Monday, December 19, 2016

Working When Everyone Else Isn't

Ho, Ho, Oh No
When I was in college, far too long ago, there was a Thanksgiving weekend when I didn't have the cash to get home. So I stayed at school for the long weekend, and picked up four straight double-shift days at my work-study hustle job as a security guard. Sixty eight hours billed over four straight days.

I'm not going to mince words; it was terrible, even though the cash saved my holiday season, and I used the time well to catch up on all of my studies, along with an inordinate amount of reading, guitar playing, writing and so on. But there was one side effect that was valuable, in that no Thanksgiving since has been as bad as that. Also, that I was capable of that sort of sacrifice if I had to make it, which gave me a curious sort of pride about my motor, really.

When you work in advertising and marketing, you tend to take your time off at the same time as everyone else -- the week between Christmas and New Years', some time around Labor Day, and if you've got kids, maybe spring break. Which leads to the tendency among many in the field to wrap up the year in mid-December, since most of us have everything all set up well in advance of this time, and finding people who you work with is very hit or miss. Also, you might have a use or lose moment with your time off.

But just because many pros are fortunate enough to have this time, that doesn't mean your audience does -- or that there isn't major hay to make from last-minute adjustments and opportunities, particularly in e-commerce. You also might have contractual obligations to clear business before the end of the calendar year, which means you are doing more than you might want to, given the impact of seasonality on engagement. But if it can't be helped, and you find yourself churning while everyone else is getting their wassail on, a few points to keep in mind.

> Engagement might not be as big of a problem as it used to be. Smartphones make way too many people eternally tethered to their work or (especially) email, which means that the historical drop off might not repeat itself. You might even see a bit of a gain if your competitors close up shop early for the season.

> However, the send might be more harmful than you anticipate. In email marketing, unsubscribes spikes in Q4, because, well, people get too much of it, and take steps to control their intake. True email pros never neglect this metric, of course, but it's easy to disregard it in the face of revenue. Just remember that a spike in unsubs, especially if there isn't a strong corresponding intake of fresh addresses, is a serious problem for long-term growth.

> Don't overpromise. The worst brand moment for an e-commerce company comes when they can't fulfill their promises during the Christmas rush, and marketing and advertising that doesn't take this into account -- or, even worse, actively works to convince the leads that orders will be safely sent when they aren't -- is actively destroying the brand. Most folks in the space know this down cold, but unclear messaging on shipping is just not something many companies can survive, especially in a social media and review site age.

> Cramming rarely saves the season. If you've got a client that needs to change messaging on a daily basis, burns through creative like it's a free resource, and keeps you going 24/7 as if this activity is all that stands between them and a winning year... well, you are in the presence of a terrible managerial situation, and a business that can't survive in the long run. At a brand level, the client is training prospects to buy in low margin. At a business level, the client is keeping you from serving other clients to the best of your ability.

Don't think of it as squeaky wheel gets the grease. More, it's a lack of wheel stopping the entire cart. Oh, and the work's going to stink, too, because this kind of rapid fire force feed creates mistakes, fatigue, and turnover. Push back, if only to save your sanity. (Or get your resume out before everyone else does. That will also save your sanity,)

> Keep your perspective. Even the worst day in Q4 in marketing and advertising is spent (a) indoors, (b) without dealing with hordes of panicky and rude clients, (c) with no greater traffic or commuting problems than usual, and (d) for a salary that would boggle the mind of, say, the poor folks selling Christmas trees or working retail. There are, frankly, many folks in the work force who'd trade gigs with you in a heartbeat. Charity during the season is rarely a mistake.

And if all of that doesn't put a smile on your face, just remember... the holidays will be over soon enough, and then we'll be able to turn the page on a year that many of us consider to be among the worst in recent memory. 2017's got to be better!

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Feel free to comment, as well as like or share this column, connect with me on LinkedIn, or email me at davidlmountain at gmail dot com, or hit the RFP boxes at top right. RFPs are always free, and we hope to hear from you soon.

Monday, December 12, 2016

The Next Level In Fake News: Content Attacks

As Seen On Not TV
There's a hard and cruel line in political science, which is that the people get the government they deserve. The concept is that if there's a tyrannical despot, and the people aren't rising up to overthrow, they are enabling it. That if there's corruption and graft, that the people are, on some level, comfortable with it, haven't been socialized or educated away from tolerating the practice, and so on.

It's a fairly cold and inhumane perspective, especially when it comes to moments like a violent overlord that is propped up by foreign action, but it's got the feel of truth about it. If you aren't prepared to commit to political actions to the extent that your opponents are, they will prevail. (A fairly famous quote from a recent symposium at Harvard of "I wouldn't want to win the way you did it" comes to mind.)

We pivot now to marketing and advertising, as we always do, because that's why you read this column.

The recent presidential election, and the continuing investigation by the CIA, is now at a point where it is clear that foreign powers tried to influence the results through the use of fake news stories that were designed to go viral. Whether or not these stories were successful in changing enough hearts and minds to sway the result is going to be open to interpretation; after all, very few people vote for just one reason or point, and it's not as if millions will recant their vote (or have the opportunity to).

But that's not the point.

The bigger issue, to me, is that the actors who just made money with fake news about politics aren't just going to go into hibernation now that they have developed skills and techniques, and where that goes next could have strong implications for our field. This also presumes that interest and traffic about politics eventually goes down, which might be an incorrect assumption. But anyway, let's move on.

I have one more concept to add to this message of worry, and that is towards a creative interpretation of ransomware. Ransomeware, in case you aren't up on your cybercrime, is a type of software that's designed to block access to a computer system until a payoff, usually in untraceable bitcoins. But instead of a program that's downloaded by mistake, fake news ransomware could come in the form of negative viral content about a brand or service, then the ask of the brand owners to pay for the content to get scrapped before social sharing.

If all of this seems a little far-fetched because people aren't going to be read and share a listicle about the top 10 things that experts don't want you to know about (targeted brand or service), well... I've got a pizzeria in Washington DC where the employees might want to have a word with you, in regards to your naivete about how much people will believe.

So what, if anything, can marketing and advertising pros do to try to safeguard against this threat? Much of the optimal practices that you should already have in place, frankly. Content that cross-links to well-established blogs in your space, so that organic search results won't pull up clickbait. Customer service that's so strong that your clients shout down the bad actors, or evangelize for you as part of a grass roots recovery plan after attack. A diversified revenue stream, so that an attack in a single consumer category doesn't imperil the entire business. An active social media program, in multiple channels, that helps get the word out about any issues you are encountering.

There's been a longstanding tendency in marketing and advertising circles, especially on the direct side, to deride the value of a Facebook like, a Twitter re-tweet, a Pinterest pin, and so on. But what you should really be doing is to stop trying to put a hard ROI figure on these activities, and start seeing them as an insurance policy against a content attack.

After all, the reputation -- and business -- that you save will be your own.

