Planning for mobile e-mail

Luck and Jue (2013) suggest that the number of smart phone internet user will increase to 1.2 billion by 2015. They believe that e-mail marketing is dead, however a revival through mobile e-mail marketing is on the cards. eMailmonday reports that ‘mobile e-mail will account for 15 to 65 per cent of e-mail opens, depending on your target audience, product and e-mail type’.

Luck and Jue (2013) have produced basic guidelines for e-mail planning, stick to the marketing basics! The first consideration is that the email must be engaging, this is probably the most important matter as mobile users will probably be somewhere with lots of distractions. Therefore, higher levels of engagement compared with normal email marketing is necessary. According to Luck and Jue the key the subject hook should be within 35 characters to compensate for email programs that limit the subject line.

Another important aspect is to plan for no images to show up, a lot of programs filter out images to reduces data usage, marketers cannot rely on emails that depend solely on images. The use of font and scalable design is also an important factor. As phone screens are smaller font sizes need to be bigger so people can easily read, it is also recognised that a single column format is best as it reduces horizontal scrolling. The use of scalable containers allows for the email resize and reshape to fit any device appropriately. If this is not possible keeping to a thinnest possible margin is best to eliminate horizontal scrolling.

The use of mobile devices has opened up to allow for touch screens in email. This means that anything clickable in the email should be spaced appropriately to avoid users mis-clicking the wrong button or link. This also means that buttons should be big enough for users to click and that those buttons take users to a mobile friendly landing page. 

Luck and Jue (2013) have come up with a few do's and don'ts to avoid being labeled as spam. 
Do's;
Use both text and html versions of the email with the same content
Include a reply address 
make sure all data is accurate, for example delivery time

Don'ts;
Do not use all caps 
Leave white space in the subject line
Use of g a p p y text 
Using Dear...
Use a large image instead of text

Overall Jue and Luck (2013) highlight the need for making a personal connection in emails and state that quality over quantity is most important in contact lists.

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Dialogue Decision Trees

Dialogue Decision Trees could be the future of social media communication between brand and consumer. Below are 2 different suggestions for dialogue decision trees in the social media environment.

Porat (2013) considers conversational decision trees containing scripted dialogue shown below, figure 11. This can help make sure that the company is always sending the right message and reflect upon responses to make changes to the decision tree in order to increase customer satisfaction, engagement and sales.

It is important to note that Porat suggests the dialogue decision tree should be used by employees for more efficient replying rather than automated responses. This allows for variation in responses and will be less tedious to consumers.

Fig. 1 Example of Dialogue Decision Tree (Porat, 2013)

Smiciklas (2012) has also created an engagement decision tree, slightly varied from the dialogue decision tree, outlining the decision process that should be done before engaging consumers. The model describes four stages to consider for engagement, these include Listening, Assessing, Engagement and Repeat. The model suggests engaging in public and in private depending on the response necessary, for example legitimate sensitive issues should be engaged privately whereas compliments and complaints can be addressed publicly.

Fig. 2 Social Media Rules of Engagement (Smiciklas, 2012)

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Listening to act Listening to learn model

This model by Pingitore and Detgen (2012) describes two types of listening in a social media environment, Listening to Act and Listening to learn. Although Both types of ‘listening’ can produce valuable information, they are different in their aims, operations and the skill sets needed to execute each.

Listening to Act mainly looks at customer relationship management and customer retention strategies. Pingitore and Detgen (2012) suggest two important aspects of listening to act, Social Selling and Social Servicing. Social selling is described as leveraging social media to enhance one-to-one marketing strategies for branding, promotion, prospecting and lead generation. Although some still believe that social selling on social media platforms does not work due to consumer resistance, it is suggested that competitions, encouraging user generated content and sweepstakes are good ways to engage consumers on social media platforms. A great example of this can be seen by looking at Subway's strategy of publishing content, sweepstakes and competitions to encourage consumers to purchase their products through interactions.

