Facebook users can now book airline tickets through Delta Airlines without leaving the popular networking site. Delta is the first travel company to implement a social commerce channel on Facebook, opening up new possibilities for the ways in which travel is booked online.

After navigating to the “Book a Trip” tab on Delta’s Facebook page, users click on a virtual ticket window to find and book a flight. Delta Air Lines then requests permission to access the user’s basic Facebook data. This information allows the user to book tickets with friends and share their travel plans in their friends’ news feeds.

While this is a revolutionary first step into social commerce for the travel industry, Facebook has been facing privacy concerns lately, and some users have been hesitant to share their personal information on the site. This lack of trust may discourage Facebook members from using Delta’s service.  We’ll have to wait and see how popular this new online ticketing tool becomes and how many travel companies follow suit.

Historically, email has been a great way to effectively maintain customer contact, while also providing useful industry news and resources. However, because online marketing is evolving and becoming more competitive, inboxes are overflowing with messages that are poorly targeted and irrelevant to users. How, then, do you get your message to rise above the clutter? Incorporating social media and mobile marketing into your email programs can enhance contact with customers at different touch points, while also encouraging interaction.

Companies are utilizing social media calls to action within their email marketing campaigns but are lagging in the implementation of mobile-optimized email. Business emails often include the “Like us on Facebook” or “Follow us on Twitter” buttons, but that’s not enough. According to a recent eROI survey, 63% of marketers say that they’re not even measuring the use of mobile devices for email subscribers. In the same survey, nearly 15% of marketers said that optimizing email marketing for mobile is not important. These statistics are frightening considering that 70 million smartphones are currently in use, with predictions that they will overtake traditional phones within the next 12 months, according to Technewsworld.com.

Then why are marketers slacking on mobile? Mobile marketing is difficult to launch, maintain and measure. Few marketers have the knowledge to develop mobile programs and, according to Marketing Profs, only 31.6% believe that having mobile-optimized email is important for their audiences.

Mobile integration will increase as email conversions diminish. Smartphones will take over the mobile market very soon, and marketers will be forced to reach out to their customers in different ways. People are utilizing mobile based online applications like email and social media more frequently, and in order to remain effective, marketers will have to shift their methods of maintaining customer contact.

Founded in 2000, 90octane is a pioneer in response-based interactive marketing tactics. The agency creates custom lead generation, lead nurturing and search engine marketing programs for its clients in the B2B, B2C and nonprofit fields. View 90octane’s Inc. 5000 Company Profile.

Last month the 90octane staff attended a Colorado Rockies game at Coors Field in Denver, CO. We had a wonderful time… even though the Pittsburgh Pirates bested our hometown team 4-2.

We hear about social media all the time: “Twitter this. Facebook that.” It borders on annoying, but here’s the thing – it actually works. Many types of companies recognize the value of social media marketing. Non-profit organizations are no exception.

With around 500 million active Facebook users worldwide and Twitter sitting at a cool 190 million users, it almost seems silly for a non-profit organization not to dive into social media. According to a study conducted by Nora Ganim Barnes, Ph.D and Eric Mattson in 2009, comprised of the 200 largest charities in the United States, “Ninety-three percent of the charities studied have a Facebook profile, 87% have a Twitter presence and 65% have a blog. This new study, a longitudinal look at social media usage among the not-for-profit sector from 2007-2009, reveals that social media has become an incredibly important part of the communication strategy for US charities.”

Some brands are getting especially creative with their social strategy. For example, Whole Foods ran a Mother’s Day campaign where it donated a dollar to The National Domestic Violence Hotline every time a specific message was re-tweeted. This type of social media promotion allows users to get involved, contribute and spread awareness about both the brand and the charity with a very low level of engagement.

90octane client Heifer International manages its own Facebook page, providing information about its mission and strategy and photos of the people and communities the charity helps. Users can sign up for the Heifer e-newsletter, peruse the gift catalog, participate in conversations, or follow the provided links to Heifer’s website, blog, Twitter account and YouTube channel. Maintaining a Facebook page allows Heifer to communicate with current and prospective donors quickly and easily.

There are countless ways that your non-profit organization can use social media to raise awareness and money at a low cost. However, before launching a social strategy, make sure to set goals and have tracking and measurement tools in place. Be mindful of who is engaging with your organization and don’t forget to participate in the conversation, too!

When discussing the goals of lead programs with sales teams, we often get one message – volume volume volume. The ‘volume’ mentality has an obvious attraction: at least some of the many leads that come in the door will close. However, when we dig deeper, we all become convinced that volume is less important than delivering quality, closeable leads to sales.

So, what is the process for identifying quality leads before sending them to sales? Lead nurturing programs. They help qualify and guide prospects through the buying cycle by analyzing what offers they are interested in and the specific actions these prospects take. Through learning about prospects, we’re able to target marketing initiatives to be focused on their needs as they gather information and research, evaluate their options and ultimately make a purchase decision.

How do we identify when a lead needs to be nurtured and when they are ready for sales? Start by segmenting by preference. Provide multiple offers on your site requiring registration – everything from white papers and research studies, to pricing sheets and sales contact information.

