Any brand or local business can use some help from highly influential people on twitter, but, how do you find them? Imagine this: you a UFC/MMA fan and have a blog/online community which you dedicate to this subject with your own unique vision, you are dying to get the words out to other UFC fans. What is the best way to do this?

Simple. The following is a few manual tips that I find extremely useful to me.

Rule 1. Discount the actual twitter user influence ranking apps, such as twitterscore, twinfluence. etc. Ranking by twitter username is absurd to say the least.
Rule 2. Start with quality twitter search engine, I recommend using topsy.com, tweetmeme.com
Rule 3. find influential people about the TOPIC that interests you, then find the highly influential people that topsy.com and tweetmeme.com provides. Notice that they are not perfect but it gives you tremendous insights about who people listen to on twitter.
Rule 4. Filter/choose/target the influential people with your judgment and common sense: algorithms used in Topsy or tweetmeme is great, but not perfect. You need to think with your own head
Rule 5. Retweet and initiate contact with them, see if there is mutual benefit.

For now, there are not many automated tools let people do all these in one punch. But they will eventually come in a better, improved format.

Following is the repost of the report intro:

The World Economic Forum’s Global Education Initiative (GEI) today launched its report, Educating the Next Wave of Entrepreneurs. Building on the GEI’s mission to help countries implement education systems that are sustainable, scaleable and relevant, the report provides specific recommendations for the academic, public, private and non-profit sectors to collaborate in supporting the development of entrepreneurship ecosystems, in which education is a key driver. The report highlights the importance of entrepreneurship education for developing the skills, attitudes and behaviours necessary to create jobs, generate economic growth, advance human welfare and stimulate innovation to address global challenges.

“With over US$ 100 million in resources mobilized and over 1.8 million students and teachers impacted to date in our country initiatives, the GEI has demonstrated the power of collaboration and partnerships. In today’s critical economic times, we hope that the release of this report will catalyse further action to create the entrepreneurial ecosystems necessary to drive the next wave of innovation and growth,” said Alex Wong, Senior Director and Head of the Global Education Initiative at the World Economic Forum.

The report provides a landscape of entrepreneurship education practices across the globe covering youth (with a focus on disadvantaged youth), higher education (focusing on high growth entrepreneurship) and social inclusion (with a focus on marginalized communities). This is the first time entrepreneurship education has been considered in such a comprehensive manner.

While there have been many successful efforts to enhance entrepreneurial skills, there has not been a systematic focus on drawing upon these findings to develop effective approaches for advancing and implementing entrepreneurship education. It is time to comprehensively address entrepreneurship education on the global agenda. The report’s Call to Action includes the following recommendations:

• Transform the Educational System. Educational institutions at all levels (primary, secondary, higher, vocational) need to adopt 21st century methods and tools, including cross-disciplinary approaches and interactive teaching methods, to encourage creativity, innovation, critical thinking, opportunity recognition and social awareness. This requires a fundamental rethinking of the educational process. Academia should embed entrepreneurship not only into the curriculum, but also into the institutional paradigm. Goals, policies, outcomes, structures and rewards should encourage the educational approaches necessary for current and future generations of students. Policy-makers and governments should develop ambitious plans for entrepreneurship education at the national and regional levels. The private sector should engage with government and academia to help transform the educational system.

• Build the Entrepreneurial Ecosystem. Entrepreneurship thrives in ecosystems in which multiple stakeholders play key roles. Academic institutions are central to providing entrepreneurship education. At the same time, actors outside education are playing an increasingly critical role in working with both formal and informal educational programmes, as well as in reaching out to specific targets groups that have been underserved and/or socially excluded. Policy-makers need to provide the appropriate regulatory framework for start-ups, growth firms, employment contracts and intellectual property. Academic institutions should strengthen links with the private sector to increase the exposure of students to practical and real-life examples of entrepreneurship and encourage an entrepreneurial environment. The private and non-profit sectors should encourage and support programmes targeting underserved groups such as women, minorities, and disadvantaged or disabled people.

• Strive for Effective Outcomes and Impact. Greater clarity is needed on the goals and impact of entrepreneurship education, based on a broadly defined set of outcomes, not just narrow measures such as the number of start-ups created. To measure effectively, better data is needed. To date, there is still not enough empirical and long-term research on entrepreneurship education and its impact. Academic institutions need to set high standards for entrepreneurship curricula and research and develop a clear framework of desired outcomes and measures to track them. Policy-makers should encourage and support studies and data collection on entrepreneurship education. The private sector, foundations and other actors can raise awareness of the importance of entrepreneurship by sharing examples and data about effective entrepreneurship education practices.

