In an earlier post, I reported that it was great to see the Gen Y kids driving the tremendous outpouring of financial support for Haiti relief via texting.

I’m happy to report that the American Red Cross “Text ‘Haiti’ to 90999″ campaign has raised $24 million to date. See the DMNews story here.

Think about this campaign for a moment. It has achieved some amazing accomplishments – in a short period of time – since this devastating earthquake hit Haiti just last week on January 12th:

• $24 million has been raised via $10 individual donations to help the Haitian people – 1/5th of the amount the American Red Cross has raised to date – breaking all records by a huge  margin.  Reference note: After Hurricane Katrina – a mere 4.5 years ago – the ARC only received $120,000 via texting – and Katrina occurred on American soil!
• The ARC has built a valuable mobile text database for future marketing communications and financial appeal efforts
• The ARC’s core donor base skews older and texting gave the Gen Y folks an easy, quick and convenient channel to offer their support (marketing lesson – treat different people differently)
• The campaign execution of  the ARC and its mobile firm partner mGive was flawless – amazing too – considering the fact that they started to work on the texting campaign the evening of the earthquake
• The viral goodwill spread of the “Text ‘HAITI’ to 90999″ campaign in Social Media channels such as YouTube, Facebook and Twitter (100K tweets/retweets)

If you think young people these days are inconsiderate, selfish, concerned with only themselves and wear their “pants on the ground“…think again.

Soon after the devastating Haiti earthquake hit, @RedCross tweeted: “You can text “HAITI” to 90999 to donate $10 to Red Cross relief efforts in #haiti.”

Kudos to the Red Cross marketing folks for being prepared (excellent online disaster newsroom) and recognizing the fundraising opportunity available to them in this terrible time of crisis.

And, much more kudos to the kids that drove this “texting bus” because they’re the ones credited with leading this Red Cross effort which has raised over $10 million for the cause since this record breaking mobile fundraiser was launched last Tuesday.

This is a great example of using technology to build rather than destroy.

Watch text marketing grow from this effort and put in on your list of things to test for your business too!

P.S.: Here is a list of 8 ways you can help Haiti by texting:

1. Text HAITI to 90999 to donate $10 to the American Red Cross
2. Text HAITI to 25383 to donate $5 to International Rescue Committee
3. Text HAITI to 45678 to donate $5 to the Salvation Army in Canada
4. Text HAITI to 20222 to donate $10 through the Clinton Foundation
5. Text HAITI to 864833 to donate $5 to The United Way
6. Text CERF to 90999 to donate $5 to The United Nations Foundation
7. Text DISASTER to 90999 to donate $10 to Compassion International
8. Text RELIEF to 30644 (to connect with Catholic Relief Services who will instruct you how to donate money with your credit card)

…the 9th way to help is to pray.

As a follow-up to my recent “Darwinian Marketing” post, I want to emphasize that successful people will not only be the ones who can most easily adapt to change, but they will most likely be faster than their competitors. That’s right.  In today’s economy and for as far as I can see into the future, it’s not about the strong beating or eating the weak, it’s all about the fast eating the slow for lunch!

At the top of my 2010 goals is to streamline processes, work smarter and faster and enjoy life more.  We’re all being tasked to do more with less, but there are ways to do it, make money and enjoy your life.

So, how can you become faster in business today? Here is my list to 25 ways you can work faster and position yourself to survive and thrive!

