Integrated campaigns using unusual gifts

An unusual gift can grab attention and emphasis a message so here's a simple plan:

1. Choose a client focused campaign theme and identify a gift that meets the theme Mail gift, along with postcard that identifies with the customer issues and reiterates your proposition, along with thought leadership to top prospects
2. 10 days after gift: send email to all prospects to reiterate issues and how you can help using theme to connect to gift and call to action inviting a 15-minute briefing with a sales person - no landing page just prepopulated email.
3. 2 weeks after 1st email: send email promoting how you can help them and how they get the most from your solution e.g. customer services team to help...
4. 3 weeks after DM: send follow up DM related to first DM with postcard that reiterates products value
5. Same week as follow up DM: reiterates product value and invite questions using a mailto link.

15 tips to better public speaking

Content is not king on stage, it's audience engagement...Here's 15 tips on behaviour, visuals &rehearsing:

Behaviour

1. Make eye contact - look at individuals in the audience one at a time for about 5 seconds each to keep your mind set on talking to individuals.
2. Lean forward and move around - 'ready position' will encourage you to move around and want  to talk to the audience.
3. Use gestures and facial expressions - movement catches the eye, the more you move the more your watched.
4. Vary your voice - your energy and excitement about the subject should be communicated through your voice.
5. Drop non-words - 'ums' and 'ahs' chop up your message so pause for a few second to gather thoughts.  
6. Dress for success - you're judged on what you wear, your hair, your jewelry. overdress when in doubt.

Slides & visuals

1. Light on text / heavy on images - use images to illustrate and support point.
2. Keep graphs simple - graphs should be 2-dimensional
3. Use black blank slides - shifts attention back to you after a key point and communicates closure of a section.
4. Go easy on transitions - no more than 2-3 different transitions and not every slide. Audience should hardley notice transitions as distract.
5. Follow 10-20-30 rule - about 10 slides, lasting no more than 20 minutes, font size 30 or larger.
6. Create a handout - if data-heavy, create handout that highlights the key findings so they can take away.

Practice & rehearsals

1. Practice in front of people - practice first 3-4 times (but don't memorise as you loose meaning), read notes before speech then get tips and practice eye contact.
2. Record your presentation - video or audio so know how come across: how look at people, whether leaving pauses, how hear voice, using hands, leaning forward. 
3. Keep rehearsal shorter - on stage you add content, interact with audience, field questions etc so rehearsal will always be about 75% as long.

Email optimisation: Email Images & Buttons

A split test by Philips Norelco’s email marketing team resulted 79.4% more 'Buy Now' button clicks.

Both versions had identical subject lines, offers, and copy but the winning design used

• a button colour that contrasted with the rest of the page
• images that didn't distract from the offer
• an image of the product, as it would appear on a store shelf, vs. the product itself helping put recipients in a shopping mood. 

http://whichtestwon.com/archives/12413

Content to inform the B2B buying decision

Content used to inform decisions when researching a market

Content used to inform decisions when researching a product

Research by Marketing Automatation Software Guide

Infographic: the state of the internet, right now

Brilliant use of animated, constantly updating infographics, which contains some mind-blowing stats about the size and growth of the web.

For example, in the 60 seconds, Amazon sold 4,423 items, and $1.6m was spent on e-commerce. During the same period there were 331 new internet users out of a total of 1.97bn worldwide.

Click on the link below to see more...

http://econsultancy.com/uk/blog/7773-infographic-the-internet-worldwide