Save Your Money – Don’t Mobilize Your Web Site

May 7th, 2013 by Cornerstone Group Of Companies

I’ve been thinking a lot about web site mobilization lately and I’ve concluded that it’s a waste of time and money to mobilize an existing desktop website. I suggest that you take a fraction of the resources you are considering devoting to mobilizing your current web site and build a specific user-focused mobile web site that is designed to quickly and effectively engage those of your prospects and customers using smart phones. In other words, build and maintain two web sites – one for desktop and tablet traffic, and one for smart phone traffic.

Cornerstone’s Google Analytics team monitors and analyses web site traffic for hundreds of Clients. What it finds over and over again is that consumers accessing mobilized desktop web sites via their smart phones don’t spend much time on these sites and visit only a few pages.

This isn’t surprising. When you’re on your smart phone, and you’re searching for an organization in which you’re interested, or even more important to the organization, if you’re trying to respond to a communication sent to you by that organization, you have neither the time nor the inclination to navigate through a bunch of pages or read an inordinate amount of text, whether it’s smart phone friendly or not. You probably only want to do one of three things:

1. Effect a transaction (buy something, make a donation, etc.).
2. Better understand what the organization is or stands for.
3. Sign up for something.

Doesn’t it make sense then for the organization to meet your needs by presenting to you a simple interface to quickly do these things…and to do no more?

An obvious question concerns the costs of building a mobile web site. I can tell you from the real-world experiences of Cornerstone’s Mobile team that they are a fraction of the costs and take far less time than mobilizing an existing web site. The cheapest way to create a mobile site is to use one of several software-as-a-service solutions currently on the market. That’s what Cornerstone does when we build mobile web sites for our Clients.

So don’t try to mobilize or otherwise change your existing web site to accommodate smart phone traffic. It’s there to do the things I’ve listed above, but also to do other important things like providing more detailed information for those people who want it when they are on their pc’s or tablets.

Rather, spend your time thinking about the experience you want smart phone users to have when interacting with your organization and then create a separate mobile web site to guarantee this experience. Then turn on something like Google Analytics and analyze your mobile and desk top web site traffic. You’ll be blown away!

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Direct Marketing In The Summertime

May 1st, 2013 by Cornerstone Group Of Companies

Spring has sprung. The grass is almost green. People are outside. What does this mean?

1) That location based tools are ‘off the hook’ busy. Recently, according to Marketing Magazine, a Yoga company based in Vancouver, Lulu Lemon, launched an app “Om Finder” that reached 30,000 downloads in its first week. Om Finder helps yoga enthusiasts find yoga studios in their vicinity. Let’s look at some reasons why the App was so successful.

Timing – People want to get in shape for summer.
Large Fan Base – Lulu Lemon has a strong fan base, evident by their social media following of 900,000 followers on Facebook and the fact that they are a world-wide franchise. Obviously Lulu Lemon is well aware of who its audience is and how to target them.
Convenience Factor – Wherever customers are, there’s a yoga class nearby.
Third Party Backing – Serving up convenient yoga classes not only helps the athletes, it helps the yoga studios.

2) People are out and about making donations and purchases on their smartphones and iPads. It’s spring/summer, people are travelling, they are on foot – this is the time when such devices are used most. Fundraisers, make sure to have donation pages ready for both desktop and Smartphone. Especially if you are planning for outdoor events this summer.

3) E-marketing & digital advertising has ramped up. With spring sales, spring cleaning events and new products and services being introduced by many – communicating with customers via email is making for one of our busiest times here in e-marketing at Cornerstone. Ask one of our reps for extra advice on your emails, too. We’ve seen many come through these doors and we know what does and does not work. Is your customer base outdoorsy? Then you might want to consider making your e-mails friendly for mobile devices.

4) Events are aplenty which means so are networking opportunities. Remember our previous blog Are Tradeshows The Real Life Linkedin? Venturing to meet vendors can be a great way to not only add some new channels and tools into your marketing mix, but also, you’ll be meeting with experts and brainstorming ideas. Some of the best ideas come from these kinds of events, as you’re being exposed to a lot of innovation.

