Measure Brand Equity and Satisfaction

Serious brand managers know that successful branding hinges not just on how well and broadly you communicate your brand, but on whether or not your organization actually lives up to what you’re promising.

So wouldn’t it be great to have a low-cost survey that gives you hard data how well your organization is actually delivering on your brand platform? And at the same time quantifies how resonant and motivational your brand messaging is among your most important constituents?

That kind of sophisticated quantitative data is now possible at a cost low enough that any organization, regardless of size, can conduct the survey as often as needed. For the first time, brand managers can quantify progress in brand understanding and internalization and can even compile longitudinal data on the growth in internal brand equity!

An online survey methodology developed by EMG quantifies the depth of understanding and the strength of your brand among current students as well as faculty, staff, and alumni. It’s a powerful tool for marketers to measure both resonance and impact of brand messaging and delivery.

The quantitative research process identifies the strengths and weaknesses of brand commitment among various internal constituencies in order to plan effective internal communications strategies and tactics.

It quantifies how strongly each audience is internalizing the brand platform, how resonant the platform is among each group, and where and how the brand helps shape organizational behavior:

• Is the brand promise/platform being communicated to students and prospects?
• Is it resonant and motivational for them both?
• Do internal constituencies believe the brand promise is real or just a slogan?
• Does it shape/improve student life and the academic experience?
• Do faculty and staff know, understand, support the brand platform?
• Are they using it to shape the student experience and improve quality?
• Are brand messages getting through to alumni?
• What impact are they having?
• Do alumni reinforce these messaging points?

Important questions. Questions that used to cost thousands of dollars and many months of work to answer. But this new online survey process makes it easy and fast to obtain this kind of quantifiable data, and for less than $2,000.

It’s as simple as customizing the survey instrument to reflect your unique environment and brand platform, inviting stakeholders to participate online, and placing the survey link on your website. That’s it. The rest of the survey process – including data analysis – is done for you. The survey report includes cross-tabulations by segment to understand how each constituency perceives the brand and how well they are internalizing and supporting it through their own actions and behaviors.

Sign up for our October Brand Bounce newsletter if you’d like to get more information about this incredibly powerful – and cost effective – survey tool.

The Athletic Image

As many of you out there know, the athletics marketing team typically operates separately from the academic marketing unit  And we have been faced many times with the question of how the core brand should interact with the athletics brand. Sometimes the athletics brand is part of the core brand and sometimes it becomes an independent brand and at times it is somewhere in between. However the athletics image is connected to the core academic brand through brand architecture, there is a connection between the two entities in the minds of your audiences.

Back as an undergrad, I remember there was a team meeting for athletes that talked directly about how an athlete should conduct themselves and when and where they can wear university logos, sportswear, etc. For example, it was mentioned that no athlete should wear any athletic or university logos when going to a party or out to a casino or other non-favorable places. We were told that we were representatives of the school and should behave as such.

All of this came flooding back into my head when I recently came across a series of fan contest materials for the University of New Mexico. The idea is great, a “who-is-the-biggest-university-football-fan” contest to see who is Lobo Loco. Lobo fans are awesome and very loyal and the contest is a great way to pull them even more into the Lobo teams. So, I kept digging into the contest and saw who was sponsoring the contest.

The contest is sponsored by a local casino, with television commercials of a skimpy-clothed blonde and the university mascot.  The commercials are sexual in nature and the promotion directly ties the athletics program to gambling. The Lobo Loco promotion site says “The action continues all season long with Lobo Loco Free Slot Tournaments every Wednesday night throughout the season inside the Route 66 Casino. Players can sign-up at the Ultimate Rewards booth absolutely free. More than $7,000 in prize money will be given away each week”. Pure sponsorship would have been ok, but to directly tie the athletic image to a casino in a sexual nature is taking it a bit over board. Below are two commercials for the promotion:

After the meeting mentioned above and the athletic scandals at other nationally known universities in the past several years, I was surprised to see the athletic department itself sell its image to the casino. While there is no direct connection to the academics in the marketing materials, it is hard to separate the perceived connection between the athletics and the academic brand of the University.

After hearing some buzz from the school, I understand the University of New Mexico’s marketing team is going to launch a new branding effort in the near future and I doubt they were expecting this.  I also doubt that some of the messages put forth in the commercials are part of the University of New Mexico’s new brand. As this contest is only about a month old, I will interested to see how this will effect the academic brand in the near future.

