DING! YOU GOT MAIL! Interested in a new cat collar produced in China? 

These e-mails can be highly frustrating, not only because I am actually allergic to cats, but also because I have never shown any interest in this product, for any reason.. EVER!

Well, this is a perfect example of an e-mail marketing strategy your business should avoid.

Spam is in the eye of whom looks at it

Users can examine your email marketing and decide to send it into the clutter folder based on several criteria; like not knowing your Brand, your business.. or even your product!
Sometimes people may have forgotten they have subscribed to your list in the past or, to their view, the content received is not relevant enough to the reason they subscribed.

You may get lost in the Spam Filters 

Outlook, G-mail and all other services work hard to protect the users from irritating or not useful content in the inbox folder. A relevant and interesting e-mail for the potential client may sometimes not reach the folder due to these filters.  According to Return Path (2016), 79% of permission-based emails get lost in the Spam folders.

Such preventative measures from the e-mailing services have become necessary due to the increasing threats of criminal activities through e-mails. Alazab & Broadhurst (2014) have researched that within 13 million emails identified as spam, nearly 1.5 million contained malicious web links or attachments for fraud and data theft.
It is therefore necessary to learn how to prepare a user friendly e-mail which would reach the customer:

• Find a balance between images and text – Too many images with little text can trigger the filter. Avoid text overlapping images: filters will only scan the image, ignoring the text.
• Use pertinent and consistent formatting – Do not exaggerate with HIGH CASES, cursive, bold, etc.
• Try not to include attachments – make sure all of your content is present in the body of the email and/or include links to redirect to your website or social networks to give higher info or follow the purpose of your marketing.
• Avoid those obscene terms such as sales offers! Crazy deals and free money – not only the user would be irritated when they discover it may not be true, but also the terms will sound suspectful to the spam filters.

MailChimp (2017) has a more in depth guidance and explanation of the digital codes. Check it out if you’re interested!

Remain Pertinent

You can send your marketing through e-mail only if your message is relative to the products/services the user has expressed interest for. This is important because imagine if you are a company which sells kitchen appliances, you would therefore be able to publicise articles as kitchen towels, plates, etc., NOT cars! Make sure the content is clear and avoid everything that can cause confusion on who you are and what you do. Using a valid address is much better than using a noreply for 2 main reasons:

• It shows to who receives the email that the sender is a company with a reputation and a high Brand status, not a robot that sends automated messages.
• It provides the user an address to unsubscribe from the mailing list.

Finding contacts

Do not buy or share the mailing lists. If someone from a separate company calls you for the purpose of selling their contacts, remember that they may have the right to send them their emails, but you do not. The other way around is also applicable and why would you give away the list you worked so hard on gathering?

Legal Issues

Ryan (2014) has summarised in 4 main points how the UK law protects users from spam emails by fining up to $16.000 among other penalties entities who violate the following rules:

Recipients must be able to opt-out at any time and easily and such actions must be processed within 10 working days

• Source of the email must be traceable
• No deceptive titles
• You must include full postal address

Of course different countries have different regulations so make sure you follow the rules by checking out this Lionbridge (2014).

Knowing that your business can definitely benefit from email marketing is an absolute competitive advantage but it is definitely not easy. The guide should help you to keep you far away from the blacklist and spam folder so that you can reach your potential clients with your newest offers and deals!

Until next time!

References

Alazab, M. & Broadhurst, R. (2015). Spam and criminal activity. Trends & issues in crime and criminal justice, 526, 2-17.

Lionbridge (2014). The Guide to Email Marketing Laws and Regulations by Country. Link

Mailchimp (2016). How to avoid spam filters. Link

Return Path (2016). Analysis of Worldwide Inbox Placement Rates. Link

Ryan, D (2014). Understanding digital marketing: marketing strategies for engaging the digital generation. 3rd ed. London: KoganPage. 185.

