text:
October 2011
E-mail Marketing ( P art 2 )
New Study Identified What Makes
Springboard Research's Top 10 Brands Social – and How, Page 4 Predictions in 2011, page 22
Fuji Xerox's One-to-One Marketing Yahoo: Science is Insight, Solutions in High Demand (Part 2), Not Hindsight!, page 41 Page 37
4As Re-launch of IAA Singapore
Chapter Safeguards Global Out There Media's State-of-the-art Connectivity and Intelligence for Mobile Advertising Marketplace, Local Players, Page 42 page 44
Dear Reader, We all know that the way in which marketers communicate with their customers and each other has changed drastically and permanently with the rise of social networks. Email marketers must recognize this and react accordingly to remain relevant, sustainable, and successful. Read in this issue how to stay competitive in the exciting world of digital marketing, as you most probably couldnâ€&#x;t snatch a seat of our event next week. A huge number of digital marketing experts from the region expressed their interest in the roundtable forum that offers them a great opportunity to discuss and explore their future online strategies with their like-minded peers. Watch out for the next issue of Asian e-Marketing in two week that will have a focus on Search Engine Marketing this November and December. Best wishes,
Daniela La Marca Editor-in-Chief, Asian e-Marketing
This issue is brought to you by CMO Council:
Daniela La Marca Editor-in-Chief Asian eMarketing
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EMAIL MARKETING (Part 2) RESEARCH, ANALYSIS & TRENDS
New Study Identified What Makes Brands Social – and How
Setting-up Your Email Distribution List the Right Way
Checklist for your Welcome Message
What you should know before running a Social Ad Campaign in Asia
Five Common Afflictions of Sales Teams
Experian CheetahMail reveals Key Trends and Proven Strategies for Flash Sale Email Marketing
The Good Old Email Remains as Popular as Ever
Hydra Advises Digital Marketing Specialists to move beyond an Isolated Approach
Fuji Xerox's One-to-One Marketing Solutions in High Demand (Part 2)
Transactional Emails get 20% higher Click Rates
How to Mix SEO, AdWords, and Global PR Global B2B Communications
IDC Expects "Big Data" to Drive the Next Wave of Investments in Business Analytics in Asia
4As Re-launch of IAA Singapore Chapter S afeguards Global Connectivity and Intelligence for Local Players
Angel's Gate: Asia's First Business-focused Reality Show
China Holds Key to Growth Say Global Business Leaders
Mobile Internet Access Outpacing Fixed-line Internet Access
Overwhelming Demand for Integrated Charging and Policy Management Solutions to Address the Data Monetization Challenge
The Top 10 Singapore Brands Continue to Dominate
Regus survey identifies respect is key to holding onto good workers
Facebook is More Popular in Asia Pacific than other Global Geographies
Privacy and Legal Certainty in Online Marketing and what you should know about it 46 MMA Releases New Privacy Policy Guidelines for Mobile Apps for Public Comment 48
Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME)
Email Marketing: In Email Marketing: In the Beginning it's all about an Effective Registration Form
Individual Relevance Determines Success in Email Marketing of Today (Behavioral Email Marketing Part 2)
Text Mining for Golden Customer Insights
IMPRINT ADVERTISE WITH US! Take a look at our rates!
New Study Identified What Makes Brands Social – and How Weber Shandwick partnered with Forbes Insights to identify what makes brands social – and how. The research report "Socializing Your Brand: A Brand"s Guide to Sociability" was conducted via an online survey in Spring 2011 with 1,897 senior executives from high revenue companies across 50 countries in North America, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Asia Pacific and Latin America. Executive respondents were selected for their personal involvement in marketing, communications or public relations strategy and utilization of digital channels as part of that strategy. Becoming social is an imperative for brands today, and while many are embracing the digital revolution, substantial improvements have yet to be made to build a brand with a distinctive social identity, according to the new global Weber Shandwick study in partnership with Forbes Insights. According to the study, global brand executives believe that sociability is growing rapidly as a contributor to a brand"s overall reputation, from 52% today with a projected estimate of 65% three years from now. Yet, a large majority (84%) report that their brand"s sociability is not yet up to world class brand standards, despite the fact that nearly all of them (87%) say they have a social media brand strategy. What does it take to be among the elite set of world class brands?
The study found that being a world class social brand means interacting with target audiences and creating original content that heightens the interactive experience, going beyond broadcasting news, deals or events. World class brands get their communities of interest engaged and develop meaningful ties over shared passions or commonalities. They demonstrate a genuine interest in what their audiences say and listen carefully to responses. World class sociability rests on the collaboration of the entire organization to integrate the brand personality across all communications channels and means that brand managers are prepared to accept all the risks that come with the rewards of venturing into this new era of customer engagement. Socializing Your Brand – Risks vs. Rewards "While there are inherent risks in socializing a brand, it is no longer an option to go without a social presence." said Leslie Gaines-Ross, Chief Reputation Strategist, Weber Shandwick, adding that "Now, more than ever, executives need to harness this opportunity to connect with customers, facilitate a conversation and encourage feedback. Their reputations and livelihood depend on it." Despite the rapid integration of social media into marketing plans, only a handful of global organizations are mastering its potential for brand-building, according to Weber Shandwick. Never before have marketers been presented with the vast and meaningful audience
engagement opportunities that social media offers and adopted these promising tools. Yet, tapping into the opportunities takes careful consideration, enterprise-wide commitment and ample resource allocation. Weber Shandwick put its collective heads together to identify nine drivers of brand sociability, which are the following: 1. It's not the medium - and it's more than the message World class APAC brands are much more likely than the average APAC brand to create original content, 49% of them create content specifically for social media purposes, compared to 23% for all APAC companies. World class brands depend upon much more than just the medium to make themselves social. 2. Put your brands in motion World class APAC companies do more than experiment with social media tools. They apply their tools in more social ways than the average APAC company. For example, they are 52% more likely to have a branded YouTube channel, 39% more likely to offer brand-related mobile content and 36% more likely to have a dedicated SMS/text address for customer service. 3. Integrate or die APAC world class organizations are much better integrators of brand personality - they are more than twice as likely as other APAC organizations to have a consistent brand personality across all social and traditional media channels and to include a social media element in their traditional print or broadcast messaging.
across all channels to amplify key messages." survey respondent. 5. Listen more than you talk APAC world class companies finetune their messages to customers and integrate what is on their fans" minds into their brand stories. More than twice as many APAC world class brands have changed a product or service based on fan recommendations compared to the average APAC brand. 6. Count what matters meaningful engagement APAC world class brands place more weight than other APAC brands on metrics that impact the bottom-line when measuring social media effectiveness. "Revenue driven by social media" is ranked #1 by APAC world class companies but only #8 by other APAC companies as a key metric. 7. Think global Executives managing APAC world class brands consider global reach the most important driver of corporate reputation while the average APAC executive ranks global reach last. "Our social branding goals involve a very firm commitment to increase the recognition of the company"s globalization." survey respondent. 8. Go outside to get inside APAC world class companies are more than twice as likely as average APAC companies to engage outside support to evaluate their brand"s social performance.
9. Be vigilant To protect their social brand integrity, APAC world class brands are always on high alert. Compared to the average APAC company, they are 129% more vigilant since WikiLeaks has been in the news and are 92% more likely to be concerned about privacy violations. "Socializing Your Brand" did not find many differences across regions, which Weber Shandwick and Forbes Insights explain is due to the fact that the social media phenomenon is a global one. Although some geographies are more technologically developed than others, they all embrace the same opportunities and face the same challenges of using social media to connect with customers in a meaningful way. So, for instance, APAC brand executives are significantly more likely than executives in other regions to report difficulty in quantifying social media results/ gauging ROI (27% vs.19% in North America, 17% in EMEA and 14% in Latin America). In fact, this is, according to the report APAC executives" number one barrier to using social media more extensively. APAC is also the most likely region to cite lack of talent to effectively implement social media as a barrier, which could be a reason for or by-product of ROI challenges. ( Source: W eber Shandwick) ♦ By MediaBUZZ
4. Make social central 58% of APAC world class organizations coordinate social media from one department vs. 41% of all APAC firms. "The most important thing we can do is to centrally plan social media activities
Experian CheetahMail reveals Key Trends and Proven Strategies for Flash Sale Email Marketing Experian CheetahMail, a unit of Experian Marketing Services and a leading global technology services provider of integrated email, social, mobile and display marketing, revealed its latest analysis illustrating how flash sale emails significantly outperform other types of offers in campaigns. The study provides marketers with a thorough understanding of trends surrounding flash sale email marketing along with tactical advice they can apply to their programs. Email is a key traffic driver for advertising Flash Sales and represents 18% of the referrals to flash sale websites - higher than social (13%) and search (11%) according to Experian Hitwise data. Some of the key trends and best practices outlined in the study include:
Three-hour Flash Sales have the best transactionto-click rates, which are 59% higher, as well as the highest transaction rates (14%). US visits to Flash Sales Websites increased 59% in August 2011 versus August 2010, according to Experian Hitwise.
Transaction rates are 23% higher for evening Flash Sales compared with lunchtime sales, and revenue per email is 30% higher in the evening. 74% of mailers have higher transaction-to-click rates and 67% have higher transaction rates on their Flash Sales compared with their yearly rate.
"The aim of this study was to provide our clients with actionable data they can use to develop more compelling and response-driven email campaigns this holiday season and beyond," said Rachel Bergman, General Manager and Senior Vice President, Experian CheetahMail. "Continuous and calculated program optimization is crucial to maximizing ROI. It is our job to help clients get the very most out of each communication they have with their subscribers." To discover the aforementioned trends and strategies pertaining to flash sale email marketing, Experian CheetahMail"s Strategic Services team analyzed the performance of flash sales compared with bulk promotional campaigns from January 2010 through February 2011. For the purposes of this study, flash sales were defined as sales lasting less than 24 hours. To download a copy of the study, Top 5 flash sale tips, please visit http://www.experian.com/marketingservices/register-top-5-flash-sale-tips.html ♦
The Good Old Email Remains as Popular as Ever Even after almost five decades after its introduction, email is well established as a communication tool in everybodyâ€&#x;s daily work and its intensity is actually even still increasing. So it is no surprise that email marketing is getting a bit long in the tooth, but will continue to be amongst the most cost-efficient and popular communication tools, according to research from MarketTools, commissioned by Microsoft. Their study revealed just a few months ago that good old email will remain the dominant channel into the foreseeable future, despite the growth of social and mobile.
The research surveyed 1,268 professionals and students about their use of communication channels such as email, social media, mobile and instant messaging and found that, while social media and mobile messaging use is on the increase, email use increased the most. In addition, MarketTools' research found that over the next five years, 96% of respondents expect their email use at work to increase (45%) or stay the same (51%), and almost the same number, 91%, expect their home email use to rise (36%) or remain the same (55%).