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Feel free to comment, as well as like or share this column, connect with me on LinkedIn, or email me at davidlmountain at gmail dot com, or hit the RFP boxes at top right. RFPs are always free, and we hope to hear from you soon.

Monday, December 5, 2016

The (Price) Race To Nowhere

Only one place to go
Twenty years ago, in the throes of the Christmas season, I knew what my big gift idea for the year was going to be. I wanted to get the woman who eventually became my wife a high-end leather jacket.

This wasn't the kind of purchase that you'd do over the Internet, especially not in those low bandwidth days. Fortunately, I knew people in New York City who trafficked in high fashion circles, and knew the right places to go. They also knew *how* to shop in such a setting, and prepared me accordingly. So instead of relying on a credit card, on the instructions of my experienced friend, I pulled my cash out of a bank machine, then spent the better part of an afternoon going from shop to shop in Lower Manhattan.

After four or five stops, we finally found what we were looking for, at a price that, to my non-New York eyes, seemed high but fair. It was, after all, a really nice coat. My very sharp friend agreed with the choice, and then approached the shop keeper.

What followed was something out of a play. My friend offered half of the price. The shop keeper looked at her as if she had insulted his ancestors, but she didn't flinch or seem in any way taken aback. He repeated the sticker price, at which point she noted the seasonality, how the coat was more of a fall piece and wasn't likely to move in January, and her original offer. He came down 10%. She went up 10%. He complained about his costs, and talked up the piece. She shrugged and made as if to leave. We got halfway out of the shop before he came down another 10%. She replied with 10% more, final offer. With a frankly uncomfortable amount of venom, he agreed to split the difference for a final 5% less, or 25% off the sticker price, but only if we paid in cash. Which we did, in a transaction that somehow didn't involve sales tax.

The whole experience took about five minutes, saved me a significant chunk of change, and gave me quite an education. From what I learned later about fashion, the shopkeeper probably still made significant profit from the transaction. (The fact that he was willing to risk his margins to avoid paying sales tax also shows that even at 25% off, he might not have paid full price for his goods, either.) But to me, and to anyone who might have witnessed the conversation in what wasn't an empty store, we were all quickly trained to the idea that paying the full price was just a mistake.

Now, let's pivot to the current state of affairs in e-commerce.

There are a myriad number of ways to avoid paying full price online. Comparison shopping among vendors can happen with just a couple of clicks. If you've got the time and inclination, abandoning a cart and seeing what might come your way in a retargeting offer can drive significant coin. Checking coupon sites for codes, or just typing in common keywords before checkout, can pay off handsomely. Using a rewards credit card, buying in bulk, taking advantage of seasonal discounts, bundling purchases to avoid paying for shipping... it's all there for you, and you don't even have to handle cash or haggle.

The challenge this brings to marketing and advertising professionals is considerable. How do you protect your margins while still driving enough revenue to matter? Can you protect your brick and mortar stores while still having a competitive online presence? And when connectivity gets even more ubiquitous, and wifi more widespread, are we all on a race to the bottom?

The answer, as far as I can see it, can only come from protecting the brand through extraordinary value and customer service. My favorite grocery store has exceptional prices across the board and a down-market esthetic that makes me think they'll always cut corners; I don't check their prices or fliers, because life is too short. Instead, I just load up on stuff when I'm there. The company that makes my poker cards just has a better product, so I wait for them to go on sale, or just pay full price if I have to, because there's no substitute. When my wife and I researched our most recent car purchase, we tried over a half dozen models, but wound up fixating on one model in particular... which led to a purchase with less leverage, since the only thing we could do was pit different dealerships against each other.

But if your brand doesn't have exceptional service or value, and there's no way to invent it with your work?

Well, then, you're in the race with way too many other entrants. With the fading hope that new prospects won't find out about all of the ways they can cut your margins...

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Feel free to comment, as well as like or share this column, connect with me on LinkedIn, or email me at davidlmountain at gmail dot com, or hit the RFP boxes at top right. RFPs are always free, and we hope to hear from you soon.

Sunday, November 27, 2016

The Internet Of Insertion

This Goes Inside A Cow; Ouch
On my Twitter feed (you aren't signed up for my Twitter feed? It's @davidlmountain, please, feel free) over the holiday, I noted how one of the things to be thankful for is that, in this lifetime, you aren't a dairy cow. (Yes, I'm presuming and yes, marketing and advertising is on the way. Patience.)

Another thing to be thankful for: that you aren't a dairy cow 130 miles northwest of London, where, if Bloomberg.com is to be believed,cows get Internet of Things transmitters placed inside the first of their four stomachs, so that they can be remote monitored for illness, going into heat, and so forth.

The weighted sensor is said to be about the size of a hot dog, and will last about four years, which is about as long as a dairy cow is productive. Given the expense of such animals, and the amount of product that a farmer can expect to receive from a healthy animal, as opposed to an ill one, it's a clear win for the farmers, and the animals don't have a say in the matter. But it also lends itself to a clear if this, then what thought exercise.

My dog, and maybe yours as well, has a microchip in his leg. It's about the size of a grain of rice, and he got it when he was a puppy. It causes him no pain, and he's in no way aware of it. It's there on the off chance that he ever gets lost and found by a professional with the right technology. My children, and maybe yours as well, have phones that can easily give the location in the event of crisis. My car, and maybe yours as well, has a transmitter on the windshield to allow for toll collection at speed, and the newer model that my wife drives has much more than that. All of that can be used to track our movements. Oh, and the vast majority of our purchases comes through digital technology, which is to say, easily trackable movements. My credit card, and maybe yours as well, rewards me to use it, and carrying a great deal of cash isn't just unseemly, it's dangerous.

Much of this is so commonplace now as to be barely worth mentioning, and yet they all add up to an ever-thickening web of connectivity, which only seems noteworthy when it's, well, new. Or invasive.

Now, we'll add another moment of technology, which is the introduction of a supercapacitor that can be charged by human body heat. This may seem like a development that doesn't have immediate consumer utility, but that would be wrong. Just imagine, for instance, a mobile phone that you just need to hold to recharge. Useful, right? So much so that it may be ubiquitous within a decade.

Where does all of this go next? Well, for my money, we're going to see real movement in wearable health monitoring technology, especially once the battery charge is more or less an afterthought from body heat. It's one thing to know how many steps you've taken, or your standing heart rate. It's quite another to know when someone with a chronic condition is at risk for any number of factors, or for someone who is post-surgery to be able to recuperate, safely, at home. No one wants to lose a loved one for any reason, let alone something that technology could easily prevent. Becoming a bio-mechanical hybrid also seems, well, off-putting. But probably less than being at risk. (Also, it leads to revolutionary possibilities in targeting, ad effectiveness, and so on. See, this all comes back to how we pay the bills.)

The question comes to this: where will the push/pull of utility versus discomfort, privacy versus health, security versus expense, fall?

Because, well, I love my dog. That's why I had him chipped.

And I don't love my kids any less...

