The 10 Biggest Social Media Marketing Fails Of 2013

RICHARD FELONI NOV. 24, 2013, 2:00 PM 56,583 5

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Nima Badiey/Flickr Creative Commons

There are some good corporate social media accounts out there. Oreo churns out cute ads based on current events, and the British cell provider Tesco Mobile caught the Internet's attention with charmingly sarcastic tweets that even trolls can't resist.

But there are at least as many fails going on in the marketing social sphere as wins, and the fails are often epic. 

A common element to all of these mishaps is that the social media team was not listening. And listening does not just mean talking to customers. It means being aware of the company's place in the Internet's culture and knowing that customers do not appreciate mass-produced responses.

The following list compiles the year's best of the worst, in which a brand's social missteps became magnified for the world to see through nonstop sharing on Facebook, Twitter, Reddit — and sites like us, Business Insider.

10. Strip club chain Spearmint Rhino's Melbourne team thought they'd be naughty and have Facebook users guess whose baby picture they uploaded. It didn't take long for users to look at the VHS sceenshot's time stamp and realize that the future stripper was now only 14 years old. Spearmint Rhino "liked" its own post.

Facebook via brionyjane.com

9. Kmart was excited to reveal they would be open earlier than ever this Thanksgiving and would stay open through all of Black Friday. So when customers complained about the ethics of the decision, a stumbling Kmart social team responded with over 100 caveman-like statements.

8. Few things hurt a brand more than an accusation of racism. So even though it's impossible to tell if this tweet from Home Depot was indeed racist or simply stupid, the fact that the Twittersphere was up in arms over it made corporate delete the tweet, apologize for two days, and fire the social media agency responsible.

Twitter/The Home Depot

7. This one is up for debate, but we firmly consider the Colorado nonprofit "Thanks Obamacare!" campaign to be a total fail. Even if some may consider portraying potential customers as morons to be clever marketing, it gave Obamacare critics way too much easy fodder.

Got Insurance?

6. British entertainment retailer HMV lost complete control of its social media team, when rogue members used the account to childishly live-tweet a massive firing at the company.

Twitter

5. London Luton Airport tapped into the always-hilarious topic of plane crashes for a Facebook post in March. The photo they used came from a 2005 Chicago flight that slid off the runway and killed a 6-year-old boy onboard.

Facebook via nydailynews.com

4. Pepsi's Swedish branch released a set of Facebook ads featuring a voodoo doll of competitor Portugal's megastar Cristiano Ronaldo tied to train tracks, getting his head crushed in, and covered in pins. They were forced to quickly remove them and apologize after a Portuguese anti-Pepsi Facebook group formed and gained over 100K fans in a day.

Pepsi

3. J.P. Morgan thought it could engage its consumer base through an enlightening Twitter Q&A session. Except they were completely ignorant of what their brand represented to the trolling masses of the Internet. Even respected journalists joined in on six hours of harassment fun.

Etc.

2. Cooking site Epicurious thought they could help people chill out about the Boston Marathon bombing by promoting some recipes on Twitter. Brands have made inappropriate marketing jokes on Twitter before, but Epicurious raised the bar. "Whole-grain cranberry scones!"

Twitter via cdn.business2community.com

1. Amy's Baking Company in Scottsdale, Ariz., was featured in a particularly grueling episode of Gordon Ramsay's "Kitchen Nightmares." When the episode prompted a wave of negative feedback, the restaurant's two owners took to Facebook in one of the most psychotic and bizarre public rants. They tried defending their restaurant against Reddit and Yelp users with expletives, all-caps, and inciting God. Legendary.

Illustration using images from Fox and Facebook

It's worth checking out more of this meltdown on Foodbeast. Also noteworthy: when the dust settled, the owners thought they could turn some of their viral rant into slogans for t-shirts and hats.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/10-worst-social-media-marketing-fails-of-2013-2013-11?op=1#ixzz2lmvzqMv7

These 5 campaigns got email right

By Wendy Parish Nov. 26, 2013 | Print 

   

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With a cluttered medium like email, it can be extremely difficult to make any kind of noticeable splash. In fact, there’s quite a bit of struggle to even encourage recipients to open emails, so when an email marketing campaign is able to inspire results like social conversation, high click through rater and even revenue, it is something to behold.

With recent changes to inboxes forcing marketers to adapt, as well as premature declarations of the medium's demise, it's understandable that some have moved beyond email. The inbox, however, is a powerful tool that shouldn't be overlooked, and these five campaigns are a prime example of that. 