Email communication enjoys in particular great popularity when users want to send messages to multiple people at once (74%), want to have a written record of a conversation (73%) or have detailed information such as a document (65%). Furthermore, many expect that the availability of more accurate, richer subscriber data, larger and more highly-targetable email lists, multi-list de-duplication capabilities, and im proved s ubsc r iber s egm entation technologies, and the like will lead to further increases in direct email marketing ROI. Companies that fail to appropriately evolve their use of email as a marketing tool will be at a significant strategic and competitive disadvantage, most experts believe and all agree upon the fact that email will remain one of the cheapest available communications tools for some time to come. So take a look at the journey of email, by taking a look at Microsoft"s rather lengthy infographic, depicting the evolution of email since its introduction in 1965. You probably have already seen it, but as it provides a proper glimpse into the historical milestones of email, I am adding it here for you again: Evolution of Email Infographic That"s all well and good, but it is in question if direct email marketing will continue as a worthwhile and profitable strategy for most companies in the future, considering the continuing exponential growth of unsolicited commercial emails. Permission marketing is a mixed blessing as well. Since it has become main stream it is no longer the differentiator it used to be - neither for marketers nor users. Thus, in the future, only permission-based email campaigns that are able to achieve a high degree of "inbox visibility" will provide marketers with worthwhile positive ROI. Most probably only those that develop the competencies and relationships to implement strategies that separates them from the shifts in market dynamics at an early stage, will ultimately achieve a real competitive advantage. So always keep up with changes and adapt your strategies to the quietly shifting currents that underpin the email marketing space! ♦ By Daniela La Marca (Source: Microsoft)
Hydra Advises Digital Marketing Specialists to move beyond an Isolated Approach A white paper by Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) marketing technology provider Hydra, warns digital marketing channel specialists of their risky approach, if they continue to work in silos. Titled "Natural Search Specialist, should Paid Search matter to you?", the white paper highlights why it is in the natural search specialist"s best interest - be they inhouse or agency-based - to plan and execute campaigns with other disciplines in mind, as opposed to working in isolation. "Today, it is simply unacceptable for Natural Search specialists to plan budget optimization without considering Paid Search", says Ruth Zohrer, Solutions Consultant at Hydra. "If Natural Search specialists want to be successful in improving returns, it is imperative they move away from looking at Natural Search metrics alone and start looking at the big picture." Hydra"s white paper focuses on five key points from keyword research, competitor benchmarking to budget optimization, besides admitting that it is a mistake to not consider the Paid Search competitor landscape in natural search competitor analysis, as few channels are driven by competitor activity as much as Natural Search.
A competitor"s overhaul of their pages or back-link profile can lead to dramatic changes in their composition of search engine results pages (SERPs) and cause movements up or down the web rankings for other sites. Hence competitor research is an integral part to successful Natural Search campaign management. By regularly monitoring competitors, Natural Search specialists assess the success of their strategies, identify new methods and benchmark performance fluctuations. Few Natural Search specialists, however, consider the Paid Search competitor landscape in their Natural Search competitor analysis and therefore obtain only a fraction of the overall picture that they must consider. Zohrer points out strong brands are increasingly running campaigns on both channels, and historically, most brands have used Paid Search to substitute for Natural Search performance when not in the Top 10 SERPs. "Natural Search specialists should supplement their competitor list with cross-channel key performance indicators (KPIs) to identify true leaders in their industry, as well as uncover the weaknesses of vulnerable competitors," says Zohrer. "This information is particularly useful in choosing which battles to fight: if a site is considerably difficult to outperform in Natural Search, resources could be allocated to another
keyword instead of wasting them in pursuit of a rank that is not realistic."
measures that worsen performance further, another aspect the white paper raises for adding Paid Search into the equation.
In Natural Search, sudden drops in performance can often be puzzling, raising questions such as: Are competitors boosting their pages to outperform rival sites? Might this drop in performance have resulted from recent changes implemented? Has the search engine released another update to the algorithm? Is this caused by other issues like industry-wide trends?
Therefore, according to Hydra, Natural Search specialists should make the evaluation of both Natural and Paid Search data a permanent habit when evaluating performance and take a step back and analyse Natural Search performance in conjunction with Paid Search performance.
Without the appropriate frame of reference, Natural Search specialists can spend a lot of time trying to answer the unknown. In worst case scenarios, misleading evidence can result in corrective
According to Hydra"s Zohrer, this will help pinpoint if any sudden drops might be a channel-specific issue or a wider phenomenon affecting performance such as seasonal variations or industrywide trends.
Additionally, since search is experienced as one channel by users (Natural Search + Paid Search), a sharp performance improvement in Paid Search paired to a sharp decrease in Natural Search performance may also hint at potential strategy cannibalization between channels. "None of the above alternatives can be properly considered without incorporating Paid Search into the analysis, which is why Natural Search specialists should make the evaluation of both Natural and Paid Search data a permanent habit wh e n e v a l u a t i n g p erf orm a nce." (Source: Hydra) By MediaBUZZ
Transactional Emails get 20% higher Click Rates Transactional emails serve first of all only one purpose: they confirm a specific action of the recipient, such as a purchase, sign up, or a change. But that doesn't tap their full potential: transactional emails are also suitable as a brand ambassador and as a vehicle for cross-and up-selling activities. They can provide marketers with great opportunities in improving customer service, gaining repeat sales and deepening customer engagement. Triggered by customers" buying behavior, the progressive email marketers of today send branded, relevant and engaging HTML messages to take full advantage of the high level of customer interest and brand engagement. According to a recent study of the email marketing provider Experian Marketing Services, transactionrelated emails achieve around 20 percent higher click rates than regular junk mail and have on top an open rate of 47 percent. The success of transactional emails can be further enhanced through the incorporation of links to social networks, taking advantage of their secret of success interactivity. But let"s not go deeper into the rapid growth of Facebook & Co. and the evolving opportunities for marketing at this point, as it is in general the hottest topic of 2011.
For the channel, emailing the integration of links to the company's social media presence is an effective way to strengthen the involvement of customers for the brand and to make full use of the multiplier effect. In that way, the customer can be encouraged to interact closely with the company, share individual experiences with others and strengthen the brand identity further, for instance, through special promotions that may arouse the interest of new potential customers. Thus, to no surprise Experian"s study shows that transaction emails with integrated links to social media achieve a 55 percent higher click-through rate than those without, consolidating the positive results transactional emails achieve – especially due to their personalization, individual approach and customized messages. There are many examples of success, as the continuous integration of social media links in transactional emails can generate potential new customers who might otherwise be barely reached by the provider and would have been hardly aware of the brand. Thus, it ultimately increases the company's success rates. The complete study "transactional emails" from Experian Marketing Services is available for download under http://www.experian.com/marketing-services/ register-transactional-email-report.html ♦ By Daniela La Marca
Experian's Quick Tips on Transactional Email Remember to say "Thank you"
Enhance the customer experience
Giving thanks matters. All messages related to the purchase life cycle should include some type of messaging thanking customers for their business. Shipping confirmations that did not say "Thank you" had a 35% lower click and transaction rate than those that included it.
Include links for site navigation, order status, customer service, email subscription and social media. The goal is to make it as easy and inviting as possible for your customers to stay engaged with your brand. When mailing to first-time purchasers, inclusion of a rewards program sign-up link will serve to strengthen brand affinity and stimulate subsequent purchase behavior.
Maximize branding opportunity Comply with the US CAN-SPAM Act Use HTML to optimize the look and feel of transactional emails. Including both static and dynamic content pertaining to cross-sell products and services will increase transactions and broaden awareness of your produc ts . W hen pos s ible, us e d yn am ic recommendation engines, next-most-likely-to-buy models or business rules such as seasonality.
Do not include an offer as the subject line or as the main message. Do, also, include a message assuring the customer of the security of the transaction, and offer a link to your Privacy Policy. Source: Experian
IDC Expects "Big Data" to Drive the Next Wave of Investments in Business Analytics in Asia The "Big Data" phenomenon seems to have appeared from almost nowhere, but in reality, some aspects of this emerging trend are not new. We have known about the exponential growth of data volumes for some time and according to a recent IDC Digital Universe study published in June 2011, the amount of information created and replicated will surpass 1.9 zettabytes (1.8 trillion gigabytes) in 2011, growing by almost nine times in just five years. Other aspects of "Big Data" are, however, indeed new. The variety of the data sources is growing at a rapid rate, particularly as we move into the semi-structured and unstructured realm - e.g. social media interactions, rich media files and geospatial information. The other emerging factor that organizations need to contend with is the increased velocity at which data is being generated, such as real-time sensor data feeds from smart meters. "These new aspects of 'Big Data' are creating unprecedented levels of complexity for IT executives, particularly as they realize that these massive data sets cannot be processed, managed and analyzed using traditional databases and architectures," says Philip Carter, Associate Vice President at IDC Asia Pacific. "What is becoming clearer is that the real value from 'Big Data' will be derived from the high-end analytics, predominantly using data mining, statistics, optimization and forecasting type of capabilities to proactively turn this data into intelligence to drive business benefits and better decision making capabilities."
In line with this trend, as businesses in Asia invest to drive growth in emerging markets, they are harnessing analytics-led solutions to gain better customer insights, and manage risk and financial metrics more effectively while striving for unique market differentiation. IDC"s surveys found that business analytics ranked as the top rated technology that would allow organizations to gain significant competitive advantage in the year ahead. The approach to business analytics in the era of "Big Data", however, will be significantly different to the traditional approach. "For example, one of the key differences between traditional analytics and what we are dealing with in terms of the 'Big Data' era is that we are gathering data that we may or may not need. From an analysis perspective, this means "we don"t know what we don"t know". To run an analysis on 'Big Data', the variables and models are likely to be entirely new. Therefore, a different infrastructure strategy and perhaps most importantly, new skill sets, are required," adds Philip. To cope with the challenges that "Big Data" poses, organizations must begin looking at deploying not only the applications traditionally used for Business Analytics (BA), but also the supporting architecture in order to scale efficiently. IDC recommends looking at cloud bursting, the deployment of analytical appliances and creating truly scalable enterprise architectures that leverage the attributes of high performance computing. This approach should also allow for the deployment of new technologies and frameworks to assist with the analysis of large pools of disparate, unstructured data that also requires, of course, new technical skill sets.