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Feel free to comment, as well as like or share this column, connect with me on LinkedIn, or email me at davidlmountain at gmail dot com, or hit the RFP boxes at top right. RFPs are always free, and we hope to hear from you soon.

Sunday, November 20, 2016

The Future Of Delivery?

Fly-By Dinner
When I was a child, the Metric system wasn't just a logical unit of measurement. It was absolutely assumed to be the way the U.S. was going to go. There were any number of classes where teachers seemed incredulous that they still had to even give short shrift to English measurements. And yet, decades later, they are still, well, everywhere. Miles, gallons, feet, yards, Fahrenheit... all still out there for you. And no one, seemingly, is ready to predict when they will go away.

Fast forward to adolescence. My first start-up looked to take advantage of a newly dominant communications medium, one that had massive installation in business locations and world-wide use. We even changed the name of the company to match this exciting tech, in the hopes that it would make us more attractive for future partners. And that's how a small group of investors lost a larger amount of money on U.S. Fax.

The point is that all tech, no matter how sexy or inevitable it might seem when it's on the rise, has a very hard threshold to break to achieve dominance and true market changes. For every social media channel that seems like an unstoppable juggernaut, many have gone by the wayside. Even if something seems logical and inevitable, if the benefits to the average user are not enough to make the bargain work, the market (or at least, in the case of the metric system in America, the U.S. market) will reject it.

Which brings me to an event that happened in a suburb of Auckland, New Zealand this last week. A pizza chain (no need to say which, honestly) completed a delivery by drone. Food was winched up and flown to the customer's house, lowered and released, with the drone then returning to port. One assumes the transaction was covered online, so there's no need for the drone to collect funds.

The advantages are obvious. Drones would use a fraction of the fuel of the technology (humans driving cars) that they would displace. Instead of propelling a ton or more of car, the drone is pushing about 50 pounds or so. The positive environmental impact is intense, not just for the gasoline, but also the wear and tear on roads, and the presumably lower fatalities, since a drone accident is much less likely to result in human injury then, well, an automobile accident. Multiply these savings enough times, independent of the costs of labor, and there's clear market movement. Given the lack of delay from traffic, deliveries may be faster, and consumers may choose to patronize this option more, since you never have to deal with a tip, or possible awkwardness with the driver.

And yet, I can also see strong reasons why drones may not succeed, outside of a niche option in isolated markets. In the footage that I saw, the food was delivered in a box, instead of the usual thermal sleeve. Even if the box doesn't take very long to get to you, there are temperature issues from being high in the air and exposed, and rain or wind could also be a major issue. Add in the difficulties involved with high density living areas, and the starting friction with having to buy a bunch of drones and figure out how to use them, and it's safe to say that delivery drivers might keep their jobs for a very long time. Maybe even to the point of automated cars, and maybe even permanently, because it's not as if you can argue with the drone if the order is wrong.

There's also this: it's easy to imagine how drone tech would be outlawed, or made so expensive as to be impossible to use. All it would take is mayhem from terrorists that use the tech, and a public reaction that more or less makes the technology publicly untenable. Or highly regulated, or with excessive insurance costs.

Hard thing, predicting the future.

Harder still, keeping people employed during it.

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Feel free to comment, as well as like or share this column, connect with me on LinkedIn, or email me at davidlmountain at gmail dot com, or hit the RFP boxes at top right. RFPs are always free, and we hope to hear from you soon.

Monday, November 14, 2016

Regression to the (very) mean

Stuck in the middle with you
Like many of you, I suspect, I've been struggling to move past the election results and determine what it all means. I also have the added benefit of being a professional with ample contacts in affected minority communities, and these folks are understandably concerned with the business and working environment in the U.S. now. Without getting too far into the weeds of partisanship, I'd like to bring my viewpoint as a data analyst, and student of American history, to provide some perspective.

My first love as a numbers guy was baseball statistics, and I'm still fairly current with modern thinking about the sport. Just this last week, I read a study of players with exceptional swings away from the mean; pitchers who were most likely to get fly ball or ground ball outs, and so on. The vast majority of these outlier players regress to the mean the next season, even though their particular style and ways to work makes them likely to, well, continue to produce similar results. And yet, the setting of baseball, and more data, corrects and mediates. Outliers, to a very high percentage, come back to the fold.

I'll pivot now to U.S. political history. After the end of the Civil War, nearly 2,000 African Amercians held public office in the South, from local levels to the U.S. Senate, in a period that came to be known as Radical Reconstruction. This did not last, of course; the rise of the Ku Klux Klan, and the corruption of local law enforcement, led to a backlash and subjugation. Eventually, the pendulum swung back through the civil rights movement of the 1960s, with moments like bussing, a growing tolerance for mixed marriages, and the election of Barack Obama all moving the cause further. You could make the argument that the revocation of the Voting Rights Act, and the election of Donald Trump, as more points to a backlash, and I'm certainly not inclined to disagree with you. But the greater point is that progress is rarely, if ever, a smooth line.

Finally, to my day job in email analytics. One of my favorite statistics to look at is unsubscribe, in that many providers fail to give it strong consideration, due to its relatively low incidence rate, and it's also-ran status against more impactful pieces like open, click and conversion. However, I've always seen unsub as a moment of high importance, since the user has to not just open the message, but hunt for the link and take direct action. Rarely do you get such clear indication of user preference.

This year, we've been able to make some design and coding moves in our better performing templates which have managed to cut our unsub rates, especially in mobile deployment. The effect has been to lower the likelihood that you unsubscribe in error, and for much of 2016, this systematic change has led to lower rates. That sort of thing seems like it would be a longstanding and happy development, but remember... regression to the mean.

I'd love to be wrong about this, but I'd put long odds on this happy trend continuing in the next eight weeks, and probably in the long run as well. The reason why is that we're moving into the heaviest part of the year for email usage, and in high send times, "good" emails (my firm sends marketing messages that also double as de facto education pieces) hit the in-box along with a surge of, well, everything else.

At some point, people start unsubscribing, even to pieces that they are interested in and getting beneifts from, just to get back some control of their inbox. When that happens, the baby gets thrown out with the bath water. In addition, the year over year trend in email is for double-digit increases in the amount of time spent. That's a trend that just can't continue, because people are busy and not getting enough benefit to just keep increasing that time spend... and trends that can't continue, well, don't.

Regression to the mean is like gravity. You can escape it for a while, and there are great benefits from doing so. When you do it, it feels wonderful, and can seem like the new normal. But if you assume you are going to continue to do it, especially without effort, you are likely to catch a painful surprise. Perhaps, very painful.

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Feel free to comment, as well as like or share this column, connect with me on LinkedIn, or email me at davidlmountain at gmail dot com, or hit the RFP boxes at top right. RFPs are always free, and we hope to hear from you soon.

Sunday, November 6, 2016

The Company You Keep

Bad Company might have better songs
This week, I met up with a friend that I haven't seen for decades, when we were just kids, honestly. He's new to my area, needs to step up his network, and we had one of those 90-minute meals where the conversation never lagged. I left feeling completely energized, and followed up with some leads that hopefully helped him on his journey. With luck, we'll meet up again soon and do more. 

