Email marketing is still one of the most effective channels for building community and generating direct sales. While the layer of social adds to, and enhances, our communities, email still works.

One of the common questions I get from clients about email marketing is when to actually send – what’s the best time for the best open, click thru and share rates.  First, before an answer is offered, I list off these three pre-email tips:

1. Create a marketing calendar. Even if it’s a sketch, your business will benefit by outlining the simple activities – email, social, events, mail, product launches, key months, etc. – in a calendar format. It saves you from the inevitable “what should we share this week?” It also ensures you can cross-promote your marketing and community activities across channels.

2. Consistency is more important than frequency. You don’t have to email your customers every week, but set up a consistent level of communication ahead of time. For example, you might decide to send an email every other week on Tuesday morning. The consistency creates an expectation of outreach and connection. The opposite of having a consistent plan is random emails that confuse both you and the customer.

3. Smart marketers use A/B testing in email marketing. A/B simply refers to the same message written two different ways to determine which way of writing it, which language/timing/image, is more effective. Most email marketing providers like MailChimp, Constant Contact and Bronto offer tips on improving your email response rate with A/B testing. Take advantage of those tips and test every single email getting better and higher open rates as you progress.

 Now, when to send? Well the team over at GetResponse created this great infographic to help you easily understand the best times and days to send emails. This is an overall idea of what works for most people. But always keep your target audience in mind. If you’re reaching night-shift workers who frequently access email via mobile, you might have a different success at a different time.

Email Marketing Best Tme to Share

As always, with any marketing, measure the results to see what’s working. If it’s not working, make changes.

Your company has a desire to build a community.

You have a community but can’t quite figure out “what’s missing?”

You’ve built a community but it requires “too much effort” to keep it going.

What’s going on? Author Sarah Robinson offers answers in her new book “Fierce Loyalty: Unlocking the Secrets of Wildly Successful Communities.”

In the myriad of business books that debuts each month, most repurpose existing business knowledge or offer case studies as something to cut-and-paste into your efforts. Robinson’s book avoids those easy traps but takes the reader deeper yet keeps it highly readable. 

Sarah Robinson, author, "Fierce Loyalty"

From nearly a year of research, Robinson identifies the DNA of wildly successful communities – the essential elements required of any community from families to FORTUNE 100s. The book walks through the research behind the common and essential elements of those communities that we envy: the highly-functioning, engaged, happy and loyal communities. Helping the community manager (or organizer, builder, marketer) to take proven positive actions, Robinson builds in action steps to plan, organize, create and manage enviable communities.

“Fierce Loyalty” is the essential read and reference for the novice or experienced community manager. It can help you decide where to start or how to diagnose what your community needs to get to that next level.  The model presented is an “a-ha” moment of simplicity that can scale to nearly any size for nearly any type of community. Robinson created that rare find in the world of business: a researched, well-thought out, replicable and simple model.

Robinson’s book, “Fierce Loyalty” is available on Amazon.com. Better still, Robinson has built a community online to help you in your efforts to build the next Fierce Loyalty community, www.fierce-loyalty.com.

Want to hear more? Check out my video interview with Robinson.

What do PR professional read when it comes to business books?  That was one of the questions posed in today’s SoloPR chat on Twitter. The 15 books that were recommended were from all over the business spectrum – some were straightforward reference books, some were management books, while others focused on understanding behaviors and even fewer focused solely on the craft of public realtions. In fact, looking over the list, you’ll see only two books specifically on communications, the rest fall along the business spectrum. 

 Just what were the 15 recommended titles? See for yourself (hover for the link to Amazon):

 Books
“Brainfluence” by Roger Dooley
“Collapse of Distinction” by Scott McKain
“Content Rules” by Ann Handley, C.C. Chapman
“Drive” by Daniel Pink
“New Rules of PR & Marketing” by David Meerman Scott
“Now Discover Your Strengths” by Marcus Buckingham, Donald O. Clifton
“Rework” by Jason Fried
“Social Media and Public Relations” by Deidre Breakenridge
“Social Media ROI” by Olivier Blanchard
“The Business of Influence” by Philip Sheldrake
“The Laws of Simplicity” by John Maeda
“The Long Tail” by Chris Anderson

 
References
AP Style Guide
Roget’s Thesaurus
Strunk & White

 
So share your own recommendations here, what business-related books have you read that you re-read, refer to or recommend to others?  