So what does a university marketing team do to avoid this kind of issue with, not only, the athletics unit, but other university units and departments. Here are some helpful tips:

• Brand dialogue. While athletics marketing teams are familiar with branding, athletics is apart of the university’s core brand in some shape and form. There should be a discussion so both units understand each others goals, strategies, and tactics.  Also, to understand how the two units should interact together.
• Provide some brand tools. While the athletics marketing unit has its own materials and resources, they still need some brand tools to help consolidate messages and some of the creative elements (based on the brand architecture).
• Constant dialogue. Schedule some regular meetings to catch up on the two unit’s progress and how each other can help.  Is there some room for cross-over or collaboration?
• Set guidelines. With any brand, including the core, sub, extension, or independent brand, there are  guidelines to follow. How, what, where, and when each unit is to express their brand?

Also, while the sponsorship has been hailed as one of the largest sponsorships in Lobo athletic history, it doesn’t give the sponsor the right to go nuts. There must be some collaboration between the athletics, academic and sponsoring brands about what is appropriate and not appropriate so the sponsorship is a win-win for all entities involved.  How should the brands look, how they should interact together, etc? After awhile, a negative image, similar to the one portrayed above has the possibility to tarnish both brands.

I am interested if any else out there has had similar issues.

The Power of Following

Having just wrapped up an EMG KnowledgeBuilder on the topic of Twitter with my colleagues @sbiernacki and @tbrock111, my brain is still aflutter with all things Twitter. In particular, the power of being a good follower.

As Twitter newbies, most of us focus on ourselves and what we have to say. Even more seasoned users can make this mistake. Here’s the rub, if we want others to listen to us, we ourselves have to be good listeners. There might be some exceptions…if you’re a celebrity, for example, or a news magazine, more people would likely be interested in following those entities than those entities would be in following those same masses.

Nevertheless, a number of celebrity uber-users like @THE_REAL_SHAQ with 2.2+ million followers, are still following hundreds of people. And our local news station @DenverChannel follows almost all those who follow it; because it understands that its followers are a great source of potential news.

For most of us as individuals or institutions (or units thereof), being listened to (gaining followers) means doing some listening (following) ourselves. Why is it important? Growing your follower base is at the heart of any Twitter strategy you might lay out…whether that is growing readership for your University’s news, increasing alumni participation, engaging prospective students, alerting your campus to emergencies, increasing the number of donors or applications. The goals for a Twitter site can be many; at the heart of each is the need to build a following.

There are three keys to the art of strategic following to grow followers on Twitter:

1. Follow highly ranked voices related to your subject matter – these are Twitter users with lots of followers. Twinfluentials. In general, many will follow you back.  For example, in the marketing business, one of the big power users is @joelcomm, author of Twitter Power. I follow him. He followed me back. He interests me in buying his book. I get the ears and eyes of some of his 76,000+ followers who in turn follow me.  As an aside, how do you know how “twinfluential” individuals are? Number of followers will give you an idea. Apps like Twitterrank and Twitterholic, among others, have developed a bit more of a sophisticated formula to determine ranking based on followers and ability to drive the conversation. You can also find were you rank by the way. Finally, Twitter directories like WeFollow have listings Tweeters in a variety of major categories. Check out who’s there, and make sure to add your Twitter page to the site. A bit of wefollow trivia > at the top of the list under the tag “#highered” is @northcentralcol in Naperville, IL with over 10,000 followers…and following over 10,000.
2. Use Twitter’s search function to identify potential followers and voices to follow. By searching key topics pertinent to your Twitter site, you will find others who share a similar interest or point of view. For example, if you have an alumni site, search on people who use your institution’s name in their posts, follow them and invite them to follow you. If you you’re responsible for your institution’s Twitter news page, invite people to follow you through the institution’s email service or via your newsletters or website. When they follow you, follow them back. You’ll mutually benefit.
3. Don’t just post updates. Engage in conversation. @reply people when you can. RT (retweet) posts that are interesting. Follow Twitter trending topics and commentaries and, either post an @reply to a specific Twitterer, or post to the trending hashtag(#). Talk to those who follow you as those conversations show up in their Twitter streams and are seen by their followers, and also talk to those who show up in searches and are commenting on trending topics. An important caveat here, make your comment relevant to the individual you’re addressing, the subject matter in the post…and relevant to your unit’s or your institution’s point of view. The more interesting and interested you come across, the more following and “twinfluence” you gain.

