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Keeping an Eye on your Web Presence

by Ron Daly

With all the talk about growing your brand these days, managing reputation risk is becoming more important. Imagine there was a clause in the lease or deed of your branch that allowed someone to buy it out from under you and completely replace you. In minutes, your branch is gutted and replaced with a chop shop. Customers coming in to handle their business are baffled - the sign and location are the same, but why are these guys stealing our hubcaps? 

In real life, such incidents are unlikely. On the Internet, however, it can and does happen. Organizations and businesses let their URLs and domains lapse and they're snapped up by disreputable businesses and spammers. The Financial Brand pointed to a perfect example of how NOT to manage your online presence(s) in this recent post. TIAA-CREF let the domain rights to one of their special micro-sites lapse and the domain was bought out from under them by...well, just go read their article. It'll stun you. 

We've seen similar issues arise with folks who switch Twitter names or Facebook pages. They make the switch, a spammer takes over their old name and starts spamming their followers. It's remarkably easy to lose control of your domain names and your social media accounts. What's worse, the fact that the management of these accounts and URLs is inexpensive relative to how much it can cost you in customer dissatisfaction. 

I'm going to be very direct and lay it all out there for you: you need to have the day your URLs expire very clearly marked. The same is true of your hosting - one of the worst things is a site pulled down for non-payment simply because a check wasn't mailed or a credit card number changed. Your webmaster(s) should stay on top of these issues and should be able to tell you, on demand, when your renewal dates are. 

How do you avoid the TIAA-CREF issue the Financial Brand discussed in their post? One FB commenter has the right idea: 

Bonnie: 
July 14th, 2010 at 7:54 am

In some cases, maybe it would be better to create a page on your website, instead of creating a separate microsite with its own unrelated URL, for a temporary promotion.

Sane advice. A special domain for a special promotion can be effective, but you need to treat it with the same care as you would your day-to-day customer-facing website. 

Go find out when you need to renew your domains today. You'll be glad you did tomorrow. 

What's in an Email?

by Ron Daly

So, you've probably heard the bad news by now. Email is "going away", according to Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg. I know, you're stunned. Apparently the message delivery systems that send almost 2.8 million emails per second are just going to wither and die because the Facebook lady says so. What are we going to do? 

Okay, I'm being sarcastic. But you can't argue that Facebook and its ilk are popular (and easy) ways to get your website content out there. One button and one piece of content can jack up your readership on an article or post. So, how can you make your email content easier to share? 

More and more businesses are integrating social media sharing into their email messages and sharing their messages in social streams. Take a look at this chart from eMarketer daily: 

 

These are all fairly simple undertakings. How can you get started? Here's a quick "cheat sheet": 

Tweet Your Newsletters - If your newsletter is anything like ours, there's a permanent link where folks reading your email can click over and read the full story. Send that link out via your Twitter or Facebook feed to encourage folks to read and even sign up. 

Broadcast Blog Entries - It's a pretty simple thing to do if you're using Google's Feedburner (as we are). Go "burn" your feed and enable email delivery. Easy to do, but you may just want to send out a "best of" email every few weeks. Both are good ideas.

Include Follow Us links/Share Links in Your Emails - There are very simple links you can find via your favorite social network's website that will let readers share content with their friends/buddies. Why not include them? You never know when you'll get picked up by a "big-time" social media user. More eyeballs is never a bad thing. 

It's that simple. Go get started! We're going to be including these features in our company newsletter this month, so be on the lookout. 

In conclusion, no, I don't think email is going anywhere. That doesn't mean you shouldn't seize opportunities to share content with new readers across a number of networks and channels. It's easy to include links and re-directs in an email, so why not take the extra time to encourage folks to spread the good word about your company? 

What's in an email? New opportunities...if you're open to them.

"You've Got Cake!" A Tribute to AOL and its 25th Birthday

by Jimmy Marks

It was a phrase so popular, it became a movie title. A friendly little cheer from a friendly-sounding guy that let you know...

"You've got mail!"