• Leverage Technology as an Enabler. The parallel development of ICT and media has changed the landscape, providing an opportunity to create greater access and scalability for entrepreneurship education. The range of implications for enterprise development and entrepreneurship education needs to be further leveraged, particularly in developing countries in where scaling is critical. Policy-makers and academia should support the development of technology as both a tool and delivery method for education by making the necessary ICT infrastructure, hardware and software available at educational institutions and community centres. The private sector can provide expertise and partner with educators and institutions to develop effective online tools and locally relevant educational materials.

The report will be further discussed in sessions at the Forum’s 2009 regional summits in Latin America, the Middle East, Africa and India. Key education decision-makers and summit participants will review the report’s recommendations specifically as they apply in their region’s context. “By holding workshops in key regional summits, we look forward to providing the opportunity for policy-makers, education stakeholders and participants to leverage the Forum’s platform to further advance entrepreneurship education in their region,” said Ana Sepulveda, Project Manager and Global Leadership Fellow, Global Education Initiative.

The report was produced by the GEI and the following authors: Steve Mariotti and Daniel Rabuzzi from the National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship (chapter on Youth), Christine Volkmann from the Bergische Universität Wuppertal (chapter on Higher Education), Shailendra Vyakarnam from the Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning, University of Cambridge (chapter on Social Inclusion) and Karen E. Wilson from GV Partners (executive summary, recommendations, Steering Board case studies and consolidation of the full report). The report is sponsored by AMD, Cisco, Goldman Sachs, Intel and Microsoft Corporation.

I hope by now you get a chance to read Whit’s “twitter rant” and start wondering: am I for twitter, or am I against twitter?

Whit and lot of people think twitter.com is a fad because “no one is busy with tweeting, no one is paying attention to what others are tweeting about” and soon “it will end up like a big pile of crap no one can do anything about but forgetting”.

Read this: Twitter is supposed to be full of “crap”, the more crap there is on twitter, the more valuable twitter.com will become.

Imagine there is no twitter.com, people still chat/talk: popular people talk on the phone with friends/family all the time, lonely people talk in their head. All these talk are gone disappeared after “talk” is done.

Twitter.com lets people tweet in short message, which resembles the most basic human behavior: random chitchat, small talk, daydreaming. Although twitter.com insists it’s a great tool to connect with your friends in a more intimate/closer setting, it’s actually being adopted by millions people for other purposes: random chitchat, small talk, daydreaming, stay on top of News.

It’s not important for people to read all the tweets, the good ones will surface for different individuals and each person can have his/her own favorite few. 99% of tweets are supposed to be random crap that will instantly get lost. How often do people write down their phone conversation, their random chitchat, small talk, daydreaming: not often. But people still have to turn their thoughts/chitchat/small talk/day dreaming into action of pursuing something, buying something, doing something. Conventionally, marketers are able to identify people’s needs based on their experiences, seasonality, understanding of people, sometimes, guessing. With Internet/Google/Yahoo came the much better transparency from the historical data, which enables digital marketers to capitalize on. When Facebook came along, social media breaks down the inter-personal barrier, all of sudden everyone is connected with everyone. But Wait, Facebook does not provide better than what Google does: the historical data. Facebook only “invades” more on our privacy and force people into a more social animal than they are supposed to be. Readwriteweb calls “Facebook is a cult”, Facebook does not really provide anything more than smart sustainable marketers don’t already know. Yes, I have listed my favorite movies/hobbies on Facebook, but they don’t represent my real time needs, like AT ALL. Many marketers have been trying Facebook “contextual ads” for ages without success. I am one of them: running contextual ads for ages without seeing ROI. The “valuable information” on Facebook now became “crap”.

With Twitter.com, all of sudden, people start writing down their random chitchat, small talk, daydreaming. I tweet about the nice raincoats that bunch of random women wear at a street corner near my apartment while it was raining and I wanted to know where I can get that raincoat (for my gf). You maybe twittering about the shopping trip you must do afterwork. All in real time!

