Marketing comes in many different forms, one of the catchiest are the “stick in your head” jingles. According to Forbes.com these are the best advertising jingles as voted on by a group of CMO’s and advertising executives. To have a successful jingle, the consumer must listen to it, and not only like it – but want to sing it! Once people starting singing the jingle, they all essentially become advertisers for that brand. Were you ever caught singing any of these?

• I’d like to buy the world a Coke ( Coca Cola )
• Oh, I wish I were an Oscar Mayer Wiener (Oscar Mayer)
• Two all beef patties (McDonalds)
• I don’t wanna grow up, I’m a Toys R Us kid (Toys ‘R Us)
• You Deserve a Break Today (McDonald’s)
• Wouldn’t you like to be a pepper too? (Dr. Pepper)
• Campbell’s Soup M’m M’m Good ( Campbell’s Soup)
• Plop, plop, fizz, fizz oh what a relief it is…(Alka Seltzer)
• Stuck on Me (Band-Aid)
• Double Your Pleasure, Double Your Fun (Wrigley’s Doublemint Gum)

A recent study indicated that the use of at least three social media options in email marketing campaigns lead to a 55% higher click-through rate.  The interesting thing is that only about half of email marketers are adding some sort of social element to their email campaigns.

The real ROI comes in the shared messages of these type of campaigns. Messages that included a sharing option generated 30% higher click-throughs than emails without the social sharing links.  Three or more generated 55% higher click-throughs.  Twitter alone showed a 40% higher CTR than without a sharing link.  Twitter appears to be the most popular option at 67.2% of all social emails with Facebook coming in a close second at 62.7%.

Think about it, you send an email to a million users in your email list.  If 55% of the users that click through your message and share it with their 130+ friends on Facebook or followers on Twitter, imagine how much ROI you are getting on that email campaign without any additional cost!  Folks, time to start A/B testing!

In this business adding new or additional tools and reporting options inside your administration interface is imperative to creating success and sending the right information to publishers and advertisers. The truth is, the data needed is always available, it’s just not always obvious to see. Working with your programmers to get what you need and updates to make information more accessible is important – just remember, marketing terminology does not apply to the tech team, so make sure to be precise in your requests to make the necessary changes a smooth process on all sides.

A great Affiliate Manager does not take no for an answer and will always find a way to get the job done! If you need something to make your job better, you will always find a way. At LeadPile it is our constant and never ending passion to make everything we do for our Advertising and Publishing Partners the best that it can be!

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Believe it or not the increase in smartphones has also impacted the online gaming market. Emarketer is predicting the revenues for mobile gaming are going to see a 19% increase this year, versus last year. With the accessability of gaming sites and also the creation of mobile apps, many individuals AND application designers have made the move into this online industry. The free apps available to consumers will probably see more success, but the eventual move to more paid downloadable apps could see more joining the bandwagon (because there might be more perks with a paid application versus the free applications). So with more and more starting to utilize gaming sites, does this mean potential regulations of the industry like it is with casinos and such?

Looks like we all have yet another reason to get “addicted” to our phones!

Spending on Internet advertising in the US should “almost completely recover” this year according to the IDC.

With Search and Mobile advertising seeing the largest growth.

Search revenue is expected to increase from 13.8 billion to 27.3 billion between 2009 and 2014. Mobile will see an astonishing growth of 220 million to 1.8 billion.

Currently Google holds a 64% share in the US search market with Yahoo at 18% and Microsoft at 12%. With Yahoo recently agreeing to outsource its search to Microsoft and Google’s proposed $750 million purchase of Admob it will be interesting to see how these big players affect online and offline advertising.

Are you up to date with the new offers and developments in the industry, especially from your competitors? If not, you will be missing out.

Your clients need an educated affiliate manager or salesperson to can guide them in becoming more successful. In this fast pace industry, it’s imperative to keep yourself up to date with the new offers and industry news.

Myself, being a Mac user and spending most on my time in Mail app, I found the following solution:

• Create your Google Alerts
• Create a feed for every keyword (example: Leadpile, Hydra Network, MediaWhiz, etc)
• Add each Feed to your Google Reader
• Group them in a Folder
• Add them to your preferred RSS reader – in my case, I have added a new RSS to my Mailboxes

Now I can get alerts on all the topics I am interested in, and they will show straight into my Inbox.

Do you have any recommendations as to what topics I should follow? Let me know!

Whether it was a plotted marketing scheme or a mistake that one Apple engineer will never be forgotten for, the newest model of the iPhone was left in a bar in California and sold to the tech site Gizmodo. The iPhone, which was not to be formally unveiled for a couple of months has now been dissected and photos posted by the technology news site. Over a million people visitors had made it to the site to view the iPhone just an hour after it had been posted.

Apple has not formally made any comments regarding the technology leak, however late Monday evening Gizmodo received a letter from Apple’s senior VP and general counsel requesting the phone be returned.

