SIPA UK Blog

I think the second shot may have been a mistake

But this morning's bacon sandwich was a stroke of genius.

Last night's SIPA marketing networking group was a success on many fronts. It was still going strong at 11pm when I took an executive decision to leave the kids to it.

We had three excellent speakers on the night - who inspired me to take a close look at our email marketing. Any marketer who does not get stupidly excited about being able to see what your customers are doing, be it through open rates, click throughs or conversion to order, is in the wrong job.

Everyone who came along will get a full copy of the presentations, for everyone else - here are the best email marketing tips from Sean Hayes, Sara Baugh and Paul Crabtree of Incisive Media, Electric Word and Adestra.

What your reports tell you

• So you think you know people because they filled in a form? You don't. Track what people do, what they read, why they buy - not what they say they do
• Buying in 3rd party email lists is a false economy; if you have to use this method - never lease names as response declines faster than the level in Sean's pint

Email marketing as art and science

• Surprise your readers; a news alert that always comes from the brand pulled £35k when it was sent from the editor (with a chatty, informal holiday style)
• Test religiously. Electric Word do and they get 40% open rates. Enough said.
• Do your editors write your news alert subject lines? Think you can do better? Do an editorial vs marketing split subject line test - Electric Word did and guess who won. Yep. Marketing every time.
• A show of hands showed that we all do things we know we shouldn't - to make it clear, in B2B leading with FREE, SALE or any offer led copy will diminish response -whatever your market. Always. Without fail.
• Headlines maketh the email - don't stop at a great subject line. If you want some great examples, sign up for Electric Word's newlines and read.
• There is no such thing as too many testimonials, especially if you use them as a block - they can lift response (orders) by 18%+
• Send your customers short surveys asking for testimonials and use them everywhere!

Rip up the research. Watch your customers and competitors instead

• When should you send your emails? When your customers are naturally responsive - look at your web stats over 3 months and your customers will tell you when they are in information mode
• A classic publishing trick is to have your magazine land on people's desks before your competitor - do you do the same things with your news alerts
• Do you send your news alert the same time every week. And why is that? Check those web trends and find out if 4pm Friday really is when your customers are online and looking to be interrupted

Watch this space for details of the next networking group. We'll be meeting in August for more practical take-aways and I suspect more beers/shots/cocktails.

Everyone who attends gets the full presentations and a complimentary hangover - so don't miss out. Come along and better still volunteer to present the best things you have done this year. Even where we compete, we are all in this together and SIPA is all about raising standard across the industry.

Please email me or Karen Hindle at uksipa@btconnect.com join the group, speak and to suggest topics.

Louise

Virtual friends?

Right. I've had enough of this debate about how it's good to meet people face to face.

I agree.

It is.

But this is interesting & I plan on playing with the technology behind it - Ning.

Folio Media Pro

My name is Rory Brown and I am a geek.

When customers say thank you

"I flew all the way for this!"

With oil at $130 plus a barrel. Increased security checks. And corporate budgets under pressure. Traveling to business conferences just to hear a bunch of speakers read out bullet points from PowerPoint slides, when improved communication and social media mean you could have listened in from the comfort of your office...All this is really raising the bar for conference organizers. Or so says author of Permission Marketing, Seth Godin.

Anyone who's ever read his white paper on 'Death by Powerpoint': Really Bad Powerpoint will have looked back and cringed at their own slide decks crammed packed full of bullet points and dense text that has delegates' minds wandering or plain squinting at the screen.

The days of the traditional format conference are surely numbered. But from roundtables, to Q&A sessions, to interactive group discussions, to plain-old networking in the halls, there's no substitute for the shared learning experience conferences offer, when done well.

So imagine our delight when a delegate at Melcrum's recent Employee Engagement Summit in Sydney, Australia took it upon themselves to buy our very own Amy Lyons the most enormous bouquet of flowers with a card that referenced all the wonderful things Amy had done to make their conference experience second to none. (Customer service smug factor: 10/10).

It would seem that the value of attending conferences is alive and well, after all. And can social media and so-called 'virtual conferences' really replace the real thing? Virtual flowers, anyone?

By Robin Crumby, Managing Director, Melcrum

Face-to-face social networking to make money, make contacts and learn new techniques

Some fond SIPA memories

  I remember vividly my first SIPA (then NEPA) conference. It was 6 years ago and I had only just joined the world of B2B media, having spent the formative years of my career in academic book publishing. The energy at the conference, people’s willingness to share what worked and what didn’t work, plus wine at lunchtime (trust me, they do not have wine at academic book publishing events) cemented my belief that I had made the right decision to switch to newsletter and magazine publishing.

