Pierry Blog

Award Honors Lee’s Vision & Leadership at the Organization’s Annual Conference in San Diego

We are pleased to announce today that Ben Lee, our Chief Marketing Officer, has received the “Outstanding Marketer” award from the Academy of Marketing Science (AMS).

The award was presented last Friday, May 26^th by the non-profit organization which is dedicated to promoting excellence in marketing practices and knowledge.

“Ben and Pierry Inc. epitomize the spirit of the award in advancing the role of marketing through innovative and ethical practice,” said Adilson Borges, AMS President. “In particular, Ben’s belief that marketing must be leading strategic efforts of companies today because it is marketing’s responsibility to build and maintain an intimate relationship with customers. In this way, we can create truly valuable experiences for customers.”

More than 400 marketing professionals gathered at the Academy’s annual conference in San Diego, where Lee was recognized for shepherding Pierry’s rapid growth and innovative client solutions.

“I am extremely honored to be here this evening to accept this award on behalf of my Pierry colleagues – and our clients – who are embracing the opportunity of digital marketing in some really unique ways,” Lee noted at the conference’s closing ceremony. “Digital marketing presents a huge opportunity for companies to create deeper relationships with their customers, but the ability to fully understand and leverage it requires a whole new set of skills that many companies simply don’t have, nor can they afford to bring in house. Pierry continues to add manpower and functional expertise that enable us to partner with marquee brands across a variety of sectors, and deliver the best possible results for our clients.”

For over 40 years, AMS has annually recognized an individual who epitomizes the spirit and character of the Academy and its ideals. Previous winners have included CMOS, CEOs and entrepreneurs to the likes of Walt Disney, Jeff Campbell (Burger King), Robbie Brozin (Nando’s Peri Peri) and Mathew Berry (ESPN). (For a complete list please visit: https://ams.site-ym.com/page/OutstandingMarketer).

About Pierry

• Named the 538^th fastest growing company in the country by Inc. Magazine in their 2016 “Inc. 5000” list
• #6 Fastest Growing Company in the San Francisco Bay Area by the San Francisco Business Times
• Pierry – which began as a team of 2 people in the emerging digital marketing space in 2008 – now has employees in offices throughout the United States and in Japan, and serves a wide range of clients, from start-ups to multi-billion dollar global brands.
• Pierry coined the term MaaS (Marketing as a Service) to describe the unique way it helps its clients design, develop and execute marketing solutions that dramatically improve efficiency and impact, and increase ROI.
• Founded in 2008 by Josh Pierry, the company has grown into a global preferred digital marketing partner for companies in all sectors, with offices in Redwood City, CA, Boulder, CO, Ruston, LA, Albany, NY and Kyoto, Japan.

We’ve all been there. You meet someone and feel that special twinge in your heart–the “spark” some call it. You realize this person is interested in you as well. Did they feel that same feeling? There’s only one way to find out: communicate with them. Find out if they’re what you’re looking for and if you’re what they’re looking for.

Just like dating, lead nurturing is a delicate dance between two people who share some initial common ideal. Perhaps you meet at your favorite coffee shop when you order the same obscure fresh ground cold brew. Or they ventured to your Contact Us page through a well-targeted Google Ad. Either way, the only way to find out if this is going somewhere is to give them more information about you and hope it’s enough to get them to stick around.

Dating and lead nurturing follow many of the same rules and cadence. Here are some general guidelines for cultivating a great (lead) relationship.

Don’t put everything on the table all at once. Most likely your lead came to you because they have an interest that aligns with your products or services. Great! You have something in common. This would be like someone saying “I like cats”. The appropriate response would be “I also like cats”, not showing them your entire phone’s worth of the 20 cats you have living in your home.

The same should be said for a brand new lead. If they find value in something you offer, affirm that as part of your core beliefs, but don’t overwhelm them with every little detail about your product. For example, if they found your brand after clicking on an ad that focused on the eco-friendly nature of your goods, reply with information that goes deeper into that aspect–don’t just send them your entire catalogue and hope they’ll call back.

Ghosting is just as bad as hounding. Building a good relationship means maintaining regular communication. You want them to know they’re on your mind and you’re thinking of them. Yet, you don’t want them to think you’re stalking them, nor do you want them wondering if you remember their name. Regular, valuable communication with your leads is just as important. Find the right balance for your audience and make sure every touch point is not only valuable, but works to move them through the sales cycle.

