Category: 1

QR Codes... best practices need apply! 08/02/2011

Quick Response (QR) codes are quickly becoming the "hot" direct marketing item in the wine industry. Much like the early 2000's blog rage, and more recently the social media craze ("if you're not on Facebook, you're nowhere!"), QR codes are popping up in our little industry like wildfire. They're starting to show up on labels, in ads, on shelf talkers, business cards, tasting room menus and more.

Here are two recent articles on how wineries are using these handy new promotional vehicles:

Wineries Connect with QR Codes
Wine Business Monthly | August 2011
(note: excerpt only - full article in the August issue)

Smart Phone QR Codes Enter the Tasting Room
North Bay Business Journal | April 4th, 2011

And, for those statistically-minded... here are a few online reports around customer usage of QR codes:

Mobile Barcode Trend Report, Q2 2011
Scan Life | June 2011

Breaking: QR Codes Stats Revealed
The MGH Modern Marketing Blog | March 23, 2011

With consumers rapidly adopting their use, and the early stage excitement around them, now is the time to take advantage of their functionality. Ready to take the leap? Here are a few considerations to keep in mind...

1) QR codes are simply "a means to an end" - to get the offline consumer you're reaching to an online place with more information and to extend their engagement with your product, service or brand. Once the QR code is activated, you've moved a consumer into queue to become your customer... and at this point, it's on you to capture or lose them. What you deliver in this next engagement is critical. Consider your content. Is it relevant? Is it unique? Does it "pay off" for the efforts to scan the code? Does it provide more information? Or does it just send your new (potential!) customer to your website with no direction?

2) With the rapid usage of QR codes coming into play, many wine marketers are failing to pay attention to the very BASIC of best practices in implementation. A great article on ensuring the best user experience was recently run on Mashable. In it, the author lists 5 very basic mistakes that can - and should - be easily avoided with your QR campaign. Read the article on Mashable.com - 5 Big Mistakes to Avoid In Your QR Code Marketing Campaign.

3) Finally, like any good marketing initiative, the basic marketing disciplines must also be applied:
* Understand your audience and their needs first.
* Aim to be relevant and meaningful to those needs, through your marketing and messaging.
* Be available where they can find you.
* As with any social vehicle - aim to engage. Don't just push. Aim for them to pull you in to them.
* Don't neglect the call to action - give them a "next step" to take.

Still want to know more about QR codes, how they work and what they are? You'll find a pretty informative article on How QR Codes Can Grow Your Business, from Social Media Examiner.

Cheers!

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.com in a .mobi world 01/12/2010

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It’s no revelation to say that we that we live in a digital world. Technology is prevalent. And no more so than with today’s “smart” phones.

What is a “smart phone”? Your Blackberry or iPhone. Or, per O’Reilly Media,

“A Smartphone combines the functions of a cellular phone and a handheld computer in a single device. It differs from a normal phone in that it has an operating system and local storage, so users can add and store information, send and receive email, and install programs to the phone as they could with a PDA.”

Consider these facts:

There are almost as many people buying smart phones as there are people buying laptops: 115 million smart phones were purchased worldwide last year
Website visitors using a mobile device increased 34 percent year-over-year, to 56.9 million in July 2009 according to The Nielsen Company.
The most popular non-phone activities among smart phone users are visiting websites (80%), taking photos (74%), and using email (73%).
Over half (53%) of U.S. smart phone users download mobile content from the web at least once a day or thereabouts, and click on mobile ads.
Thirty-five percent request coupons or further information and a quarter (24%) make purchases.
eBay alone saw mobile sales worth more than a half a billion dollars this past year, which equates to 5 million item transactions.

In this recent holiday season, according to a recent Motorola report, 51% of 2009 holiday shoppers across 11 countries used their cell phones to compare prices, find consumer product reviews and locate discounts while in stores shopping this past holiday season. Consumers are using digital tools like their cell phones more than ever, to inform which brands they purchase, where, when, how and at what price point they will purchase.

The media is clearly abuzz with iPhone mania these days. And of course, there are a number of wine specific iPhone apps; they aggregate wines available in the U.S. market and provide reviews, price comparisons, consumer user generated content, food & wine pairings, etc.. See VinTank’s report here for a complete evaluation on the latest.

But if you aren’t in the market to build your own iPhone app, it's still important to ensure you’re giving consumers the information and experience they need via their smart phones. Your email and website executions are critical places to start.

Example Mobile Email from Sony

Email Marketing for the Mobile Age

A recent report by Experian CheetahMail revealed that over a quarter of total U.S. consumers now read emails on their smart phone. Most emails are being deleted before being read, however. The main reasons? Poor formatting and a lack of brand recognition. If you’re marketing to your own list, brand recognition shouldn’t be an issue. But formatting can be.

Think about the last email you sent. Open it up on your own cell phone. Can you read it? Does it load quickly? Does it give you quick information to take action? Best practices in email marketing have always been to keep them short, to the point, easily read/understood and with a clear call to action. Now more than ever it’s important to follow that direction.

In addition, ensuring your emails are relevant to your audience is critical: segment your list for appropriate messaging, and optimize your subject line to ensure action is taken by that segment. The closer you can make your brand, message and promotion relevant and meaningful to your customer, the better. If you only had a few seconds on a computer to entice the reader to open your email, you have even less on a phone.

Most importantly, make it easy for the consumer to access more information. A clear message that links directly to a web page that allows the consumer to complete the desired action is critical. Slow page loading on a smart phone can lead to huge frustration if the information sought is not found quickly due to image loading or excessive and unnecessary content.

Refining your website to meet the needs of a mobile user

How well is your website being browsed on a smart phone? Want to see something scary? Check out these sites to see how your site may be presented on a handset:

Google OR Skweezer

Clearly one solution is to create a mobile website (.mobi) or top level domain specific to a mobile user experience. This will allow for a distinct website which you can market to your mobile users, and which presents a more mobile-relevant presentation and click path.

Not ready for a mobile website strategy? You can still review your site for best practices in clear navigation, simple messaging and a reduced “click to purchase” path. Ensuring the same can help your site read well in a mobile environment. And please, if you do create a mobile site, make sure you offer access to that site clearly from your .com home page: “Click here to read on your mobile phone”.

For mobile web navigation, make sure the action desired to be taken by your audience is no more than 1-2 clicks from the homepage. Slow loading pages on mobile phones will make people leave quickly if they’re left waiting for loads and having to click through too many pages.

In addition, since browsing in a mobile environment can mean a lot of scrolling around pages to find what you’re looking for, consider breaking the traditional rule of keeping navigation and page frame consistency… a change in the basic landscape can quickly indicate to a customer that they’ve successfully moved to another page. Keep only the necessary framed items (logo, homepage link, headers) consistent.

Finally, in a web environment, the navigation is still critical. But it needs to be short and directed. Your .com environment may have the task of addressing several potential audiences, each with distinct goals. In a mobile environment, consider what you want to accomplish and for whom. Keep it as narrow as possible and it will be far easier to reduce the navigation, page layout and format to the basic elements necessary to guide that audience to its main goal.

It’s no surprise that the mobile world is here to stay. It’s only getting more sophisticated by the day (with some pretty exciting stuff happening in Japan and Europe already). Next holiday season is going to be even “smarter” – use the next 9 months to consider, test and begin finding the mobile strategy that’s right for your business.

Sources: Compete Smart Phone Survey 2009, Forrester Research, 2009, eTailing Group Mobile Survey, 2009, Universal McCann/Platform-A Mobile Survey, 2009, Crowd Science Smartphone Survey, 4/09

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Free Run | blog

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