MarketingSherpa Blog

Burst Media online ad network just sent me a release with lots of fun data and pie charts from a survey they did of 6,300 consumers
who download music for free online. Fun data points:

– One in five (22.0%) respondents “would pay” to download copyrighted music from the Internet. 38.5% “would not pay” and
39.5% are “not sure.” The segments most likely to say they are willing to pay to download music from the Internet are college graduates (27.4%) and households earning $50,000 or more (29.9%).

– Interestingly, male downloaders are more likely than female downloaders to say they are willing to pay to download music from the Internet (20.7% versus 12.2%).

Note: Burst does *not* allow Web sites offering free downloads of copyright protected music into its network.

http://www.burstmedia.com/release/advertisers/online_insights/august_2003.pdf

Welcome to the worst email virus week apparently in history. How will it affect marketers? I popped out a special Four-Point Alert to our MarketingSherpa newsletter readers yesterday. It’s very quick, and I hope fairly helpful:
http://www.marketingsherpa.com/sample.cfm?contentID=2430

One reader emailed back, “Yes, but should I stop mailing entirely until this is over?”

My answer is mixed. If you’re running a once-in-a-blue-moon campaign, such as a launch or an unusually expensive promotion, then you may want to hold. However, experts predict this virus will stick around until Sept 10th, so that’s quite a while to hold regular mailings.

Database marketing gurus say that companies who hold mailings because of near-term situations, rarely think through their actions in terms of long-reaching sales. Each new customer you wait to acquire is also a future profit you put on hold.

Even if responses are down, you still have to feed that acquisition hopper to fuel sales way down the pike.

My recommendation: If you’re renting a list, consider holding names that are more likely to be messed up by the virus, such as Hotmail, MSN email and Yahoo email names with small mailboxes that are too clogged already.

Welcome to the worst email virus week apparently in history. How will it affect marketers? I popped out a special Four-Point Alert to our EmailSherpa newsletter readers yesterday. It’s very quick, and I hope fairly helpful:
http://www.marketingsherpa.com/sample.cfm?contentID=2430

One reader emailed back, “Yes, but should I stop mailing entirely until this is over?”

My answer is mixed – if you’re running a once-in-a-blue-moon campaign, such as a launch or an unusually expensive promotion, then you may want to hold. However, experts predict this virus will stick around until Sept 10th, so that’s quite a while to hold regular mailings.

Database marketing gurus say that companies who hold mailings because of near-term situations, rarely think through their actions in terms of long-reaching sales. Each new customer you wait to acquire is also a future profit you put on hold.

Even if responses are down, you still have to feed that acquisition hopper to fuel sales way down the pike.

My recommendation – if you’re renting a list, consider holding names that are more likely to be messed up by the virus, such as Hotmail, MSN email and Yahoo email names with small mailboxes that are too clogged already.

Synapse’s FreeBizMag.com finally has a serious competitor, which will make lots of B2B publishers seeking subscribers happy. The
Subscription Network was founded a year ago in Aug 2002, but didn’t gain much traction until it was bought by Magazines.com in
April. Now it’s powerhousing forward to become the top feeder of B2Btrade mag circulation from online promotions in the US.

I called up Cliff Mulcahy, Founder and VP Business Media to find out how online-only pubs can use his service. (Note: in a former
life he was associate publisher of PC Magazine.) Here’s what he told me:

– Yes, they are adding co-registration tech by possibly early Oct so ezine publishers will be able to piggyback opt-in offers onto
magazine sub forms when people filling them out are in the right niche demographic for the ezine too.

The cost would be roughly 50% of what it costs to get a new qualified mag sub though the system as long as you don’t ask any
further qualification questions beyond ‘tick this box to opt-in.’ Costs are negotiable, but assume a new mag sub is around $10.
(Synapse is around the same price range.)

If the name is already on your files, he won’t charge you for it. I get a lot of dupes from some co-reg partners so this could be a
big savings.

– Mulcahy drives traffic by putting magazine offers on a wide network of affiliate sites, many of which are vendors instead of
content sites. Example: See the free subscription link at the lower left side of this page at Ricoh-usa.
(http://www.ricoh-usa.com/)

– Mulcahy’s justifiably proud of his registration process which is vastly streamlined over Synapse’s current one. They don’t do a good job of merging various pub’s qualification forms yet, so users who want multiple pubs are forced to answer the same
questions repeatedly.

Frankly, now that we are building a new database so I’ll be able to track name value by acquisition source (at last, at last!), I’m
definitely planning on testing buying opt-ins from both systems and comparing results in early 2004. I can hardly wait.

http://www.subscriptionnetwork.net/subnetwork/bm?cmd=fw&p=random_mag

B2B publishers are often frustrated because they have a hard time getting their stories and names out via PR to other publications.
Most competitors won’t pick up a story about you, or interview you for a story.

American Business Media just held a seminar on the topic, with top business editors talking about how B2B pubs can get covered by them. Among the tips:

– Pitch yourself as an expert to broadcast outlets, which are less likely to see your publication as a competitor. The Wall
Street Journal isn’t likely to quote an editor from a B2B pub, but CNN would certainly use you as an industry expert.

– Send journalists copies of your publication. “I read everything,” said Wells from Forbes. “And if I get a story from you, I’ll give you credit.”

– Show that your pitch is part of a larger trend story, and provide sources outside of your company. “If you can show me that
your story could have national implications, then I know it’s not just a self-serving story for you,” said Ad Age’s Jonah Bloom. You can get a transcript of this seminar for $35 (ABM members pay $25) by emailing Debbie Humphreys at d.humphreys@abmmail.com.

P.S. Nope, I’m not an affiliate or anything. ABM doesn’t even know I’m running this item.

Having published hundreds of articles about HTML email, I have to admit that I had *no idea* how hard doing it ourselves would be.

The design was the fun part.

First I picked a simple color palatte because it would help our brand stand out in a colorful marketplace.

Plus, fewer colors means “high value” at a gut level to many businesspeople. (Think about it, no-cost or low-cost trade magazines are colorful while valuable research reports are often black and white.)

Next I trolled the Web looking for design ideas to steal. My faves: DWR.com’s newsletter, Barry Parr’s MediaSavvy.com blog, and the interior pages of UnitedWayToronto.com. You guys rock.

After hours of tweaking with our Web designer Ryan Manville, I handed the HTML layout over to our email broadcast vendor.

Then the hard part began. Turns out great Web page design from style-sheet perspective is often too heavy for great email design. Oops. Also turns out folks using Compuserve or Netscape got a horrible-looking version of our HTML. Oops.

The good news is, SherpaStore sales are up roughly 70% since we made the switch last Friday. That will probably stabilize to a lot lower once people get over the novelty factor, but it’s still a happy thing.

Next time I have to pound it into my head! Test much more prior to launch!

Having published hundreds of articles about HTML email, I have to admit that I had *no idea* how hard doing it ourselves would be.

The design was the fun part.

First I picked a simple color palatte because it would help our brand stand out in a colorful marketplace.

Plus, fewer colors means “high value” at a gut level to many businesspeople. (Think about it, no-cost or low-cost trade magazines are colorful while valuable research reports are often black and white.)

Next I trolled the Web looking for design ideas to steal. My faves: DWR.com’s newsletter, Barry Parr’s MediaSavvy.com blog, and the interior pages of UnitedWayToronto.com. You guys rock.

After hours of tweaking with our Web designer Ryan Manville, I handed the HTML layout over to our email broadcast vendor.

Then the hard part began. