Archive for September, 2011
Four ways to avoid Social Media fails
This month, Adestra’s Parry Malm featured in the InPublishing Knowledge Bank. His article “Four ways to avoid Social Media fails”, gives you four social media ‘bullets’ so you can drive your marketing objectives on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.
Parry says “Publishers are becoming increasingly active in the social media space, but a lot of the activity is unfocused and unlikely to lead to long term profitability.”
“Social media is like gold rush time in the Wild West, with everyone trying to make a fast buck. There are loads of cowboys and cowgirls rushing to them there hills looking for gold, but, despite much effort, the only people really making money are those selling pickaxes and gold pans.”
With social media being the focus of many publishers, this article covers the exponential growth of this channel, how to improve and measure activity and Return on Investment, plus how to integrate with your email marketing to deliver an effective multi-channel communication strategy.
Specifically, it looks at: the fallacy of activism; the importance of integration; the realities of ownership; and the methodology of ROI measurement.
You can read the full article on the InPublishing website here >
Mistakes happen – but it is how you deal with the mistake that matters
Mistakes happen; everyone makes them occasionally, it’s inevitable when there is human involvement. But it’s how you deal with the mistakes that matters. Below are some steps that you should consider when dealing with the problem:
Firstly decide how bad things are:
You need to gauge the scale of situation and what impact the mistake is likely to have had.
Ask yourself the following questions:
1. How many has the mistake affected? E.g. Size of list, previous engagement of particular recipients etc.
2. What are financial implications? E.g. Was the wrong price / discount offered?
3. Was the customer experience affected? E.g. Did the recipient receive more than one email? Did it contain the wrong links?
4. How was your reputation affected? E.g. Increased number of unsubscribes / complaints, negative feedback on social networks etc.
Once you know exactly what has been affected make sure all relevant departments within the organisation are informed of the situation.
Secondly decide how you are going to respond:
Depending on the type of mistake made, a different response will be needed. Here are a two scenarios:
Financial mistake:
If it is a price you can’t honour, work out what you can offer in order to make up for the mistake.
Incorrect information:
If the email went out with the wrong link you can now amend this post send within MessageFocus. Read Jim’s MessageFocus fixes to find out how, or contact the Message Focus Support team for assistance. Remember if the link has already been clicked on by a number of recipients you need to deal with them slightly differently. You can re-send the campaign to these recipients using MessageFocus’s filter tool, with the correct link apologising for the mistake and any frustration caused. Ensure any response reflects your brands tone.
*Remember timing is everything
The speed of the response is key in order to minimize the impact, however ensure it is accurate! You do not want to have to send out a second apology email. Also monitor all communication channels not just email, if people have been complaining on your social media sites due to the mistake, ensure to issue an apology on here as well.
Lastly, make sure it doesn’t happen again:
Learn from your past mistakes. Figure out how the mistake happened in the first place. Was it due to lack of communication? Or perhaps lack of process? Always ensure that you have an approval process in place. Adestra’s MessageFocus Approval System allows for the sign off process of email campaigns to be controlled and recorded reducing the risk of mistakes happening. You’ll be able to send a copy of the email as the recipient would receive it to a group of stakeholders for approval. Stakeholders can then send feedback which is collated in MessageFocus ready for the creator to amend. You can also set a campaign to launch only on approval of all stakeholders ensuring that a campaign will never be launched unless everybody approves.
For more information on the MessageFocus Approval System click here or to email us about it click here. And don’t forget the MessageFocus Support Team are always on hand to check your campaigns if you are unsure about anything or just need a second pair of eyes.
Jenna Lovell
Account Manager
MessageFocus Help Documentation
Over the last few months, our documentation manager Steph has been working with the development team to refresh all of the help documentation for the new MessageFocus.
I am pleased to announce that you can now access this new documentation directly from within your MessageFocus account, providing you with another way of getting help that complements our existing client service and training departments.
Accessing help documentation
Where documentation is available, you can get help on the feature you are using by the links at the top right-hand side of the page. Alternatively, you can use the ‘MessageFocus Help’ link in the sidebar, which will take you to a page where you can find out more about getting help, and access documentation on other parts of MessageFocus.
Contextual Help Links
Clicking either of these links will open a new window, enabling you to continue working while referencing the help documentation.
MessageFocus Help
Over the coming months we’ll continue to expand on this documentation. If there’s an area of the product that you would like us to provide more detailed documentation on, or you have any feedback, please get in touch.
There are lots of benefits to using the new version of MessageFocus, such as split testing, content preview and social sharing, all of which now are completely documented, so if you haven’t done so already, login and give it a try.
