As I have said before, when creating an email marketing campaign, testing is crucial to make sure you are reaching the most people as possible and obtaining the highest ROI.

In a recent article by Jack Loechner, he discussed the results on a study that examined the use of analytics in email marketing campaigns. None of these findings really surprised me.

Here is a brief summary of the findings:

* 33% of marketers who don’t test their emails say it’s because they don’t know how and 27% don’t because they don’t have time.

* More than 50% of marketers improved their ROI by testing.  (This statistic alone should be enough for someone to see just how more effective your email campaign(s) can be just by testing.)

* For marketers who do test, here is what they are testing:

1. 85.2% test subject lines

2. 54.8 % test calls to action

3. 50.9% test designs

4.  49.1% test copy

5. 41.7% test offers

6. 36.8% test timing of campaigns

In a past post, I discussed how to make an email campaign more effective. I specifically talked about how important testing the subject line and the time of day you send your email is. Remember, you want to test for the tone and personality of your subject line and you should generally send your email between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. (I have found Thursdays work best).

I feel that testing the call to action is 100% dependent on your company– not all email campaigns can have more than one call to action. So, I am a little surprised with that number being so high.

I love how so many people are testing designs. Seeing what attracts your target audience’s attention is  important, especially because these findings can dramatically change the way you design all your future email campaigns.

I wonder if this survey asked  questions about what testing methods were NOT working. In addition to knowing what does work, I find it can be just as helpful for email marketers to know which things they should avoid.

Having done my fair share of interviewing in the relatively short time since I graduated, I was blown away by the number of options available to reach out and touch someone, as I searched for a job ahead of my impending relocation to San Diego this past May. The advent of the Social Web has fundamentally changed the way people connect, communicate, and get introduced. In fact, I wouldn’t be writing this post, if social media hadn’t come through for me, (you can see how it all started by scanning the comments right here…), so with this in mind, here are some useful tips for job hunters across some of the major social media destinations:

LINKEDIN

Fill out your profile
Research cuts both ways – you can be sure that while you’re using LinkedIn to find out more about that dream job, some interviewers are likely looking you up also, so give them something to work with, and get a better sense of who you are, and what you’re like.

Get introduced
Know somebody who knows somebody? Request an introduction through that contact. You’d be surprised at how easily you can get your foot in the door at a company you want to work for. Kevin Bacon would be proud.

Talk about achievements, not responsibilities
This is an evergreen tip that still holds true for traditional job-hunting as well as in social media. Interviewers often want to know how you did, not what you did at your previous jobs. Stats are your friend here – did you make or save the company money? Did you reduce turnaround time, or help them win an award? Quantifying your performance makes it real for your interviewer

Write recommendations
Harness some social media karma, and say nice (true) things about others in your network – they’ll likely return the favor, which will only give you bonus points when interviewers look you up

Get a vanity URL
Which would you remember better: http://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonamunwa, or http://www.linkedin.com/pub/jason-amunwa/1/4/a6?

LinkedIn is an incredible networking tool, with tons of functionality – check out this great article on Mashable to dive even deeper.

COMPANY BLOGS/TWITTER
Follow the latest news
Many companies have been blogging for a while, and others are using Twitter too – some are even using these channels to announce new hires, rather than go the Monster/HotJobs/CareerBuilder route – subscribe to/follow them, and watch them for any new openings. In some cases, you may even get advance notice over the traditional listings sites, helping you get your application to the top of the pile. Thanks to this tweet from @BGIndra, I managed to get my resume towards the front of the queue referenced in this tweet!

Be social!
Engage in a dialogue with the author, retweet them, ask them questions, and follow other people from the same company to get a clearer picture of day-to-day life there. People notice this, and pretty soon, your name will become familiar around the office, before you’ve even dealt an introductory handshake.

FACEBOOK
Keep your private life private
Facebook offers its robust privacy settings for good reason. Hide any content you wouldn’t share with interviewers before you start your search. With that said, leave your profile open to be found in searches – you want interviewers to know you exist, but not what happened when your buddies challenged you to drink a quart of milk in an hour.

Join relevant groups, fan relevant pages
As with blogs and Twitter, groups and fan pages give you another opportunity to get your name known in the right circles, and raise your profile among companies who may be looking for someone just like you.

GOOGLE TOOLS
Get a Google Profile
Google’s recent response to the now widely-known phenomenon of googling people’s names was to allow you to create your own ‘official’ profile. This is powerful in that it allows you to take control of your online reputation, rather than whatever results pop up. It also means that you’re less likely to be confused with the frat boy who shares your name, and insists on regularly posting outrageous drunken party pictures to Flickr.

Put your resume online
There are a number of ways to do this, including using an online resume service, or simply adding a page to your personal website. For ease and speed, I imported my resume into Google Docs, and made it publicly viewable.
Bonus: use TinyURL & you can reference it in your cover letters, biz cards, etc. with a vanity URL, e.g. http://www.tinyurl.com/yoursmarttaglinehere

Use an RSS reader
Many of the larger job listings sites allow you to create a custom RSS feed for the types of jobs you’re looking for. Use an RSS reader and subscribe to these feeds, as well as industry/company blogs, to consolidate all this info into one place – you’ll greatly expand your ability to monitor the new jobs being posted in your area.

OTHER TIPS
Comment, tweet and post on industry blogs
Not only does this get the attention of people who read/follow these streams of content, it makes you more likely to appear in related search results. Sharing your opinions on relevant industry topics helps establish you as an expert and leader in your field

Turn on your email/sms notifications
These days, time is of the essence, so make sure you have your finger on the pulse of all fronts of your online presence, and are ready to respond at the drop of a hat no matter where you are.

Be genuine & make it fun
Nobody likes a poseur, so just be human and let your personality come through online

Most importantly
Don’t forget that all of the above should be employed in addition to traditional jobseeker methods. It’s a new reality we’re living in, folks, and job opportunities can come from anywhere, so take steps to be prepared. The multitudes of outlets for your online presence is a way to extend your traditional search, not replace it.

Do you have any social-media job-hunting tips or anecdotes of your own? Let us know in the comments!

For the past couple of weeks I’ve been on hyperdrive it seems – a landslide of client and work-related events has kept my calendar full of lunches, meetings, coffee get-togethers, conference calls and cocktail parties. And aside from feeling overwhelmed and falsely popular, I had an epiphany.

As a advocate for social media and a regular speaker, tutor and blogger on the subject, my world depends increasingly on relationships formed digitally. I have made friends with people I have come to know and respect — completely online. Friendships I have enjoyed for years have grown and taken new importance through social media outlets like Twitter and Facebook, and @carondg, @prprosandiego, @jaybaer, @specialksd and the hilarious @troymjohnson have all become friends I look forward to “talking” with daily.

But here’s my epiphany — all those meetings and live conversations I’ve had recently were WAY MORE REWARDING AND ENJOYABLE – because they were live. And it jerked my chain hard.

The feeling of actually being social, without the media part, was refreshing – and it reminded me that for all my advocacy of social media marketing (and I believe in its strengths more than ever), nothing beats a good ol’ fashioned face-to-face conversation once in awhile. No digital winks, no LOL, AYFKM, WTF and #fillinwhateveryouwanthere.  Just honest facial expressions and words with meanings attached that you can read on someone’s body language.

There’s been a lot written about the ubiquity of social media tools and how we are becoming increasingly dependent on them. A lot of theorists and scholars – people way smarter than me – are engaged in dialogues about how to harness the power of social media, how to shape social media use for the common good, how to measure its effect, what it means for the future of marketing, and more.

For me, it’s more simple. Mixing social with social media is the combination that works best for me – when I can overlap real, live, in-person conversations with those 140-character bursts of spontaneity and occasional tidbits of wisdom. I like people, and I’m a sociable kinda guy.

The funny thing is — all those live, in-person meetings and conversations and musings over cocktails I enjoyed so much? All we talked about was social media the whole time.

Ironic, huh?

Every other week, the ad department at our San Diego advertising and public realtions agency gets together for lunch (“brown bag” as we like to call it), to discuss articles, new industry trends or just agency life in general. Each team member has been assigned a certain industry publication, since obviously, none of us have the time to read every publication, blog, etc… everyday.

In our lunch yesterday, our Advertising Account Director, Jennifer Personette, shared with us an interesting article on AdAge about what makes ad campaigns work. Some interesting key points from the article are as follows:

1- Focus on hard objectives, such as specific market-share gains, rather than soft ones, such as brand awareness.

2- Focus on price, not volume.

3- Focus on penetration (winning new customers) rather than loyalty.

4- Influence consumers emotionally rather than rationally.

5- Create ads with “talk value.”