Once upon a time, you thought of the population you wanted to connect with. So, you came up with a brilliant way to tell them you existed: Instagram. Then, you created such a fantastic profile that your followers became your clients and then they started sharing your content with their friends.
And they all lived happily ever after…

For your fable to have such a happy ending, you should first set yourself specific objectives, such as:

• Learn to distinguish different forms of media.
• Recognize the most common SMM channels and choose your most suitable one.
• Comprehend what makes SMM effective and the company’s consequences.
• Identify the various objectives of SMM and learn to formulate your own.

This blog, supported by academic research, gives an introduction to SMM to help you set (and reach) your objectives when developing a successful Instagram page.

Assess if SMM is for you

Instagram, or social media in general, may not be necessarily beneficial for you. Before beginning, you should ask yourself if it is suitable for your business, and which channels you should use (twitter, snapchat, facebook, linkedin, etc.).

Ask yourself:

• Does your target market use social media?  If not, it would be senseless to waste time and money.
• Would your public profile be appropriate for your target market?  You need to be careful when selecting your interests and publishing too personal content (unless that’s your business!); your credibility and reputation may depend on it.
• Can you keep up with instant communication?  Interaction with potential clients is much quicker now. This gives your brand an increased human perception, but it also means you may slip up easily and quickly.
• Do you have time?  Rome wasn’t built in one day! Keep in mind that developing a social media process is long and intricate.

Types of Media:

If you have the financial and influential possibilities, Belden (2013) suggests you can choose to publish your content through:

• earned media – free ads generated by fans and clients whom respond to content they appreciated
• owned media – all communication generated and controlled by a brand through their own platform
• paid media – costly activities which bring added traffic to owned contents and media

Whichever option you choose, remember that you may always encounter hidden costs. An “addictive” profile requires good text, entertaining multimedia elements, and a solid strategy. Since it doesn’t make sense to have the best profile in the world when nobody knows of its existence, you should begin by resorting to sorts of promotions and ads to reach your desired public, which requires time and money (so make sure you remember it when evaluating your goals!).

Instagram

Instagram is oriented towards the “cool kids” of which smartphones have become a constant and daily use. This group has been identified and grouped with a specific demographic of individuals born in the early 2000s, known as Generation Z (Williams, 2015).
Instagram has an average of 300 million active users each day and the average user uses this platform to show and share the beauty and events of their lives (Wertz, 2017). Most companies utilize this platform to introduce and advertise their products or to generate online and instore sales.

You can use Instragram’s Power Editor (Ottaway, 2016) to create your ads. The tool follows a similar structure to Facebook and Twitter, as it shows up in the follower’s feed with the line: “sponsored content”. If you want to propose a new line of clothing or furniture, etc., you may also want to take into consideration the rotating ad feature which makes more multimedia available without scrolling through the feed.

To create a page, you should first consider whether you’re a business or a location, a brand or product, if you’re a musical artist, actor, or any other public figure. Complete your page with all the necessary information about yourself, activity, and contact information. Choose a profile picture which represents your business and is appropriate for your idea.
For the content, it is extremely important to make it interesting and light hearted (keeping in mind your target market).
Would your followers want to learn more about it? Would they share it with friends?   If you don’t think so, you should work further on it. Among with making your followers laugh, being positive, and sharing quality content, use multimedia to catch attention; also, remember that most of the time playing it safe can be better than making a foolish risk.

The content should follow a consistent style and should be refreshed regularly to keep your followers entertained. Check out Baranovska’s blog (2016), as she gives additional and precice guidelines.

Finally, you must try, try, try!! Nothing comes out perfectly the first time. Keep going at it, and you are sure to achieve positive results.

Be sure to follow next month’s blog post, as I will explain the implementation and analysis fundamentals for SMM.

References

Baranovska, V. (2017). 7 Tips for Using Instagram for Business. Link

Belden, C. (2013). Paid, earned and owned media: Convergence in social media. Journal of Digital & Social Media Marketing, 1(3), pp.243-250.

