FreshNetworks Blog

Yesterday I attended an email marketing roundtable hosted by Econsultancy. Having a social media agency’s perspective gave me a good opportunity to learn how email marketers currently view social media, as the new communication channel was discussed frequently.

Email has a well established track record of delivering ROI, whereas discussions continue in terms of social media’s value. However, information offered by Econsultancy and Adestra from their 2011 email marketing industry census suggests that there are opportunities for the two channels to integrate further:

• 72% of the companies surveyed by Econsultancy did not measure how email marketing impacted social media activity (just 1% responded that they use sophisticated measurement)
• At present under a quarter of companies (23%) say their email is currently well integrated with CRM data.The future of email will involve further development of integration with web analytics and social media data.

In addition to Econsultancy’s findings, interesting opinions and findings were shared in the discussion:

• The extremely personal nature of an inbox is significant, and email marketers have to offer something of value in order to maintain access to it.
• The proportion of emails that are opened on mobile devices varies from 2-20%, which tends to be affected by industry (publishing was cited as an example of the higher end) – as the number of people using mobile devices to access social media grows, perhaps we can expect further convergence of email and social messages in a mobile-optimised format.
• One suggestion is to use email to send a digest of a brand’s social media activity – offering a summary of the week’s most interesting blog posts, tweets and Facebook activity might catch the attention of people who do not have the time to constantly follow a variety of social channels, and might give a reminder to visit.

It is understandable that social media skeptics will hold email marketing close to their hearts – it has a solid history of delivering results, and is relatively simple to track – whereas the new kid on the block remains elusive in both these areas. In my opinion, social media and email are not mutually exclusive – those who learn to implement both in a strategic  and integrated manner will learn and communicate far more effectively than those who treat both channels separately.

With Dual-screen viewing on the rise, brands need to tap in to increasing consumer demand for interacting on computers, tablets and mobile devices while watching TV.

Thinkbox, the marketing body for commercial TV in the UK, recently conducted a survey of 3,000 consumers and found that:

• 60% of people concurrently watch TV and go online at least two or three times a week.
• 37% go online while watching TV every day.
• 44% use social networks, like Facebook and Twitter, while watching TV.
• 37% have chatted online about TV content.
• 19% have shared TV content on a social network.

Heineken has already rolled out a global initiative to enable people to interact wih each other online while watching Champions League football. And with brands like Expedia looking to invest in multi-screen marketing (according to EMEA Senior Marketing Director Andrew Warner), there is a need for brands to become less siloed in their thinking and start moving from traditional media models to multi-screen, multi-platform marketing.

So how can brands take the first step into the dual screen arena?

It doesn’t have to be as extravagant or wide-reaching as Heineken. Developing a social media strategy that ties in with other forms of advertising will help engage an audience across multiple channels and across multiple mediums. Keeping ideas simple – depending on your brand, a forum or a basic game could be enough to encourage engagement.

Whatever your marketing and advertising plans, with the rise of smartphone and tablet users, brands need to consider how they will create a more social experience to TV viewing.

So far in our social business blog post series we’ve looked at defining the term ‘social business‘, as well as examining three examples of multinationals who are implementing it.

To make it easier to start thinking more about social business, here are four steps that can help ease a company’s transition from being social media users to a full social business.

1. Put people first – not tools

Social media may still have a somewhat intimidating air of the unknown about it for some businesses. It’s important not to forget the fundamental element is in the word “social”: communication and forging relationships is the key -  something that any successful business should already be familiar with.

2. Evaluate the structure of your organisation

An evaluation of how the company is structured for social media use is a good starting point. While social business offer cross-silo communication and collaboration, issues may remain  over the “ownership” or “control” of the channels. In practical terms, the technology should be owned and maintained by IT, but departments should own their own processes. However these processes should be standardised across the business as a whole to ensure best practice and maximum return from social media.

