A new article from eMarketer examines concerns that consumers have expressed about mobile - chief among them, privacy and security.
by Jimmy Marks
It used to be that "The Internet" was something you used in your home. You had to have a computer connected to the web via cable. Then came the idea that the Internet was a practical business tool - email revolutionizes communication! High-speed Internet makes websites more robust! Wi-Fi is the new guard - the web without wires, in every Hotel, Airport, Starbucks and McDonald's in your neighborhood.
Mobile is the latest wave on the shore. The same Internet that used to demand that we buy large tower CPUs and big monitors now only requires us to have a smartphone and our thumbs. But there's something troubling about that - it's the same Internet. Which means the same problems and the same fears.
Take a look at this chart from eMarketer. There are concerns among smartphone users about apps that track their various patterns (you've already heard about the iPhone tracking issue to be sure). Smartphones and tablets emit and receive data - what does that data say about the user? Is the picture flattering?
When it comes to moving your financial institution forward with mobile, how are you allaying concerns about security? Did you do a good job of getting your customers to trust your OLB and website? If not, try to recover the fumble for mobile - it could make or break you in the long run.
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.
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):
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:
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):
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
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.
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:
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:
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.
by Jimmy Marks
Came across this diagram of "A day in the Internet", a visual representation of all the information that gets processed, added, and moved through the Internet every day.
The diagram is 500 pixels wide and 1600 or so pixels long, so putting it here is tough, but here's a clip of it that links to the full image.
A lot of interesting information shared here. Some thoughts this generated for me:
- We get one Guyana's-worth of new Facebook users every day. Theoretically, everyone could connect with anyone else. I just wonder why there aren't as many people "follow-spamming" me there as on Twitter. Maybe it's because Facebook has actions other than type/follow/unfollow?
- We send enough data across the mobile phone carrier infrastructure every day to fill 1.7 million blu-ray discs? That's bananas. I'm starting to wonder if, in the next few years, you'll be able to call phones "phones" anymore. They're just tiny computers these days, getting your email, playing games, taking pictures - calls are one slice of a great big functionality pie.
- Rob once remarked that there was "signal to noise ratio" to consider when reading/digesting information online. Sometimes it's helpful and interesting, sometimes it's a list of things someone ate for breakfast. If each day, bloggers write the equivalent of 19 years of newspaper - the New York Times, no less - how much of that is recycled? Or worth the time it takes to read?
Hopefully, this is some food for thought for you, too! Talk to us about it in the comments section.
(image, story from Gizmodo)
by Jimmy Marks
Growing up in a rural community, you get used to hunting and fishing terms and techniques. Two such techniques I've seen used to great success are decoys and bait.
The decoy is a preferred method of staying out of the sight of waterfowl. Lulling them into a false sense of safety with fake ducks or geese and getting them to draw closer so you can fire is a skill that many successful hunters learn early. Bait, obviously, is a key part of the fishing equation - without tempting bait, it's tough to draw a fish's attention. While these methods are important to hunters, they're even more important to Spammers. Regrettably, they're just as effective online as they are in the outdoors.
A number of credit union and finance Twitter accounts have been compromised lately. Our own Twitter account, twitter.com/DMI_CUSoapbox, received a number of direct messages from our followers/friends imploring us to click links and enter our personal information. Thankfully, we ignored most of these links and paid attention to the Twitter explosion that followed.
"Accounts hacked!" followers exclaimed.
"Do NOT click the link," others noted.
And from one or two Twitter accounts being compromised came three or four. And from all that hubbub came a stinging reminder:
SPAM will always be around to ruin the party.
Continue reading "The Decoy, The Bait, and the Smarter Twitter User" »
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