Marketing Software Tools

Many people don’t really know the origin of the national holiday that we are celebrating today. Truth be told, I didn’t either.   The short answer is today we celebrate the birthday of George Washington, the father of our country, who was born on February 22, 1732. Why is it called Presidents Day and not Washington’s Day? Well, in 1968, there was an attempt to change the day to President’s Day, to celebrate both Abraham Lincoln (born February 12, 1809) and Washington ’s birthday on the same day. The attempt failed, but the name stuck – hence we are celebrating Presidents Day. 

Most retailers look to Presidents Day as the first retail push following the dismal holiday shopping season. Many of the big chains rely on national advertising programs to reach their local audiences on big holiday sale weekends such as this.  Local advertising may come in the form of newspaper, radio, direct mail and local internet marketing.   We too believe in the value of these mediums to advertise screaming deals on holiday weekends. As much as I hate the idea of adding another insert into the pile of flyers that fall out of the newspaper on holiday weekends such as this, they inevitably work. Even better, franchisors are slowly adopting marketing software tools to help them develop local advertising strategies, tailored to their local markets. So, not only will their messages reach their local consumers, they may actually be relevant to them!   

So, if you aren't working today, pick up a newspaper, turn on your favorite radio station and hit a few sales. The economy could use a little boost. 

 “Hey, send me a postcard when you get there!”  Famous last words of family and friends as I leave for a vacation and I always smile and say “Will Do!”  Problem is - I never do.  I am notorious for walking into gift shops and perusing the spinning racks of postcards thinking 'HA' that one’s kind of funny or is that picture really from here because I have not seen anything that looks like that. 

It has honestly been a while since I have handwritten and sent anything in the mail unless there is a check stuffed in it dated for the same day it's due.  But this week I found a solution to all of this after reading an article on Adage.com.  A company called Hippopost, located in Canada, has created a marketing software tool where you can upload a picture from either your computer or phone, write a message and they will print and send it to the recipient.  And the best part is it's all for FREE! 

So what's the catch, well there is no real catch for me as the user.  The recipient of the card though is going to not only get an awesome picture of my vacation but they are also going to get hit with an advertisement from a brand sponsor of my choosing.  Currently the sponsors involved are national brands, however their efforts will aid local advertising campaigns.  By spreading brand awareness "Hippopost is hoping advertisers will find the sponsorship opportunities compelling, the pitch being that people won't readily throw away postcards that capture priceless moments from friends or family."  Makes sense.

I feel like this adverting concept has a lot of growth potential.  Being part of a company that works with local store marketing for franchises, I foresee this idea being a great addition to co-op advertising efforts.

For those of you involved in Co-op advertising or co-op marketing programs, I wanted to make you aware of a new whitepaper we have entitled, "Integrated Co-op Marketing." 

You can access the whitepaper here:  Integrated Co-op Marketing

The overall concept of the whitepaper is that organizations who integrate the creative and financial components of their co-op marketing solution see significantly increased results from their channel marketing program.  We believe that by deploying sophisticated co-op marketing software an organization can dramatically increase reseller participation and success in their co-op marketing solution. 

Marketing software tools, specifically co-op marketing software, have made significant strides in recent years and this whitepaper will help you understand how to identify and deploy the most effective co-op marketing solution. 

Would love to hear any feedback! 

Tags:  Channel Marketing Software, Co-op Advertising, Co-op Marketing Software, Co-op Marketing Solution, CRM Marketing Automation, Retail Marketing, Sales Promotion Marketing, Trade Promotion Marketing

Note:  This post originally appeared on Balihoo's old blog on 12/4/09 by Kelly Mason

People always say, “Oh, if I could be a fly on that wall.”  First off, it’s odd that as intelligent humans at the top of the food chain, we would wish to be flies, which rarely live longer than a few days and spend the majority of that time on or searching for feces.  While it could be expressed in a more pleasing way (butterfly on the wall, fairy, anything), it is still an interesting sentiment.  The idea being that one can gather uninhibited, and therefore extremely valuable, information if the recipient is invisible (or nearly so).

As Balihoo’s product team, we are constantly seeking information from our users.  I have quickly learned the value of the 5 Why’s, to ensure that I’m getting every piece of information I need in order to get to the bottom of the issue.  “Why do you need that?”  “Why is that necessary for your process?” “Why doesn’t the current feature work?”  (My coworkers love requesting a new feature from me.)  But even if I ask all the questions in the world, we are still missing one valuable perspective, and that is the uninhibited, fly-on-the-wall perspective. 