3. Start small and build momentum naturally

The scalability of social business is one of its best assets. Running pilot schemes allows flexibility and opportunity for tools and practices to be evaluated properly. Internal early adopters turned evangelists will be able to demonstrate the real value of social business to colleagues.

4. Educate your workforce

Applying social business will come naturally to some, but for many the change in process and practice may be overwhelming. Social business requires a change in company culture as much as it does technology, and so guidance and education is important to ensure successful, company-wide adoption. Use evangelists to energise the company and demonstrate the benefits of social business to encourage word-of-mouth to spread the message, but dedicated training is a worthwhile investment to ensure a consistent adoption across the board.

Courtesy of the National Trust

Most Facebook users will have heard of FarmVille, one of the most popular games on the social network, with almost 47 million monthly active users. And as social gaming has a massive following in the UK,  it’s interesting to hear that the National Trust have launched a real life interpretation of the popular FarmVille game.

The project, called MyFarm, hands over control of the real-life Wimpole Estate to online users, who then vote on all major decisions about running the farm. It’s worth noting that while membership is open to anyone, it costs £30 to sign up for a year, perhaps as a way of ensuring a level of commitment from members.

As the experiment aims to improve education about food-sourcing, their is the potential for families and schools to join in the debate. The project will accept up to 10,000 “farmers” and is actively driving recruitment through Facebook and Twitter.

It seems that MyFarm aims to eventually become an online community as the site has been seeded with blog content and they are using a community manager to liaise between the virtual and real life farmers. Discussions will be held after voting to reflect on how and why a decision was made, and at least one major decision is expected to be voted on per month. There is already a promising amount of high quality video content available, and I hope that be more produced as a great way of giving engaging feedback to the farmers, as well as showing how their online decisions have affected the real world.

While the site includes The National Trust branding in the main banner of the site, the call to action for signing up to the National Trust is featured well below the fold of the website-potentially a wasted opportunity to promote membership to the main charity. Perhaps it has been designed this way to reduce diversion from the primary aim of signing on farmers.

The first vote will open on May 26th and the National Trust aims to reach 10,000 farmers within 3 months. I hope that they are successful in reaching this goal, as the experimental and educational value of this project is exciting and it will be worth keeping an eye on to see how things develop.

In what appears to be a David and Goliath style encounter through  social media, Colliers Powerful Welsh Cheddar,  a strong-tasting cheese that’s part of the Fayrefield Group,  is trying to mobilise shoppers to lobby supermarket giant Sainsbury’s into re-stocking the brand following its delisting.

Collier’s  Cheddar became the first victim of a branded category range ­review by Sainsbury’s back in March.

The delisting itself came to light following an enquiry on Sainsbury’s Facebook page from a user calling themselves “Beer Kat”. Beer Kat asked about the missing cheese and Sainsbury’s responded – “Hi Beer Kat, this product has been discontinued. I’ll send a product request to our buyers to stock again.”

As the cheese is yet to be restocked, Collier’s Cheddar are now using Twitter and Facebook to get consumers to respond to the delisting by opening up the floor to their customers saying  “We’d like to hear your thoughts…your opinion counts”.

Collier’s tactics on Facebook and Twitter seem to be to get customers to comment on where they will be buying their cheese now Sainsbury’s don’t stock it (“Oh no! I only shop at Sainsbury’s beause they stock Colliers. Looks like I’ll now be a Morrisons customer”). Comments and interaction is fairly low – nothing that couldn’t be sorted out with a well-thought out engagement strategy – but statements have been quite powerful so far.

Before the rise of social media a lot of this kind of lobbying would’ve been done via letters or email protest, with the odd complaint in-store. Nowadays it seems that even smaller brands and businesses feel comfortable tackling the big guns online and in public view, hoping that word-of-mouth will spread about their cause.

At the moment is seems that Sainsbury’s don’t have too much to worry about. But this could all change depending on the way Collier’s Cheese choose to manage future engagement with their audience. If they play their cards right they could get enough impetus to make the voice of the customer an even more powerful force than a supermarket multiple.