Yes, I admit all these tweets are trivial, worthless to our friends and no one wants to see. But that is besides the point. The smart sustainable marketers in the social media era that is beyond Google/Yahoo will need to mine the real time twitter.com. That is when crap becomes gold. That is why visionary people start treating twitter.com as a real time search engine. That is why Google is drooling over twitter.com.

That is exactly why Twitter will be the king of new social media marketing.

Techcrunch just released that Google is about to acquire twitter. I am not surprised. (see my previous post on April 1st fools day) Twitter needs a better search engine and will need resource to build it. Google has it, but Google won’t partner with twitter. Google has to get twitter in its entirety.

Michael Arrington also talked about Twitter be a search engine, and down play twitter’s “pro account” feature. I can’t agree more.

The money is in the search, twitter realized it and is testing out the search box in side bar, for people to find more interesting stuff to follow, and for business to target the “talkers” for their brand, or shop (small businesses). It’s two way communication channel, and one step above current search engine states. Once twitter gets its search fixed up for relevancy, twitter is well on its way to become next Google. Yes, you hear it right. Next Google.

Couple years ago, we had Youtube, Facebook, and we always have been wondering, who and what will be the next Google. Now we have a winner.

Not long ago, @garyvee (of course twitter tag) suggested in a highly popular video that it’s a nonsense to worry about how twitter will monetize. He pulled up “search.twitter.com” to show it’s in a similar situation as Google, only without ads…end of the story.

It strike me as a bold statement, to say the least, although it’s inspiring. I did not think twitter will invest big time on “search.twitter.com”.

I am right. At least if twitter wasn’t pulling off a April 1st game.

Today (April the fools day) Biz Stone announced twitter’s new search feature. (twitter acquired “Summize”: a 5 person search startup back in July 2008) using Twitter’s words “Currently, a small subset of Twitter users are trying this new search feature in the sidebar of their Twitter home page. When you do a search, you don’t go to another page, the relevant tweets instantly show up where you’d expect them to—right on your home page where tweets love to be.”

I am one of the small subset, I did a quick search for “wine” and got tons of tweets with “wine” in it, including people I don’t follow, although again, using twitter’s words: “By default, the tweets you see on your home page are from sources of information that you have curated over time—in other words, the accounts you chose to follow. When you search, you’re asking for any tweets that contain the word or phrase you’re interested in right now.”

I then expended the keywords a bit: wholefood wine, I was thinking about what wine is on sale at my local wholefood store. There was no search results! See where I am going: twitter search is very early, it does not look for keyword match type, no ability for local search – just for the record. yes, if twitter search is perfectly done. I can totally imagine this twitter becoming the next Internet cash king like Google does. I can also imagine TEO/TEM. (vs. SEO/SEM). To get to where they need to be quickly, profitability wise, twitter might work with Google. Otherwise, it may take much longer.

I know, I know. Twitter confirmed paid account. But I don’t believe that is a sustainable way to be a fortune 500 company if twitter really think big. Look at flickr, they are nice, they were big. So what? Twitter should be much bigger than that. and I believe Search is one of the top ways to go.

So, to wrap it up, Looks like the new twitter search feature is mainly a design change, but it’s a significant change toward monetizing the most important real estate: the twitting page. (Not search.twitter.com)

Thoughts?
P.s. I believe I just invented terms “TEO” and “TEM” or “TSEO” or “TSEM”

SUMMARY: Maximizing conversions from Google AdWords is at the top of marketers’ checklists. But it’s easy to get lost in all the data the program generates. Find out how one marketer increases AdWords conversions by applying three processes.

This is a useful how-to article for anyone in a niche industry where one to three main keywords are the bread and butter.
Troy Olson, Online Marketing Manager for BillardEx, a large pool-table retailer, loves digging into AdWords and site-analytics data. He uses three processes to get the highest conversions at the lowest cost.

Before applying the processes, Olson recommends that all marketers use Google Analytics because some data gets pulled into Google Analytics that doesn’t get pulled into other analytics programs.

Olson thinks AdWords Editor should be every marketer’s most used search tool. “You can download it when you log into your AdWords account,” he says. “Once I found it and figured out how to use it, which is pretty easy, I can honestly completely revamp and change a campaign in a matter of hours.”

Olson uses AdWords Editor to copy and paste entire accounts and campaigns, move around ads, keywords and negative keywords, and diversify campaigns by geographic region.

Once you download AdWords Editor, try using one of Olson’s three processes to refine AdWords campaigns.