Which reminded me of, well, just how the people in my childhood brought me along in their wake, and how one of the shortest ways out of any personal funk is to think about how much I have to be grateful for. I'm the first person in my family to go to college, and it wasn't easy; no funds (truth be told, my grades and test scores weren't strong enough), not much aid, and I had my heart set on a name brand, private, and pretty expensive school. It all worked out after many years of paying off debt, but the point that I want to make is that no one makes their way alone. Even once I got out of school, that same pattern of being brought along from the inertia of others reasserted itself at various stops in my career. 

So I know a lot of things about a lot of things, and it's mostly because of people I've had the honor of working with. I've said this enough times that it sounds like a canned laugh line in conversations with clients, but because of the actions and support of others, I've been able to seem smarter than I am. I've also been blessed with a memory, and the ability to focus on individual salient points. Which leads to the ability to tell a good story or two. So with luck, I've started to (hopefully) pay back what I've learned.

The point of this isn't to just tell you about myself. More so, it's to share with you how this came to be. Because the people that I've learned from are all over the map, demographically. That's not a coincidence. Your thinking, and your opportunity to think different things, just gets sharper and better if your peer group is diverse. Rather than getting stuck in the same patterns and tactics, you get outside of your comfort zone faster, hear different perspectives, and in general, just go to different mental places. 

Also, you wind up eating better, listening to more interesting music, seeing different movies, thinking different thoughts. It's harder to be bored, harder to get down on yourself, and just a better way to be. And once you find this kind of peer group, you don't give it up.

So this is where I pivot, perhaps obviously, to the election that's going to happen in a couple of days. One side has diverse support; the other does not. One side has endorsements, whether pursued or not, from expressly racist organizations; the other does not. One side has a higher percentage of supporters who are positively voting for their candidate, rather than simply against the other. One side spends much of their political advertising just simply repeating wildly inappropriate and divisive statements made by the other candidate, in the simplest "attack" ads in recent memory. One side relies on statements that are simply and easily shown to be not true, to a much greater percentage. 

This isn't a matter of getting to simply vote for the side that you normally vote for, or the one that's closer to your history. It's also, due to the clearly perverse nature of for-profit "news", a situation where we may never have a not-close, third party "safe" election ever again. 

That's why the polling for this election doesn't show the usual splits by income, but more pronounced by education level. This isn't a matter of insidious indoctrination into a political belief system; it's simple exposure to a diverse community. (The same thing applies to how one side does well in cities, where a mix is inevitable, as opposed to less dense areas.)

I'm not sure what happens next in our very broken system. This election has been an ordeal for seemingly all involved, and the only true bi-partisan point is that these take too long, cost too much, and just infuriate. But I do know that when you judge the sides by the company they keep, the choice seems obvious. So, choose accordingly.

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Feel free to comment, as well as like or share this column, connect with me on LinkedIn, or email me at davidlmountain at gmail dot com, or hit the RFP boxes at top right. RFPs are always free, and we hope to hear from you soon.

Monday, October 31, 2016

What's Wrong With The NFL?

Roger Is Not Helping
Ratings for the nation's most popular television programs are off by significant percentages this year, which has raised alarm bells in various sectors of the marketing and advertising media. As I have a foot in both worlds, I'd like to dig into the reasons why this is happening. But first, some ground rules.

1) Before anyone throws my opinion out as being clearly in the tank for some other sport, or being anti-NFL in some way, my bona fides. I run a fantasy football league, play in another, write about it for a blog, take my mom to a road game every year, and watch way, way, too much of this stuff. I'm a lifer. I like the game. I'm not against it.

2) I'm going to try to keep this to new factors, since the ratings decline is also new. It's not as if people are suddenly discovering that the game is violent, that women on the sidelines are objectified, and that commissioner Roger Goodell is cartoonishly corrupt. Those are all known quantities coming in.

So, what's new?

Well, the most obvious point of order is that one of the more remarkable Presidential campaigns in the history of the nation has been taking up all of the oxygen in the room, but it's not as if these audiences are really the same. In any event, the debates haven't ran into football games very often, and the ratings haven't grown now that those events are over. So while this might be a factor in just limiting overall coverage, it's not likely to be a massive point.

The next factor has actually been addressed during the campaign, with one of the contenders (you can guess which one, right? Sure you can) taking issue with the new concussion protocols as somehow being too restrictive. I think there's actually a bit of a point here; if you were weaned on more thrilling displays of violence, maybe the weaker tea that the NFL is serving up now as a middle ground between player safety and viewer appeal just doesn't cut it for you. If this is a major factor, then the NFL's decline could be seen as a purposeful long-term controlled descent, as part of a more sustainable economy. But while long-time fans might grumble about these new rules, I kind of doubt that anyone is really not watching because of them.

Another possible factor is San Francisco 49er QB Colin Kaepernick's continuing symbolic protest against the national anthem, which seems to (a) really rankle some in the audience by its seeming intrusion of politics into sport, and (b) prove the point that if you really want people to pay attention to your political point, you really need to put it into non-political areas of society. Kaepernick's exploding popularity in jersey sales makes me think that the controversy probably isn't that much of a net negative for the league.

Now, I'd like to pivot this into factors that I think are at play here. The first is the seemingly constant deterioration of the officiating, and the murky nature of the league's rules. Things that should be as cut and dried as humanly possible -- what is a catch? what does a player have to do to demonstrate possession of the ball? -- are a constant source of shrug, wait for replay, and we're into the realm of conspiracy theory and random chance. Any time a game can have its integrity questioned, it's not exactly a win for the league's broad appeal, especially to more casual fans.

Which leads me to the next point -- the NFL's declines are, in all likelihood, entirely in the realm of casual fans. Lifers are hooked on the stuff; it's the bigger crowds that gravitate in for night games and playoffs that generate growth in a mature market. Which is a major issue for the league, since two of three night telecasts seem to show the league at its worst, rather than at its most appealing. Games on Thursday are much more likely to show random or lesser teams, with blowouts more common due to the odd schedule, especially when one team comes in with more rest. Those games also get the coverage of Phil Simms, who might be the most irritating announcer on broadcast TV now, if my social media feed is any judge of it. The Monday Night Game has more of the Thursday feel to it, with Jon Gruden matching Simms' obsessions with quarterback minutiae and self-branding. I get that this isn't exactly new styles for either man, but with each passing year, the tendency seems to be getting stronger.

Before we move off the schedule, a further point about this: why is the league so skewed away from 4pm EST Sunday games? This week, we had 7 in the 1pm slot, and 2 in the 4pm; if the Falcons-Packers game hadn't been close, that entire block of time would have been must-skip TV. Combined with the increasing presence of games from London in the morning (can't imagine those are terribly popular with West Coast audiences at 7am local time), and nearly half of the league's games this weekend were viewable on broadcast, spread over a half dozen time slots. Maybe more, if you live in a media market with bleed over coverage fields. There's not much in the way of mystery anymore, and the timesink just keeps growing.