AOL turned 25 this week, and I, for one, am a little nostalgic over it. When the "dot-com bubble" burst in 2000, it set an unhealthy precedent for tech and online service companies. Here today, gone later today - don't bother with tomorrow! 

When a web company turns 25, it's pretty remarkable. AOL (or "America Online", for those of who've forgotten) started in 1985 providing services via the Commodore 64. As time progressed, AOL helped shape the face of Web 1.0 and helped young dreamers get their feet wet in the Internet space. 

How you ask? 

1) Easy-to-understand interface - AOL wasn't the fastest, nor the most stable, browsing platform. But for dial-up service, it was still pretty handy. What's more, it was easy for a skeptical American public to comprehend. Remember how every commercial was "go to www.example.com, AOL keyword: Example"? Doesn't get much easier than one-word access to websites. It was bright, colorful, and almost idiot proof. 

2) 1,000,000 hours free! - We all got them, those colorful floppy disks (and eventually CD-ROMs) with hours and hours worth of AOL access for free. It set the gold standard for "trial use software", where you get x number of hours with access to a credit card. If you go over, you're paying for it. If you don't, no harm done...but you WILL be getting more of those CDs.

3) Instant Messenger - private chat sessions with your friends for free? Profile pages that you could customize as much as you wanted? Group chats? Sounds like a lot of Web 2.0 web apps I hear about these days. Instant messenger was free to download, and opened up folks to chatting all over the world. Now, there's chat on gmail, Facebook, and one might even argue it's an early father of Twitter. 

AOL is seeing some gray days (spinning off from Time Warner after that much-talked-about merger, re-branding, and when's the last time you got one of those disks in the mail?), but it was still where most Americans got their concept of how the Internet was supposed to work, what it was supposed to cost, and what to expect when you got online. If you ask me, I say they did a fine job of laying the foundations for where we are, and where we're going. 

Happy birthday, AOL. Keep on keepin' on. 

Social Finance - Is It Working?

by Jimmy Marks

Look at your watch. Let eight seconds go by. Boom - another social media consultant has just appeared and has come up with an article about how much impact social media has on people's finances. 

It's getting a little crazy. It seems like every time we turn around, we get one more guy saying that users of X social media site are Y% more likely to put their money in your credit union than any other human being alive. Whoops, another eight seconds went by, that's another guy yelling about how all those Facebook fans you have are the same as alternative capital!

Let's get serious for just a second. We've been talking social media for the last two posts (if you haven't read them, go do it). Come to think of it, we've been talking about social media for the last two YEARS. But we've never really taken the time to look at the impact "social finance" and whether or not there were numbers and trends you could count on when it comes to social media and online finance. 

America (Banking) Online

Louis Hernandez at Open Solutions wrote an article (It Takes a (Global) Village: How to Use Social Media - CUJournal, 4/19/10) about social media. Some interesting facts about deposit balances and social network users (most of which, it seems, were culled from a report by Raddon Financial Group): 

• MySpace users have the lowest amounts on average, with $11,891. 
• LinkedIn users has the most with $29,794
• Twitter users had $20,562 on average
• The average Facebook user has $19,339, but daily Facebook users average about $16,586. 

I found these numbers surprisingly high, given that we only started seeing a resurgence in savings in the past year-and-a-half or so. 

I differed to Ron (Daly, my boss), who said "Ask what the average amount is among people who want nothing to do with this stuff." He's betting it's going to be a lot more. Anybody got numbers, comment on this article and let us know. 

Other interesting numbers regarding getting financial advice via social:

• Only two percent of consumers have interacted with their FI while visiting a social networking site.
• Three percent would be interested in taking advice from a blog or SM site. 
• Only four percent said they had solicited advice about finance from a social media site. 

Two, three, and four percent? That's terrible. Is it because there are few FIs online and they're doing a bad job of social media, or is it that people aren't interested in "friending" B of A or their chief banking institution? (Yeah, B of A's Twitter has 7,000 followers, give or take, but I'm doubting all their followers are customers with issues, and with 53 million customers, you're looking at <.013% of customers being helped by their Twitter account.)