China Holds Key to Growth Say Global Business Leaders China holds the key to growth opportunities for businesses around the world in the next two to three years, according to global research released by Allen & Overy recently. The report examines global business confidence, the shifting balance of economic power, plans for future growth and barriers to market entry. When asked to identify the three markets that presented the best opportunities for growth for their business, global executives ranked China the clear number one with 44% of respondents naming it, well ahead of India (34%), the United States (23%), Brazil (14%) and the UK (12%). China received its strongest "vote of confidence" from respondents in South Korea, with three quarters (75%) of respondents targeting China as a key growth market, followed by Germany (69%) and Brazil (60%). Allen & Overy conducted in-depth research among 1,000 business leaders from large international companies across 19 countries. The report is the first in a series looking at how Asia's rapid growth and development is expected to influence business decision making in the future.
While the world looks to China for growth, China has been seizing its own opportunities for growth around the world. Analysis of FDI data from A&O's Investment Perspectives shows that there has been a 457% increase in China's FDI outflows between 2005 and 2010, when they reached US$68 billion. China believes that its best opportunities for growth lie with India (27%), followed by the US (25%) and then China (19%). The wealth of opportunities is creating a feeling of economic stability, which is the key driver behind Chinese business leaders being among the most confident globally. Sixty-five percent of Chinese business leaders say they are very confident about their business's prospects in the next 24 months, compared to 53% globally. The findings of the report also confirm the growing strength and influence of Asian economies, with Asia Pacificâ€&#x;s economic influence seen to be rising by 75% of those surveyed. Europe and North America received the highest scores from business leaders saying their economic influence is in decline, with 22% and 19% respectively. However, respondents in China and Hong Kong were less inclined to agree, with only 12% saying North America was in decline.
Globally, business leaders believe a Eurozone sovereign debt default is the greatest threat to the global economy; Chinese executives see more pressing concerns closer to home. One-third of respondents from China say an Asian economic slowdown is the biggest threat, followed by protectionism (17%) and inflation (15%). In Hong Kong, a Eurozone sovereign default is still seen as the biggest threat by 25%, with an Asian economic slowdown and inflation tied in second with 15% choosing both.
While China presents the best growth opportunities globally, it is also perceived as the hardest market to enter due to barriers to entry, according to 21% of executives globally - closely followed by the United States (19%), Russia (17%) and Germany (12%). The regulatory environment is identified as the largest hurdle to market entry in all of the identified top growth markets. A copy of the 50 Degrees East: Opportunities and Challenges Report can be downloaded at www.allenovery.com/50degreeseast ♌
Mobile Internet Access Outpacing Fixed-line Internet Access Based on research conducted by On Device Research among 8,350 respondents in nine countries across five continents, the Mobile Entertainment Forum (MEF) revealed that mobile is increasingly the primary platform for internet access.
rises to 73% of respondents in Indonesia, with 63% having sent airtime to someone else - the highest share by country.
According to its Global Consumer Survey (GCS) report, 72% access the mobile internet globally on a daily basis with 18% no longer using fixed line internet access whatsoever.
Meanwhile it is reported that 85% in India, 80% in Indonesia and 84% in Singapore are using their mobile phone to research or purchase a digital or physical product. Findings across all regions concur that the vast majority of respondents are actively using their mobile for the purchase of goods and items.
In each individual market, the number of consumers accessing the mobile internet daily is higher than the number accessing fixed-line internet - 74% in Singapore, 71% in Indonesia and 67% in India are accessing the mobile internet daily. Mobile Banking is Widespread The report also illustrates how consumers are engaging in banking, payments and commerce via mobile - 44% in India and 48% in Singapore have engaged in some form of banking or financial activity on their mobile, including balance checking and transfer of funds. This
Mobile Commerce: Considerable Scope for Growth
Colin Miles, MEF Asia Chairman, sees a seismic shift in mobile content and commerce consumption taking place and Asian markets spearheading this progress. MEFâ€&#x;s GCS report clearly demonstrates how mobile has increasingly become the platform of choice for internet access and reinforces how consumers are using mobile connected devices for a wide range of content and commerce activities including research, payments and financial activities.
Fears, however, around security are cited as well and seen as the greatest barrier to wider adoption of mobile commerce, as MEF Global Board Chairman, Andrew Bud commented: "This global research illustrates many positive findings regarding consumer engagement across a wide range of mobile
content and commerce activities in developed and developing markets. However, with 27% of consumers stating they would use mobile to make purchases more often if security was addressed, the need to build trust further in order to satisfy growing consumer demand is a clear industry call to action.
There is work to be done, and MEF"s G lobal M -Comm erce initiative is already addressing the issue of security as a core focus. We invite all forward-looking companies to take part." The full report is available to download here. ♦ By MediaBUZZ
Overwhelming Demand for Integrated Charging and Policy Management Solutions to Address the Data Monetization Challenge Amdocs, a leading provider of customer experience systems, released the findings of a global research report, conducted by analyst firm Heavy Reading, which highlights the importance for service providers around the world to integrate charging and policy management capabilities to enable their future pricing strategies for data services. The research is based on 64 qualitative interviews with decision makers in director, vice president or chief executive roles from 32 service providers from across Europe (13), North America (9) and Asia-Pacific (10), from both IT and marketing departments, and comes to the conclusion that the recent rise in new data price plans is being driven by the need for service providers to offer customers an improved data experience and to better monetize their investments in network capacity. "We can expect new data price plans to flood the market as data usage skyrockets with the introduction of improved tablets and smartphones, such as the iPhone 5, BlackBerry Torch and the Nokia N series," said Ari Banerjee, Senior Analyst, Heavy Reading.
The research shows a global consensus that the integration of charging and policy management capabilities is required to monetize the new data pricing strategies. Key research findings reveal that charging subscribers based on the customer experience provided is gaining mindshare, but existing systems are challenged to enable it: Marketing departments want to introduce more sophisticated data price plans -
83% of respondents say their marketing organizations are asking IT to enable innovative data price plans; 90%+ say their companies are looking to create packages across lines of business, customer types and payment methods; 86% of providers plan to launch tiered pricing plans; 82% plan to launch single data plans for multiple devices (e.g. tablets, smartphones, etc.); 67% plan to launch family plans.
Integrated charging and policy management capabilities are required to enable these more sophisticated data price plans -
85% of respondents see a need to integrate charging and policy management capabilities. Integration between charging and policy management will allow providers to offer a better cus tom er ex per ienc e by introducing plans that relate to the device type, network status, customer information across all lines of business and other parameters.
IT organizations find it difficult to deliver -
80% of respondents do not think their existing policy m anagem ent s ystems, deployed to support networkrelated use cases (bandwidth management, fair usage, bill shock) can support more advanced use cases, such as
data plans across multiple lines of business, payment methods and spend limits, and more; 10% have tried to integrate charging and policy management systems and failed.
"This survey validates the need for better integrated charging and policy management capabilities in order for service providers to create offer and monetize the next generation of data services," said Reb ec c a Pr udh om m e, V ic e President of Product and Solutions Marketing at Amdocs. "But we must remember that end customers also want to get their new services in a simple and intuitive manner. This is exactly where value-based pricing should come into play. For example, a movie package that has data and speed prerequisites already embedded into it for a highquality experience will offer end customers the ease of use and personalized services for which they are willing to pay more."
Amdocs" recent acquisition of leading policy management vendor Bridgewater Systems will enable the company to offer the market a pre-integrated convergent charging and policy management solution, scalable to meet the needs of the largest service providers. The Amdocs Convergent Charging software incorporates Amdocs" innovative, real-time charging technology - Amdocs Turbo Charging - and holds the industry record for real-time charging performance, demonstrating the ability to process 276 million prepaid calls during peak calling hours. (Source: Amdocs) ♦ By MediaBUZZ
The Top 10 Singapore Brands Continue to Dominate Brand Finance Plc. released their fifth annual "Top 100 Singapore Brandsâ€? league table showing strong growth from the countryâ€&#x;s top brands. The Top 10 Singapore Brands have been valued at US$18.01 billion in 2011, storming ahead of the remaining 90 brands featured in the leagues that have a total combined value of US$35.042 billion. Two brands not previously featured in the Brand Finance Top 100 Singapore Brands entered the leagues in the top 10. Astra International achieved fourth position and Flextronics squeezed into the top 10 at number eight. Despite competition from growing brands, the top three brands from 2010 held steady retaining their coveted positions. Singapore Airlines continues to fly high taking the top place for the fourth consecutive year, despite a moderate brand value increase of just 3% (US$3.75 billion). This compares to an overall average brand value growth of 26.1% amongst the top 10 brands. Singapore Airlines has a comfortable lead of US$656 million over the number two ranked brand Wilmar International.
The top three risers by brand value growth amongst the top 10 brands were Great Eastern (83%), UOB (37%) and DBS (34%). This is in line with the general trend around the world of financial brands rebounding after the 2008 crisis. These three brands, however, have achieved a more marked recovery than their western peers because of their proximity to major rapidly developing economies. DBS Bank remained at the number three position increasing its brand value to US$2.10 billion, a brand value growth of 34% over 2010. It is building its brand presence in the three key markets of Southeast Asia, South Asia and Greater China as it seeks to diversify its revenues away from its home market, through a major regional brand campaign. SingTel also kept their number five position with a 25% increase in brand value at US$1.35 billion. Overall, the three new brands in the top 10 had a combined brand value of US$4.09 billion. The top 10 brands added an impressive 30.17% to the combined brand value, with Wilmar International contributing the most as the brand value gained US$600 million.
Similar to other Asian markets, there was also a sharp contrast in the contribution of the top 10 compared to the next 10 brands (51.4% vs. 19.57%). This clearly
indicates the large growth potential available to a majority of the top 50 Singaporean brands. It also indicates the dominance of the top 10 and the benefits of robust brand
management at the top. (Source: Brand Finance) ♌ By Daniela La Marca
Regus survey identifies respect is key to holding onto good workers As Singapore"s economy stabilizes following rapid growth since the global downturn, it is especially important for managers to keep job satisfaction up, so that good people do not leave for new pastures. But what do people really value in their work environment? What really makes the difference and keeps people on board? The findings from a new global Regus survey gives managers some top tips about holding on to their good people. Singapore workers stated that showing respect towards all members of staff is the most important ingredient to creating a happy business culture. In the latest survey by workplace provider Regus, over 17,000 respondents from more than 80 countries were asked what factors were most likely to help create a happy work atmosphere and 72% of Singapore workers said that respect for colleagues is the key ingredient. Encouraging skills and knowledge sharing (52%) and vocally acknowledging the work of others (44%) were voted second and third most important factors. Helping out struggling colleagues was also nominated by 42% of respondents.