 
As for me, I’m off to add a few new titles to my Kindle reading list.

Top PR people on Twitter? You can find a dozen public relations expert lists with no real rhyme or reason, in fact many of the lists base their inclusion solely on the frequency of using the PR hashtag. Or the list includes companies who simply promote their work and their clients, but who contribute nothing to conversations or the industry.  Turning to Google Search, other top lists are dated from 2008, and some of those folks aren’t in PR, or have new jobs or aren’t with us anymore. Interesting note, even PRWeek analyzed their so-called Power List and noticed that only 22% of them are actually active on Twitter.  Not so much a “power list” then is it? It’s the Gen X in me, but just because you’re in a senior position doesn’t mean you’re powerful in an industry going through dramatic and very public changes.

Not one to just complain, I created a solution – a list of PR pros who contribute and shape the conversations around communications.  In a rather unscientific manner, I set the following criteria:

• primary job is public relations or communications
• has been active on Twitter at least 6 months
• minimum 1,000 followers with at least 2,000 tweets and not an auto-bot
• participates in the conversation and offers, adds, or shares value
• based in North America
• not an industry resource (e.g. PRWeek)
• and is a real person

 The result?

52 PR Pros Shaping the Conversation on Twitter  (and listed in alphabetical order because who wants to rank by influence, frequency or heaven-help-us a Klout score.)

1. @allanschoenberg
2. @andrew_shippr
3. @arikhanson
4. @armano
5. @augieray
6. @beckygaylord
7. @bethharte
8. @briansolis
9. @carenwest
10. @chuckhemann
11. @commammo
12. @conversationage
13. @dbreakenridge
14. @davesaunders
15. @elissapr
16. @fredmcclimans
17. @ginidietrich
18. @jasmollica
19. @jasonfalls
20. @jaybaer
21. @jeffespo
22. @jgoldsborough
23. @jspepper
24. @kamichat
25. @karenswim
26. @kdpaine
27. @keithtrivitt
28. @kellyecrane
29. @lenkendall
30. @lizzharmon
31. @loudyoutloud
32. @mackcollier
33. @marc_meyer
34. @markwschaefer
35. @mdbarber
36. @michaelocc
37. @mindofandre
38. @missusp
39. @mpranikoff
40. @nflprguy
41. @pmgnicole
42. @pprothe
43. @pr_couture
44. @prcog
45. @prtini
46. @rexr
47. @shonali
48. @steveology
49. @steverubel
50. @tamadear
51. @tdefren
52. @valeriesimon

This is by no means a complete list, but it’s a good, solid start. Feel free to add more to the comments or let me know who you’d knock off the list.

When should I be posting my blog?” The questions around social timing could be endless, expect there are smart companies analyzing that data and sharing what the answers – for free. The good team over at KISSmetrics, who I frequently refer to when I need good data, offers a great infographic on when you should activate your blog post, see below.

I often share with clients a lesson I’m still learning, consistency matters more than frequency. Having something to say is more important that “finding” some topic to write about. Content aside, we know a lot about timing thanks to smart teams like the ones at KISSmetrics.

“When should I tweet if I want to be noticed?” This may be the most common question we get from clients, friends and fellow tweeters. Thanks to the team at Fuse Works Studios, we’ve got this great infographic to share the answer:

A Twitter infographic by Fusework Studios

This week, Adobe released a global benchmark survey, “The State of Create” defining creativity in the global perspective and in our daily work. The survey of more than 5,000 people revealed 8 in 10 people feel that unlocking creativity is critical to economic growth and nearly two-thirds of respondents feel creativity is valuable to society, yet a striking minority – only 1 in 4 people – believe they are living up to their own creative potential.  Take a look at the infographic on The Creativity Gap:

The question that resonates here is what are we doing to train and enhance the creative skills of our teams? Are we investing in “yet another training” or are we finding those ways to develop their skills that benefit our brands and our bottom line?

