As marketers and sales people, we all know that companies now employ increasingly sophisticated means to avoid receiving “Spam”. And, since spam has come to dominate email on the Internet, it’s no wonder.

Internet historians believe that the first spam email was sent on May 1st, 1978, by a DEC marketing representative to every ARPANET address on the west coast of the United States. The general reaction was one of annoyance, and it hasn’t abated since. In 2001, only 5% of email on the Net was spam. By 2003 this figure had risen to 50%. Then, by 2004 it was 70%. By 2007, almost 90% of business email was characterized as “Spam”.

One line of defense is to buy your email marketing lists from providers who understand the nuances of spam blocking. One low-tech way that companies use to dodge your email is to frequently alter and/or use multiple syntaxes in email address construction. For example, Jamie.Bloomquist@thelistinc.com is an email syntax that suggests that everyone at The List Inc. has an email address consisting of Firstname.Lastname@thelistinc.com.

But that’s not always – or even often – the case. A study of several thousand major brands in The List Online database, determines that major brands frequently change, mix and multiply the syntaxes of their employee email address, in an effort to stay a few steps ahead of spammers.

For example, in a study by The List Online, it was determined that Proctor & Gamble uses 5 distinctly different email syntaxes. Coca Cola currently uses 7 different formats. Microsoft Corporation also uses 7 different syntaxes. General Motors uses three.  These syntaxes can also vary based on job functionality; for example brand managers will differ from marketing directors who will differ with CMO’s.

What does this mean to you? First, it means that deliverable email is getting increasingly difficult to count on as a marketing vehicle. CAN-SPAM Compliance has limited marketers’ options dramatically. Add to that the increasing proclivity for companies to utilize multiple syntaxes and formats and it means that accuracy in sourcing your email lists is essential.

With B2B opt-in email address lists going for $1 per record to as high as $7 per record, depending on the broker, it’s essential that you ask your list broker about multiple syntaxes and address construction formats. If they don’t know, chances are the email list is both filled with junk addresses and violates CAN-SPAM Act of 2003. You don’t want to spend that kind of money on a list that is both in violation of the Law, and, grossly inaccurate. Make sure you know how often your broker verifies email address lists both for syntax and CAN SPAM.

Visit the Sales Intelligence Solutions website

Top Jobs:

• Analyst & Media Relations Manager for US Public Sector, HP
• Communications Manager, PENCIL, Inc.
• Public and Media Relations Manager, Americans for the Arts
• Manager, Corporate Communications, Warner Music Group
• Sr. Communications Specialist, Wolters Kluwer
• Director of Public Relations, Glenville State College
• Vice President Public Relations, Select Medical Corporation
• Senior Account Executive, Volume Public Relations
• Public Relations Director, Purdue Marion & Associates

Post your resume for free today and access the newest jobs available for PR professionals.

Everyone is talking about the mobile Internet and how more and more consumers are browsing and using lots of apps anywhere they and their mobile phones happen to be. Are cell phone owners also becoming more comfortable buying things with their phones? If not, what would make them more likely to shop with their phones? This Retrevo Pulse Study looked at consumers and mobile commerce and found many willing shoppers ready to make purchases with their phones.

Consumers Are Warming to Mobile Commerce
In February of 2010, a Retrevo Pulse studyfound almost 10% of the respondents indicating they had purchased something with their cell phones. Four months later, with a different sample, that number had doubled to 20%. The bad news is that a little less than half the respondents have never purchased anything with their phone and have no plans to do so in the future. The better news is the 27% that haven’t bought anything yet but indicate they will in the future. That leaves about 20% who purchased something through their phone.

Apps Make Shopping Easier
Apps make everything so much easier and more fun, and that includes shopping. Retrevo found that nearly 42% of those who have shopped with their phones said they have used apps to make purchases. When we looked at gender and smartphone owners we weren’t surprised to see male mobile shoppers outnumbering females and iPhone owners leading the pack.

