It’s been quite a journey over the last two years. Putting this portfolio together caused me re-live some the experiences that I had during this time. I found myself upset, happy, despondent and overall grateful for the way things turned out.

I have many people to say thanks to for their support over the last two years. (I will do so privately.) I feel like a new chapter of my work is beginning. I’m looking forward to new friends and new successes with ol’ pals.

We used the mobile icons of the directories to create a standardized the look and feel. Below is what the ad looks like as Facebook wallpaper:

The product makes it extremely simple for a business to track their online reviews. It’s emailed weekly and only takes a single glance to understand a business’s ratings across the major review websites.

There are no passwords to memorize or training required. All the features are one click away from the inbox. Review Report Card is also available as a web app for your iPhone or iPad.

We accomplished a lot from a design perspective. Not only is the product extremely simple, we were able to build the advertising directly into it.

To learn more about Review Report Card, visit our website at http://expert-reputation.com.

These three elements will help you pull it off:

1. Make the email come from the same IP of the email domain (this will eliminate “sent on behalf of” disclosure that many email programs make)
2. Suggest a specific call to action, like an appointment
3. Embed your compliance statements in the signature and footer.

When you incorporate these three elements into your emails, people will be much more likely to respond. Here is an example of an email that got an 8% company level response rate off a list of over 1,200 people at pharmaceutical companies:

Element #1

We setup the SPF records of the from:domain to include the IP address of the sending machine so that the email only had my name in the sender field. It did not say “sent on behalf of.” Email from a normal person doesn’t say “sent on behalf of.” It’s key to make your marketing email look like it was sent by a real person.

Element #2

I suggested in the email specific times to meet. That’s the kind of thing that real people do–not marketing machines. The good news is that it’s easy to get pop in a time using a merge code. If you’re sending out 100,000 emails then be sure to rotate the times so that you’re not booking 100 appointments at once.

Element #3

You are required (by law and industry standards) to disclose that this is an advertisement, how the person opted in, how they can opt out, your physical address and your phone number. You can accomplish this without giving yourself away by following my yellow highlights in the above example, specifically:

• Embedding the physical address & phone number in your email signature
• Subtly disclosing everything else inside of the email footer (see the highlighted yellow parts in the example email)

This is not main stream. However, if you step out of the box, you could be pleasantly surprised by the results.

Because many B2B sales cycles are long and involve multiple people, the B2B marketer needs a way to track open & response rates from entire organizations–not just individual leads.

The benefit of tracking an organization’s engagement with your marketing is that you will be able to find hidden buyers within your existing lead pool.

Consider a buyer at the top of the sales funnel. Maybe the boss forwarded a junior employee a marketing email for your webinar. The boss wants to know a little more about your services but isn’t ready to jump on a sales call.

If you get a hold of that individual employee and they say “not interested” you will most likely give up on that company–because there isn’t enough time to figure out if someone else in the organization is truly interested.

Company Level Response Rates could expose hidden buyers for your products by measuring the engagement with your ads by multiple people at a target company. If there is high company level engagement, a salesperson should keep digging even though one person said “no.”

Of course, if there is not interest from the rest of the organization it is time to move on to other prospects.

Invented: Circa June 2011

Here is a video which describes the product.

The cookies would be set by the medical directories. The cookies have an ID that describes what type of medicine a doctor practices. For example, we know if someone visits a Dermatologist’s profile that we should show that user dermatology ads.

Thanks to Logan Lidster for the collaboration and the video editing. Thanks to Mark Leggett for the illustrations.

Go ahead and give it a try:

Pharmaceutical advertisers are always telling the public to ask the doctor about their drugs. Many already publish questions that the ad network can copy and paste to setup the campaign.

Success for this campaign would be measured by average clicks per user. The goal is to discover how deeply the average person who DID show interest dives into the ad.