Process #1. Follow the Click

This process is the big picture, an overview of how Olson thinks about the data. It is the first step to executing all three processes.

Step #1. Dig into AdWords data

Olson looks at the clickthrough rate (CTR) of each ad to find out how many visitors an ad is pushing to the site.

Note: BilliardEx uses PPC ads to attract visitors to its website.

Step #2. Dig into site analytics

Once he knows how many visitors get pushed to the site, he evaluates what they do on the first page. Do they leave? How many leave? What do they look at while on the site? Where do they go?

Step #3. Dig into shopping-cart analytics

Next, he looks at how many enter the purchasing process. How many add a product to the shopping cart? How many abandon the shopping cart?

Step #4. Dig into conversion analytics

Finally, he digs into the conversion data. Who made a purchase? What did that person buy? What does he know about him/her? How can he tweak AdWords to get more buyers?

Olson follows this process because it shows each step a visitor takes — from clicking a PPC ad to purchasing a product. If he looked at the data in reverse, it would lead to the conclusion that he needs to bid on more keywords to increase conversions instead of trying to find better keywords, create better ads, create better match types, etc.

By following each click from entry to purchase, Olson makes conclusions about how to tweak AdWords campaigns to send only those visitors who are likely to purchase.

Process #2. Look Deep Into Data

Process #2 reveals the hard numbers to look at within AdWords and site analytics. Looking at the data in this order allows you to draw conclusions about which keywords to keep or eliminate, which ads to tweak, which Web pages to tweak, etc.

Step #1. Evaluate CTRs and bounce rates

Bounce rates measure the percentage of single-page visits (i.e., the number of visitors who leave the site from entry page without clicking on anything).

Olson looks at CTRs, then at bounce rates because there might be an ad that’s really effective, it draws a lot of visitors, but if the bounce rate is higher than the site’s average bounce rate, something’s not right.

The bounce rate tells you something about the ad, Olson says. If it’s too high, the ad isn’t giving the right impression of the site (or landing page) or the site isn’t matching visitors’ expectations based on what the ad copy promised. “You can change the keyword or the ad if your bounce rate isn’t where it should be,” he says.

TIP: Don’t forget to follow the process through to conversions because there might be a keyword that has a high bounce rate but also a high conversion rate.

Step #2. Evaluate time on site and pages visited

Looking at time on site and pages visited helps identify trends. If there’s a common exit page, for example, perhaps that Web page should be tweaked or eliminated from the website. If a Web page gets bypassed by most visitors, perhaps that page isn’t necessary.

“There is an invisible line for converting browsers into buyers,” Olson says. For example, it might take at least 10 minutes and 12 pages visited to complete a sale; therefore, it’s important to generate keywords and ads that produce visitors who spend at least 10 minutes looking at 12 or more pages.

TIP: There is a point at which the quality and effectiveness of the site takes over.

AdWords can only get people to a site, nothing more. Also, a change to the website alters the visitor’s experience. For example, when BilliardEx added streaming videos of customer testimonials to its site, the time visitors spent on site went up 20%, but the number of pages visited actually went down.

“We are trying to offset that change by ensuring that it is very easy to shop after watching a video,” Olson says. “This can be challenging.”

Step #3. Evaluate Add-to-Cart rates

Olson tracks shopping-cart additions because they show when visitors enter the transaction process. “You can get anyone to your site,” Olson says. “But if you can’t push them into the sales funnel, then you’re ineffective.”

If the add-to-cart rate is too low, it could mean the page needs a new promotion, such as free shipping, to push visitors to purchase. “It helps us know if we need to be more competitive or attack more when people are getting their tax returns,” Olson says.

Step #4. Evaluate conversions

Don’t discard a keyword based solely on its CTR and bounce rate. If a keyword results in a high conversion rate, keep it because a high conversion rate trumps all.

TIP: The goal of each step is to get the most relevant traffic possible (i.e., traffic that’s likely to purchase).

Example: If Olson discovers that every visitor from a specific geographic area, such as Midwest Oklahoma, leaves the site from the entry page, he goes back to AdWords and blocks the traffic from that area. He eliminates wasted clicks to improve relevancy.

Step #5. Evaluate customer characteristics

Look at every dimension of your customers, including which campaigns they come from, which ads entice them. Look at what countries they came from. What regions? What states? What cities?

Use the data to find more customers. If there’s a certain ad that gets more people to convert, use similar ad copy in other campaigns.