5) Changes in people’s lives. People are moving, traveling, learning new things, exploring, shedding their old ways and starting anew, such as with style or diet. These quick changes mean that as Marketer’s, we need to stay on top of how consumers’ needs are changing. Prepare by ensuring you have an analytics team behind your customer database. You want to make sure, especially if you plan on doing a direct mail campaign, that you are targeting the right people and staying abreast of their quickly evolving lifestyles.

Posted in Database Marketing, Direct Marketing, E-Mail Marketing, Mobile Marketing | Comments Off

Cornerstone’s Change of Address Services

April 22nd, 2013 by Cornerstone Group Of Companies

“Return to Sender” isn’t just an Elvis Presley song. For mailers, these three little words could mean thousands of dollars in wasted investment, lost revenue, and declining response rates when mail is sent to people that are no longer at the address. So what’s a mailer to do? Why, run Change of Address of course!

Cornerstone offers two services to help our Clients avoid the costly error of mailing people at their old addresses: Canada Post National Change of Address (CP NCOA) and Cornerstone National Change of Address (CS NCOA).

Cornerstone licenses the Canada Post National Change of Address data, which contains up to six years’ worth of mover data. The information is collected when customers fill out their change of address notification cards and submit this information to Canada Post. The change of address card allows customers the opportunity to provide a new address (classified as a mover), refrain from providing a new address (classified as a nixie), or notify Canada Post that their family member has died (classified as a deceased).

The most obvious use for the Canada Post NCOA is to update addressee information prior to a mailing. Also, if there is an existing active business relationship between the mailer and the recipient, Canada Post NCOA can also be used to update the mailer’s’ own internal data to maintain correct addressing information. However, if no such business relationship exists or the business relationship is lapsed, the use of Canada Post NCOA data is limited to mailing purposes. In addition, the data must only be sent to a third-party vendor, such as a lettershop.

For mailers with lapsed data or mailers that perform their mail drops themselves, Cornerstone NCOA is a great complement to Canada Post NCOA. Cornerstone’s database is made up of public directory phone number listings. By comparing this data month over month, Cornerstone can identify people who have moved. As the Cornerstone database is compiled of publicly available information, mailers can update their database regardless of the recipients’ lapsed status.

Cornerstone runs both Canada Post NCOA and Cornerstone NCOA products using SAS DataFlux, an industry leader in match coding and data quality. Most recently in 2012, DataFlux was recognized by Gartner as a leader for data quality tools. By using SAS DataFlux, Cornerstone provides our Clients with an added benefit of better, and more accurate, matches.

Some interesting findings from a recent test, completed in April 2013:
- Of all movers identified, Cornerstone NCOA accounted for almost 69% of the records with new addresses.
- Nearly 24% of Canada Post NCOA movers were also identified through Cornerstone NCOA.
- Of the Canada Post Nixies records (records with no new address), Cornerstone NCOA identified new addresses for over 5% of these records.
- About 5% of the Canada Post records were identified as Deceased.
- Combined, Canada Post NCOA and Cornerstone NCOA identified over 4% of the records as movers.

Canada Post NCOA and Cornerstone NCOA can be run in conjunction or separately, depending on the mailer’s needs. Please contact Cornerstone for more information.

Posted in Direct Marketing, Marketing | Comments Off

The Data Conundrum

April 9th, 2013 by Cornerstone Group Of Companies

Data can be thought of as being like water. You need it to survive, but you can drown in too much of it!

At Cornerstone, we help our Clients obtain data, but we also help them get at the data that they need to solve a problem.

In simple terms, the two primary questions that every company needs to answer are:

• What is it that we want to say to our prospective customers and;
• To whom do we want to say it?

We at Cornerstone are not in the creative agency business so the What question is not our forte, but we can help determine Who would be likely to find your message to be relevant.

Example number 1:

You have dozens of sales people for their services across a given geographic area, and you have a big database of prospects to feed them. However, the amount of effort to query the database and make it usable is high, and it costs money to do it.

Solution:

Using ListXpressTM, Cornerstone can house your data and set up the business rules for each user such as:

• What geography/territories a specific sales person can pull data for?
• How often can they contact a prospect in a given period of time?
• New-to-file prospects can be made available with every update
• Records can be selected that have a full first name or are within a fixed distance from a particular location.

We developed ListXpress to manage and query hundreds of datasets for our own purposes, so we have experienced and overcome many of the issues that you might be having in this area.