Speaking of the mystery draining out, let's look at fantasy football... which has likely crested in popularity, especially with the boom/bust nature of daily fantasy sites for an expansion of gambling opportunities. With the exercise growing further and further away from something a hobbyist could do without a major time commitment, we're going to a place where only hardcore nerds and fast twitch waiver wire obsessives need apply. More and more people seem to be cutting back on the number of leagues they play, and the demographic group of these leagues also looks to be graying. Not exactly a great trend for marketing pros.

A quick word about the compelling year and World Series that baseball is enjoying, and that's this: there's no strong likelihood of MLB really poaching much of the NFL's market. In its heyday, the NFL would just rollover any contenders to their time slot.

Here's another factor that I think people miss out on... the NFL's probably on the wrong side of momentum with women now. The annual October "pinkwashing" isn't without controversy or detractors now, and the league's sadly erratic history with cutting ties with domestic abuse perpetrators can't be doing much to help its chances. More and more moms and dads are keeping their kids away from the game for safety concerns, which also can't be helping.

Finally, this -- the NFL underserves its market through artificial shortages, by only playing at one time of the year, and not expanding into more regional markets that are currently dominated by high school and college games. As an aside, more and more folks in my network seem to be growing more interested in the college game, especially when it comes to casual betting. If nothing else, the announcing teams seem better.

No, the more you think about it, the more you might be inclined to think that we haven't seen the end of soft ratings for the NFL.

The bigger question is... have we hit the bottom yet, and if not, what does the bottom look like? (My guess is a Thursday night game between Tennessee and Jacksonville. But your mileage may vary.)

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Feel free to comment, as well as like or share this column, connect with me on LinkedIn, or email me at davidlmountain at gmail dot com, or hit the RFP boxes at top right. RFPs are always free, and we hope to hear from you soon.

Sunday, October 23, 2016

You'll Pay To Know What, And When, To Really Think

Via tech
Here's a small but highly recommended way to seem smarter than you actually are... listen to podcasts. I cycle through a bunch, mostly in a constant effort to find new ways to think about my various projects. Which is how the grist for this week's column came about, which is a new way to think about the next wave of wearable technology.

(Don't worry, I'll bring it around to marketing and advertising eventually.)

Here's the germ of the idea. A research team that was conducting MRI scans of healthy subjects for a baseline study found that, well, it's hard to ask people to just lie still for a long time. Especially in an environment that many people find to be claustrophobic.

So they experimented with a variety of audio programs on headphones during the scan, and found that while music was good, podcasts -- particularly ones that told an engaging story -- were better still.

This probably doesn't come as a striking revelation. From your own day to day, I'm sure you find that when someone is telling you an engaging story, you are more apt to stay still and listen. But what's more telling and interesting is that the actual thought process of listening and learning shows up on the MRI as well.

Here's where I'm going to make two small but defensible leaps of logic. I'm going to presume that the brain is a muscle, and that it does better with routine exercise. And maybe not just the kind that involves sweating, but also the mental kind.

This is, of course, the entire raison d'etre of Lumosity, the "brain games" start up that is, not coincidentally, a frequent buyer of advertising space during, well, podcasts. So it's not exactly a big leap of faith to imagine that properly timed and individually prescribed mental exercises will also help cognitive performance. Also, that we can prove that it's worth doing.

Which brings us to the second leap of logic. A future version of wearables will monitor brain activity, and provide alerts to the user based on various mental conditions.

If you are predisposed to negative potential, you might go immediately to a dark place from this, with thoughts of mind control, exceptional privacy violations, censorship, and so forth. But my inclination is to stay with the personal and the positive, and imagine a scenario in which people struggling with depression are given, well, content at the time when it does them the most good. Or aging patients at risk of mental deterioration are given small puzzles that help them retain and improve. The potential could extend to patients with OCD, postpartum depression, drivers with readings that seem to indicate episodes of micro-sleeping, and so on, and so on.

Imagine, for a moment, just how much untapped human potential would reach the world from people who achieve some measure of additional relief from these conditions. Consider the possibility of lives saved from fleeting thoughts that lead to suicide, moments of regression in fights against addiction, or the more mundane aspects of better awareness and coping mechanisms for stress, and so on. How much more could we achieve as a species, if technology gives us the ability to act without these limits?

Let's bring this back to our bread and butter. So while you are considering all of these possibilities, let's also think about narrow-casting our messaging to people when they might be most interested in buying a product, or most receptive to hearing an advertising message / willing to be distracted from their current task.

After all, a dramatically better human experience?

Still has bills to pay.

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Feel free to comment, as well as like or share this column, connect with me on LinkedIn, or email me at davidlmountain at gmail dot com, or hit the RFP boxes at top right. RFPs are always free, and we hope to hear from you soon.

Sunday, October 16, 2016

My Trump Media Conspiracy Theory

Preach, H.L, Preach
I'm going to step away from the usual beat (marketing and advertising), because I feel the following point is being missed, and needs to be addressed before it gets wiped away on the whiteboard that is modern history. And for the record, I'd like to think that I'd hold this opinion regardless of my partisan position, but as it's probably going to be pretty apparent to you which way I lean, I'm not going to apologize or hide that.

In the last week of the presidential race, there has been two interpretations of the rhetoric coming from the Trump campaign.

1) That he's speaking truth to power, calling out the timing as well as the veracity of various news stories as suspect, and daring to speak of vast interconnectedness at the highest levels of finance, media, and political influence.

2) He's grasping at straws to spread the blame for a failing campaign, and setting up a future delegitimization of a Hillary Clinton presidency, which will help when he sets up a new media network for those in his influence. This is where Roger Ailes' role in the Trump campaign comes into play. Trump TV as an exit strategy has been more than a persistent rumor.

Now, I'm not going to convince anyone of the merits of either of these theories. We live in a time where convincing anyone about anything requires great tact, data, and expertise, as well as a background where you trust the proprietor of the opinion for past work.

But what I can assert, and maybe even reach some minds across the aisle from mine, is that there is some suspicion in the timing, but it's not necessarily due to a favoritism towards Clinton, or away from Trump. Rather, it's toward, well, profits. Ratings. Also, that a democracy that serves these needs in front of informing the populace seems more than a little dangerous.

There has been ample time in this campaign (we're going on what, the second or third year of it?) to vet the candidate from all of his various issues, without anything new coming out in the last few weeks. The bus tape that started the latest avalanche is over a decade old, and many of the women who have come forward with allegations could have been published some time ago. Sure, some of the client's own statements may have caused some to move forward, but a persistent journalist or staff could have, perhaps, gotten some of this out earlier in the calendar year. The graphic and easily understood nature of the tape gives it more red meat than, say, the Trump University issues, or some of the more racier stories about overtones of organized crime in the Atlantic City days, or past instances of adultery, but that's not what concerns me here.

