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Since the topic of the day seems to be lead lists and email I thought I would gather together some of my best posts on the subject.

Happy reading. Oh and don’t forget, the people that are telling you how many names are on their lead list are trying to sell

you something.  Just sayin’

The Truth About Lead Lists

Bridal Spam. Get Out of My Inbox!!

Social media marketing is a much more complex animal than most people seem to think. You cannot just do a bit of it and think it will achieve your goals. In truth, for it to work it has to be a full on social media campaign. Like a well orchestrated symphony, if one part is missing or off key, it will fall flat.

All the tools of Social Media are but pieces of the larger puzzle. Some are to build buzz, some are to spark interest and build tribes, some are used to give deeper information and yet others are best used as a clear call to action. Then there are tools like Twitter and Foursquare that serve to provide the constant beat of jungle drums in the background to keep the movement alive.

Let’s break one down. In our example we are marketing an event to showcase our business.

First off, get your information ready for  your blogsite.Big, splashy, information rich with links and details aplenty. This is in essence, the home base for your media campaign. But don’t launch it all yet, just tease it.Put a lead generator on the page to gather email addresses. “Be the first to know more”

Next you should start teasing it on your FB and Twitter. Lay it out and start building excitement. Put up tweets and status updates saying that “You won’t believe what we have in store for you.” Then start leaking details. You have to do this frequently and you can’t stop. In your symphony, this is your base line. Mind you, you can’t just keep retweeting the same thing over and over. Change the notes. Every thing should link back to the page on your website.

Now that you have tweaked everyones curiosity, roll out the full content on your blog/website. Start getting into buzz building detail on FB. “Just met with {caterer} for a tasting and OMG the food will be fabulous!” “What do you think about our signature cocktail {name}?” “Just saw the mock-ups from {florist}. Wow, just Wow”

Everyone of those vendors needs to be in on the campaign, even if you have to write the content and set up the tweets for them. This is a multipronged attack and it all has to work in unison to achieve it’s goals.

Now you send out the email blast. You send it, your vendors send it and you track your response. The email should match the page on your website and it simply must limit the number of reservations accepted and a time frame. The more scarse and coveted you make the tickets the faster they will sell.

Now you and all of your vendors should be posting updates on their blog helping to build the excitement.

One week later, send the next email blast. In fact, do two. On would go to the people that opened the first but did not respond. Say something along the lines of “Don’t miss the boat” or “Last chance to register”. the other email should go to the people that did not open the first one. Your subject line has got to make their mouth water.

Don’t forget to keep up that baseline of Twitter and FB. On Twitter you should start thanking people for registering. “@{name} I’m so glad you are coming! Can’t wait to see you.” “Dear friend of {company name} @{name} just registered. I can’t wait for you all to meet her.” Put those names out there and make it a social event.

Keep this thing running until the event starts and beyond. Heck, Tweet the event. Those that missed it won’t miss your next one.

Yep, it’s a lot of work. If you look at the alternative of using traditional media you are looking a a massive spend in money instead of time. If this is important to you, take a fraction of what you are saving by not doing traditional media and hire some one to orchestrate the campaign. Money well spent.

or you could just wing it. LOL yeah right.

I ran a cross an interesting story over the weekend. It is an interview with Robert Evans, celebrity photographer. Evans was the wedding photographer for the Jennifer Anniston/ Brad Pitt wedding and then the Katie Holmes/Tom Cruise weddings.

So how did Evans break into that rarefied world? He schmoozed the florist. No, he didn’t cozy up when he knew that they were doing the wedding, it was a part of a regular recurring plan of action. Here is the quote

Why him?

The long answer is hard work, an artist’s eye and a portfolio of unique photos. But the short answer is: flowers!

See, over the years, Evans made a habit of shooting wedding floral arrangements and mailing his best shots to the florist. LA Premiere, of Beverly Hills, was so taken with his photos that they recommended him for weddings. Including the Pitt-Aniston wedding.

