Tips: Simple steps to reduce your internet energy consumption (and Co2 emission)

As highlighted in my previous blog post, Internet and Data Centers are huge energy consumers and therefore a significant source of CO2 emissions, up to 1 or 2 % of global emissions, almost as much as the Airlines industry.

As promised at the end of that earlier post, and as your use of electronic cloud storage, internet surfing, email communication, social networks, audio and video conferencing, music or video streaming (etc.)  consumes a lot of energy, let me give you a few tips and steps you can take to reduce your personal internet carbon footprint:

Cloud storage:

as you are dumping your photos, videos, music and back-up data into the Cloud, whatever Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive, Apple iCloud, iDrive, pCloud, Amazon Cloud, DropBox or other provider, look at how many GigaBites you store there – 10 GB, 100GB, 500GB, 1TB ? – All that storage occurs on servers somewhere, and those servers need energy to run. Data centers that house all this storage run 24/7, with redundancy back-up, require massive amounts of energy to process your data and to cool the servers. So, the first easy step is just to go over your photos, videos, music, documents, sort it and do a spring cleaning, getting ready of what is useless, too old or redundant, that you’ve been clutting over the years and will never use. It is not fun, it takes time, but it is efficient. To lead by example, I did some yesterday and saved 20GB of Cloud Storage (and of my laptop storage capacity which is almost full at 500GB). Another Tip: If your computer, tablet or phone, backs up photos and videos automatically to Google Photos: To make sure to reduce space, by resizing them, Go to Preferences menu, look under Photo and video upload size and select High Quality (free unlimited storage). Google will shrink photos to 16 megapixels and videos to a resolution of 1080p. Although this may reduce image quality a bit, most photos and videos will still look great. Apple and iPhone users can do the same on Apple iCloud. And last but not least, decide which files you really want to keep and upload in your cloud.  Stop automatically syncing everything. Keep a folder for important backups, and only sync that to your cloud storage. Just a heads-up, there is a big chance that you may be duplicating some cloud storage of the same files in several providers, ie on Google Drive and Apple iCloud.

Email:

Your Email box is yet another dirty and full closet, with thousands of files clutter up servers, some of them 10 or 20 years old, archived or not, with or without attachments, attachments that you probably already saved anyway if they had any value at that time, they still suck-up energy unnecessarily. Again there is an easy fix, whatever you use Outlook, CleanEmail, Gmail, Hotmail, Apple Mail, or other, just go back in time and get rid of old emails which have no value today, specially sort by size of emails and attachments so you can prioritize and get rid of the bigger ones, and save space. I do it regularly, still my Outlook file is 17GB, including archives. Also delete all spam, advertising emails daily, junk, unsubscribe from useless newsletter, promotions and notifications you received daily, weekly or monthly and you never open. Finally use the function to only download images from the emails received and open images only when you decide too, this will reduce your internet and network consumption. And keep in mind that all in all sending a single email results in about a gram of CO2 being released into the atmosphere.

Social Media:

If you’re a social media addict as I am, you probably have accounts Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, Snapchat, LinkedIn, What’s App, YouTube, TikTok (I have all of them)… so now is the time to purge your social media: just go to settings of the apps, and download an archive of your data before you delete it online. It is good practice anyway to clean-up your digital history, as it’s stay there forever, like it or not, until you delete it (sometime you can’t even do that). I will not go into the details of each platform, but as an example on Tweeter, you can download your archive by opening Twitter Settings on the web and choosing Your account and Download an archive of your data. You can also use tools such as Tweet Delete or Tweet Deleter. For Facebook and Instagram there are  limited options for deleting older posts, but you can still delete old posts manually one by one though, and you can also make use of the Stories feature on where posts automatically disappear after 24 hours anyway.

Online Activity:

whatever browser you use, Google Chrome, Internet Explorer Edge, Firefox or Safari, there is way to reduce your consumption by using some of the tools, settings and auto-deletion of your browser. As an example, log into your Google account, click “Data & personalization” about your online activity, your search history, and your location—both to personalize your experience of its apps and to serve up targeted ads. In all of these categories, you can select the Auto-delete option to have the data erased.

Streaming:

Audio and video streaming is one of the worst when it comes to power use and carbon emission: Just In the US, streaming music dumps between 25,000 to 40,000 tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere annually. Now with people moving more and more to IPTV, Netflix, Amazon, Disney, Hulu, Roku, AppleTV and others, streaming services are exploding and are making it worst. As highlighted on my precedent blog post, Visiting Amazon consumes 0.0003 kWh, streaming 5 MB MP3 song takes 0.025 kWh, watching 5 minutes YouTube video takes 0.065 kWh, streaming 3 GB movie takes 14.65 kWh, and online video game takes about 78.13 kWh. Therefore be aware and use streaming service appropriately. You can also reduce the resolution of the video quality when streaming on your phone, you don’t really need High Definition Resolution on such a small screen.

