Corporate Eye

...compare, compete, excel

Brand

Tumblr Launches New Mobile Advertising Opportunity for Brands

Tumblr adsSince Yahoo! purchased Tumblr, there has been a big focus on monetizing the popular blogging platform. Earlier this year, Tumblr launched its first mobile advertising unit, Sponsored Mobile Posts, and now, brands can also purchase space through the new Sponsored Trending Blogs unit.

The new Sponsored Trending Blogs ad unit will appear in a popular area for mobile Tumblr users. CNET explains that Sponsored Trending Blogs, “will push advertisers’ Tumblr blogs in front of people checking out the Explore tab in the Tumblr for iOS and Android application.”

The Trending Blogs section of Tumblr debuted in July of this year and is a quick place for users to find popular, curated content from Tumblr’s editors. The Sponsored Trending Blogs will look just like non-sponsored content in the Explore tab of the Tumblr mobile app except for a dollar sign icon that will be used to disclose content has been paid for by a brand advertiser. Tumblr already uses this symbol to distinguish paid content, so the new native advertising of Sponsored Trending Blogs will be flagged similarly.

While Sponsored Trending Blogs won’t fully debut until January 2014, Tumblr has rolled out a soft launch with beta advertisers including Calvin Klein, Turner Broadcasting, Delta, Twentieth Century Fox, and Sony Pictures Entertainment. Currently, Sponsored Trending Blog ad units are being sold at a flat fee, and according to Mashable, they will be targeted geographically but not demographically or behaviorally.

Tumblr’s focus on monetizing its mobile traffic shouldn’t come as a surprise. In February, Tumblr CEO David Karp told Mashable that mobile traffic was expected to overtake desktop traffic before the end of 2013. The company has come a long way since 2010 when Karp told The L.A. Times that Tumblr was “opposed to advertising” because it “turns our stomachs.”

Taking a look at the story from Yahoo’s perspective, Tumblr was a huge acquisition that cost a lot of money. Tumblr needs to bring in big revenue. For Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer, failure is not an option.

Only time will tell if Tumblr users are willing to accept the various advertising units being rolled out. So far, results seem to be positive with ad units released previously. With over 153 million Tumblr blogs and over 100 million posts published on Tumblr each day, according to Venture Beat, Tumblr is certainly a place brands need to be.

Image: Josh James

Attention Brands: U.K. Is the Most Social Country in the World

united kingdom flagAccording to research compiled in an infographic by Offerpop, the United Kingdom has the highest proportion of social networkers in the world (52%). In fact, 95% of 16-20 year olds in the U.K. have logged into Facebook in the last month. However, social media penetration in the U.K. is highest in the 25-34 year old demographic, followed by the 18-24 year old and 35-44 year old demographics, respectively.

In the U.K., social media is a place where consumers actively engage with brands. Offerpop reports that 36% of U.K. consumers use social media to interact with brands. On Facebook, two Cadbury brand pages are included in the top three most liked Facebook Pages in the U.K., and on Twitter, Rockstar Games and Swedish House Mafia are the top two brands with over 1.5 million followers each (see the infographic below for details).

The Offerpop findings are in line with research conducted by eMarketer in February of this year, which predicted that 71% of U.K. adults will use social networks by the end of 2017. However, U.K. social media users are using Twitter, Facebooks, and other social sites for more than just interacting with each other. Separate research by video search website Blinkx released in August found that 43% of 18-24 year olds prefer to use social networks to look for content rather than using search engines like Google.

With so many people in the U.K. using social media, brands need to understand what type of content resonates with their audiences. A study conducted by Ipsos OTX and Ipsos Global @advisor in April found that 58% of U.K. social media users shared some kind of content via social media in the last month. The research report identified the following ranking of the types of content U.K. social media users share:

  • Photos = 36% of survey respondents
  • Links to articles = 22% of survey respondents
  • Links to other websites = 18% of survey respondents
  • Reposts from other people’s social media accounts = 18% of survey respondents
  • Something I like or recommend such as a product, service, book, movie, etc, = 15% of survey respondents
  • News items = 14% of survey respondents
  • Video clips = 11% of survey respondents
  • I haven’t shared anything in the past month = 42%

Back in August, The Daily Mail published an article reviewing the “meteoric rise of social networking in the U.K.” which included statistics from the Office for National Statistics and Eurostat. Bottom-line, Britons are prolific social media users, and while usage has grown quickly, it shouldn’t have come as a surprise to any brand manager when The Daily Mail reported in August that over half of all Britons were using social media. If you’re brand is available for purchase in the U.K., it needs a social media presence, because that is where your customers are.

You can see more details from the research compiled by Offerpop in the infographic below.

Social-Media-In-the-UK

Image: Chris Chidsey

Brands Get 12 Times More Views on YouTube from Earned Media than Owned Media

youtube home page logoResearch from Octoly tells us that owned media generates 25 million YouTube video views for brands, which is a drop in the bucket compared to the 300 million views that brands get from earned media. However, brands aren’t effectively tracking that earned media or using it to calculate return on investment.

