MindWorks Marketing Communications

Getting campaign timing right to boost your email open and clickthrough rates GetResponse analysed   over 21 million email messages sent by US companies in the 1st quarter of 2012, and the results clearly demonstrated the optimum times for open and click-through rates for email campaigns. The infographic below provides clear evidence of when to schedule your email campaigns to improve engagement: "One of the most important conclusions is that sending newsletters during readers’ top engagement times of  8 a.m. – 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. – 4 p.m. can increase their average  open rates and CTR by 6%" Highlights of the research: Emails have the best results within the  1 st  hour after delivery . This is when  23.63%  of all emails are opened. But 24 hours after delivery, the average open rate is close to zero. Almost  40%  of all messages are sent  between 6 a.m. and noon . This can result in inbox clutter, and signif...

MindStage ® MindStage ® is a continuos direct marketing program with disciplined measurement criteria allowing past campaign learnings to move prospects along the sales pipeline  What is MindStage ® ? A Lead Generation Engine  MindStage is a 4 step process that identifies where prospects sit in the buying journey and moves them along the sales pipeline through a disciplined ‘test & learn’ continuos direct marketing program.  How does MindStage work? Step 1 Disciplined Data Briefing Process (list selection) Step 2 Determine Success Criteria Step 3 Testing Step 4 Response Analysis The following outlines each step in more detail: Step 1 - Disciplined Briefing Process List Selection - identify ‘best customer’ profile from previous activity. Determine List Selection Criteria (from list fields and groupings) Step 2 - Determine Success Criteria Cost per Lead, Cost per Sale, Life Tim...

Acquiring customers by incentivising response through customer-centric direct marketing Prospects need a reason to respond WITHOUT the pressure to buy. Hot prospects - ready to go - will of course make contact requesting information to meet their specific needs. However the bulk (warm and cold prospects) will do nothing. Building long-term relationships requires a more customer-centric approach. That is, investing in your prospective customers life time value. The key ingredient is to START relationships from your prospects point of view. So starting a relationship between a brand and prospect requires a commitment to offer ‘something that shows a genuine interest in your customer’ allows the prospect to ‘respond’ to your communication without any pressure to buy. Offering free trials, 30 day cool-off periods etc can sound like a trap in sceptical savvy prospects mind, so offering something without a catch, related to the brand value proposition, but possibly more cu...

Helping business align their Value Proposition to their Customers Having recently attended a seminar that demonstrated a Business Model Tool called Canvas™ it became obvious how little businesses understand their customers when presenting their product offering. It seems that business often have a biased and myopic view of their product/service and how beneficial it will be for customers that 'other' selling challenges are ignored or not considered in the Value Proposition development process. The Canvas business model offers a process to ensure ALL the key elements of a business, product or service are considered so the resulting findings support Customer  Segments needs alongside the final Value Proposition. Making creative more accountable MindWorks has long been aware of the importance of ensuring customers are front-and-centre of any product offering. We refer to better understanding the 'customers nagging need' that the product offering will fulfill. O...

6 steps to mobile landing page optimisation The rules for mobile landing page optimisation and standard landing page optimisation are fundamentally different. The goals are different. The metrics use to track success of landing page conversion are different. Even the definition of “conversion” is different. Beyond the tech guidelines, here are 6 steps to implement as you create a mobile landing page. 1. Mobile users want instant gratification Mobile users want to immediately call, buy, download or visit. Quick. Quick. Quick. They are not doing research. They want something that will immediately solve their problem. Research shows that 90 percent of mobile searches lead to action.  2. Define your goal Is it lead generation, application download, immediate purchase, phone call generation or coupon redemption? The answer to this question will define the type of landing page you create. In standard (PC) landing page creation, lead-gen or immediate purchase is the most common ...

One of Direct Marketing (DM) key benefits is its measurability. Marketers know whether the campaign has been a success or failure very quickly – almost instantly for some online campaigns – by measuring the ROI. In most cases the key measurability of DM is sales - did the revenue generate a profit after costs. However there is a growing acceptance that as markets become more cluttered and consumers more targeted other metrics need to be considered when determining campaign success or failure. The challenge for marketers is to broaden their view beyond measuring just the ROI on each and every DM campaign. A number of scenarios may exist which drive marketing decisions to only focus on ROI: Marketers are focused on the virtue of their products and the reasons why they believe the product will benefit prospects Marketers are pressured in today’s market to strive for short-term goals ie sales Marketers may view the fact that product has been previously purchased suggests ‘it will again’ an...

When Drayton Bird, David Ogilvy and Bob Stone started to talk about direct marketing would they have imagined an employee writing a 140 characters in a social network could help a company connect with millions of people – instantly. And that a lone consumer with a video camera and a sleeping ‘cable guy’ could turn public opinion away from one of the worlds biggest communications companies – in the comfort of the consumers living room? So who is using what? Twitter’s traffic has grown tremendously in the past year, but how many people are actively using the service versus casually passing by? According to the latest research from eMarketer, that number will be at around 18 million by the end of 2009. eMarketer considers “users” as people who access Twitter via any platform – Web, client, mobile or otherwise – at least once per month. The study was also US-only, and the research firm calls its estimates “conservative” in light of other stats that show Twitter has a high abandonment ...