Tag Archives: orkut

You Social, We Social

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With more and more people from India jumping the Social Media bandwagon, local brands are not standing on the edges anymore and have slowly started to test the Social Media waters. Reliance  Mutual Fund seems to be a new kid on the block. I happened to get the following mail from them yesterday

“Accept Button”?
Curious, I tried to check out what they had to offer and here’s what how things stand. The link takes you to their MF site that has the same icons in the tiniest size possible in the most invisible place possible


And here’s what you get when you click the icons

Facebook:

Twitter:

Orkut:

These screenshots pretty much tell the Social Media story for Reliance MF, which is so typical for most companies that are trying to be there but are no where near the optimum experience. It will take them some time and effort to understand there’s more to Social Media than reposting links and hopefully they’ll get hang of things before they run into a Nestle Like crisis

Designing Notification Emails: What you can learn from Friendfeed and others

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Email notifications for various actions(like new friend request, new follower) play an important role in getting a user back to the site and making them perform an action (accept/deny or follow back). Also, given the huge size of various social networks and thinking of these emails as a customer touch point it’s helpful to have a nicely designed notification email template. I’ve written a couple of posts on the same earlier too.

In this post I’ll try to compare the notification email by various popular platforms for the basic action of getting a new friend,follower, subscriber etc and see whose doing what and what could they do to make things better.

1) Twitter:


Format: HTML; Display Pic: Included; Call to Action: Visit profile; Direct Action: Block

This template is mostly good enough to decide if a user wants to follow back another user of not but by having a direct follow button would have helped.

2) Slideshare


Format: HTML; Display Pic: Not Included; Call to Action: Visit profile; Direct Action: None

This template is plain and simple but it doesn’t have a display pic for new follower and it doesn’t have a direct button for an action. Also, it has two links which point to the same page, which isn’t the best thing .

3) LinkedIn

Format: HTML; Display Pic: Not Included; Call to Action: View Invitation; Direct Action: Accept Invitation.

While Linkedin has a direct action button they don’t have any detail about the user in question. Here again a picture or some more description will be helpful.

4) FriendFeed:

Format: HTML; Display Pic: Included; Call to Action: None; Direct Action: Subscribe back

Friendfeed has by far the best designed email notification template in which they have the display pic, last few updates and just one link to get direct action(subscribe back) from the user

5) Facebook:


Format: HTML; Display Pic: Included; Call to Action: Visit request ; Direct Action: Accept Request.

Facebook has changed it’s notification from the older one (active till 14th september 09). While they have definitely gone the Friendfeed way, the name  of direct action button is Login which doesn’t kinda look right.

Format: Text; Display Pic: Not Included; Call to Action: View Request; Direct Action: None

6) Orkut:


Format: HTML; Display Pic: Included; Call to Action: Visit profile and Visit friends page; Direct Action: None

Orkut too like slideshare has two links to the user’s profile and a third link which reads ‘visit friends page’ but it takes you to a separate ‘add friends’ page ala facebook.  Also there is no direct call to action here too.

While there could be reasons for not having a direct action button for Facebook and  Orkut(because they need to group friends into categories for example) some sites like Slideshare and Twitter can easily pick this.{Tip 1}

Having two links to the same profile page is definitely not wise and needs to be taken care off {Tip 2}. Other tips like having some profile info and a display picture can help {Tip 3} in a direct call to action(button etc) {Tip 4} if there is.

As you might have noticed eventually every notification email has moved to HTML format as it has more options like better looks and including a direct action call. {Tip 5}

What do you think about these email notifications?

Marketing Case Study: Tata Nano

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Tata Nano

Tata’s Nano is not a car, it’s a PHENOMENON. Tata Nano is undoubtedly being looked upon as the next big(actually small) thing. With a lot at stake on Nano, it’s success is extremely crucial. Let’s delve into what all has been to market(online+offline) the car of the year.

Online Marketing:

1) Website: TataNano.com
A website dedicated to Tata Nano was up and running since January last year. The website saw huge spurts in traffic when it was the website was released and when the car was launched.