Know when to introduce your friends and family. After you’ve invested enough initial time to see if this is going somewhere, it’s time to bring them further into your world. You would probably introduce them to your friends first, to gauge the response, and then move on to your family. But you wouldn’t throw them into a room with both at once. The same rule applies to how you introduce your product or service. Start slow with your introduction. Find the friends (products/services) that are most welcoming and relatable to your new beau. Once you know it’s a sure thing, bring in Aunt Betty (less compatible product/service), who might not be the most relatable, but something that’s still important enough for them to know.

Sometimes, it doesn’t work out. Sometimes, the spark fizzles. You realize that the one thing you both had in common was the only thing you had in common (i.e. Deep Blue Something’s Breakfast at Tiffany’s). The best thing you can do in this type of relationship is to end it quickly and civilly. There’s nothing wrong with walking away when you realize it’s just not going to work. If the customer you’re speaking to would not be the right fit for your product/service, that’s ok. Make sure they appreciate the time you spent together, and make sure they also understand why you’re breaking things off.

No one likes to get dumped, either. You may not be the one to realize the relationship isn’t working. It is going to sting when you find out the feelings aren’t mutual, but the best option for everyone involved is to walk away with your head held high. Trying to force a bond that doesn’t exist will only make you come off as desperate or clueless as to what your customer really values as a person. Be able to recognize when a lead is dead. Otherwise you’ll just end up looking like a spammer.

But sometimes, it’s love at first sight. Everyone has a friend of a friend who has that fairytale love story. They locked eyes with that person and just knew they were destined to be with each other. They had an instant connection that brought two halves of a whole together. Even in lead nurturing, this happens. When it does, don’t over-think it. Accept your excited new customer with your warmest embrace. In other words, think about how you can create a loyal customer and brand advocate–not just make another sale. When a consumer has an instant connection with a brand, more likely than not they’ll share that connection with others. And we all know that word-of-mouth endorsements carry more weight than any other marketing initiatives.

Remember, despite what eHarmony and Match.com will tell you, dating is not an exact science. The same holds true for lead nurturing–it’s more of a dance in which you try to anticipate your partner’s moves and follow their rhythm without stepping on their feet. When you’re both in sync, it’s a delightful and harmonious salsa. If you’re trying to force something that isn’t working, it’s a clumsy, off-beat electric slide that results in a few bruised toes and frustration from everyone involved.

When you think about Google Analytics you probably just think of one thing—traffic data. How many people are coming to my website? How many pages are they looking at? How long are they staying on my site? How are they finding my site? What is my most popular page?

While this data is important and useful, there are some really wonderful, lesser celebrated aspects of Google Analytics that can help you learn more about your audience and uncover valuable insights about your content and your website as a whole.

Here are three features you might be missing out on…

1. Learn More About (and Leverage) the Interests of your Audience

The Audience tab of Google Analytics is chock full of great information regarding, well, your audience. Do you know the average age of your someone visiting your website? What about their location? Do you know if your customers are more likely to use a mobile device or a desktop when viewing your website? All this information is waiting in your Google Analytics account.

But outside of this general demographic information, the Audience tab also has information on your visitor’s interests outside of your brand. This type of information can help you better understand your various personas, and most importantly, guide how you communicate with them—and speak their language.

Let’s say you have a large base of customers who are 25-34 and are recorded as being “Movie Lovers”. You could experiment with incorporating well known movie lines into your content on social or email. Or you could go test a more visually driven piece of content against one that is more text heavy to see if there’s a difference in the level of engagement.

These valuable Audience insights will help you be a bit more creative and daring in your marketing efforts.

2. Understand How Users are Finding You

The days of keyword data are long gone. But the ability to understand how visitors are finding you is alive and well in Google Analytics, particularly if you have taken advantage of the ability to connect the data from Google Search Console to Google Analytics.

Located under the Acquisition tab, the Search Console feature shows you query level data including searches that were made in which your website was listed as a result, the average position of your website in those search rankings, average click-through-rate (CTR), and total number of impressions.

Now, keep in mind that not all query data will be available. However, you can see how many times a specific page has appeared in the search results, as well as the number of impressions, clicks, and ranking position. From here, you can understand what types of content your organic visitors are most interested in and, more importantly, see which pages are showing up in search results and not getting clicks, opening up opportunities for optimization.

You can also see which landing pages are driving conversions vs. those that aren’t. If you have pages that are generating a high CTR from the search results, but aren’t ending in conversions, it’s a signal that something about that page isn’t working.

3. Conduct A/B Tests

One of the most underutilized features of Google Analytics is the ability to conduct an A/B test, or as Google Analytics refers to them, “Experiments”. Located under the Behavior tab, Experiments allows you to test two pages against each other.

To conduct an experiment, select an objective, a percentage of your audience to experiment against and how you’d like the test pages distributed. For a more traditional A/B test, elect to show the experiment to 100% of visitors and have pages distributed evenly across all variants.