Some less fond ones

I remember my second conference even better. But not for the same warm fuzzy reasons. My then boss Rory Brown used it to start a campaign which became a daily part of my life for the next 3 years. The campaign was apparently to “take me out of my comfort zone” (his version) and to “ruin my life and make me panic” (my version).

Having raved so much how motivating it was to work in an industry where people were prepared to stand up and tell their peers their best marketing tips I opened the following year’s conference brochure with anticipation. This turned to disbelief, shock and finally what people watching tell me looked like rage when I saw my name on the brochure, apparently speaking about guerrilla marketing. I think they call it management by making your staff want to kill you.

SIPA today

Well I suppose it must have worked, because 6 years later I find myself still as evangelical as ever about SIPA’s role in sharing best practice. About a year ago I had a few drinks with the SIPA committee members to talk about how we could extend SIPA’s reach in a less formal environment than the conferences and workshops. I vaguely recall going off on a small rant about creating a networking group who could meet to talk about the marketing challenges that keep us awake at night. The next day I was told it was set up and I was chairing it. Clearly have issues with learning to keep my mouth shut.

In the age of twitter, facebook and linkedin it feels rather old fashioned to have an actual networking club. But I say let’s go crazy and so the SIPA networking club is one where you actually meet and dare I say it, touch real, live people.

The group has met up about 5 times now, covering topics including renewals, converting trials and growing lists. The group really reflects what’s great about SIPA, with three people doing short presentations about the best campaign that they have done in the last few months, sharing results and war stories. I have made a career out of nicking other people’s ideas and Electric Word’s case study about blanket renewals inspired the Incisive team to do the same –and we made £100k from the campaign. A pretty good ROI for a free event!

We meet again this Thursday –details below. I’ll write up the best tips from the evening and post them in a few days…it’s a great warm up to the main event, the SIPA conference and pre-conference discussion forums on 8^th and 8^th July.

SIPA marketing networking group: Top tips and case studies for email marketers

Thursday 12 June (that's this Thursday!), 6.00 pm, Incisive Media, Haymarket House, 28-29 Haymarket, London, SW1Y 4RX

• Do you ever wonder how your open rates compare with other publishing companies – should you be celebrating or weeping?
• What’s the best day to send out a renewal email?
• Do event or subscriptions emails get the best click throughs?
• What’s the best email campaign Electric Word did this year?

Come along and find out (free of charge) with fast, concise tips that will make you better email marketers – and then join us for some summer beers!

Our three speakers are: Sean Hayes– Data Manager at Incisive Media; Sara Baugh – Online Manager at Electric Word; and Paul Crabtree, Marketing Director at Adestra. They will be sharing the best things they have done this year, and also some lessons they learned from things that didn't go quite to plan. The evening will be chaired by Louise White, Group Marketing Director of Incisive Media.

The evening will start promptly at 6pm, and at around 7 we'll adjourn to a nearby bar to continue the chat and networking.

Sign up now or let us know if you want to attend or speak at future meetings by sending an email to Karen Hindle at uksipa@btconnect.com – please reply asap so we can get an idea of numbers and we I look forward to seeing you there.

Louise

The Undercover Marketer

9 June 2008

Spying on the spies who spy on us: I see the Chinese hacked into a US trade secretary’s laptop in Beijing and stolen all the information on the hard drive.

And they call that news?

We publishers get our commercial intelligence from the Specialized Information Publishers Association. You sit at a ‘round table’ at the conference and someone will tell you how they launched a title, how many subs they have and the best price to charge. The only other place you can get that ‘insider’ stuff is the Subscriptions Strategy newsletter.

You won’t find much about the wider, more secret world of international intelligence in newspapers. Having moved in this world for many years, I can explain what actually goes on. The Chinese infiltration may sound like an isolated, newsworthy incident, but it is nothing of the kind.

All governments have departments that exist purely to steal information from other Government departments. These teams compete with each other and spend millions of our (tax) money developing new bugging techniques.

So the USA complaining about the Chinese is like a football team complaining that the other side have scored a home goal -- tough cookie.

Why are the guys at the US Commerce department pissed? It’s because the stuff the Chinese steal is more valuable than the stuff the US steal.