If a significant number of customers come from Los Angeles, try targeting that area with special promotions.

TIP: Don’t forget to look at the screen resolutions and Internet connection speed of Web visitors who convert.

“This is critical for designing your site and landing pages,” Olson says. “How big should your site be? How big should it not be? Is it worth putting video on your front page if 20% of your customers will have to wait for it to load?”

Process #3. Increase Click Relevancy

This is the third process Olson uses to refine incoming traffic and increase the relevancy of AdWords campaigns.

Step #1. Diversify keywords

o Consider every spelling of a keyword and plural form of the word.

o Test each match type with each keyword to see which match types are most effective with the keywords.

o Look at organic search terms. Visitors who find the site through an organic search might use keywords or phrases you haven’t thought of. Add those keywords to the list.

Step #2. Create extensive negative keyword list

Using negative keywords can improve the relevancy of visitors to the site.

Example: If a company sells musical instruments but doesn’t sell pianos, the company might not want its ad to show up when someone searches for pianos. Setting up a negative keyword for “piano” can prevent that from happening.

The larger and more extensive the list, the more likely the traffic that comes to the site is the right traffic (i.e., traffic interested in buying pianos).

Step #3. Maximize Keyword Quality Scores

Quality scores are the relevancy scores Google uses to determine ad placement. They measure the relevancy of a keyword to ad copy and search queries. The better the quality score, the better the ad placement.

To improve a campaign’s quality score, make sure the keywords match the content of the ads, and that the content of the ads matches that of the landing page or site.

TIP: If a company sells guitars, banjos, and ukuleles, it will get a higher-quality score by creating separate ads and landing pages for each instrument than by creating one ad and landing page promoting all three.

Specific and targeted ads prevent the possibility that a person who enters a search for “banjos,” for example, will see an ad about “guitars,” “banjos,” and “ukuleles.” The more relevant the ad is to the search term, the more likely it is that people will click on it.

Step #4. Track analytics results

The goal is to maximize each campaign to get the highest conversion rates possible by eliminating keywords, ads, and campaigns that aren’t working and find new ones that are.

Step #5. Use keyword benchmarks

Use well-performing keywords as benchmarks for new keywords. In other words, hold all new keywords accountable to the standards of the highest-performing keywords. It helps when deciding which keywords to eliminate and which to keep.

Step #6. Manage bids

When each of the previous steps has been maximized, it’s time to consider increasing your bids. Note: Increasing bids should be the absolute last resort!

Step #7. Commit to continual improvement

If each step has not been fully maximized, start the process again to get even better results on your Google AdWords campaign.

Useful links related to this article

Google AdWords help:

http://adwords.google.com/support/?hl=en

Google AdWords Editor:

http://www.google.com/intl/en/adwordseditor/

BilliardEx:

http://www.billiardex.com/

How many times were you not so sure about what you were to buy and look for re-assurance from previous buyers? I don’t know about you but I always look for those fabulous 5 stars !

Tip1: always go to reputable 3rd party shopping sites such as Amazon, beachcamera, adorama.com etc., if you are not so sure how big the site is, type the site URL into http://www.alexa.com/, any site ranking above 60k should be big enough, reputable enough
Tip2: don’t just look for price! Many times merchant show a cheap price to draw buyer only to charge more through “handling, shipping, fees etc” hidden charges.
Tip3: this is my gold rule – always look for product ratings from previous buyers; not only look for the number of rating stars, but also pay attention to how many ratings this product has got. The more the better. Most products on this blog have great amount of positive customer reviews:)
Tip 4: if possible, check out the original brand website. Many 3rd party merchant or retailer like Amazon.com, or comparison shopping sites rely completely on merchant/seller to upload product “feed” or information which can be inaccurate. When in doubt, always go to the original brand site to find out more information.
For example: here is Amazon description to Nikon S560; here is the Nikon official site about the same model. Not only Nikon’s information is much more organized than Amazon, but has full brochure in support for the product. Rest sure that the photos on original site are always accurate while product images on Amazon could be inaccurate or even of different product.

In the future blog entry, I will share with you many great customer rating and reviews for certain products, and more shopping tips are coming up.

SUMMARY: A long-term, strategic lead-generation plan is essential for complex sales. But when market conditions change rapidly, you might find opportunities for ancillary campaigns that help address your customers’ immediate pain points.