6- Have a high share of voice relative to brand market share.

7- Include TV in the mix.

8- Include a small number of media channels with a concerted message.

All of these are great ways to help increase a company’s sales or profit. I do have to admit though, I was a little surprised by number 3. I know it is extremely important to constantly win new customers, as that is one of the major ways to increase profit. However, I am also a big believer in customer loyalty and making sure you keep them as customers. Naturally, this varies from brand to brand, but still. Especially today with people spending less, isn’t it more important to keep the customers you have already won?

I really like how they included TV on this list. A lot of people think that TV advertising is not worth the money any more and that it is a dying medium. Yes, people are DVRing shows now. However, the vast majority of the population is not. Even people that are, like myself, sometimes forget to fast forward through the commercials or the remote control isn’t right next to them and are too lazy to get up to go get it to skip the commercials.

One thing I would have like to have seen on this list is to include some form of social media, whether that be Twitter, Facebook or something else. Social media is key these days.

What do you think is missing from the list or should not even be on the list?

Supplied by my friend Deborah Weinstein of Strategic Objectives in Toronto.

At Bailey Gardiner, we’ve always found it rewarding to hire, develop, and work with interns. We’ve worked with interns from both ends of the spectrum. In college for class credit, summer interns “vacationing” in San Diego, MBA students, even eager yet recently laid-off professionals. Really, all kinds.

I have always thought of us, the agency, teaching and mentoring the interns. Allowing them to learn from our real world clients and soak in our smarts. Now, after more than ten years of advertising and agency life, it has taken our recent (and amazing) batch of interns to make me realize several things that are re-shaping and re-energizing my work life. Who knew that interns would be teaching me?

Here is some insight from their fresh and unadulterated minds:
1. I have come a really long way. From the early days of learning how to use a fax machine (really), to learning what an insertion order was, to understanding the difference between PMS and CMYK. Working in an agency is truly a lifelong education. I learn something new every single day. Just think, when I first started in advertising, we were sending print ads on FUJI film (I am cringing at the thought of the FedEx bills and carbon footprint we accumulated) and faxing proofs of ads to our clients.

Hearing our interns ask what a v-card is or what our common nicknames, like specs are (short for the specifications of a project/job), or overhearing them wondering to each other about how we go after clients and win business — all reminded me that I started in the same place.

2. I really love what I do. I love being creative and I get to apply creativity to everything that I do. No two days are ever alike.

3.  Perspective. While I am totally in love with what I do, I also love to exercise, go to the beach, walk my dogs, and spend time with my friends. These things are really easy to lose sight of when you bury yourself in a job you also love. I have really enjoyed overhearing our interns talk about their weekend activities or seeing them take off for a lunchtime jog.

4. Attitude, teamwork, drive, and eagerness to learn. Enough said.

5. Sometimes the little perks and successes are the biggest. Pizza and a day at the Del Mar Racetrack go a long way, especially for college students. No longer am I immune to these gestures, thank-you’s and activities, I appreciate all of the wonderful perks that surround my job! The smallest successes are celebrated by our interns with high-fives and happy hour. Busy schedules and high-profile projects have jaded my view of success. Even the smallest successes should be recognized.

6. I didn’t really learn anything in college. Some of the most important things I do come from my life and work experiences. How to deal with different and sometimes difficult personalities, how to manage projects, people, clients, and yes, even your boss.

I am so thankful to our current interns, that, for a very long list of reasons, have helped to re-energize my life in advertising.

Given only the directive to “start their own intern blog,” I am proud to share their new (and quite hilarious) endeavor into the blogosphere. They came up with a concept and content that is really refreshing! Check it out and hopefully you will be as inspired as I am.

Thanks BG Interns!

I last blogged on my favorite brand reinventions, and I’d like to add another to that list: Bravo TV. Lauren Zalaznick, president of NBCU’s women’s & lifestyle entertainment networks, is my hero. Lauren took a simple concept  – Reality TV: great if you’re watching it, horrible if you’re living it – and ran with it. She’s transformed the network and built quite the brand -  look at the success of shows like “Project Runway,” “Top Chef,” “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy,” and all the Real Housewives series. And “NYC Prep,” “The Rachel Zoe Project,” “Make Me a Supermodel,” “Millionaire Matchmaker,” and “The Fashion Show?” I watch(ed) and love them all. It’s pretty safe to say Bravo TV would not be where it is today without Lauren.