Next, put in the URL for your current page to serve as a control and then your test page. If you’d like to perform a multi-variant test, you have the option to add an additional version. Finally, set a minimum run time for the experiment.

Once the set-up is complete Google Analytics will generate a code which will need to be placed right after the opening tag in the HTML of your original page. You also need to verify that your main Google Analytics tracking code has been placed on any test pages.

From there, Google Analytics starts collecting data on your experiment, eventually allowing you to declare a winner and gain actionable insights.

The most valuable data is the kind that helps you optimize and grow your digital marketing program; these three features can help you do just that. Best of all, it’s waiting for you in program you’re already likely using. So, next time you think of Google Analytics, don’t just think about how it can help you gather basic traffic metrics—think about how every detail it collects about your visitors can be used to your advantage.

I recently bought a coat from a popular outdoor lifestyle retailer that provides clothing items for men, women, and kids. Excited for my purchase, I elected to subscribe to their email list at checkout so I could learn more about products and specials in the future. But my delight to receive their emails was quickly dampened when I realized that every email I received was around men’s items—not women’s.

Now, had I bought an item for my husband, I could understand this discrepancy. But I had bought this coat for myself, from the women’s section. So why was I only getting information about items that weren’t for me?

After a few months of receiving their emails, I’ve just stopped opening them. Those emails now sit untouched in the Promotions tab of my Gmail Inbox, dragging down the company’s engagement rates. And I haven’t even thought about making another purchase. Why? All because they didn’t stop to ask the right questions.

Why It Never Hurts to Ask

There’s an old adage that says if you want to know something, it never hurts to ask. Customers want to receive emails that are relevant to their needs. In fact, marketers who use segmented email campaigns have seen increases in revenue of up to 760%.

Providing segmented email campaigns is simpler than you’d think. First, consider what you already know about each individual customer—this could be simple things you could derive from past purchase history, such as gender, type of product, or location. Just these three simple pieces of data can help you create a new audience segment.

Want to go beyond this? Good, you should, because the more targeted you can get, the higher the engagement rates you can expect. How do you get this information? All you have to do is ask…

Types of Email Preference Centers

There is no one-size-fits-all method for assembling an email preference center (also commonly referred to as a subscription center or profile center). The questions you ask should be relevant to your brand and your customers. And they should all have one goal in mind—providing you with actionable information about your customers.

For some brands, this can be achieved with a very basic preference center, while other brands may need to go a little more in-depth. Here’s the difference:

Basic Email Preference Center

Brands that provide a very niche product or service may benefit most from providing subscribers with a more basic email preference center. This would include asking for information such as…

• First & Last Name
• Email Address
• City/State/Zip
• Language Preference (if applicable)
• Gender
• Age Range

This is enough information to provide personalization to your messages, as well as a basic layer of segmentation, especially if it can be paired with past purchase or browsing history.

Advanced Email Preference Center

Brands that offer a broader range of products and services would benefit from moving beyond on the basics to something that is a bit more granular. This includes understanding things like…

• Specific interest in products or services
– For example: A retailer who offers everything from home goods to clothing to accessories could ask subscribers their interest in learning more about these various departments
• Specific interest in types of sends
– Promotional sends
– New product announcements
– Newsletters
– Etc.
• Frequency at which subscribers would like to receive emails from your brand

This type of profile center can also allow you to ask more in-depth questions such as where a consumer may be most likely to buy your products, how they use them, household information and more.

Whatever you ask, make sure it’s something you feel you could take action on in the future—meaning there’s a purpose for asking. And don’t overwhelm subscribers with too many questions; keep it to 5 or 6 questions outside of the basics.

Super Advanced Email Preference Center

Many businesses are a lot of things to a lot of different people who may be interested in your brands for a plethora of very distinct reasons. Because of this, you likely have a number of different email publications to reach these different consumers and you want to make sure that each subscriber has access to the right mailings (without having to be subscribed to every single one).

This is where a super advanced email preference center comes in to play. This would include all the information you might see in an advanced preference center as well as:

• The option to subscribe and unsubscribe to emails based on a wide range of interests
• The option to subscribe and unsubscribe to newsletters based on the type of information they provide

Keep in mind that while you may be asking more granular level information, that doesn’t mean your preference center should feel like a 10-minute survey. Whatever you ask should be relevant and useful to the subscriber.

Getting Your Questions Answered

One of the best ways to get information from your subscribers is to ask them right when they sign up. This can be done by directing new subscribers to their email preference center after hitting subscribe, or as part of the subscription confirmation process in which you email new subscribers to not only confirm their email address, but to confirm their preferences.