Be sure to include sales in the process of identifying what offers have generated conversions in the past. If history has shown that leads who request pricing sheets are likely to buy, then send leads who take action with this offer directly to sales. On the other hand, if the sales team contends that prospects who are only downloading white papers never close, don’t just give up on them. Instead, add them into a nurturing program. It is more likely that they are still in the investigation phase than they’re expressing disinterest. By placing them in the nurture flow and sending them follow-up emails and offers that provide them more information over time, it’s like having a salesperson guide them through the purchase cycle without pressuring them to sign a check.

Nurture campaigns aid in closing more sales because the lead who wasn’t ready to buy a few months ago will eventually move into the final decision phase, and your company will be top of mind. You were there, after all, every step of the way.

Getting people to open and read a marketing email can sometimes feel like pulling particularly reluctant teeth. Although email can be highly effective as a marketing tool, the first (and arguably most challenging) step is getting your target audience to open your correspondence. A study by Salted Services discovered that “more than 50% of email recipients delete messages within two seconds of opening them” (BtoB), making it difficult to effectively communicate your message via email. However, this statistic isn’t reason enough to give up on email marketing; there are still plenty of strategies you can implement to increase your open and click-through rates.

Some of the most successful email campaigns utilize these key tactics:

Create highly targeted and segmented emails. Delivering relevant messages to your readers is vital to strong email performance. If you can identify your target audience and deliver information that is significant to them specifically, you’ll have a much higher success rate.

Deliver compelling content. Consistently creating strong content ensures that your audience will be intrigued by your emails every time they arrive, thus encouraging steadfast readership and potentially creating brand loyalty.

Write convincing subject lines. The first words the reader sees in any advertising materials are the most important: in this case, it’s the subject line. According to Econsultancy, readers need to understand what the email is offering in 5 – 8 words. What’s more, your audience needs to be interested in the content of the subject line, so be creative!

Make the display address clear. Readers are very hesitant to open emails when they don’t recognize the sender. A known source in the display address will encourage readers to open the email rather than viewing it as potential spam and deleting it off hand.

The Salted Services study also found that marketers who focus on email best practices have reported “seeing as much as 77% of recipients spending 10 seconds or more reading their messages.” (BtoB) Although it is a challenge to get readers to open emails, these tactics can increase the likelihood that your message will be read, thus increasing the reach of your brand and the efficacy of your marketing efforts.

Most marketers are excited about leveraging social networks to connect with their audiences. Sometimes, in their enthusiasm, they forget to take a step back and ask themselves how they plan to measure the success of their new social media programs.

Your company may have 300 people who “like” your Facebook page or 500 Twitter followers, but what does that mean for your bottom line? Are those fans contributing something measurable to the success of your overall marketing objectives?  These are the questions that many marketers aren’t sure how to answer.

A recent study, the 2010 Omniture Online Analytics Benchmark Survey, evaluates ROI on social, mobile and video media, and shows that 55% of respondents cannot effectively measure marketing ROI from their online tactics. The study also found that 86% of respondents consider the ability to track conversions from their online marketing activities as important, but 25% of them are unable to do so.

When you develop a social media strategy, start by setting clearly-defined goals. Once you’ve decided what objectives you’d like your campaign to meet, you can start thinking about how to measure them. Having an effective strategy for evaluating social media marketing programs can give you a competitive edge, so be sure to measure, measure and measure some more.

For information on free tools that can help you measure your social media program, visit Mashable Social Media.

We took advantage of the many knowledge-sharing opportunities among top marketers to put together this quick list of hot topics and key learnings from IMS:

1. Marketing plans should start with the desired outcome for the organization. Once that’s established, you can outline the marketing objectives, strategy, programs and tactics (in that order).
2. Keep asking “why” throughout the course of your marketing programs. Asking why specific objectives are being set, for example, provides insight into bigger business goals.
3. Think performance management, not just campaign optimization, to demonstrate how you’re guiding your marketing programs to greater success.
4. Communicate how your marketing success is making a business impact to the C-Suite. They’re interested in customer acquisition, retention and growth, so change marketing reports from being tactically focused (CTR, open rate, impressions, etc.) to speaking the C-Suite language (market share, customer value, category growth rates, etc.).
5. Remember that, these days, consumers control your brand. From brand experiences to social media, viral content can help grow your company. Use these channels to your benefit.
6. Consider what it costs to lose a customer who becomes unhappy. Social networking designed for customer service can turn an angry customer into a brand advocate. And don’t forget to throw in some incentives on your social sites – most in your network are looking for discounts and promotions. Feeling a part of your brand is a secondary perk.
7. While there are many strong tools to help companies monitor social marketing (and as few as 16% are actually tracking and measuring social media), it’s more important to think about if/when/how to respond via social outlets.
8. Keep an eye out for increasingly sophisticated geo-targeting and location-specific marketing channels, as today’s consumers becomes more reliant on their mobile devices. Already 87% of consumers are equipped with them, and mobile marketing opportunities are on the rise, too.
9. When strategizing offers for your next marketing program, consider how you might repurpose quality content for efficiency. Take webinars, for example. Done well, they generate engaging content that can be used across YouTube, tips programs, blog posts and more.
10. Lead management automation is on a lot of marketers’ minds because it has the potential to improve both sides of the ROI equation. But true adoption of a comprehensive solution – including all the processes to realize its potential – is under 4%. Education is one of the keys to increasing adoption of these valuable toolsets.

We’ll keep you posted on any other great upcoming events, and you do the same!