Credit Cards Might Be Getting in the Way
Note to retailers: if you want more sales from mobile customers, make it easy for them to store their credit card info and while you’re at it, keep your eye on retailers like Amazon with innovations like PayPhrase or Mobile Payments Service that might take some of the friction out of online or mobile transactions.

Visa vs. Verizon
If retailers can’t get the credit card out of the way, how about the carriers? Will we see AT&T or Verizon get into the mobile payment business? The idea seems to be popular in Japan where the dominant carrier, NTT DoCoMo offers a mobile wallet with their handsets. And what about Apple or Google; they’re building huge collections of credit cards. Will we see an Apple Bank spin out of the iTunes Store?

Conclusion
Mobile commerce is here and gaining ground fast as mobile devices and apps make it easier for consumers to press the “buy” button. Despite its growing popularity, we have to wonder if consumers might be apprehensive about transferring credit card info using their phones. If retailers want more business from smartphone toting shoppers they’ll need to improve the process.

About Retrevo Pulse Report
The Retrevo Pulse Report is an ongoing study of people and electronics from the consumer electronics shopping and review site Retrevo.com. The data for this report came from a study of online individuals (non-Retrevo users) conducted by an independent panel. The sample size was over 1,000 distributed across gender, age, income and location in the United States. Most responses have a confidence interval of 4% at a 95% confidence level.

Shopping On-The-Go?
Coincidentally, Retrevo Has a Mobile Shopping Service called RetrevoQ, Anyone can send a tweet or SMS text message to Retrevo’s mobile shopping service and get back a message telling them whether or not it is a good deal and what would be a fair price to pay.

“It can be a very daunting task for companies to hone in on the specific needs of their Hispanic customers,” says Leylha Ahuile, senior multicultural analyst at Mintel. “Latinas come in a variety of shades, so a wide range of products must be developed to cater to every pigment and hair type.”

Hispanic women are especially concerned with the box or bottle their favorite products come in. Eighty-one percent of Latinas surveyed report that they would like to see more personal care products with bilingual packaging. Younger Hispanic women are more inclined to express a desire for bilingual packaging than their older counterparts.

“Hispanic consumers often look at bilingual packaging as a way of being acknowledged and respected by a brand, not because they are unable to read English,” notes Leylha Ahuile. “The lack of Spanish-language packaging has the potential to make these women feel ignored by manufacturers.”

Latina women are younger than the average US female population, and 62% of the Hispanic female population has yet to enter their peak earning years (35+). As a result, Mintel believes Latina purchasing power is definitely on the rise.

Please join Leylha Ahuile for a FREE webinar on June 16 at 2 pm CDT as she presents, “Marketing to Today’s Latina.”

Register here: http://tinyurl.com/26ood6p

About Mintel
Mintel is a leading global supplier of consumer, product and media intelligence. For more than 38 years, Mintel has provided insight into key worldwide trends, offering exclusive data and analysis that directly impacts client success. With offices in Chicago, New York, London, Sydney, Shanghai and Tokyo, Mintel has forged a unique reputation as a world-renowned business brand. For more information on Mintel, please visit www.mintel.com. Follow Mintel on Twitter:http://twitter.com/mintelnews

by Mike Bawden
President & CEO; Brand Central Station

There was a recent article that appeared in the Cincinnati Enquirer about Procter & Gamble and the financial impact it appears their re-focused charitable efforts are having on the company. (Read it here)

This story caught my eye for two reasons: First, only P&G could pull off a global good-will effort like this. And it’s interesting to read about the groundwork they are laying for a variety of their consumer brands in emerging and developing markets. In addition to the awareness and market-building efforts, P&G’s philanthropic program also enhances the value of the company in the eyes of shareholders who are becoming focused on results beyond the bottom line when evaluating their equity holdings.

But the second reason this article was of interest is that it was sent to me by a client.

This is a company not of hundreds of thousands of employees and billions of dollars in sales but of just over one hundred employees and sales that are, shall we say, significantly less than anything in P&G’s portfolio. Yet we’ve managed to work with this client and establish a national connection to a leading health association (The American Diabetes Association) and put together a corporate social responsibility program that will achieve the same kind of awareness and market-building objectives P&G is striving for on a global scale.