In conclusion,

making it an habit to spend a few minutes to one hour monthly to reduce your cloud storage space, cleaning your emails, deleting some online activity history and social media posts, streaming reasonably will reduce your carbon footprint and our planet will feel a bit better. We live in a digital smarter world, let’s also make it greener.

Happy Birthday facebook! Love it or Hate it, facebook changed your life…

Facebook is only 10 years old today, but in a decade it moved from being a social network to being much more like a platform of all thinks internet.

Whatever you like it or hate it, whatever you are an addict, a casual user, a curious user that just tried it, has a profile but don’t really use it, or did not like at all, felt an invasion of privacy and just deleted your profile or if you are one of those stubborn deniers who still refuses to join despite the pressure from friends and family, despite the isolation you may feel from not being part of that trend, group and communication, whatever type you are, I am pretty shire that facebook did touch and change your life in one way or another way.

Facebook has evolved quickly from just a place to share photos, videos, music or just a status of where I am and what I am doing at that moment, or a way to say “Happy Birthday!”, to a internet hub, a full platform, a content aggregator of all things internet, a platform which companies are using to build on top of it, and actually the best platform to sell you anything as anything you post, like, comment becomes an element on Facebook database, and they know more about you as a person and as a consumer than anyone in the world, and the new business model is based on revenue generated by this data-mining.

More people today use facebook from a mobile device than from a computer, so facebook follows you wherever you go.

So after blowing its 10 candle on the new billionaires’ cake, what’s next for facebook? Despite the fact that some obscure Princeton searcher, probably avid to come into light, predict the end on facebook, based on a nonsense model (and that facebook predicts the end of Princeton, based on the same model!), despite the fact that more serious studies show that teenagers are moving away from facebook to use others networks as Instagram (even is facebook actually owns Instagram), mainly because their parents are using facebook and not Instagram (yet), in the future facebook plan is to keep growing in the part of the world not yet saturated, and to make everyone connected. A glance to the future of facebook is the newly created internet.org, a new global coalition to connect everyone on the planet, “making the internet affordable, a global partnership dedicated to making internet access available to the two thirds of the world not yet connected” as they defined themselves.

So in my view from facebook to internet.org or whatever it will become, facebook is here to stay, until something that we can’t even imagine today comes to replace it. By then facebook will probably be blowing its 20 candles on a bigger cake.

5 New Technologies to change your life in 2013

My Jan 2011 blog post “11 new technologies to impact our life in 2011” has been my most successful topic in term of audience and traffic, so I thought I will do it again. With the explosion and acceleration of science and technologies, 2 years is already a long time, so here is a short highlight of 10 new technologies that will change your life in 2013:

1- 3D printing

A 3D printer is a device able of outputting physical objects meaning they can create real, solid objects from digital data. They have been in development labs for quite some time but are now hitting our real life and are starting to revolution prototyping and digital manufacturing. There are several technologies enabling 3D printers, such as stereolithography, material jetting, polyjet matrix, DLP projection, Fused Deposition Modelling, Binder Jetting, selective laser sintering or selective laser melting, etc… and a wide range of 3D printers and online services are now available for industrial and manufacturing applications. This is only the first step, in the second step it is already becoming available to the public consumer with Personal 3D Printers or kits ranging between $1.000 to $3,000. We can predict a Desktop 3D printer will cost a few hundred dollars in 2015 …imagine a future where instead of going in a store to buy an object, it will be delivered electronically to your computer and created on your home 3D printer… 3D printing is going mainstream, future is coming to your door!

2- Mobile Payments and Mobile Wallets

Mobile payment or mobile wallet refer to a payment performed via a mobile device and managed by a financial institution (bank, credit card) or service providers (internet providers, wireless communications providers), enabled by technologies as Near Field Communications or NFC. Newcomers are rushing to this huge market too and Paypal (owned by eBay) will be announcing next week it’s new mobile Point-of-Sale (available first in UK) at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona where Mobile Payment will be a big Buzz. Samsung and Visa are announcing a new global alliance to boost mobile payment and NFC. Technology has been available and secure for quite some time, banks and operators have been preparing for few years, and time has come for wide market adoption by shoppers and end users, as a very convenient alternative payment method to cash, check or credit card, carry digital coupons etc. Adoption has been spreading from Asia to Europe and is starting in North America, slower for regulations and technical reasons. In parallel social Commerce is also growing and American Express customers who link their cards to their Twitter accounts are now able make purchases with a tweet, I like that! A good justification to upgrade my Blackberry Torch to the Blackberry Z10 J

