Many names come to mind when you mention the name Crystal Palace Football Club. Sansom, Hilaire, Wright, Bright, Johnson, Coppell. And now, dotMailer.

That last one is a recent addition to the list but get used to it – this season dotMailer is proud to announce its sponsorship of Edgar Davids’ away kit. Why the away kit? Well, because it’s the best and one most famous looking kits in football of course!

With those ever present orange goggles, there’s something of the digital about Edgar as it is, so he seems the perfect match for what the dotDigital group (and blog) is all about.  Edgar is also one of the most socially connected footballers you’re likely to find on the web, constantly tweeting and replying to fans.

Indeed, in reaction to Crystal Palace’s recent financial woes, some of the fans tweeted to Edgar to see if they could bring him on board to help. Not only did he call his own 11,000 followers to support the club but ultimately sign up on a pay by play basis, making his debut last night.

While his arrival didn’t herald the showering of glory that Palace needed, it’s still evidence of what can be achieved through social networks and we’re very happy to be associated with the whole phenomenon.  The question is, can this performance be replicated by other teams and will it become an influencer in the future?

Will we see email marketing campaigns attempting to motivate supporters to put such pressure on players? Time will tell, but in the meantime, keep an eye on our man Edgar- we look forward to watching him focus his two big orange eyes on the ball.

P.S. For a limited time only, the phrase EAGLES will get you a discount on your dotMailer order. Give it a try!

Certain dates stick out in the mind. November the 5th perhaps or the 4^th of July.  But until yesterday, 5 July 2010 wasn’t on the list for many people.

Until, that is, some bright spark on Twitter published the following:

Attracting hundreds of status updates, retweets and (in our case) emails, the little mote of trivia took the internet by storm.

Except, some bright spark soon pulled the rug out from under the furore by identifying that the date they travelled to would actually have been 26 October 2010. What’s more, Marty ends up going to the day Doc invented the Flux capacitor instead, thanks to a pickup truck full of angry terrorists.

If this wasn’t already complicated enough, Total Film then released a mockup of what the DeLorean’s time travel panel would have looked like if they had travelled to 5 July 2010 (below).

Predictably, this produced a second wave of misunderstanding, buffeted by an irate backlash from those who were angry enough at its inaccuracy the first time round.  What’s interesting is that a very simple but attractive idea was able to go viral not once but twice on the basis of that simplicity.  It’s a timely reminder that sometimes less is more.

For those keen Back to the Future fans out there, the date you might really want to add to your calendar is 21 October 2015, or the day that Marty arrives in the future in the second film. Until then, we’ll leave you with the sage advice that remains true throughout time; don’t believe everything you read on the internet…

A major ecommerce solutions benchmark research report published last month by dotCommerce found that of the 100 online retailers sampled, only 26% had a Twitter account – slightly more than the number that had Facebook accounts (24%).

What’s more, of those with a Twitter account, only 23% provided a link to the account on their website (all those who did were larger retailers).

So it looks like in many cases online retailers and marketers are proving slow if not reluctant to build Twitter into their marketing mix.

Our Star Example

Check out the eSpares Twitter account for a great example of how a retailer can build up a following and really connect with its customers and prospects in a natural and engaging way.

The tweets are a mixture of offers, competitions, product information, customer service, and general advice and chit chat.

This approach helps to create a human face for the brand and keep followers engaged. The result is a follower base of over 761 to date – not bad for a retailer selling spare parts!

Top 10 tips for retailers using Twitter:

1. Make sure you register your brand name ASAP! – with the popularity of Twitter increasing at a phenomenal rate, it’s vital to claim your ID before someone else gets in first.

2. Write a biography – think carefully about what you want to write in the biography section; this is your opportunity to sell yourself.

3. Add your logo and design a background – creating a customer Twitter background and featuring your branding and logo will help to strengthen your online identity and encourage recognition in the busy Twitter ‘market place’.

4. Use hash tags in your tweets – users can track tagged keywords (eg #iPad), so if you use a relevant tag that is trending you will increase the likelihood of people coming across your content.