Ottaway, F. (2016). Creating Instagram Ads in Power Editor: Your One-Stop Guide. Link

Wertz, J. (2017). Which Social Media Platforms Are Right For Your Business? Link

Williams, A. (2015). Move Over, Millennials, Here Comes Generation Z. Link

The Setting

It’s 7pm, it’s been a long day, you have nothing in the fridge but some carrots you’re still not sure if they went off and you’re starving. This is the perfect setting for a quick browze on the computer to get amazing cheap food as soon as possible.

Luckily, the giant food delivery start-up Deliveroo is offering customers to get £5 off from any delivery with a minimum order of £15 pounds. Yes, you can finally get those delicious starters you always wanted to try out or that inviting dessert that eyed you each time you logged into the website, as you reluctantly skipped through because pay day was still far away.
Well, at least I am most certain that this promotion will be an amazing addition to my student life (and funds).

The method to benefit from this discount is simple, as you log in to the Deliveroo website, just click on the “<3 get free food” and you will be given £5 discount whenever you share your unique web link with a friend and they order; same discount applies to your friend for a total of £10 over two meals.

So be ready to spam all of your Facebook friends, as I’m sure they will do the same afterwards!

Deliveroo’s marketing Strategy

But why is Deliveroo doing this? The first question that popped in my head was: isn’t the company losing out? Surely it would be easy to create a new email and Deliveroo profile in order to gain both discounts for yourself.
Lee’s interesting blog post (2016), among other 2 marketing strategies, explains how enticing customers with generous promo codes makes sense when you consider the lifetime value of a user. Dawson (2016) says how this word of mouth customer acquisition model helped towards the company Deliveroo to a 25% monthly growth over 2015 and 2016.

Villanueva, Yoo, and Hanssens’ study (2008) measures the impact of 1 new person being acquired on the firm’s future performance. Deliveroos expense of the £5 coupon does not largely affect the positive performance and sales of the service in the short-term; however, this form of customer acquisition will affect Word of Mouth (WOM) acquisitions, which will impact the business on an exponential scale in the long-term.

WOM is one of the most effective communications a company encourages for business results. Kimberly Whitler (2014) explains in her blog how consumers are more prone to friend’s suggestions when deciding to purchase a product or service. On top of this, research showed that marketers also believe in the power of WOM marketing but marketers are not focused on it. Companies like Nike, who are connected with their really passionate fans on social media are exponentially more successful than other companies who “buy fans” which signed up just to win a free iPad.

Deliveroo is indeed succeeding in getting their customers passionate about the brand which has increasingly brought high customer acquisition and customer retention rates. Tang, Q., Zhao, X. and Liu, S. (2016) findings show that the sense of self-worth, socializing, economic reward and reciprocity have positive effects on coupon sharing. Furthermore, coupon proneness positively moderates the relationship of socializing and reciprocity with coupon sharing, which means that a satisfied custmer will gain further satisfaction by telling a friend about the deal.

So we get it: Deliveroo is gaining success, offering us big deals and slowly conquering a small place into our hearts. We can therefore only learn from their strategies, appreciate their service for those empty fridges nights and wonder if soon every company will lure us into their products ad services through the same marketing idea.

References

Dawson, F. (2016) Delivering 25% month-on-month growth: The Deliveroo story. Available at: http://www.forbes.com/sites/freddiedawson/2016/02/26/delivering-25-month-on-month-growth-the-deliveroo-success-story/#3c96f1bd4590 (Accessed: 5 February 2017).

Lee, S. (2016) What Deliveroo did to get Traction and become a Billion-Dollar company – word-of-mouth and referral marketing Blog. Available at: http://www.referralcandy.com/blog/deliveroo-marketing-strategy/ (Accessed: 28 February 2017).

Tang, Q., Zhao, X. and Liu, S. (2016) ‘The effect of intrinsic and extrinsic motivations on mobile coupon sharing in social network sites’, Internet Research, 26(1), pp. 101–119. doi: 10.1108/intr-05-2014-0136.

