Author Archives: Lauren Ysseldyke
Ever feel like text messaging is taking over teens’ lives or maybe your own life today? Well according to a recent study by Nielsen, society, especially teens, have become mad with text messaging. The study discovered the average teenager sends more than 3,000 text messages per month, which works out to more than six texts per waking hour! Teens aren’t the only ones under this craze however, the study also points out that the number of texts sent has increased in every age bracket since last quarter.
So how can this popularity of text messaging translate into a successful marketing opportunity? Through SMS campaigns of course! Now you may be thinking…I don’t know what a SMS campaign is, let alone how to execute one. Well, then this is the blog post for you! Below I have outlined a short guiding principles/best practices of SMS campaigns that will help even the most SMS challenged.
As I’m sure most of you already know, SMS campaigns are mainly used to drive consumer responses. Text-to-win, discount offers, text-to-vote, sweepstakes entry and SMS email offers are the most common types of SMS campaigns and there are several case studies out there outlining each type. So what must you do to launch a successful one? Here are 10 of the most important steps to remember:
After 17 years of classes, homework, and all-nighters, it was finally time for us to be released into the real world. Not knowing what to expect, we, the CM Experience Distribution interns, were terrified about the prospect of not being able to find a job in this economy. Although our friendship only blossomed at the beginning of this internship, we both took similar paths to finding our dream internship here at CM. The path was social media. There have been a lot of great articles cropping up on just this topic, but we thought we’d share our firsthand experiences… and success!
As college students, social media quickly became a large part of our day-to-day lives. Whether it was posting pictures, chatting with friends, or updating tweets every hour; social media became an outlet we could not live without (and sometimes took precedent over homework and studying). After graduating last month, we were instantly faced with the overwhelming task of finding a job, not just any job, but one that would excite us and tie to our interests.
This was no easy task, but through websites like LinkedIn and Facebook, our opportunities became more apparent. We were able to connect with employees at CM and understand the culture of a digital marketing agency. While this may seem like a novel idea, many of our classmates and peers continue to search for jobs the same way. This method of finding jobs through social media is a growing trend at many colleges.
Lauren Ysseldyke | Critical Mass Chicago
Being new to CM and the Experience Distribution team, I was thrilled to have the opportunity to attend Digg’s Social News & Social Marketing Summit and meet the mastermind behind Digg.com, Kevin Rose (@kevinrose). While listening to Kevin talk about Digg’s place in the social space, its upcoming new Digg platform (to be released in a month or so) and marketing concepts in a constantly changing social media world, I realized how extremely important it is today for marketers to know how to find a role in social media. With today’s audience immersed in a “snack culture” (as Kevin put it) of wanting online content in short, interactive form, marketers must learn to cater to these needs when it comes to advertising and building brands. Kevin has learned this concept well through his creation of Digg.com. Falling in a social space between Facebook and Twitter, Digg.com offers its “snack culture” audience a customizable news experience in which content is driven by the audience itself in a concise and interactive format.
“Snack c
ulture” wasn’t the only concept I found interesting and relevant to the CM team and other marketers today. After listening to marketing panelists, Daina Middleton, Sloan Broderick, Rick Wion and Chas Edwards, I took away several necessities to making it as a marketer in an increasingly digital and social media driven world. Here are my top five picks:
1. Role in Social Media: Before diving into the world of social media, it’s crucial for marketers and clients to talk about what each partner’s role should be for social media…Creative? Curator? Publisher? Sloan Broaderick (Managing Director, MediaCom) went into a great story about how Audi follows this concept and focuses on building brand relationships before people even enter the purchase stage. “If you’re just hearing about Audi when you’re ready to make a car purchase then we’re already too late,” Sloan says.
2. 3 Universal Categories of Digital Marketing: Daina Middleton (CEO, Performics) stressed the importance of dividing the digital marketing space into three categories of owned, earned and paid. Owned includes your own controlled assets (websites, commercials, videos); earned includes social and social monitoring and paid includes distribution. Then each of these channels/categories have a different purpose and a different set of goals/KPIs. This is very similar to how CM views the digital space and how the Experience Distribution team is structured. Whereas the rest of the CM company is dedicated to the owned category, the Experience Distribution team is divided into both an earned and a paid media group.