5. Encourage ‘retweeting’– getting your followers to retweet your posts is a great way to spread your influence. Keep your tweets short and engaging to maximise retweet potential and don’t be afraid to ask followers to retweet a post.

6. Engage – rather than using Twitter solely as a broadcast tool, don’t be afraid to engage with followers.

7. Use @replies to respond publicly (this will notify the original poster of your response and thread it so other users can follow the conversation), or direct messaging to respond to something privately, for example if you receive a complaint or query about a specific order.

8. Get ready for customer service enquiries – it’s highly likely you will be contacted via Twitter with customer service questions. These shouldn’t be ignored. Be prepared for your reader to tell you how best to communicate with them.

9. Special offers work – Dell generated $6.5m of revenue on Twitter alone by using offers! We all love a discount and what better way to spread the news of your offer than on a social network.

10. Be generous – retweet or comment on tweets by other people and show them you’re not just interested in what your brand has to say.

11. Monitor – make sure you monitor what tweeters are saying about your brand or your industry so you can pick up the positives and negatives and handle them effectively. Twitter search or Tweetbeep are great applications for this.

And a word of caution…

Be aware of Twitter ‘follow bots’ – some companies use bots to automatically follow users (sometimes randomly, sometimes targeted to demographic data or use of key words) in the hope that users will follow them back.

This may have some small value in increasing your base of followers, but is seen as annoying and intrusive by most users and may earn you a poor reputation.

Click here to download your copy of the full 25 page social media in ecommerce solutions report.

Are retail brands effectively using social media to connect with customers?

We were keen to find out, so we did some research…and we’re launching the results today, with a free benchmark report, giving you all the juicy details: www.dotcommerce.co.uk/social_ecommerce_solutions.

We found that social media is being used by 42% of UK retailers, but they’re not very keen on expanding their activity across multiple networks, with only 12% using more than one form of social media channel to engage with their target audiences.

When it comes to the channels retailers are using, more brands have a presence on Twitter (26%) than Facebook (24%) despite the latter having been around for a lot longer and with far more users.  But what surprised us most was that the majority of brands with a social media presence are failing to tell anyone about it, with no links or references to their Twitter or Facebook pages anywhere on their websites.

Want to know more? Download our report which details the full results of our study, with lots of best practice guidelines to help your brand get the most out of social media. There are also over 60 handy tips for Twitter, Facebook, User Generated Content, Blogs and other sites like LinkedIn, MySpace and YouTube that will help your business get ahead in this exciting new landscape.

And, if you’re one of the 58% of UK retailers with ecommerce solutions not already using social media for marketing, what’s stopping you? Entry costs are low, and the potential for spreading marketing messages virally through social media sites is high. Read our report and give it a try – and drop us a line on our Twitter, @dotCommerce, to let us know how you get on.

We are all spending an increasing amount of time reading blogs and participating on social networks. Research from Nielsen shows that globally, we spent 82% more time on social networks like Linkedin, Twitter and Facebook in December 2009 than we did at the same time a year before.

This increased interest offers great potential for marketers; by tapping into social communities you are geared up to reach a wide new audience through one of the most effective marketing tools – peer recommendations.

Email marketing provides you with a fantastic way to tap into your recipients social networks, but it won’t happen on its own. We’ve picked out four top tips on how to use your email marketing to encourage social sharing:

• Add sharing links – ‘Share this’ buttons have become common on most web content, so make sure you add them to your emails too! They allow readers to quickly and easily share material they find interesting with their social circle. Indeed, a recent study by Marketing Sherpa found that including sharing buttons on an email marketing message produced a 25% boost in reader interaction and a surge in inbound traffic from social networks
• Publicise your newsletter to social communities – When you send out your email newsletter, why not post the link to the web version on your Linkedin, Twitter or Facebook account. This will encourage your followers to read the message and, if you have a prominent ‘subscribe’ link in the email itself, they might even sign up
• Add a ‘follow us on Twitter’ link – As well as giving recipients the option to share newsletter content, make sure you publicise your social network accounts so that recipients that aren’t following you on Twitter for example can have the option to add you. This will help you deepen the relationship and will make it more likely that they will share future content with their network
• Encourage social media interactions – Where possible, try and encourage recipients to take actions on social networks. For example, could you use your email message to invite feedback on your latest product via Twitter or on Facebook. Or why not encourage your customers to submit pictures of them using your products on Flickr?