Off the record, on the QT & very hush hush

Commercial eavesdropping took over when the political cold war ended back in 1980. It’s far easier to conquer Europe and the USA commercially than militarily.

Any logician will tell you that all wars are about economics.

Like SIPA members, the top Govt people meet up to exchange information: but not the really secret, sensitive stuff. Secret Govt. files are designated ‘Commercial-in-Confidence’ and you have to be really sneaky to get those. (Like the Chinese.)

Usually the target is a foreign embassy, because that is where all the secret information can be accessed, not just for that mission, but for the whole of that region. Infiltrate a computer at the US or UK embassy in Moscow and you’ll get secret information for the whole of Eastern Europe. You’ll have access to the Pentagon, State Department, Commerce department or the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO).

This blog is already too long. Go here for the full story, with some inside intelligence from SIPA about Internet marketing etc:  The undercover marketer

 

Conferences and meetings in the age of social media

The great Seth Godin, author of 'Permission Marketing' had some choice things to say about Conferences and meetings in the age of social media.

I think he's right too. With budgets under pressure, the format and focus of our conferences need to be updated and refreshed to make them unmissable.

..."I flew all the way here for this?" is going to be far more common than it used to be.

If you think a great conference is one where the presenters read a script while showing the audience bullet points, you're wrong. Or if you leave little time for attendees to engage with others, or worse, if you don't provide the levers to make it more likely that others will engage with each other, you're wrong as well.

Here's what someone expects if they come to see you on an in-person sales call: that you'll be prepared, focused, enthusiastic and willing to engage honestly about the next steps. If you can't do that, don't have the meeting.

Here's what a speaker owes an audience that travels to engage in person: more than they could get by just reading the transcript.

And here's what a conference organizer owes the attendees: surprise, juxtaposition, drama, engagement, souvenirs and just possibly, excitement.

35 days to go - SIPA UK Congress (8-9 July) London

The countdown has begun. While the SIPA US Conference - Profiting in the new publishing environment - is taking place in Washington at the moment the real excitement is building for the SIPA UK Annual Congress on the 8-9 July in London.

Topics to be covered include:

• Publishing narrow and deep - Tim Weller, Group CEO, Incisive Media
• Transitioning from print to online - Mark Ragan, CEO, Lawrence Ragan Communications
• Powerful & results driven email marketing techniques - Guy Cecala, Publisher / President, Inside Mortgage Finance Publications and Nic Laight, MD, Canonbury Publishing
• How to maximise your online development, sales & marketing spend - Luke Kelly, Head of Sales, Euromoney & John Whitaker, Online Business Development Manager, DMG World Media
• The future of paid content in the revenue mix - Hugh Look, Senior Consultant, Rightscom
• Search engine marketing for publishers - Jonathan Allen, Search Marketing Specialist, Incisive Media & Ken McGaffin, CMO, Wordtracker
• Site licences and syndication - Andrew Leighton, Director of Research, Aroq & Richard Londesborough, MD, Business Monitor international
• Social networks, user generated content and the law - Grace Baynes, Corporate PR Planner, Nature Publishing Group & Laurie Kay, Laurence Kay Solicitors

Alongside this stellar line up there will also be:
2 sessions of interactive round tables; an overview of the state of the specialist publishing industry from David Worlock of Outsell; a lunchtime awards presentation; drinks reception and 2 half day discussion forums for senior marketers and publishers.

The great thing about all SIPA events is the open and sharing environment which delegates enjoy. You'll hear case studies, real numbers, and a 'warts 'n' all' overview of what is, and what isn't, working in our new media world.

If you haven't already booked your place. Do so today. It will be great.

Download the brochure here or e-mail Karen Hindle at uksipa@btconnect.com.

From the Undercover Marketer

30 May 2008

As a freelance marketer, I believe marketing lies at the centre of all business. Without a market, you don’t have a product. I therefore investigate any business I can learn from, whatever or wherever that is.

So in March, over I go to Arkansas USA to talk to one of Barack Obama’s election volunteers. He tells me how wonderful Obama is. Never mind all that – every Tom Dick and Harry can get that from newspapers and TV.

What marketing tricks is he pulling?

After some experimental interrogation sessions with this volunteer guy, he starts to tell me all about Obama’s web and viral marketing techniques. How far ahead of his rivals the Obama team is in SEO (Search Engine Optimisation), email marketing and website design. All of which are central to today’s publishing operation.

