The Hall of Shame

http://www.revista.espiritolivre.org/category/artigos

It can be tricky to navigate the web without infringing on the rights of others in regards to their property, especially since it is so easy to copy and paste or share content. I was intrigued by our lecture this week during the section dealing with copyright. The Electronic Frontier Foundation’s (EFF) Takedown Hall of Shame caught my eye. If you have not visited the site yet, it is a list of cases in which people or organizations have petitioned others who they believe have improperly used their content.

One case in particular deals with the Miss UniverseOrganization, Perez Hilton, and the National Organization for Marriage (NOM). In this instance, the NOM was used a video showing Perez Hilton slamming Miss California Carrie Prejean and her comment on same-sex marriage. They also utilize a clip of Miss California Carrie Prejean saying she opposes same-sex marriage. NOM used the clips to make a political statement on the issue.

Both the Miss Universe Organization and Perez Hilton claimed that NOM had infringed on their copyrights, yet it was clear that both video clips were being used within fair parameters. In the end, it was decided that NOM could keep their work and that they had not misused the content.

Although this is an example of where fair use was utilized, there are many instances in which content is misused by those that do not have rights to it. The lesson that can be learned here is to ensure you are always within the law when using someone else’s content. It can be too easy these days to infringe upon someone else’s copyrights. 

What's My Mystery Offer Worth?!

When we talk about email marketing, a popular thought is that this avenue is dead; however, I strongly believe that email marketing still is powerful, given it delivers a clear and relevant message to each individual. Meaning, the generic email blast may be dead, but email marketing as a whole is just evolving. With that in mind, I wanted to do a search of some of the best email campaigns.

The ROI Factor assembled a group of eight campaigns for their “Best of the Inbox Awards.” Each of the eight email campaigns was awarded specific recognition, i.e. the best user experience, best open rate, strongest message, and the humanitarian award, to name a few.

Napoleon Won "The Strong Message Award"

The campaign I connected with the most was Rent the Runway’s campaign, which won the award for “The Best Open Rate Ever.” The company sent an email promising a mystery offer of either 10%, 20%, or 30% off. In order to discover what your award was valued at, you had to click on the email. With this strategy, Rent the Runway was hoping to get a high open and click through rate (CTR), as well as many conversions.

I thought this was an excellent way to interact with customers, since from experience, I have followed the instructions for another company’s email in order to discover what my offer was worth. As a consumer, I was highly motivated to discover what my offer was. It prompted me to read the email and click on the link – which doesn't often happen. I also found out my offer and proceeded to browse their website for products. I can guarantee you that I would not have browsed the site that morning had I did not received the mystery offer email.

To me, this is an excellent lesson in email marketing. If we can entice our subscribers and offer them a reward for clicking through to our landing page, we may get the conversion we are hoping for! To truly be effective, this strategy must be used in conjunction with individualized emails as I mentioned above. 

Cure for Banner Blindness

Every year around this time I am responsible for developing the next year’s advertising strategy. This involves decisions on who to advertise with and how to best deliver our message. Of course there is the usual suspects – print ads, banner ads, sponsored text ads, etc. Depending on the publication, we sign up for a variety of these advertising methods. I am always trying to ensure we use our advertising dollars most effectively and frequently question which method is the best to portray our message.

I was never a huge fan of spending a great deal of money on banner ads. Based off personal experience, I rarely spent much time looking at them myself. When we read the lecture notes for this week, it mentioned banner blindness, which is exactly the experience I have had. Constantly being bombarded by banner ads is something I have learned to quickly ignore. I wondered, now, if my company should not pay for banner space for 2014.

I did a little research, thanks to Google, and found that there are many resources devoted to the topic of banner blindness. The best I found, though, was this infographic from bannerblindness.org. 

While it gave some facts that I really wasn’t shocked to see, like low viewing levels and retention rates of banner ads, one thing that did catch my eye were the suggestions to avoid these problems: go native; stay relevant; and decrease clutter.

Finally, some insight into how to make our banners more effective! Let’s place ads in uncommon places and shapes than are normally seen. Make sure the content is formulated so that it is relevant to the customer. Last, choose websites that are not already cluttered with other banner ads. Ours would easily get lost in the shuffle.

Next month we start discussions for 2014, and I can guarantee you I’m taking this new found information into consideration when determining whether or not to use banner ads.