Starbucks is taking convenience to the next level. In this rather stunning email Starbucks outlines how consumers can pay for their next cup of coffee with their iPhone and their latest app.

What I like about this email is that it is clever, educational, and wittily promotes it’s relationship with Target.

I’m also a fan of the top and bottom navigation. Deep linking to provide consumers direct access to relevant information.

What are your thoughts? Does the smooth flowing layout peak your senses?

Starbucks Email Marketing Campaign - Promotion new iPhone Application

Are you familiar with the Geico Insurance Commercials? How many spokes characters can you identify?

Despite contrary belief, there are multiple spokes characters; the Gecko, the Caveman, the Googly-eyed stack of Money, the Talking Pothole, the babbling Fire Hydrant, the Movie Announcer Guy and more.

I’ve asked a few colleagues which Geico Insurance spokes person they can identify. Naturally, most mentioned the Gecko, a few named the CEO and one or two recalled the Caveman. When I mentioned the Googly-eyed stack of Money or the Talking Pothole, everyone said something like, “Oh Yeah!”

How does having multiple spokes characters affect the brand? Does this cause the brand to appear to have Multiple Personality Disorder or is it simply targeting different audiences?

Over the past few months I’ve only seen the Gecko, Caveman, Stack of Money and the Talking Pothole. This could be because the insurance company has retired the commercials or because I’m not part of those target audiences.

I attempted to understand if the characters where being used to target different audiences or if something else was going on. Of the people in my office, most recall seeing three or more characters on TV. The office is comprised of people from all spectrums of life; Sports Junkies, Tech Nerds, Moms, Dads; you name it, we have it. Since most of the people in the office can name almost all of the different Geico characters, it makes sense to assume that the company’s strategy isn’t about targeting audiences with different characters. It’s much bigger.

Each character has it’s own style, personality and message:

Gecko - “15 minutes could save you 15% or more on your car insurance.”
Caveman - “So easy, a Caveman could do it.”
Googly-eyed stack of Money - “This is the money you could be saving on your car insurance.”
Talking Pothole - “Accidents are bad. But Geico’s good, with emergency road service”

While Geico may be confused with it’s multiple distinct identities, each with its own patterns of interactions with consumers, but it also creates connections with consumers on various levels. Each character creates a multi-teired connection with its audience, connecting at a deeper level compared to other marketing messages. The overall strategy works well for the brand. The ads are like having 5 people people tell you about a product or service. Think back to brands like Nike, who has many different spokespeople, all these people are telling you a different story about the brand. If you combine them together, consumers are getting a well-rounded impression of the brand.

Combined, the Gecko, the Caveman and the talking Pothole are telling consumers: “Save Money. Be Safe. It’s Easy.”

Who said having multiple personalities was a bad thing?

Around the time of Earth Day, many companies broadcast their environmental support. The jump is a tricky step, however. You do not want to look like you’re only being “green” because it is the flavor of the week, for it is a year round effort. For some companies, such as Brita, being environmentally friendly comes naturally.

Events such as Earth Day are perfect times to use advertising to invoke the audience’s emotions and direct them into action. Whether that action is buying your product or reducing the number of plastic water bottled used, these types of advertisement provide a strong call to action.

Clever advertisers know in order to create change or to get the consumer to buy your product opposed to your competitor; you need to apply to both the emotional and rational sides of the human mind.

A hot air balloon excites emotions by providing something visually pleasing to look at, such as the colors, shapes and size. In order to get riders on the hot air balloon, you need to provide direction. Such as, where is the balloon going, what will they experience?

Imagine a large, brightly colored hot air balloon sitting in the middle of the park. The balloon is aesthetically appealing; the roaring sound provides a teaser for what’s to come. Standing aside the balloon is a tall sign that shows a map of the valley below and reads, “Hot Air Balloon Rides. Soar up 2,000 feet and take a 2 hour journey above the valley.” Now imagine the excitement you feel, the willingness to climb aboard and sore to new heights. This is because the owner of the balloon excited your emotions and provided you direction.

The hot air balloon experience applies to advertisement. The main point: excite and direct.

Or on the flip side, we just completed a campaign where we advertised on two different sites and it’s time to decided if we will continue advertising on the site or change tactics.

For either reach we can provide statics to gauge the level of visitor engagement from said sites. The other day I was reading the Google Analytics blog and came across a posting about an API update. http://analytics.blogspot.com/2009/12/api-python-client-library-updated.html

The post describes the use of the Analytics API Python Client library and a sample application they’ve created to test the library. The application creates segments to pull specific referrals from select referring domains. Then, it takes five calculations and corresponds metrics to compare the performance of those segments.

I decided it would be a great experiment to test out the application as well. With the help of a programmer, we were able to create the pretty chart as displayed on the Google Analytics Blog. Exciting.

Since I’m not a programmer and had some time to spare I decided to create the same chart using Google Analytics and Excel. I took the same steps, Segmented my referring audience. In this example I created two Advanced Segments to capture all referrals from two separate campaigns. Then, from the Google Analytics Dashboard, I copied the following five metrics into excel for each segment. Created a few charts, formatted a bit and BAM. A chart that compares visitor engagement between two referrers.

My chart might not be as pretty nor as quick to create from the API application, but it does the trick for now. I’ve picked out a few Java API applications I want to play with next when I have a few minutes.

Ok, so now we have this fancy chart and I’ve explained how to create it without having to be a programmer who understand Python.

What now, what does it all mean? Well… For starters, we can see that traffic from Campaign #2 is more engaged compared to traffic from Campaign #1. Visitors from Campaign #2 view more pages per visit, on average they spend more time on the site and they return more frequently. The Bounce Rate is higher on Campaign #2 compared to Campaign #1 but compared to the site average, Campaign #2 is lower. If I had $10,000 to spend, where would I spend it? I would split it between both campaigns. Maybe a 30/70 split, depending on the site’s objectives. Campaign #1 drives and retains a nice chunk of traffic to the site.

This fun new chart provided us with a great deal of insight, not only from an evaluation standpoint but also to look at potential marketing opportunities.

Using data to make marketing decisions. Interesting concept.

Experiment Results
Month prior to the experiment: 15.59% avg. click thru-rate.
Month of the experiment: 18.69% avg. click thru-rate
Overall CTR increase: 20%

The excitement doesn’t stop there, in addition to the increase in click thru-rate the set of keywords noticed a 21% decrease in average cost per click.

Comparing to the rest of the account, average click thru-rate decrease 48% and average cost per click only decreased 17% month over month.

As noted previously, we setup six Ad Sitelinks. Google will display up to 4 additional destination URLs out of the potential 10 links provided by the advertiser. Through our internal tracking system, we recorded one specific link captured 54% of all clicks to the campaign set. - This means that more visitors clicked on the one of Ad SiteLinks compared to the standard text link.

Next Steps
Because Ad Sitelinks is currently limited to the constraints of the beta test, we are recommending adding an additional variation of ad copy to include the concept associated with the top performing link. This additional variation will rotate between other ads. The ads are set to show based on best performing ad, meaning the better performing ads will show more often.

I’d call this experiment a success and a quick and easy way to test ad campaigns.