How Tweet It Was

EMG’s KnowledgeBuilder on (almost) all things Twitter is over. I’ve got to say that I’m somewhat sad because I really enjoy talking about Twitter and especially hearing success stories about colleges and universities seeing tangible, even in-person results from their usage. It’s worth mentioning up front that yesterday’s participation among attendees was particularly great. Among the topics of questions my colleague Ineke Caycedo and I fielded were about measurement and analysis, integration with Facebook and other services, and, a key one for many, how do you find followers.

We started the KnowledgeBuilder by covering a little bit of recent news and research, principally the growing 12-17 and 18-24 age groups. Though we realize this announcement makes for a great headline, we do take this research with a grain of salt. The ‘teens don’t tweet’ mantra has dominated social media discourse for a while, but recent research leads me to believe that it’s safe to say the age groups institutions are typically most interested in reaching, are in fact tweeting (and so are an awful lot of people).

Beginning with the most basic of functions to be sure we didn’t leave anyone behind, we looked at everything from setting up a correctly branded avatar (profile picture) to tried and tested tactics to finding relevant followers, who are likely to follow you back and find value in your tweets. We spent a lot of time discussing search, as it’s clearly the most powerful part of Twitter. More used than Google? Of course not… at least not yet. Better for real-time information? Yes, though Google has something up its sleeve, as always, to answer the popularity of Twitter’s real-time engine.

I’d say the most important keys to Twitter for us are the following:

1. Be focused in your tweets. Have a specific voice and purpose for your posts. That means thatfor most institutions, you’ll need to think about multiple accounts that focus on different audiences with different needs and expectations. Use the profile section of your Twitter account to outline what followers can expect from your posts.
2. Set a goal with specific outcomes for your Twitter presence. The goals can be numerous. And with each you should define metrics for success:
   • Are you trying to build more inquiries and apps for your admissions process?
   • Engaging more alumni with the intent of greater participation in events and giving?
   • Using Twitter to drive followers to your news feeds?
   • Creating a place for discussion and sharing of specific academic areas of interest?
3. Don’t be self-centered. Focus on finding other posters to follow who share an interest in your subject matter. The advantage to this is that those who follow you see that you’re paying attention to others out there – that you’re an active Twitter participant, not a Twitter narcissist – additionally; through following others you can draw those individuals to following you. An added warning, (a big no no in the Twittersphere) don’t over-tweet. A continuous stream of posts from you, in particular if they are not seen as relevant, will annoy followers and you are likely to be dumped from their follow list.
4. Build followers in Twitter by using Twitter search. By looking for people who are talking about your institution or subject matter you can identify those posters who might be interested in what you have to say. Talk to them by commenting on their posts. Follow them. In turn, they are likely to follow you.
5. Put faces to your tweeter or tweeters. Give your followers a sense of who the voice or voices are behind those Twitter posts. Tools like CoTweet or Hootsuite allow the owner of a Twitter account to allow others to post to that account. You can choose whether they are identified by a marker, i.e. mine for the emgonline Twitter account is ^SB, or stay anonymous. We’d recommend that you give them an identity. Customize your Twitter page background to show those people’s images, like this example on Bing’s Twitter page.
6. Use Twitter to lead followers to your other digital spaces like Facebook or your website. Likewise, use your other digital spaces to drive people to your Twitter site.
7. Finally, as the central communication unit, create an inventory of all the organizational Twitter sites on your campus. Monitor them, help them to interconnect with each other, create guidelines for Twitter and other social media usage, help the campus develop a nomenclature for its Twitter presences, and set up a resource site for individuals. This is a pretty good example from Washington State University.

Our favorite Twitter tools:

1. Create a custom background using one of these tools.
   • Twitbacks
   • Free Twitter Designer
   • TweetStyle
   • MyTweetSpace
   • Twitterbacks
2. URL shorteners (this space is overpopulated; there are many!)
   • Bit.ly
   • Tinyurl
   • Is.gd
   • Tr-im (now open source)
   • Ow.ly
   • Create your own URL shortener (i.e. Awe.sm, Yourls)
3. Twitter directories
   • WeFollow – Add yourself to the directory by location and 5 interests. We might suggest ‘highered’ and ‘university’ (or college), ‘research’ (if applicable), etc.
   • TwitterCounter
   • Twitterholic
4. Photo sharing:
   • Twitpic
5. Facebook/Twitter Integration
   • Selective Twitter Status – update your Facebook status from Twitter, only the posts you want.
   • TwitterUpdater – post your Facebook status to Twitter
6. Advanced tools
   • CoTweet – Can handle multiple profiles and users. The profile aspect means an individual can have one login to CoTweet, and be able to update multiple accounts. The user aspect enables multiple users to update one account, and it is common to use CoTags to distinguish different updaters. Other advanced features include scheduling tweets and assigning @messages to different users of the account.
   • Hootsuite – Not as efficient in regards to workflow as CoTweet, but provides detailed analysis of posted links. A better measurement tool than CoTweet.
   • Seesmic Desktop – Adobe AIR application that has the ability to combine Twitter and Facebook. Notable features include multiple accounts, creating groups, and column customization. Very effective way to follow searches in real time. Also available is a Web-based, in-browser version, but this iteration contains less features.
   • TweetDeck – Similar to Seesmic Desktop with minor differences. Try both applications and using whatever you prefer.
7. Other tools worth exploring
   • Twitter Grader – It looks at a variety of factors including the number of followers, power of those followers and the level to which you are engaging the community.
   • Twitalyzer – tool to evaluate the activity of any Twitter user and report on relative influence, signal-to-noise ratio, generosity, velocity, clout, and other useful measures of success in social media.
   • Twazzup – search Twitter topics and stay current on Twitter trends
   • Twitterly InView (in Beta) – solution for monitoring, receiving instant notifications, and responding to anything that matters to you on Twitter.
   • Mr. Tweet – look through your relationships and tweets to: 1) show the influencers and followers you should follow and 2) suggest you to users relevant to you
   • Who Should I Follow? – Offers recommendations based on username.
   • Twitoaster – Allows for conversation threading, great for tracking the long conversations.
   • Retweetist – Site that tracks who has been retweeted and other popular Twitter trends.
   • Retweetradar – Another site that tracks retweets.

There are also a boatload of mobile apps that allow you to manage and post on the go depending on your mobile platform and a growing number of Twitter applications.  Bookmark Twitter’s “Goodies” link to stay on top of all the cool stuff that developers are putting out there.

Shrinking News Media and What To Do About It

Back in the eighties, I was the national science writer at Washington University in St. Louis. Ah, the glory days of PR, when there always seemed to be a ready market for news media pitches on science stories. Like shooting fish in a barrel.

Research stories have been the traditional go-to area for universities hoping to increase credibility and name recognition in the news media. Twenty years ago, print and broadcast editors – lots of them compared to today – were hungered by the scent of advancements in science, especially when you were able to inject a whiff of economic development into your pitch.

And scientific research – hard sciences and social sciences, both – remains a stalwart for university PR, but the media resources for, and the space/time allotted to, research have both waned. Fewer outlets are devoting less space to research than they used to.

What’s a PR unit to do? Plenty!

The March 09 start-up consortium website, Futurity, is a great idea and brings to mind once again the idea of creating themed microsites. This one is a consortium aimed at letting “the public learn about important breakthroughs at leading research universities as traditional news outlets continue to shrink?” The site describes itself as “an online news magazine that reports on discoveries in science, health, technology, business, society, and the arts.”

Its scope is limited, at least currently, to 35 large research institutions and while it’s a neat idea, consortium sites aren’t the real solution for most institutions. This one, for instance, is more a resource for science junkies and the few science writers left, and is not likely to garner significant public attention because it’s not the way audiences want to consume such news – in oversized big-gulps.

But here’s the important nugget: Every institution should be looking online for solutions. And there is enormous ROI to be had by developing your own research microsite.

A themed microsite can either embedded in your current institutional website, or it can stand alone as a branded URL. And don’t think the idea is limited just to science research. You can make a waves through a “community outreach” microsite, or one devoted to “the arts,” or “economic development,” or whatever brand differentiator is most important to your organization.

The key is in creating focused, interactive, multimedia content and “drawing” your audiences to that site through advertising, viral tactics, social media, and push-pull e-mails that give audiences a real reward on the microsite.

I’ve noted in previous blogs the effectiveness of Virginia Tech’s microsite “thisisthefuture.” It’s branded, it’s interactive, and it involves and engages audiences with the VT “Invent the Future” identity, all while showcasing important applied research stories from prominent faculty.

Microsites provides a host of opportunities to reach your critical audiences with the exact stories you want them to see, and moreover, to give them a lasting, high-impact brand impression. So while the media outlets for science coverage have declined, we’ve never had a greater opportunity to disseminate stories about campus research.