For many marketers, whether they’re inside an agency, working from home or cloistered away in a marketing department somewhere, the marketing strategies and actions of the mega-brands (P&G, Pepsi, AB/Interbev, etc.) can all seem out of reach. The fact is, though, their not … and marketers who don’t seem to understand that are destined to live out their professional lives doing more of the same and wondering why they’re not getting better results than they did the year before.

I’ve written about corporate social responsibility programs before. They’re interesting to put together and, done right, can not only have an impact on your company or brand’s growth; they can re-energize your employee base and help build long-term equity in your brand’s value. That can mean better margins on the sale of products to retailers or consumers and, just as important, it can mean better multiples if you decide to sell your business to an investor group or acquiring company.

Doing the right thing, the right way can be a tremendous benefit to your company.

More on this at another time.

(from BIGResearch)
COLUMBUS, OH — (MARKET WIRE) – 6/1/2010 – A paper presented last Friday at the La Londe Conference in Service Management in La Londe les Maures, France demonstrates a new, non-invasive approach to behavioral targeting. This methodology developed by Professors Don Schultz and Martin Block (both of the Medill School at Northwestern University), using BIGreseach® Simultaneous Media Usage® Survey data, avoids online privacy issues by using services people subscribe to to predict purchase behaviors. The presentation demonstrated how this method can improve the predictability of purchase behaviors 20-70%.

The approach re-frames the whole question of behavioral targeting. Consumers often aren’t aware of electronic tags and “cookies” and such tactics can often be perceived as invasions of privacy. This research concludes that non-invasive service indicators – information consumers willingly provide via a survey – can be used to enhance existing behavioral targeting approaches at minimal cost.

“Relating service indicators to consumer purchases bridges the gap between services people use and the products people buy,” said Professor Don Schultz of Northwestern. “The example developed in the paper is only the tip of the iceberg and holds great promise for low cost, non-invasive predictability.”

Key Points – “Expanding the Success of Behavioral Targeting with Service Resource Availability”:

• Online behavioral targeting today is focused primarily on using “cookies” attached to web-based consumer searches. From these tags algorithms, are developed to estimate customer potential and then are used to deliver targeted advertising messages.
• The current system is generally based on a limited linear predictive model to generate results.
• This paper provides a methodology that extends and expands beyond tagging methodology to other, non-direct contact product categories.
• It demonstrates how adding commonly available consumer service indicators can be used to effectively increase the predictability of frequent and non-frequent purchases.
• In addition to avoiding privacy issues found in the current system, this methodology demonstrates the value of additional customer services resources as a method of improving general marketing capabilities.

Read the full complimentary paper: http://info.bigresearch.com

About BIGresearch®
BIGresearch is a consumer intelligence firm providing analysis of behavior in areas of products and services, retail, financial services, automotive and media. BIGresearch conducts the monthly Consumer Intentions and Actions®) of 8,000+ respondents and the semi-annual Simultaneous Media Usage® Survey (SIMM®) of 15,000+ respondents.

Vancouver-based Vitrium Systems announced the launch of a new, online service that allows marketers to embed a registration form into PDF’s. The new system, dubbed PDFSalesLeads, allows marketers to take advantage of the portability of electronic sales literature while providing an interactive form inside the document that will allow the reader to provide the contact information required to carry the sales process to the next step.

During a sneak peak of the new service, Vitrium’s Manager of Marketing and Communications, Randa Codron, explained how PDFSalesLeads provided a solution to the dilema of making prospects register to download PDF’s online or giving digital documents away without any idea of who’s reading them. “PDFSalesLeads allows users to complete their registration information inside the PDF while they are engaged with the content,” she explained. “You can set the form up to appear on any specific page, so the reader has a chance to decide whether the information your providing is something they want more information about.”

Furthermore, the technology stays with the document, so PDF’s that are passed from one user to another also pass along the interactive registration form. All registrations are collected in real time back at the PDFSalesLeads web site and can be integrated into SalesForce.com.

View an online demo.