OK, Evans did a couple of things by using this method.First of all he endeared himself to the vendors because he enhanced their business. By that I mean that he gave them things that made them look better to their potential clients. Better shots of their product makes them look better.

Since the vendors would be showing these shots of their arrangements to potential clients, it gave him a showcase in front of clients that he wouldn’t have had otherwise.

While not explicitly stated in the article, I’m sure that over time, his method went a long way to build relationships with these vendors. Relationships build business.

Before you get all excited, remember that this is not an overnight thing. It isn’t even something that can be accomplished in a single season.

For 10 years, he’d spent weekends shooting the first dance, the cake, the garter. Eating chicken with the band. Waiting for the bride and groom to climb into the limo.

If you are a regular reader, then you know this isn’t the first time I have advocated something like this nor does it work only for photographers. What ever you do, there is a way to share it with the businesses that are in a position to refer you. Florists, caterers, bakers, DJ’s and stationers have all found ways to accomplish it.

It takes time and persistence but as Mr Evan’s story shows, it can pay off in a huge way if you just stick to it.

If you want more specifics, I found this in the Members Content archives:

Never Underestimate the Power of the Suck-Up

(yes, you have to be a member to read it, but shouldn’t already be one anyway?)

He captures celebrity “I do’s” and yours too | evans, wedding, says – Life – The Orange County Register.

Joy Basdeo , a wedding planner in Grand Cayman emailed me not long ago about a new website. Joy had a blog in one place and 2 different website on other urls and nothing was working. She couldn’t update anything but her blog, and she wasn’t getting much SEO traction on her websites because of the way they were built.

Well, in no time flat we had Joy on a shiny new WordPress blog site built on the Genesis framework. If you haven’t been paying attention, Genesis is just about the slickest thing going in the land of WordPress. In terms of SEO, ease of use and security it at the top of the heap.

What a wonderful experience it has been working with Joy.

I took a couple of the child themes, pulled them apart and played Frankentheme to create Joy’s site. I hope you like it as much as Joy does.

If your website isn’t doing what you need it to, give me a call and I’ll fix you right up.

Click on the image to visit the site.

I met with a friend last week that needed some advice on promoting an upcoming event. We talked about the time frame (very short), we talked about what they were doing already(great event, some advertising, no social media) and what they hoped to get out of the event.

In the course of an hour we tossed around ideas and looked at some possibilities. By the time we were done I thought that we had laid out a fairly comprehensive plan. The thing was, it needed to be implemented almost immediately. Now, yesterday if possible.

I still haven’t seen one word on social media. Not. One.

This needed to be mobilized by all the people that are involved in it. By getting everyone  involved, setting them all up to update automatically and letting it roll, it should have been an easy thing to do.

Sometimes, when you have a lot riding on your PR and marketing and your hands are already full running your business, it just makes sense to hire someone to do it for you.

This was in my PR file this morning.

The Dessy Group Introduces Wedding Planning Tools Online.

Now why would a bridal fashion house take the leap into planning? Or, more correctly, to become a

“one-stop shopping” wedding site

I can think of two reasons why.

The big one, at least on the surface, is to keep brides on their site as long as possible. Any couple that decides to use the Dessy suite of planning tools has to do it through their website. Everytime they log on to use the tools or update their wedding website Dessy has the opportunity to expose them to their product line. That is pretty self evident.

The more important piece of this puzzle is that if it catches on, Dessy will now have access to a very deep level of information on its target market. I have a hard time imagining that a company as large as Dessy would have built this thing with out including a few algorithms to pick the data apart. When you spent as much of your marketing budget to build something like this what’s a little more to be able to fully mine the results.

I think that is the the key behind this project. Data.

Will it work? Good question. Wedding planning tools are a dime a dozen on the internet. These are going to have to be pretty spectacular to even get noticed. Had they done it 6 or 7 years ago, maybe.

On a personal aside, I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall at the pitch meeting for this. I’m sure it was never mentioned that they would be taking on the Knot, Wedding Wire and Brides.com. Just sayin’

The more websites I build, the more I learn. So time for a little sharing.

