You might think the constant siege of inboxes by spammers has tarnished email’s reputation as a marketing tool forever. However, email still remains the workhorse of online marketing and integral to relationship building. Spam is merely its evil twin.

Email can start a dialogue, enhance your credibility and generate sales long after prospects have left your website. It’s even more potent when you’re smart enough to speak to recipients as individuals, rather than bellow the same speech to the entire crowd.

Relationship building

Capturing a customer’s email address when they visit your website should be your top priority. Because no matter how much flash animation and handpicked testimonials you throw at them, less than 5% (and that’s being generous) of visitors will be ready to buy on their first viewing.

So rather than hope they’ll come back on their own accord, you need to be able to maintain a line of communication with prospects long after they’ve left.

If you can capture their email address (e.g. in exchange for a free newsletter or eBook) then you can develop the sales process over time, because email can be a potent tool for relationship building and earning your prospects’ confidence.

Focus on the prospect

As any salesman will tell you, people like to do business with those they get to know and trust, which is exactly what email marketing campaigns are all about. Your strategy isn’t to force recipients into submission by mail bombing offer after offer, but to engage their interest with relevant messages that provide valuable and useful content.

Emails which offer to solve a prospect’s problems, help them sleep better at night and feel they’ve benefited from the interaction is how you can win trust, confidence and credit card numbers.

Rather than talking endlessly about yourself and how much profit you made last year, relationship marketing emails need to be focused on the needs of your prospect and how your product/service can enrich their lives.

As well as earning trust with valuable content, email can be used in many other ways to foster loyalty, such as invitations to live events, timely promotions (such as a birthday discount) and getting feedback on what your customers want from you.

Don’t blast, listen and engage

Perhaps the biggest impact of spam on email marketing has been the speeding up of the demise of lazily blasting the same message at every customer. People now receive so many marketing messages that if your email doesn’t appear to be relevant then you’re only a mouse click away from being deleted or blocked forever.

Simply repeating the same offer to every prospect in the hope of seducing a small number is no longer the smartest strategy. People now want and expect to be treated as individuals, and I’m not talking about just featuring their name in the subject line.

Modern tracking and analytics enables you to capture an endless stream of data on prospects. Along with their buying history and demographic profile, modern one-to-one digital campaigns utilising personalised URLs are able to record data on your prospects’ interests, preferences and desires. You can then segment and customise future messages pitched to appeal to each prospect’s personal triggers.

However, the process of fine tuning emails to be as relevant and personalised as possible never ends. Even after campaigns have been launched, you need to run A/B split tests on every adjustable element, such as the subject line, layout and the call to action at the end.

Watching how people interact with every email enables you to listen to what they’re thinking and how your message can be more finely tuned in the future.

Email is about one-to-one dialogue, rather than bellowing a single message

As with every aspect of marketing, the more relevant, timely and personalised your email marketing can be the more chance of provoking the right response, or as the popular mantra goes ‘delivering the right message to the right person at the right time’.

Delivering mass untargeted emails is now more likely to get you blacklisted than welcomed into people’s inboxes. However, modern email technology means we can now build and fine tune personalised one-to-one email campaigns which are pitched to match the desires of each individual prospect, leaving lazy email blasts to the spammers.

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BDA (Buckingham Design Associates) blog - real people giving real opinions, and a complete lack of agency waffle. BDA deliver an exciting blend of design and creative marketing for the Oxford, Milton Keynes, Northampton and London region.

A very simple to understand webpage to produce something to boggle minds

www.revfad.com/flip.html

All Wordpress installations start out the same; what makes them unique is their skin, or ‘theme’. A theme is a set of files (or ‘templates’) which control how your content is pulled from your database and displayed to your visitors. The bare minimum that a theme requires to work is an index.php file and a style.css.

Index.php is the main ‘template’ that Wordpress relies on - there are numerous files that can take importance over this file, but in the absence of extra files, Wordpress will default back to the main index.php to display your site.

Style.css contains the basic information about your theme (name, author, version, etc.) but also contains all the CSS for your theme as well.