Carl Chambers
Development
Four ways to avoid Social Media fails
This month, Adestra’s Parry Malm featured in the InPublishing Knowledge Bank. His article “Four ways to avoid Social Media fails”, gives you four social media ‘bullets’ so you can drive your marketing objectives on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.
Parry says “Publishers are becoming increasingly active in the social media space, but a lot of the activity is unfocused and unlikely to lead to long term profitability.”
“Social media is like gold rush time in the Wild West, with everyone trying to make a fast buck. There are loads of cowboys and cowgirls rushing to them there hills looking for gold, but, despite much effort, the only people really making money are those selling pickaxes and gold pans.”
With social media being the focus of many publishers, this article covers the exponential growth of this channel, how to improve and measure activity and Return on Investment, plus how to integrate with your email marketing to deliver an effective multi-channel communication strategy.
Specifically, it looks at: the fallacy of activism; the importance of integration; the realities of ownership; and the methodology of ROI measurement.
You can read the full article on the InPublishing website here >
Mistakes happen – but it is how you deal with the mistake that matters
Mistakes happen; everyone makes them occasionally, it’s inevitable when there is human involvement. But it’s how you deal with the mistakes that matters. Below are some steps that you should consider when dealing with the problem:
Firstly decide how bad things are:
You need to gauge the scale of situation and what impact the mistake is likely to have had.
Ask yourself the following questions:
- 1. How many has the mistake affected? E.g. Size of list, previous engagement of particular recipients etc.
- 2. What are financial implications? E.g. Was the wrong price / discount offered?
- 3. Was the customer experience affected? E.g. Did the recipient receive more than one email? Did it contain the wrong links?
- 4. How was your reputation affected? E.g. Increased number of unsubscribes / complaints, negative feedback on social networks etc.
Once you know exactly what has been affected make sure all relevant departments within the organisation are informed of the situation.
Secondly decide how you are going to respond:
Depending on the type of mistake made, a different response will be needed. Here are a two scenarios:
Financial mistake:
If it is a price you can’t honour, work out what you can offer in order to make up for the mistake.
Incorrect information:
If the email went out with the wrong link you can now amend this post send within MessageFocus. Read Jim’s MessageFocus fixes to find out how, or contact the Message Focus Support team for assistance. Remember if the link has already been clicked on by a number of recipients you need to deal with them slightly differently. You can re-send the campaign to these recipients using MessageFocus’s filter tool, with the correct link apologising for the mistake and any frustration caused. Ensure any response reflects your brands tone.
*Remember timing is everything
The speed of the response is key in order to minimize the impact, however ensure it is accurate! You do not want to have to send out a second apology email. Also monitor all communication channels not just email, if people have been complaining on your social media sites due to the mistake, ensure to issue an apology on here as well.
Lastly, make sure it doesn’t happen again:
Learn from your past mistakes. Figure out how the mistake happened in the first place. Was it due to lack of communication? Or perhaps lack of process? Always ensure that you have an approval process in place. Adestra’s MessageFocus Approval System allows for the sign off process of email campaigns to be controlled and recorded reducing the risk of mistakes happening. You’ll be able to send a copy of the email as the recipient would receive it to a group of stakeholders for approval. Stakeholders can then send feedback which is collated in MessageFocus ready for the creator to amend. You can also set a campaign to launch only on approval of all stakeholders ensuring that a campaign will never be launched unless everybody approves.
For more information on the MessageFocus Approval System click here or to email us about it click here. And don’t forget the MessageFocus Support Team are always on hand to check your campaigns if you are unsure about anything or just need a second pair of eyes.
Jenna Lovell
Account Manager
MessageFocus Help Documentation
Over the last few months, our documentation manager Steph has been working with the development team to refresh all of the help documentation for the new MessageFocus.
I am pleased to announce that you can now access this new documentation directly from within your MessageFocus account, providing you with another way of getting help that complements our existing client service and training departments.
Accessing help documentation
Where documentation is available, you can get help on the feature you are using by the links at the top right-hand side of the page. Alternatively, you can use the ‘MessageFocus Help’ link in the sidebar, which will take you to a page where you can find out more about getting help, and access documentation on other parts of MessageFocus.
Contextual Help Links
Clicking either of these links will open a new window, enabling you to continue working while referencing the help documentation.
MessageFocus Help
Over the coming months we’ll continue to expand on this documentation. If there’s an area of the product that you would like us to provide more detailed documentation on, or you have any feedback, please get in touch.
There are lots of benefits to using the new version of MessageFocus, such as split testing, content preview and social sharing, all of which now are completely documented, so if you haven’t done so already, login and give it a try.
Carl Chambers
Development