William Willems, Regional Vice-President for Regus Australia, New Zealand and Southeast Asia comments: "With the global job market regaining strength, the results of this survey should serve as a wake-up call to managers who may be overlooking simple, practical and cost-free measures they can take to make sure that staff does not resign." As Kowshik Sriman, SAP Singapore Managing Director, notes: "At the end of the day, workers want to be valued and appreciated. In a contemporary corporate environment like Singapore, employees often face high levels of stress on a daily basis amidst juggling their various responsibilities. Bosses must trust their workers as this goes a long way in giving them a greater sense of ownership and empowering them at the workplace. It is easier to retain a worker who is valued and respected than one who is not." "As work pressures and hours expand further into people"s personal lives, Singapore workers are ever more aware of the importance that the character of the people they work and spend so many hours of their day with has on job satisfaction. Aside from salary increases and material bonuses, simple steps like showing respect for all staff, making a point of congratulating staff on good work and helping colleagues develop by encouraging skills and knowledge sharing contribute to creating a more human and wholesome environment that staff are not easily tempted to abandon" Willems emphasized. (Source: Regus) ♦ By MediaBUZZ
Facebook is More Popular in Asia Pacific than other Global Geographies Singaporeans emerged as the global leaders for the longest time spent on Facebook, with an average of 38 minutes and 46 seconds spent per session (Table 1) revealed in an international analysis on the use of social networks conducted by Experian.
Table 1
Local interest in the social networking site also continued to increase between August 2010 and August 2011 (Table 2). Asia Pacific also showed dominance over other global geographies, with users spending a total average time of 116 minutes 5 seconds on Facebook per session. This is in comparison to a total average time of 82 minutes and 31 seconds per session spent by users in the UK, US, France and Brazil. Understanding the average time spent on Facebook illustrates the need for brands to be present on social networks. By knowing the average time spent on Facebook by a social network user in Singapore, will for example, mean that brands can increase the likelihood of capturing an individual's attention by rolling out digital marketing campaigns through Facebook. This underscores the need for local marketers to ensure they are putting investments for campaigns towards the right online platforms.
Graeme Beardsell, Chief Customer Development & Marketing Officer for Experian Asia Pacific commented: "Understanding how long people spend on Facebook in different countries is vital for any brand on the social network. With Facebook still finding its feet in emerging Asian markets like India, lower session times are to be expected. However, that doesn't mean brands should ignore Facebook in those countries, with market share for the platform in India increasing by 88% year on year, with its influence and dominance set to grow as internet penetration in the country continues to rise.�
RESEARCH, ANALYSIS & TRENDS Table 2
This could represent YouTube being a potential competitor to Facebook for the local marketing dollar (Table 2).
Experian further reveals that Facebook has managed to sustain its popularity with Singapore internet us ers des pite the emergence of Google+ this year. The social network ing site managed to increase share of visits by 0.39% between August 2010 and August 2011 (Table 2). This could indicate saturation in numbers of local users accessing the site.
However, the longer time spent by Singaporeans on Facebook could represent the opportunity for better engagement over the social networking platform as compared to other channels. Singapore internet users also showed more interest in YouTube, evidenced by a 3.24% increase in share of visits between August 2010 and August 2011.
For brands in Singapore and Asia Pacific looking to capture consumer attention by running digital marketing campaigns through Facebook, knowledge of behaviour is critical to developing targeted campaigns that will resonate with local audiences, Experian states. While Facebook continues its local dominance, brands should not underestimate the importance of video in the form of YouTube when look ing to ac hieve deeper engagement with their audience. It is only with intelligent actionable customer information that brands can market forward while ensuring continued loyalty from customers, the company advises. (Source: Experian) ♌ By MediaBUZZ
Might this drop in performance have resulted from recent changes implemented? Has the search engine released another update to the algorithm? Is this caused by other issues like industry-wide trends?
Email Marketing: In the Beginning it's all about an effective Registration Form In email marketing the customer relationship usually starts with a prospect filling out a newsletter subscription form. Many businesses, however, still do not pay the necessary attention to precisely this important aspect, although the application rate can often be increased just by making a few small changes. The most important aspects for the optimal structure of application forms are:
4. Clearly declare that you are not dealing with email 5. 6.
1. Place the newsletter registration form as eye-
catching as possible in your website. If possible, the form should be an integral part of the page layout (i.e. below the navigation). Describe the newsletter in two to three sentences: why should the interested party subscribe to the newsletter? what advantages does a subscription bring? how often is the newsletter sent out? Put a link to the current edition of the newsletter, because prospects usually want to know what they should subscribe for.
addresses - independent from the specific link to your Privacy Policy. Avoid terms such as "order" or "subscribe", instead speak of the fact that the prospect will receive interesting information "for free" in future. Pay special attention to the submit button at the bottom of the form. A text like "free entry", "OK" or "Go" is more inviting to click rather than a terrifying "Order!" Keep the registration form as short as possible. Initially you should just ask for their email address, as more data can be collected at a later date. (Note: In any case, it should be possible to receive the newsletter on an anonymous basis as well, so actually only the form field for the email address has to be a mandatory field - keyword "data economy"). Two-stage forms can indeed be a very effective method: first ask for the email address and only in the second stage for additional data, as many prospects are willing to provide more information after the initial hurdle. ♌ By Daniela La Marca
Individual Relevance Determines Success in Email Marketing of Today (Behavioral Email Marketing Part 2) Providing individual relevance is the only way to achieve higher deliverability and more involvement in email marketing and can be achieved by reading user behavior. The opening and clicking behavior of newsletter recipients and their movements on site is in general measured by email service providers, but only a fraction of potential customers are usually coming through newsletters to a website. Therefore it is necessary to track the behavior of all visitors without regard of their origin as a filter. In the concept of behavioral email this integration of email marketing and web analysis is implemented in the software. Behavioral email means that content and delivery time of emails are based on individually collected and stored behavior of a user. The knowledge of current preferences and past activities allows advertisers to submit their offers to the right user in real time. Effective behavioral email marketing is based on a database for contact and tracking data. It stores historical and current data through interactions with emails and the website. It can also be enriched with other CRM data and help automatically generate individually relevant emails that are sent at the optimal time. When is the best time/offer/etc. can be tested easily.
Behavioral email in practice If the historical data proves that a customer buys a dress every month, it makes sense to proactively offer dresses to this specific customer at the right time. If current tracking data also shows that this person has looked at blouses on the website, this opportunity should be used for cross-selling - automated and in real time, as long as there is a need and it has not been yet satisfied otherwise. Especially with event-driven interest, such as, before birthdays or major gift giving holidays like Christmas, the pace is crucial. Who is frantically looking for a present needs individually relevant offers in real time, not only at the next transmission date of the newsletter. Instead of inflexible standard programs, there are differentiated behavioral triggers for all kind of segments, which are formed on the basis of customer behavior. I am not talking about trigger email, such as order confirmations, which are made immediately but are standardized and have therefore nothing to do with personal preferences. Another example: a cinema operator is struggling with numerous booking crashes. Several offline and online advertising campaigns have lead many visitors to the site that go into the booking process, willingly give their
contact information and consent to communicate via email, but still half of the customers leave the site before finishing their booking. The website of the provider is furnished with tags, so that the individual online behavior of each visitor can b e r e c or d e d a n d t r a c k e d . Segments are formed, based on the data from the web analysis, which can be confined by movie interest and behavior in the booking process. The behavioral analysis clearly shows that the majority of potential customers back out of a deal at the third stage of the booking process and that is where behavioral email marketing comes into action. It can achieve tremendous success through the seamless integration of email marketing and web analytics. It is very unlikely that same results in lengthy exchange processes across interfaces between separate email servers and Web analysis tools would be possible. Incidentally, the merging of personal and behavioral inf orm ation i n a d atabas e corresponds to current law. In the
case of behavioral email it is about consent on two levels: email and web tracking.
each client can be estimated and the email communications can then be set-up accordingly.
In order to send emails, it requires a declaration of consent of the recipient. In many countries without opt-in, email communications is illegal. Web tracking via cookies is common practice and merely requires an explanation on the website and users can withdraw their consent at any time. However, experience shows that recipients appreciate the personal and highly relevant content of email communication as a real added value. The cancellation rates for behavioral email programs are well below the industry average, because it is really annoying when it is not just in-boxes that are clogged up with completely uninteresting and irrelevant emails.
Only if the handling of emails, the browsing behavior and purchasing patterns are merged in a single customer view, an automated, comprehensive, database-driven eRFM strategy becomes possible (take note: e-like engagement is not electronic).
Principle: Single Customer View The more consistent data sources are all integrated according to the principle of RFM (Recency Frequency - Monetary Value – see Part 1 of the article), the more precisely the individual needs of
Such an integrated, data-driven email strategy includes regular mailings, automated, customerlifec ycle-related em ails and behavioral trigger emails alike, thus achieving maximum individual relevance. We will see when behavioral email finds acceptance in Asia. Fact is that the future of email marketing belongs to those email service providers who can offer an integrated approach that determines the future of e-commerce companies that rely on their solutions. ♌ By Daniela La Marca
Text Mining for Golden Customer Insights We are living with increasingly large quantities of data, with at least 1.8 zettabytes worth of data to be created and replicated this year alone. In addition, at least 70 percent of business-relevant information lives in unstructured data. The advent of multiple platforms for communication and content creation, coupled with the sheer variety of formats and mediums at play, including audio, video, blogs, micro-blogs and social media messages, has exponentially increased the amount of that unstructured data. Today, businesses are stuck with mountains of data to manage, and are challenged with making sense of the data and deriving value out of it. To stay competitive, businesses can no longer afford to ignore the critical role that unstructured data plays in driving their day-today decision-making processes. Here is where text analytics and text mining tools play a key role. Text analytics enable businesses to maximize the value of information within large quantities of text that is generated, acquired or exists in repositories by extracting relevant information, interpreting it, then structuring information to reveal patterns, sentiments and relationships among documents. For example, unstructured transcripts, notes and documents describing business activity can provide important insights about customersâ€&#x; habits, tastes, product use and support requirements, employee work habits and performance, as well as business process efficiencies and failures. In most business scenarios, text mining can have an immediate and measurable effect on CRM policies. Information extracted from various customer touch points such as email, transactions, call center communications and customer surveys can be used to predict customer churn as well as help in building customer up-sell and cross-sell models. Beyond refining internal business processes, the usefulness of text mining on gaining market insights
cannot be understated. Daily analyst reports, news articles and company press releases contain vital information about market shifts and changes in the investment environment, upon which trend analyses can be performed utilizing systematic approaches through text mining. The same results can be gleaned from qualitative data found in blogs, commentaries, open-ended survey questions, focus groups and interviews. Applications implications
Text mining can be combined with other data mining tools to look for patterns and anomalies in huge amounts of text data, bringing about great benefits to critical industries such as health care, insurance and even the public sector. It can be performed for text extraction on patent reports, journal articles, and other medical publications, reducing the amount of time needed for extraneous and redundant research. Association models can be used to detect patterns such as in the testing of drug symptoms, therefore minimizing time spent in the drug discovery process. Furthermore, text miningâ€&#x;s capability to sift through massive amounts of data and emerge with verifiable patterns and associations represents a tremendous opportunity for national security agencies to get ahead of criminal and terrorist organizations. At the end of the day, imagine what your business could do if you could harness the insights hidden beneath that 70 percent of unstructured data. Picture how it would improve knowledge sharing and facilitate decision making if useful content was easy to find and use, and automatically included in analytical processes. In a world containing more and more data, text analytics will only become more valuable. ♌ By David Hardoon, Principal Analyst, , SAS Singapore
Setting-up Your Email Distribution List the Right Way Errors can be embarrassing, but there are worse things than that, namely not to learn from mistakes. Unfortunately, not all errors in email marketing are obvious or easy to fix, so it is better to deal with how to avoid them in the first place. All professionals working in email marketing want to do their job as efficiently and successfully as possible. Unfortunately, they often don"t give the set-up and maintenance of their existing email distribution list the necessary attention. Keep in mind that the most valuable asset in email marketing is not the soft or hardware used, nor your advertising medium or the advertised product, but your database (inventory) of email addresses and related information. The email distribution list is your key asset and often decides the success or failure of your email campaigns. You should therefore avoid the biggest mistakes, which are explained in more detail in the following points: No storage of the origin address The advantages of purchasing data is obvious, you can win within a short time large amounts of data which can be used in general without restriction for your own marketing activities. Still, be careful and consider a few points to do it right. One of the most commonly observed errors in connection with the establishment and maintenance of an email distribution list is the lack of information about the origin of the address. This information is not only important in case you may need proof, but you should not forgo getting essential insights into the quality of the corresponding generation channel. Data from dubious sources can harm your reputation and jeopardize your entire email marketing program. Therefore, invest enough time in the selection of the appropriate provider - it's worth it. No maintenance of the existing data Data becomes rapidly obsolete. Many operators of email marketing programs place too little emphasis on talking care of their data. Therefore, provide a permanent adjustment of your data and remove addresses that are undeliverable (bounce) consistently from your database. Make use of the experience of the operator of your email delivery solution (ASP). There are guidelines on when a hard or soft bounce should be inactivated and you should be aware of them, but eliminate in any way incorrect addresses immediately.