If this information isn’t provided at sign up, or if a preference center is being implemented after you’ve already got an established email list, create a dedicated campaign to direct subscribers to their email preference center. You’ll be surprise how many subscribers are willing to provide information in exchange for the promise of more relevant email communications.

In addition, a link to your email preference center should be included in the footer of every email communication, or as a part of the unsubscribe process. In many cases, subscribers who were looking to remove themselves from your list may opt to stay if they see they have the option to self-select the types or frequency of communication.

Remember, a preference center is not just a means of collecting data. It’s also about giving subscribers the option to tell you what they do and do not want. And no matter what type of preference center you elect to use, make sure the information you collect is always actionable—whether that means it’s informing your email marketing strategy or another element of your business—all in an effort to provide better customer experience.

For many of us, social media channels are so much a part of our daily lives, that we don’t really remember a time without them. In reality, social media as we know it today didn’t exist until 2002 with the introduction of Friendster, followed by MySpace. While those two may not have stood the test of time, other networks that were introduced in the early 2000s, notably LinkedIn and Facebook have, leading the way for more platforms like Twitter, Pinterest, Tumblr, Instagram, Snapchat and others.

While all of these platforms are different, the one thing they all have in common is they allow brands to use their platforms to promote their products and services—which is good and bad news.

If social media has taught us anything it’s that just because you can post something, doesn’t mean you should. This is true for both those using social media as a way to stay in touch with family and friends, as well as for brands looking to stay connected to their customers.

Here are 5 questions to ask yourself before taking a deep dive into any social media channel:

1. Is my brand B2C or B2B?

As you already know, marketing to a consumer audience is much different than marketing to a business audience. And this rule is particularly true when it comes to marketing on social media.

Many B2C brands find success on channels like Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, YouTube, Instagram, Pinterest, and Snapchat. B2B brands often find the most success on more professional networks such as LinkedIn. However, it’s not uncommon to also find B2B brands on YouTube, Twitter, or even Instagram.

The type of business you have will shape the channels you choose to be on. That’s not to say a B2B couldn’t create a Pinterest account and a B2C brand couldn’t create a LinkedIn page. Just ask yourself, would your audience expect or want to see you there? What benefits would you provide your customer by being on that channel?

2. What is the age range of my audience?

Each social media channel attracts a certain age range and thus should have an influence over which channels you choose to promote your brand. If your products appeal most to those who are 40+, would you want to invest in posting content to something like Snapchat? Probably not.

Percentage of Users by Age

Source: Pew Research Center 

3. What types of content do I have the resources to create?

Certain types of content are better for some channels than others. For example, written content can be easily shared on platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Pinterest and LinkedIn. However, this type of content is more difficult to share on something like Instagram or Snapchat, which relies heavily on more visual content.

Before establishing your brand on a new channel, make sure you have the ability to regularly create content specifically for that channel. Your decision to market on that channel is simple: If you don’t have the resources to regularly create the appropriate content for a channel, don’t join it.

4. How often am I willing to post content to a social media channel?

No matter what social media channels your brand is on, you want to make sure you’re posting with some level of frequency. However, that level of frequency can vary, as the lifespan of content can vary from channel to channel.

For example, content posted on Twitter has an estimated shelf life of about 5 seconds. This means brands should post with a much higher frequency on this channel than they would on LinkedIn, where there is far less noise and posts have a shelf life ranging from days to weeks.

When considering a new channel, think about how much is appropriate to post each day, each week, or even each month. Then make sure you’re willing to invest the time needed to keep up with that cadence.

5. What is my goal for being on a particular channel and is it in line with my overall marketing and business objectives?

Every marketing initiative should have a goal and play a role in achieving a grander business objective. If you’re struggling to come up with a goal that fits into that larger strategy, that social media channel may not be right for your brand.

Make sure you are not only willing to formulate both a short-term and long-term strategy for any new channel, but that you feel you’ll be able to follow it and achieve some value from it.

When social media first came on to the scene, many marketers didn’t anticipate the impact it would have on both brands and consumers. Not wanting to be left behind, many brands have joined channels where they are unable to maintain a valuable presence. The early bird may catch the worm, but if it doesn’t do anything with it, being an early adopter won’t pay off; abandoned or neglected social accounts can degrade a brand’s credibility.

Social channels will continue to proliferate, so it’s important to always remember to determine the value of the channel to your target customers before you decide to dive in. While joining a social media channel is free, the time you need to create and post resources for it are not. Make sure any channel you join is worth the effort and provides real value to both your brand and your customers.