E-MARKETING: Make Your First Impression a Long-Lasting One.

While many of us now employ some form of e-marketing in our overall branding efforts, and almost all of us devote serious time, energy and resources to acquiring the almighty e-mail address, a lot of us may be overlooking one of the most crucial components to long-term success: the welcome e-mail.

According to Jeanniey Mullen, founder of the E-mail Experience Council, the "welcome message has become probably the most critical message in an e-mail marketing program because it not only serves to acknowledge permission and a relationship, but sets up expectations for how that relationship is going to develop." In other words, it creates a positive first impression.

The article in Marketing News goes on to identify a number of successful welcome e-mail tactics, including:

• An acknowledgment (subject line) that this is a welcome email, significantly improving open rates.
• A link to your website or e-commerce site.
• Delivery within 10 minutes of the consumer's interaction with your website or data entry.
• Rewards and incentives.
• The option to go to your website to enter more personalized data (if not collected earlier), to better pre-qualify the subscriber.

Mullen concludes that across all industries, research over the past two years indicates that the first three e-mails somebody receives from your company will define, for them, whether this is a relationship they're interested in maintaining. Guess that means we all have three chances to make a first impression. Or we get three strikes, and we're out.

SOURCE: Marketing News, NOISE
REPORTED BY: John Sprecher

INCENTIVE MARKETING: Wearing Your Brand on Your Sleeve.

Incentives come in all shapes, sizes, prices and value points. But according to a recent article in Ad Age, one of the most popular, inexpensive and enduring incentives remains the mighty (yes) t-shirt.

Don't pshaw just yet. According to the magazine's Lenore Skenazy, the t-shirt "might bring your brand close to immortality. A t-shirt is a conversation starter, a touchstone, a symbol. Oftentimes, it's not only a reflection and statement of the company that sponsors it, but also the person wearing it. T-shirts remain an attractive draw everywhere — as a giveaway at an event, a trophy for a corporate tournament, in a goody bag at a conference."

But let's face it. Cool t-shirts are cool and something to be embraced. Ugly t-shirts are, well, destined to polish furniture, dry automobiles or a fate worse. So if you're thinking of branded apparel for your company or org — whether it's a lowly t-shirt, mighty polo or anything else (NOISE once gave away branded men's boxers!) — make sure you design something people will actually want to wear. Do that, and they'll become yet another extension of your brand. And you can never have too many of those.

SOURCE: Ad Age, NOISE
REPORTED BY: Kimberley Parker

BRANDING: Put Your Organization to the Test.

As regular readers of Trendspottings well know, this blog isn't about blatant self-promotion of NOISE — but rather, about providing new, worthwhile, practical and applicable information that you as a marketer can use to improve your brand and brand equity. But there is a NOISE service that we believe fits the definition above, and it's time to tell you about it.

We call it a Brandoscopy. It's a simple, entertaining, thoughtful online quiz that tests a person's (or organization's) awareness, understanding, integration and delivery of your brand — whether that person is the chief executive officer, the nightly maintenance engineer, or anyone and everyone in between.

You see, every customer touch point is an opportunity to positively promote and reinforce your brand, because your brand is defined by your customer's most recent experience. A positive customer experience helps create a valued, desired brand. A negative customer experience — and that can derive from infractions large or trivial — obviously begets negative feelings toward a brand. And as we all know, hell hath no fury like a consumer scorned.

We encourage you to take our Brandoscopy by clicking here. It'll be over in a minute and your test results are available immediately. And if you're interested in having your entire organization take the exam to better understand your level of brand integration, simply contact John Sprecher at johns@make-noise.com. We'll help you promote participation, collect data and review results.

Are you ready for a Brandoscopy? Take a seat and take the test. We promise it won't hurt a bit.

SOURCE: NOISE
Reported by: John Sprecher

INTERACTIVE MARKETING: Where Women Are a Healthy Majority.

It's no secret that women are the primary drivers of health care decisions, and clearly the number one target of health care marketing. Now, hospitals and other health care marketers can make it easier than ever for women to have the decision-making information they need, right at their fingertips, by simply providing it on their websites.

A recent study by comScore shows that today, a healthy majority of women — 60% — are more likely to search the internet for health information than turning to family or friends. And when not consulting a physician, that number rises to 85%.

The study shows that women are specifically using web-based health information:

• To organize findings.
  
• To learn and share via user-generated online content.
• To become more proactive in their health, wellness, education and treatment.

NOISE is expert at health care marketing, with highly successful campaigns that have recently been nationally featured in Adweek and HealthLeaders Media. Whatever health care promotion you're undertaking, our strong recommendation is to utilize traditional advertising, public relations and promotion to drive your consumers where they want to go: your website.

SOURCE: Marketing Management, NOISE
REPORTED BY: John Sprecher