Working in lead generation it is really important to know who your client is and who you are are trying to target. Unfortunately, what happens with many networks/agencies is that they are wrapped up in generating as many leads as they can, they are not focusing on who they are targeting. Knowing the consumer that you are targeting, does it really matter that you don’t know the ins and outs of what the consumer is you are marketing to? Many would say it is not totally important, but I feel knowing as much as you can about your target market/consumer can make or break the effectiveness of your marketing campaign.
APNews seems to agree. “The independent Marketing Tracking & Maximisation Specialist also found that Marketers around the world classify ad agencies into three groups: (1) the Result-Drivers who truly believe that the primary purpose of a campaign is to deliver the bottom line results of their clients, and do whatever they can for that (35%); (2) the Result-Pretenders who claim they believe in making campaigns that deliver results, but are internally not prepared to put in place the relevant systems and processes to do so (43%); and (3) the Dreamers who still live in old “Adland” (22%).” There were also 3 weaknesses identified in those that are not truly focusing on the actual result of their consumers:
1. The customer insight is not deep enough
2. Too award driven and not enough customer focused
3. Not effectively tracking to know what is working with each media campaign

Bottom line: know your customer and what advertising is working effectively. This applies to lead generation or any other marketing techniques where you are trying to target consumers.

Starbucks is revamping it’s image to something other than your morning or afternoon stop for a caffeine fix. In Seattle, the Starbucks Corporation has opened a Roy’s Street Coffee & Tea & 15th Avenue Coffee & Tea. The new cafés were created as a challenge to break away from the mold.

According to msnbc.com it is speculated that the two new cafés were designed to separate Starbucks apart from others and back to the top of the market with so much competition facing its lattes and frappuccinos. The company also debuted a small number of test cafés last summer with a new store design focusing on energy savings and being “green”.

It is not predicted that Starbucks will convert it’s other stores to this atmosphere or start serving alcohol any time soon….However, this might be a good thing – walking downstairs to get your caffeine in the afternoon, it might be just a little to tempting to replace that triple shot frappuccino with a nice glass of red wine!!

Leadpile is very much familiar with email marketing and works with a lot of publishers that are generating traffic through this source of marketing. Because it has become so popular with companies trying to monetize data, and publishers trying to have a less expensive way to generate traffic, reading up on any new email marketing trends is important. DMNews brought up some key points about email marketing:
1. Permission and privacy: Various states are making rulings on cases that involve consumer’s information, so keeping up with not only CAN-SPAM but other legislation involving consumers privacy, is key to keeping your nose clean with the law.

2. Video in email: The next biggest thing is utilizing video in emails. If you are not someone that is utilizing this yet, you better start reading up now.

3. Partnership of email marketing and social media: Incorporating links to social media in emails is something that marketers picked up on last year, however the future of these two is going to be big. Perfecting the use of social media in email is something that all emailers will have to learn more about, because this is going to be something that is going to continue to emerge and you will need to learn to keep up with it.

“Nineteen percent of online marketing budgets are now allocated to e-mail, according MarketingSherpa, and 54% of marketers plan to increase their e-mail budgets this year, based on research from Econsultancy and ExactTarget.” If you are not a company that is looking at increasing your email marketing budget, trends show you might want to reconsider this!

In previous years, marketing strategies involved companies utilizing direct mail as a source to reach consumers. However, it seems to be going extinct because of it’s lack of effectiveness and cost. Today, companies are using email marketing and other direct marketing sources as a way to reach new consumers. Many however are still planning on utilizing direct mail as a source to get new clients, however the other source to generate consumer is growing at a much faster pace. The bottom line is, the economy seems to be heading in the right direction, which means marketing budgets can start coming back to now generate more customers. Any other marketing methods that are seeing a downward trend from the economy? Mail can’t be the only marketing method being affected by the nation’s struggling economy? Leadpile is certainly seeing the affects of the economy and it’s traffic coming in, so maybe this is affecting all sources of marketing.

Creativity is not something that everyone has the ability to express, it takes a certain “breed” of people to be able to come up with the ideas and works of art that the rest of us often times look at with amazement, wondering “why didn’t I think of that”?

A creative mind and ability to market can be truly valuable and pay off for some lucky people and companies!

According to Entrepreneur.com here are few of the 10 of the most brilliant marketing ideas:

- “Danicing in the Tube” – an ad for T-mobile featuring flash mobs in the middle of a London Tube station. This YouTube video has received tens of millions of page views.

- “The Coke geyser” – The YouTube video of mentos being dropped into a 2-liter bottle of Diet Coke. Record numbers of people viewed this on the internet, and sales of Mentos and Coke went up much higher.

- “Does she…or doesn’t she?” – Clairol’s series of ads for hair tints and dyes asking the question and making you wonder “does she….or doesn’t she??

- “Marlboro Man” – Marlboro originally marketed to women introduced the American cowboy in an effort to grab more of the market. The ads made Marlboro the bestselling cigarette in the world!

- “A diamond is forever” – De Beers mining company promoted the “requirement “of a diamond for marriage and attached the two months’ salary spending rule with it.

To come up with an icon or phrase that everyone recognizes and last forever is something that is truly amazing and inspiring!