With traditional mobile banner advertising, measuring engagement can be tricky. The user typically clicks one or twice and is redirected to a mobile landing page. It’s up to the advertiser to setup their own analytics package and measure post-click behavior. While this is possible, it’s not turn-key, and the ad network most likely can’t tap into these metrics.

Ad Networks should embrace this ad unit because they can show engagement metrics without having to rely on a marketer’s analytics package. The depth of interaction is built directly into the ad unit.

Many mobile advertisers are not committed enough in mobile to do post-click analysis on their end. They may miss the deeper metrics, and the ad network may miss out on future mobile spend.

Thanks to Alek for design collaboration and coding.

P.S. Here is a PDF one sheet with a media placement idea–medical directories.

The home page of inside.mobilepositive.com featured simple, free lists.

To retrieve the free data, a user had to subscribe to the list by typing his/her email into the box.

After subscribing to the list, the user received access to download it. He/she also was emailed changes to the list in real-time.

The strategy behind the email subscription component was to keep our brand top of mind–while also providing useful data that the user requested.

A good rule to live by in Email Marketing is keep your emails as transactional as possible–meaning send specific information for that user not bulk mail.

The goal was to give media salespeople knowledge that they could assimilate & use immediately after reading each story.

Mobile ads tie into the movies

Ashley is looking for show times for the new Justin Beiber movie.

She clicks a mobile display ad for the “Free Fries Movie Game.”

What movie are you going to see? > She clicks on the Justin Beiber movie.

What time? > She clicks on the time it starts.

Look out for the scene where Justin’s eating McDonalds.

The question is: Who did Justin share french fries with?

Enter your number below. We’ll text you the choices after your movie is over. Keep your eyes peeled!

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In store brand influence

Alex is inside Footlocker. He wants to buy shoes, and he doesn’t want to deal with a sales person.

He pulls out his iPhone and searches for Nike Running Shoe Reviews.

On a review site, he sees a mobile display ad that takes him to a mobile product selector for Adidas.

He answers a few basic questions. The site recommends a shoe that catches Alex’s eye. He decides to buy a pair of Adidas shoes even though he started out looking for Nike.

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Use the store locator

Nate is looking at his client list. One of his clients, Vizio, sells TVs at Costco.

He starts emailing people at Costo.

“You have a store locator app and a store locator section on your mobile site. Great work. Let’s start the shopping experience when customers are looking for your location.

“Let’s put a mobile ad on those store locators about a weekend Vizio TV sale.

“Then, we’ll have Vizio contribute to a mobile campaign that takes locals to your store locator.”

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Kick ShopperApp’s Ass

Jeremy runs mobile marketing for REI. He likes ShopperApp. Listen as Melissa convinces him that it isn’t so great.

“We’re doing this thing with ShopperApp. We like it. We know it’s getting people in the store to check out new products.”

“How well is that translating into purchases?” Melissa asks, knowing that sales tracking is a weakness for ShopperApp.

“Well… we don’t really know.”

“Do you have an existing rewards program?”

“Yes.”

“What if you got the benefits of ShopperApp — from your existing rewards program?”

“I’m listening.”

“Let’s run a mobile ad that asks people to download your app and scan a product to get 10% off their purchase. We’ll use the sales tracking system that you already have inside your rewards program. You can spend the money you would have spent on ShopperApp on our mobile display network. That way, you can control the customer experience end-to-end.”

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Mobile co-marketing at retail

Nate sold Best Buy mobile display inventory across long-tail electronics review publishers.

The campaign is working well for Best Buy. With a little more exposure, Nate thinks he could dramatically increase the campaign’s effectiveness.

He calls Best Buy, but they can’t increase the budget until next quarter.

Then it dawns on him. “Who at Sony stays up at night, worrying about moving product at shelf?”

After a day of cold calling people at Sony, he finds his champion. A merchandising director who is willing to put some co-marketing dollars behind the Best Buy campaign because it helps seal the deal in store.

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Stores aren’t only for research

Dan is at Best Buy. He parks himself in front of a Sony NX720 Series TV for $1,899.