The second aspect of Listening to Act is the idea that social media has now also become a customer services point. This is often hard for brands to do as consumers now expect this to be applicable over all social media platforms and they expect the same customer services as traditional techniques such as email or call centre customer services. By this they mean that consumers expect empathy, the same response time and problem resolutions. According to research by American Express (2012) customers who received positive customer service on social media would spend 21 per cent more with companies that deliver great social servicing.

Listening to learn proposes that brands can look at consumer posts and interactions to gain valuable information on their beliefs, motivations and behaviours. However, Pingitore and Detgen (2012) look at three different analyst results and find that the results were very inconsistent between researchers due to validity, pragmatically and limited reliability. This makes social media research difficult, for brands intending to use this research method a solid research structure is required to make sure research stays on track and only looks at relevant posts. Deciding on the depth of research is also important, the most common of these include performance tracking, comparative analysis between brands and an overall customer population.

Although social media research is rich in content, it is also unstructured, fluid and constantly changing which usually means data is dirtier than traditional market research data. Therefore, traditional research methods are still more relevant than social media research. Pingitore and Detgen (2012) suggest that problems found through traditional research can be qualitatively improved by social media research and that the two methods used together are more effective than they are individually.

Social Media Integration Model

Garcia (2011) states that this model is a total engagement approach developed through interactive processes that enable same level information exchange between brand and consumer. Same level information is where consumers and brands are able to directly communicate on the same platform.

Garcia (2011) explains the model by suggesting social bookmarking sites place content on the web with the ability to share this to social media platforms. This is then provokes engagement from those within common groups which then spreads into the social networking system due to the “two-way street'” interaction process. However, at the same time social bookmarking allows for consumers to create reviews and make recommendations on the product which gives valuable feedback. The exposure of this allows for consumers to blog about the product or brand which utilises search engine optimisation and high ranked pages to give the most effective exposure.

This model greatly differs from other social media models and traditional models which are usually based around a linear or circular models. However, the social media integration model shows the organic nature of social media. Once the process begins content goes into a social media 'eco-system' implying that it naturally develops into an organic system that flows without influence. This emphasises viral communication on social media platforms.

http://socialmediatoday.com/isra-garcia/278936/social-media-integration-theory-model

Corporate blogging and virtual communities

Bradley Jobling (2013) states that in the UK, 78 per cent of all businesses that create content for marketing purposes were found to keep a blog. Through the course of the journal Jobling (2013) produces a suggested strategy for developing a blog, focused mainly on business to consumer marketing.

He proposes a 5 step framework that will help to create a successful blog; 
Listening and research
Defining purpose, mission and goals
Installing the editorial calendar, defining roles, regulations and procedures
Reaching out through social media platforms and other bloggers
Analysing, refining and regrouping

He suggests listening and research & Defining the purpose, mission and goals can be done at the same time as they can contribute to one another. It is also stated that listening and research is possibly the most important but also the most overlooked. This is backed up by a survey form 2012 where 75% of marketing executives monitored social media content, however, only 25% were extremely satisfied with the results.

Jobling encourages research as it helps to define the audience and will produce higher levels of engagement through more relative content which increases traffic through the blog. The suggested research is based on 8 questions:

Is there a demographic?
Can the blog be classified by type?
What are the norms and practises in the community?
What is the purpose of the blog?
Do readers and other bloggers want anonymity?
Does the community use specific platforms?
Is the community currently discussing a product or service and what are they saying?
Who are the key influencers?

Looking up site rankings and Twitter rating scores will locate the more popular blogs and influential bloggers. 

Defining the purpose, mission and goals is essential to create a meaningful blog, it is stated that this should be a reoccurring objective to keep the blog relatable to the community. This sort of research allows the writer to; gain feedback, communicate change, provide a personal side to the company, build relationships within the community and expand the marketing mix. It's suggested that as blogging increases so do the expectations of the community. 

The next stage 'installing the editorial calendar, defining roles, regulations and procedures' relates to the team and scenario planning, for example who will be moderate the blog, complaint handling and comment analysis.