In an effort to gather this feedback, we went to www.UserTesting.com.  This is a valuable site which allows us to write instructions for accomplishing a specific task on our site, and then to send those instructions to a complete and total stranger who is viewing the site for the very first time.  What I got back was a video of said complete and total stranger trying to complete my task.  The users were great, providing verbal, stream-of-consciousness feedback the entire time.

Watching and hearing someone try to maneuver a site you know so well, when you can’t say anything to guide them through, is a whole new world for a control freak like me.  That button, which caused us to agonize over its positioning, is utterly ignored, while at the same time, these strangers can’t figure out how to move to the next page.  In our efforts to automate marketing with marketing software tools, user feedback is invaluable. 

The reality is, we can’t sit next to our customers all the time.  And we can’t scream and yell in their faces (“The button is at the bottom – the bottom!!”)  And we can’t ask all the right questions, or train users for every possible scenario.  Sometimes we just have to sit back and listen.  Watching someone else go through the site provides information we would never get in a formal training or feedback session, and it also reminds us to never underestimate the importance of usability.  Marketing software tools have to be easy-to-use to be effective. 

Note:  This post originally appeared on Balihoo's old blog on 11/12/09 by Kevin Donaldson

In the past couple days I have came across two interesting articles using American football analogies representing typical startup challenges.  One yesterday from Dan Martell entitled Startups: Its ok to change your mind/product, A second post just two days prior by Entrepreneur/Angel Andy Liu on his blog Inspired Startup entitled Dink to Success.  I often use the concept of sports when talking about Agile software development and more generally when discussing business agility so I thought I would add some additional thoughts into the mix.  These certainly apply to the marketing software tools and marketing planning systems we build here at Balihoo. 

First, lets talk about why are sports such as football are great inspiration to startups? – I think it works well because there is a mix of competition, pain and exhilaration in the sport, which is very similar to what you get in a startup environment.  Interestingly, this can be a useful way to help recruit and/or determine the types of people that you want on your startup team.  I don’t mean that you should seek out athletes, but the analogy can help prospects understand what they are signing up for, and help weed out candidates that are not interested in playing the game.  Some people like the idea of being in a startup. but can they play on the field, or are they really just an armchair athlete?

Once you have your team – how can you make your players most effective? The articles listed use the sport of football; however, I actually believe that while football works in some ways the sport of rugby might be a superior analogy in many respects.  Both games have similar objectives but with some key differences. 

 

Here are a few examples:

Pads and Helmets:  Unlike American football there are no pads or helmets in rugby.  Having this type of safety gear can create the impression of indestructibility.  Just put your head down and go.  Without pads and helmets for protection it might drive a different type of behavior – is there a smoother way for us to move the ball forward?  Plus, if you make the comparison that pads/helmet = cash you are likely lucky to have a jersey:)

Defined Plays - the good:  Executing a defined play can be a good analogy in a startup if used in the right context.  For example in most Agile software shops teams will ‘huddle’ each morning to set out a plan for the day and then resets again the next day based on the results of the previous days play.  Another good use of this model relates to frequent resets and huddles on business strategy.  However the longer the duration between huddles the more this analogy starts to breaks down.

Defined Plays – the bad:  At a macro/business level I think this analogy can actually decrease agility.  Plays in football are executed in a very defined process.  If anything goes wrong, play execution fails most of the time.  It typically results in zero movement forward or sometimes a loss of yards.  On the other hand, Rugby is more about continuous sustained play with real time adjustments.  The team is not told what play to execute or has the benefit of a stoppage in play to make a static decision.  The rules of the game create a style of play that can appear very chaotic from the outside. (remind you of your startup business environment?)  However, team members practice around a basic framework or set of patterns, and when on the field – the team self organizes, and adjusts real time as the environment changes. 

The Speed of Play: Think about American football.  4 quarter hour segments of play time.   Then think about actual game duration in terms of actual time from start to finish.  There is a lot of time where there is no play.  Now think about Ruby.  The style of play is much faster – there is a lot more opportunity for real time ‘practice’ – fail, retry fail retry.  It happens so fast in the game play that you hardly have time to consider or even think about it as a failed play.  Its just a natural part of the game progression.  This coupled with real time learning on the field creates a very well practiced, fail fast and adapt, agile team operating under minimal constraints.     

One of the article above talks about dinking the ball down the field with small short plays.  Yes – good analogy and a potential strategy to get the ball across the line – as long as the team you are playing against is using the same rules.   Now think about about business.  To me, it is much more like rugby with very few rules about how the different teams move the ball.  If your team plays well under the rules of American football what happens when you are put in an environment with the same objective (moving the ball down the field to the end zone) but remove the constraints on how movement takes place and play doesn’t stop?  Think like a rugby team!

Tags:  marketing software tools, marketing planning systems, agile software development