Octoly researched 1,000 brands, 28 million videos, and 9 million YouTube channels, and found that 500 billion user-generated video views were not being tracked by brands.

On YouTube, earned media for brands comes primarily from user-generated content. These are the videos that customers create to show other people how to use a product, to review a product, and how to make the product (and the brand) their own with their own creativity. The popularity of videos by people who play Minecraft and other video games is just one example of significant earned media for brands.

Research has shown again and again that consumers are more likely to purchase brands after watching product videos created by other consumers. It’s critical that you encourage your audience to take control of your brand, make it their own, increase their emotional connection to it, and advocate it by allowing them to create their own content (including videos) related to your brand.

Octoly found that an average of 260 YouTube videos have been created per brand. Compare that to the average of 35,000 user-generated YouTube videos created per brand, and the potential reach or earned media is clearly something that not only should not be ignored but should be an important part of the overall brand strategy. For example, Octoly found that user-generated YouTube videos accounted for 99% of views for both LEGO and Apple, 95% of views for Call of Duty, and 85% of views for Coca-Cola.

According to Octoly’s brand ranking system, the earned media ranking of the top five brands on YouTube is as follows:

  1. Call of Duty: 8.9B Views, 324.8K Creators
  2. LEGO: 7.5B Views, 102.9K Creators
  3. Apple: 4.2B Views, 103.2K Creators
  4. Pixar: 3.4B Views, 18.6K Creators
  5. Ford: 2.8B Views, 201.8K Creators

Octoly’s top five earned media rankings by category are as follows:

  1. Gaming: 69.5B Views, 1.3M Creators
  2. Cosmetics and Beauty: 1.4B Views, 96.1K Creators
  3. Luxury Brands: 1.2B Views, 98.6K Creators
  4. Automotive: 31B Views, 1.5M Creators
  5. Tech: 13B Views, 533.1K Creators

You can see some of these statistics and more in the infographic below.

youtube for brands infographic

Are you effectively tracking and measuring user-generated content related to your brand on YouTube? If not, you’re missing a lot of data as well as significant opportunities.

Image: Andrew Perry

Email Marketing List Segmentation Drives 15% Higher Open and Click Rates

email marketing list segmentationThere is a science to list segmentation, and new research from MailChimp shows just how important it is to segment your email marketing lists. Unfortunately, most marketers aren’t effectively segmenting their email marketing lists for optimum returns.

The Research

MailChimp analyzed 11,000 email marketing campaigns that were segmented and sent to nearly 9 million people. Segmented campaigns performed better than non-segmented campaigns in each of the following areas:

  • Open rate up by 14.4%
  • Click rate up by 15.0%
  • Bounce rate down by 0.8%
  • Abuse reports down by 0.01%

The biggest improvement in both open rates and click-through rates occurred when email marketers segmented their lists by a specific field in their database such as zip code, job title, and so on. Open rate increased by 18.9%, and click rate increased by 22.0%. In fact, every area listed above saw better results when email marketers segmented their lists using a specific database field. Bounce rate decreased by 1.4%, and abuse reports decreased by 0.02%.

For email marketers that segment their mailing lists by customer sign-up date, results are better than non-segmented lists in three areas but not as high as when lists are segmented by merge field. Open rate increased by 11.6%, and click rate increased by 10.5%. However, bounce rates were 0.5% worse than non-segmented lists, and abuse reports were only 0.002% better than non-segmented lists.

Another discovery from this study that email marketers should be aware of is related to the performance of email campaigns when the mailing list was segmented by interest. These interests typically come from the list sign-up form where customers are asked to check boxes to identify activities that they’re interested in. While email marketing campaigns that were segmented using interests did perform better than non-segmented campaigns, the performance increase wasn’t as high as you might expect. Both open and click rates were only 1.7% better in campaigns using interest segmentation. Bounce rates were 0.2% better and abuse reports were just 0.002% better.

Bottom-line

The science of email marketing deserves your investment because effective list segmentation can have a significant effect on your email marketing ROI. List analysis and segmentation is an ongoing process that enables you to use historical data related to customer behaviors to fully integrate your marketing efforts. The trick is avoiding over-segmentation. At some point, your segmentation work will become counter-intuitive. Find the sweet spot and you’ll generate the maximum ROI possible.

Image: Ilker

Companies Failing in Data-Driven Customer Sales and Marketing Intelligence

big data bar chartTwo studies were released this week that tell similar stories about the state of data-driven sales and marketing intelligence. Long story short—enterprises are failing.

First, the Chief Marketing Office (CMO) Council released the results from its survey of 230 North American marketing executives at enterprise organizations of all sizes. Using a Customer Sales Intelligence Scorecard, the CMO Council ranked each organization using 10 measurements of “front-line sales enablement”, and enterprises only received passing grades in three of those factors.