3- In Car Digital connection, Connected-to-Cloud cars and Self Controlled cars

I visited the Toronto Auto Show last week, and ff you have been in the market for a new car, you probably realised that Connected Cars are becoming ubiquitous with increased deployment of telematics and infotainment services. The Connected car is out in the streets, industry targets and predictions are:

 Over 20% of global vehicle sales in 2015 to include embedded connectivity solutions

 Over 50% of global vehicles sales in 2015 to be connected (either by embedded tethered or smart phone integration)

 Every car to be connected in multiple manners by 2025

As examples, Ford’s Cloud-Connected Car, the Evos Concept was announced at CES 2012, and

AT&T+General Motors are announcing to sell 4G LTE-connected cars, smart-cars with built-in Wi-Fi hot spots.

Leveraging several wireless technologies as Bluetooth, 4G, LTE, Satellite, Wi-Fi, Wimax, and M2M (Machine-to-Machine) embedded technologies, Your car is becoming a mobile device, with constant connectivity. Applications cover safety systems such as intersection collision, avoidance and platooning, emergency services, as well as non-safety systems as local chat room, traffic, weather, music streaming, emails, social media, broadcast, connected games, infotainment…

About Self Controlled cars: US government believes wireless systems could address 81% of all light-vehicle target crashes, this number seems very high to me, and very controversial, specially when most people believe being good drivers, needing automated systems only in extreme situation.

In any case, your next vehicle will do much more than taking you from A to B, it will connect you, direct you and protect you. Are losing control of our cars ???

4- Wearable and Bearable computers

With the advance of miniaturization, new display technologies, sensors, smaller and faster chips are now enabling us to wear computers just like we would wear clothes or glasses or watches, and to interact with you based on the context of the situation, this new generation of miniature computers are called Wearable or Bearable computers, they are unobtrusive internet-connected multimedia computers built within clothes, glasses, watches or belt and to become a seamless extension of the body and mind. Wearable or Bearable Computing applications include seeing aids, memory aids, photographic memory, wayfinding, Personal Safety Devices (PSDs), heart and health monitoring, augmented reality, diminished reality, mediated reality, glogging, surveillance, smart badges, language translator, music and video streaming, visual and audio email, social networking, gaming, and overall will replace a smartphone, a tablet or a laptop. Until now most devices are used in the military, commercial, industrial, financial, and medical industries, however it is now coming to the consumer mass market with Google Glasses, Clothing+ sensors, MicroVision displays, Xybernaut Poma optical mobile assistant, Nike+ gear, internet connected shoes, Neptune Pine android SmartWatch, Pebble Wirstwatch, Apple iWatch and many more soon to come. Some may feel reluctant to being assimilated into a cybernetic relationship with computer technology, and but let’s face it, resistance is futile, it will happen.

Wearing computers will make you feel like a SuperHero with ubiquity power !

5- Micro-Networks

Don’t be shy, from 7 to 107 years old, most of us already use Social Networks, but the rise of Micro-Networks is going to change the social game and outreach. Social networking is about sharing, but sometime there is stuff you don’t want to share with all your social network, and the group or circles functions do not allow you to the full extent of sharing only specific topics of interest to the relevant people. Micro-Networks are the solution, they are more intimate and private communication social networks focusing on a common point of interest or topic, a local community, a political group, a club, a sport, a shared passion or hobby etc.

Social platforms such as Quora and Facebook are already at the top of the micro-network trend, but new platforms such as Path, Change.org, Neighborland, Collective Action Toolkit (Frog), are ramping up and many more will follow.

These micro-social-platforms are the new wave of social networking, go for it and share your passion, or may be just create your own !

In conclusion, those are only a very few 5 of the new technologies impacting our life in the short term, there are so many more, time goes faster and faster, if you don’t surf at the top of the wave, there is no way you will be able to catch-up, The Future Is Now, Embrace it, Ride it !

MarComNeXt Pocket Guide: Leverage LinkedIn to grow your business

Social Media is now clearly a required component of any integrated marketing mix for all companies, Large Enterprise or SMB, and among the numerous Social Media and Networks available, LinkedIn is one of the most effective, and may be underused, to help you grow your business.

I first used LinkedIn to build my personal network, and later on I also used it professionally to develop my company (IBM) Social Media Marketing tactics for my business unit and for our events, and in both case it`s been a success and rewarding experience.

First a few stats & demographics: As of February 2011,

– LinkedIn has over 101 Million members, all experienced professionals, from +200 countries (3/4 in North America, followed by Europe and India), 30% of them are part of SMB companies (less than 1.000 employees), 72% of them are between 24 and 54 years old (average 41 and household income $109k), The industry sector best represented is IT and Finance followed by Manufacturing and Medical, The two most popular job functions are Sales and Administration, followed by Academic, Operations and Engineering.