No data erasure despite opt-out When someone unsubscribes from your newsletter, delete these users immediately without any ifs and or buts from your mailing list. Don"t use special black lists or any temporary files, but make sure to delete the data of the recipient from your master file to ensure that the address is no longer used. In all other cases there is always the danger of an accidental, repeated use. A consistent approach protects your reputation, so do not take any risks. No use of a centralized master file A central master file should be the core of your email database. It"s the specific file that gets all your attention and should be well maintained by you as it is the basis of all your sending activity. Distributed data always carries the risk of an erroneous use and makes all procedures more difficult when it comes to taking care of your data. Unwanted data redundancies are also a frequently observed problem. When creating a master file, you should store at least the following information:
Email address Name attributes Date and time of registration IP address of the registration Segmentation data (categories which give information about the form of advertising) Generation channel Opt-in status Type of authorized communication (promotional email, transactional mail, coupons, etc.)
Do not forget the best in conclusion At no time is the attention of the mailing recipients as high as immediately after their registration. Studies show that opening rates are four times higher and clickthrough rates even five times as high as when sending normal promotional emails. Companies should therefore use the start-up phase to their advantage and benefit from an average eight times higher potential turnover! ♦ By Daniela La Marca
Checklist for your Welcome Message The email marketing relationship with your customers usually begins with the welcome message that is sent immediately after their registration, at a time, when the user has just expressed an interest in your business. As the welcome message decisively shapes the perception of your company, it should be seen not only as a technical necessity, but you should make sure that you utilize its potential to the fullest. Take a look: Confirm your registration Right at the beginning of the message you should confirm their registration, as this is the most important information for the reader. Take this opportunity to also thank them, at the same time, for their interest in your newsletter! Personalization is a must A personal salutation is standard today and definitely, should not be missing in your welcome message. Pique curiosity Write what the reader can expect in future newsletter issues. What can they look forward to read and why should they pay special attention to your newsletter?
Name a contact partner The indication of contact information helps the user not only with an approach in case of questions or problems, but also emphasizes the personal impression. Do not forget the unsubscribe link and imprint Legally required links to the imprint and deregistration shouldn't be absent in the welcome message. Gifts enhance the friendship Small "give-aways" such as PDF downloads or gift coupons are an ideal instrument to increase the number of new registrations. For this purpose, place a notice of the gift prominently in your login page. The recipient then receives the coupon or the link to the PDF file with the welcome message. Admission to their Address Book If you are struggling with the problem of false positives, which means your newsletter is being wrongly rejected by spam filters, you should ask recipients to include your return address in their address book. This way you reduce the risk that your desired newsletter lands in their spam folder. ♌ By Daniela La Marca
What you should know before running a Social Ad Campaign in Asia The APAC region is a great place to be in social media. 1. Social Media is the biggest communication revolution since the internet itself: There are now more than one billion people on the internet globally and over half of those are on Facebook. Asia is no exception. 20% of that Facebook audience are in Southeast Asia - thatâ€&#x;s just under 100 million active users. We live in an age of social media and niche content with Nielsen reporting that users spend up to three times more time on Facebook than they do on portals. The existence of re-sellers that understand the space is also critical. By working with the right reseller, advertisers can engage huge numbers of highly targeted audiences with video, recruit highly targeted consumers to attach themselves to a brand, and create dialogue with those consumers with quality content. 2. Social is all about engagement: Social media gives advertisers the opportunity to create consistent and on-going dialogues with their consumers. The metrics are different to 'traditional online' - by which we mean banners - and revolve around the number
of engagements advertisers drive with consumers and the life time customer value generated through the creation of these brand advocates within the social media environment. Opportunities range from recruiting engaged users to interact with your own brand to running bespoke video and rich media banners to extremely targeted sections of these users to get very cost-effective and engaged consumption of your advertising assets. 3. How do you measure ROI for social: The most important thing about measuring social media is to keep in mind that social marketing is continuous rather than episodic. Yes, there will be campaigns aimed at achieving some short term results but the focus should really be nurturing the on-going relationship with consumers. Just like all other relationships that cannot be measured at a given time, social media efforts need to be evaluated over a period of time. Another important consideration while discussing social media ROI is to note that the metrics used to measure social ROI are being adapted from the last generation of digital advertising. To be able to measure the true value of
a social campaign we need to first arrive at new metrics that understand the breadth and depth of social media marketing. With this in mind, it's important to work with a re-seller that can define these metrics with you beforehand and provide the technology to track and report them to fully understand your ROI. 4. There are multiple options when looking at the social opportunity: Social media offers great advertising options to brand marketers. Apps built for advertisers own pages that engage fans and drive brand advocacy. Extremely unique advertising opportunities within the apps and games that Facebook users are deploying. Savvy advertisers working with a
skilled re-seller can run near full page video executions within social media environments as well as having apps built specifically for them to engage their own 'fans'. Social Gaming goes further to deliver some of the most engaged online environments that exist on the World Wide Web. So why not have a branded game just for 'fans'? 5. Video and Social will feed off each other to grow the market: A cursory glance at the internet usage habits of the region will find social networking and video right at the top in terms of the amount of visits and time people spend on this type of content. From an advertiserâ€&#x;s perspective video banners running across
apps and games on Facebook with demographic targeting and reach and frequency benefits far outstrip those of TV. Online TVCs are set to drive major growth in this industry over the next few years and social has a big part to play here. Aside from pure views, there is a mass of data that can be collected here. These include cross-pollination in terms of the video going viral to other friends on YouTube and other platforms; tracking the comments and feedback from those users who have consumed the video as well as the more straight forward likes, dislikes and favorites. ♌ By Matt Sutton, CEO, Aktiv Digital
Five Common Afflictions of Sales Teams I've been a part of many sales teams in my career, and over and over I've noticed five common afflictions that affect them, each of which reduces morale and sales performance.
Finding as many ways as possible to remove unnecessary tasks from the sales team"s shoulders will result in sales increases that will more than pay for any adjustments in duties.
They can be found to some degree in most almost every organization. Smart management teams are aware of these afflictions and work to avoid their potentially destructive impact. Any one occurrence of these problems will not necessary hurt the sales effort, but if allowed to progress to extremes, or if multiple conditions exist at once, they can be extremely harmful.
Affliction 2: Poor sales meetings
Affliction 1: Wasting sales representatives' time One of the prime afflictions of sales teams is forcing them to spend time on non-sales tasks, for example making accounts receivable collections, managing product recalls, or filling out reports that do not directly relate to the sales process. Non-sales management often requests that reps perform these tasks, but great care should be taken before delegating them to valuable salespeople. If you, for instance, divert five percent of a sales team"s time to managing customer collections, you effectively reduce the number of feet on the ground by the same amount - and the reverse is true as well. Sometimes it"s necessary to assign nonsales tasks to salespeople, but before this is done it"s worthwhile to audit a company"s sales process to determine whether these tasks could be assigned elsewhere.
Another affliction of sales teams is poor or boring sales meetings. The objective of any sales meeting should be to increase sales - period. Every high-performing salesperson who attends a meeting will be thinking, "Is this meeting making me money, or is my time being wasted?" Powerful salespeople are self-motivated, and they intuitively know if their time is being wasted. If it is, management is hurting sales and morale. Wasteful or unnecessary meetings also send a clear message that management doesn't know what needs to be accomplished to increase sales - and no good salesperson will have confidence in that type of leadership. The simple way to ensure effective sales meetings is to develop a statement of strategic intent that includes clear success metrics. This statement will define in specific terms what needs to be accomplished and the metrics needed to determine whether the goals set in the meeting were accomplished. It takes a deep understanding of the business, the market, and the competition to write an effective statement of strategic intent, and managers who can"t write them need a better understanding of the business. The bottom line is that powerful sales meetings produce sales and keep morale high.
Affliction 3: Poor strategy Ineffective marketing or sales strategies will always negatively impact the sales team, and this is especially true for teams selling commodity products or services. A player with small market share who enters a commodity market without a well-defined and wellimplemented strategy can be assured of certain death. These types of companies usually say, "It"s a huge market, and we can grab some of it," but it"s not that simple. The sales team will recognize ineffective strategy and will lose faith in the managers who developed it. If the players on a sports team lose faith in the coaching, the path to winning will be difficult, if not impossible; the same is true with sales teams. Don"t let lackluster or non-existent strategy cause this lack of faith. To compound the error, companies often try special promotions to save sagging sales on products that are ill-conceived or supported by poor strategy. Special promotions can be very effective, but managers should never call for a pointless charge of the light brigade. Sending the sales team on a promotion in support of a poor product or service is a severe tactical error.
