – 65% is an acceptable average range.
But having a high bounce rate can’t always be a bad thing. There are some cases when you probably want people to leave your website right away – say when you have some sort of affinity deal with a corporate partner, or if you’re signposting to another charity who offers services you don’t, or serve an audience you don’t support.
So why would commercial and charity sectors differ (if they do)? Well perhaps people who go to commercial brands are generally looking to build their trust in the brand a little bit more than they might be on a charity site. Or maybe commercial sites are not designed to meet people’s goals quite so well / quickly.
I’d be really interested to hear other people’s thoughts and any additional bounce rate benchmarks anyone is willing to share.
One thing’s for sure – if you’re not monitoring your bounce rate, you should be!