Curious to see if it’s cheaper elsewhere, he Googles NX720 Series TV.

He clicks on a price comparison list from a well-known publisher. On that publisher’s mobile site is a display ad for Best Buy that makes him think, “It may be cheaper online, but I should just buy it here.”

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Make Dan feel better

Tina doesn’t know it, but Dan’s feeling guilty because he hasn’t even started their taxes.

On a commercial break, Dan searches for one of the characters from Law Order.

He sees a display ad on the IMDB mobile site. It’s an offer from H&R Block to schedule an appointment to come in. He clicks through and schedules his tax appointment.

When the show is over, Tina asks him, “Have you started the taxes?”

He smiles, “I’m all over it, honey.”

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Mobile display where least expected

The marketing team at H&R Block are feeling really slick because they just negotiated a killer deal for display advertising on financial sites. Little do they know, the feeling is not going to last.

In walks Brian, their mobile consultant. Brian asks, “does your ad buy include a mobile component?”

“Sure does.”

“Oh… Do you have any budget left over?”

“No. Why?”

“It’s just that the consumer who’s reading a financial site on their iPhone is probably too sophisticated to do their taxes at H&R Block.

You really should be reaching the guy on the couch, watching Law and Order with his wife, feeling guilty that he hasn’t started his taxes.”

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Remind Susan to get toothpaste

Susan checked into her hotel in San Francisco. She needs to make a dinner reservation, so she Googles ‘Restaurants in San Francisco’ on her iPhone.

On a mobile-formatted restaurant guide, she sees a mobile display ad for CVS.

“Shit. I forgot my toothpaste,” she remember and clicks through to a mobile-formatted CVS store locator. She allows it to use her current location, and it points her to a CVS that is 1.4 miles from her hotel.

She stops by CVS on her way to dinner.

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Mobile display catches traveling customers

Sally is the director of mobile marketing at CVS. She hangs up the phone, and says to herself, “That ad salesperson was right.

“We are missing a huge opportunity to get in front of people when they are traveling. They are probably not searching for CVS, but they are reading  ’Things to do in San Francisco’ on their phones.

“Makes perfect sense to take some of the branding dollars we’re spending on desktop display and do a mobile ad buy against travel guides. Show viewers a CVS store locator when they are deciding which restaurant to visit.

“Might make them remember that they forgot toothpaste.”

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Mobile ads on the way to a big box retailer

Joe buys media for a car care products company. He gets over 100 emails a week from ad sales people. One of them catches his attention.

Joe:

Let’s reach your customers when they are searching for big box retailers on a weekend with nice weather… after they just had a week of bad weather.

We’ll show ads to males between the ages of 25 and 55 who are searching for major retailers like AutoZone. We’ll show the ads on mobile phones only, when your customers are likely to be headed out to buy car wash products.

I’ll call you to discuss.

- Shelly

Shelly calls, “How many different car wash products do your customers have to choose from when they are in the aisle?”

“We have 20 different products. There are about 300 to choose from including competitive products.”

“What are you doing to make sure that your customers don’t choose a competitor? Or, worse, choose the wrong product from you and have a bad experience?”

“Yes. That’s always a concern.”

“Let me tell you a story about one of your customers,” Shelly continues. “Let’s call him… Joe.”

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Mobile product selectors aren’t just for makeup

It’s 80° and sunny. Joe notices his car is dirty. He looks around the garage and finds a bottle of old wax and no shampoo.

He pulls out his Droid and searches for AutoZone Glendale. A mobile ad jumps out at him:

Joe finds himself on a mobile site. It asks him a couple questions about his car and suggests the shampoo, wax, and upholstery cleaners that work best together.

When Joe arrives at AutoZone, he walks to the aisle with all the car wash products. He pulls out his Droid and finds the products the site recommends.

Joe is out of there in 10 minutes, and he did not have to ask one person for help.

