Even though it still feels like summer outside, now is the time to start planning for the holidays.

The first step is to evaluate all of the tests that have been done throughout the year in order to put your best foot forward.  In addition, it involves reviewing the results from the prior holiday season.  That means determining the most effective:

• communication method (e.g., email, direct mail, multi-channel) by customer segment
• timing (both day of the week and time of day)
• creative (hero images, placement of links, etc.)
• subject lines (when and where to mention free shipping offers, brand or product offers, etc.)
• offers (discount percentages, dollars off, buy one get one free)

Next step is to evaluate any implementation issues from the prior holiday season.  Before coming up with your holiday strategy it is important to determine any limitations or challenges with respect to execution.  Your strategy cannot be developed in a vacuum.  Thus, I recommend that you review what has worked and what did not work with the entire team.

Once all of this information has been gathered, you can develop a holiday strategy.  It should incorporate the lessons from past tests and holiday campaigns as well as encompass:

1.  Start Date. The average holiday campaign begins in October.  Some retailers hold pre-holiday clearance sales and send informational emails to start their holiday campaigns.

2.  Black Friday. For Marketers, the holiday campaigns have been starting earlier and earlier on the calendar.  The same is true for Black Friday.  It is now beginning on Thanksgiving Day for some retailers.  When will yours start?

3.  Cyber Monday. While many digital sales are made on the Monday after Thanksgiving, digital sales are occurring earlier as consumer shop from home.  Will you wait for Cyber Monday or start earlier?

4.  Sequence. If you are using email, you can easily send at least an email a day.  It is important to determine the contact frequency and cadence.  Will all or a segment of your customers receive an email a day, every other day, every third day, etc.?  Will emails be sent only on weekdays or only weekends or a mix?  Will there be a resting period or a maximum number of emails that can be received?

5.  Free Shipping.  Many consumers expect to get free shipping online, especially during the holidays, and will not pay for shipping.

6.  Social Sharing.  Consider how to tie in Facebook, Twitter and other social sites with your campaign.

7.  After Christmas. Lastly, there is also the opportunity for follow on sales after Christmas.  It is the time to promote use of gift cards and purchases of parts or refills.

Social media has radically altered the power of advertising and marketing companies.  With the rise of social media, consumers’ power has increased.  Through blogs, product reviews, Twitter, YouTube and other sites, consumers can voice their feedback and they have an authenticity that often carries more weight with consumers than the companies’ own marketing and advertising.   I know that I carefully read product reviews when contemplating a purchase, whether it be a book on Amazon.com, a shirt from LL Bean or a hotel room in Hawaii.  It used to be that feedback was provided by word of mouth or direct contact with a company.  Now one good or bad review can be seen by a multitude online.

This shift has diluted companies’ power to direct their message and required that they be more responsive to consumer feedback.  Just yesterday a friend told me that he provided a review on a purchase, noting that one of three products he bought did not work.  When he said as much in his product review, he was immediately contacted by the retailer and offered a replacement.  His experience is now business as usual for most companies.  The risks of not being responsive are now too great as one bad review can last a lifetime on the Internet.

At the same time, social media has given companies a channel that enables them to integrate their messaging and engage their consumers.  First, advertisers can now get more value from their mass media.  Ads seen on television have a much longer life now and potentially more power.  They can be seen on websites and YouTube as well as integrated into online campaigns.  Second, consumers can now engage with companies by suggesting and even sometimes creating their own ads, posting their pictures which are then included in ads, etc.  Or they can simply indicate their brand loyalty by becoming fans on Facebook.

While social media has forced companies to be more responsive and in tune with the needs and wishes of consumers, it has also given them a channel by which to communicate more effectively one to one.

While Mark Twain was talking about his own death, there is another reported death that I am thinking about.  Back in January 2009 I included a quote about banner ads being the next direct mail.  I mean no offense to direct mail but the implication was that the value of a banner ad was diminishing.  The belief was that banner ads were being replaced by social media, which is a disruptive technology much in the same way that e-mail marketing has replaced direct mail in many industries and situations.  Direct mail still is a valuable channel but it is being used more selectively than it once was.

Well reports of the death of the banner ad might be premature.  A recent study by eMarketer predicts that banner ad spending in 2010 will be up 8.2%.

The question I am increasingly asked is how do you measure social media and what is its ROI?  Given the economy there has been an increased demand for accountability and measurement.  The question is how do you apply this to a channel that is about brand awareness? 

There is the question of source material.  In many cases this translates into what web sites do you follow?

1. Your company web site(s)
2. Social media web sites (e.g., Facebook, Twitter)
3. Individuals’ personal blogs

What metrics do you measure?  Below are just some ideas.

1. Number of tweets
2. Number and ratio of positive comments
3. Number Facebook fans and Twitter followers
4. Links to personal sites that fans and customers have added to their web sites and blogs
5. Level of engagement with your company web site

Lastly, how do you establish causality?  It is difficult to determine if events in the social space are affecting purchasing behavior in the bricks and mortar space.  As my Statistics Professor said so often, “correlation does not mean causation”.

I worked with a Greek statistician who would always try to correct my pronunciation of the Greek letter chi.  I would say “kai” and he would say something similar to “he”.  It was like he and key combined.  I can’t do it justice so I continued to say kai. 