– 18Million members belong to a group

– 1Million new members are signing up every week

– 45 Million visitors per month, among the top 250 web sites visited word wide

– 2Billion people searches per year

– 69% of the Fortune 100 companies use LinkedIn

– More than 1Million companies have an official Company Page on Linkedin

– LinkedIn is a favorite with lead generation companies conducting B2B campaigns: 72% of the respondents in a survey voted for LinkedIn as Number1, Facebook ranked second with 71%, while Twitter came in third with 67%

– Worldwide spending on social networks is expected to rise 71.6% to $5.97 billion, approximately 8.7% of the total amount advertisers are predicted to spend online in 2011.

LinkedIn can help you grow your business in many ways, depending on which type of business you are in, but overall here a few of them:

1.Raise awareness on your profile, your brand and reputation

2. Connect with more people and engage discussions with customers and partners

3. Drive traffic to your web site and generate leads

4. Advertise job offerings and Hire qualified people

5. Trade services and grow revenue

Based on my experience, here are a few basic but useful  tips to guide you on how to leverage LinkedIn to grow your business:

• Create your company profile on LinkedIn
• Invite employee to connect and customers and partners to follow your company, Use LinkedIn’s email import tools to import all of your contacts
• Advertise your LinkedIn profile on your communication, web, social media, email, newsletter
• Tie your LinkedIn profile to your others social networks and add a LinkedIn widget on your website and blog
• Create a LinkedIn Industry Group, and invite employees, partners, customers, prospects, industry experts and influencers to join
• Start rich discussions and promotions on your LinkedIn Group and become a recognized expert in your market or industry
• Advertise Jobs offerings on your LinkedIn Company Profile and Group and extend your reach to a huge pool of resources and experts
• Search & invite your customers and prospects to connect
• Perform blind, “reverse,” and company reference checks
• Get recommendations and referrals to help attract more clients
• Join relevant LinkedIn Groups and use them to send e-mails to thousands of prospects
• Use LinkedIn to get back-links to your web site, blogs, newsletters
• Enhance your Search Engine results, Claim your own vanity URL for added SEO power
• Create LinkedIn events and drive traffic to your events, conferences, workshops, webinars or virtual events
• Automatically get your Tweets to show on your LinkedIn profile
• Automatically get your blog posts to show on your LinkedIn Profile
• Use polls and surveys to gather valuable market information
• Find out who has actually viewed your profile and follow up
• Leverage LinkedIn’s application features, share Powerpoint presentations and PDF files with your connections, with product and services information, white papers, customers cases studies, press releases
• Advertise on LinkedIn, "pay per click", and touch hundreds of thousands of potential customers
• Define metrics, track your results to measure your success and justify your Return on Social Media Investment.

LinkedIn has grown to become an important B2B marketing and recruitment digital channel.

 Apply all these tactics to take advantage of LinkedIn and help you quickly build a valuable professional network, Improve your brand visibility, grow your reputation, raise awareness on your products and services, extend your reach and Word-of-Mouth and generate leads cost effectively.

View my profile on LinkedIn www.linkedIn.com/in/gdusastre

Top 10 latest trends in Social Media Marketing.

To face Social Media exponential growth, or should I better say explosion, and to help keep up with so many new sites, services, apps coming-up every day, helping businesses connect and engage more directly with customers, I thought I will take a step back and try to point you to what’s in my view are the Top 10 latest trends in Social Media in a Marketing perspective.

1- Large Enterprise adoption of social media platform: America’s Fortune 500 have increased their participation in Twitter, from 35% in 2009 to 60% in 2010, and 56% have a Facebook page, according to a yearly report from the Center for Marketing Research.

2- SBM adoption of social media platform starts growing: according to research by Zoomerang and GrowBiz Media, 34% of SMB companies (less than 1,000 employees) use social media, 10% is allocating 30% of their marketing budget to social media, and 13% will spend more on social media next year.

3- Audience Growth: According to The Nielsen Company, global consumers spent more than five and half hours on social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter in December 2009, an 82% increase from year before. Teens and young adults spend more and more time on social media, and now older people (50 to 65 years old) represent the most growing population of social media users. Facebook already has over 500M users and growing exponentially everyday, and over 150M twitter users, and growing even faster. Social Media becomes more popular, and social business becomes a play that companies marketers can’t ignore anymore.

4- Corporate Policies: Result is many companies are now setting up official company  guidelines, policies and best practices for usage of social media tools and services, specially when representing the company via social media.

5- Like in Real estate social media is now about “Location, Location, Location” (see my blog on that topic) –With latest Facebook announcement  launching its new Geo-Location feature, “Facebook Places”, Facebook is moving from a basic Social Networking space for friends to a business-oriented tool for local businesses. Location-Based-Services once integrated via APIs to services as Facebook are going to change the Internet over-all, as the internet will become “less about the searching and more about the getting“, less about Search Engines and more about Apps.