I decide to investigate further
Obama’s website has a really effective USP and a prominent ‘donate’ button. You can’t miss them. But Hillary Clinton’s messages are mixed and all over the home page. Her USP (‘I’m a woman. Make history’) is negated by Obama’s (‘I am black. Make a change’) Hillary’s donate button is found under a list of five other options.

Take a look here: MarketingObama.com

Inside Obama's Internet marketing team
I discover the inside story on the expert Internet marketing team Obama has assembled. (This is beginning to sound like Electric Word..)

The Clinton’s didn’t even bother to visit Silicon Valley when they were in California – whoops!

Now - how clever is this?!
We can all learn from how the Internet team was brought together. Obama doesn’t waste time going around interviewing dozens of Internet wizards (all of whom have probably arrived from the distant planet of Gobbledygook.)

No - Obama is far wiser than that; wiser even than the average publisher. Instead he recruits a partner in a San Francisco venture-capital firm, Mark Gorenberg. These VC guys invest in Internet entrepreneurs. So instead of loosing his sanity listening to fast gobbledygook from a long list of computer guys, each who will insist he can build the right fund-raising system at the right price, Obama gets this guy Gorenberg to do it.

(How to run a company, lesson one: if you know Jack about Internet marketing or indeed, not much about marketing at all – delegate the job to someone who does).

As a venture capitalist, Gorenberg spends all his days listening to and investing in computer people talking fast gobbledygook. So he has the experience to quickly spot what he wants. But Gorenberg, like Obama, is also a wise man - wise enough not to take on the task himself. He teams up with a friend whose job it is to recruit executives for tech firms. So she does all the listening and all the hiring.

(How to run a company, lesson two: that’s how ‘networking’ at the top works).

These tech-types think in terms of networks. That is why Obama has a hugely successful viral marketing email campaign and why he has pulled in much more money than anyone else – around 23% more than Hillary Clinton. That’s enough to give Obama market leadership.

Many of the donations are in recurring monthly payments by credit card – but that is another story, another lesson.

 

 

Anyone else heading for SIPA Washington?

Is anyone else making the trip to SIPA Washington this year?

There's normally a merry band of Brits flying the flag (along with around 30 Germans and fellow Europeans). But I'm struggling to find others heading over this year.

Looks a great program. Never too late...

Hopefully see you there.

Robin.

Twitter ye not?

Whenever I talk about Twitter my fellow committee members tend to laugh. I must admit that when I first came across the service about 6 months ago I was baffled and couldn't see the point. But now I am starting to..

For those who have not come across Twitter the basic concept is that it is a 'micro-blogging' platform. Users register accounts and then decide whose tweets they want to follow. The principle is very similar to instant messaging but instead of your messages being one-to-one they are one to how ever many people chose to follow you in return.

Now, this could all be viewed as a massive time suck. And it can be. But there are some interesting business applications - especially in the marketing and information sectors in which I currently work. I'll list a few of them:

1. Speaker recruitment. We have recently recruited several speakers for events as a result of pitching calls for papers on Twitter. They have either been recommended by people who have heard them speak in other places or pitched themselves.
2. Feedback. if hosting events you can set up a 'Twitter tag' where your delegates can post questions to the panel or give feedback on sessions via their laptops or mobile phones. It is also great for co-ordinating where the best parties are!
3. Reputation management. I guarantee that somewhere people are talking about your brands or competitors.Twitter posts don't currently show up in search engine results but you can search for posts by using specific search engines like Summize or Tweetscan.
4. The news finds you. My news consumption habits are changing. From reading a lot of magazines, to e-mail newsletters, to RSS feeds; my biggest source of information is now referred by my network. The people I trust and who have similar interests to me flag up things of interest and often people at the fringes of my networks prompt those slightly peripheral thoughts from other industries that develop into great ideas.
5. Driving traffic to websites. We now have Twitter channels for some of our major news sites - like ClickZ. Users of Twitter chose to follow the channel and  then get instant messages when new content is posted.
6. Product / supplier recommendations. I recently bought a new Asus eee pc laptop totally based on recommendations I received from people I trust on Twitter. The same principle applies when trying to source suppliers or products for your business.

I mentioned Twitter at SIPA's great "How to make money from online content" session last Thursday [if you weren't there you missed a great session & well done Lindsey Greig for organising], a quick poll showed that no-one in the audience was using it. That's a shame. While there will probably be a new fad along any moment I would urge all publishers to try these tools. You have to be operating in the new digital world if you want to really understand how everything fits together and how your business might need to adapt in the future.

www.twitter.com/rorybrown