If you’re familiar with CSS already, creating your theme’s stylesheet will be a fairly straightforward process. What will be slightly trickier is the index.php file, as this doesn’t just contain HTML - it needs to be told where and which information to pull from your database, and this happens via the use of ‘template tags’. The best place to learn about template tags is the Wordpress codex.

Unless your site has a minimal amount of content or your theme is very basic, you’ll find that you’ll soon have more requirements than index.php can cope with. If you want certain content to only be displayed on certain pages, or if you want your posts to look different to your pages, etc., then for the sake of file size and readability, it will be a good idea to start adding extra files to your themes.

Common files are as follows:

• header.php; this contains everything found at the ‘top’ of each page, such as navigation, title, etc.
• footer.php; this contains everything found at the ‘bottom’ of each page, such as the copyright statement, etc/
• sidebar.php; your sidebar can contain anything and everything from your archives to your wishlist.
• single.php; this controls how individual blog entries are displayed.
• page.php; this controls how your pages are displayed.
• comments.php; this is perhaps the most common file after header.php, footer.php, and sidebar.php. It controls how comments on your blog are displayed.

Wordpress is an extremely versatile CMS, in that once you have the basic index.php and style.css sorted, your options are then pretty much limitless. Your Wordpress theme can be as simple or as complicated as you want to make it.

Further reading

• Theme development (WP codex)
• Stepping into templates (WP codex)
• Template heirarchy (WP codex)

‘If Coca-Cola were to lose all of its production-related assets in a disaster, the company would survive. By contrast, if all consumers were to have a sudden lapse of memory and forget everything related to Coca-Cola, the company would go out of business.” – unnamed Coca-Cola Exec

A business’ brand is the set of thoughts and feelings people associate with it. More than just an eye catching logo, a brand can provoke positive emotions, such as excitement, trust and desire, which seduce people into wanting a relationship with it.

People prefer to interact with those they like and trust. So a business’ brand is its biggest intangible asset because of its influence on customers; if you can influence the way they think you can influence the way they behave.

People don’t buy Nike trainers because they feel more comfortable, but because they want to buy into the lifestyle promised on adverts and endorsed by some of the world’s biggest sports stars. When Nike’s customers see their ‘swoosh’ logo they see a status symbol and feel a set of positive associations which they want to be a part of.

“A great brand raises the bar – it adds a greater sense of purpose to the experience, whether it’s the challenge to do your best in sports and fitness, or the affirmation that the cup of coffee you’re drinking really matters” – Howard Schultz (CEO of Starbucks)

It’s not always the best product which wins, but the one with the best branding

When people are in a shop choosing between two products they’re not merely pondering which has the most speed settings or loudest volume, but how the products make them feel.

People make buying decisions based on pragmatic and emotional triggers. So to encourage them to pick your box from the shelf, you need to make them feel good about you when they see your logo.

People are often happy to pay extra for a branded product because of the positive emotions triggered by the brand’s charisma (and advertising).

“Coca Cola does not win the taste test. Microsoft does not have the best operating system. Brands win.” – Bob Pittman (President of AOL)

Defining your business’ brand

When assessing what your brand should say about you and how it should make people feel, you need to consider:

• What’s your big idea – what makes you special? What’s at the heart of what you do? Ikea, for example, sells stylish furniture at affordable prices based on the big idea that well designed furniture should be available to everyone.
• Values – What do you believe in? What do you strive for in the service you provide? Easyjet’s brand is built on the values of easy and cheap.
• Vision – what are your aspirations and plans for the future?
• Personality – How do you want to talk to your customers? In a witty ‘Innocent’ drinks style or like a straight talking ‘John Smiths’ Yorkshireman?

These questions provide a blueprint for the thoughts and feelings you want your brand to communicate to your customers.

Communicating your brand

Once you’ve identified your big idea, values, vision and personality, you need to communicate your brand’s message through everything you do, including your business’ culture, customer service and advertising.

The tone, visual identity and appeal of your advertising must be consistent and carefully designed to reflect want you want people to feel when they see your logo. Whether it’s trust, excitement, reliability or prestige, the emotions triggered by your brand will influence how people respond to you and whether they’ll buy your products.