Example Number 2:

You have millions of records to which you can prospect, but are challenged to determine which ones you should communicate with.

Solution:

Cornerstone’s Analytics group can help answer this question. They can examine your current customer bases and past campaigns and help you determine the most likely pool of prospects with whom you should communicate.

Example Number 3:

You know what you want to say and to whom you want to say it but you don’t have a ready source of targeted prospects.

Solution:

Cornerstone’s List Brokerage group has access to every direct to consumer or direct to business list on the rental market and can assist you in reaching your target audience with your intended message.

Example Number 4:

You know what you want to say and to whom you want to say it, and you have multiple sources of prospects, but they need to be consolidated and rationalized so that messages are not being unintentionally duplicated to the same prospect.

Solution:

Cornerstone’s Data Management group can take the spaghetti data that you need to make sense of and untangle and reassemble it in a way that you can use. This includes de-duping records, assigning priorities, running data against the Canada Post and Cornerstone Change of Address databases to ensure your message gets to the right location and other services.

Summary:

How companies acquire data and deliver messages can be the key to the success of any given campaign. It is all too easy to “drown in data”. Cornerstone can be a partner to help navigate every step of the way. From acquiring data to analytics to data cleansing or some combination of all of the above, Cornerstone can help. Just give us a call!

Posted in Direct Marketing, E-Mail Marketing, List Brokerage, List Management, Marketing | Comments Off

Mobile Making Headlines

April 2nd, 2013 by Cornerstone Group Of Companies

Here at Cornerstone, we help our clients find and keep good customers. So we’re interested in any consumer trends that impact how people relate to marketers and brands.

The “mobile migration” may be more than a consumer trend. Consider these eye-popping headlines:

Mobile data traffic in 2012 was nearly twelve times the size of the entire global Internet in 2000. 

Source: Cisco Visual Networking Index: Global Mobile Data Traffic Forecast Update, 2012–2017

A survey of international media and marketing executives has found that a plurality 25% see mobile as the most disruptive force in their industry. Mobile outpaced other hot trends such as social media (13%), digital (12%), free information/free content (6%), and big data (4%).

Source: AdMedia Partners’ “19th Annual Market Survey 2013″

Mobile and desktop usage could achieve parity inside a couple of years if both maintain a consistent trajectory. 

Source: eMarketer, 2012

Whether or not you agree with the hype, you’ve probably noticed an increase in the number and power of mobile devices in your personal life. Many recent mobile-surfing recruits began by reading email on their new smartphone. We see large mobile traffic spikes resulting from email blasts. Consider what links you’re putting in your emails, and how those links look when viewed from a smartphone.

To appreciate what the shift to mobile means for your brand, try this exercise. Imagine for an hour that you are “smartphone-only”,  and you don’t have access to a desktop or laptop computer. How do your brand’s emails look? How does your website look? How easy is it to complete a purchase/donation/registration using only your smartphone?

Many organizations are realizing the importance of making their websites ‘mobile friendly’, which should be on anyone’s priority list for 2013. Some organizations are investing in “responsive” website content management systems. While this may make sense for some groups who have the budget and team to implement a big technology change, other may do best to employ an “m.dot” strategy and only mobilize a sub-set of their entire website, with a focus on their home-page and high-traffic landing pages.

Either one of these approaches addresses only the technical plumbing issue. Once a marketing team has the power to communicate in three modes — laptop, tablet, smartphone — what will they say? Shouldn’t we market to these distinct technologies differently? I know when I use my tablet, I tend to be on my couch or in bed and in a relaxed mood. On my laptop I’m sitting up and in ‘work-mode’. Some of my smartphone surfing is done in short 5 minute segments, using my thumbs.

One thing is certain: the small screen size of mobile devices forces us to be crisp in our marketing and response management. The discipline required to succeed at mobile will benefit all areas of our marketing, and provide a new imperative to focus on what really drives results.