A successful sales effort hinges on good strategy, and companies that fail in this regard severely handicap their sales teams. Affliction 4: Capping or reducing income Powerful com panies have managers who do not get envious when large pay checks go to the sales force. Managers who are resentful of this often respond to rising sales income by reducing commissions, capping earnings, reducing territories, or removing products. These are all practices to be avoided, as they destroy morale, which hurts sales. When it is absolutely necessary to cap or reduce reps" earnings, it must be done carefully. If it"s done carelessly, management will send the message that future earnings for the sales team have been limited. Powerful salespeople want to leverage today"s efforts into greater sales and income for tomorrow. If their commissions are reduced, earnings capped, or territory removed, they will feel like that ability has been taken away, and the high performers will quickly look for employment elsewhere. Affliction 5: Favoritism We all have favorites in life and that"s normal, but playing favorites
with individuals on a sales team is very destructive. Salespeople want to work for companies that keep the playing field level for all. If select salespeople are given extra incentives, special attention, benefits, or favors not afforded others, management is sending a clear message that there is a privileged class within the team. This is one of the best ways to lessen team spirit, as reps will spend their time trying to move into that special class and not trying to close sales. Managers can"t buy the loyalty of a team by strengthening a small political power base within a company. Playing favorites within a sales team causes problems for all team members (even the favored ones), but keeping the playing field level will pay big dividends. Wasting time, poor sales meetings, poor strategy, capping income, and playing favorites are, with few exceptions, situations to be avoided. They are destructive to morale and they lead to poor performance. Effective managers will be careful to avoid these situations, and astute salespeople will bring these practices to the attention of management for correction. ♦ By John R. Treace
Social media offers great advertising options to brand marketers. ~ Matt Sutton
Fuji Xerox's One-to-One Marketing Solutions in High Demand (Part 2) Fuji Xerox Asia Pacific creates marketing campaigns that can connect businesses on a one-to-one level with clients and is able to massively improve response rates, sales, life-time value and brand loyalty. Hélène Blanchette is the driver behind Fuji Xerox's 1:1 Experience, covered already in the September issue of Asian e-Marketing (Part 1). She is the one that developed the service that enables advertising and marketing companies to drastically improve their ROI while reducing their risk of failure. Hélène's method combines targeted messaging based on customer profile and contextual information with an integrated multichannel approach across the web, print, SMS, social media, and mobile platforms. The enthusiastic and energetic marketing personality is an expert in her field of activities and knows a lot about 1:1 marketing that she shares generously. Asked how she is managing to get the consumer insights needed to start a 1:1 marketing campaign, she said, that just four data – namely name, job title, name of company and whether the person is male or female – would be enough to achieve good results and summarized her in-depth knowledge of 1:1 marketing with a few simple steps that explains the success of such an approach:
1. Communications should be customer-driven and directly impact the set goals of clients, while resolving their challenges. Media channels are just tools to use for communications, but it is important to make sure that data collection doesn't get isolated in silos as it would reduce the ability to be relevant in future communications. 2. When the strategy is well defined, intelligence can drive and capitalize 1:1 marketing, even with just a small amount of information. Any usable data can help refine the relevancy of the first communication. 3. To break internal silos it is best to work with product and department managers to better understand the audiences' multiple profiles and get insights into which products or offers match those profiles best. This will be your guideline when developing variable messages for cross-selling opportunities. 4. To gauge the success of a one-to-one marketing program you need to measure response rates in each channel, conversation rates, value of Tier 1 to Tier 3 customers, life time value, value of prospects, requests and complaints at the call center, customer defection, retention, traffic and trends on website, sub-segments and much more.
Hélène Blanchette 5. A 1:1 marketing approach is a continuous conversation, a p r o g r es s i v e i n s i g ht i n t o customer behaviours and a gradual adaptation of your communications to ensure your customers are the main focus of yo ur s tr at e g y. E ac h successive communication will be more relevant and consequently more valuable. "We have a very strict methodology that we follow and we know exactly where to go and what to do", Hélène said and explained further "we always do one intense workshop in an afternoon to find what are the messages, what are the different segments and their messages, what is the key message and what are the particular actions that we are going to do to get results. That's basically the line-up, before it goes to the copywriters who have to write the text. Then the twin concept comes into play that takes into consideration as many twins as there are cultural differences and diversity in Singapore, such as Chinese, Australian etc., and just then we decided what we want to address as an issue."
According to Hélène, agencies of ten s ee her s ervic e as competition and therefore she always addresses the issue in the f ir s t m ee t i n g wit h c l i e nts , emphasizing "I would like many agencies to adopt this model not just for me but for the sake of the marketing and to make sense of all of this. It's about a strategy and methodology being used properly and I would like for more agencies in the market to be there to create independence." She affirmed: "I am very proud of the one to one lab and I am certainly proud that the whole one to one marketing experience is taking shape and being adopted and that we have succeeded to bring credibility to our service which was a very long shot when you think of what was the first, initial reception of Fuji Xerox on the market. They perceived us as a very great company but they still think that we make copiers and to come to the market with a service and be completely accepted right away makes me, of course, very proud." She explained again that the use of hyper personalization in her direct marketing campaigns can be achieved by a very simple methodology - she looks at the: 1.
data available, whether a lot or a little;
several objectives that need to be achieved within it;
major challenges that need to be resolved.
For her one to one marketing approaches must resolve and must accomplish something and she claims that following these three points is all that is needed to deploy a one to one marketing strategy. "Instead of spending so much time in designing or re-designing, we are extremely regimented so we spend a lot of time in the first four weeks to ensure that we have done the work that needs to be done to prepare for these assets and once that is done we start to produce the work. We are regimented in our work and we never miss a step, never!" So, you don't actually need a lot of customer data to start a 1:1 marketing campaign, if you have the proper strategic approach that empowers you to have a more relevant and more memorable conversation with customers. For more information, get in touch with Fuji Xerox's 1:1 Experience and go to http://1to1.com.sg/ helene.blanchette ♦ By Daniela La Marca
How to Mix SEO, AdWords, and Global PR Most marketing and sales professionals are still grappling with the impacts of the global recession on marketing budgets.
3. 4.
All those struggling to determine how to best stretch limited marketing funds can now apply for a no-cost, maths-assisted 2012 Online and Offline Marketing Mix Plan from Global B2B Communications that helps to measure and gauge the highest returns-on-investment for online marketing tactics to reach global niche markets. Web competitive analysis tools give readings of a company's unique competitive landscape on the web in relation to the market niches their company targets worldwide. The Global B2B Marketing Mix can even help outline available off-line marketing tactics for a greater global impact. The 10-step process used by Global B2B Communications to guide companies' in-house efforts to develop their optimal 2012+ marketing strategy includes: 1.
data and findings from high-powered search engine optimization tools for web competitive analysis for a selected keyphrase vs. less competitive terms that a web competitive analysis demonstrates are not as effective, even if more popular; demonstration of how to overtake competitor websites for traffic and rankings for that selected keyphrase in a step-by-step manner;
assessing relative importance and strengths of offpage (links) to on-page website optimization factors; a preliminary review and report by highly trained search engine optimization consultants as to whether resources need to be devoted to reworking website code to make the company site more visible to search engines and/or costprojections of migrating current web designs to more search engine friendly web frameworks such as WordPress, or whether to build additional country-specific domains; rewrite demonstration of a webpage using math tools that transform personalized search algorithms from obstacles into competitive advantages so companies can compare before and after content and the before/after web development results viewed with in-house Google analytics; suggested online and print publications to pursue with a variety of PR tactics and tools (blogs on online publications, articles, white papers, news releases, etc.) to help overcome obstacles some companies face in reaching certain market niches due to search engines' local search algorithms and intrinsic challenges these create to reach prospects far from home; intelligence and metrics from web competitive analysis software to identify page one competitors for a particular search term that can be surpassed in the shortest timeframe;
systems assessment of fit for in-house vs. outsourced assistanc e with G oogle advertising, display ads and other online advertising; 9. recommendation on web marketing courses that match the skill sets of in-house marketing management and/or web teams; 10. listings of potential lead sources available through data mining of Twitter, Linked In and other business-oriented social media. Optional addons available for select companies upon request are recommendations for videos to assist viral marketing and/or overall company com munications plans, and/or best -match list sources and testing methods for direct email campaigns.
The service is especially timely for any company whose web site was built prior to 2009 and that is now looking to engineer the development of future markets. Amy Munice, President of ALM Communications, comments: "After 2009, local search started to affect website optimization that had a different impact on companies that sell locally vs. those who sell globally. It's easy to understand how the recession overshadowed marketing managers learning about these developments. However, most business owners, marketing executives - and surprisingly even many webmasters or full-time SEO consultants - whom I speak with have not identified that search engines change EVERY day. There are phenomena such as personalized search algorithms, local search algorithms, "bad link" neighborhoods, etc. that are impacting the success of many online m ark eting program s, whether recognized or not."
Amy Munice Munice continues, "If you are selling on a global scale it is inherently more complex because different regions and markets often require some devotion to off-line marketing tactics and tools (trade directories, trade shows, print publications, etc.) to reach prospects that do not yet use the internet as their primary information source. Also, now that social networks are having good impacts on web traffic, and since many networks tend to be more local, that needs to be factored in as well." Applications for the no-cost 2012 Marketing Mix Plan can be made at http://tinyurl.com/4y768r6 ♌ By MediaBUZZ
Companies that fail to appropriately evolve their use of email as a marketing tool will be at a significant strategic and competitive disadvantage, most experts believe and all agree upon the fact that email will remain one of the cheapest available communications tools for some time to come.
4As Re-launch of IAA Singapore Chapter Safeguards Global Connectivity and Intelligence for Local Players The Accredited Association of Advertising Agents (4As) officially announced the re-launch of the International Advertising Association (IAA) Singapore Chapter, the local presentation of the IAA global body with the function of providing members with direct connections to the international partnership network of advertising, marketing and media professionals. At the same time, and to commemorate the launch, the trade association opened for the first time its doors to individuals from the advertising, media and marketing communications industry through a dual membership offer. All who sign up for the IAA Singapore Chapter will also become a 4As individual member during the same period. As a result, members will receive a wellrounded offering of both 4As' depth of connectivity in the local market and IAA's global network and intelligence. "We are happy to partner with the International Advertising Association to 'rebirth' the Singapore Chapter and provide a direct connection for our members to widen their horizons and link with the global advertising community through IAA's broad international network," said Ted Choo, President of
4As, continuing, "Over the past 60 years, the industry has evolved a lot. With new thinking and new technologies, the playing field is rapidly changing for advertisers, agencies and media owners. An individual today can be a client advertiser, marketer, media owner, target customer and sometimes, even an agency. As the market is changing to more 'contract and transient' work with more individual professional operators in Singapore, 4As aims to be more inclusive by adding an individual membership level. This is a natural next step towards creating a more deeply connected community ecosystem." The 4As is the only professional trade association that represents the full spectrum of advertising, media and marketing communications industry in Singapore. Set up in 1948, it was formerly exclusive to corporate members largely from advertising, media, creative agencies and affiliates including media owners, service providers relevant to the industry and government institutions. 4As' membership base currently contains some 110 corporate members.
