The future of magazines, or lack of it, has been commented on many times over the last few years. Publishers have found spiralling production and fulfilment costs against a backdrop of a soft advertising market difficult to operate under, while readers crave for interactivity and rich content, which, for many, paper just can’t give them.
Magazine publishers have responded by setting up web sites which give the reader more interactive content but this can seem like an endless stream of links which doesn’t replicate the joy of reading a magazine. Readers like there to be a beginning and an end to an article and the act of turning pages. This is where tablets come in. The technology captures the essence of magazine reading in which high quality writing married to stunning moving images allows readers to have the best of both worlds.
The forward thinking Swedish publisher Bonnier have done some really exciting work in this area. Their view, and one that I share, is that people are willing to pay for iphone applications where content is packaged and distributed like a product. In fact, just like a magazine.
Ian Prager, Planning Director
Wednesday 26 January 2011
Wednesday 19 January 2011
The Benefits of Quality over Quantity in Email Marketing
A Marketing Week study carried out in late 2010 indicated that over 50% of businesses surveyed expected their email marketing spend to increase in the next 12 months. The challenge for marketers is to understand how to maximise the return for this additional spend.
A common ethos amongst advertisers at the recent forefront of email marketing has been to forego the benefits of high price, high quality data for high volume, low cost data; the thought being that the more inboxes hit, the more likely the email is to get into the right ones. This practice is entirely unsustainable though, in that there is no consideration for the preservation of data quality. People who have signed up to such promotional sites often receive multiple emails per week, sometimes per day, diminishing responsiveness and damaging data in the longer term.
All of the apparent benefits of a low cost per thousand are lost when data does not respond to email advertising. Worse still, delivery platforms suffer negatively as a result of complaints (emails being flagged as spam by unwilling recipients), which subsequently leads to even poorer performance. All signs point to the maintainable future of email advertising being found in responsible, disciplined data management.
List owners who strictly limit the number of messages their dataset can receive in a given time period; those who realise that charging a certain cost per thousand to deter time-wasting advertisers; and those who ensure that the correct messages are sent to the correct people with selective client choices and appropriate targeting – these are the data suppliers who will all play a part in ensuring that email marketing can be a sustainable form of advertising long into the future.
Alex Prout, Senior Digital Planner/Buyer
A common ethos amongst advertisers at the recent forefront of email marketing has been to forego the benefits of high price, high quality data for high volume, low cost data; the thought being that the more inboxes hit, the more likely the email is to get into the right ones. This practice is entirely unsustainable though, in that there is no consideration for the preservation of data quality. People who have signed up to such promotional sites often receive multiple emails per week, sometimes per day, diminishing responsiveness and damaging data in the longer term.
All of the apparent benefits of a low cost per thousand are lost when data does not respond to email advertising. Worse still, delivery platforms suffer negatively as a result of complaints (emails being flagged as spam by unwilling recipients), which subsequently leads to even poorer performance. All signs point to the maintainable future of email advertising being found in responsible, disciplined data management.
List owners who strictly limit the number of messages their dataset can receive in a given time period; those who realise that charging a certain cost per thousand to deter time-wasting advertisers; and those who ensure that the correct messages are sent to the correct people with selective client choices and appropriate targeting – these are the data suppliers who will all play a part in ensuring that email marketing can be a sustainable form of advertising long into the future.
Alex Prout, Senior Digital Planner/Buyer
Wednesday 12 January 2011
Mobile, the 7th Mass Media Channel?
I’m sure you all agree last week was a bit of a struggle. To celebrate getting through the week a few of my esteemed colleagues and I decided to break all our new year’s resolutions and have lunch comprising of a “few” bottles of red wine. To feel less guilty, we thought we should discuss a media topic. Surprisingly, we enjoyed an immediate consensus of views on the topic - mobile.
Mobile facts started began pinging round the table like a demonic pin ball machine. Twice as many mobile phones globally than personal computers, nearly twice as many mobiles as TV sets. One fact that is obvious but still astounding is that twice as many people use SMS messaging on the phone than use email.
