by on November 1, 2011 Leave a Comment

Incorporating Video in Email Marketing

by Jennifer O’Brien

More and more companies are including videos in their email marketing campaigns. Past technical obstacles are no longer a problem with the advances in technology. Studies show that people are more likely to watch a video than read a message and emails containing video are opened five times more than emails without video. There has been a prediction that by 2013, 90% of web traffic will be caused by video.

There are many benefits of having video in your email marketing campaign. Some researchers suggest that people are 85% more likely to buy a product if they watched a video describing it than if they simply read about it. There have been significant increases in conversion rates and return on investment. Some companies report click through rates increasing by over 96% from video. It provides a richer interaction between business and consumer and is becoming a common practice.

One way to place a video in your emails is to put a thumbnail image of the video in the email and clicking on the image redirects the subscriber to a landing page.  It is also possible to have the whole video play in the email with no redirecting. You can also just place a link to a video in the email instead of embedding it within. If you do embed the image within the email, you should add a text link below the video describing its content because some people have an image blocker set up on their emails.

One important thing to keep in mind is that people are not likely to watch a lengthy video. You should try to keep it less than one minute long. Subscribers are busy so they need to watch videos that are short and to the point. It is important for the video to have a clear message and offer useful information. The video should clearly relate to the objectives in your campaign and portray the brand correctly.

Don’t make the video the focus of the whole email. Remember to continue giving consideration to the other elements of the email because not everyone will watch the video. There are a variety of reasons why someone might not view a video in their email so it’s important to keep meaningful text and links. For the subscribers who never want to view videos in their email, you should give them the option of opting-out of the emails that contain video. This will help ensure that your subscribers are being sent emails with the type of information they enjoy receiving.

Filed Under: BMI Elite Blog, Digital Advertising, Digital Branding, Digital Marketing, Email Marketing, Marketing Campaign, Marketing Strategy, Video Marketing, Viral Marketing, Viral Marketing Campaign Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,
by on October 12, 2011 Leave a Comment

Building Brand Awareness Through the Use of Viral Marketing

by Jennifer O’Brien

It is the goal of any advertising campaign to increase brand awareness especially with the introduction of new brands. Target markets being exposed to a new brand is an important step for the product life cycle. It is actually the first step because only after brand awareness can you have aided brand recall, unaided brand recall, brand recognition, and then finally, after people become repeat users, brand loyalty. One interesting and fairly new way of increasing brand awareness is through viral marketing.

Viral marketing has been around for a long time in the form of word-of-mouth marketing, but has transformed with the introduction of the internet. Now it can be defined as a technique to encourage a large amount of people to pass on a marketing message. Viral marketing comes in many forms including videos, emails, gossip, and can even be found in social media sites.

In order to make any viral marketing campaign successful, it must contain relevant information that people think is interesting enough to pass on to friends or family. Advertising companies have accomplished this by adopting techniques such as incorporating humor, using current events, using unique content, and using content that can be helpful to people. Viral marketing campaigns that include this kind of information will not only encourage people to pass it along, but will help the consumer remember the marketing message.

Because of viral marketing, I am now aware of brands such as Jack Link’s Beef Jerky, the International Music Festival (IMF), and Dove. Viral marketing not only makes people aware of your brand, it helps shape the brand’s personality and it helps people form opinions about the brand. This is important because brand loyalty can only occur after someone forms an opinion. And, a brand having a unique or highly developed personality will help it to be the prominent choice for consumers.

Viral marketing is a great tool for companies to use to get the word out about their brand and their line of products. This form of marketing helps to get people acquainted with the brand and helps people to recognize the brand in the future.

Filed Under: BMI Elite Blog, Digital Advertising, Digital Branding, Digital Marketing, Viral Marketing, Viral Marketing Campaign Tagged With: , , , , , , ,
by on September 21, 2011 Leave a Comment

More Infamous Examples of Viral Marketing

by Jennifer O’Brien

An early example of viral marketing comes from Mystery Science Theater 3000. In the early 1990s this TV show had little distribution. They prompted their viewers at the end of the show to start recording it on video tape and pass it on to friends. This was a unique viral/word of mouth marketing technique in a time when not many people were using the internet.

Another unique example of viral marketing was created by BMW in 2001. They made a series of eight short films called The Hire and posted them on their website. These films were very expensive to make and starred actors like Don Cheadle, Clive Owen, and Madonna. In the end, the cost was worth it because it was viewed by 11 million people in a very short amount of time and prompted sales to go up 12% just in 2001!

In 2006, Jack Links Beef Jerky came up with a series of clever videos called Messin with Sasquatch which eventually became television commercials. These short films show a group of people walking around in the woods who see Sasquatch and play practical jokes on him. The videos became popular on YouTube where people were led to the company’s website.

A very recent example of viral marketing is from J.K. Rowling, the author of the Harry Potter books. She sent her fans on a hunt to find a hidden message. She posted geographical coordinated on her nine favorite fan sites. When her fans plugged the coordinates in Google maps, they found a letter at each location. These letters made up the word POTTERMORE and fans began to try and decode the message. People were talking about it like crazy on social media sites and wondering with anticipation what it could mean. When fans typed in pottermore.com all that popped up was a sign that said (coming soon).

It was finally announced that Pottermore.com will be an unbelievable website for Harry Potter fans to do many cool things. Fans will be able to create an account, choose which house of Hogwarts they want to be a part of, read the backstories of different characters, and do many things to interact with the story and continue on the journey. The site will be open to one million people on July 30th of this year, and be open to everybody sometime in October. This is an extremely unique and creative example of viral marketing! I suppose that should be expected from the author who brought us seven incredibly unique and creative books.