For more information about how we can help you succeed at mobile, please contact me, Philip King, VP of Cornerstone Mobile, at 416.932.9555 x 2143 or philip.king@cstonecanada.com

Posted in Direct Marketing, Marketing, Mobile Marketing | Comments Off

Blogging FOR Your Customer

March 15th, 2013 by Cornerstone Group Of Companies

We hear a lot about “customer engagement”, but what is it really? The answer is – It’s any content that might draw a customer into your product space. Blogging has great potential to do this.  Not only can it serve as a communication tool for news, tips, reminders, dates, photos, etc., it can be a sales pitch that feels more like advice or even sometimes, just an enjoyable read over coffee.

Sites like BuzzFeed and The Huffington Post are highly popular because their content is the meat their fans are hungry for. How can we as marketing professionals learn from this contagious type of content creation to engage our own customers or donors?

What does my customer want to read?

Have you considered what your customer truly wants to read? Are you sure those e-blasts you are sending them are really influential? Why not hold a few focus groups and find out what your customers are reading on the train to work and modify your content to suit those needs. For example, if you’re a Fundraiser and you’ve found your donors love to read positive stories, add a ‘Chicken Soup For The Soul’ story-telling element to your writing style. You might find that by spending the time to give your donors exactly what they want to read, you will be thanked by increased interest in your cause.

How do I grab their attention immediately on a blog?

If you already have followers on Twitter or Facebook, then bringing them to your blog link might seem like a giant leap for mankind. We’ve found that many of the blogs we post with interesting titles will get more clicks. Keep track of what works and what doesn’t in terms of blog titles. If a title screams “I am going to help you and I’ll probably be interesting while I do it,” chances are your content is going to be very inviting to someone who is scanning their Facebook mini-feed. Ensuring your content is ‘new’ and using ‘outside of the box thinking’ will up your blog’s value.  Nobody is interested in reading the same old content, so our ability to have a unique insight will increase the appeal for our blogs to be shared and subscribed to.

Blogs take work

Blogging for your customer means giving them something more than words. Things you can share:

  • Research – statistics and facts
  • Quotes – new and old
  • Photos and videos you’ve created – original content will get you one step ahead of your competitors
  • Advice – from the heart of your organization
  • Maps and visual guides
  • Behind the scenes of your organization
  • Interviews
  • Anything topical
  • Investigations
  • Inspirational people
  • Reviews or commentary on anything you feel your customers would be interested in: technology, the environment, travel, etc.

 Blog for your customer, not your company

Your blog isn’t meant for you or your company. Sure, you have to write something you feel you would enjoy reading too, but your main focus is the customer’s/prospect’s needs. What do they want to read and how can you get them to contact you? In a digital world bombarded by blogs and content, it’s easy to get lost if you aren’t putting in the effort. We’re all guilty of ‘lazy blog’ syndrome, but we’re all capable of creating content that engages and motivates our prospects and customers.

 

Posted in Direct Marketing, Fundraising, Marketing, Mobile Marketing | Comments Off

Is Direct Mail Acquisition Dying?

March 12th, 2013 by Cornerstone Group Of Companies

This is a question we are often asked by Clients. We’ve even asked it ourselves. While there are many different opinions,  research shows that Direct Mail Acquisition is still very much alive and is to date the most profitable and preferred method of new customer acquisition.

According to a recent article (January 2013) published by Avrick.com on Consumer Attitudes about Direct Mail vs. Email, more than 60% of people surveyed actually want to see physical mail in their postal mailbox as opposed to their email inbox. According to the article, “Epsilon just conducted a study of Americans and Canadians (2012 Channel Preference Study) to find out if they still love direct mail. And the resounding answer is YES!” The report goes on to say, “direct mail is the preferred channel for U.S. and Canadian consumers to receive brand communications in nearly every product and service category including financial services, insurance, general health, cleaning products, food and charitable causes. It seems that PRIVACY motivates people to prefer their mailbox. People simply do not trust the exchange of personal information – such as financial or health details – in an email. Almost two thirds of respondents enjoy checking their mailbox every day. Half of the people say they pay more attention to direct mail than email and three quarters say they prefer direct mail because they can read the information at their convenience. Not only do they enjoy getting direct mail, they actually open and read it. The same can’t be said for emails. 73% of Americans and 62% of Canadians said they receive a lot of emails that they simply do not open. Consumers want a dialogue, a way to express their needs and interests, and they see direct mail as a more trustworthy method of expressing their desires.”