Rather, what seems to be the case is that the media wasn't as dogged in pursuing those stories during the Republican primary, not when there was such a fountain of ratings and takedowns of various candidates to fill the news hole and bring in casual viewers. Some blame must also go to Trump's primary rivals, who clearly didn't do the same level of opposition research (witness Alicia Machado) that the Clinton team did. While it's clear that any single Republican rival that went that strongly against Trump in the primary would have suffered a direct counter-attack, it's also clear that the entire field would have been more likely to end the insurgency had all of the countering forces come out earlier, when support for him wasn't as entrenched.

Much about this campaign has seemed unprecedented, unique, and straight out of an over-ripe screenplay. But what it's also been is highly lucrative for a media industry that has done as little as possible to talk about differences in issues or policy, and has profited mightily from lowest common denominator news stories.

While we can hope that lessons have been learned, and this kind of phenomenon will get faster vetting in the future, it's hard to argue with money. Perhaps even more depressingly, that this is the new normal, where scandal and malfeasance is what will rule the day, now and forever more.

Also, the eternal, true and depressing adage that you learn very early in political science class, which you can also call out for the ratings being so high...

The people get the government they deserve.

And in the words of the late great H.L. Mencken, they'll get it good and hard.

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Feel free to comment, as well as like or share this column, connect with me on LinkedIn, or email me at davidlmountain at gmail dot com, or hit the RFP boxes at top right. RFPs are always free, and we hope to hear from you soon.

Tuesday, October 11, 2016

Even The Losers

More Losing Might Be In Order
Last weekend, I took my mom, a huge Philadelphia Eagles fan (OK, I am too) to a road game for our annual birthday tradition. So far, we've been to Cleveland, Indianapolis, Chicago, Tampa, Green Bay, St. Louis, and now Detroit. (We're 4-4, and my beloved team lost this last one by a point. We had a good time, because we always do, but it could have been better. Alas. Moving on.)

On the way to our parking spot, I saw the following PSA, which just made my day on many levels. Let's dive into it, shall we?

1) As a fan of a team that is nearly as futile as the Lions in terms of time between championships (1957 for them, 1960 for my laundry), I kind of like that this headline is a few blocks from the stadium. I'd like it more if it were close to Dallas, Washington, New England and New York, but you take what you can for smart aleck snarking moments.

2) On first blush, the ad pops and makes sense... but if you look at it more than five seconds, you'll catch a rather, um, glaring mistake. (I apologize for the image, but we were in the car and I had to rely on Google Earth for the grab.) Take a second look. See it yet?

Namely, um...

If you are losing, dude in the hoodie with the hands up in obvious distress...

Why do you have the mountains and mountains of chips?

Which you clearly have not lost, or at least, not yet?

Look, I get that outdoor ads are hard. You can't go for any concept that takes more than three seconds, the copy has to be pretty much header online, and you need obvious graphic relevance and stopping power. They cost real money and take significant industry, and even PSAs get real attention in the community.

But, um, how hard would it have been to show the chips being raked away, to back up the whole idea of Losing?

Or just not show the chips at all, since the hoodie, green felt and copy might have gotten the point across?

Which leads me to the following and final point about any marketing and advertising project like this one...

Maybe run it past someone who is actually in the target demographic of, well, actually having gambled in their lifetime? Before you put the damned thing up?

Play me out, Tom Petty...

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Feel free to comment, as well as like or share this column, connect with me on LinkedIn, or email me at davidlmountain at gmail dot com, or hit the RFP boxes at top right. RFPs are always free, and we hope to hear from you soon.

Monday, October 3, 2016

Dad's Favorite (Only?) Game

Sing It, Fry
This past Saturday saw another college trip for the eldest -- the third this month, and the seventh of her process so far. She's getting serious about this, on a lot of levels, and it's honestly great to see. But the nuts and bolts of that isn't what I'm going to get into here. Instead, I'll use the experience to answer an age-old question for some casual observers of marketing and advertising, which is why the vast majority of pitches in our world are geared to dramatically younger audiences. But first, back to the college visit.

The trip this time was a 3-hour drive to a state with dramatically higher costs for gasoline, as well as a toll road to get there if you want to save about 15 to 20 minutes of time. As we were late getting out in the morning and had a hard stop of when we needed to get back, this was all part of my consideration set, because, well, every dollar we save is a dollar we've got to help with the college costs in a couple of years. And at this stage in my life, I just enjoy finding new ways to save money. It's a Dad Game, to be sure, but a game all the same.

Which meant that I bought just enough gas in the neighboring state to get back. Also, that we left in time on the trip back to take non-toll highways, which also allowed me to drive at more mileage-friendly speeds. When we did get back, I filled up at my local warehouse store, where the gas is a few cents cheaper and still good quality. That also gave me the chance to grab a handful of groceries that were also a deal. While also using the cashback credit card, which doesn't carry a balance, because, well, we're avoiding the finance charges. The warehouse store also has a cashback bonus, so we're kind of double-dipping on that. And so on, and so on. I stretch dollars now in ways that I never did when I was younger.

Which leads me to the point I wanted to make, and the one that has been an abiding mystery in many marketing and advertising circles. Namely, why is so much marketing fixated on younger and less demographically advantaged users, when the older folks are the ones, well, with the money?

In automotive advertising, it's particularly striking. The average new car buyer is in their early '40s. Up to then, most buy used or increasingly just avoid the expense. (Personally, I didn't buy a new car until that age as well.) So when you see ads for cars that are filled with millenials, it's something of a miss, but understandable from the standpoint of the prospects wanting to appear younger than they are, or building brand for the long term.

If you want to tell a nice story about this, it's because younger buyers are presumed to be highly impressionable, and you can more easily change their buying patterns. The not so nice story is that older consumers are, well, cheap, and aren't likely to adjust well to the new price levels for things; consider the not overwhelming cash you might have gotten in cards from your older relatives back in the day.

But for me, what it really comes down to is being able to say no to myself pretty easily, whether it's for drinking free office coffee over premium stuff, shifting to store brands over premiums, doing my due diligence for price checks, and so on, and so on.

Saying no to the kid, especially if she gets into a school that could have a dramatic impact on her future life and earning potential?

Well, being Dad means you can't always play the game you'd like to play...

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Feel free to comment, as well as like or share this column, connect with me on LinkedIn, or email me at davidlmountain at gmail dot com, or hit the RFP boxes at top right. RFPs are always free, and we hope to hear from you soon.

Monday, September 26, 2016

Your Expected Contribution

Help Me, Piggy
This past week saw two interesting and seemingly unrelated events in my life that are merging in my mind.

The first was an interesting exercise with my teams and HR department at the day job, with the promise and actual delivery of personal insights as to how we are all seen by co-workers, in terms of the kinds of energy, strategies and modes of working.

