Twitter has been around for quite some time, but as we move into the holiday season, we’ve been seeing Twitter used more in email campaigns, on Websites and via SMS. We thought we’d take a quick look at some statistics and trends around campaigns our clients have been sending, as well as some quick hit ideas you can use as we head in to the holidays.

What we know about Twitter and its audience:

We know that Twitter’s audience skews young. Experian Marketing Services has found that more 18-25 year olds are utilizing the social media giant than other sites like Facebook or Pinterest. We also know it’s a great source for real-time news information, customer service interaction and gathering instant feedback. Additionally, a previous study by Experian Marketing Services has found that using the word “Twitter” in subject lines can increase open rates by up to 14% and click through rates by up to 2.3%.

But what about other creative ways of using Twitter in your emails?

We noticed a growing trend with hastags recently being used in subject lines, specifically with retailers that cater to the teen market, so we took a deeper dive to see how they were performing across our client’s campaigns.

What we found:

We looked across campaigns with hashtags in their subject lines between June and September 2012 and compared results to the same client’s overall quarterly performance. Hashtag mailings appear to generate a modest lift of 4.8% in open rates, but we also noticed a drop in both click and transaction rates.

Conclusions and advice:

If you’re looking to grow your Twitter base and build your brand, a lack of transactions might be okay for this type of email. But if you’re also looking to get those transactions and clicks, think about what you are asking your subscribers to do, as even your subject line can contain a call to action. If the subject line is directing or encouraging recipients to take action to tweet the hashtag, it is possible that the drop in click and transaction rates is a reflection of the action the email is asking the recipient to take.

While hashtags in subject lines may look like a great opportunity to lift opens, it’s important to be careful with the rest of your message if your main goal is to also increase clicks and transactions.

Sample campaign 1:

Subject Line: Our #SoCalStylist just added a new video in Hollister Club Cali!

Above, they are asking customers to “tweet now” in the secondary part of the email, but the main call to action is to “join now.”

Sample campaign 2:

Subject Line: #Liveyourlife

Again, the main calls to action direct users to the sales occurring at the time, while separately calling out the hashtag campaign American Eagle is touting.

Other ways to incorporate Twitter in to your marketing mix:

After checkout, think about asking users to tweet about their purchase. I’m sure many of you have seen share functions on Websites like Amazon post purchase. Here, Gilt Groupe takes this concept one step further, giving their customers and incentive to share.

Also remember to include customer tweets in emails:

The above example shows a great way to include your community, and make your customers work for you. Experian CheetahMail has found that when including customer ratings and/or reviews in emails, we see a lift in transaction rates. You can use tweets about your programs or products as you would a review. People love hearing from other folks like them, so where appropriate include those customer tweets.

And take it one step further with live tweets:

Here, DirecTV is streaming live tweets from events in their email. This is another great way to keep your emails current and targeted.

If promoting your Twitter presence is right for your brand, now that you know its core demographics and uses, incorporating some of these tactics might also be right for you. As we always say, you’ll never know until you test, test, test.

And if you want to share results, tweet me @gouldliz

About Liz Gould:

Liz Gould brings over 13 years of knowledge, passion and experience in digital media to her colleagues and clients at Experian CheetahMail. In her current role as director of strategic accounts, Liz advises CheetahMail’s largest accounts on their email, mobile and social strategies. She began her career at agencies like Euro RSCG, advising clients such as Mastercard, Goldman Sachs, Genentech, and Electronic Arts.

Key take-aways:
Facebook is the top social network displayed or promoted in email, followed by Twitter, YouTube and Pinterest respectively.

On average, emails promoting Pinterest get 24.7% more unique clicks than other non-social-promotion emails. The new kid on the block creates a lot of buzz in email. Check out this case study for specifics on how Ballard Designs boosts engagement with Pinterest.

Unique open rates for Twitter “follow-us” mailings are 9.5% higher than those for other mailings.

60% of brands that sent emails with “Facebook” in the subject line averaged a 27% increase in traffic to their website from Facebook the week following deployment.