Summit Cancellation

This has been a trying year for many of us, what with the economic uncertainty and budget cuts that have been endured on virtually every college and university in the country.

It’s because of these unprecedented challenges that we’ve recently made a very tough call to cancel this year’s Brand Manager’s Summit, which had been scheduled for October 19-21 in Denver.

It was a difficult decision.  But the truth is that over the past few weeks we’ve fielded many serious concerns from Summit registrants over deepening budget cutbacks, freezes on travel, and an increasing number of incidents of the H1N1 virus across the country.

Since we are committed to maintaining the Summit’s premier quality and highly interactive nature, we believe that it’s in the best interest of all of our registrants to cancel this year’s event.

We do so only reluctantly, since we know the decision will disappoint many marketing professionals who were looking forward to this year’s Summit.  We were, too.

It really is the only venue of its kind where marketing practitioners can truly focus on discussing and creating real-world branding strategies and tactics for their institutions.  And we’re absolutely committed to bringing the extraordinary Summit event back next year, bigger and better than ever.

Meanwhile, we’ll continue to provide a full calendar of interactive online workshops through the Online KnowledgeBuilders program.   We’ll try to migrate some of the Summit sessions to these online seminars, too.  Check out the KnowledgeBuilder schedule for a list of topics.

We certainly hope that you are not being affected by some of the same issues, and we appreciate your understanding.

Analyze This

I have yet to see the results of one of the Notebook Polls so one-sided, until this poll.

The question posed last month was “Which website analytics tool does your institution use?” It seems that “Google Analytics or other free analytics” was the main response (86% of respondents).  I am assuming that most responses where focusing Google Analytics and not the “other free analytics” part of the response.

Not surprisingly, the people who took the poll did not choose any of the following options that were available as a response.

• ClickTracks, WebTrends, WebSideStory HBX Analytics, Omniture’s SiteCatalyst or other non-free analytics
• None
• Don’t know
• Don’t care

And a slim 14% mentioned they use “Urchin, AWStats or Webalizer or other analytics provided by your web hoster”.

The chart below provides the full story.

We all know that keeping track of your website stats is now key data that any marketer should keep a close eye on. While there are many tools out there to track this data, they are are similar and most do a good job. Google Analytics is, by far, the fan favorite and is a very powerful tool. It takes some training to get used to, but it is well worth it.

It is good to know that everyone who took the poll pretty much agrees with this and no one mentioned that they “don’t care” or don’t have any web analytic tools.

Some key data to watch on a regular basis

• Bounce rate: how many are leaving a certain page to view a completely different website. The lower the percentage the better.
• Average Time on Site: how long users are staying on your site. The higher the better.
• Percent New Visits: how many new visitors are viewing your site. A good number to watch when running advertising designed to point lots of new people to the website. During an advertising campaign, the higher the percentage is good a sign the advertising is working.
• Pages per View: shows how many pages a viewer is looking at. The higher the number the better. It shows your audience likes your content and wants to see more. It could also mean your content is too hard to find but is still needed by the viewers.
• Traffic sources: where viewers coming from. Again, good to watch if running something like AdWords or some internet advertising. Or to know if someone has added a link to their website.
• Pages: which pages are the most viewed. In many cases, it is the home page that is the most viewed page. This is good to know so you know what content people want the most on your website.

With many of the analytics tools you can mix and match the data to get a cross section of a certain page or a certain viewer domain or of a certain day.

Some things to keep in mind when watching the data trend.

• Quick trend shifts: If you haven’t made a change recently to your website, find out why there is a quick change in the site stats. It could mean a page has crashed or a new browser update isn’t compatible with certain site functions. A sharp positive shift  in site trends could mean certain content is needed or someone has linked to your content.
• When making changes: If you plan on making changes, make incremental changes to your website and then take a break to watch the stats. If you make a small shift in the website and notice  a positive change in the data you can continue to make more of the same type of changes. If the change creates a negative reaction, revert back to the version of the site before the change took place. If you make large multifaceted changes, you won’t know what works and what doesn’t work.
• Seasonal shifts: Keep an eye on seasonal shifts in data. As we all know certain audiences on and off campus will need certain content on a seasonal basis and if you see a seasonal trend in the data you can make seasonal changes to match the needs. For example, during football season you can make your team’s scores and game times easier to find and after graduation you can make new alumni information easier to find on your site.