1. Read and embrace Stephen Covey’s best-seller, The 7 Habits of Highly Successful People” and work to excel in Quadrant II living
2. Be flexible and adaptable to new ideas and processes (think Darwin)
3. Work to rid yourself of distractions such as email, instant messaging, turn of the TV, turn your phone/s off and turn your music off (although I work quickly and calmly listening to classical and piano instrumental music)
4. Get rid of things that slow you down (clients, employees, suppliers)
5. Set up power hours of work blocks and prioritize on job at a time
6. In your email inbox, tag all emails with a project ID so you can resort your emails by subject or client and stay focused and fly through them.  For example, for a book I’m working on, I simply tag these emails “Book” first followed by related copy
7. Batch your email work – only respond at specific intervals 2-3 times per day
8. Batch your phone calls too – never answer unidentified calls
9. Get the fastest computer set-up you can afford
10. Set earlier deadlines – if a client’s expectation is 7 days, deliver it in 6.
11. Get up earlier and take good care of yourself to stay sharp
12. Outsource most anything that costs you below your hourly rate
13. Focus on the 20% of activities that reap 80% of the most rewards for you
14. Cut things to the core bare necessities and essentials and key features
15. Keep features, processes simple
16. Focus on those things that help you gain or keep a customer
17. Anticipate trends and act on them.  For example, mobile marketing is starting to smoke. Are you studying it, using it, putting together a skunkworks operation, looking into strategic alliances etc.?
18. Phase things in to keep customers happy and moving business forward
19. Create processing rules (see Tim Ferris’ stuff here – awesome read – love virtual assistant idea too – actually all of his stuff is brilliant – great book)
20. Create templates of your work to easily repeat efforts
21. Create processes
22. Create life and decision-based rules (see Marcus Aerilius’ Meditations)
23. Begin with and end goal in mind and then focus on all of the processes of everything you do to achieve the end, list all the steps and key critical path and look for ways to take wasted steps and time out of the process.  Rinse and repeat.
24. Look to eliminate all busy work that takes time away from building your business
25. Take one information day off per week – no phone, Blackberry, email etc. – rest and recharge your battery

I’m sure there are a ton more ideas – feel free to add!

During recessionary times, the first place people cut back is with their eating and drinking out dollars.

Sure, there is a progression. First, white table cloth restaurants are the first to feel the pinch, then casual, fast casual and then fast food.

After a scorching sales tear for some time, McDonald’s is now considering a $1.00 breakfast menu nationwide.

With unemployment at 10.2%, no one is safe.

Now it appears that people are buying less at the supermarket.

More are using shopping lists, feel prices are to high, hate the experience and nearly 8 out of 10 would flip brands on a deal! Loyalty be damned.

The restaurant and hospitality industry isn’t the only one suffering – every industry is suffering and only the smart, speedy and strong will survive. So, what can you do to succeed in these tough times?

Here are five marketing ideas to put on your shopping list that will help you survive and thrive in these tough times.

1. Do remarkable things that add value and drive word-of-mouth. Pretty simple statement, easy to understand, but so few do it. So, you do it. Positive word-of-mouth drives customer referrals, online reviews and media coverage while keeping your marketing costs low. Do something remarkably well.

Value offerings for specific reasons make sense (e.g., Anniversaries), but you need to watch it because deals are so easily copied and it’s difficult to move to higher prices when times get better.

You need to work on creating unique value priced offerings. People are re-thinking all of their purchases, so if you’re not truly giving value or a exceptional experience you better start. This requires packaging creativity and more customer focus.

List all the possible value-added services and amenities you offer and then look for ways to improve your customer’s experience for little or no cost to you.

If you’re in hospitality you could offer things such as free parking, free upgrades, late check-outs, drink certificates etc., and look to your marketing partenrs to help defray the costs.

Deliver value in creative unique packaged experiences.

If you’re average player in a today’s recessionary economy, you’re running backwards and you’re a loser.

2. Keep the Heat On. If you’re out of sight, you’re out of mind. Don’t just arbitrarily cut your advertising, but look for ways to more effectively spend or not spend it.  Get into social media marketing, improve  the search results of your web site, network.  Create stronger, more emotional appeals for your goods and services.

3. Strengthen Your Customer Relationships. Strengthen your sales force and put together win-back and retention strategies. Work to maximize the lifetime value of your key customers and integrate all of your communication messages into relevant targeted appeals.

4. Build a Centralized Segmented Marketing Database. The bedrock of all customer relationship management strategies is a unified, centralized and segmented marketing database. Fortunately, it’s easier than ever to set up and manage a CRM system today.

