Everyone can follow the clearly marked path to Nirvana

If you point to the place where everyone wants to be, do you think they will go there? At the very least, some folks will check out the path you are directing them towards, some will follow it, and some will just ignore it and find their own way. But one thing is for certain, if you are absolutely sure of the path to Nirvana, and you can show people that path, quite a few will follow you there.

This should be the driving philosophy behind email.  I'm sure you've received plenty of emails in your lifetime from folks who want to sell you something. I know I have. But so many of those emails have so much stuff in them that I start to zone out, feel a headache coming on, and then hit the delete button.

The problem with those emails is that they're crowded, with a hundred different fingers pointing in a hundred different directions.  Some of the big box retail companies send out perfect examples of these. They've got lots of departments that have lots of deals, and they try to put them all in one place. I wonder what would happen if they focused their interest groups into segments, and then sent out more targeted deals?

If you're a small or medium sized business, you likely don't have as much variety of stuff to sell. If you've managed to collect an email address list from your website, then your interest group is already defined. You've got your segment, now you just need to follow up.

That idea about pointing down the path to Nirvana? Well, that still stands. Check out this email from MaggieMudd. There's nothing on there but a giant red button that says "deal" on it. Obviously, it's a call to action and it makes a nice promise. Now, here's the proof: This email, used multiple times for different campaigns, scored a high of 10.03% click-through. The lowest, 5.99%. This is a conservative measure, as the rate is calculated on the number of emails sent, not opened, compared to the number of emails clicked on.

The results speak for themselves. Which really tells us something. Simplicity is good. A realistic promise is nice. And having an email address list of people who are already interested in your business goes a long way towards increasing sales. People don't have time to sort through stuff. As one of my sales colleagues once told me, and I'll never forget it, as a business you've got to "lift your skirt and show your goods."

Building stickiness around web apps

When you talk about the stickiness factor of your web apps, you're not talking about selling cotton candy online. Instead, you're talking about the ability of your web applications to either tempt or coerce your customers to come back to you again for content or services.

Getting them to come back is the goal of anyone who is trying to build a business online. Repeat customers are golden in the sense that they have already patronized your business, know something about it, and are likely to remember you whenever they are in need of something similar.

So, how do you get them to come back, other than providing an excellent service? This is where the idea of stickiness comes in.

Discounts and deals that have an extended shelf life is one way. Here's an example. When we built an e-commerce system for MaggieMudd, one of the requirements was to be able to manage deals. These were, of course, coming from Groupon, Living Social, Town Hog, and so on. The orders needed to be placed online, the unique voucher number entered, and in the background, the voucher management system needed to take care of the redemption process, discount, and issuance of credit to the customer.

MaggieMudd structured their deals so that folks who purchased an item online with the deal voucher would always have a little bit left over, anywhere from 1 to 5 dollars.  MaggieMudd was not crazy enough to give back cash to their customers, instead, they gave them something more valuable. A digital gift card. The order management system was tied into a digital gift card manager. Soon, MaggieMudd was issuing hundreds of small value gift cards to their deal-based customers. In so doing, they were tempting them back when they were again in need of something similar to what MaggieMudd sold. If you had a good experience, why not go with the guy who sent you a discount?

Sticky apps range from email collectors, that is, when people sign up on your website for a coupon, a newsletter, or as part of an e-commerce process, to customized content. We're presently working on a top-secret "post-it note" application on the MaggieMudd site that will allow visitors to tag and post notes on pages that are interesting, and ask for an email reminder of the page on any specific day that they need it. This is an exciting project, because it means that people will have a way of finding them again at a more relevant time, say, when a birthday or a celebration event is coming up.

There is plenty of opportunity to develop sticky apps in order to gain and retain customers. Facebook, perhaps the ultimate of stickiness, is an important place to develop apps that give your fans' networks the ability to interact with you and the further opportunity to connect with them again. Take a look at our Facebook page to see some of the apps we developed as lead generation tools.

Lead with your face...book

Ok, I'll admit that I don't watch much TV anymore. Or read very many magazines. I can get all that stuff "in the cloud", and much more than I'll ever need in multiple lifetimes.

However, when I do watch television, I pay special attention to the ads. Why? Ads can be more shocking, more funny, and more interesting than even the program that I originally sat down to watch. Ads also leave you with a calling card, a place that you can go after the 30 second mini drama to get more information.

I was surprised to find that many of the retail and consumer goods companies that are advertising on TV are leading their digital marketing efforts with their facebook pages. That is to say, the first place these TV ads send you, if you want more information, is directly to their facebook page. Not their own corporate web site. A perfect example of this is Jeremiah Weed, an alcohol company that places provocative, mysterious images before you in their TV ads, before sending you off to their facebook page, where you can hopefully get a sense about what's going on in the big picture. The facebook page for Jeremiah Weed is here http://www.facebook.com/JeremiahWeed

So why lead with social media? Do social media sites really give you enough time and space to tell your story the way a corporate website does?

Technically, facebook is a quick and easy publishing platform. There's no doubt about this. Setting up and maintaining a facebook page takes no time compared to developing and maintaining your own website. But even more important than this, facebook, and all social media, allow users to interact with content, and in doing so, push that content to other users who exist within their network. So, if you as a facebook user like a particular facebook page, then your entire network sees this. You then provide them the opportunity to like that facebook page as well. Suddenly, the company's page that all your friends just saw got a bunch of new eyeballs, or impressions, without the company having to pay a single dime. Unlike advertising. And because your friends might tend to listen to you, that company page that you just liked, is more legitimate in the eyes of your social group.

Business owners should see the lead generating potential of social media. Yet, content is king. As a business who has a facebook page, or might be thinking of starting one, it's important to give your potential fan base something to look at, some thing to interact with, some information that is relevant and useful. Here are some of my favorite customized facebook pages, there are of course, many out there. Jeremiah Weed, Blockbuster Express, TigerDirect, Denny's, Big 5 Sporting Goods.

I like these pages because they each provide opportunities to their visitors and fanbases to interact more with the company. Jeremiah Weed is the most fun on the scale, and Big 5, although not so exciting, provides you with the opportunity to get a coupon to save some money by signing up right on the page. Business owners will appreciate the lead-generating capabilities of these facebook pages.

Check out the CoScient facebook page. Like us and sign up to get your own interactive, custom designed facebook page.