Her latest project? An art-world reality TV show produced by Sarah Jessica Parker. The show, which doesn’t have a name or air date yet, will feature undiscovered talent competing for a gallery show, a cash prize and a sponsored national museum tour.  As reported by the New York Times this weekend, more than 400 people auditioned. I have a good feeling about this show.

Word on the street is they haven’t chosen which museums are participating yet… Being part of the art world as Bailey Gardiner reps The San Diego Museum of Art – can’t wait to watch what happens!

Last week I attended the San Diego session of The Cool Twitter Conference World Tour. The event was a part of a series that is bringing together local twitter experts to share best practices, talk about new resources and keep the Twitter conversation going offline. Each speaker talked about Twitter from a different perspective (Twitter for non-profits, Twitter for a local association, Twitter for a retail business, Green Twitter, etc…) which was a great way to get variety into the presentations. And the event even attracted a few of our local twitterati: Mashable’s Jen Van Grove (@jbruin) and Customers Rock’s Becky Carroll (@bcarroll7) were both speakers, and @downtownrob was in attendance. All in all I found it to be an extremely interesting day and I enjoyed being in a room with people who are as twitter-obsessed as I am.

Here are some of the things I liked, things I learned and a few key takeaways from some of the conference.

A couple of Twitter Basics:

• Twitter is a not new fad – It’s actually been around since 2006. It is only recently that it has taken off in such an exponential way.

• Must have’s for every profile: a bio, link to your site, and a profile image.

• Basic things every company user must do: Follow back the people that follow them (within reason), reply to @ replies and DM’s, RT links/tweets that would be of interest to your customers, ask for feedback, be conversational, genuine and consistent.

• 20 character rule: If you are hoping to be re-tweeted, aim to save at least 20 characters so that your followers will have room to RT you.

If you are looking for more twitter basics check out our post on Twitter 101.

Twitter/Social Media Numbers:

• In the last year, Twitter grew 1,000 percent. (That’s a lot).

• 51 percent of US adults now participate in social media.

• 63 percent of companies have increased their social media budget in 2009.

New Twitter Trends:

• Real-time search engines (aka, the ability to search for something the second it is typed) – Twitter, Tweetmeme and the recently launched Bing Tweets are all real time search engines. Facebook and Google are both scrambling to get their real-time search capabilities functioning and are expected to release these sometime soon.

• Monetizing Twitter – Twitter recently launched verified accounts for celebrities however not for businesses. It is expected that this will be something businesses have to pay for in the near future.

There is also a growing trend of Twitter Ads. Companies use services such as Magpie to send their tweets out through peoples Twitter stream as “sponsored tweets.” There seems to be a bit of controversy over this, and I’d have to agree that I, personally, wouldn’t want to subject my followers to a bunch of Ad’s in my stream. (I just love you all too much!)

• Twitter Giveaways – If you haven’t heard of the Square Space Iphone giveaway/drama or the successful Moonfruit Macbook giveaway, I’d suggest googling them. Both can teach you a lot about running your own Twitter contest.

• Microgiving – The average online donation is only $57 dollars. To run a successful Twitter fundraiser, it is recommended to ask for small donations ($5-$10 range). Such small donations can have a big impact, much like they did during 2008’s Tweetsgiving.

Twitter Resources:

• TweetLater/Futuretweets – Allow you to schedule out your tweets.
• Twitbacks – Twitter profile background
• Polldaddy/Tweetpoll – Ways to create polls via Twitter
• Trottr/Audioboo - Audio Twitter
• Tweetphoto – A new competitor to Twitpic.
• Trenderr - Tracking for mulitple search words.
• Hootsuite/Bit.ly/Cli.gs – creates shortened URLS and tracks click-throughs.
• Paratweet – streams tweets at conferences/events of Tweet screen

Most interesting case study of the day:

Twelpforce – Just launced, @twelpforce is BestBuy’s twitter handle run by hundreds of its employees. The company isn’t giving its employees specific guidelines on tweeting. Instead, they are empowering their employees with the tools and letting them use their own voice to talk with customers. I will be fascinated to see how this new approach works out and I must give Best Buy a major Kudos for being able to relinquish so much control.

Biggest controversy of the day: 

Should businesses allow their employees to tweet during work hours? I am obviously a proponent of this. A few people there, were not. It got heated…I won’t go into detail.