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What B2B content is most compelling in mobile?

Jonathan is in charge of online marketing for UPS. He comes back from lunch and sees a blinking light on his voicemail.

“Hi Jonathan, this is Cindy from The Ad Network.” Jonathan moves his finger over the Delete button. What she says next causes him to pause–

“You have a ton of interesting educational material that you should get in front of people. Have you ever thought re-packaging it for mobile and doing an ad buy against people who are browsing for logistics?”

He listens to the entire voicemail.

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Why would customers interact with us on mobile?

Natalie is the VP of Marketing for a semi-conductor company. She is looking at a quote she just got from an ad network which includes mobile.

She doesn’t have a mobile website, which means she’s going to have to build some mobile marketing assets.

Natalie tells the ad sales rep, “I’m wondering if this mobile piece is more trouble than it’s worth.”

The sales rep responds, “When are you most likely to give an advertiser the time of day? When you’re waiting at an airport with nothing but time to kill… or when you’re sitting at your desk in the middle of the week?”

Good point.

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How quickly can you solve my problem?

David is sitting in Terminal 5 at the San Diego airport, about to leave on vacation, when his phone rings.

“We’re having serious problems with this email system. The blast needs to go out today.”

“That does it!” David opens up Mobile Safari to search for a solution.

He clicks on an ad for a new, email marketing software: Setup & send out in 2 hours flat.

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Who can I talk to?

Amit takes out his Droid and starts reading the news. A startup just raised $5M to launch a CRM that experts predict will be a “Salesforce Killer.”

Amit does a search on the new company and clicks on an ad that takes him to their mobile site.

Product information is not enough. He wants to feel like he “knows” the company so when his friends bring them up, he can say, “Yeah, I talked to those guys.”

Luckily, the software company put a click-to-call phone number on their mobile site.

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What do your products cost?

Phil and his team are tasked with upgrading the company’s database systems. During the initial meeting, everybody kept mentioning Oracle as a possible system to use. Phil pulled out his Droid searched for ‘oracle cost.’

Phil began reading a forum when he noticed an ad:

PRICE SHEET: Oracle v. SQL Server

“It looks like Oracle is going to be the most expensive option,” he said. “SQL server looks like it costs half.”

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Why are you better?

It’s Saturday, and Brian sees an unread email on his iPhone. It’s a mobile-formatted newsletter from his favorite HR magazine.

He clicks through to receive a sponsored infographic, “How generation Y uses social media to evaluate employers.” Brian lands on a mobile site, where he enters his name and email to access the infographic.

The advertiser emails Brian the infographic along with a mobile-formatted product comparison sheet. He decides it’s worth forwarding to his team.

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Define Mobile Context

People are now in a mindset where they feel they should have access to information anytime, anywhere.

Therefore, mobile context is defined as what your users are doing anytime, anywhere both the online and in the physical world.

Here are some mobile contexts that mobile advertisers should pay close attention to:

- B2B Context
- Activity Context
- Mobile TV Context
- Retail Context

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How do the top four U.S. retailers compare when it comes to iTunes app downloads?

This infographic, sponsored by Mobile+Positive and Luth Research, provides a look into how many total downloads Walmart, Target, Sears and Kohls have received in Apple’s App Store.

The data is based on the Luth Traffic Index, which is an estimate of the total downloads an app has received over its entire lifespan. It is based on statistical analysis of comments, ratings, price, category and date of last release of each app in the iTunes and Android Marketplace.

Walmart received the most cumulative iOS app downloads by sponsoring popular artists with Walmart Sound Check.

Target focused their download strategy around a single iPhone & iPad app. They received more downloads than Walmart’s flagship app.

Sears has a variety of apps. Some are brand apps and others are mCommerce apps. The Sears, Kmart and Shop Your Way apps are the most mCommerce intensive and have received the most updates.

Kohl’s recently introduced iPhone and iPad apps. They are on version 1.4, whereas Target is on version 5.3.

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