5. Become a Direct Marketing Master. Direct marketing needs to take a greater role in your business plan whether it be direct sales, email, mail, phone etc., The most effective weapon is email marketing to current customers (but smartly segment them).

This is a good list to follow, but make sure you do not skip the first step!

The MarketingSherpa (BIG FAN) chart above, shows one view of how email is used to share information – an activity central to social media sites. You can see how dominant Email still is when it comes to information sharing!

When you look at all forms of media over the past 50-100 years, you’ll see what Marketing Sherpa sees and that is, “a pattern of aggregation and adoption rather than replacement. Some media suffer in the exchange, but none are eliminated entirely. More commonly, their uses become more refined.”

I agree.  How do I know? Well, I’m 47 years old, I’m a Marketer (traditional and Social Media too) and I still enjoy my reading my newspaper in the morning and I love to listen to Mike & Mike on ESPN radio in the morning.

That’s right. I still read newspapers and listen to the radio and watch TV…don’t you?

P.S.: I use Twitter for writing telegrams – R.I.P Western Union.

We’ve been actively engaged in the Blogging scene since late 2004/early 2005 so it’s no surprise that we jumped in early with two feet into the Web 2.0 scene.  However, when you and everyone around you is jumping into the latest and greatest, a good strategy is to pause and reflect on how well you perform on the basics.

These email open and click through rate charts from eMarketer – overall and by industry – should help you benchmark your basic email marketing success.

With the Direct Marketing Association stating that email marketing drives an ROI of $45.06 for each $1.00 spent, this killer app needs more care and feeding.

I consider email marketing part of the “basics” most SME brands fail to bulletproof.  And, because the technology is so inexpensive these days many brands defer email execution to inexperienced juniors with some of the creative output looking like ransom notes!

Marketers need to pay much closer attention to email marketing – they’re leaving money on the table.

For the past few years, our clients have continued to embrace email marketing and have gotten pretty sophisticated using it by adding video, sub-segmentation strategies, editorial calendars and much more.

Because of the affordability and relative ease of use of email service technologies, I’m sure you’ve witnessed how much more “stuff” you get pounded with from familiar and unfamiliar brands.

And, it’s amazing to me how marketers who care for their brands so well in traditional media slap just about any old copy and creative into an email and batch and blast it! Many SMEs and large brand emails alike take on the look of a “ransom note” with multiple fonts and typefaces too.

It’s sinful for brands to be lazy marketers with email marketing when it is one of the easiest (if not the easiest) channels to target the right message at the right time to the right audience.

As this chart points out, we – YOU – can all improve our email marketing through better list segmentation, using relevant copy and by deploying campaigns in a rhythmic cycle from a respected, familiar person/firm.

People are so inundated with commercial marketing messages these days, that relevance has become ever so much more important as this chart from MarketingSherpa points out.

Before you take on the next latest and greatest online marketing strategy, tool or tactic, step back into your email marketing efforts to make sure you’re sub-segmenting well and that your key messages are relevant to your audiences. If you don’t, you’re simply wasting time and money and encouraging people to unsubscribe from your email lists.

I love the team at MarketingSherpa and have learned a great deal from them. Here's a good bench marking marketing chart to see what your fellow advertisers feel are the best ROI driving B2C tactics from Q4, 2008.

The size
of the bubbles represents their relative share of online budgets. House
email, SEO and paid search continue to enjoy the best ROI. Are you tracking?

Time and again, my clients are always curious about open rates and how to increase them.

Here is an eMarketer chart sourced from MailerMailer detailing worldwide open rates.

We all know that shorter subject lines perform better than longer ones, but how well?

In this study, subject lines of less than 35 characters yielded an average open rate
of 19.6% and a 3.1% average click rate. E-mails with subject lines of
35 or more characters drew average open rates of 14.8% and average
click rates of 1.9%.

Email may not be as sexy as other digital marketing tactics, but it still works well if you do it well.