This is a handy break-through for small and mid-sized marketers who want to expand their reach via the Internet but can’t spend a lot of wasted time sorting through irrelevant leads or trying to follow up on bogus registration information. At just $49 per month, the service is affordable.

The possibilities of this technology appear to go beyond simple registration. During our conference call, I asked if there were plans for creating other interactive forms that could be imbedded into PDF’s. While Randa couldn’t be specific, it does sound like PDFSalesLeads may be just the first of a number of utilitarian products to roll out of Vitrium’s R&D team.

We’ll be watching for more developments from Vancouver in the future.

It’s not “greenwashing” per se - but more than a few people are skeptical of catalog and direct mailers when they say they’re concerned about the environment and want to cut the wasted circulation out of their marketing efforts.

As far as I’m concerned, if they save a little “green” (money) and a few trees in the process, I’m all for it.

Randy Erdahl, co-founder and president of Minnesota-based Decision Inteligence recently shared some ideas on how to cut the waste out of your mailing lists with Target Marketing magazine (one of the best, pure-marketing magazines around, in my opinion):

1. Use e-mail activity history to identify candidates for fewer catalogs. Identify customers who show a preference to shop without catalogs by looking at e-mail histories. These customers are prime candidates to test contacting through e-mail more and catalogs less, saving money on paper and postage, and at the same time, adding value to those customers by making it more relevant.

2. Set up a contact optimization stream test that can compete against the current circulation decision-making methodology. “Stream tests are excellent ways to learn if these new contact strategies work,” Erdahl said. Design a stream test to measure how well the results are. This approach measures over time the impact your new strategies have on the results and helps you determine if your test contact process (channels, frequency, etc.) is the right move. Stream tests quantify the results for you, said Erdahl, and determine how you should move forward.

3. Use ZIP code or other geographic level filters to screen prospect lists. “You should know what ZIP codes or other geographic areas are vast wastelands for your business, and you shouldn’t be mailing into them and [should be] suppressing them right up front in your prospecting efforts,” said Erdahl.  “And find out where your hot spots are.”

4. Update catalog-sales-per-mailing models. You need multiple, detailed statistical predictive models in this day and age. If you use RFM, run, don’t walk, exclaimed Erdahl. If you don’t build separate models for customer segments, jog! And if you aren’t using different models for different catalogs, walk fast! The more detailed models you have, the better off you’ll be in eliminating wasted mailings.

There is also a webinar you can go to (on demand) that explores these issues and strategies in more detail.

Nobody ever likes to think about what they’ll do when things go wrong.  As corporate marketers, a big piece of your job is to make sure things go right.  So, what are you doing to make sure a crisis doesn’t permanently derail your company?

Crisis PR gurus, Deon Binneman and Ned Barnett addressed this in a recen exchange on the PRMindshare Forum.  Deon is from Johannesburg, South Africa has been in the “Reputation Management” business for years and specializes in helping businesses deal with problems tht get out of hand.  (Check out Deon’s blog.)  Ned lives in Las Vegas and has spent years helping clients in healthcare and technology deal with the unexpected.  (Check out Ned’s web site.)

What it boils down to is this – dealing with the unexpected can be expensive and most companies can not afford to have people on staff 24/7 to do it.  Instead, the smart money is spent on planning ad creating a rapid response team that can implement that plan when needed.

According to Deon and Ned, here are some of the organizational and cost factors to keep in mind:

1. The first phase is a comprehensive site evaluation; an in-depth discovery session sometimes lasting as much as a couple of days.

2. Following the audit and interviews, an outside PR pro will develop a crisis plan – either general or specific, based on the identified needs of the client.

3. A key step in comprehensive crisis planning involves the outside consultant returning to the client’s location to present the plan and walk it through the approval process.

4. While a good bit of the plan can be implemented with internal first responders, most PR consultants will als be involved in helping their client implement the plan – this is a widely variable action as different clients have different needs, resources, etc. 

5. Once the plan is in place, most PR consultants will receive a small monthly retainer to be “on call” and to keep up with the changing needs. Depending on the size of the retainer, some consultants will make a site visit once a year, twice a year or quarterly to assess the environment and submit updates to the plan as needed.