Reaching out through social media platforms and other bloggers is represented in figure 1 below.

This basically suggests that the firm must diversify across all platforms for maximum coverage. However not all platforms are useful, ones that increase KPI's are often the most useful for web analytics.

The final aspect of the strategy, Analysing, refining and regrouping, is a short section explaining the constant changing wants and needs of consumers. therefore, the blog must be revisited and analysed periodically in order to stay relevant. 

There you have it, the framework for writing a successful blog.

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Big Data in Health Care

Big Data is a term give to large amounts of data that are too complex to track, usually growing exponentially. Being able to view these large amounts of data and arrange it into a format that is easy to understand can be tricky. However, health care services are using digital media across many platforms and are now delving in to big data. 

The main use of big data has mainly revolved around trying to look at historical trends on things such as epidemics in the hope to be able to predict upcoming epidemics. Ben Wolin (2013) has suggested and presented ideas on big data, his first example is an app designed for sufferers of diabetes. Sufferers of the disease are expected to track food, carbs, glucose and weight, most people give up on this. However, a new app released last year by WellDoc shows how big data can be used across any industry. The app works by analysing user data and providing real time alerts with clinical analysis. The app has FDA approval and shows how big data can support the health care industry, keeping up with dietary habits is now a lot easier.

Another current use of big data in health care is an app produced for people with asthma. The app works along with hardware that attaches to the users inhaler which detects when and where the inhaler is used. It also connects wirelessly to the users smart phone where they can input triggers of asthma attacks which helps over use. Another more innovative use is through sensors embedded in medication which allows users to track what medication they have taken. This is useful when considering the ageing population where older patients often forget which medication they have taken.

In 2013 Everyday Health released a new data tool to customise newsletters to recipients using Content Optimisation and Relevancy Engine (CORE). This tool executes 400 billion comparisons a day using 150 terabytes of data. During a year Everyday Health would send out 2 billion emails, since using CORE engagement has increased by 75% causing adherence to increase by 20%. Big data is also useful in marketing health care products.

It is these simple yet innovative tools that can improve health care through big data.

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Using Social Media as a Customer Relationship Management Tool

This article will provide a brief insight into the use of social media as a CRM tool, accompanied by a case study (Lorenzon, 2013).  The Uk's social media usage see 52% of adults using these services, e.g. Facebook, Twitter and Youtube. Lorenzon suggests that 02's customers use of social media is in the millions per year with the figure growing by 35,000 per month with a growth rate of 78% of 3 years. With the high growth rate of social media consumers are now expecting fast efficient customer service along these platforms.

O2 use the hub and spoke model with a centralised team of social experts to manage the social media presence, this model is shown below, image by Altimeter group.

This model allows for the centralised hub to support and guidance to all business units within the company. It also allows for full integration of all social media platforms and business units for consistency across platforms and specific messages reach the right business unit.

In July 2012, O2 suffered its largest set back on social media, with 120,00 negative mentions of the brand. An company inexperienced in social media may become unsettled and unsure on how to deal with the viral situation, some companies may even decide to hide from the storm and wait for it to settle. However, clever companies in this situation will realise that such a negative situation can be turned positive. O2's central hub and spoke model allowed them to rapidly respond to each individual tweet with a personalised message. To their customers this represented care, they were quick to apologise and react with a personal message. This is shown in Lorenzon's graph of O2 tweets categorised by sentiment. On  10/07/2012 the negative mentions started, however by the next day the rapid growing amount of 'anger' tweets ceased increasing, whereas 'love' tweets increased at a much quicker rate and became the most common category of tweets.





This shows the importance of maintaining a social media presence. If O2 had not reacted fast with personal messages anger and sadness tweets may have grown exponentially and virally, possibly resulting in loss of control by O2.

Lorenzon, K. (2013). Creating meaningful customer experiences and campaigns in social media: Case study of O2 (Telefónica UK). Journal of Digital & Social Media Marketing. 1 (1), p32-38.

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