Some fresh perspective from Jeffry Pilcher's Financial Brand blog, which ran a "Datahead" article about online banking and social finance (his data's from Forbes, Mintel and ComScore to be clear): 

• 76% of online banking users have visited a branch in the past two months, while 68% have visited an ATM and 37% have called their call center. Mr. Hernandez's article says there's been a drop-off in branch visits even between '08 and '09, but 76% is still plenty high. 
• 75% of members/customers don't realize their bank/CU has online banking. Half of those that DO realize there's online banking USE online banking. That's 12.5% of consumers that are actively using OLB on average. But 87% of those are accessing OLB more than once per week.
• Half of all online banking users have mobile internet on their phone and less than half of those access their bank's services online from said phone - so, on average, about 23% of consumers are accessing their bank's site via mobile. 
• 65% of members wanted to get emails about their accounts(!) while only 8% wanted account updates via social media. 

On this evidence, I'm willing to make a few guesses about where social media fits in the big picture. 

1) Social media is good for ad hoc feedback, event coordination and notification, casual chat and (maybe) some selling. But most folks don't want advice from their social networks. And it's not specifically the networks, it's the people using said network. 

Think about it - do you want to talk about your Roth IRA or your Mortgage with the person who keeps sending you "Which Twilight Character Are YOU!?!?!?11?!" Quiz on Facebook? No, you don't. At least, I HOPE you don't. You trust a few people in this world to tell you what you should do with money, and that conversation doesn't have to happen in front of an audience of hundreds.

According to this article from eMarketer Daily, the number of people using social media is going to be growing to about 66% by 2014. Getting a foot in the door now is smart, given that the trend is increasing and the risk is relatively low, but expecting it to be "the fix" for your institution is unrealistic. People don't start a financial relationship with some bank or CU that they found on Facebook. They go find their bank on Facebook because they already have a relationship with them. 

People are loyal to a dependable product first, its associated brand second. Slap a member or customer with $200 worth of fees and all the social media in the world won't make a difference - they'll feel cheated and complain, and might even leave. Doesn't matter if they brought it on themselves -they're going to say it's your fault.

2) OLB, email and websites all need to be better. There's a reason you started offering online bill pay/banking, eStatements, eLerts and so on. It's because the more people are leaning on your online channel, the less they have to come all the way to the branch to deal with their money issues. Little things like transferring money between accounts and making payments are time sucks for a branch - let people work it out from home. 

Emails, eStatements and online notices are popular (it's why we exist), but we still have people who are on the fence about communicating with members via email. Why? What's stopping you? You don't have to put a ton of personal info into the thing and you aren't spamming anyone. "We might get phished," you say? Yeah, you might. But if you're actively engaging members with emails and getting them accustomed to what an email from you looks like, you're training them about what the real messages look like versus a fake one. Come on, people, it's 2010. "I'm scared of email" stopped being a valid excuse in 1998. Get in there.

If your OLB, emails and websites aren't up to snuff, you're missing out. This is Web 1.0 stuff, and 2.0 is about to hit the bricks in favor of Web 3.0 (does that blow your mind, because it should). You're going to see the big banks and their big websites increase functionality in the next few years, and as Robbie Wright of CU Innovators recently said: 

I will immediately think poorly of a product if they have a crappy looking website. crappy site=crappy product

less than a minute ago via CoTweetRobbie Wright

Let's just cut to the chase: you have a budget of $1 million. You can spend it on your websites and online banking, or on your social media initiatives. You can only spend it these two ways, and you can split it any way you choose. What are you going to spend it on, knowing what you know now? 

Talk to me, people.

How a "Like Button" Could Make a Difference For Your Website

by Jimmy Marks

Remember those notes you used to send to people in grade school with three check boxes and the text "Do you like me? Check one: Yes, No, Maybe"? You, a shy little kid, send your classroom sweetheart a little note to see if they liked you. Then maybe later you held hands on the playground. It was social media, version 0.2. 

