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Digital Media, Storytelling and The Art of Immersion

Posted by LBi India October 20th, 2011

Graham Hodge, Director of Branded Content and Creative Services, writes in this month’s issue of Admap Magazine, entitled The Power of Storytelling. He highlights how successful brands have embraced digital media by creating experiences around storytelling.

The feature-length piece The Art of Immersion looks at campaigns that have not only connected with audiences through the web, video and social media — they’ve empowered them to shape narratives of their own, centred around the brands they’ve embraced.

Read ‘The Art of Immersion’ by Graham Hodge (PDF)

Visit Admap: October 2011 (content behind paywall)

Tags: branded content, brands, Engagement, narrative, online audiences

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Driving mobile channel engagement via Email

Posted by LBi India August 11th, 2011

Email has long been an integral part of marketers’ multi-channel communications toolkit. While more recently its profile has been overshadowed by the rapid rise of social media and mobile, it is still as important as ever. Not only is it a highly valuable marketing channel in its own right, it is also key to driving engagement in newer channels such as social media and mobile.

The rapid growth of mobile and particularly m-commerce has been well documented in recent months with a slew of infographics to show for it. There are multi-channel marketing strategies driving this growth, of which, email is a part. A recent report on society’s growing dependence on mobile has shown that not only does email usage increase with the purchase of a smartphone but that 55% of consumers are using their smartphone to check email at least once per day. Furthermore, marketing messages delivered through email and read on a smartphone have driven more consumers to purchase than any other mobile method.

These statistics show the importance of optimising email marketing in order to drive greater mobile engagement. With just over half of customers citing an email as the impetus for a mobile purchase getting the following areas right is key;

- Rendering: Email design needs to render correctly on a smartphone so that it is easy to scroll and that calls to action are visible on different mobile handset types

- Mobile variant: As email will display differently whether opened on a mobile or a desktop consider creating two versions that are each optimised for their respective channels

- Calls to action: Mobile versions of emails should contain calls to action that are relevant to time sensitive mobile behaviours such as links to store locations, promotions, events etc.

- Timing: Test and learn to pin point the time of day that delivers the greatest levels of response

All of the above should be tracked, analysed and enhanced in order to deliver email communications that drive the greatest mobile engagement, click throughs and ultimately conversions. A good example of this in action are Gap, who have integrated mobile store locator functionality into their Emails:

Therefore, Email and Mobile should not be viewed in isolation. We should leverage their combined powers to drive engagement across the channel mix.

Sarah Walsh – CRM Consultant (LBi London).

Talk to LBi if you want to find out more about email optimisation, driving mobile engagement, CRM or Social CRM.

Tags: Communications, CRM, email, Engagement, mobile, Optimisation

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From Shop to Swap?

Posted by LBi India May 9th, 2011

As we begin to peek out from under the veil of recession, a new movement is stirring. An innovative business model is evolving that has the potential to change how we live our lives as well as how we do business. Time Magazine has listed it as one of the top 10 ideas that will change the world. So what exactly is this mystery movement?

Rachel Botsman, social innovator and writer, has aptly named it Collaborative Consumption. It began with a natural shift in customer behaviour from shopping to swapping and from buying to renting, ultimately moving away from the hyper-consumption that got us into so much trouble in the first place. This simple video from www.collaborativeconsumption.com sums it up nicely:

WHAT’S MINE IS YOURS from rachel botsman on Vimeo.

Both Rachel Botsman and Lisa Ganksy (author of The Mesh: Why the Future of Business Is Sharing) make some really interesting points on the impact that Collaborative Consumption could have for brands, marketers and consumers alike. I have picked two key points as food for thought;

1) The success of Collaborative Consumption hinges on trust (TED Talk ‘The case for Collaborative Consumption) and while there has been a lot of focus in the last year on influencers and metrics such as Klout score and Peerindex, it may be time for businesses and consumers to start thinking about reputation. In Botsman’s words “Reputation capital will determine our access to collaborative consumption. It’s a new social currency, so to speak, that could become as powerful as our credit rating”.

2) To avoid being left out of these new conversations that are forming in a peer to peer environment and to take advantage of new opportunities to engage consumers, brands need to get creative about adapting their business models. This could be through enabling sharing (e.g. Netflix), building communities that offer shared experiences and then providing ancillary services to these communities (e.g. Nike Plus) or simply adapting their traditional business model to incorporate sharing (e.g. DriveNow from BMW).

This is just the beginning of the discussion and only time will tell how big and far reaching Collaborative Consumption will become. The technology to support this entirely new class of commerce is developing rapidly and with brands such as Zipcar and Netflix growing at such a fast pace, it doesn’t look like it’s going away any time soon. So, maybe it’s time to get the thinking caps on?

Tags: Collaborative Consumption, CRM, Engagement, Influencers, Reputation, Technology, TED

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