Advance is dedicated team to help you connect in the US.

The objective:
+ Amplify TFIA’s presence and benefits to prospective members during LMFF via appropriate, strategic and creative means
+ Align with the LMFF, speakers and industry alike
+ Deliver TFIA’s message in a voice that’s progressive, thoughtful and compelling
+ Offer incentives that resonate with the audience eg. Complimentary membership or event passes
+ Steer our audience to twitter to redeem incentive and gain knowledge

The idea:
Using the talents of Sarah Brooke, a young illustrator from Melbourne, craft an exquisite TFIA bird to perch – quite literally – on TFIA’s managing director’s shoulder during LMFF events to promote TFIA and encourage people to visit the TFIA twitter roll.

Infiltration:
Amplify TFIA’s presence beyond the breakfast by creating a small flock of birds who perch on the shoulders of ‘fashion advocates’ encouraging people to follow on twitter and handing out small info cards and badges.

Visit the TFIA Website or Read more about the TFIA Brand

Blocks meets Austrade meets NY

The idea of the mission was to give Australian technologies with a commitment to US expansion a good look at the US market, and to introduce us to a network of prospective clients to help us on our way. It was also a chance to ‘get bloodied up’ as Austrade puts it, or in other words, get a taste of dealing in a highly competitive market with it’s own way of doing business.

The trip consisted of a number of days in NY pitching a 4 minute, 6 slide presentation of your product or service initially to ‘friendlies’ that have some allegiance to Australia or Austrade, and then as the days went on, to tougher panels of digital experts. Day three in NY consisted of a panel presentation in the morning followed by ‘the big pitch’ to a room of 100+ interested parties to create a networking opportunity for meetings in the following days and months.

It’s confronting enough to talk in front of 100+ people let alone pitching your idea to the most competitive, and most would agree technically mature, market in the world. The good news was Blocks received strong support in both the existing technology and our planned direction in the coming years.

San Francisco was a completely different vibe. Our 1st presentation was the ‘elevator pitch’ which needed to be concise, engaging and effective, a requirement we all initially all struggled with. We then went on a road tour of Silicon Valley ’selling our wares’ first to Lightspeed Venture Partners, a VC company on the infamous SandHill road, home of ‘.dom’ venture Capital. This was a great opportunity to ask what VC’s look for, the process and expectations. It’s also something I’m glad I had done before the day where I will actually be raising capital.

Although 2 & 3 were interchangeable, it seems the consistent theme is.
1. Market [1 billion USD+]
2. Exit [$150 Mill +]
3. Management [able to manage expansion]
4. Product [disruptive and industry changing]

From there it was off to the Googleplex to meet Linkedin and then Facebook which surprisingly was really more an opportunity to sell them on us and not the other way around, but great to see where we can utilise the future focus of these Social Media channels with Blocks. After a day of pitching we ended up at an Australian network function run by Advance were we had to, well pitch.

I have to say that after selling our wares ‘US style’ for 2 weeks all of the 7 companies represented had a slick, to the point and engaging presentation. I’m not sure the succinct and almost aggressive nature would be received in OZ but I have gained a lot from the experience. There is no doubt there is opportunity for Blocks in the US although it would require Blocks to have a full time presence there. Can we get used to hamburgers and fries? Time will tell.

Special thanks to all those that gave us the time to both create opportunity and bypass the many pitfalls of ‘crossing the paddock’.

Particular thanks to;
Iain Hunter: HS Dominion
Alan Burgess: Euro RSCG
Ryan Junee
Jeremy Liew: Lightspeed Venture Partners
Rob Petty: ex Kit Digital now Sport 195

This article, written by SCT Director Paul Wilson, was published in Marketing Magazine’s Blog section on March 23rd, 2010.

Raise your hand if you enjoy spam. A collective glance around the room reveals, no… no one does. While this is generally a given, well-intended email marketing campaigns can be pushed to the wayside; the consumer overwhelmed and fatigued with the sheer volume of email campaigns received.

So what can you do to counteract this trend of more email, less impact? You’re busy – and they’re busy, but there are a few simple steps to help make your email marketing campaigns stand out and be that little bit more effective. According to ‘The Big Australian Email Report, 2009’ in the next 12 months, 65% of email marketers are going to increase emphasis on email campaigns, so you’ve got to stay ahead of the game to remain effective.