6- Social Media becomes more and more Mobile: Facebook and Twitter access via mobile phones has grown by triple digits in the last year. Advertising & Mobile advertising is becoming a major source of revenue and a BIG business for social media platforms. The detailed personal information they detain on their users coupled with location based services is a dream come true for any marketer and advertiser. Facebook advertising revenue forecast from advertising is around $1.3 billion in 2010, and $1.7 billion in 2011, and has not yet penetrated the Mobile Ad market, which they will do with “Places”.

7- Social Commerce & Mobile Payment is a growing trend in social media and social business world, offering the ability to make purchases and micro-transaction from mobile apps, mobile social media platforms and social gaming, embraced by major finance players as Visa, Paypal etc..

8- Email marketing is becoming more Social: Recent acquisitions like Constant Contact acquiring NetShellMail and Exact Target acquiring CoTweet are good examples of this new trend, merging email marketing with social media, and the emergence of a more interactive marketing platform to engage with customers..

9- Another new trend is Group Buying: Groups in a social network can get discounts or group rates on products or services. Social sites like Living Social and Groupon are focusing on this market, a new business model for retailers and local stores.

10- Finally Analytics and Return on Investment measurement has become increasingly critical for marketers to analyse and justify their return on social media marketing investment. More and more tools are available and in the future the winning social media platform will be the ones with the best analytics tools.

There are of course others trends in Social Media, some more specifics to specific countries, population, industries, businesses, and this new area of marketing-Communication is evolving so rapidly, trying to predict the future is often more like guessing, so pragmatically, as a marketer take advantage of those latest trends to optimize your social media marketing strategy and tactics.

MarCom-NeXt Pocket Guide: successfully engage in Social Media Marketing

Social media originally started as a tool for friends and family to keep in touch, and has now moved also to the business community for Companies to engage discussions with their customers, partners and others organizations.

Large Enterprises, as well as SMB in a smaller scale, are adopting Social Media as a new wave of Marketing.

Based on recent reports and studies, the top benefits of Social Media Marketing are seen as (in this order):

– Branding: Generating exposure for the business

– Word-of-Mouth: Extending audience, raising awareness, increasing traffic

– Discussions: Engaging discussions & building relationship/partnership

– Revenue: Generating leads or sales

– Cost: reduce marketing expenses

Marketers have high expectation of Social Media, often and wrongly perceived as a free or low cost, easy to launch and deploy, not resource consuming tactic and they could be disappointed by the results and return in investment if they do not use best practices; It could even be a failure and damage your brand or business if not well executed and then abandoned after an unsuccessful try.

So, based on my own experience, here are few tips to successfully engage in Social Media Marketing:

1- Define a clear strategy

2- Secure executive sponsorship

3- Clarify Goals & Business Objectives: Talk or Listen, raise awareness, engage discussions, generate leads, drive sales & revenue, foster loyalty.

4- Integrate Social Media as one marketing tactic of your marketing mix

5- Document metrics

6- Target your audience: understand digital audience behaviour, develop social media map, identify and engage the influencers,

7- Define content, aligned with your objectives and aligned with corporate marketing messages

8- Select appropriate social networks, based on your goals and audience: Twitter, facebook, LinkedIn, blogs, YouTube or others videos sites, Social Bookmarking sites etc… (see chart)

1- Select appropriate tools: management tools, short url tools, analytics tools, maximize digital assets distribution

2- Allocate dedicated assets and resource, experts to provide content, be the Voice and participate in relevant discussions,

3- Define and document some Social Media Guidelines for people participating to your social media activities, bloggers, and all employees,

4- Design your Social Media image, theme, tag line and main message: name, gravatar, banner, theme, colors, page

5- Launch and deploy your Social Media tactic and tools

6- Start Talking and empower consumer advocacy, tell the story, but also let the others tell the story about you

7- Listen to your Audience, monitor the market conversation

8- Engage discussions, be very responsive, show appreciation, gather market intelligence

9- Promote and advertise your Social media presence (via your web site, email marketing, newsletters, blog, webinar, print…)

10- Leverage your network: employees, partners, customers

11- Grow and maintain you LIST of friends, followers, Fans …

12- Maintain the relationship, keep the momentum, keep communicating regularly and intensively, keep on building and growing,

13- Tie all your Social Media and web presence all together and keep the Buzz growing,

14- Track and measure qualitative, quantitative and competitive results using analytics tools, document lessons learned and communicate monthly reports, understand the impact and do what it takes to improve your ROI.