Filed Under: BMI Elite Blog, Digital Advertising, Digital Branding, Digital Marketing, Guerilla Marketing, Marketing Campaign, Marketing Consulting, Marketing Strategy, Online Marketing, Video Marketing, Viral Marketing, Viral Marketing Campaign, Word of Mouth Marketing Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , ,
by on September 15, 2011 Leave a Comment

Viral Campaigns Making An Impact On The Web

by Matt Genna

Many times you hear about something, whether it being a product or service, through all types of sources. Some of those sources could have been through the media, a newspaper ad, a TV commercial, but usually the biggest form of communication is through word of mouth. Your friends, family members, classmates and co-workers actually have the biggest impact on spreading information about something then let’s say a commercial on TV.  This is due to a trust that you have already established with them.

When trusting someone, you then trust their opinions. When someone you trust tells you about a certain product or service that they have tried out, and it’s positive feedback about it, you are more than likely going to check it out. This usually happens due to a successful Viral Marketing campaign. You see, at one point the person who expressed positive feedback about the product or service that you are now looking up, at one point was subjected to some sort of advertisement.

Viral Marketing or Viral advertising is in short, a “marketing buzz”. It uses the form of “hear-say” if you would, to spread a buzz between consumers who were specifically targeted in a type of market to advertise. Many times you will find this specific form of advertising popping up throughout the internet on outlets like social networks and social media websites. This is due to the amount of consumers that can be reached out to on these specific websites. Social networks like Facebook or Twitter have been rapidly growing with the amount of people that are constantly connecting to it throughout the world. Also, it is very easy to target a specific group of consumers if needed, just by either searching or visiting the groups or forums that are linked to the social networking sites.

Another source for a successful Viral Marketing campaign is through social media websites. Examples of social media websites are sites like Youtube and Vimeo. These sites allow anyone from anywhere to upload any type of media content to the internet. With that alone being a great tool for advertising, they also allow users that have accounts with these websites to login and post comments on their thoughts of the video. Now, what some marketers will do is post up a video that is entertaining to the masses but still getting their product or service across. For example, if you look at something like the movie “Twilight” and search for it on Youtube, you will not only find cuts of the actual movie, but you will also see fan-made videos of them, like parodies. Many times this is the most popular videos due to a majority of the people on these sites enjoying funny videos, now see, you might be asking how does that have to do with anything? It’s simple. When watching these videos, you’re not only getting a good laugh but you’re now aware of the movie and will recognize the name of the movie if it’s being talked about. Also, most of the time people will check out the movies in which are being made into a parody skit to see how well the parody was actually put together.

So as you can see, Viral Marketing can be quite the successful advertising technique. It all depends on what it is that you want to advertise, I say this because it has to mesh well with peoples interests on these social networking or social media sites. The users have to respond well to it on these sites for it to create a popular buzz, and with these sites being the most used websites on the internet, you can see how Viral Marketing campaigns can make quite the impact.

Filed Under: BMI Elite Blog, Digital Advertising, Digital Branding, Digital Marketing, Marketing Campaign, Marketing Consulting, Marketing Strategy, Online Marketing, Social Media, Social Media Marketing, Viral Marketing, Viral Marketing Campaign Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,
by on September 1, 2011 Leave a Comment

Viral Marketing: Marketing By Numbers

by Matt Genna

Social networks today are some of the most visited websites by millions of people around the world. They help keep everyone in contact with relatives and friends no matter where they are located; it keeps them up to date with events and lists the birthdays of all your friends so one doesn’t miss an important day. It has become a crutch in a sense, because many people rely on these sites for each of these things.

It is because of this daily high demand of the people that not only the social networks profit but the marketers as well. Marketers who indulge into the social networks with their advertisements benefit because of all the people that are subjected to the advertisements when visiting the social networks, a chain reaction you could say happens. But sometimes it isn’t just about having a flashy banner, or pop up.

In marketing, when advertising ones service or product it is good to evaluate who would use that product or service the most, as in let’s say age range. The age range of most people that use social networks are between 14 and 35. Knowing this, it could make or break marketer’s advertisement efforts if the product or service doesn’t benefit them in anyway, thus causing them to ignore and possibly creating a negative gossip surrounding the product or service, depending on how the marketer went about advertising it to the people in the social network. For example, people tend to not react in a positive matter when being spammed with all different sorts of un-needed advertisements.

But when advertising successfully, the outcome could be highly beneficial. In order to successfully advertise on a social network you would first need to analyze your campaign and if it’s the best form of advertising for the product or service to attract your targeted audience. The second thing you would need to do is select the best social networks for the product or service you are providing. The third thing you would need to do is target groups or forums on the social network that in which relate to your product or service. Once doing that, the fourth step would be to now spread the word of your product or service throughout the groups and forums, not by posting as the owner or employee of the company, but as a normal person. Doing this, people will react and listen better at times, this is because they will end up trusting someone who comes off as a consumer that has tried the product or service and are providing them with informative feedback.

Once the people on the forums or groups see the feedback from others that are a part of the same group or forum, they then will generate their opinions on the product or service. Thus, causing a viral word about the product through word of mouth, this is an example of Viral Marketing. In order to have a successful Viral Marketing campaign, or any form of marketing campaign, you need the masses to back you up and help spread the word of your product or service in a positive way. “Marketing by Numbers” for short.

Filed Under: BMI Elite Blog, Digital Advertising, Digital Branding, Digital Marketing, Marketing Campaign, Marketing Consulting, Marketing Strategy, Social Media, Social Media Marketing, Viral Marketing, Viral Marketing Campaign Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,