Here are the top five things that have to be on your website, in no particular order. These are all aimed at wedding professionals. The list may not be the same for other markets.

Images.

Your target market is visual, very visual. I once had a young lady stand up in one of my seminars as I was talking about tagging your images and how GenY mostly surfed for pictures. She stated straight up that she was firmly Gen Y and truth be told, they ONLY surfed for pictures, rarely ever reading a word. So, add them to your blog posts and include large galleries of eye candy. Bue sure that you images are added in a way that the search engines can read them, in other words, don’t use Flash. Be sure to annotate and tag every single image with any relevant keywords, paying special attention to include subject matter and location.

Local Content

Most of my readers are based locally, by that I mean that even though they would love to book wedding all over the world, most of them are in their home town. With that in mind, be sure that you put a lot of local flavor in your website. If brides are looking at your site they want to know that you know all the best places and faces in your location. Remember brides search locally for their vendors. The other part of getting local on your site is that it give you an excuse to use the name of your town or neighborhood frequently. Why is that important? If you want to come up high for wedding planners in Washington, DC you need to have the actual words”Washington, DC’ appear in your content for the search bots to see. Search bots read words, only words; so the more often you can logically mention wedding & Washington, DC in you site the better off you are. (assuming of course you are a planner in Washington, DC, but then you know that)

Testimonials

As many and in as many ways as possible. Give them their own page, add pictures of either the smiling couple or the service that you provided. If they are complimenting you on the flowers and décor, add a picture of that.

Get the Wedding Wire Review widget and put that on your front page. Not only will brides read your reviews but it will make them more likely to give you a review themselves.

Add endorsements from other vendors. Those carry a lot of weight as a bride tries to decide if you are stable and reliable. Any one can get one or 2 good reviews from clients but it is the people you work with week in and week out that can really speak to what you are made of! Incidentally, I spoke with Wedding Wire last week and in their next revision they are adding a widget to add your endorsements just like the review widget. Yeah!

Prices

The number on thing that brides ask to have included in their online experience is pricing. This is something that hasn’t changed in as long as I have been at this. They want to know if they can afford you before they fall in love with your work.

Lead Generator

Right there on the front page and even in the post sidebars, you have to have a lead generator to collect email addresses. You never know when you are going to need them. Email marketing should be an important part of your overall marketing plan. Read why here. You can use it to promote any events you have coming up.

Of course there are other things that will be specific to you, but these 5 things are a must have for any wedding vendor.

I have been following the articles over on eWedNews concerning the demise of the formal wear industry. So, you know me, I started looking at their marketing.

First question: What marketing? Why isn’t there a gorgeous man in a gorgeous tux in every bridal gown ad? Isn’t there usually a groom at most occasions to wear a bridal gown?.

Second, the ad I do see most is the Men’s Wearhouse ad that speaks directly to men. Pffffft! If you want men to wear tuxedos you have to pitch the brides.

Which brings us to the Old Spice Man. If you haven’t caught this bit of viral brilliance then you have been living in a cave. What started as an ad on the Super Bowl transformed itself into a social media phenomenon with the Old Spice man responding to tweets in YouTube video spots. Brilliant social media marketing, but that isn’t the point I want to make.

*pause for random opportunity to include gratuitous half naked hunky guy video

This is: 80% of the purchases made in the US are made by women. The Old Spice campaign is aimed at women. Yes it is a product for men, so are tuxedos. However, body wash isn’t something that most men think about, neither are tuxedos. They are both something women think about. Whether it is a wife or partner that does the shopping and decides which body wash to buy or a bride deciding what to dress the men in the wedding party in, it is the women that make the decision. That is why you need to pitch to her.

Seriously, do you really think that an ad with a hunky half naked man was created to appeal to MEN? I didn’t think so. But what happens to the single guy that sees his date pay attention to said hunky half naked guy? He is going to pick up that product thinking that he may get her to pay that kind of attention to him. Either way, it was the woman’s influence that drove the sale.

