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Simplicity Is Superior When It Comes to Strategic Marketing Solutions

Albert Einstein is quoted as saying “If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.” Whether he actually said those words is in question, but the idea is not new and the concept should be put to the test whenever you’re developing strategic solutions.

Chuck's strategic marketing solutions post
Temple University students won the 2016 Collegiate ECHO Marketing Challenge. Here’s the video.

Albert Einstein is quoted as saying “If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.” Whether he actually said those words is in question, but the idea is not new and the concept should be put to the test whenever you’re developing strategic solutions.

Nobel Laureate Richard Feynman also backed the relationship between simplicity and understanding. He once agreed to explain a complex physics concept to a freshman class at Cal Tech. He later came back and said,

“You know, I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t reduce it to the freshman level. That means we really don’t understand it.”

Philosophers and scientists have historically supported the benefits of simple explanations. Simple hypotheses are easier to test and prove. Occam’s Razor (also the name of Web analytics guru Avinash Kaushik’s blog) is a problem-solving principle attributed to William of Ockham (c. 1287–1347), an English Franciscan friar, scholastic philosopher and theologian. The principle can be interpreted as stating:

Among competing hypotheses, the one with the fewest assumptions should be selected. (Wikipedia).

Okham’s actual Latin phrase is “Non sunt multiplicanda entia sine necessitate,“ which translates to “Entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity.”

Sometimes we overthink strategic solutions when simple answers are hidden in plain sight. I had the honor and pleasure of working with the Temple University team that won the 2016 Gold Collegiate ECHO. (Victoria Bak, Mollee Douglass, Rachel Gallucci, Niamh Murphy, and Finnian Saylor). Their challenge was to increase awareness and consideration of Facebook Custom Audiences. It’s a B-to-B offering where businesses share their customer files with Facebook, and in turn, Facebook includes the businesses’ sponsored posts in their customers’ News Feeds, as well as in the feeds of look-alike Facebook users.

The team spent a lot of time trying to define the best target audience for the product. They debated large and small companies, online and offline retailers, universities and cultural organizations, and several other potential targets. They pored over NAICS codes to match them up with list counts to define the size of their universe. Yet they couldn’t agree on how to simply define the audience.

Then, they took a step back and asked some fundamental questions:

  • What are the requirements for using Facebook Custom Audiences?
    First and foremost, you need a customer email file.
  • What do businesses do with their email files? They send promotional email.
  • What happens to promotional email? Only 20 percent of it is opened and read.
    By contrast, a larger percentage of people notice promotions in their Facebook News Feed.

Suddenly, their target audience was simply defined as anyone who has a customer email file (Entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity), and their strategy became simple and clear:

Position Custom Audiences as a more efficient and effective alternative to promotional email.

It was this simple, elegant strategy that led to their creative campaign, “Don’t be spam. Be seen.”

You can see the team tell the story of their road to a simple strategic solution in this video.

Temple University Students Win 2016 Collegiate ECHO Marketing Challenge https://t.co/YS6PaxKUPQ

— (((HeatherFletcher))) (@HeatherReporter) February 7, 2017

The simplest solutions are always the best.

Author Chuck McLeesterPosted on February 8, 2017February 8, 2017Categories Marketing and Sales, Social Media MarketingTags 2016 Gold Collegiate ECHO, Email, Facebook, Facebook Custom Audiences, Marketers, Marketing, Occam's Razor, Promotional email, Retailers, Solutions, Strategic, Strategic marketing solutions, Temple, Temple University, VideoLeave a comment on Simplicity Is Superior When It Comes to Strategic Marketing Solutions

Cyber Monday: How It Stacked Up

Online retailers can finally breathe a sigh of relief. After months of doom and gloom, Cyber Monday (Nov. 30) brought with it a glimmer of sunshine as consumers shopped online in record numbers.

As an editor, tons of statistics, figures and surveys — Cyber Monday, Black Friday, etc. —  come to my desk. So I thought I’d give you a quick roundup of some of my favorite Cyber Monday stats:

Online retailers can finally breathe a sigh of relief. After months of doom and gloom, Cyber Monday (Nov. 30) brought with it a glimmer of sunshine as consumers shopped online in record numbers.

As an editor, tons of statistics, figures and surveys — Cyber Monday, Black Friday, etc. — come to my desk. So I thought I’d give you a quick roundup of some of my favorite Cyber Monday stats:

∗ $887 million was spent online, up 5 percent versus a year ago, matching the biggest online spending day on record, Dec. 9, 2008, according to a comScore press release.

∗ MarketLive’s retailers had a 19 percent year-over-year increase in revenue and a 43.6 percent increase in traffic on Cyber Monday, according to a company press release.

∗ On Cyber Monday, 71 percent of the major online retailers tracked by the Retail Email Blog sent at least one promotional email, up from 70 percent on Cyber Monday 2008, according to a report by Chad White, the research director at Smith-Harmon, a Responsys company. In fact, White said that Cyber Monday was both the most popular retail email day of this year and also the most popular of all time. What’s more, on Cyber Sunday, 45 percent of retailers sent at least one promotional email, up from 36 percent last year. That made Nov. 29 the biggest Sunday ever for retail email marketing.

∗ One in four email marketing messages wasn’t delivered to recipients’ inboxes on Cyber Monday, according to a press release that contained deliverability data from Pivotal Veracity.

∗ Cyber Monday sales were up 13.7 percent versus Cyber Monday 2008, according to the Coremtrics Benchmark Cyber Monday Report. In addition, the average dollar amount consumers spent per online order rose 38.2 percent from Cyber Monday last year ($180.03 versus $130.24), with much of the growth coming from the apparel category. Finally, consumers bought 30 percent more items per order on Cyber Monday 2009 compared to Cyber Monday 2008.

∗ As of 4 p.m. EST on Cyber Monday, eBags.com’s sales were up 50.1 percent versus last year’s Cyber Monday, according to Peter Cobb, eBag’s co-founder and senior vice president of marketing.

∗ “Cyber monday online deals,” “cyber monday discounts” and “cyber monday bargains” topped the list of Cyber Monday Google Hot Trends, according to a Dec. 1 blog post on the Google Retail Advertising Blog called “Cyber Monday’s Hot Search Trends.”

∗ Amazon was the top visited retail website on Cyber Monday, seeing a 44 percent increase in visits compared to 2008, according to a report from Experian Hitwise.

∗ For the third consecutive year, PayPal saw double-digit growth in online sales — i.e., total payment volume — on Cyber Monday, according to a company press release.

All pretty impressive, no? Despite the economy, online retailers seem to be meeting consumers’ holiday shopping needs this year — whether it’s due to fantastic online sales, easy-to-navigate websites, the convenience of shopping online or great customer service. Whatever the reason, let’s hope this good momentum continues.

Happy selling!

Author Melissa CampanelliPosted on December 2, 2009November 25, 2015Categories E-CommerceTags Company press release, ComScore press release, Consumers, Cyber, Marketing, Online, Online retailers, Online sales, Online spending day, Press, Press release, Promotional email, Research director, Retail email marketing, Retailers, Sales, Senior Vice President1 Comment on Cyber Monday: How It Stacked Up
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