By creating a link between your social media marketing and your outreach via email, you can begin to join the dots between your separate strategies and use both forms of communication to support and increase customer retention and acquisition.

picture credit

Twitter is a great tool that can be a powerful part of your marketing mix. For many brands who only joined this year, it’s still new and relatively unknown. But the arrival of Twitter Lists in October brings even more opportunities for marketers that will excite even the most hardened Twitter veterans.

In a nutshell, Twitter Lists provides a way to create lists of Twitter accounts, making it an easy way to share the Twitter users you find useful or interesting with others. Other people can then subscribe to your List and if they do, all the accounts included will appear in their feeds.

Many marketers are looking for ways they can use Lists to add value to marketing campaigns. Here are five recommendations we came up with on how Lists can be used:

1. Follow industry lists

Keep on top of marketing trends and news by following industry lists, like Email Marketing or Email Marketing UK IE . Things move fast on Twitter, and Lists can help you find the people that will keep you in the loop

2. Find users with niche interests

Do you market to particular interest groups? Discover Lists of new Twitter users to follow in niche markets, like Orchestras or Bird Watchers. You can then follow the feeds to keep on top of the latest news and ensure your marketing content is timely and relevant

3. Create your own Lists

Use Twitter Lists to create your own resource of Twitter accounts and then share them with your target audience as a way to offer them more information. Recommending Lists to follow also puts you in the position of being an industry expert

4. Use the Lists API

This will bring meaningful, real-time Tweets to your own website, and incorporating Twitter Lists to your site could be another way to encourage users to click through from your marketing messages.

5. Show some respect

You can use Twitter Lists to recognise and promote your existing customers, clients or partners. This can act as a list of references for potential customers, a way to give kudos to partners or just as a way for letting clients know how important you think they are.

Twitter Lists is still a relatively new feature and we’re discovering new benefits every week. How are you using Twitter Lists to maximise your marketing efforts and reach out to your customer base?

Google Wave launched earlier this month and the surge of anticipation that followed the initial unveiling of the new product in May (see above), only seems to be growing.

Google Wave is a new platform, which the media are calling ‘email 2.0’. Some are even going as far to say this could be the ‘end of email’.

Of course, we’ve heard this all before. Last time it was social media that was going to end email, now its Google Wave, tomorrow it’ll be something else…

But social media didn’t kill email – it’s just another channel and, if anything, smart marketers have developed ways to integrate social media and email to great effect.

Google Wave will be the same. The platform integrates a number of commonly used applications – word processing, spreadsheets, slide presentations, email, real-time live chat and broadcast web conferencing, with a very slick user interface. It’s a great collaboration of collaboration tools and marks a major turning point in the development of communication technologies.

For the many brands beginning to experiment with networks like Twitter, this will be a natural development to their existing marketing strategies, and help them justify why Twitter is important!

But email will not disappear, even if Google Wave gains major traction (and it is way too early to tell whether it will). For marketers, email will continue to be key to their strategies, the same rules will still apply, and the same techniques will still work.

In fact, the good news is that – if Google Wave does take off – email as a technology could experience something of a rebirth, making it more popular than ever and used more frequently.

Brands should also be able to increase real-time interactions with recipients, bringing more social media and 2.0 elements to traditional email marketing.

Whatever happens with Google Wave, you can be sure that we will be on top of developments and the first to communicate best practice techniques to our customers. So, stay tuned, and in the meantime, if you get a beta account do please let us know what you think.

by Tink Taylor