86% of U.S. online adults are taking part in at least some form of social interaction

None of the marketers in the room were surprised to hear Rob say that social media has become increasingly mainstream, though it was interesting to learn that according to Forrester, 86% of U.S. online adults are taking part in at least some form of social interaction.

This was good news for the marketers in attendance, many of whom are in the retail and travel industries, and all of whom are increasingly turning to social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest to promote their brands.

Also not surprising was Rob’s breakdown of challenges that marketers face, the biggest of which is creating a single view of customers across channels – picked by 50% of respondents in a recent Forrester survey. Not surprisingly, according to Rob, organizational silos contribute heavily to creating this challenge.

Measuring results was chosen by 45% of respondents, 39% cited improving expertise in new channels (i.e., social and mobile), 37% picked capturing customer insight to drive decision-making and 33% said managing data quality.

Smart cross-channel campaign management is critical to solving all of the above challenges and Rob had these thoughts on the topic:

• Campaign management applications are needed to enable more customer-centric approaches, but core CCCM capabilities are now quite mature
• Integrations, customizations and licenses are expensive and this sometimes prevent firms from incorporating campaign management applications
• Marketers need more support in social, mobile and local, but often native social listening, mobile push notifications and location-based communications are poorly supported or absent from the mix
• Marketers are asking for more help from their vendors as they often have the right vision and an interesting perspective. The vendors’ biggest challenge is simply a matter of moving fast enough to satisfy clients’ needs

Ultimately, Rob’s advice to marketers for getting to optimized cross-channel campaign management was this:

• Map your customer’s journey across key touch points
• Look for opportunities to integrate data and automate operations
• Create a 3-5 year technology strategy and implementation roadmap
• Prove ROI in high-value interactions – quick wins make it easier to get funding

These lessons have taken some time to be adopted in the expanding world of digital marketing. From broadcast emails to placing banner ads to capture  eyeballs, the metrics have gravitated towards something new, including actions, conversion, click-throughs and even amount of purchase. Different companies, and even internal groups within companies, use different metrics to determine success. The metrics can be proactive based on strategy, or reactive based on other internal or external factors. Sometimes the approach is forced by competitive pressure, in other cases by the need  to track performance against broader objectives such as budgets or margins. As businesses become more used to the digital arena, segmentation and profiling play an increasingly important role in targeted campaigns.

Enter the new frontier of social marketing. Many questions arise for marketers, generating much discussion in industry groups and conferences: Which platform should I use? Which metrics should be tracked? What is the ROI? What does it drive? Also growing in complexity is the issue of revenue attribution in a multi-channel marketing world, and the role social media campaigns play in overall results. All valid questions, but a big challenge is that many seem to be forgetting a very fundamental question in marketing, regardless of channel, and that is: exactly who we are targeting? What is the difference between the 10 or 10,000 people who ”Like” your Facebook page or follow you on Twitter?

What is the difference between the 10 or 10,000 people who ”Like” your Facebook page or follow you on Twitter?

This is an important question because it raises the issue of relevancy. Look at the marketing efforts in other channels. Do we show the same ad on all channels? What about print ads in magazines? Is every customer or prospect sent the same piece of direct mail? The same offer? How about email? Even web pages are providing different experiences to different visitors based on what we know about them, including something as simple as a winter clothing offer that’s based on the IP address of the customer. It’s clear that marketing efforts are becoming more finely tuned and targeted.

One key strength of social media marketing is the ability to engage an audience, though this can be marginalized due to the one size fits all approach for social engagement efforts. The troubling question is: At what point does this approach become irrelevant noise or social spam? If I have one page for customers to like, in an attempt to speak to all of them I may not be speaking to any of them. The only case in which all messages are relevant to all the fans on Facebook or followers on Twitter is if they are essentially alike because I have a very narrow product offering. Let me describe the issue with social spam using a simple example. A national clothing retailer has customers who differ by age, gender and geographical regions. At the most basic level, the factors that segment the customers would be:

1. Gender: 2 groups – male and female
2. Region: 4 groups – West, East, Central and South
3. Age: 3 groups -18-25, 26-34, 35-44

Potentially there are 24 different segments of audience (2x4x3 = 24). It is late Fall and if the retailer is sharing updates once daily on its Facebook page, how often will it post something that is relevant to a 19 year old male living on the West Coast? Say the posting on Monday is for light Fall jackets targeted for teenage girls on the West Coast. Tuesday it is for heavier jackets targeted for 30-something males in the colder East Coast, Wednesday the message is for 35-44 age women in South for accessories, and so on.