1. LINKEDIN: TOP 1% EMAILS
Why it was great: It got people talking

Earlier this year, LinkedIn sent out emails to users congratulating them for being in the top 1%, 5% or 10% of users. The emails looked like the one featured below and sparked a massive response across social media, which seemed to be LinkedIn’s intent.

The first wave of social media commentary came from those who had received the emails. If users clicked through the email’s “Read More” button, they were encouraged to share their status on various social media outlets — and share they did. The second wave of social conversation came after users started doing the math. Even if you were in the top 1%, 5% or 10% of users, you were still among 2 million, 10 million, or 20 million users, respectively. There was a slew of negative posts after users started to realize this fact.

You can argue whether or not the campaign was a success, but you can’t argue that it sparked a serious viral fire.

2. VERTICAL RESPONSE: GROUPON-STYLE EMAIL
Why it was great: The email generated $18,000 in revenue

It should come as no surprise that an actual email marketing firm made the list. Vertical Response made its big splash by taking a cue from daily deal provider Groupon.

The firm sent out a Groupon-like email offering discounts on email credits, which are used by customers for email newsletters. With credits up to half off and Vertical Response's promise to match the credits up to 1,000, the email created additional urgency with a countdown timer.

The deal was too good to pass up and ended up generating $18,000 in revenue. That’s an impressive ROI on one email. 

3. CHARITY WATER: GET TO KNOW THE PEOPLE OF RWANDA
Why it was great: It told an engaging story

Most email marketers will tell you that a call to action is one of the critical components of any email campaign. Typically, the call to action is an invitation to buy or visit a company's website, but in the case of nonprofit Charity Water’s “Get to Know the People of Rwanda” email campaign, the call to action was use to engage recipients in a compelling story.

Rather than the “buy now” or “visit the site” buttons so common in marketing emails, there is only a “Read His (or Her) Story.” For an organization like Charity Water, they couldn’t have picked a better tactic to get recipients to care about their cause. The email put a face to the problem and included visually stunning images to connect to recipients. 

4. BRAIN PICKINGS: EMAIL NEWSLETTER  
Why it was great: It broke email rules because it knows its audience

(Click to enlarge)

Like so many things in marketing, there are industry-understood sets of “rules” for many tactics. Email marketing has not escaped this. One such rule is to keep emails short and to the point. The idea is that readers want to be able understand the email’s point as quickly as possible.  

But rules were meant to be broken in the case of discovery websiteBrain Pickings. Their email newsletters are often extensive, offering an array of interesting ideas for readers. The reason Brain Pickings can get away with this is because it truly understands its readers. The site’s audience is interested in Brain Pickings because it’s a wealth of information in one place, not in spite of it. 

5.  AT&T: ADD A LINE PROMO 
Why it was great: The call to action fit the audience

Remember how we mentioned the call to action before? In this case, mobile provider AT&T nailed it right on the head. In the side-by-side comparison of desktop and mobile emails, one can see that AT&T really understand how to optimize an email for mobile.

In the mobile version of the email, AT&T includes a button labeled “Call Now.” This simple addition shows just how much the brand understands mobile users, who can appreciate the option for a phone call from their devices rather than trudging through a site to find more information. Plus, it just recognizes that the user is on a mobile phone while reading the email. This kind of customization shows recipients that AT&T is cognizant of their needs. 

Top Technology Trends for 2014 And Beyond

 

11/25/2013 @ 8:21AM |24,827 views

Forrester: Top Technology Trends for 2014 And Beyond

 

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This month, Forrester released its list of top technology trends for the three year time horizon. The author of the report, Forrester analyst Brian Hopkins makes the point that now that consumers and employees have continuous connectivity and an endless supply of apps, the CIO must drive the nimbleness that will be demanded by employees and customers, while he or she must also do so securely. These trends are so woven into the business drivers, that IT leaders must become much more strategic, providing the rationale for the changes that are afoot. With this background in mind, Forrester identifies the following ten technology trends for the 2014 through 2016.

1. Digital convergence erodes boundaries

Physical and digital worlds are converging. As a result consumers expect uniform service whether they are in the physical world or if they are in the digital world. The convergence of the business and personal use of technology is also fueling this trend.