Company Background:

Hollister.co is an American fashion brand that revolves around the “South-California style”. The company, a subsidiary of Abercrombie & Fitch, manufactures apparel, accessories and fragrances, and performs sales to its consumers through their franchising stores and online website with a constant aim of easy accessibility.
Hollister’s target market is mainly constituted by teens, which requires the company to employ a youth marketing strategy. The sector the company operates in requires a particular attention to the generation Z trends and habits;
Forbes (2016) describes this generation as the population born after 1995, ethnically diverse, digital natives with strong and constant use of smart phones, highly interactive through social media platforms and have an attention span of an average 8 seconds, the lowest in the most recent generations.

An important factor for retail companies in maximizing their sales in the youth market, is to render their products “cool” and accessible. O’Donnell and Wardlow (2000) define cool as ‘‘the use of external props to shore up the faltering sense of self’’, which means teenagers find an item cool if it identifies and expresses their individuality.

Hollister’s mission is to associate the term “cool” to the Brand, this is constantly being achieved during their marketing campaigns, where they constantly show pictures of laughing young adults “hanging out” and having a good time in summer location sets.

This strong Image the company portraits itself as, has a powerful impact on the generation Z population as it identifies with youth’s preferences.

Social Marketing and Competition

According to CNBC (2015), Hollister is the 5^th most appealing average-income Brand to teens, this is a result of the marketing strategies Hollister has employed since its creation and their focus on this specific segmentation of the market.

Applying Chaffey’s six channels to Hollister, it is possible to further investigate on the company’s marketing strategy and compare it with the competitive companies.

Hollister’s main digital marketing communication is through social media, such as platforms like Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat and Twitter and Opt-in e-mails. Good use of these platforms are a necessity, since they are continuously frequented by the youth market on a daily basis. Although Twitter, Instagram and SnapChat have particular attention to customer feedback and give good communication to the public on ongoing discounts, Facebook seems to have been abandoned completely with no feedback to customer’s negative comments and reviews; this may be a strategy implemented by the company since Facebook is becoming less popular (Lang, 2015).

Competitor Brands like American Eagle, Forever21 and Abercrombie & Fitch have a very similar layout and settings of their social media platforms with the exception of keeping high interactivity on Facebook.

Hollister’s opt-in e-mails in contrast with its competitors, does not display items of clothing, however it publicizes the eventual sales, discounts opportunities with links to the website and their social media.

However different, Hollister employs a different visual impact to Forever21 with the use of a GIF image of different jean colors and styles in order to capture the reader’s attention.

Although interactive ads are not a strategy Hollister employs, the company has recently reached the public through an anti-bullying campaign in the US. PR Newswire depicts how the company went on in reaching out to more than 1 milion students during the “all equal” campaign.
It is not unusual for companies to create such campaigns to reach different sectors of the market, American Eagle with the “we all can” campaign for example encourages young people to express their individuality.

In relation to google search, hollister does not employ any paid search ads, which is a big miss in the market since it would create a great competitive advantage in respect to the other firms.

Competitive Brands, like Nike, Adidas and other teen apparel brands, benefit from google search paid ads for key words such as “shoes”; this creates an advantage in the market to show and sell the company’s products and merchandize.

Key words like american clothes, californian clothes, cool clothes, cool apparel, abercrombie and so on would create higher visibility and reach to the public.
Finally, Hollister’s only partnership with other companies is Gilly Hicks, a co-branded company subsidiary of Abercrombie & Fitch.

Most videos and blogs around the web relative to Hollister give information and influence on how to apply and get a job in the shops. This is very popular around YouTube since many students apply for sales assistant in the shops and the role is seen as “cool”.

Additional Data

References

Arthur, R. (2016) Generation Z: 10 stats from SXSW you need to know. Available at: http://www.forbes.com/sites/rachelarthur/2016/03/16/generation-z/#4244c9ba4ba4 (Accessed: 12 December 2016).