Fast forward twenty-some years (or more, in some cases) to now. In case you missed the past six years, social media - and specifically, Facebook - has made those little paper notes a big online enterprise. 

The sweet little "do you like me?" note has been replaced by a very simple button that simply says "like" (or "recommend", in certain cases) with a thumbs-up. The three checkboxes for "yes/no/maybe" aren't really an option - if you like something, you like it, and click the "like" button shares the fact that you do with your friends and your network. If you don't like it, you don't click it. Silence, in that case, speaks volumes.

The "like button" for Facebook began as "Become a Fan", a button that drew links between a Facebook user and a product page on the site. For example, if Coca-Cola had a Facebook fan page (it does), I could click "Become a Fan" and on my profile page, it would say: 

"Jimmy has become a fan of Coca-Cola."

Now, with the like button, a fan page is no longer necessary. I can put a like button on all our product pages and Facebook users can share that page via Facebook without having to find it on Facebook. So why does this matter to a business? 

The like button launched last month and is now prominent on 50,000 websites across the Internet, according to CNN...and growing, no doubt. Many have raised questions about how the like button and the data that comes from clicking it is going to change the web. Privacy issues abound, specifically when it comes to "cross talk" between Facebook and other sites you use. This PC World article spells out an example - you use the like button to tell folks about a band you like, then music services like Pandora will start changing the music they play for you based on those likes. For most folks who have Facebook profiles, it's a grievance hearing about every person's every like. For people and businesses who are looking to reach specific groups and sell to them in a specific way, this little button is something you should definitely like. 

First, there's the concept of free advertising. We've been talking for years to the business world about how the Internet is changing the game and this is the best example of that. Word-of-mouth is still your best bet for driving growth and encouraging cross-sales (see our DMI Blog post on NetPromoter Scores). How can you turn down 5,000 people liking you and sharing your content on the most popular site on the Internet? 

Second, there's the mountain of available data that people are pouring out day after day. When you see who likes your business or product, you also see everything ELSE they like. In a "like-pool" of 500 people, 300 like iPods and iPads. Why not make that the giveaway for your eStatement enrollment campaign? Let's say 80% of them are over the age of thirty. Why bother hitting them with "off to college" campaigns and student lending materials? Sell to their interests. Stop blasting, start targeting. 

Finally, there's the tradeoff of effort to payoff. Setting up a like button on your site (or sites) takes very little effort and can end up paying off if you develop a strong Facebook following out of it. We've already been over how to get going with "share" buttons, and the minimal effort necessary to get started. If you're a b-to-c, you officially have no excuse NOT to get going with social media sharing/liking links and buttons. It takes very little time and can have a big impact on your web initiatives. Go do it.

Those little notes from grade school have changed, but the feeling's still there. It's always good to know someone likes you, and it's always good to have proof of it. Maybe it's time you find out how willing people are to spread the word about your business - and time to make adjustments based on the results. 

Your comments are always welcome. 

Your Monthly Balance: Brought to You by McDonald's!

by Ron Daly 

Advertising on the Internet is a funny enterprise. You can create ads that move, almost like mini-commerical spots. You can make interactive ads that play games with potential customers. You can create wildly inventive ads that use dozens of colors and lots of crazy patterns, because unlike print, there's no premium on how creative you get. More importantly, you never run out of room. 

What do I mean by that? Sure, you have to meet file size requirements and format the ad to fit into the seller's ad space. In that sense, you are confined to a certain amount of space. But there's a lot of empty space on the Internet. I mean, a LOT. Have you ever seen the "Million Dollar Homepage"? A while back, a 21-year-old university student in England decided to buy a website and block off one million pixels worth of blank space that he sold for a dollar per pixel. The site was completely sold off in 2006 and all one million pixels are filled up with ads from companies of all shapes and sizes. The 21-year-old student grossed over a million dollars as a result. Quite a way to pay for college, wouldn't you say?