It’s not rocket science, but here’s a timely reminder before you hit send on yet another ‘email blast’ to make you feel like you are staying on top of your online communications. Think about the following:

1. Content

Think about what the consumer wants and act accordingly – another given, but one that is often ignored when trying to push a campaign out the door. Relevance is essential to curb the growing consumer fatigue with email campaigns. An email is not a place for lengthy debate. Short, concise headers that engage interest are what’s required with a link to your website (or others) for the bulk of the information. The upside of this is you also create traffic for your site. This is where you may have the chance to tell more about your company, product or service. Send fewer emails that are more relevant, save cyberspace and your customer information overload.

Tip:

• The subject line is the most important piece of information, 35% of email users open messages based on what’s contained in the subject line.
• Keep in mind that the wording of the subject line can also trigger spam filters that cause mail servers to reject your email.
• Preferably plan out your content three months ahead to align with your other marketing and communications strategies.

2. Segmentation

Okay, better and more engaging content? Obvious enough, however assuming you have this sorted, the next most important weapon that should be in your email marketing campaign artillery is segmentation and personalisation.

Segmenting emails takes only slightly more effort on behalf of the sender, and could be the difference between an open and an unsubscribe.

Unfortunately your ability to send segmented email requires clean and well-populated data about the interests of each recipient and the software you use to manage your email marketing.

Tip:

• Arrange an email with a benefit for having clients update their own information including segmentation information to update and clean your data.

3. Measurement

So you’ve sent your campaign to your database, what now? Eservices Email’s ‘The Big Australian Email Report, 2009’ found 55% of marketers do not employ any testing to optimise email campaigns.

AB testing is a method of multivariate testing that changes single elements of the campaign such as ‘time of day delivered’ and compares the outcomes. Opens, click-throughs and other results are analysed to determine the most successful strategy. Over time, it’s an easy way to learn which strategies work best for you.

67% of email marketers are employing segmentation and personalisation, making their campaigns all the more effective and sophisticated. A further 10% employ more advanced methods that apply auto inserts in campaign text based on database contact’s information adding accurate personalisation to email campaigns, enticing the consumer to open the email which seems to speak directly to them, containing relevant information for them.

Tips:

• A simple example of AB testing is to send an identical email at the same time to a mix of customers with a different subject header. Measure which one has a higher open rate.
• Look for an email marketing tool with in-depth reporting that is easy to use and digest. The main measurement stats you need are: opens, bounces, unsubscribes and open over time.
• Whatever level of email marketing your organisation is at, there is always room for improvement. Most important put yourself in your customer’s shoes, what information would you want to receive, and how often and of course, ‘What’s in it for me?’

Looking to the near future, mobile is the real up-and-comer. It has been the biggest shift in operating environments/systems – and the trend line is sharp – less than 2.1% of emails are opened on mobile devices, but this is up by more than 400% in 12 months, from 0.05 in 2008. It’s critical email marketers begin to consider the mobile format in planning.

Another important category of email has emerged: transactional emails. These are emails sent to a customer regarding business processes – times such as statements, receipts, confirmation of orders etc., and as they relate directly to the customer’s actions, are more likely to be opened. Don’t forget to use these as methods of communication for other messages.

Social media is a concentrated network of resources, people and information using the web, and web-based technologies (blogs, wikis, twitter, facebook etc.) to create social dialogue across many channels.

Social media transforms ‘people from content consumers into content producers‘.

Unique to Social Media, and in striking contrast to conventional media channels such as newspapers or television - is its capability of allowing a single voice with relatively no resources to publish information with significant volume and sentiment.

What used to be “word of mouth” is now “world of mouth” - Eric Qualman (Socialnomics)
Watch the Social Media Revolution (YouTube)

The key to Social Media is ‘genuine dialogue’
When considering social media strategies or campaigns, provide your audience a genuine reason to participate.

• Ensure your idea has resonance
• Provide a genuine incentive to participate
• Ensure the message has relevance (to your intended audience)
• Establish a meaningful exchange for you, and your audience
• Ensure your message is fresh
• Establish trust and ensure you maintain it

Tip: Ensure your approach is sustainable with your available resources.