Cornerstone’s Fundraising Services Division’s Annual Global File Audit also shows the importance of direct mail. It continues to produce the most significant share of donation revenue (63% of overall revenue) versus other channels (i.e. online and direct dialogue). While these other channels, particularly online, will no doubt play an increasing role in the revenue and marketing efforts of charities, Mailers cannot ignore the importance of Direct Mail Acquisition at their peril.

Posted in Direct Marketing | Comments Off

PIPEDA vs. CASL – Changes in the Privacy World?

February 25th, 2013 by Cornerstone Group Of Companies

While marketers have had the time to understand the principles of PIPEDA (Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act), there are changes coming in the email world. Marketers generally understand and respect the principle of explaining what the marketer is going to do with a consumer’s personal information, and giving the consumer the ability to opt out at the time of disclosure under PIPEDA. In this case, it is up to the consumer to opt out if they do not wish to receive solicitations.

However, under the CASL (Canada’s Anti Spam Law), the onus for consent is reversed. Instead of the default position being that you can market to a consumer unless they opt out, the CASL default is that you must get the consumer to opt in to be able to market to them. No consent, no communication allowed.

CASL Specifics:

First off, it’s important to note that CASL specifically deals with Commercial Electronic Messages, more typically thought of as email or text messages not telemarketing or direct mail.

The intent of CASL is to eliminate unwanted electronic messages, referred to as spam, by requiring that a consumer provide consent prior to receiving an electronic message. In addition, the consent that is given can be retracted at any point in the future and it must be able to be done in conjunction with any message received. For example, any commercial email must contain an “unsubscribe” feature which clearly indicates the source of the email, and which can be unsubscribed in no more than two clicks.

Some Exceptions:

CASL does allow for Commercial Electronic Messages to continue without opt in consent in some cases such as:

• There is an existing business relationship
• There is an existing non-business relationship (e.g. not for profits)
• In response to a request, inquiry or complaint made to the company

The Current Situation:

The draft legislation has been passed into law as of December 2010, but the regulations regarding how it is to be enforced have not yet been finalized and it is anticipated that the regulations, once approved, will not come into force until 2014.

Preparation For Marketers:

If you are an email list owner –
• Make sure that you have the proper consent language moving forward, so that any email addresses that you collect in the future will be CASL compliant.
• You can use your PIPEDA compliant file for the moment, but that will change in time.

If you are an email list user –
• Make sure that you have the proper unsubscribe mechanisms in every single email that you have sent on your behalf.
• Be sure that you source email lists from list owners who can tell you exactly where they got their emails and avoid owners who are rather “vague” about the source of their lists.

While the changes going forward are significant, with the proper planning and effort, marketers can use email and text messages to communicate with prospects. With the change in consent laws, they may well find themselves communicating with a smaller, but more responsive audience that has chosen to hear what you have to say to them. Careful messaging will ensure that the conversation is a longer and more productive one!

Posted in Marketing, Privacy Management | Comments Off

Google Grant Increases Top Bid to $2

February 8th, 2013 by Cornerstone Group Of Companies

In what at first seems a win for not-for-profits (NFPs), Google has increased the maximum bid for its popular Google Grant program from $1 to $2.

Some background – Google Grants is a program that provides qualified NFPs with free Google AdWords advertising to a maximum of $10,000 per month of “in kind” click fees. That number could go as high as $40,000 if the NFP has the search volume to warrant an increase. The limitations of Google Grants are that ads only appear on Google Search Results Pages (paid Google ads also appear on partner sites such as AOL and Content sites) and the aforementioned maximum bid on a keyword. The keyword bid cap essentially means that if there is a lot of competition over specific keywords then the cost per click would increase to over a $1 and it wouldn’t qualify for the Grant. An example is the phrase “children charities” which in the Google auction goes for about $1.65 per click.

So the increase to $2 is a great thing. Or is it? Seems there’s a bit of a catch. In addition to the increase Google also announced that, “to balance the interests of businesses who pay to advertise on Google search, your ads will now appear below the ads of traditional AdWords advertisers.”

So that means that Grantees’ ads will always appear below paid advertisers no matter what they bid.