My natural way of thinking for this kind of thing is to compare it to horoscopes (why yes -- I am perceptive! That's so interesting and unique to the sub-set of people born in this month of the year!), and to disregard what is told as nothing I didn't already know... but when you get under the hood and really consider what is said, there was real value in the process and exercise. (There's also the relatively tender matter of how much of this you will want to share, and with who. Knowledge is power, after all. Not always nicely used power...)

What was intriguing to me wasn't the specific points, but how it jibes with what the day job expects. It's a different role than what I bring to consulting, or parenting, or being a husband. Limiting my energy to my known role may limit how I'm seen, and make it seem like I'm holding something back, and not delivering the full contribution.

Which leads me to Saturday's activity, which was taking my eldest daughter, a high school junior, to her fifth different college visit. (No need to specify which one, as I'm not sure it's going to be in her final consideration set, but it was a fine presentation and pitch.)

What was especially valuable in this session was the publicization of a calculator Web site that estimates your EFC -- expected family contribution -- for when your child gets accepted to a school. This number takes your tax return, assets and current financial situation to bear to determine the student's level of aid, .

It is, as you might imagine, a daunting and sobering number, no matter how long you have kept this goal in mind. Making this number isn't going to be easy, and might require some significant need to leave my comfort zone -- either through pushing the consulting billing to higher levels, doing more to step up monetization of content, cutting expenses in ways we haven't been willing to do, or maybe even just adding formal second and third jobs. Setting our child up for a lesser educational experience than what my wife and I were able to achieve is just a non-starter, and expecting our kid to just achieve all goals through aid packages or exceptional debt acceptance is similarly unacceptable.

For the moment, we've got time to make some moves, but not nearly as much as we used to. We know we're not alone in this concern, as it's kind of the signature worry of the age. Maybe political change might make the situation better, too, but again, not something you can count on.

Your expected contribution.

I had no idea that phrase could seem so loaded, really...

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Feel free to comment, as well as like or share this column, connect with me on LinkedIn, or email me at davidlmountain at gmail dot com, or hit the RFP boxes at top right. RFPs are always free, and we hope to hear from you soon.

Monday, September 19, 2016

Consulting With Teeth

Words To Consult By
My wife is many things; a mom, an instructor, and an unstoppable force. But what fuels all of that is curiosity. She wants to know how things work, how they could work better, and isn't afraid to ask. She also plays a harp, and has done so for decades.

(Don't worry, this is all leading to marketing and advertising later. Stay with me.)

So this weekend, with her main harp starting to act up with some minor aches and pains -- buzzing on a couple of strings, minor cosmetic issues, and some concerns over recent string breakage due to a faulty tuner -- we needed to bring it in for some TLC. Which put us in close contact with an extremely specialized consulting experience, which is the world of a harp regulator.

There probably aren't more than a few dozen people who are qualified to do this work in the entirety of the United States, honestly. The person we met and contracted to do the work on my wife's harp is a classically-trained musician who found herself in the field due to a chance encounter with the master craftsman who made harps for the most famous company in the field. She then received extensive training with the instrument, all the way down to a full deconstruction and re-assembly of an instrument that costs more than many cars on the road. A full-sized harp can have literally hundreds of distinct parts and pieces, and has strong mechanical pressure on it. It's far from a simple machine, and to find someone with the ear to know what they are doing, plus the patience to get the tech right, is a very rare combination.

Since my wife is also technically inclined, and finds how harps work to be fascinating, she then asked a question that I'm very familiar with, from my time as a marketing and advertising consultant. "Do you think I could learn how to do this myself?"

The question wasn't meant meant in malice, or to diminish the professionalism of the technician, or her skill set. It was just a question without an agenda. We also weren't trying to negotiate for price, or considering anything other than using the tech; her payday was in no jeopardy. But she answered it with the best and only possible answer, and it made me smile in the moment, and for hours afterward. (She also said it with a smile, which helped.)

"Well, yes, but it's not easy to get really good at it."

Which is the entire gist of experience, really, and always in the back of my mind when I help a client with copywriting, creative direction, design concepts and the like. Also, I suspect, in the back of the minds of the designers and coding techs that are part of the M&AD family. Sure, we could teach you how to do this work. But we can't teach you how to be, well, us. That takes experience, insight, access to data analytics, and maybe even talent. (Maybe.)

We can, and do, tell clients optimal practices. It's part of the gig in consulting, and especially with new prospects, you need to establish your bona fides. I'm also certain that we've been used for fishing expeditions where a prospect wasn't quite up front in their motivations for taking the call, and weren't ever going to use us for more than surface insights. It's an occupational hazard.

But if you want to do the same level of work that we do, with the same efficiency, turn time, etc.?

You pretty much have to be us.

Which is not easy. Not easy at all.

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Feel free to comment, as well as like or share this column, connect with me on LinkedIn, or email me at davidlmountain at gmail dot com, or hit the RFP boxes at top right. RFPs are always free, and we hope to hear from you soon.

Monday, September 12, 2016

The Emperor's New Phone Jack

So fine it's like it's not there
I am a much better marketing and advertising professional for having the experience of being a father.

One of my favorite aspects of that role has been reading to my kids at night, which started, of course, with fairy tales.

My kids like magic. Harry Potter and His Dark Materials, and before that, Zagazoo and The BFG. I always tried not to read the same books over and over again, but some times, you have to. There's only a few things that get to the status of all-time favorite.

If you were to ask either of my daughters what their father's favorite story is, they'd be able to tell you in a heartbeat.

"The Emperor's New Clothes."

Not just because it's funny, easily understood, and that it might also be the only one in the classic canon that relates to my professional role. More so, because it teaches an incredibly important lesson for kids (and maybe girls especially), and also to anyone in a corporate setting -- the importance of being able to go against the prevailing wishes of a crowd and hold to, well, what should be common sense.

Or, at least, what might matter to people outside of the room.

You know. Like your actual customers.

Which leads me to pivot to the new iPhone's move to eliminate the headphone jack from the handset, with users now either having to go to wireless earbuds, or to a corded unit that splits off the power dongle. (A dongle that is also, well, easily lost. But I'm getting ahead of myself.)

The money quote from this is that Apple considers themselves to be courageous for making the move, in an exceptionally tone-deaf PR moment. But independent of that, we need to just speak to the obvious point which is that ear buds should never cost something like the $159 that the "airBuds" are said to cost... because, well, just about everyone has lost a pair of ear buds or ten over the course of their lives, and that's the only thing that's going through the minds of the people I've talked to about this.

Sure, something has to give to get more power, longer battery life, faster speeds, and the other obvious gains from the new handset. But the plain and simple of the new model is that if the unit came in two flavors -- with and without analog jack -- the vast majority of younger (and most churning) consumers, who operate their units with buds all the time, wouldn't give it up.

They've learned to live with the current speed and battery life. They aren't buying what you are selling as anything more than a price hike, and one that's not exactly, well, courageous.

Especially for a company with growing PR nightmares of tax fraud, child labor, and slowing innovation. Who are sitting on more cash than just about anyone in the world.