Back to formal wear. If you want men to start wearing tuxedos, you are going to have to sell women on the idea first.

Say for instance, when the most recent Bond movie came out, why wasn’t there a tie in with how sexy Daniel Craig looked in formal wear? I mean come on, he had on a tux in the poster for Casino Royale!!! Sexy man> sexily dressed. Pitch perfect for a campaign directed at women.

Here is another, I ran across a couple of beach wedding pictures that had the bride in a traditional formal gown and the groom in cargo shorts and a bowling shirt. How about a picture like that with the tag line, “Don’t you deserve better?” Maybe if the tuxedo manufacturers produced a line specifically for the beach weddings, after all the gown manufacturers have.

Back to the gown ads. Those ads I do see in magazines with men in tuxedos usually have him looking disaffected and women fawning over him. That is pitching to men. Let’s turn it around, how about have him looking on adoringly at her? Every girl is crazy about a sharp dressed man, but on her wedding day the last thing she wants is all of her bridesmaids fawning over her new hubs. The better story is “Look at this gorgeous man that only has eyes for me.”

More important than the end user of your product, think about who is most likely to influence that purchase. That’s where you aim the pitch.

I ran across a new survey this month regarding women and email from ExactTarget and here are  the basics from M2W Essentials.

88 percent of women indicate that promotions have motivated them to subscribe to email marketing messages

“Consumers are turning to Facebook and Twitter to show support for their favorite brands. However, when it comes to on-going deals, email remains the channel of choice,”

I know, you sent out an email blast after the last bridal show and didn’t get a thing. Well there is your problem, you sent out one and I’ll bet it was nothing but a sales pitch. Gotcha, didn’t I?

Here is how you need to be crafting your email campaign or just don’t bother.

• 80% of the email needs to be information that is fresh and timely.
• 20% pitch at the bottom of the page
• Include a discount that MATCHES what you talked about above.
• Now, repeat weekly or at least every two weeks. (remember,you have a short time window to reach brides)

I know, “Examples , please.”

Let’s say you are a caterer, write a post about the trend of passed hors d’oeuvres. Talk about the why and describes some. At the end of the email include a coupon to add a certain passed hors d’oeuvre to any order that includes hors d’oeuvre for say 100 already. Redeemable only if booked THAT WEEK.

If you also do linens, do a blast about linens and a coupon for, oh I don’t know, an upgrade if booked THAT WEEK.

You can also think of ways to involve your network. Write a post about your favorite florist, then offer a discount or perk to any bride that is using that florist that books you. Have the florist pimp it out on their networks too.

Do you see where I’m going with this? The possibilities are endless. all you have to do if come up with something you can easily discount and then write a couple of hundred words extolling it’s virtue. Don’t give away the store, make it only usable with other orders and limit the time frame and then keep doing it.

Just about any wedding business can use this technique. Brides will keep opening your email to see what they can get for free that week. If you have one that is sitting on the fence you never know what ‘enhancement’ will be the one to tip them over.

The good bulk emailers  like AWeber*  now are set up to automatically send your email blasts to your social media. That way if someone knows you there but isn’t yet on your lead list, they get notified too. Not new but still very useful if the ability to schedule you emails. Write a bunch one day and have them go out at later dates. Now that is marketing on cruise control.

As with anything, you will get better the longer you do it. Keep checking you stats and see which offers are getting the most response and do more similar ones. You can get seasonal with them, but remember, a bride booking in December is most likely getting married in the spring, not at Christmas.

Be sure you have a lead generator on your website. Depending on what you do you may be wise to give them a choice of which lead list to choose. Picking up on the caterer again, you may decide to do a wedding list and a corporate/party list depending on your clients.The lead generator should be a part of the email package. You may have noticed the pop-over one I have on this site. I pickup 2 to 3 new leads everyday with it.

*disclosure: I am an affiliate of AWeber. I have used AWeber since I started Think back in 2005. I have switched at times and used most of the other ones for one client or another, but I always come back to AWeber.