Read how a telecommunications marketer responded to the credit crisis last fall with a campaign for existing customers. The five-week email series generated hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of revenue from products with a shorter sales cycle, and took home an Email Marketing Award at this year’s MarketingSherpa Email Summit.
CHALLENGE

“We have a lot of planned campaign activity that has a relatively long cycle,” says Russell Cartwright, Sales Enablement Manager, BT. “Although they are very much strategic campaigns, what that doesn’t do is give us the agility to respond to changing market conditions.”

Cartwright’s team felt those limitations acutely last summer, with the credit crisis emerging in full, and rising worldwide oil prices dragging the economy down. They saw a need for new campaigns that positioned the company’s telecommunications products and services in light of customers’ financial concerns.

With most of the marketing budget already set aside for quarterly campaigns, however, any new effort had to be relatively inexpensive and fast to implement.

CAMPAIGN

The team created a series of emails to offer existing customers advice on surviving the recession. Those messages included links to relevant BT products and services that also had a comparatively short sales cycle, to capture immediate revenue.

Here are the five steps they took to plan and implement the campaign:

Step #1. Create five-part email series on cost-cutting tips

The team wanted a unified campaign theme that would reflect the recent economic challenges. But they also wanted to “turn a negative into a positive,” says Cartwright.

They chose to highlight ways that IT and communications services can cut customers’ costs and improve their bottom lines. They called the series the “Credit Crisis Survival Kit” and selected five specific topics within the theme:
o Managing high fuel costs
o Managing total business costs
o Lowering customer-acquisition costs
o Retaining customers in a slow economy
o Improving cash flow

Each email offered links to advice and educational content, such as existing webinars on the BT website. The messages also provided links to BT products and services that could help customers achieve savings. For example:

- The email on managing fuel costs included links to BT Web conferencing services.

- The email on managing total operating costs included links to BT’s bundled networking and telecom offerings.

- The email on improving cash flow included links to BT’s electronic signature service, which helps close deals faster.

“It wasn’t just a solutions push,” says Cartwright.

Step #2. Select list of existing customers for the campaign

The team wanted to get the program running quickly, so they worked off their house list. They also wanted to provide additional service to existing customers, and position the company as partner that could assist them in turbulent times.

They selected the top 20,000 business customers to receive the campaign.

Step #3. Send personalized emails

The need for a rapid turnaround also led the team to create a simple email template that was primarily text. The only major graphic element was a header image of a first-aid style toolkit and the “Credit Crisis Survival Kit” title.

They also personalized those emails by sending them from the email address of the customer’s account manager.

The result was a message that looked less like a formal BT marketing promotion, and more like a personal note that leveraged existing relationships between customers and their account reps.

- Text was limited to just a few paragraphs, explaining that the company recognized that businesses were facing tough challenges, and describing which BT resources were available to assist them.

- Each email contained links back to the BT site, where visitors could read more about the topics and products being offered.

- The five emails were sent two to three weeks apart, depending on other scheduled promotions from the marketing team. They didn’t want customers receiving too many messages from BT in the same week.

Step #4. Track response rates and website activity

After each email send, the team tracked several metrics to determine customer engagement and gauge interest areas. They measured:
o Opens
o Clickthroughs
o Which page a customer initially visited
o Clickstream to other pages after landing on the site
o Time spent on each page

Step #5. Provide reports for sales team follow-up

The team’s email system provided sales representatives immediate feedback on customer response, as well as cumulative reports on customer activity.

- Account managers received an instant message alerting them when a customer had opened an email or clicked a link inside.

- They also could access the email system to get a report detailing which pages of the site the customer had visited and how long they had spent on each page.

- Account managers used that data to plan follow-up contacts with their customers, to answer questions or discuss products in which a customer had shown interest.

Although sales reps could see in real-time which customers had clicked on Web pages, Cartwright’s team cautioned them not to call prospects immediately, so as not to appear “Big Brother-ish.” Sales reps also were free to analyze customer responses on their own and prioritize follow-up calls.

RESULTS

Rapid turnaround and timely advice resulted in quick wins for Cartwright’s team:

- The five-week campaign secured new contracts worth more than £270,000.
- Email open rates for the campaign averaged 24%, compared to a 21% average for BT’s typical marketing emails.

“That was revenue we’d ordinarily have to wait a lot longer to accrue,” says Cartwright. “The immediacy of the campaign meant we could connect with the right customer at the right time and turn them into sales.”