At what point should that message targeted to a 19 year old male living in the West Coast show up? Until that message is delivered, the other messages might be seen as irrelevant noise or even be considered social spam. By attempting to engage fans and customers the retailer could be sending the wrong signals ¾ i.e., you are just a number. How long until this customer/target/fan stops paying attention due to irrelevant messaging day after day? It takes one simple click to stop seeing all or most of the retailer’s updates thereby losing the attention of someone who at one time was interested enough to like the retailer’s Facebook page.

So what is the answer? We have to go back to the basic principles of marketing. A social strategy has to be targeted and customized. We must be able to answer basic questions like: Who is our ideal customer? How much do we know about this person, and what is or is not of interest to them? This will help fine tune all aspects of our social channel efforts, segmentation and, eventually, drive strong results.

Profiling and segmentation are critical. We don’t send the same direct mailer or email, or offer the same landing page to all customers, so why force them to the same feed on a social media channel? The answer is to have more specific feeds, whether it’s pages, accounts or albums. The good news is that the right information is available to be able to segment. This includes all kinds of syndicated consumer information, as well as information available specifically in the social channel itself. There are many views and approaches to calculating the value of a “Like” on Facebook or a follower on Twitter, but regardless of how the value is calculated, the more specific your messaging is to the customer the higher the value will be. Remember the channel or tool may provide additional capabilities but the fundamentals have to be followed to make the best use of any channel.

However, as time went on and Facebook and Twitter began to dominate the social space, a shift began in the kinds of things people were talking about. As Facebook evolved and started offering “fan pages” where someone could create a page on something or someone they really liked, a new idea was born: Businesses now had a social venue that allowed them to brand themselves in a social space and best of all, get instant reader feedback.

“Listening” became a corporate norm, and with it hundreds of vendors and software solutions were created to form an entirely new industry. With all of this information available for businesses to gather feedback, it was essential to understand what people were saying about their brands. And, brands needed to determine how and/or whether or not to respond to negative or positive comments. Today, most businesses have mastered the listening phase of the social revolution and taken advantage of the multitudes of software solutions that are available to help them react to and monitor what consumers are saying. But how does one respond effectively and also isolate subpopulations of negative consumers against a broader positive consumer base?

If someone posts about relaxing with a glass of wine, an organization can find out what the consumer’s wine brand or taste preference is.  Also, if someone posts about a new membership club they joined, an organization can determine if this caused others to follow suit.

This is where we are at today. Businesses are now realizing that just listening to what is being said about a certain topic, product, service or brand and responding to everyone in the same way isn’t as effective as they had hoped. So what’s a marketer to do? They profile their social consumer to understand key differences between those that are high-value and loyal brand advocates versus those that are low-value, negative consumers. By combining social data with traditional data, a brand can now understand their consumers across social media and other online and offline channels. If someone posts about relaxing with a glass of wine, an organization can find out what the consumer’s wine brand or taste preference is.  Also, if someone posts about a new membership club they joined, an organization can determine if this caused others to follow suit. This allows marketers to see if social media has any correlation in customer loyalty or consumer purchasing patterns. With this next evolution in social media marketing, brands are now able to make even more sense out of the vast amount of social data that exists in the social sphere. Once a brand understands more about the specific segments of consumers that are socially active, it’s time to move on to “publishing,” the final phase of social marketing.

With profiling, publishing becomes far more effective and efficient and a brand no longer has to blast everyone with the same social messaging.