Traffic for tatanano.comThe folks at Tata have a done a good job at building a beautiful website which experience wise is also good.

Nano Website
The major sections of the site are
a) Galary (both pictures and videos)
b) Game(rather Link to a nice virtual driving game by Zapak)
c) Community
d) Why Nano?
e) Booking Details

The website is quite informative and easy to navigate while the chat feature is either programmed or buggy. The site also has a forum which is slightly active and has no signs of involvement by officials from Tata.

2) Social Media:
There are definitely some efforts to use social media to market the car. Not sure if there’s an elaborate strategy behind it all but here’s what’s being done.

a) Blog:
nano_blog
Though it’s certainly a step in right direction but clearly it’s a semi baked and half hearted effort with just two posts on the blog(managing 71 and 20 comments respectively) and no official replies to the conversation.

b) Orkut:
Orkut is one of the most popular social networking platforms in India and thus an obvious choice to pitch. There’s a user profile for Nano which has a few pics and videos and has around 350 friends. Also, there’s a group dedicated to the care which has around 11,000 members. The group was started back in May, 08.

c) Facebook:
Facebook is also a top networking site amongst Indians and there are some attempts to market Nano here too. There’s a fan page for the car with about 6000 fans, a few videos and picture albums. Here again the interaction levels from company reps are quite low(if at all).

d) YouTube:
There’s also a YouTube channel for Tata Nano which has some 78 subscribers and has managed to generated more than 10,000 views on videos of the car.

3) Online Booking:
There was also a lot of buzz surrounding online bookings for the car, I am not sure if this idea was implemented on Tata Nano’s site but it did definitely generate a lot of excitement on the web in general.

4) Nano Game:
Tata Nano Game
As mentioned previously, the game by Zapak was a great move to spread word about the car and it seems to have really worked well in doing it’s job. There are a lot of claims that the game has been played millions of times since its launch. It’s a simple and easily accessible game, which anyone with a browser and internet connection can play.

5) Online Advertisements:
nano_ad_iciciThe blogosphere and indian media sites were inundated with ads for Tata Nano. The ads came in all shapes and sizes and were definitely noticed. Though not directly a part of marketing, it’s an important aspect of Nano’s promotional campaign.

Offline Marketing

1) Collaborations:
As a part of their strategy to avoid premium for booking Nano, Tata partnered with a few banks for releasing application forms. Though the reason behind the move was different, it did help a lot in marketing Nano as the banks used their resources to market their collaboration with Tata to attract more and more applicants. ICICI bank for example initiated a whole campaign to get noticed and spread the word. Icicibank.com had a banner ad on their home page for booking Nano, and also ran links inside the site for the same. Not only this, the banks hired extra part time staff to book the Car. Roping banks like ICICI and SBI helped in also offering loans for total payment of car and infact to surprise of sum Tata announced a bank interest on the applications for Nano which will be rejected in lucky draw.

2) Mall Promotions:
As is the case with most automobile companies, Tata too ran a series of promotional activites on Malls to get Nano in front of perspective buyers.

3) Leveraging Existing Infrastructure:
Tata, a giant brand that it is has also leveraged it’s umbrella groups to market Nano. Now you can find Nano <!– /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:””; margin:0cm; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:”Times New Roman”; mso-fareast-font-family:”Times New Roman”;} @page Section1 {size:612.0pt 792.0pt; margin:72.0pt 90.0pt 72.0pt 90.0pt; mso-header-margin:36.0pt; mso-footer-margin:36.0pt; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} –>

merchandise, application forms and demo cars in Tata Indicom,Titan, Croma and Westside stores. Tata Indicom is also offering a money-back offer with every application form.


4) TV
Though Tata didn’t invest heavily into TV commercials, they did get a few channels to use the word ‘nano’ instead of small wherever possible. For instance, instead of anchors saying ‘we’ll be back after a short break’ on TV channels, they’re saying, ‘We’ll be back after a nano break.’

These are some of the marketing campaigns/tactics that I could find about Tata Nano, if you think I’ve missed something, just drop a comment and I’ll update the post.

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