The team also sees potential longer-term benefits in terms of customer loyalty. The email campaign created a way for account managers to reach out to customers during difficult economic times and start a conversation about their current concerns and future needs.

Useful links related to this article

Creative Samples from BT’s Credit Crunch Survival Kit Campaign

http://www.marketingsherpa.com/cs/btcredit/study.html

The team used Genius.com’s email marketing platform:

http://www.genius.com/

BT

http://www.bt.com

SUMMARY: Don’t want to spend a fortune to build an email list? You don’t have to. We interviewed a marketer who multiplied his subscribers list 20 times by involving popular bloggers in his low-cost campaign.

Find out how you too could expand a marketing file by holding one contest for bloggers, and another for their readers. Includes results and creative samples.
CHALLENGE

Patric Welch, Owner, Noobie, needed a bigger marketing file. The technology education site had a list of well-qualified email newsletter subscribers, but it did not have enough names. Welch wanted his email promotions to have more impact, and for that he needed a larger list.

His team decided to target a specific demographic through well-established blogs. Welch created one contest that required entrants to share their email addresses, and another to encourage bloggers to write about the former one. In October 2008, Welch’s team ran a private contest for bloggers and a public one for their readers.

CAMPAIGN

Step #1: Target an audience

Welch felt that moms could use more technology advice, especially in the digital camera market, he says. He dug into the “Mommy Blogger” phenomenon to find that audience. Many mothers and mothers-to-be candidly share their experiences and opinions online. Some mommy blogs, such as dooce, get well over 100,000 unique visitors a month, according to Compete.

Step #2: Set prizes and rules of contest

o Wii for readers

Welch set the hard-to-find Ninentdo Wii as the grand prize for the blogs’ readers. The campaign ran from October to December 12, giving the winner the option to give the Wii as a holiday gift to a loved one.

“At the time, the Wii was the hottest commodity going, and to get your hands on one involved waiting in line at a store for an hour before it opened,” he says.

Readers submitted their full names and email addresses for a chance to win. They could also receive additional entries (and a better chance of winning) by referring five friends to enter the contest. After December 12, the winner was picked at random.

o iPods for bloggers

Note: This portion of the contest was not publicized. The blogs’ readers were unaware of it.

The bloggers could win one of two prizes: an iPod Nano or an iPod Shuffle — both very popular consumer gadgets. The Nano was awarded to the blogger who generated the most signups for the contest. The Shuffle was awarded to the blogger responsible for registering the winner of the Wii.

“I thought to myself, ‘If someone blazes out ahead, the others are going to give up, so I included the Shuffle as another prize,” Welch says.

As the campaign got under way, Welch realized the possibility that one blogger could win both prizes. He decided to change the rules to prevent that from happening. “No one was upset by it. They all understood,” he says.

Step #3: Set up landing page and auto emails

Welch’s team created a contest landing page (see creative samples below). The page included:
- Explanation of contest and rules
- Picture of the Wii
- 3 text boxes for first name, last name and email address
- Terms, conditions and “agree” checkbox
- 5 textboxes to refer friends via email

Those who entered the contest were added to Noobie’s marketing file. The referred friends were not added to the file unless they visited the site and registered for the contest.

o Auto-email referrals

Welch’s team wrote a script to email the referrals automatically. The email quickly explained the contest and provided a link to the landing page.

“What was nice about the script is that it had the name of the person who had originated the entry. So it said ‘your friend, John Smith, says you might be interested in this.’”

Step #4: Set up coded links and a tracking page

Welch’s team created coded links to identify each source of traffic to the landing page. This way, they could see which sources were driving the most registrations. Sources included:
- Blogs (each blog link coded separately)
- Referrals
- Emails to Noobie’s newsletter subscribers
- Social networks
- Google AdWords
- Link from homepage

o Drive competition

Welch wanted the bloggers – the main drivers of the campaign – to compete with one another for the iPod Nano. He created a page that listed the blogs by their number of registrations in descending order. The blogs’ names were coded, so that they would not be known to one another.

This page was updated regularly. Welch would email the bloggers once a week with an update on their rankings and a link to the stats page. “The purpose behind this was that when somebody sitting comfortably at 500 signups in first place gets passed at 520, it gives them a little nudge to get back and promote it a little better and get back in first place again,” he says.

