When I ask people, "What does social media mean to you?" They usually say, "Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube."
Of course, there's much more to social media. There are literally hundreds of social media sites and more are springing up every day. Many of these sites are targeted to reach and benefit very specific audiences, whether by demographic, geographic or even a hobby or area of interest. Let's take a look at some of them.
Email marketers are excited about recent industry news from research company Smith-Harmon: Retail email volume increased 12 percent from 2008 to 2009, with an amazing 37 percent two-year increase from 2007 to 2009. However, while this increase is substantial, experts are predicting a break-even or decrease in the coming years.
"Retailers have been increasing contact frequency for several years running," says Ed Henrich, Vice President at Responsys. "Sooner or later it will flatten out. I think 2010 is when we will finally start to see segmentation and analytics start to reduce contact frequency."
I'm amazed every time I get a letter that starts off "Dear Ken Greenberg." Amazed because for as long as I've been in the business, it's been pretty easy to address the letter properly - the way you would if you were actually writing one: Dear "Mr. Greenberg," or "Dear Ken." As a result, when I see "Dear Ken Greenberg", I know I'm reading junk mail. Even if it could be important, I'm immediately turned off. How would Mr. John H. Jones, III, feel if he got a letter that started "Dear John H Jones III?" (They never get punctuation right, either.)
What's so difficult about doing it the right way? Nothing really. It simply takes more time to run a single field containing all the parts of a name through special software or routines that will break it apart. Yet I can't imagine that any good mailing house doesn't have that software.
Effective personalization increases response. In most cases, having a person's name on the mailing piece and in the letter makes them pay more attention than when they get a piece addressed to "occupant" or "current resident."
While most of us spent the holidays stuffing ourselves
around the dining room table, a group of friends turned that same venue into
the start of a grassroots movement that's taking aim at those mega banks once
deemed "too big to fail" - with impressive results.
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