Feedback Loops - Part of a Balanced Budget

by Ron Daly 

No, it's not a sugary breakfast cereal - a feedback loop has to do with information and systems. A real life example: 

1. We got a Wii® Fit™ for our home
2. We got on and tested our balance and posture
3. We went through a series of crazy games involving hula-hoops and yoga poses
4. We re-tested our posture to see how it had improved

But there's a fifth step, one that happens from the moment we turn the game on until the moment we quit and go get a sandwich - it's self-correction. 

As you play, your character is being challenged to walk a tight rope, dance, and stand very still. The game gives you feedback about your posture and stance, evaluating your performance and telling you when you do whatever you're doing the wrong way. You try to get better, little by little, as you move through levels and exercises. Steven Levy of Wired has an article about being beaten down by these workout video games. His reason? He was TOO focused on his workout, as opposed to usual gym distractions. 

An article from Harvard Business Review, "The Cost of Being Omniscient", talks about feedback loops in business and how they change the behavior of a buyer/user. From their article:

Anyone who doubts the power of feedback to influence action hasn't stepped on a scale before dinner. Customers under pay-as-you-drive plans almost invariably start using their cars less and buckling up more. Enel, an electrical utility in Italy, saw the same effect. After it installed "smart meters" in homes, its newly aware customers collectively spent 500 million euros less per year on electricity.

We have come to a point where "Information Age" doesn't quite describe where we are as a society. I think "Feedback Age" is a better fit. The more social the Internet gets,  If you're interested in bettering yourself, there's info everywhere on how to get it done. Your iPod isn't just a music player, it's a pedometer and a calorie counter. Your car is telling you when you're not driving safely. Your house tells you to shut off your lights. As a result, you jog faster, you drive better, you live greener. Why? 

Divide and Conquer: Start Split Testing Today

by Jimmy Marks

 I'll go ahead and throw away the opening sentence of this article on an obvious statement: the internet has changed everything. We, as online creatives and marketers, are no longer confined to the constraints of the physical space (or "meatscape", as total weirdos call it). We can make our websites as big and bright as we like. We can publish our updates and releases at our leisure via blogs and online news services. We can change our minds and our products on a whim. We can animate, demonstrate, and, most importantly, split test. 

What is split testing, you're wondering? If you're not already doing it, today's your official start date. Split testing involves two (or more) options for a marketing campaign, website, email - any intellectual property that is designed to command user's attention. Typically, you set up your "A" and "B" choices and test each to see which gets the most user response/return. You might think these two choices have to be completely disparate, but the differences might be as simple as: 

• The placement of your "call to action" button
• A different subject line/title
• A different image in the body text
• Altered colors
• A different sender name (i.e., sending from "Member Solutions" instead of "Collections Department")

This involves a little work on your part. You're going to need to track conversions on these two website versions (that is, how many people take you up on your sales offer or click for more info). For traditional-mail marketing pieces, you can send both options in tandem and see which gets more response, then adjust from there. For email, you'll need to track opens, bounces, unsubscribes, etc. for each of your campaign choices. 

"So you're just measuring ROI ?" you ask. In a sense, but you're also measuring the strengths of one campaign's layout and language. Who's to say that, by putting your seminar ads up under your headline in a sidebar, you won't get more people signing up? Maybe members aren't calling because they don't know where your phone number is on your email or contact page. You might think these are trifles, but when it comes to engaging members and getting them to take an interest in what you have to offer, can you afford NOT to make a campaign better over time? Pick your pet campaign, give the components some thought, and see how a split test might improve it.

I could go into extra detail, but I'm hoping this has spurred you to start thinking about this for your websites, email campaigns, newsletters and marketing pieces. Here are some resources to get you started: 

• An article titled "10 Factors to Test that Could Increase the Conversion Rate of Your Landing Pages" (catchy title, no?). A good walkthrough, with some important points to keep in mind as you move forward. 
• From DailyConversions.com - An article in which one of the website's marketing specialists does split testing on a local homeless man's "please give" sign. It seems a little weird at the start, but his work with the homeless man's sign placement and content changes the homeless man's luck and drives up donations. A really strange exercise, to be sure, and not one I'd recommend repeating, but still worth a look.
• Five Second Test is a great website that lets you test website layouts and the impact your current layout has on a random spray of audience members. Simple, fast, effective, and free, it's worth the time it takes to throw up a few potential layouts and examples. 