Klaptoman, Images, G., Spade, K., Ehlers, S., Lerouge, F. and Gustafson, K. (2016) What teens want: These brands top the list. Available at: http://www.cnbc.com/2015/10/15/what-teens-want-these-brands-top-the-list.html (Accessed: 12 December 2016).

Lang, N. (2015) Why teens are leaving Facebook: It’s ‘meaningless’. Available at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2015/02/21/why-teens-are-leaving-facebook-its-Meaningless/?utm_term=.bfd14518b7c1 (Accessed: 12 December 2016).

O’DONNELL, K. A., and D. L. WARDLOW. 2000. “A theory of the origins of coolness”. Advances in Consumer Research 27: 13–18

Ryanair’s e-mail

The below e-mail is a house-list campaign set by one of the most famous and used low-cost airlines of Europe… incredibly done! … but with a catch.
A house-list campaign is a permission-based list in e-mail marketing which can be elaborated and structured by anyone. It is used to establish a relationship with the customer over time by “reminding” them about the company and current deals they have specifically for the receiving individual. (Group, 2016)

Structure of the e-mail

This particular kind of e-mail making needs a particular set of strategies in order to catch the attention of whom receives it and convince them to purchase the valid offers:

• The layout must be recognizable as the official style of the company:
  colors, logos, fonts, etc. should be the same as the official website.
• There is often a discount included within the email or cheaper prices for their products or services
• The message should be kept relevant and personal
• A language to sell:
  Soft Sale statement (like proposing to the customer to solve a possible outstanding issue)
  Call to Action, with terms such as BUY NOW or LIMITED OFFER OF 24H! in order to give the individual a sense of urgency.   (Mohammadi et al., 2013)

The style and structure of the Ryanair e-mail tick most of the points made above.
The layout is easily recognizable by anyone who has visited the official website once before, the pictures invite the reader to be more interested in the destinations described although no prices nor discounts are visible. The title is relative and personal, the company is aware of my nearest airport available (London Gatwick) and, in the content, Ryanair uses both languages to sell.
The first section of the e-mail includes soft sale statements, such as “Maybe it’s time to book a trip” and contains further information on many destinations they would be able to connect you with the rest of Europe.
The second section of their message includes call to action statements: BOOK NOW as a means to redirect the reader towards the website and book the displayed flights.
The final section of the page is relevant to give further options to the reader, download the app and to opt out from the mailing list (which is a legal requirement to include).

Landing Page

The page includes 4 re-directing links to the website through the method of supplying further information in case the reader is interested in the displayed ad.

So to recap, Ryanair’s e-mail is attempting to tell the customer (me in particular) that they can make it super-easy to fly to Barcelona and/or London. Amazing right? … WRONG.

Although the company is aware of my approximate geographical position (Brighton), the displayed ad for the London destination is non-relevant. While by clicking on Barcelona’s trip, once re-directed to the landing page, the website does not seem to apply the information received into offering the relevant service. In other words, the landing page is simply a generic flight searching page. Many cheap offers are displayed on the page but none of them are in relation to the sent e-mail.

By going even further, there is the final realization that the destination of Barcelona has one particular issue on the landing page: Ryanair does not offer flights from Gatwick Airport to Barcelona!

The whole ad became therefore meaningless, for me in particular, and created big disappointment once I realize I could not travel to my favourite part of Spain with this company.

References

Group, B.I. (2016) Glossary of email marketing terms – house list. Available at: http://www.benchmarkemail.com/resources/email-glossary-detail/house-list (Accessed: 4 November 2016).

Mohammadi, M., Malekian, K., Nosrati, M., & Karimi, R. (2013). Email Marketing as a Popular Type of Small Business Advertisement: A Short Review. Australian Journal of Basic and Applied Sciences, 7(4), 786-790.