 Social Media are platforms for interactions and relationships, not just a branding or advertising platform, it represent a fundamental shift on the way we communicate and make decision, so take advantage of it, build et develop new relationships and partnerships.

Jump on The Social Media Bandwagon, Start Talking & Listening, Start Engaging Discussions with Social Media.

Next-Gen Email Marketing Pocket Guide: 10 tips to optimize your email marketing.

Email Marketing seems to be easy but is actually a tricky and difficult tactic to implement fully effectively and successfully. It is a powerful tool but also a risky one that could damage your brand if used inappropriately.

In order to overcome the annoyance of spam, Email has become the most personal medium of marketing communication and advertising.

Email marketing can be used for multiple purpose and media: campaigns, newsletters, product launch, promotion or discount, invitation to an event, marketing collateral or technical paper, Press Release or Announcement, Customer or Partner success story, Industry Analysts studies, awards, contests, surveys, just to name a few.

Email marketing can be a very effective and profitable tool to: improve your brand, raise product awareness, engage contacts, build relationship, generate leads and to increase any type of business, as long as you use the best practices.

At MarCom-NeXt we focus on Next Generation Marketing, including Next Gen email marketing , and Therefore, here is a short summary of best practices and tips to help you optimise the results of your email marketing campaigns:

1- Strategy: define and document your strategy, goals and objectives

2- The List:

a- create and maintain a high quality list or database, possibly use a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software; the more information, the better the list, the better the click-to-open rate, it is a simple as that.

b- Segment the list: No email blasting to the entire list, the more targeted message to the most relevant segment of your list, the better the click rate, this is The Key.

3- Permission: Make sure to send emails only to contacts who have been authorising you to do so, via opt-in or opt-out , subscribe or unsubscribe process.

 4- Integrated, multi-steps campaigns: Integrate your email marketing with your others marketing tactics – web site, advertising, SEM, events, etc- and build multi-step campaigns, not just a one shout email. And more specifically link your email campaign to your Social Media activities.

5- Content:

a-The Subject line is very important and has a huge impact on the click-to-open rate.

b- Personalised address: Address the recipient with its name, so it does look to much as mass marketing, and recipient feels respect and relationship.

c- Ensure the clarity and relevance of the message, make sure it is useful to the targeted audience.

d- Tone: set a positive, dynamic, inspiring tone, aligned with your brand or product, and use the KISSS rule “Keep it Simple, Short and Sexy”

e- I will not go into details of the classic tips as misspelling, acronyms, signs, triggers/spam words to avoid, abuse of capitals letters, colors etc as it is of course basic but also important.

f- Use the same font and size throughout all the email.

g- Include links to your web site, your blog and to your Social media accounts (Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook…).

h- Include Multi-Media, Audio, Video, Flash, Interactive, Game… to make the message more attractive, entertaining and memorable.

i- Ensure links, logos, image etc display properly.

j- Propose to forward the email to friends and colleagues (and measure forward-to-click rates).

k- In the end, it must include a clear Call-to-Action.

l- Provide the contact information (email address) of someone to contact as return email address.

m- Include an opt-in / opt-out or subscribe/unsubscribe option.

n- Have the email signed by someone real, possibly an executive.

o- Email and html versions should be exactly the same.

p- Use a plain text editor like NotePad or EText Editor for PC, or TextEdit or TextMate ffor Mac, do not use tools like Word, FrontPage, DreamWaver etc.

q- Get the message tested and checked by several people before sending.

6- Consistency: keep a regular and consistent flow of email communication, without becoming annoying or overwhelming, but just enough to keep attention, be informative, be relevant, be helpful. Periodicity can be monthly, weekly or daily, depending on your audience.

7- Delivery: Optimize the delivery process of your email, eventually hire a professional email service provider as they have specialised tools for that.

8- Timing: do not send on week-end, holidays, not even a Friday, timing is everything

9- Follow-up: Create, document, implement and automate as much as possible a follow-up process, we call it –eNurtering, the quality of your follow-up is critical to your success.

 10- Results Tracking: Define metrics and track and analyse results, possible using analytics tool. Build reports, document lessons learned and share the value.

If well planned, integrated and executed, email marketing is a simple, easy, affordable, quick marketing tactic which will provide a Great Return On Marketing Investment (ROMI).

So now Go for it ! email me…

Pocket Guide: Improve your Return On Event Marketing Investment

Times are changing, business people tend to limit travel, marketing budgets are often decreasing and/or shifting from traditional marketing tactics as events, Web, Printed and TV ads, to new marketing tactics as Digital Marketing, Mobile Advertising, Virtual events,  and Social Media, however in my view nothing can be more effective than a Face-to-Face contact, a real Live demonstration, an executive on site meeting to promote brand recognition, raise products awareness, generate leads and revenue and I do believe events still need to be part of an effective integrated marketing mix.

