If you're a marketer working with a brand that sounds anything like what I just described then you probably spend a great deal of time thinking about how to get that message across to your target market in a way that actually sounds authentic but also motivates and stays "on brand". Even if you had 60 second TV-spots, 5 times the copy length for your search campaigns and banners that people watched as they looped through 30 frames it would still be a challenge to get the right message and have people believe it.

Luckily there's a tactic that caters well to higher priced brands and lets you demonstrate your true value without worrying about sounding too factious or casual - social media.

The smell of the New Year is almost gone and the economy is still tanking big time world wide which means now is a great time to get into social networking. This may of course seem counter-intuitive - most companies are trying to trim budgets and reduce expenses so why would I possibly suggest spending resources in expanding tactics? Because it will both make and save you money in the short term. Seriously.

Now I'm not pitching a social media campaign because I'm some big shot social media consultant looking to ramp up my business or because I dislike paid marketing method. No, I'm a believer in the power of paid search, organic search, email and even the banner just as much as any other internet marketer but social networking (notice I didn't say social marketing) has a whole lot more to offer than most companies give it credit for and a heck of a lot more value to bring than just cheap acquisitions.

Think about the world as it exists today - people have less money, hear loads of bad news, see friends getting laid off and while the sky isn't falling habits are becoming more conservative (in spending that is) every day. This means more people are flocking to the web to gripe, to deal hunt and just to talk. Part of web conversation has always been about brands and probably your brand but as consumers become more worried about where their dollar goes they've become more likely to listen to what others have to say. This is true for all of us - in the boom periods we want more, we want the hottest, we want new even if it isn't perfect (remember people lining up for a phone with a 2g data network when 3g was out). In the bust periods we want value, we want things that are reliable and work and with less money to spend on nice vacations, dinners out and trips to the mall we get more time to talk about what we like and dislike. Beyond more talk time we're also seeing improvements in technology, increased trust in online social media and overall upswings in adoption rates of sites ranging from FaceBook to LinkedIn to Twitter.

That's why now is a great time for a business to get into social networking and start building a reputation. Heck now is the time it has to be done.

Still not convinced? Well it wasn't that long ago that Twitter was a site visited by the "superusers" of social networking: people with big followings, techie roots or internet backgrounds. Now CNN spends half their day-time segments talking about the comments they're getting on Twitter, MySpace and their Blogs on every subject from the economy to national security. And those comments don't just come from the social networking elites; they come from all across the spectrum. The fact is people in America and around the world are sharing and sharing it more often.

The good side of this is that most discussions are positive. People want to be heard by friends and be helped by companies but they also have good things to say about each other, about the brands they like and about the discussions they're in. More importantly you don't need 5 star rankings to be considered good anymore... the culture of comments has shifted and what was once seen as a flaw is now seen as authenticity. Heck, one twitter I caught today from Buzzillions stated that more people buy 4 star products than 5 - I'd believe it, even a perfect product isn't going to be perfect for everyone.

So where do you start? I'd say start by becoming a member. I can't begin to count the number of brands I've tried to mention in Tweets (defined: a twitter post) only to discover they aren't represented officially. If you do nothing more than register an account on the major social sites and monitor it you're still a big step ahead of most of the business world and will still benefit from the insights that are dropped on your door. If however you fail to register you leave customers without a place to talk to you and almost force them to cry, yell and scream about it to more people simply because you aren't there to hear them.

But of course only watching doesn't bring you near the benefit of actually becoming a participant. Participating in social networking is the core of what the whole concept is about and is where you start to build the best benefits and become truly viral. Participating can be done on just a few sites like twitter, FaceBook, topical forums and blogs and it can take the shape of having someone respond to concerns, ask for feedback or simply network and socialize with customers. What matters is that you're timely and human... 3 week delays while legal reviews your 140 character response won't fly, nor will trying to be all marketing talk, all brand value and all about DR messages.