A more outward-thinking group, especially one that understands that competitors in the space are ravenous, would get closer to VR, holograms, more customization in voice recognition, etc. Even the simple act of pitching more secure over the ear exercise bud options, or a locator app for lost hardware, would have helped.

Instead, Apple just strips away the headphone jack and tells the world that they are courageous for going naked.

Well, I suppose. The marketplace, as always, will decide. Maybe there's just so many people in the iPhone Empire that naked will be just fine.

But what they call courage?

Might not be quite so echoed by the more direct in the audience.

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Feel free to comment, as well as like or share this column, connect with me on LinkedIn, or email me at davidlmountain at gmail dot com, or hit the RFP boxes at top right. RFPs are always free, and we hope to hear from you soon.

Sunday, August 14, 2016

Leave of Absence

Vegasy
If writing is a muscle -- and, well, it is -- it's something of an understatement to say that I am pretty well developed.

This blog now has over 200 posts to its credit. My music blog (what, you didn't know I have a music blog? It's about my old rock band, which just might play again one of these days) has another 30 posts, just in the past few months. The sports blog has another (gulp) 5,825 in the past decade, and counting

Before I made those blogs, I've written four books, wrote for dozens of clients and start-ups, and have pretty much paid the bills with words for my adult life. There's also four different social media feeds.

Way too many words, really.

Writing isn't just what I do for a living. It's how I define myself. The process is how I unwind at the end of most days, how I share and remember what I've learned, and how I give meaning to it all.

And, well, I've got to give it up.

Not all of it, of course. You might not even notice the drop in output, or might even be happy for less. But personal circumstances (an injury to my spouse that is going to require surgery and several months of rehab. a sudden outbreak of a summer cold that's completely knocked me sideways), combined with professional and personal commitments, are going to make certain sacrifices in terms of time served inevitable.

Besides, the clients (always) come first. And if you are really in the market for more of my words, you are more than welcome to go read more of them. They just won't all be about marketing and advertising.

Back in a bit!

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Feel free to comment, as well as like or share this column, connect with me on LinkedIn, or email me at davidlmountain at gmail dot com, or hit the RFP boxes at top right. RFPs are always free, and we hope to hear from you soon.

Thursday, August 11, 2016

Four Indispensable Strategies to Increase E-mail Open Rates

Let's Get Open
(Wrote this one for the day gig, folks. You can see it live in the corporate wild here.)

Raising your open rates is a constant concern for many marketing managers in pharma and a prime focus of what we do at MNG Direct. Here are four abiding strategies that help us deliver results.

1) To go three steps forward, you might need to take one step back.

 Here’s a quick hypothetical scenario. You are running a simple A/B creative test for an e-mail campaign, which means you are splitting the list in half and making a single change so you can measure the impact of that decision. Rank the three outcomes below in order of preference.

a) Creative A performs 8% better than average, Creative B performs 4% worse

b) Creative A performs 28% worse than average, Creative B performs 15% better

c) Creative A performs 22% better than average, and Creative B performs 21% better

The answer is (drumroll please!)…B, then A, and then C.

That may seem counterintuitive, because we all want winners, and we’re leaving the two biggest ones on the sideline…but the problem with the results from Group C is that there’s no variation in the performance that you can use to inform future creative. When your work all performs the same, or is within a range where confidence from statistical significance is low, you do not have the information you need to make optimal choices for the next execution.

So, to sum up – when testing, go for bold single changes in test cells, made without fear. Learn from every test, and test whenever possible. It’s vital.

2) Counterpunch the clock with data.

 One of the most common questions in this industry is, when is the optimal time and day of the week to send e-mail? The problem is the question does not have a simple answer, because your e-mail does not hit the in-box in a vacuum.

Let’s imagine that you get a concrete answer – Monday at 8:30 am – and that it actually is the best time to send. This finding most likely came from data or a test and will become known by other e-mail professionals. Keep in mind that your healthcare professionals (HCPs) probably also subscribe to content newsletters, get notification e-mails from e-commerce vendors, and likely sift through dozens, if not hundreds, of e-mails in a day. So how many of these communications will wind up showing up in their in-boxes on Monday at 8:30 am? Probably too many for yours to really stand out.

At MNG Direct, we’ve seen consistent wins from dayparting in a more varied and granular approach, by category, click-through destination, frequency, and so on. This lets us generate a personalized plan for our flights and creates an atmosphere where we are continually learning. As a bonus, it also means that we are never overly dependent on a single time and day slot.

3) Mobile is more of a mindset than a platform. It’s also dominant.

 Many design professionals go for responsive coding in their e-mails to ensure smooth deployment in mobile handsets, and then they consider the job done. This leaves a lot of engagement on the table.

When an HCP is viewing your e-mail on a handset, it’s more than just a smaller screen that you have to worry about, more scrolling than on a desktop or laptop, or a different direction in panning. Dayparting is also a major consideration, since many HCPs are smartphone users who extend their accessibility beyond traditional business hours, and they may also not be willing or able to spend mobile bandwidth on high data transfers. With up to three out of every four people filtering for later or accessing e-mail content directly through mobile, your mindset needs to be mobile first, not mobile friendly. (As a final point on this, you also should be looking at your work on a variety of screens and monitoring how that display mix changes over time.)

4) Prioritize your testing levers.

 In every e-mail campaign, there are a number of variable choices that can have an impact on open rates. Sender names, subject lines, dayparting, preheaders, and preview pane creative elements are all in play, and that’s independent of more technical aspects like in-boxing to avoid the junk folder, hard and soft bounces, list hygiene, ISP white-listing, avoiding spam “honeypots,” and so on. Stay in the space long enough and you’ll wind up with winning and losing practices in all of the above, along with a sense of optimal practices, hopefully through test cell data.

But while all of these tactics have the ability to spike engagement metrics in different ways, they don’t have the same impact. Subject lines and sender names appear to all users, and dayparting also has universal impact. Getting deeper, preheaders and preview pane elements only have impact to the subset of users that are in a consideration path, but they can make all of the difference in the right placement, especially if you are looking to optimize beyond opens. As always, the data should drive your decision-making process.

Next Steps

While open rates may be the primary point of concern for most e-mail professionals, at MNG Direct, we take a more nuanced view, and we monitor a host of other metrics. That’s because any single e-mail metric, even one as important as open rate, will not give you the full indication of a campaign’s performance.

For instance…if your campaign has high opens but poor deliverability and high unsubscribes, that’s not a successful campaign. Similarly, a high click rate e-mail might sound great, but not if the opens are low, or if there are very few conversions on a landing page. Seasonality will also have an impact, and seeing how all of these metrics perform in relation to each other, over multiple flights, is also important.

Increasing your open rate is a laudable goal. But it shouldn’t be your only goal.

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Feel free to comment, as well as like or share this column, connect with me on LinkedIn, or email me at davidlmountain at gmail dot com, or hit the RFP boxes at top right. RFPs are always free, and we hope to hear from you soon.