MarketingSherpa Blog

Per today`s Case Study, Lewis Weiss was able to trade on a long-standing advertising relationship in order to get custom-created content from a recognized industry expert in each issue of his email newsletter.

It’s a sweet deal, but other marketers can copy it if they swing the same kind of heft among trade magazines or vendors.

Some considerations:

— Are you a major advertiser in a trade magazine, Web site or email newsletter? We’re talking a regular contract for display ads of at least a quarter page in print or skyscraper-size online, not one-time deals, or co-op or classified ads.

The next time the publication’s ad salesperson comes around looking to get extra money from you to underwrite a special issue, ancillary program (like the audiocassette program for Weiss) or the like, see if there’s room to barter away some of the cost by picking up a key writer.

You should try to get the writer to produce something special for you. Failing that, try to negotiate the rights to rerun a column by a popular writer.

— If you don’t have that kind of ad-dollar pull, look at your own vendor relationships. Do any of them have exceptional knowledge to share that your customers would also appreciate?

Although he doesn’t have a separate contract with his writer — terms are covered under his ad contract with Purchasing magazine — I recommend that marketers who use talent from outside their companies work with a contract that specifies the following work conditions:

— Pay: How much, how often and how much if any should the company cancel an issue?

— Copyright: Does the marketer or the writer own the copyright to the material the writer creates for the newsletter?

— Editorial content and control: Who has the final edit on copy, the newsletter publisher or the writer/editor? Who determines the editorial calendar, solicits articles and artwork and works with the newsletter designer?

Here’s a link to a standard freelance writer’s contract template (modify for your own needs)

We were wrong when we told you last week that Arial Software didn’t ID the three spammers it uncovered in its six-month undercover study of email marketing practices.

The three got busted in a related report intended to reassure consumers that they won’t get spammed if they opt in to email newsletters from reputable companies.

The three, all freebie-giveaway sites, are Prizeomatic.com, freebiepeople.com and memolink.com .

The report suggests that no consumers “in their right minds” would mistake any of these for Fortune 500-level emailers, but that’s beside the point.

Consumers will report even opt-in email from Fortune-500 companies as spam when it comes too often, becomes irrelevant or irritates them in some other inexplicable way.
What’s the most likely way? Forcing consumers to uncheck the box giving permission to share their names with third-party advertisers.

Check out Arial’s spam audit and the CAN-SPAM compliance survey mentioned last week (you don’t even have to register for them):
http://www.arialsoftware.com/whitepapers/SpamAudit2004.pdf

Either people are all talked out over the opportunities and challenges that Google’s email service Gmail presents, or else everyone’s going quiet as Google heads into the final stretch leading up to its IPO.

It also looks as if Google has reined in its viral expansion program for now — we’ve received no new invitations to pass along for over a week. Previously, new ones would be handed out as soon as the old bunch were used up.

Some big emailers have been stressing over the possibility that the emails they send to Gmail addresses will pick up contextual ads from their competitors, but let’s consider that problem in reverse:

If YOU are a Google Adwords advertiser, YOU are the one who could end up on a competitor’s page.

Another big potential headache can also turn into a benefit: Your competitor could be featured for free in the list of “Related Pages” that appears under the sponsored text ads to the right of the email’s message.

This can also happen in reverse: At least once in the last week or so, an entry for MarketingSherpa.com has shown up in the Related Pages list on the daily email messages from our friends at MarketingVOX.com.

We’re still checking to see if our site saw any kind of traffic spike on that day.

Our Editorial Assistant Stacy Cornell drove up to New Hampshire last weekend to campaign for her chosen presidential candidate.

New Hampshire is a swing state, so things could go either way. This means residents, already hammered with campaign marketing during primary season, are now dealing with a fresh onslaught of foot soldiers for both sides knocking at their doors.

I hired Stacy because she’s an admin whirlwind. She doesn’t know much about marketing. Yet, her tactics last weekend helped several voters make up their minds definitively in favor of her candidate. Why?

As one older gentleman told her, “You are the first and only person who’s shown up here and asked me with genuine interest what my concerns about Bush and Kerry are. Everybody else just shoved slick marketing brochures at me.”

This story reminded me that we’re all too apt to focus on pushing out campaigns without listening patiently to the marketplace first. Focus groups, surveys, and usability studies take time and money that many marketers convince themselves they don’t have.

Before you write or approve your next bit of copy, at the very least pick up the phone and call a few prospects (or surf sites where they post comments) to find out what their pain points are, and what sorts of verbiage they use to describe them.

I know, I know — most marketers come from the introvert end of the Myers-Briggs spectrum. Don’t let your shyness convince you you’re too busy to reach out and ask about pain points. I know mine has in the past, and I always regretted it.

Looks as if RR has lifted its block against SparkLIST. Two publishers who were having their emails blocked from RoadRunner subscribers told us they’ve had no problems since Tuesday. They still don’t know what provoked the block, though.

“All I know is I tied up a good 2 hours yesterday dealing with this. What a pain,” one of them told us.

If you are counting sponsor-paid subscriptions as part of your overall paid circ, the ABC audit bureau is watching like a hawk. ZiffDavis’s PC Magazine has been censured for counting more 100,000 subs they’d given away to qualified readers via Synapse’s FreeBizMags.com as paids.

The problem was that the sponsor didn’t pay the bill on time, and ABC only allows six months. More details at Circulation Management Mag today.

Today InfoCommerce Group announced their picks for the top 15 “Models of Excellence” innovative database and directory products.

Worth noting: these were chosen by editors who like the interactivity and editorial quality and not by business analysts who like the bottom line. So, while I’m sure some are profitable, others may be great stuff that doesn’t make a dime…

* All Media Guide (www.allmediaguide.com), a detailed and current database of all movies, music and computer games.

* CoStar Property Professional(www.costar.com), a database that contains detailed information on commercial buildings.

* The Engineering Search Engine, (www.globalspec.com), which couples a high-end buying guide with a vertical search engine.

* eStat Database (www.emarketer.com), an aggregation of statistics on e-business and online marketing.

* EuroInfoPool(www.euroinfopool.com), a common interface to the official corporate registration databases of 12 major European nations.

* HighBeam Research, (www.highbeam.com), an online research engine for individuals that fills the gap between free search engines and high-end information services.

* HotelGuide.com, (www.hotelguide.com), an Internet database of hotels that allows direct reservations by consumers.

* ImageAtlas,(www.globexplorer.com), a database that correlates detailed aerial and satellite photographs to latitudes and longitudes.

* O Series Software, (www.vertexinc.com), a program that allows corporate users to centrally administer sales tax, use tax and value added tax collection.

* Physician Quality Reports(www.healthgrades.com), which provides background information and ratings of nearly 600,000 individual physicians.

* Realtors.com (www.homestore.com), a database of more than 2 million homes for sale nationwide at any given time.

* IMDB (www.imdb.com), a one-stop database of more than 375,000 movies.

* TripAdvisor (www.tripadvisor.com), a comprehensive travel search engine and directory.

* WAND Online Directory, (www.wandinc.com), a multi-lingual product taxonomy, including more than 1 million distinct product attributes.

* Technology Marketing Reports, (www.wendovercorp.com), a powerful database that offers directory style contact information on companies that purchase IT products and services.