Suggested companies to follow via the CTC presenters:

@Birch_Aquarium
@TreeHugger – Green Blog
@Delight_com – E-commerce
@WholeFoods – Retail /Food
@zappos – Shoes/famous twitter case study
@comcastcares – Twitter as customer service portal/famous twitter case study
@cottageantiques – Retail
@OBMA – Ocean Beach Mainstream Association

Suggested people to follow/CTC presenters:

@momcentral – mom expert
@ecoglamourista - Green clothing
@bcarroll7 – Customers Rock blog
@jbruin - Mashable editor
@Mike_Stelzner - wrote Social media marketing Industry report
@bobfine – Cool twitter Conference organizer
@mcmilker – eco marketing and twitter presenter
@rumford – tweetphoto founder
@seantiner – non profits and twitter presenter
@aaswartz – Twitter talk radio host

What do you think fellow attendees? Anything important I missed here?

Have you ever had one of those times when you started thinking about random childhood memories? That happened to me the other day. I was sitting at home watching Law & Order and enjoying a glass of wine when I had the most random memory. I remembered a time when my mom came home from the store excited about a new pop she had found. Yes, I am from California and I call soda, pop (those four years in Oregon must have rubbed off on me). My family was big Coca-Cola fans and when my mom saw Coke II at the store, she was intrigued and brought it home.

I was really excited to try it since I loved Coca-Cola. My initial thoughts were that it tasted like an exact mix of Coke and Pepsi. And strangely enough, I loved it! My mom continued to buy it for us for only a short while until it was pulled from the shelf.

When this random thought came to me, I started wondering about the real truth behind Coke II, why it was launched and why it was pulled. I started digging around and found some interesting things about how the entire Coke II era went.

* In 1985, Coca-Cola changed the name to New Coke. The New Coke brand launched because baby boomers were looking for healthier beverages. A younger generation was looking for something different, like Pepsi. New Coke wanted that younger generation. New Coke had a better taste. The trick was swapping from real sugar to high fructose corn syrup.

*However, New Coke’s PR agency did not impress the media. Just three months after the launch, sales started to dwindle, protests continued and lawsuits came pouring in. Shortly after this, Coca-Cola’s Director of Northern America Operations declared a company-wide holiday and announced that Pepsi had won the “cola wars.” The next day Pepsi gave all its employees a company-wide holiday as well declaring victory over New Coke. (I think this is great. Don’t think I’ll ever see this type of thing happen again.)

*Coke reverted back to its original product, but it did keep New Coke on the shelves until 1992 when it changed the name to Coke II. (I could not find any information on why or how they came up with the name Coke II.)

*After only a year of Coke II being released, new flavors of Coca-Cola were launched. That finally marked the death of Coke II. It was pulled from the shelves never to be seen again.

Today’s society thrives on new products, upgrades, changes, etc.. Food, less calories and organic; technology, new cell phones and DVRs. It’s crazy.

I wonder if Coke II was launched in 2009, if it would have succeeded and maybe, just maybe, been more popular than Coca-Cola or Pepsi……

At Bailey Gardiner we have a seven-year history of promoting the Del Mar Racetrack.  Personally, I have a ten year history of hollering at ponies.  But the track itself has a 70 year past of historical races, glamorous guests and noteworthy events.  To celebrate the 70th, famous racing artist, Pierre Bellocq, “PEB” was commissioned to paint the approximately 100 most influential people and horses of Del Mar’s history.

The 30′ x 6′ stretch of canvas took 18 months and almost three quarters of the characters were sketched in person by Pierre before gracing the canvas at Del Mar.  Spend a few minutes admiring the cartoons and you’ll see the whole history right there:

There’s Seabiscuit racing Ligorati on the far left.  It’s the race that put Del Mar on the map.  Bing Crosby just above them and comedian WC Fields just below them, grumpy over his loss.  Lucille Ball, Desi Arnaz and Ava Gardner grace the canvas just as they graced the track years ago.  Del Mar’s current President, Joe Harper, sits front and center just above his mom, Cecilia DeMille Harper.  Off to the right, my favorite, is the famous race horse Dare And Go, smoking a cigar – the literal translation of his race in 1996 in which he figuratively “smoked” Cigar, who was attempting a record-breaking 16th straight win.

It’s all there, 30 feet of Del Mar history.  You don’t want to miss it.  The official public revealing is Saturday,  July 25, during which many of those pictured will be there in person to admire the fine work of art.