An Event is an expensive tactic and a lot of work but nothing can replace personal interaction and a high quality public exposure.

Based on my experience at leading and managing many events all over the world, conferences, trade shows, road-shows, customers meetings, users or partners conferences, experiential events, Press and Analysts briefings, Fundraising events etc, I thought I would share a few tips to improve branding, generate more leads, optimize results  and increase Return On Marketing Investment (ROMI).

Strategy & Planning

1-      Document a detailed business plan, including Goals, objectives, tactics, metrics  and get executive management approval, sponsorship and support,

2-      Integrate the event in an integrated marketing mix/campaign,

3-      Build a detailed project plan, with every task, roles & responsibilities, deadlines, status and keep it updated,

4-      Define the strategic products, solutions or services to highlight or demonstrate at the event, aligned with targeted customers needs and challenges,

5-      Define the strategic messaging to convey at the event, aligned with strategic corporate branding and messaging,

6-      Document a detailed communication plan (external and internal).

Audience generation, prior to the event

7-      Advertize on the event communication, web site, guide, emails etc

8-      Leverage your web site to promote the event, increase awareness and generate registration

9-      Leverage Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to drive traffic to your web page promoting the event,

10-   Leverage Social Media to extend word-of-mouth, reach a larger audience, and engage discussions and generate registration

11-   Send series of emails to personally invite your customers, partners to attend your speaking sessions, visit your booth, register for a demonstrations, or schedule on site executive meetings,

12-   Offer free registration badges or incentive to selected targeted customers or prospects,

13-   Enable your direct and channel sales force to invite their customers and drive audience,

14-   Set up an effective  lead response management process, system and tools with a dedicated team to manage it.

At the event

15-   Be visible, promote your corporate brand, use clear, clean, warm, sexy design, colors and materials, use large screens displays (Size does matter, the larger the better) and bright lighting,

16-   Train your team to be engaging, open and proactive, not forgetting to listen,

17-   Train your team to a clear strategic and integrated messaging, “One Voice”

18-   Offer promotions, incentives, draws, games, widgets, freebies to increase traffic and contacts

19-   Provide marketing material available for easy and self distribution (USB drives, DVD, Printed)

20-   Have very skilled and engaging hosts at a reception desk to help guide and inform visitors

21-   Leverage Social Media to raise awareness and drive audience to the booth or speaking sessions, i.e tweet and blog live from the event,

22-   Create the Buzz,

23-   Leverage Press and Media presence,

24-   Enter every contact and lead in the lead generation system (wireless badge scanners, business cards scanners, manual forms etc) with as much detailed information as possible to help the lead response team.

After the event

25-   Send a thank you email to all contacts, with an opt-out option to be included in your database and receive follow up emails,

26-   Enter all contacts who have opted-in (or did not opted-out) in your database for future communications, newsletters, campaigns, events, eNurtering tactics,

27-   Send a series of emails with relevant information following the event and engaging contacts to take actions,

28-   Track and measure results of your email marketing and eNurtering activities (click-through, forward, referrals, responses etc…),

29-   Engage contacts via Social Media (follow them on twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook etc),

30-   Track and measure results of your Social Media activity,

31-   Review all contacts and leads, prioritize and dispatch Hot Leads to appropriate sales force,

32-   Track and measure wins and revenue generated or influenced by the event in your CRM or Marketing systems,

33-   Gather feedback through a survey from internal and external audience,

34-   Document lessons learned for next event, there is always room for improvement.

I hope this Event Marketing Pocket Guide will help, however it is a short summary version and you are welcome to add any tactic of yours in the comment section…

Now get on stage and Sell !

Like in Real Estate, the future of Mobile Advertising is in “Location, Location, Location”

Latest Facebook announcement  launching its new Geo-Location feature, “Facebook Places”, which will enable you to share with your friends where you are, check who is also there, find out what’s interesting to do around, read some tips from your friends about the place you are checking-in etc…was expected and is a major move.

 To me this announcement just emphasizes the importance of Location-Based-Services (LBS) for online advertising. Even if for now Facebook is not announcing, yet, mobile advertising capabilities for “Places”, I am sure they plan to do it in a near future as it is such a big market opportunity for local businesses.

In my mind, there is no doubt Facebook is running after competing Location-Based-Social-Network-Services (LBSN) as Foursquare, Gowallas, Brightkite and others Yelp leading that space for now, and when you know that “Places” will include Localeze directory of 14 Millions local business listings, that people will be able to share and consult on their mobile Facebook, and when you have Facebook’s  500 Millions users base, (and just a few Millions users for Foursquare and Gowallas) it’s easy to figure out who is going to win that battle, and grap the advertising business opportunity attached.