Regardless of how you pronounce it, the chi square test can be very useful.  In fact, one of my business school classes was spent discussing the uses and assumptions of the chi square test.  I won’t try to summarize a semester’s worth of material into a blog post.  Rather, I wanted to point out that chi square tests are used for categorical data and the only “gotcha” is that you have to use the actual counts (rather than percentages).  It is sensitive to cell counts and requires that there be at least 5 observations per cell. 

The chi square test is a powerful statistical tool as it can tell you if there are significant differences between categories and it is the foundation for CHAID.  CHAID is an abbreviation for CHi-square Automated Interaction Detector.  It is one of the many segmentation techniques used in marketing and, if you plot out the tree that results from CHAID, it is a wonderfully visual way to see differences within your customers and/or prospects.  For CHAID you will need to define a dependent variable and undergo EDA (exploratory data analysis) similar to a modeling project.

One of my clients is focused heavily on e-mailing his customers.  However, it is only part of the equation.  Consumers are increasingly online 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.  Yes, they are still checking e-mails but they are also on Facebook, Twitter and blogs. 

It used to be that the question was direct mail or e-mail?  Now the question is not what channel to use but rather which channels to leverage.  The direct marketing strategy needs to consider traditional direct channels, such as e-mail and direct mail, as well as social networking sites.  The need for integration of branding and messaging has become even more important as consumers have a multitude of ways to learn about your company and its products and services. 

The other challenge with the plethora of channels that have evolved is that consumers are bombarded with information.  Some are abandoning their e-mail accounts because they are overwhelmed by their inboxes.  Others ignore their inboxes in favor of communication channels they control.  I don’t bother sending my sister e-mails anymore because they disappear into the black hole that is her inbox.  However, she will respond instantaneously to a text message and will e-mail me on occasion, when it is the best channel for her to communicate with me.   

As marketers, we need to go where our customers are and offer them relevant and honest information.

Accountable marketing is a lofty goal.  It is the idea that marketing can and should be measured.  It sounds simple but is difficult to implement and execute.  It starts with planning and identifying metrics for success up front and ends with calculating ROI and other relevant metrics as well as incorporating lessons learned into future marketing efforts.

I have written about metrics before.  In fact, my New Year’s Resolutions post included a suggestion to test, measure and learn.  Even in social media there are now agreed upon metrics.  The Interactive Agency Bureau (IAB) has released social media ad metric definitions. 

Given the current tough economic climate, there is no reason not to measure and evaluate your marketing efforts.   How else can you know what worked, what did not work and whether your efforts have met your threshold or definition for success?

Today’s Wall Street Journal had the following comment by Colleen DeCourcy, chief digital officer at Omnicom’s TBWA:

“Banner ads will be the new junk mail.  More and more, reputable companies won’t be buying up the space around the Web sites you visit.  Clicking these ads will become less and less legitimate as brands will endeavor to do things that add more value to you in the social-media and customer-service space.”

SodaHead.com seems to be the exception to the conventional wisdom that click through rates for banner ads are low.  SodaHead is an online community and according to a Wall Street Journal article a few weeks ago, “SodaHead ads enjoy click and conversion rates of as much as 10 times the industry average.”  As I wrote in an earlier post, click through rates for banner ads are typically much less than 1%.  The click through rate refers to the number of times a banner ad was clicked.  For example, if a banner ad was displayed 100 times and it was clicked on once, the click through rate would be 1%.

There are several ways that you can try to increase the likely click through rate.  You can optimize placement by displaying your banner ad on a website with synergy.  Alternatively, you can use rich media to make the ad more noticeable and engaging.  Personalization is also likely to increase clicks.  So how does SodaHead do it?  They ask provocative questions and engage viewers by asking for their opinions.

Though SodaHead has a high click through rate, what is their return on investment (ROI)?  My question remains.  What is the value of a banner ad?  As the Wall Street Journal article points out, SodaHead has yet to make money.

Social media is a hot topic this year and it is likely to remain a hot topic in 2009.  I even found myself talking about it over dinner last night.  That is what happens when two marketers get together for dinner and a movie.  Somehow we end up talking shop.

So you may yawn when I say that I have suggested to a client that she develop an internal blog.  However, it can help her achieve her goals by educating users about an internal resource, disseminating information about enhancements to the system, and reducing calls to the internal help desk by building a community of users that learn from each other.  Believe it or not, there are companies that do not have blogs yet.  I can understand their hesitation.  Blogs result in a loss of control as the blog may move in unintended or undesirable directions.  Further, it can inspire resistance from managers.  There is also the additional work involved as it requires that staff monitor the site and address questions or criticisms at a minimum.    They will probably need to write posts.  Blogs are a lot of work.  Ron Shevlin in his blog states, “a helluva lot of time and effort” went into creating his posts.  (In the interest of full disclosure, I had the pleasure of working with Ron a few years ago.)

To be successful, the blog must focus on what users care about;  it must be about their needs rather than the needs of the company to have credibility and gain acceptance.  If it does so, it will develop a devoted audience.  Again to use Ron’s blog as an example, his post announcing the end of his blog has 55 comments as I write this.  This was after just writing his blog for two years.    I too will miss Ron’s thoughtful posts.