Mash Media Cafe - Fresher Marketing Ideas

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• Split testing makes for sense and sanity

  Why i before e - always after C!!
  
  Split testing - of email campaigns, DM creative and other marketing communications activities - often breaks conventional rules.  Particularly when copy writing, proofing and QA come into the equation.
  
  Take "complementary" and "complimentary".  Such subtle differences resulting in significantly different meaning.  Particularly when used in the context of business.
  
  Of course all clients are vigilant when it comes to proof reading their copy content and rightly expect complete rigour from the professional partners supporting them in the creation of critical marketing communications collateral.
  
  Equally, we all should interrogate carefully those marketing messages we receive on a daily basis, and perhaps sometimes test for ourselves the integrity of their original meanings.
  
  Split testing various campaigns, by tweaking subject headings of emails for instance, can provide insight into what actions are most appropriate at the next stages of contact.  A/B testing of campaigns across platforms: for example email, print, Twitter, LinkedIn etc., can provide valuable information too, about recipients' behaviour and preferences and even present opportunities to get feedback.
  
  When you're ready to plan your next campaign, why not get in touch - for an informal audit of creative concepts, relevancy of copy content, functional performance, R.O.I.  It'll be Complementary to your overall strategy and Complimentary, too.

  Posted by Kaz on Fri, 2 Sep 2011

• New Creative Exchange.

  Introducing the new Creative Exchange from Mash Media Cafe in partnership with the x-Centre and Cricklepit Media.

  

  Posted by Gareth on Thu, 30 Jun 2011

• Customer Experience

  I love clients.  They bring marketing folk back to earth, just by DOING. 
  
  Here at Mash Media Cafe, we like to think we're everyday doers too - foot soldiers who help our clients put marketing ideas and plans into action.  We pride ourselves on speaking plain English.  But sometimes we're guilty too; of talking in acronyms and lapsing into marketing speak. 
  
  For example, a client today has been considering options for managing their database: the business's customers, prospects, suppliers and stakeholders, whom the client contacts and wants to keep in touch with.  Straightforward. 
  
  Unfortunately however, I mentioned CRM and then, unguardedly "customer relationship management".  Arrragh!  Now it's not that I can't eloquently explain the importance of moving customers from a state of satisfaction to loyalty through incremental, planned communications messages that Bond (whereby the organisation acts in customers' best interests), Personalise (once they've understood and anticipated customers' needs and wants) and Empower (by sustaining conversations with customers on the customers' own terms).  Or of course, suggest, reference and recommend systems and software solutions that segment, distribute and record these various sophisticated messages.  I didn't need to!  The client was defining CRM by DOING IT; more efficiently than any marketing definition I've read so far.
  
  To deal pro-actively with customer feedback and comments for example, this independent, service-based SME has put a very human form of CRM at the heart of its operation.  There's a  brilliantly effective training programme in place to ensure that the right people deal with customers' opinions, including psychometric testing and regular appraisals to identify and motivate customer service 'champions'.  The client also makes sure that their customers have open access to feedback and that any complaints are dealt with at a single point of contact.  Recently the website improved this state of engagement even more by incorporating direct links to Trip Advisor and other social media networks.  All customer-facing staff within the company are confident that their decisions will be supported by the management team, and the general culture of the business encourages everyone to recognise the true value of customers and the significance of retention.
  
  Coming back to the technological options that can help manage the 'customer experience' of this brand, we will be focusing on what alternatives are available and the various cost/benefit arguments of off-the-shelf versus bespoke solutions. 
  
  But in the meantime, I'll hang on to the real meaning for my clients of managing relationships with customers: turning products into experiences; satisfied customers into members of a club; repeat customers into viral marketing departments; excellence into memory; damn good service into fulfilment of dreams...!

  Posted by Kaz on Wed, 29 Jun 2011

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