Ramblings, references and recommendations…

• Historically, brands and business are used to having their conventional armory of communication lined up in a row ready to push information out and hope it works. Now brands need to participate.
• Ironically, human connection is the primary reason people venture onto social media sites - though contribution to content eg. blogs and product consumption is frequent (Razorfish)
• Social media, is an opportunity for brands and consumers to equally benefit from relationships.
• People influence others online = Social Influence Marketing. Ironically, human connection is the primary reason people venture onto social media sites - though contribution to content (eg Blogs) and product consumption is frequent (Razorfish)
• Acknowledge, accept and employ social media as a powerful and viable channel to marketing
• There are many indexes and methods for measuring success of social marketing. For easy understanding, Social Media measurement is a metric of volume and sentiment (positive, negative or neutral) around user-generated content.

Tools for enabling social marketing
Enable social media into your website to encourage social interaction, community support and make content more shareable.
There’s many ways and means, here’s a few handy tools as reference.

TweetMeme: The TweetMeme re-tweet button is for website and blog publishers who want to encourage their audience to tweet their content on Twitter.
AddThis: Boost traffic back to your websites by making it easier for visitors to share your content.
Delicious Collaboratively manage bookmarks for handy online resources tailored to customer segments
SlideShare: Upload and share presentations, Word documents and PDFs. Share publicly or privately. Add audio to make a webinar.
Survey Monkey: Survey your community at the start, middle or end of a campaign.

References:
There’s literally thousands of websites, blogs, business and evangelists out there, here’s a good start to learning more…
Social Nomics
Disruptology
WoorkUp
Mashable
Going Social Now by Shiv Singh
MediaPost
Social Media Examiner

Big kids at play: Pepsi V Coca-Cola
If you’re not yet convinced social media is here to stay, Pepsi have dropped their established NFL Superbowl ad placement for a social media campaign; Pepsi Refresh Project valued at US$20M. It’s no small gamble, though if successful they stand to gain a full year of audience sentiment, rather than a fleeting 30 seconds. Coke stayed with their Superbowl placement, though not to be out-done, countered Pepsi with a socially minded response through Facebook called Live Positively.  Read More.

In those famous words of Coke’s early 2000 campaign… “Enjoy!”

A week later it dawned on me - “If we give ‘em nothing, it’ll mean everything. The goat idea has legs!”

Combining our panache for beautifully designed, functional websites and the clear headedness of a week on Queensland’s far-north coast - things really took shape and Give Up Your Goat was born.

I expanded the idea to include charities close to our hearts, refined the copy, finessed the creative… and importantly scouring the aisles of toy stores in Cairns for mini goats to photograph on the beach house floor.

Arrrgghhhh this holiday is turning into a deadline!

Arriving back at the studio, we finessed the detail as a team and brainstormed how best to integrate social media streams into the campaign. By linking the re-gifting form to Twitter, we automatically published a tweet of who re-gifted and their nominated charity.

Anyone following SCT on Twitter could then discover Give Up Your Goat and join our flock of re-gifters and nominate a chairty close their heart.

Into production we go.
Rob… quick, code the templates.
Holly… source 100 mini goats… (a touch harder than you would think).
Black cube gift boxes… 100
Candy canes, ribbon to match
Swing tags…
Printing…
Hay…

Every detail is crucial.

The goodies arrived including the goats … now affectionately nicknamed Chev. Go go, go for assembly.

Chev & co. in the production line.

Holly madly herded goats into their boxes (strategically chosen black to match SCTs logo) and applied the finishing touches with matching candy stripe ribbon.

The boxes beginning to stack up...

The charities we selected are close to our hearts, close to our world or close to the people we do business with. We’ve allocated a total gift donation of $2,000.00 - which is distribute across the charities according to how people re-gifted.

Chev. King of the flock and ready to be re-gifted.

Thanks to all our clients, suppliers and friends who have re-gifted. Your responses have been incredible and the ‘baaaaaaa’ is certainly set for Christmas 2010.

If anyone would like to ‘Steal The Goat‘ and use the idea for their own philanthropic endeavours then drop us an email and we’ll work together in making it happen.

Cheers, Brad

A handy glossary to help decipher the lexicon of Twitter.

Tweet: A short post or update of 140 characters or less, which is published to your Twitter page. Generally they answer the question asked by Twitter; “What are you doing now?” but you can write whatever takes your fancy. Post links, share your opinion or ask questions.