In any case time will tell if this will be a positive or negative for NFPs running Google Grant campaigns. I suspect it will be a positive because most NFPs have a fairly segmented focus of keyword searches. The reality is that the more generic keywords such as “sponsor a child”, “charity donation”, “donate” etc are already over $2 so NFPs that want to run Google ads on thousands of such keywords have to run paid campaigns anyway.

We’ll be watching results at Cornerstone Search and Web Services closely and will report back what we observe.

A quick reminder – if you are running Google Grants then you should be increasing your maximum bids on all keywords to $2. If you are not using Cornerstone to manage your Google Grant campaigns, we’d love the chance to present our
credentials.

Posted in Search Engine Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, Web Analytics | Comments Off

Google Me

January 7th, 2013 by Cornerstone Group Of Companies

“Google me”. It has turned into a verb and in some cases, a challenge. To be honest, I am surprised that Google hasn’t jumped on the bandwagon and churned out t-shirts for the masses with the statement boldly spray-painted across the front and back. I would laugh…wouldn’t you?

So whether we are saying it directly to a friendly face on a night out with friends or indirectly in the business environment, we are essentially saying it all the time; challenging people to sharpen their detective skills and rely on their resources at hand. And if you are wondering how we say it indirectly- simply ask yourself, when is the last time you went into a prospect meeting without “googling” the person to see if they made Page One or to scan their LinkedIn profile?

We are no longer caught off guard with the “face doesn’t match the voice” type of scenario. Providing the LinkedIn profile picture is recent and not pulled from the archives of yester-years, information with respect to the person’s physicality, education, work experience and expertise is ripe for the picking. You might even strike lucky and get a sneak peek at his or her Facebook pictures, blog postings, sport associations and political interests. And if you are even luckier, you might hit the jackpot and dig up some embarrassing details that they would rather not share. One could liken it to the world of online business dating! So what do we do with all this information? Well of course we pretend to be surprised when they divulge a tiny piece of background information on themselves during the meeting. I mean, you don’t want to go in looking like you stalked the person, do you?

So what should we do? Become paranoid? Change our name to Amy, Sue, Pat or John….followed by Smith? Or do we simply accept that everything is public and that we are no longer in control; we are transparent. Trying to stop information from being published on oneself is a time consuming and tedious task. The reins of our privacy control are now in the hands of the Google searcher. As to when this transfer of power occurred, your guess is as good as mine. So if we all agree that you can’t hide from this reality, the only thing to do now is to fight back and OPTIMIZE yourself.

Like the companies that surround you online, you too are a brand that should be marketed effectively. I am not telling you to go out and start up a Google Adwords campaign and bid on relevant keyword phrases like “the coolest person in Toronto” or “the top digital executive of this century”. That would be a bit pompous, wouldn’t it? Plus I already tried that! However, you can implement some traditional SEO methods to meet your objectives. Content is the key and relevant content opens the door. For example, if you want to be known for being the expert on juggling, write a blog about it, post pictures of yourself in mid-act with 6 balls in the air, tweet about it, have others talk about you and include back links and develop your social influence on the subject matter. And of course review what your circus-like competitors are doing; emulate the professionals with the end goal being to out-rank them organically. You want to OWN JUGGLING!

So start your journey today and “google” yourself and think about your brand.

Then, after a bit of Googling self-indulgence, perhaps it is time to set some company New Year’s resolutions for 2013. Why not take a little test- we’ll call it the SEO Challenge. Here’s how it goes…

Select your top 5 keyword phrases that you think prospects are using when searching for your products and services. Please don’t cheat and include your brand name!
“Google them”
Take screen shots of each ranking result.
Record your results for each keyword phrase;
10 points for ranking in positions 1-3 organically.
5 points for being on the first page.
0 points for being on the second page.
-10 points for being on pages 3+.

My thoughts on your results. If you scored:

50 Points – GREAT JOB! Give yourself a pat on the back.
35-45 Points – Keep plugging away, you’ll get there one day soon.
>30 Points – Call me.
-50 – Call me now!

Add salt to wound and compare your results to those of your top competitor.

For more information on our Search and Web Marketing Services and how we can help you dominate the first page for your industry’s top keyword phrases, please contact Brigida Maxwell at bmaxwell@cstonecanada.com 416-932-9555 x2186.

Posted in E-Mail Marketing, Marketing, Search Engine Marketing, Search Engine Optimization | Comments Off

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