When publishing, a brand has the opportunity to reach out to its consumers in a smart, targeted way. Utilizing the information learned in the listening and profiling phase, brands can target certain messages or ads to specific sub-segments of consumers. For example, if a brand’s high-value, socially active segment has been recently complaining about a new product line, the brand can take corrective action and target the individuals that fit into that segment with messaging similar to, “We’ve heard you and now we are working to make things better.” Whereas, if a brand’s low-value, non-socially engaged segment is complaining about a service, a brand may just want to send them a coupon or “sorry” message. With profiling, publishing becomes far more effective and efficient and a brand no longer has to blast everyone with the same social messaging.

Listening, profiling and publishing all work in harmony to provide the most impactful social marketing communication. Each one alone has its value, but together the three are worth more than the sum of the parts. As brands grow and continue to evolve their social communication, these three phases need to become more interconnected in the overall marketing plan.

Register for this webinar titled Harnessing Social Media for Accelerated Multi-Channel Performance  on June 21^st and find out how to get started. May The Force be with You!

Here are three tips on what you can do as an advertiser to effectively connect to your audience

1. 360-degree immersion
   With so many gadgets vying for the average American’s attention, it’s no small feat to actually grab it! To ensure your message doesn’t get lost in the deluge, use multi-channel audience targeting to communicate the same message on multiple platforms. Data-driven advertising that helps you understand as much as possible about your targets, enables you to consistently reach your audience regardless of channel, giving you a greater chance of being remembered when it matters.Look for partner companies that directly manage display, email, direct mail and social media platforms so that once you define your target audience, you can rest assured that the same customized message will be delivered across all channels reliably.
2. Find your right target
   Many political advertisers have a list of key segments they’d like to reach. Reputable data providers can help you connect with the right segments in a de-identified manner using targeted digital messaging. For example, political campaigns can display environmental-oriented ads to a subset list while showing a Social Security themed message to another subset from their voter database. This allows them to customize their messaging to cater to the varied interests of their constituents The same ideas can be applied in targeting your key audience.
3. Get granular
   Campaigners always know which types of voters are engaged and passionate about their cause, and connect with the most influential voters based on their political affiliation and interests. To do this with your audience, look into data management platforms that have a reputable history of gathering first-party data. They need to seamlessly combine their analytical know-how when creating sophisticated segments in a privacy-compliant manner. We call this data-driven political advertising.

Here’s an example of how we helped a government official in a local re-election campaign: Using Experian Marketing Services data, the official ran segmented TV ads in his local election area. The TV ad was tailored so that multiple ads with different messages were delivered to each of his demographic segments. The result of the targeted messaging led to strong re-election numbers and an eventual campaign win for the official.

Pinterest content has something for everyone, but the site is dominated by images featuring home décor, crafts, fashion, and food. Not surprisingly, visitors to the site in the 12 rolling weeks ending December 17th skewed female (58%) and between the ages of 25 and 44 (59%). Pinterest and the Social Networking & Forums category both receive their highest share of visits from California and Texas. However, the Social Networking category as a whole over-indexes on share of visits from Northeastern states while Pinterest over-indexes on visits from the states in the Northwest and Southeast. This data indicates that Pinterest visitors have a different profile versus their counterparts visiting other social networking sites such as Facebook and YouTube.

In fact, nine of the top ten over-indexed states for Pinterest visitors also over-index for the Hobbies and Crafts category (versus the online population) which is expected given the abundance of crafts content on the website. When comparing the Mosaic USA 2011 types that visit both Pinterest.com and Hobbies and Crafts websites during the 12 weeks ending December 17, 2011, the data shows that Boomers and Boomerangs are the group most likely to visit, particularly the Pinterest website (comprising over 10% of visits). This group of consumers is characterized as baby boomers and young adults who are heavy web users who spend time on house and garden, sports and fitness, and family-oriented websites. This information is useful to companies who wish to target their content to be “pinned” by Pinterest users.

Thanks to Lauren Rice, an Analyst with the Strategic Services team at Experian Hitwise for today’s analysis.