"We are very excited to collaborate with IAA for the 'rebirth' of the Singapore Chapter. As a first world marketplace, there's now a greater appreciation of global standards and best business practices. For some, it's also the need for international connectivity as we venture beyond our sunny shores to regional markets like China, India and the rest of the world," added Anthony Kang, President of the IAA Singapore Chapter. "Through this established international network body, we are confident that our local industry players will have much to gain from both its connectivity reach, wealth of intelligence resources, and global opportunities," he concluded.
The current Executive Council of the IAA Singapore Chapter is headed by eight senior professionals from the advertising marketing and media industry:
Chapter President, Anthony Kang, President, Singapore
Chapter Vice-President, Vincent Hoe, Group Managing Director, AG Advertising
Chapter Secretary, Lily Tay, Executive Director, Singapore Advertisers, Association
Chapter Treasurer, Phyllis Chua, Executive Director, Advertising
Chairm an
Com m unic ations (Internal & External), Andrew Thomas, Regional Director Southeast Asia & Managing Director Singapore, Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide
Chairman Events & Programs, Thomas Ang, Vice President OOH Media, MediaCorp
Professional De ve lo pm ent (T rain i ng & Education), Theodore Choo, Chief Executive Officer, Gosh Advertising
Membership Development, Bernard Chan, Chief Executive Officer, 4As
Chairman Insights, Publication & Research, Allein Godfrey Moore, Publisher/Editor, AdAsia Media.♦ By MediaBUZZ
Angel's Gate: Asia's First Business-focused Reality Show Over 100 investors and entrepreneurs from around the region converged in Singapore for the launch of Angel's Gate, Asia's first business-focused reality programme. Backed by Asia's leading venture funds, Angel's Gate is a 360-degree platform spanning the TV, Web and Mobile that gives entrepreneurs the opportunity of a lifetime to pitch their dream business ideas to some of Asia's most successful investors. Produced by Interactive SG, a digital media company and supported by Singapore's Media Development Authority (MDA), Angel's Gate targets enterprising individuals who believe they have the next big business idea and want a shot at securing public support and funding. People from all walks of life will have the chance to make their dreams come true. Angel's Gate will be delivered to audiences globally, targeting a combined viewership of 100 million. Available on mobile platforms, Angel's Gate also lets users view videos, participate and connect with a network of entrepreneurs on the move. According to Ash Singh, Founder and CEO of Interactive SG, "Entrepreneurs involved in Angel's Gate will receive more exposure than they could by any other means, empowering them through the use of technology and the media.
Over and above delivering unparalleled reach and visibility, the vision behind Angel's Gate is to create a level playing field for the aspiring entrepreneurs of this generation. We might just see the rise of the next Mark Zuckerberg, Donald Trump or Richard Branson from Asia," he says. Simon Mouyal, Chief Marketing Officer, Microsoft summarizes: "The Angel's Gate project brings to life three key drivers for entrepreneurship: aspiration with successful entrepreneurs, cash with support from the best business angels in Asia and innovation with access to the latest technology for a fast, smooth startup." The AngelsGate.com website went live on October 14; and more than a hundred business ideas have already been submitted. The most compelling and well received ideas will advance to Angel's Gate TV, which is set to start airing in the coming months on a regional broadcast partner. Entrepreneurs who believe they have what it takes can submit their business ideas to AngelsGate.com. There, they can leverage their social graph (through Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn) to crowd-source support for their ideas. They can even raise financial support through AngelsGate.com.
The Angel's Gate TV panel of judges include Dr. Finian Tan, Founder of Vickers Financial Group; Karan Singh Thakral, Executive Director of the Thakral Group of Companies; Ken Mandel, Founder of Jam Ventures; Patrick Grove, Co-founder and CEO of Catcha Group; and W illiam Klippgen, Founder and Managing Director of Tigris Capital.
Apart from business funding, entrepreneurs will also be offered an opportunity to think about how they can make a meaningful contribution to society through phi la nthro p y an d c o rporate citizenship. Angel's Gate has partnered CapitaLand Hope Foundation as the programme's charity sponsor. Through the par tn ers h ip , un d erp ri v i le g ed c hildr en wil l ben ef it whe n
entrepreneurs garner support for their business ideas. CapitaLand Hope Foundation will donate S$1 to selected children's charities for every 'Facebook Like' gathered by entrepreneurs for their respective business ideas on AngelsGate.com and winning entrepreneurs on Angel's Gate TV will get to earn bon us d on at io ns f rom the Foundation to benefit even more underprivileged children. For more i n f o r m a t i o n , v i s i t www.angelsgate.com ♌ By MediaBUZZ
Privacy and Legal Certainty in Online Marketing and what you should know about it Let's face it, the demand for data protection and legal security in online marketing simply doesn't fade away. Quite the contrary, the issue gets constantly more attention in the media and the public eye. The Singapore Government is considering a National Do-Not-Call Registry to protect consumers" privacy by allowing consumers to opt-out of all unsolicited marketing like calls or SMS ads. If approved by Parliament, in 2012, companies will have to check the registry and ensure that they do not contact the registered numbers via calls, SMS or even fax, if they don"t want to risk a fine of up to One Million Singapore Dollars for not abiding by the rules. Privacy in the technology sector has become, in general, an increasingly important issue in recent years. In many companies, especially in the areas of information technology, telecommunications and the internet as well as marketing and advertising, it has become an issue at CEO or board level. The reason for this lies in the technological change and the increasing importance of data, where data protection not only raises legal questions, but makes it the focal point of
public awareness. Online and email marketing, social networks, geospatial data services as well as cloud computing are just a few examples that make data protection issues more and more crucial, as they are increasingly determining whether a particular business model works or not. Surprisingly, recent studies show that data privacy protection doesn't always stand at the top of a company"s agenda. Many seem to underestimate the topic or simply don"t know enough about it and due to the still limited enforcement of data protection by supervisory authorities some companies, especially start-ups, deliberately take risks. Well, it seems at least that the situation is different in most traditional businesses, since they have understood why the issue of data protection must be given attention. In particular, publicly listed companies and large companies in the B2C sector do take data protection very seriously, as part of their general compliance responsibilities. In times of crisis, however, many others still don"t seem to be interested in the issue, at least as long as they haven"t encountered any trouble with data privacy protection before.
Most specialized players have, in general, a very good understanding of data protection and often just need some advice because of unclear legal regulations, international aspects, and the attempt to explore boundaries. In the past, companies were mainly focused on collecting data in marketing and CRM, as causerelated processing and the proper collection and administration of consents and data usage agreements in marketing was often rarely managed at that time. Well, be assured that this business style won"t do it any longer. Nowadays, the legally correct administration and systematical collection of a huge number of consents for a more sophisticated targeting have an important strategic role in marketing. Companies that don"t recognize this in time and get prepared will have a clear competitive disadvantage in the future, as this paradigm shift cannot be made ad hoc and often not even retroactively.
Companies simply risk losing substantial parts of their customer data for marketing, if they have not collected the data in a properly legal way – which is the real economic risk (and not individuals" complaint, as is often erroneously assumed). Awareness that knowledge about the customer - the customer data represents the core business value isn't often really understood. Although not only the possession but the legal agreement for using such data in marketing is the critical point. Valid, timely and detailed customer data are part of the customer value, as they help to exploit and increase the customer lifetime value. Who puts it into practice will look after these values and deliver appropriate maintenance. Unfortunately, an overview and perspective on the legal position is often absent and therefore a shallow smattering on the do's and don'ts gets circulated. Regarding the use of social media marketing there is currently a lot of legal uncertainty, although just considering a few simple rules can be very helpful:
1. Transparency is needed and
3. 4.
means to inform customers and other stakeholders of the concrete, obvious and clearly understandable guidelines before using their data. In case of doubt make default "opt-in", i.e. conscious and active consent of the person in the area of social media marketing. Deviations from this norm should only be considered after seeking proper legal advice. Do not cooperate, if you do now know what your partner will be doing with the data. Understand from a technical point of view what exactly happens and seek professional legal advice if needed. Privacy protection is probably the biggest legal issue in social media, and is one of the threats that can most easily produce a public relations meltdown.
Well, nobody"s perfect and errors can be embarrassing. Do try to stay informed, keep pace with changing rules and regulations in your industry to avoid risks. ♦ By Daniela La Marca
MMA Releases New Privacy Policy Guidelines for Mobile Apps for Public Comment The Mobile Marketing Association (MMA), the leading global trade association for the mobile industry, announced the release of their MMA Mobile Application Privacy Policy, the first guideline document of its kind that addresses the core privacy issues and data processes of many mobile applications, for public comment.
Privacy policies are an important consumer disclosure tool for app developers and are not meant to be a onesize-fits-all document but should be customized to fit the needs of each company and each jurisdiction. The MMA urges app developers to consult with their legal counsel when adapting these guidelines for their purposes.
"These new privacy policy guidelines fill an urgent need for all companies doing business in the mobile marketing industry. The guidelines are intended to give the mobile application developers clear and transparent policy language that can be quickly and completely understood by consumers," said MMA Global CEO Greg Stuart. "Today"s release is the first in a series of privacy policy guidelines that the MMA will create with the input of industry leaders across the mobile ecosystem."
"Having a privacy policy is a good first step, compliance and supporting processes are also very important," said Alan Chapell, Co-chair of the MMA Privacy & Advocacy Committee. "With more than 58% of US mobile users worried that their data can be easily accessed by others, a privacy policy that helps to establish and maintain consumer trust is absolutely essential."
The guidelines address key issues including:
Annotated guidance on core privacy principles and consumer-friendly language for developers to consider using. Ways to inform users on how data is obtained and used. Guidance on security and confidentiality of information.
The MMA Mobile Application Privacy Policy was created by the MMA Privacy & Advocacy Committee in response to the massive upsurge in mobile app popularity among smartphone users and mobile marketers. There are now billions of apps downloaded per year; as of June 2011, over 425,000 individual apps were available via the Apple App Store and more than 200,000 were available for Android devices. Members of the mobile marketing industry (marketers, app developers, media companies, advertising agencies, technology enablers and other) are encouraged to read the proposed guidelines and submit comments on the MMA website http:// w w w . m m a g l o b a l . c o m / MMA_Mobile_Application_Privacy_Policy_18Oct2011.p df. After the comment period closes on Friday, November 18, 2011, feedback will be reviewed and the privacy policy guidelines will be finalized and released. ♦
Awareness that knowledge about the customer the customer data - represents the core business value isn't often really understood.
Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME) MIME is an internet standard for attaching non-text files to an internet mail message, such as animation, graphics, hypertext files, sound files, and spreadsheets. MIME standard converts (encodes) non-text files into text that is normally unreadable and then, at the other end, reconverts (decodes) the files to their original form. Virtually all human-written internet email and a fairly large proportion of automated email are transmitted via Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) in MIME format. The basic internet email transmission protocol, Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP), supports only 7-bit ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) characters, which effectively limits internet email to messages which, when transmitted, include only the characters sufficient for writing a small number of languages, primarily English. Other languages based on the Latin alphabet typically include diacritics and are not supported in 7-bit ASCII, meaning text in these languages cannot be correctly represented in basic emails. MIME, therefore, defines mechanisms for sending other kinds of information in email. These include text in languages other than English using character encodings other than ASCII, and 8-bit binary content such as files containing images, sounds, movies, and computer programs. Internet email is so closely associated with the SMTP and MIME standards that it is sometimes called SMTP/ MIME email. The content types defined by MIME standards are also of importance outside of email, such as in communication protocols like HTTP for the World Wide Web. HTTP requires that data be transmitted in the context of email-like messages, although the data most often is not actually email. Mapping messages into and out of MIME format is typically done automatically by an email client or by mail servers when sending or receiving internet (SMTP/ MIME) email.
MIME is specified in six linked Request for Comments (RFC) memoranda: RFC 2045, RFC 2046, RFC 2047, RFC 4288, RFC 4289 and RFC 2049, which together define the specifications. These standards specify the familiar formats for text email headers and body and rules, pertaining to commonly used header fields such as "To:", "Subject:", "From:", and "Date:". MIME is extensible. Its definition includes a method to register new content types and other MIME attribute values. ♌
APPOINTMENTS Juniper Networks, an industry leader in network innovation, announced a strengthened management team to lead its business in Asia-Pacific. The new appointments, which have been made over the past several months, help position the company to leverage its technology leadership in key growth markets. Douglas Murray, previously senior vice president and general manager of Juniper Networks' Security Business Unit, has been appointed Senior Vice President for Asia-Pacific and will be based in Hong Kong. In his new role, Murray is responsible for all aspects of Juniper's business activities across the Asia-Pacific region, including customer engagement, sales development, training and enablement, strategic planning and revenue growth.
Douglas Murray
His management team includes new hires Geoff Thomas, Vice President of Enterprise Sales, Kevin Ackhurst, Vice President of Partner Sales, and Alita Wong, Vice President of Marketing.
Thomas and Ackhurst join Juniper from Microsoft where the former spent 19 years, most recently as general manager for the Asia communications sector business, and the latter worked for 14 years including his last stint as Asia-Pacific vice president for sales and marketing. Before joining Juniper, Wong was Oracle's director of market development in Asia-Pacific and Japan and also worked at Lucent and Gartner. Matt Kolon, who was acting theater head, will return to the key position of Vice President for the service provider business in Asia-Pacific. ♦
The Association of Accredited Advertising Agents Singapore (4As) has appointed Bernard Chan as its Chief Executive Officer. With immediate effect, Chan will work closely with the executive committee to expand on the 4As" objectives of elevating the stature and prominence of Singapore"s advertising, media and marketing communications industry, while acting as the collective voice of the industry, and nurturing upcoming advertising talent and creativity. Chan will also represent 4As in related industry bodies, and government-led industry councils/panels at both national and international levels. Since coming on board, Chan has been busy with 4As" restructuring plans as the trade association realigns itself to the evolving industry and ventures into new initiates to better engage and connect with the community ecosystem. A veteran in the advertising and marketing communications industry, Chan"s experience in advertising and marketing communications spans almost four decades. In his last industry-related appointment, Chan was Principal Consultant for Dimension 8, a Bernard Chan set-up with several senior partners from DNC International, where he was responsible for business development, as well as brand creation and strategy. Prior to this, Chan was the Principal Owner for DNC Advertising since 1974, Singapore"s largest locally owned advertising and marketing communications group with branches in Malaysia, Indonesia and annual Singapore billing of over $35 million and a staff strength of 110. For a decade, Chan sat as an Executive Council member in the 4As and was the association"s President from 1996 to 2003. In the past five years, Chan was involved in the non-profit sector focusing on senior services. This included the Tsao Foundation and Centre for Seniors. Chan is also the founder for Silver Tsunami Asia, a social enterprise focused on becoming an Asian-based movement to represent and champion the population group of those between 50-75 years, starting with today"s Baby Boomer group. 4As also recently appointed Lauryn Tang as its Senior Manager for Programs. Tang will work closely with Chan to expand and drive the association"s programs for its members. ♦
APPOINTMENTS GSI Commerce, a leading provider of ecommerce and interactive marketing solutions, appointed Simone Barratt as President of e-Dialog, a proven provider of integrated digital marketing solutions. Barratt replaces Joe Gagnon, former head of e-Dialog, who is taking on new responsibilities within GSI. In her new role, Barratt will be responsible for leading the e-Dialog team worldwide, which includes global sales, operations and P&L functions. Barratt has a long history with GSI Commerce. Prior to being named president of e-dialog, Barratt was president of GSI Global Marketing Services International, a position she was promoted to in May 2011. Prior to this promotion, Barratt was managing director of e-Dialog International for 10 years where she was responsible for driving the expansion of the business across EMEA and also successfully grew the company from an email marketing firm to an integrated digital marketing company. She has more than 20 years of experience in direct and digital marketing and started one of the earliest new media companies in London, which was later incorporated into the Interpublic Group. Simone Barratt
Darren Fifield, General Manager of e-Dialog APAC, will also report to Barratt and continue guiding the areas of sales and client services operations, including consulting and functional delivery teams for APAC clients Additionally, Christian Wright, currently e-Dialog"s chief technology officer, became General Manager of e-Dialog Americas. He will continue to be responsible for the development of e-Dialog"s products and technologies, and will manage the North American sales and client services operations. Wright has been with e-Dialog since May, 2011 when he was named chief technology officer. As CTO, Wright was responsible for the overall direction and execution of global technology functions. During this time, he and his team have been focused on developing the next generation of full- and self-service multichannel solutions for e-Dialog"s clients and prospects as well as integrating e-Dialog technology into other GSI Global Marketing Services companies.
Darren Fifield
Luke Griffiths was named General Manager of e-Dialog UK and will be responsible for overseeing sales and client services operations, including the consulting and delivery teams for UK clients. Griffiths has been with e-Dialog since 2008. Prior to his promotion, he was vice president of European Client Services at e-Dialog where he was responsible for expanding the organization"s client portfolio and leading strategic email and CRM programs for clients, including British Airways, Dell, Skype, Philips and Sony PlayStation. Griffiths is a member of the DMA Email Marketing Council client hub and has more than 15 years of direct and digital marketing experience. Before he joined the e-Dialog team, Griffiths held the positions of head of ecommerce at RCI Europe and then European Marketing Director at Wyndham Worldwide/ Group RCI, the world"s largest holiday property rental and exchange services provider. ♦ Christian Wright
Worldcom Public Relations Group, a leading global partnership of independently owned public-relations counseling firms, announced their new board members for the remainder of 2011 and 2012. There are three regional boards within Worldcom, including Americas, Europe/Middle East/Africa (EMEA), and Asia Pacific (AP). The Asia Pacific Region is chaired by Cindy Payne, Managing Director of Asia-Pacific Connections Pte. Ltd. in Singapore. ♦
Aimee Buchanan
Media communication specialist OMD announced the appointment of Aimee Buchanan as Global Business Director working on the Tourism Australia account. Aimee moves to the role from MPG where she held the position of Group Client Service Director for the last three years, leading two of the Agency"s key accounts; SingTel Optus and Virgin across all channels including offline, online and SEM. With more than 11 years media experience in the Australian market, Aimee has predominantly worked on large scale telecommunications clients, managed complex accounts, focused on content creation and the leveraging of new channels. Aimee commenced her role in mid October 2011 and reports to Mark Jarrett, General Manager, OMD Sydney. ♦
Amdocs, the leading provider of customer experience systems, announced that it has partnered with Singapore"s Cellcity and Israel"s MobeeArt to deliver innovative mobile capabilities to Trudon, the leading search and digital advertising provider in South Africa. In only three months, MobeeArt"s mobile site creation solution and Cellcity"s mobile applications have been deployed at Trudon. The joint mobile solution not only supports Trudon"s yellow pages applications and sites, but it enables Trudon to offer small and medium sized businesses mobile web site creation abilities and optimization services. The newly deployed solution supports a wide range of mobile devices and tablets . ♦
Komli Media, Asia Pacific"s leading digital media technology platform, and Jivox, a leading cross-platform interactive video advertising company, announced a strategic partnership through which Komli Media will be the exclusive partner of the Jivox Interactive Video platform in the Asia-Pacific region for video advertising. Building on the success of Jivox India, India"s leading cross-platform interactive video advertising, this partnership will extend the availability of the Jivox video advertising platform to reach Australia, Southeast Asia, Middle East and Africa. The partnership allows Komli Media to exclusively use the Jivox platform for running online interactive video ads (pre-roll, mid-roll, post-roll, expanding innovations, video banners, and mobile video) for its advertisers and agency partners across all platforms including online, mobile and all tablet devices. Online video advertising is globally estimated to cross the US$3 billion mark this year. With more than 70% of all internet users in Southeast Asia watching online videos, it is expected to fuel a significant part of the overall online ad market growth. As part of this partnership, Aktiv Digital (a division of Komli) will be able to offer a first of its kind video advertising solution to the Southeast Asian market. This sophisticated multi-platform proprietary video ad serving technology that includes social sharing functionality and real time analytics is set to be a great hit with brands and advertisers. ♦
Netbiscuits, the world"s leading platform for developing, publishing and monetizing sites and apps across all connected devices, and Akamai Technologies, Inc., the leading provider of cloud optimization services, teamed up to deliver optimized mobile web solutions designed to allow best-of-breed user experience, accelerated mobile site delivery and control across multiple screens. Together, Netbiscuits and Akamai expect that mobile sites published via the Netbiscuits platform will be able to leverage the Akamai Intelligent Platform to enable better device intelligence, improved performance, and greater reliability into the delivery of these sites.♦
MediaBUZZ Pte Ltd, launched in early 2004, is an independent online publisher in the Asia Pacific region, focusing on the business of digital media and marketing. Asian e-Marketing is a true pioneer in Asia Pacific's digital marketing scene, empowering e-marketers in the vibrant and fast-paced electronic marketing environment. Key sections include e-marketing tips, best practices and trends/statistics, legislation affecting e-marketing, training the spotlight on companies and their e-marketing campaigns and e-marketing leadership profiles. Click here for the latest online edition
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