When you take the time to participate and build relationships you open up the opportunity for serious value and buzz. When I mention @zappos in a post of any sort I get a response; sometimes in hours, other times in days. As a result if zappos links me to something, be it a special offer or a survey I'm inclined to click. And I'm not unique in my affiliation; zappos has over 59,000 followers and follows over 63,000 members. And yet I still get responses. In an ideal world all companies would be like Zappos and move beyond sticking an intern, customer service rep or junior level employee with absolutely no management access in front of the screen - what you really need is someone with a real title, understanding and access to serve as a voice to the customer (even if a team helps them execute it).

As your networks grow and people follow you on twitter, friend you on FaceBook or MySpace, join your group on LinkedIn or express interest on a niche forum you'll get the opportunity to ask for things in return leveraging the relationship capital you've built up. Now instead of having to put together a large panel every time you want to test a product you can ask your network first and rule out the bad ideas for a lot less money a lot earlier in the game. Your promotions will get feedback, you can run polls and you can get true one on one comments that, while not the same as a formal survey, will give you insight into real customers with the opportunity to go back and ask that important follow up question. Knowing that 55% of your website visitors think your product is 9 out of 10 stars is great but being able to ask 5,000 people why they didn't buy it is better.

Feedback for less. Feedback quicker. That's money saved and money earned. Build a strong enough campaign, offer enough interaction or just please customers by responding (most of the time a simple "We're sorry, call us for a return at XYZ number" is enough to turn an angry voice into an enthusiastic fan) and you'll get a viral buzz too. Sometimes the buzz comes from a media source talking about your involvement, sometimes from the campaign you push out to your network that they forward on and most of the time just because you have a good name being circulated out there. Big or small it's awesome when someone tells their friends to try you out because they feel like you're good enough to recommend. That's new customers and money coming in the front door.

Of course there are a lot of complex strategies about growing a campaign, using cool contests, big names or brand new apps to draw in attention and lots of that is good and important but it's far less important than being available. Take the time to get involved, build relationships and show your customer base and the world that you listen and in a down market you may just find yourself the company hundreds start talking about which leads to thousands and tens of thousands and on and on. Staging a campaign is after all not nearly as good as generating the buzz because you're actually walking the walk.

Have thoughts on this post or questions? Skip the comments and visit me on Twitter.

The benefit from personalization and segmentation in general comes from matching a customer or user with something that's relevant to them which causes them to find the right match and buy more. While it may seam harmless to match things incorrectly from time to time, it's anything but. Case in point, in a 2007 survey by ChoiceStream, nearly 40 percent of respondents indicated that they were "less willing to return to sites with poor recommendations." (ChoiceStream PDF)

But even strong numbers haven't kept some companies from making bad decisions about how to personalize their marketing messages. A few days ago I recieved what amounts to perfect a example of a personalization mistake...

The problem...

As you can see the above email is from Harry & David and is about Valentine's Day (subject line reads: Ladies: Here's the Way to Your Man's Heart! FREE delivery on select gifts for Valentine's Day!). Now I'm a huge fan of the brand myself and would buy into their product gladly. Problem is "Ted" isn't short for anything female yet the email is written entirely for women... Whoops! Now Harry & David may not have used any advanced segmentation tactics to drive this email versus but the concept is still at heart about personalizing, even if the personalization was done to their entire list. 

On the surface this makes a lot of sense and someone in their marketing team made a great suggestion that they focus an under marketed to Valentine's Day segment [women] knowing their product is a hit with many men. But since Harry & David doesn't know my gender there's a serious gap. Very serious.

One could say that Harry & David may have a heavily female list, they may have even surveyed their list to confirm this.  But even if 90% of the recipients were a fit for this message the remaining 10% surely weren't pleased and definitely weren't likely to act on the message. Assuming most merely deleted it you'd have a definite marketing loss and in all reality there was likely a nice jump in optout rates as well; afterall, what guy wants to get an email for women. And of course only having 10% of the list be male is very, very unlikely.

The solution...

Gender targeting is a great idea especially for Valentine's and other peak holiday seasons but it has to be done properly. While some companies try to use first name to sort out gender that's dicey (think of the names Alex, Chris, Toni/Tony, etc...).  In all reality the only way to get close to accurate is to ask the customer. While most signups don't have any place to gather this data, Harry & David's does as they already require all sorts of data including name and address. Adding gender to that sign up page would be a smart idea if they want to continue segmented emails.