Alan Moore and Tomi T Ahonen in their excellent book ‘Communities Dominate Brands’ see mobile as a fully fledged mass media channel. They call it the 7th mass media channel not merely a response tool to facilitate accessibility. Mobile phones are an expression of individuality which makes them unique in media terms. From ring tone to contacts, the mobile phone is as close as you can get to an individual’s cultural finger print. There was a woman on Radio 4 last weekend who told listeners she has an erotic relationship with her phone, she sleeps with it and takes it to the loo. Maybe this is taking things a bit too far but it makes an interesting point.
As practitioners in media communications we all need to exploit the relationship consumers have with the mobile phone. So we all made a belated new year’s resolution. Ensure mobile media is an integral part of our comms planning. Much better than losing weight! If you’d like to explore how you can incorporate mobile into your media mix, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.
Ian Prager, Planning Director
Mobile facts started began pinging round the table like a demonic pin ball machine. Twice as many mobile phones globally than personal computers, nearly twice as many mobiles as TV sets. One fact that is obvious but still astounding is that twice as many people use SMS messaging on the phone than use email.
Alan Moore and Tomi T Ahonen in their excellent book ‘Communities Dominate Brands’ see mobile as a fully fledged mass media channel. They call it the 7th mass media channel not merely a response tool to facilitate accessibility. Mobile phones are an expression of individuality which makes them unique in media terms. From ring tone to contacts, the mobile phone is as close as you can get to an individual’s cultural finger print. There was a woman on Radio 4 last weekend who told listeners she has an erotic relationship with her phone, she sleeps with it and takes it to the loo. Maybe this is taking things a bit too far but it makes an interesting point.
As practitioners in media communications we all need to exploit the relationship consumers have with the mobile phone. So we all made a belated new year’s resolution. Ensure mobile media is an integral part of our comms planning. Much better than losing weight! If you’d like to explore how you can incorporate mobile into your media mix, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.
Ian Prager, Planning Director
Wednesday 5 January 2011
Changes in the World of DRTV
DRTV has long been considered rather tacky and downmarket. Yes it may be cost effective for some clients, but it requires long commercials, forceful calls to action, and can only work in daytime and late night. It’s been the Poundland to mainstream TV’s Selfridges.
Well one of those ‘rules’ is about to change. Peak airtime, so long an unaffordable commodity for most drtv advertisers, may become familiar terriotory to many. We have just finished the last in a series of tests for a client that proves conclusively that, with the right support infrastructure, peak can be as cost effective as other dayparts.
I would like to claim that this is part of a long held ambition to boldly go where other direct marketers do not. But that’s not true. We have held tight to the “no peak” rule for years.
The only thing that causes us to hold our heads high is our insatiable curiosity. We love new data. And when new data arrived in the shape of Touchpoints we looked to what it told us. And to our surprise, it told us when and where people were as they responded to each media channel. And for TV we saw the familiar peak of response in the morning, and a decline throughout the afternoon, just as expected. But we also saw another rise in response, later in the day, right in the middle of forbidden territory.
Much excitement, much debate. And we convinced a client to test. And fell flat on our faces. But more than 12 months and several re-tests later we now have a string of convincing victories. And benefits that include new audiences responding, higher transaction values and many others.
So a very happy start to the year for us here and one client in particular. If you too use drtv as part of your media inventory and are confined to the daytime ghetto, give us a call.
Happy New Year!
Well one of those ‘rules’ is about to change. Peak airtime, so long an unaffordable commodity for most drtv advertisers, may become familiar terriotory to many. We have just finished the last in a series of tests for a client that proves conclusively that, with the right support infrastructure, peak can be as cost effective as other dayparts.
I would like to claim that this is part of a long held ambition to boldly go where other direct marketers do not. But that’s not true. We have held tight to the “no peak” rule for years.
The only thing that causes us to hold our heads high is our insatiable curiosity. We love new data. And when new data arrived in the shape of Touchpoints we looked to what it told us. And to our surprise, it told us when and where people were as they responded to each media channel. And for TV we saw the familiar peak of response in the morning, and a decline throughout the afternoon, just as expected. But we also saw another rise in response, later in the day, right in the middle of forbidden territory.
Much excitement, much debate. And we convinced a client to test. And fell flat on our faces. But more than 12 months and several re-tests later we now have a string of convincing victories. And benefits that include new audiences responding, higher transaction values and many others.
So a very happy start to the year for us here and one client in particular. If you too use drtv as part of your media inventory and are confined to the daytime ghetto, give us a call.
Happy New Year!
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