This week, while driving back from a social media conference I heard a radio ad from a furniture store offering a free tablet with a purchase of $999. It got me thinking back to the days when banks gave away toasters. Or to the current tchotchke giveaways that come in conference bags and in exhibit booths. While I wouldn’t mind a new tablet, or a new pen, or a light-up toy car, it’d make more sense if these giveaways were better tied to the value/message/benefits of the brand.Sure, an iPad giveaway might bring you traffic, it might get you RTs or tweets, or Facebook postings, it might get foot traffic to your booth or store, but what is the message you share and what is the longer term value?

Can you see the thought cloud: “Every time they use the tablet/pen/toy, they’ll think of us and that good feeling will transfer back to the brand and increase our sales.” If it sounds ridiculous, it is.

If you’re going to have an incentive item, a giveaway, find a way to make it meaningful, memorable, and valuable.  Here’s a short list of ideas:

• For a smartphone or tablet, preload your company’s app onto the tablet or load a welcome screen (can’t do that without corrupting the packaging, capture the email address and send an immediate email after winning and send them a value-add for the device).
• For gift cards, either ask if they have a way to personalize the card, or add a company sticker but don’t stop there (there’s no value here yet). If it’s a coffee gift card, invite them to join you for an informal meeting. If it’s an iTunes card, send them your company’s playlist or the podcasts that you find valuable. If it’s an Amazon gift card, include a recommended reading list of books that you’ve found most valuable to your business.
• Guess what? Your cheap booth giveaways, don’t have to be meaningless.  Tie in a benefit of your product to the giveaway. For example, consider giving away a portion of the product, a small sample of what you sell. Imagine if Mercedes-Benz giveaways were a sample of the leather used in their cars that was a car key holder. Every time you put your current car keys away, every time you felt that leather, you’d be reminded of the aspiration to own a Mercedes.

I still can’t figure how banks ever tied value to toasters, and I can’t think of how I’ll feel like I got more value/quality after spending a grand at a furniture store by walking out with a new tablet in my hands.

What do you think of incentive items?

iPad 2 A Worthy Giveaway?

One of the more raging debates and discourse you’ll hear in marketing and business circles is the value, the return on investment of social media. While there is no doubt that social media is a trend, but rather a distinct movement towards active consumerism, measuring the value to a company’s bottom line is much more complex. This week, the good folks over at MDG Advertising created a compelling and easy data visualization focused on the ROI of social media.

Infographic by MDG Advertising

This month, you’ve made it far. If you’ve followed our 5-step series, you’ve already: defined your value, defined your audiences, created key messages and created a basic action plan. You’ve got one more step, so read on.

This last step is surely forgotten, after all you’re tired, busy and behind on lots of other things on your to-do list. But here’s the reason you WANT this step. If you don’t measure, you never really know how well or how poorly something is working.

In marketing, you want some form of measurement for every action you take. For example, did the radio ad at 10am work better or was the drive-time 5:30pm ad sending you more calls. Did you notice a rise in web traffic after you sent that email? Are you getting a better open rate of emails when you send on Tuesdays or Fridays? Now there are whole books and plenty of resources on how to measure. But guess what – you can measure it. Anyone can install Google Analytics on their website, it’s a free tool and does a very good job of telling you about web traffic (if that’s important to you). Even if you’re simply tracking one thing, measure it to your bottom line.

 And to quote someone smarter than me, “If it’s not working, fail fast, learn the lesson, and move on.”  I’ll add, and if it’s working keep at it.

As a final thought from this series: when in doubt repeat this slowly: focus on the why, what and who, before you ever get to the how.