While it seems many use Google Analytics to track their website usage, most have their own favorite data trends to watch. I am interested to know what data people try to keep an eye on that we haven’t mentioned above.

And give us input on how the H1N1 flu is affecting your campus in the new Notebook Poll on the right panel.

Allow Students to Tell Your Story

My colleague Ineke Caycedo and I just returned from a 2-day campus consultation for a client. We conducted a series of interviews with senior-level administrators and key communications staff to better understand the institution’s goals, current strategies, available resources (primarily related to Web), and overall vibe of the campus and community. From now until spring, we’ll be working collaboratively with the institution to develop a new website, and more importantly, helping to determine what message we’ll be sending on that website. This isn’t the easiest task given the truly unique position of this institution, but it’s an exciting one and we certainly made significant progress on that front during our visit. The sky really is the limit here.

A Free International Trip!?
As a result of our interviews, one important nugget of information we learned was that the institution has a healthy amount of ‘student-voiced’ marketing ammo that has yet to see the light of day. For example, this college offers one of the best international opportunities of any institution we’ve ever seen. During their second year of study, students are offered a free week-long trip overseas with their classmates. To no surprise, almost all students end up going. As part of the academic component (there is a large one, of course!), students are asked to write a journal documenting their experience. These entries are thoroughly looked over by faculty and the students are given feedback, but they never end up becoming public in any way.

A Huge Opportunity
Truth be told, there might not be a better way to present this unique international experience to prospective students than making these students’ journals easily accessible online! Promoting this type of content is a huge opportunity for colleges and universities. We know from our own and others’ research this is the exact type of approach prospects are looking for and resonate with.

What the Research Tells Us
We know from Edelman’s Trust Barometer that young people most trust people like themselves. This idea was further confirmed on our trip in the Web usability testing we conducted. We were straight up told by the students in several instances that they’re looking to hear from current students. It’s the best way for many of them to learn about different aspects of the college or university, as they can best relate to what they’re hearing.

The bottom line is, if you have any appropriate student-driven media (text, blogs, photos, videos, etc.) sitting around in the depths of your offices and computers, there may very well be an effective way to make that material work for you. And because the production cost is zero since the work has already been done, you’ll only have to spend time doing a little strategizing, editing, and uploading. So if you decide to do a little detective work, good luck! Here’s to hoping you are surprised with what you find.

Interactive Email – eMarketing Workhorse

Throughout the social networking fluff and flurry, a number of marketers I know have relegated interactive email tactics to the “old-and-worn-out” bin. “Nobody emails anymore…it’s sooo yesterday!”

If you’re in that category, it’s time you take a second pass at this tried and true tactic, which has re-emerged as the real workhorse of eMarketing. Don’t get me wrong, social networking in some form is here to stay. No argument that it needs to be a staple in the marketer’s toolbox to help create and support audience engagement.

But email is the real ROI generator, and new interactive and integration capabilities make it more versatile than ever. It is the engine that makes your social networking efforts work harder and pay bigger dividends.

Upside

1. Unlike social networking, which can be a black hole for staff, you can directly link bottom-line results to the effort needed to produce them
2. Like its old-school cousin – direct mail – interactive email directly reaches bona fide prospects
3. Integrating email with your website and social network presence enhances the productivity of all of these channels
4. Interactive email is cost-efficient
5. It is eminently trackable and refinable

Downside

1. Email – even interactive versions – is limited by relatively low open rates
2. It is easy – and probably always will be – for prospects to unsubscribe or identify your email as spam

Six Solutions

1. New, innovative design formats for interactive emails improve open rates – wide-screen format and bold branding ideas, for example
2. Solid database analytics and firm opt-in policies allow you to minimize spam problems, track individual audience behaviors, distinguish between hard and soft bounces, (a discussion here) and hone in on motivational design/copy choices
3. Strategic scheduling and database segmentation give you an incredible ability to manage touch points with critical audiences – by segment
4. Interactivity: Well-designed email campaigns offer stepping-stone interactivity that engages audiences (good discussion here)
5. Multimedia: While video still can’t be reliably embedded in email (Here is a good synopsis of why), the alternative – video GIFS (good example here) and links to your website videos – are effective options
6. Integration with web presence: integrating opt-in email campaign is a great way link your social networking platforms and website promotions

As always, one of the keys is to keep “run-and-gun” unit-driven tactics from taking over. By developing a clear, coordinated approach (here’s an award-winning example) to eMarketing, you’ll find a significant uptick in ROI.