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March Madness Email-Style: Top-seeded Strategies

admin — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 10:00:45 +0000

On this first full day of March Madness 2012, I thought I’d apply email marketing strategies to the annual ritual of filling out tournament brackets. Here are four No. 1 seed strategies to keep in mind as you develop and manage your email marketing program.

No. 1 – West Region: Relevance
Is what you’re sending of interest to your audience? The information in your message may be a priority to you (and it should be if you’re sending it out), but the reader needs to be able to quickly understand how/why your email is important to them.

No. 1 Seed – East Region: Audience
Do you know who’s on your distribution list? I don’t mean knowing them personally, but are they people that were invited by you to join your email program? I hope the answer is, “Yes!” It’s key to manage your opt-in program with more information about your list members than just an address. Use this additional information to send your database and send targeted campaigns.

No. 1 Seed – North Region: Design
News flash – the days of single-device viewing are shrinking. A May 2011 report by Campaign Monitor saw 20% of total emails opened come from a mobile device. Bear in mind that not everyone views 100% of their emails in one place. But if some of your list members switch between viewing their emails on a PC and their phone, a smaller subset of that group might only see your message on their phone or iPad. The growth of a mobile audience has been sharp over the past year and it’s critical to make your message actionable for someone surfing their emails with their thumb. Design your message to be action-friendly for desktop platforms, web-based programs and mobile devices.

No. 1 Seed – South Region: Timing
Woody Allen is quoted as saying “Eighty percent of success is showing up.” (I don’t think any of the teams who made it into the tournament would use that as their primary game plan.) Yes, getting into the inbox is what we strive for, but how about sending at a time when your message is most likely to be read? Over a period of time, test out different send times and monitor the results. Whatever time is best reaching your desired metric, be it opens or sales or some other business objective, use that until you see a dip in results. Then test again. But always keep in mind your audience demographics, if you know them, and act accordingly.

Do we need a Cinderella story for our tournament bracket?
It wouldn’t be March Madness without one! Pinterest is the social media darling du jour. Let’s keep an eye on how this site integrates targeted HTML emails into the mix.

A recent study stated that the first two days of the NCAA tournament account for a loss of $175 million in productivity as basketball fans turn their attention to the games and away from their responsibilities. Don’t let your email program’s productivity suffer by ignoring any of these top-seeded strategies.

NCAA Regains its Senses

admin — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 13:06:00 +0000

After a reporter was ejected last week for live-blogging during the College World Series, the NCAA eased up a bit and now permits live updates are OK, as long as what’s posted is limited to the score and time remaining in the game/match/whatever.

Here’s the update and thanks to Joel Price for the tip.

Nice to see that the Double-A realized it doesn’t own the rights to game scores. I remembered after my last post that blogging game scores and a running commentary is something Bill Simmons has been doing from his couch for a long time.

Technorati Tags: college baseball, ESPN

About bats, balls and blogs

admin — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 22:13:00 +0000

On Sunday, June 10, Louisville Courier-Journal reporter Brian Bennett was kicked out of the press box at the NCAA Baseball Super Regional for live-blogging during the University of Louisville’s 20-2 win over Oklahoma State en route to the College World Series. What led to Bennett’s ouster?

Here’s how Josh Centor from the Double A Zone – the “official blog” of the NCAA – explains it:

Due to the NCAA’s broadcasting agreement with ESPN, bloggers are not permitted to update their sites with in-game coverage from the baseball press box. In-game updates include providing readers with the score, inning of the game, roster moves, etc. The policy was enacted at a baseball game, but applies to all NCAA championship events.

Thus, if you want to sit in the press box, you’d better not think about telling your readers what’s happened until the fat lady has sung. There’s been much chatter in the blogosphere about this. Here are a few of the postings I particularly liked:

These guys have all argued great points – from the NCAA being totally out touch with how people receive information to the idea that any Joe or Jane with a TV and an internet connection (or attendee with a cell phone) could do the same thing Brian was doing.

When I was at the University of Georgia, we published the scores for the gymnastics meets (including the NCAAs) as they were announced. Since these meets were never broadcast live it was an invaluable resource for fans that weren’t there to still follow along. That fact may be what separates what we were doing from what happened Sunday, as ESPN was broadcasting the game Bennett was blogging.

And when I was working at the boxing venue during the 1996 Olympics, we were constantly coming across men calling the action on their cell phones to be broadcast over the radio back home (which was usually somewhere in Brazil). If those guys had stepped outside the press area, they would have been beyond our jurisdiction.

But Sandi, how does this topic relate to Marketing Clutter? I am glad you asked.

To not grasp the fact that live-blogging is THE most effective and most efficient form of reporting and analysis of all kinds of events – sports or otherwise – demonstrates the NCAA’s ignorance. There are so many ways for people to get information these days, that the NCAA cut off its nose to spite its face with its ban on live-blogging. Apparently they thought people would chose to read Bennett’s blog over watching the game on TV, which is exactly what happens during the workday when more people turn to the internet than the TV for information.

Even though this didn’t happen during the week, the NCAA’s tone-deafness to the realities of how people get their information is appalling. This is counterintuitive to how people communicate.

Given that this is the same organization that also banned text messages between coaches and recruits, the ban on live-blogging doesn’t surprise me. Way to stay in the 1980′s, NCAA!

If this were a Bud Lite commercial, I’d salute you, Mr. I Regulate Information Like it’s 1972. You’re a real man of genius!

Here’s hoping fans of the Louisville Cardinals who have to work during tomorrow’s first-round game (which begins at 1 p.m. CST) can follow the action to their liking.