Localisation is a critical addition to Facebook as it provides valuable contextual content to the already rich Facebook objects database. (Each action you take in Facebook, each information you add, each comment you write, each link you click on etc, become an object in Facebook database, what a mine of information for marketers, and how SCARY, isn’it!).

With this new feature Facebook is moving from a basic Social Networking space for friends to a business-oriented tool for local businesses, and that is indeed a BIG business.

This will also clearly position Facebook to compete more and more with Google.

Any Marketer dreams of reaching customers where they are, where they can buy their products or services, and that is what Location-Based- Services enable them to do, by pushing a targeted and localised online ad to the consumer on his device, nothing can be more efficient, this is Powerful Next Generation Marketing, as we conceive it at MarCom-NeXt.

Latest Mobile Marketing Association report shows that Location-based mobile ads outperform all other formats, with nearly 50% engagement rate.

LBSNS intensifies the relevance between social networking and geographical location. By dint of check-in record and behavioral responses in different geographical positions, LBSNS users can generate corresponding relationship with  local enterprises, which enables the local enterprises to identify targeted consumers and improve the correlation degree and accuracy of advertising service so as to raise the value of local advertisement marketing.

So, how big is the business opportunity? May be not huge right now, the local advertising market of LBSNS shows a promising development outlook, but this market is still in the early adoption period and it will grow quickly and expand from US to Worldwide.

Facebook and Twitter access via mobile phones has grown by triple digits in the last year.

Facebook advertising revenue forecast from advertising is around $1.3 billion in 2010, and $1.7 billion in 2011, and has not yet penetrated the Mobile Ad market, which they will do with “Places”.

Google generates 90 percent of Google’s revenues with AdWorks advertising.

Apple with its iAd platform Apple required its first advertisers to spend as much as $1 million to start and pay both a $10 Cost-Per-Thousand (CPM) and a $2 Cost-Per-Click fee (CPC). Please note: Apple announced last week that it’s winding down Quattro Wireless, the ad network acquired earlier this year, to focus on Apple’s iAd program.

Location-Based-Services once integrated via APIs to services as Facebook are going to change the Internet over-all, as the internet will become “less about the searching and more about the getting“, less about Search Engines and more about Apps, which is why Google may be starting to worry.

Like in Real Estate, the future of Mobile Advertising is in “Location, Location, Location”

Do you speak Social Media ?

Do you know what OED and NOAD stand for ?

They are great institutions: they stand for Oxford English Dictionary, and New Oxford American Dictionary.

Editors define OED as: “The Oxford English Dictionary is the accepted authority on the evolution of the English language over the last millennium. It is an unsurpassed guide to the meaning, history, and pronunciation of over half a million words, both present and past. It traces the usage of words through 2.5 million quotations from a wide range of international English language sources, from classic literature and specialist periodicals to film scripts and cookery books.”

Therefore we can consider OED and OAD  are recognized as the best guardians and witnesses of the evolution of the English/American Languages which somewhere is just the translation in words of the evolution of our society and way of life.

We all know that email, and even more text messaging and instant messaging has been changing not only the way we communicate but also  the way we write (specially the way our kids write!), but I just want to catch your attention on another impact of new technologies on our language.

If you have any doubt of the importance, impact and adoption by the public, as well as by corporate community, of Social Media and Social Networking, here is a fact which may help open your eyes and convince you.

The new words added in OED  2009  release, now part of common language, relevant to Social Media / Social Network  included:

• Hashtag – noun: a # [hash] sign added to a word or phrase that enables Twitter users to search for tweets (postings on the Twitter site) that contain similarly tagged items and view thematic sets.
• Tweetup – noun: a meeting or other gathering organised by means of posts on the social networking service Twitter. [from tweet + up on the pattern of MEETUP]
• Unfriend/defriend – verb: to remove from one’s ‘friends’ list (e.g. on a social networking website)
• Tag cloud – noun: a visual depiction of the word content of a website, or of user-generated tags attached to online content, typically using colour and font size to represent the prominence or frequency of the words or tags depicted.

And a few more related to our Techie Digital World:

• Freemium – noun: a business model in which some basic services are provided for free, with the aim of enticing users to pay for additional, premium features or content
• Slashdot effect – noun: action to slow down or crash a small website due to a huge increase in traffic when the website is linked to another, much more popular one.
• Minute mentoring – noun: a system of advising aspiring professionals based on the format of speed-dating.
• Paywall – noun: a way of blocking access to a part of a website which is only available to paying subscribers
• And a few more in March 2010: Data center / data centre, Server farm, USB Drive, Ring tone…

And, oh, by the way, sign of the times, the new edition for these two dictionaries are available as iPhone apps !

So do you speak fluently Social Media ?

And if so, guess which words will be the additions to the next release?