Step #5: Find and message bloggers

With the architecture in place, Welch started researching and reaching out to “mommy bloggers.” He found them through basic Web searches. When he found a blog he liked, he looked at its “blog roll,” or links section, to find similar sites. “This is where the hours of work piled up,” he says.

o Determine site size

Welch looked at the sites’ number of RSS subscribers (if publicized) and the freshness of its content. Having 500 RSS subscribers was enough, as long as the blog’s content was fresh, he says. He decided not to reach out to stale blogs, even if their numbers were higher.

You can also look at a blog’s monthly Web traffic and Technorati rank to get a better idea of its readership and authority (see links below).

o Send everything in one email

Welch identified about 200 blogs to pitch. Rather than sparking an on-going dialogue with each, he sent everything a blogger would need in one email. This included:
o Description of the contest
o Coded link to the landing page
o Link to the stats page
o Link to an image that could be used as an ad

“I started out by sending the ad as a JPEG attachment. Then I thought to myself, ‘that’s another reason for someone to think I’m sending a virus or something and not bother,’” he says.

Welch looked for contact information for the bloggers on their websites. When all else failed, he submitted to their “contact us” forms. His email was a friendly soft-sell, he says, suggesting that the bloggers write about the contest, or post the ad on their site.

o Be prepared to answer questions

The most common questions Welch received about the contest and their answers:

1. Q: I have four blogs. Can I write about this on all of them?
A: Absolutely.

2. Q: I only do exclusive contests where one of my readers is guaranteed to win. Is that possible to arrange?
A: No.

3. Q: When this post rolls off my page, can I write about it again?
A: Sure.

The rest of the questions were mainly clarifications about how long the contest would run and other minor details, he says.

Step #6: Promote elsewhere

Welch also mentioned the contest in:
- Noobie’s weekly email
- His Twitter feed
- Noobie Facebook group
- Smaller Indiana: a local online social network

He did not push hard in these areas for several reasons. First, his target audience was not in these channels. Second, most of the people in these channels already knew Noobie and its email newsletter. Last, he considered promoting to his email list “self defeating,” but did mention the contest as a courtesy to Noobie’s audience.

He also promoted the contest through Google AdWords, but shut off the campaign after a few days. “The bloggers were driving more traffic for free,” he says.

Step #7: Scrub list, remind new subscribers

The contest’s registration form did not prevent multiple signups. Welch’s team had to scrub the list of duplicate entries before awarding the prizes, and before promoting to the list later on.

o Reminder in first email

Contest registrants were told in the terms and conditions that they would be signed up for Noobie’s emails. Since he knew that most people would not read the fine print, Welch reminded the new subscribers of this fact in the first email sent to them (see creative samples).

The email’s header stated: “Note: You are receiving this email because you are a subscriber to Noobie’s regular mailing list or you recently signed up for one of Noobie’s product giveaways.”

RESULTS

“I was ecstatic about the results,” Welch says. “I probably had five times the page views per month while the contest was running, compared to normally.”

After the contest, the traffic settled down to about double its previous volume, he says.

In all, Welch’s small email list exploded to 20 times its previous size. The blogs were by far the strongest force, driving 71.5% of the registrations. Signups from other sources:
- Referrals from friends: 12.8%
- Unknown: 10.8%
- Google AdWords 2.1%
- Emails: 1.6%
- Social networks: 1.0%
- Homepage link: 0.2%

“Unknown” represents the percentage of registrations that came through without a tracking code.

About 40 blogs, or 20% of those emailed, wrote about the contest.

o Wandering contestants

“Some people who signed up for the contest when they submitted the form, they got a thank-you page on my website. That thank-you page had three hot things I wanted them to know about Noobie, with links. So, some people stayed on the site and navigated around. And some people even went as far as to use the normal email signup box that I have on the footer of every page.”

Useful links related to this article:

Noobie Contest Creative Samples

http://www.marketingsherpa.com/cs/noobiecontest/study.h

ml

FormSpring: Helped Noobie build landing page form and script

http://www.formspring.com/

Compete

http://compete.com/

Technorati: Parenting blogs directory

http://technorati.com/blogs/directory/lifestyle/parenti

g

50 Best Mom Blogs

http://www.onteenstoday.com/2008/03/18/50-best-mom-blog

/

dooce

http://dooce.com/

Nintendo Wii

http://www.nintendo.com/wii

Noobie: Friendly technology coaching and consulting

http://www.noobie.com/

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