Follow / Followers: To follow someone is to add his or her “tweets” to your real-time news feed. They do not have to follow you in return, but you may find they will. Your followers are all the Twitter users following your tweets.

@ + username: When the @ symbol is placed directly in front of a Twitter username, that username then becomes a red link to the user’s page. @ + username can be divided into two categories: replies and mentions.
@username(reply): By clicking the arrow in the right bottom hand corner of someone’s tweet, you can reply to the tweet they posted. Otherwise, typing @ + username into your tweet box, followed by your message, will direct your message at that user.
EG:
Alyssia: Has anyone stayed at the new Tyrian Apartments in Fitzroy?
Simone: @Alyssia Yep… I have, I really liked it - worth considering for your next melbourne trip!

@username (mention): A mention is simply placing an @ symbol before a username that you are discussing. Either you are talking about them, or wanting to include them in the conversation.

David: Have you checked out the awesome work of surf, fashion and adventure photographer @tedgrambeau
Graeme: As an art director @tedgrambeau is a pedigree photog. His website was designed by @sctmelbourne - you should check their work out too.

NOTE: You can view your @replies and mentions in the right hand side tool bar on your Twitter home page. Click the @’your username’ to view all of them.

Direct Messages (DM): These are like an ‘inbox’ for your Twitter account. They are private messages that the public will not see, as they will not show up on your page. To send a user a direct message, they have to be following you.

# symbol: “Hash tags” are used to group tweets into categories relating to keywords they have tagged with the # symbol. They can also become conversational topics for all users to get involved in, such as ‘#bestfeeling’.  These can become quite popular and often show in the top ten trending topics on Twitter search.
Hashtags also become red links, and clicking on a hashtag will search all other tweets containing the same hashtag.
EG. #iraqelection #haiku  (often hashtagged after users tweet their haiku poems) #favouritesong

Lists: One of the newest features to Twitter, lists are a way to organise your followers into groups. You can group followers according to what they generally ‘tweet’ about, location, co-workers, family, anything you like!

RT: to re-post (called retweeting) something posted by another user - preceed it with “RT” and “@username” to give credit to original poster.

Get tweeting!

Want to follow SCT on Twitter? ]]> http://blog.sct.com.au/2009/11/twitter-lexicon/feed/ http://blog.sct.com.au/2009/10/5-minutes-with-kath-cashion-scts-accounts-manager/ http://blog.sct.com.au/2009/10/5-minutes-with-kath-cashion-scts-accounts-manager/#comments Wed, 21 Oct 2009 03:39:27 +0000 Holly http://blog.sct.com.au/?p=382 We managed to grab Kath long enough between phone calls with clients and meetings with the team to find out a little more about her..

What do you do at SCT?

Herd cats.

Project management, quality assurance, client happiness management, web analytics advocate and search engine optimiser.  Basically I try to keep work coming in and going out with maximum efficiency and all round satisfaction.

Describe an average day?

Is there any such thing?

Ride before work, then chew the fat on the challenges building software with my technical cycling buddies over breakfast.  Cringe at SCT’s shower - who decided to put it in a cupboard?  (There are generally at least 5 bicycles in the office - surely a good shower is in order?)

3 mornings a week we have a stand up meeting to check how everyone is tracking against the schedule for the week.

And the rest of the time - scoping new projects, reviewing work and discussing directions for current projects.

What was your previous job?

I was on the founding team for a start-up (redbubble.com) launching an online art gallery and community site - learning 1st hand the challenges of social media as we went from 0 to 30,000 members in 12 months!  Talk about herding cats.

What’s your passion?

Bikes and traveling.  Everything from a 24 hr mountain bike race to some of the European alp’s highest mountain passes. I’ve worked in Canada, studied in Milan, ridden my bike around New Delhi, and walked along the Andes.

What’s your best work moment?

The best moments are working on a project when the client is wanting to push the boundaries a bit.  Either the design something really special, or perhaps challenging from a usability perspective.

Coffee or tea?

I save coffee for really serious moments - like when I’ve ridden a long way from home and need to get back somehow.  So day to day it’s definitely tea - at the moment I’m drinking Ceylon, strong, with a large dash of full cream milk.

Favorite website?

Etsy.com   - like Ebay for handmade things.  It’s got lots of great ways to browse, like by colour.