Forrester makes the point that “A great digital experience is no longer a nice-to-have; it’s a make-or-break point for your business as we more fully enter the digital age.” The report points to a growing number of firms that have chosen a mobile-first approach, but then falling flat because “systems of record cannot keep up with engagement needs.” To a greater extent, customers’ impressions of a business are established through digital engagement forcing businesses to recognize that “software is the brand.” Some CIOs are losing their influence over the decisions in these areas as digital experience agencies are engaged by chief marketing officers and chief technology officers to a greater extent than by chief information officers.2. Digital experience delivery makes (or breaks) firms

3. APIs become digital glue

Forrester draws a comparison between service-oriented architecture (SOA) and applications platform interfaces (APIs).  Like the former, the latter provides “open access to useful functionality through network-based services using technologies that are readily accessible from a broad range of programming environments.” The report sites as examples Amazon.com AMZN +1.2%’s product advertising API and the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority’s API which represent business model innovation under this paradigm, while also highlighting the need for ever more sophisticated security given the exposure of data to a much broader set of individuals.

4. The business takes ownership of process and intelligence

Forrester highlights that IT is losing its control over business intelligence platforms, tools, and applications often due to IT’s inability to operate at the increased pace of the business. The report also notes that business process management, again a traditional domain of IT by-and-large, is increasingly becoming the domain of other functions as “a new class of users demands more user-friendly, self-service features to automate ad hoc processes without expensive and scarce IT resources.” As mobility increasingly becomes a strategic imperative of the entire business greater levels of process and data innovation should arise, again leading to various functional leaders to wrestle control away from IT.

5. Firms shed yesterday’s data limitations

Forrester maintains that “firms that embrace big data concepts, open data, and adopt new adaptive intelligence approaches are creating next generation smart systems that overcome limitations and create disruptive business innovations.” Cheaper, more agile, collaborative, and adaptive methods for analytics and data sharing are key. Forrester also notes that it is important to design “predictive apps able to sense their environment and respond in real-time, anticipate user action, and meet users in their moment of need.”

6. Sensors and devices draw ecosystems together

The Internet-of-Things will move from hype to reality with the ubiquity of connectivity and proliferation of devices, and wearable computing will go from niche to broader use.  This will turn the traditional “spray-and-pray promotional campaigns” into marketing to ecosystems that emerge as a result of these changes.

7. “Trust” and “identity” get a rethink

The report posits that trust has been irreparably harmed as “it’s impossible to identify ‘trusted’ interfaces, many data breeches comes from trusted insiders, and the concept of ‘trust’ doesn’t even apply to data packets.” Consumerization of IT means that a greater number of IT devices and apps are being used in the workplace, especially by the digital natives. IT’s need to catch up with this will continue to be the norm.  Forrester also points out that “the minimum cost of a data breech is $10 million, and in many cases it can be much larger”, and so it cannot be ignored.

8. Infrastructure takes on engagement

Forrester foresees a number of changes that will change infrastructure from barrier to progress to “enabler of business demand for engagement.” The report notes that leading companies are changing silo unified communications and collaboration, mobile device management, and desktop computing to more efficiently deliver and foster employee engagement and innovation. Also, “converged infrastructure and software-defined networks are leading to the emergence of the software-defined data center (SDDC) as the new organizational model for intelligent infrastructure management — as a result, technology infrastructure will be able to deliver blazing fast performance on a variety of workloads, all at an affordable cost and level of complexity.”

9. Firms learn from the cloud and mobile

10. IT becomes an agile service broker (or fades away)Many firms have cloud strategies and mobile strategies, but the report makes the point that the benefits of the cloud will be limited by the speed with which traditional applications are re-written to take advantage of cloud. Without this redesign, benefits will be limited. Additionally, mobile strategies that have been a part of IT strategies across industries for a couple of years are now insufficient given the need to think of mobile as only one part of a broader omni-channel approach which requires a new kind of “application architecture that must be capable of supporting systems of engagement.”

Forrester notes that “Today’s leading IT organizations are moving from aligned IT to empowered business technology practices.” Examples include

• Becoming technology service broker
• Modifying the software development lifecycle , architecture, and solutions development to deliver mobile, cloud, and big data solutions more readily
• Changing portfolio management to focus on products rather than projects as projects are more narrow in focus which leads to narrower value
• Replacing the success metrics to gauge project management “from time, cost, and resources” to “value, capacity, and time-to-market metrics.

5 recent email changes that required marketers to adapt

By Wendy Parish Nov. 13, 2013 | Print 

   

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With the rise of social media in marketing, rumors of “email marketing is dead” were running rampant in headlines. No one in marketing actually believed that email was dead, but several significant changes have necessitated new strategies and tactics. The medium has arguably become even more important as social media channels become increasingly crowded. 

Renovations in recent years have altered standards, norms, displays and more. To say the least, those in email marketing have been busy.​

These five recent changes have required marketers to find new ways to administer email campaigns.