And I wouldn't be much of an ad guy if I didn't take the time to tell you that DigitalMailer's Automatic Relationship Builder (ARB) has built-in split testing capabilities. Start marketing smart by visiting our website, or give us a call at 866.994.4900 ext 115.

Social Media: Getting Started

by Jimmy Marks

Many companies worry about their involvement with social media (or lack thereof). We've talked about social media before, but we've never really given a list of "getting started" instructions. Hopefully, this will help your business get its feet wet. 

STEP 1: Sign up, Get going

No more of this "will we, won't we?" business. Get moving! Start turning out those blog posts, recording messages from the CEO to upload to YouTube, twittering, facebooking, emailing...whatever fits your member's tastes. Don't know what members are interested in? Hit them with a quick survey to sharpen your focus. 

More importantly, make this new communication channel someone's job. Make them track results and feedback. Stay on top of it. 

Best Practice - Set a bar and meet it. What do you WANT out of Social Media? Before you get going with anything, read this from thefinancialbrand.com about ROI and social media. 

STEP 2: Learn to Share

If you are running a blog or sending out a monthly email newsletter, you can make individual stories or pages shareable via the major social networks. Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and most other networks provide links that, when set up properly, allow readers to share your content via their own account. Most blogging services provide a widget for sharing this information around. If you are a DigitalMailer ARB user, we can get you set up with the proper links and icons for sharing. 

You've probably seen buttons such as these before. When readers/members/users click these buttons, they're sharing your content and information with other people. Encourage them! 

Best Practice - Worried you don't have enough followers after a week? Don't. Building out this new way of talking to members and customers can take time. Read the CU Soapbox article "Follow-and-Friend Freeze Out" to give yourself and your organization a realistic idea of a "healthy" follower count.

STEP 3: Refine and Realign

Don't get comfy, social media trends and usage are changing day to day. Know which methods and messages are working and which aren't. Keep an eye on your stats and your referrals and make note of which method/network is giving you the best response.

Best Practice - Don't just talk, listen. If you have followers or friends eager to speak with you, address them and meet the need. You'll find that you can help users and members in a way that's simple, light and smart. You may also pick up new members and customers as a result. 

Some final food for thought:

Take a look at this video on "socialnomics". VERY thought provoking. 

Who's Buyin', Who's Lyin', Who's Dyin'?

by Ron Daly 

After ten years providing email delivery and online services, I have a little experience with what draws people to open an email or visit a website. Where that experience shifts is when it comes to social media and referrals. Over the past year or so, there's been plenty to read about whether or not social media is "good" for your business. Can you run/boost a business using social media? 

Bob Serling of Power 8 Marketing seems to think it's possible, but it requires a stronger knowledge of your audience. From his blog post:

There are a lot of ways to identify people who are actual buyers, but it takes a lot more leg work, and usually more money to do this properly. That’s why the promise of the next “free magic bullet” traffic system is bound to fail too. Because there just isn’t any free and easy way to generate qualified leads in your sleep. If there was, we’d all have a different color Ferrari for each day of the week.

I think Bob's point is well spoken - just because you're blogging, tweeting, facebooking, youtubing, etc. doesn't mean you're going to burn up the Internet with site traffic and new visitors. And even if you do draw a million people to your business' website, how many are in market and qualified? It's a tough nut to crack for b-to-c companies, but for b-to-b it's a lot harder. Fewer people are involved in a b-to-c buying proposition and you can appeal to people on a gratification level that's not quite the same in b-to-b. But no matter who you're selling to, getting them to buy online in a single visit is a rarity.