Smart marketer at SP Summit

Very exciting time here outside of Atlanta at the SP Client Summit.  The pre-

Smarter. Has smart marketers working for him (Brad's boss)

conference ‘boot camps’ have wrapped up and the welcome reception is just getting underway.  Met some very savvy marketers already, and decided to do some ‘pre-release’ polling of what might be coming out from being under wraps as the ‘big release’ scheduled for tomorrow…

Brad Parmerter and Barry Burmaster of Trans World Entertainment have been clients of SP’s for over 5 years – this is their first Summit, and when asked ‘what game-changer do you think might be coming?’, they said that since the demographic they target is 18-34 yr olds, it’s all about SMS/mobile/and Tweeting, and that they’re hopeful the release is geared around that front.

Terry Sartor of UPS, a local Atlanta here at his 1st SP Summit

Terry Sartor is here from UPS (came all the way from downtown Atlanta), and was in the email-intensives ‘boot camp’ as he is tasked with getting up to speed fast on email.  He’s been doing online marketing for years within different divisions of UPS, but is new to email.  Top takeaways for him were getting a handle on the email measurements and analytics to prove ROI (coincidentally, the very topic I’m presenting on for Weds) and is keen on putting the best-practices he learned today about layout and design elements of content into production.  “WAIT!” he said.  “SOCIAL!  So critical for us, that’s a really important topic to bring some back some expertise on.”

Others that commented in passing said they would wish that the new release has something to do with getting a higher level/deeper involvement of engagement with their audience.  I think they’re onto something here…

So off to snack and drink and schmooze.  You’re quasi-official blogger signing off for now.

Chad White has a great article on leveraging email marketing to get more from social media to engage customers and start conversations that lead to conversions.

We preach relevance a lot in this email marketing blog. And relevance is a key part of Chad’s message. As he says, it’s not enough anymore to just sell pet care products. You must offer pet care advice and tips, and give your customers an opportunity to contribute their own thoughts and ideas.

That’s social media. And email marketing can both start that conversation and keep it going. An email newsletter can offer advice and link back to a site where customers can contribute, for example. Chad offers great examples in his article, but we’re taking it one step farther to remind you that you can drive customers to these Web 2.0 tools using email marketing, and you can also use them to grow your in-house email list.

• Blogging, where people can comment but you can also solicit email signups
• Facebook, where people can because fans or members and post comments…and where you can also solicit email signups
• Forums (or wikis), where customers can post entire articles or comment, and you can (you guess it), solicit email signups

Even Twitter can be used to get people to subscribe to your emails!

Web 2.0, social media, social networking: We have a few names for these new marketing tools, but they all have one thing in common no matter what we call them. They can all be integrated into your email marketing program to deepen your conservations, strengthen your relationships, and increase your conversions. Maybe we should stop thinking of them as different, and simply consider them additional email marketing tools?

Click here to read Chad’s article