Following are the grades from the CMO Council scorecard along with the number of marketing executives who indicated they are doing each of the things listed well. Take a look and see where enterprises are failing:

  • Effectiveness in accessing key account decision makers: Yes = 52%, Grade = C+
  • Total view of customer, business, and markets: Yes = 22%, Grade = D
  • Real-time delivery of sales intelligence and breaking news: Yes = 9%, Grade = F
  • Customer information accessibility to groups outside of sales: Yes = 37%, Grade = C-
  • Continuous updating of CRM systems by sales teams: Yes = 26%, Grade = C
  • Front line access to the right level of customer intelligence: Yes = 14%, Grade = F
  • Customer data accuracy, depth, and reliability: Yes = 16%, Grade = F
  • Remote, mobile user interface to customer data: Yes = 16%, Grade = F
  • Ability to do opportunistic and strategic contextual selling: Yes = 17%, Grade = D
  • Satisfaction with closure and conversion rates: Yes = 14%, Grade = D

Overall, the CMO Council gave enterprises a D- in customer sales intelligence and offered the following call to action:

Organizations must shift their cultures and platforms to become a market-sensing, alert enterprise, ready to capitalize on moments of opportunistic engagement. These universal customer sales intelligence systems must be at the ready with on-demand, real-time updates on key customer accounts. They should be filled with market news, social intelligence and aggregated customer account, service, and support details to enable all customer touch points to operate in unison and to access intelligence when and where is most opportune and through the right channel.

A second report released by Domo, 2013 Data-Driven Marketing Study, reveals that less than half of marketers believe they have sufficient access to the data they need to be successful, and at least 50% are not able to effectively calculate marketing return on investment.

Domo surveyed more than 300 marketers in management roles across a wide variety of industries and found:

  • 83% of marketers deliver reports via email.
  • 72% of marketers deliver reports during in-person meetings.
  • 87% of marketers rely on data to do their jobs.
  • 45% of marketers do not have access to the data they need to do their jobs.
  • 83% of of marketers are held accountable for ROI
  • 54% of marketers’ compensations are tied directly to ROI.
  • 77% of marketers do not have access to ROI data.
  • 89% of marketers believe it’s important to see all of their data in a single dashboard
  • 81% of marketers do not have access to a single dashboard to see all of their data.

Is your company effectively bridging the gap between collecting data and actually using it to drive ROI? If not, you’re already missing significant opportunities.

Image: Masbro

Twitter Goes Public and Stock Price Rises 73% on Day One

twitter mobile appTwitter started trading on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) on Thursday at $26, and by the end of the day, the share price climbed by 73% to close at $44.90. All of this and Twitter has yet to turn a profit.

The success story of Twitter, which isn’t even a decade old, hasn’t fully played out yet, but stockholders and brands are crossing their fingers. In honor of Twitter’s successful IPO, let’s take a look at some statistics that put the Twitterverse for brands into perspective.

First, from the Brands on Twitter 2013 report from Brandwatch:

  • More than 97% of major brands tweeted in 2013.
  • U.S. brands tweeted an average of 221 times per week and U.K. brands tweeted an average of 30 times per week in 2013.
  • 63% of brands have multiple Twitter accounts.

Next, here are some Twitter stats from HubSpot’s 2013 State of Inbound Marketing report:

  • 36% of all marketers have found a customer through Twitter in 2013.
  • 69% of brands use Twitter for broadcasting and engagement while 23% use it for broadcasting only.
  • The average brand has a four-person Twitter team.

Finally, here are some March 2013 statistics from Digiday that give you some more perspective about the Twitterverse:

  • The median number of brands that a Twitter user follows is six.
  • Mobile users are 78% more likely to retweet a brand.
  • Purchase intent increases by 58% after a Twitter user sees a promoted tweet.
  • Brand tweets with price in a whole dollar amount have a 12% higher click rate.
  • The engagement rate on Twitter ads is 1-3%.

And here is one more statistic that investors and brand marketers are likely to find interesting. According to calculations by AllThingsD, the cost for a brand to run a Promoted Trend on Twitter for one day in 2013 is $200,000.

Which brands rule on Twitter? According to the SocialBakers ranking which calculates both the number of Twitter users a brand profile follows and the number the brand profile is followed by to create a rating, the leaders are Samsung Mobile, Vine, and iTunes Music. If you only care about ranking brands based on number of followers, then TwitterCounter ranks YouTube, Instagram, and Twitter as the top three brands.

Only time will tell what the Twitter IPO will ultimately mean for brands. Many people are speculating, including Jennifer Polk, Research Director at Gartner who notes, “For the near term, we may see a slower pace of change, as Twitter works to avoid some public scrutiny or speculation.” In other words, Twitter’s not talking—yet.

What do you think?

Image: Hank Mitchell