Selling bottled water is environmental insanity, with water being shipped half way around the world from Fiji and millions of barrels of oil used to make the plastic bottles.

However, the successful branding of bottled water as a purer, more natural and healthier alternative to what you can easily pour from the tap has seen sales increase 60% this decade and created a market worth £2 billion a year. This just goes to show that if you can influence how people feel you can influence what they’ll buy as well.

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BDA (Buckingham Design Associates) blog - real people giving real opinions, and a complete lack of agency waffle. BDA deliver an exciting blend of design and creative marketing for the Oxford, Milton Keynes, Northampton and London region.

Aren’t digital video recorders great: they let you watch what you want when you want, and the best part is you no longer have to sit through tiresome adverts? Well, ITV certainly doesn’t think so, but its desperation to force ads onto viewers could easily backfire.

Now that people are fast forwarding through the ad breaks, ITV are eager to find a way of shoehorning ads into the programmes themselves, and are currently trialling a new ad overlay technology, which enables logos and messages to be embedded on blank surfaces (such as a wall, the sky or someone’s forehead) during programmes.

The risk for ITV is that is that in its dash for cash it damages the viewing experience, and people give it the thumbs down with their remotes.

Ultimately, ITV could be forced to import more US shows because, unlike the UK, American networks aren’t banned from using product placement for funding.

A brief history of product placement

Embedded marketing has been around nearly as long as broadcasted entertainment itself. Back in the 1930s, Procter & Gamble sponsored radio daytime serials to get housewives hooked on its soaps in more ways than one. P & G (along with Unilever) then went on to sponsor numerous ‘soap’ operas from the birth of TV, in the 1950s, right up until present day, with its household products getting as much camera time as the actors.

In the 1980s it was the film industries turn to get invaded by brands, with Ray Bans featuring in Risky Business (Tom Cruise helped increase sales 55%), breakfast cereals luring out aliens in ET and Marlboro trucks used as bowling balls in Superman II.

Brands and modern movies

Product placement is now becoming an integral part of how movies get marketed, with brands falling over themselves to promote their movie star endorsements. Audi’s concept car in iRobot helped generate 34,000 search engine hits, whilst Sex and the City was proclaimed ‘the Super Bowl for women’ as advertisers virtually bankrolled the film’s publicity for a share of the limelight.

The Bond franchise is a particularly juicy cash cow for studios: the films are almost guaranteed to fill seats and advertisers rush to buy time with the world’s most famous secret agent. After ‘Buy Another Day’ and the two hour Sony promo that was Casino Royale, you can expect Quantum of Solace to continue the tradition, with close ups of Daniel Craig planning his route on his Sony Ericsson before making a daring escape in a spotless Ford Ka.

Does product placement work?

Product placement can be effective because it’s embedded in the entertainment itself. Viewers can’t fast forward or ignore it, and it can bypass their subliminal anti-ad filters. A movie star seen wearing a particular brand is as good as a celebrity endorsement, helping to enhance a positive association and a desire to dress like the hero.

Last year US advertisers spent $2.9 million on product placements, which was a 34% increase on 2006, and this year it’s expected to be higher still. American TV networks are already switched on to the fact that people aren’t watching their ad breaks, so weaving brands into the script is now the only way shows are going to get made.

As the old adage goes ‘if you can’t measure it you can’t sell it’, so (along with their own private armies of trackers) advertisers ask 2.5 million people to fill out online surveys on whether they’d noticed the product, whether it improved their opinion or if they found it annoying.

It will be a while before sense can be made of the data on whether product placement is the future of advertising, but for the time being it’s the direction ad spend is pouring.

ITV’s quandary

Product placement works when it’s a relevant part of the entertainment and fits in with what the characters would wear and use, such as reflecting the materialistic lives of the Sex and the City girls. However, it can back fire if viewers think they’re being manipulated and advertisers are trying to trick them.

ITV’s problem is that it’s unlikely viewers are going to be as accepting of logos suddenly appearing all over Coronation Street as they are of the American Idol judges only drinking Coke.