1. GMAIL INBOX TABS 

When Google decided to make a major overhaul on the way emails are filtered in Gmail inboxes, email marketing professionals went a little crazy. The new inboxes now sort incoming mail into category tabs that include one labeled “Promotions,” where most marketing emails now find themselves. This created a great deal of speculation among marketing professionals about how they would be able to reach the hundreds of millions of users on the most-used email platform on the planet.

How marketers have adapted: A hot topic on marketing blogs for some time after the Google announcement, there is plenty of information available on how to adapt email marketing campaigns for the new Gmail inbox. One simple way marketers were campaigning to get moved to the “Primary” tab is including directions in emails to Gmail users on how they can star their emails to receive them in their primary feed.

The biggest way marketers have to adapt practices is by targeting their audience and providing more value to their subscribers. Gmail’s move to categorize promotional emails gives users a better experience by allowing them to read marketing emails on their own terms. Tactics like flash sales aren’t as effective anymore when recipients are reading emails at leisure. To that end, subject lines have become even more important with the new Gmail.

2. YAHOO ID CHANGES 

This summer, Yahoo announced it would be cleaning up the Yahoo ID list by eliminating all IDs that hadn’t logged in for over a year. This meant each Yahoo email, and all the other Yahoo products tied to it, would be wiped clean and put up for grabs for new users. Marketers then scrambled to figure out how they would prevent emails already on their list from going to a different person.

How marketers have adapted: When Yahoo cleaned up its list, marketers had to do so, as well, by monitoring emails bounced back by inactive accounts. The transition was about 30 days for marketers to watch for bounced back emails. If marketers were unable to purge their lists of inactive Yahoo IDs, the complaints could roll in about unwanted emails.

Ultimately, Yahoo did marketers a favor by helping them to identify abandoned accounts. Sending emails to those subscribers wasn’t doing marketers any good.

3. INCREASED MOBILE EMAIL USE

The increasing popularity and heavy use of mobile devices has been arguably the biggest change in email marketing in recent years. Mobile devices have drastically changed how consumers access and interact with emails. According to a report from Knotice, 41% of emails in 2012 were opened on a mobile device. That number is anticipated to grow in future years. The Radicati Group predicts mobile email users will grow 28% in 2014 and 23% in 2015. 

How marketers have adapted: There’s no fighting this trend for reluctant marketers. Mobile email is the norm now, which means “mobile friendly” templates are no longer enough. Responsive design is the email of the present and of the future. Responsive design allows marketers to adjust text, type, images and other functions of an email depending on what screen or device the email is opened on. Because so many users access email via both desktop/laptop and mobile devices, responsive design is the answer.

4. THE END OF HOTMAIL 

Hotmail has been in a slow decline for several years now. In 2012, Gmail finally surpassed the Microsoft platform as the most-used email platform in the world. Earlier this year, Microsoft made anannouncement that Hotmail would no longer be available. All current Hotmail users were transferred to Outlook.com by the summer of 2013. Though they could still use the Hotmail.com domain name and keep their addresses, the platform was now Outlook and they had the option to change their address. The move, industry pros predicted, was the “death of Hotmail.”

The Outlook platform also had a similar function to the Gmail tabs, placing non-personal emails into a separate folder.

How marketers have adapted: Anytime a major email platform makes such a striking change, it means email marketers have to do some major housekeeping on their lists. Potentially, users could have both a Hotmail.com and an Outlook.com address that goes to the same account, causing duplication problems. Those users who made the switch to Outlook.com domains will no longer appear on some lists, so marketers had to make an effort to stay in touch with subscribers through other methods, like social networks.

As with Gmail, subject lines become more important when marketing emails are categorized to a different inbox. Targeting engaged users is, of course, of benefit to brands, as well.

5. LIST HYGIENE AND TARGETING

While list hygiene has always been a practice among email marketers, the change in the landscape over the past year made it even more important. List hygiene involves cleaning up lists to eliminate unresponsive accounts and also segment and target audiences better within the list. Inbox sorting, as noted, made sending the right emails to the right people more important than ever. Marketers are also moving away from the email “blasts” of previous years in favor of fewer emails with more personalization.

How marketers have adapted: With email platforms like Yahoo and Hotmail eliminating dormant handles and migrating users to a new interface, marketers have had to pay closer attention to bounce backs and unresponsive email accounts. Many marketers found that when they cut down the numbers on their email lists, they were able to grow engagement, as evidenced by publisher CNET, which cut its email newsletter list by 53%. Other marketers sought to reactivate dormant accounts. The Denver Center for Performing Arts was able to increase ROI by 73% during a reactivation campaign that targeted 40,000 lapsed patrons.