Having put together channel lead gen campaigns for years, I know the downfalls of the spray and pray approach, but somehow I just can’t bring myself to trash it quite so readily.  I’ve read many a blog about comparing email marketing and social media, but the thing is you’re not comparing apples for apples.  One is about measuring opens and clicks and hoping you’re in the right place at the right time, the other very much about influencing decision makers and positioning oneself as a trusted advisor… yadda, yadda, yadda.

I understand that social media has a huge role to play in influencing decision makers; however, as a traditional girl at heart, I still like to see some action at the end of my efforts.

I’ve been keeping an eye on the stats of campaigns that come across my desk.  Emails are getting an open rate of around 20% (sometimes a lot lower!), with click through rates of about 2-3%.  Not bad.  Then I see results from socialondemand, the online tool delivered by purechannelapps that enables vendors to syndicate their rich content through their channel partners’ social networks.  Posts are achieving click through or download rates of nearly 8% (based on the number of the partners’ followers).  Maybe time to hit the social ‘like’ button?

It’s not just the post:click results that are impressive.  It’s the reach as well.  8% of thousands of current followers is much more attractive to a marketer like me than 2% of a few thousand on an ageing email list, purchased a few years ago.

We recently did a tally of the potential audience for socialondemand for one of our clients.  We took 22 of their top partners, and added up how many followers they had.  Of the 22, only four had no social media presence at all, and the other 18 had over 4.5k followers / connections between them.  They are looking to recruit about 100 socially active partners initially, which will give them access to around 25k end-user followers within one click. And that’s a conservative estimate, as we didn’t include followers of individual staff within the partner, just their corporate accounts.

So there are two things that are warming my social cockles compared to direct marketing techniques… reach and currency of contact information.  Don’t get me wrong, it’s still worth combining the two, but social media is definitely on my Christmas card list.

After about an hour of waiting behind the crash barrier, looking pretty fetching in my yellow water-ride-theme-park-stylee plastic poncho (thoughtfully donated by a passing traffic officer) myself and my colleague were picked up by a kind chap in his recovery vehicle.

On our way home, he started talking about how incredibly noisy it is on the hard shoulder, and how he recently dragged his wife out to stand on said hard shoulder with him… for no reason other than to help her understand why he watches the football so loudly on the TV.  In essence, his wife needed to experience the noise herself to understand just how noisy it actually was.

This got me thinking about how noisy social media has already become.  Fastly turning into the ‘must have’ medium in most of our marketing strategies, content is being blared out left, right and centre in the hope that the right people hear it at the right time.

Maybe it’s time we all stood on the hard shoulder to find out how noisy it actually is?  Have you or I actually put ourselves in the shoes of our audience and taken a look around the social media forums they are interacting with?  In our efforts to hone and target our messaging, maybe we should do just that to find out what and who is influencing them, and how.

So here’s a suggestion.  Why not take half an hour out, and swap online roles with one of your target audience.  Search for what they might search for… have a listen to what they are exposed to.  You might be surprised at how noisy it is out there, and decide it’s time to become more refined and targeted with your content to make a difference.

If you’re still with me on this one, then hey, at least something has come out of a pretty bad start to my day

The trend of integrating social media into internal communications has been on the rise for a while, with the term ‘the social intranet’ being bandied about more and more.  But the real question is… are your people syndicating content as well as they could?

Imagine then, a different scenario.  Marketing presses the ‘go’ button on a fantastic new SMB solution you’ve just launched.  Within seconds, your channel managers receive the appropriate partner/ benefit-led content relating to the solution. At the touch of a button they repost this content via their own LinkedIn accounts and inform all their partner/ channel contacts.

At the same time, your direct-touch sales staff receive their content about the launch in real-time, but now with an end-user spin. They are able to share that information with their own base of followers, be prospects or customers, via LinkedIn and Twitter, even reaching specific social ‘groups’ with the content.

Simultaneously, your channel partners receive their own version of the end-user announcement and can repost it in a matter of 3 clicks on their own social media networks, reaching out to prospects and end-users you have no direct connection with.

Nirvana? Yes.  Realistic?  Most definitely.

Not only have you achieved real-time communication of your product launch, you’ve also targeted the content with precision in a matter of seconds to all tiers of your channel including your own people internally.  Now that’s pretty neat eh?

Earlier this year, we landed the contract to deliver Avnet’s channel eNewsletters.  We diligently set about redesigning their ageing layout, using best practice techniques we’ve honed over the years, and created compelling and valuable content using partner-led benefits.  Open rates increased by a few percentage points, and we patted ourselves on the back.

Then, with a few editions of the new format under our belt as a benchmark, we decided to do some split testing with different subject lines.  So, without prejudice, we came up with four different types of subject line – the first posing a question (often thought to be the panacea of subject lines); the second offering an event; the third delivering a clear business benefit; and the fourth stating the name of the newsletter alone.

Then we pressed send.  Within an hour of sending, there was a clear leader.  And within three days, one of the options had achieved a staggering 130% greater open rate than the other three (which were all lounging around at the normal open rate).

So, which subject line made us spill our coffee?  The answer…?  Plain and simple ‘Security Newsletter’.   Just goes to show, maybe we try too hard sometimes, or maybe we try to be cleverer than we actually need to be?

Like many things around in this consumerist age, things often come full circle back to an original ‘no frills’ way of doing things and this is a fine example of just that.

Jose Campo, Enterprise Marketing Specialist at Trend Micro, has given purechannels a fantastic reference… “the best quality service”, “a very professional team”, “a pleasure to work with”.

Read the full testimonial on Olivier’s LinkedIn page

This week sees the launch of socialondemand^TM by the team at purechannelapps™.  Find out why vendors, analysts and the press are getting hot under the collar about this revolutionary new social media tool that enables vendors to deliver targeted content to end-users via their partners’ social media presence.

Click here to register for the launch webinar

purechannels announces the launch of purechannelapps^TM, its new sister company that delivers innovative channel applications. So, if you need to better influence and collaborate with your channel partners, you should have a look!

Click here to visit the purechannelapps website

We are delighted to announce that Citrix Systems UK has chosen purechannels from several agencies it assessed to provide channel marketing consultancy and tactical implementation services. “We’re not afraid to suggest new ways of doing things, and we feel that Citrix fully embraced our ideas of how to enhance and evolve their existing marketing plans.” Commented Olivier Choron, MD, purechannels.

Read about our other clients here

When we were asked to provide channel consultancy for this solar panel manufacturer, there was a definite air of excitement here in the office at the thought of working outside of our comfy IT sector (no offence everyone!).  Find out how we helped this leading vendor to create a partner program that fitted its business model perfectly.

Read the full case study here