As with all forms of marketing, if message are irrelevant, annoying and of no value then it will either be ignored or make prospects switch off altogether, which is the danger ITV faces.

Are you happy being average? Or would you prefer to stand out from the herd? That was the challenge posed by digital marketing guru Seth Godin in his popular book ‘Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable‘.

His book’s theme is that, with markets full to bursting, you have to be remarkable if you want to get noticed and pulled out from all the other businesses milling around for attention.

What is a Purple Cow?

Seth’s definition of being a Purple Cow is to have ‘products, services and techniques so useful, interesting, outrageous, and noteworthy that the market will want to listen to what you have to say’.

So being a Purple Cow isn’t about being loud or quirky. It’s about finding a way to show that you’re more passionate, special and remarkable than your black and white spotted competitors.

What’s Purple Cow marketing?

Delivering superior products and services so amazing that people can’t stop talking about them can make you a Purple Cow. However, creating the perception that your products are exceptional can be equally as effective, which means your marketing needs to be superior instead.

A key theme in Seth’s ‘Purple Cow’ is that marketing needs to be remarkable because the ‘TV industrial complex’ is broken: people have been bombarded with so much mass targeted advertising that TV and print ads are failing to get noticed.

Whilst the effectiveness of traditional methods alone to launch a new product is questionable, TV and print advertising can still be effective for brand maintenance and keeping your jingle ringing in people’s ears whilst they’re browsing supermarket shelves.

However, for awareness campaigns targeted at specific sectors an integrated and personalised direct marketing campaign is the way to go.

How can I become a Purple Cow?

If you want your marketing to be remarkable, and stand out from the rest, then you need to think about how you can make your message more unique and special to your customers.

Here are a few ideas:

Promote your customer service as a differentiator – publish testimonials, case studies, reviews and feedback on your website. People look for the ‘social proof’ of a product by reading for comments in forums and review sites. Save them the effort and build trust in your credibility at the same time.

Start a blog – providing useful, insightful content helps build trust, gives your website a voice and can maintain contact with customers long after they’ve left.

Integrate your print and digital marketing – in surveys, the majority of consumers have said they prefer to receive offers in the post compared to email. Print is far from dead, and smart marketers know that integrating the two can make your marketing more effective, as well as remarkable.

One-to-one digital marketing – people like to be treated as individuals, rather than drones with credit cards. Delivering campaigns personalised to appeal to an individual’s interests enables your marketing to be more relevant and remarkable, compared to the lazy one-size-fits-all approach of your competition.

Purple Cows do exist

With so much average marketing in the world, it’s the Purple Cows that get noticed and rewarded. They haven’t become remarkable because their products are necessarily better, but because of the perception they’ve cultivated of being more unique, special and remarkable than the rest:

Innocent Drinks – witty copywriting on the packaging and the story of a small group of plucky upstarts taking on the multinationals won people’s hearts and sent their smoothies and fruit juices flying from the shelves. They now occupy 71% of the UK’s smoothie market, hold their own music festival and are launching a range of exotic vegetable snack jars.

Red Bull- launched a fizzy energy drink that’s as high in caffeine as it is in price. Its association with extreme sports and cool clubbers saw its appeal spread to the mass market. Buzz marketing and relevant sponsorship (Formula One and the Air Race World Series) has kept awake their global domination of the energy drinks market.

Riedel – traditional glass blowers with a long heritage of designing glasses to enhance the taste of any drink. Their story and the popular belief/myth that wine tastes better from a Riedel helped them sell millions of glasses to wine connoisseurs worldwide.

So what’s your remarkable story?

If you want to become a purple cow then start thinking about what’s unique, special or exceptional about you. What’s your background story? How can you make your product sound more noteworthy than the rest?

Once you’ve developed your remarkable story, start thinking about how your marketing can be remarkable too. How can you use the tools at your disposal to tell people an engaging story which will capture their interest, connect with them on an emotional level and be a tale they’ll eagerly share with others?

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BDA (Buckingham Design Associates) blog - real people giving real opinions, and a complete lack of agency waffle. BDA deliver an exciting blend of design and creative marketing for the Oxford, Milton Keynes, Northampton and London region.