For those who don't have a long form email sign up (which is not something most sites do) there are still opportunities to capture gender or other details through micro-profiling. If you aren't familiar with it, micro-profiling is the concept of gathering data one or two pieces at a time over a customer's lifetime. So on day one the customer signs up for email either directly or through an order and on day five you capture their gender through a poll, a short questionnaire, a profile update, a second order or any other means and add it back into the master profile. Even if you don't want to build a robust profile, asking for some basics once can be enough to establish core segment groups.

But sometimes getting the data you want just doesn't fit either because of technology challenges or out of fear that the customer won't be pleased with you asking. In this case you simply have to make the wise decision to skip visibly segmenting along that line. For example, if Harry & David had realized that they didn't have my gender (perhaps they have it for other users) and sent me a split email geared at men or women individually or a single email that just didn't talk about gender it would have fit. Lift for the female segment may have been lower but toss outs and confusion from the male segment would go away as would the impact of optouts, brand reputation, etc... 

Not personalizing when you can't do it right is the right call.

When things do go wrong be ready to act...

No matter how you capture data there will always be some number of people who get the wrong information. This could be a result of a database error, a user error (we don't always check the right boxes afterall) or something else. When it does happen what matters is that you can identify and address it. If a customer calls or emails your support department to complain they just got an email about Women's clothing and they're a guy be sure customer support can fix their profile on the spot.  Too many companies stick their database in a vault so deep that the customer's only response to getting the wrong message is to opt out completely and that's a much bigger loss for you than for them,

Personalization is a great tool for any internet marketer and the results are amazing, when done right. The mistake we're all guilty of is wanting to do more than really makes sense and the email I got is a great example of that. Nice creative, good messaging, wrong data and when the message is this visible the mistakes aren't missed. 

Turns out Macys wasn't soliciting my feedback directly nor were they actually offering their gift cards. Macys had simply sent me an email which, from a 10-second glance, looked like a request for feedback but was really a link off to e-rewards.com, an on online survey panel that pays consumers with gift certificates and other rewards in exchange for filling out surveys. Being linked off to a third party to sign up for surveys was definitely not what I had expected and not something I consider myself to have opted into when I asked to receive emails from Macys. Now admittedly I didn't read the entire copy and in review it is clear what Macys is doing from their email but no one reads copy in email in its entirety and the Macys team had to know this when they put the big bold red text "Join. Share your opinion. Receive Macy's gift cards." at the top of the email.

I wasn't a fan of the pass off but let's think about how this will work for Macys in general.

1. Some customers will open the email and click through signing up and netting Macys some much needed revenue in the tough economic times.
2. Of these customers many will be confused when emails come about surveys not from Macys and a portion will definitely end up calling Macys for support.
3. Some customers in their disgust for being sent to an unknown site (look below, there's a small logo from Macys and that's it) will complain or just optout and since the optout is a global one, Macys will lose any future email opportunities with them.
4. Most customers who click to the page but don't signup will see that Macys has basically used them for advertising and while they may not take action, they're going to remember the email and remember being sold off.

Macys certainly could have structured this campaign to work the right way. They could have got their partner to brand the page properly, introduced people to a Macys survey first and then offered them the chance to take more. They could have even kept things just as they are but linked to the offer in an existing email as a promotion box. Instead what they did is send an entire dedicated email out to customers advertising a third party in a subtle way playing off of the idea of gathering feedback.

So Macys you wanted feedback and here's mine: partnerships are fine but just because email is cheap doesn't mean you should be using it to sell me off to another company. If you want my revenue don't make me consider opting out so you can earn a few dollars in commission.

While blogging is something I've really come to like and intend to continue I'm looking to get back to more than just consulting on the hunt for a full time job that can keep me challanged. So if you're looking to hire an ECommerce/ Internet Marketing Sr. Manager or Director please check out my resume or drop me a line.