6. The bulk of the retainer is to pay the consultant (or consultancy) to stay up-to-speed so if a crisis breaks, the consultant drops everything and rushes in to help manage the crisis.

7. Keep this in mnd: when a crisis breaks, most consultants operate on an hourly basis.  A typical arrangement is for a consultantto charge 1.5x the normal hourly for week-days and 2x normal hourly for weekends and holidays.  If you can negotiate it, it’s better to pay for crisis management time on a day rate rather than by the hour (crisis situations can rack up a lot of hours in a hurry). 

8. Be sure the PR consultant commits to managing a crisis situation on-site – “remote” crisis management has limits.

So, what constitutes a “crisis”?  It’s not all exploding buildings and earthquakes as Bissett Matheson Communication’s Duncan Matheson points out: “People involved in crisis management spend too much time focusing on the potential exploding type crisis, when statistics tracked over well more than a decade now show that exploding crisis have become very much the exception.”

“The much more common type of crisis is the building crisis – the one management should have seen coming, but because of action or inaction, mismanaged.  This is the more common type (and) is potentially just as devistating.” Duncan points to the most recent report from the Institute for Crisis Management as a reference for building (or smouldering) crisis.

The key take-away here:  Be prepared and work with an objective consultant (or team) who can help you spot the building crisis – not just attempt to expect the unexpected.

Do me a favor, would you?  Give it a few minutes and post a list of one to five “building” crisis in your organization.  I think we’ll be surprized to find that most of them fit within five to ten general categories. I’ll update this post based on the response to this and other requests posted to the discussion boards/forums I follow. 

Thanks in advance.

Editor’s Note: This is the first guest post by a contributing writer to the Brand Central Station Blog.  Mary Ann Johnson is a member of Team Position2, experts in search and social media marketing and sent us this post on behalf of the team.  You can learn more about Position2 by visiting their web site.

by Team Position2

Social Media Monitoring has become a hot topic of discussion over recent times. A brand makes or breaks its name by its users.

With the huge outbreak in the online media and platforms like, blogs, forums, microblogs and different types of social networking sites people have an effective place to express their opinions and influence others. In the online world people own the brand. Social Media Monitoring is to keep track of all the conversations happening in the online world.

Social Media Monitoring is all about figuring on what the objectives are, listening, refining the talks, analyzing and taking action.

Social Media Monitoring and analysis can be used by a brand to improve a product, get feedbacks, customer service, market research or any marketing and communication.

Listen: It is very important to “listen” to what people are talking about your brand, your competitors and the industry as a whole. People and their opinions influence your customers. Watch out for any complaints against you or your competitors, as it is the best opportunity to showcase your customer service to them and show that you care and value customers.
Potential customers also look for others opinions before they make the purchase decision.

Participate: It not about just listening, you need to get engaged and converse with people. If you respond timely to any of the questions it reassures the faith in your brand among the people. Even if your brand is not talked about its essential to know the key influencers and what are they talking about. Make a plan and start conversation at relevant places and establish your footprint so that you are equipped for any future talks of your brand.

Respond: When you are monitoring the conversations you know the happenings and can implement relevant responses. A proper response goes a long way in spreading the good about your brand in these times of the ripple effect like Twitter.

Tools: There are many paid and free tools to keep a tab on the conversations. It could be as simple as setting an alert through Google, Yahoo etc, searching for your brand name or the relevant keywords on Twitter, Social Media aggregators like Social Mention, Same Point, Backtype.

There are paid tools, which help in monitoring and analyzing the brand such as radian6, Collective intellect, TechrigySM2 to name a few.

About Position2
Position2 is a leading Search & Social Media Marketing firm that delivers continuous growth for its customers through its proprietary “Surround & Intent Marketing” methodology. The company’s adaptive technology solutions are customizable to customers’ evolving marketing needs. It delivers integrated Search & Social Media Marketing solutions that engages prospects at multiple touch-points in the online environment. For more details, Please visit http://www.position2.com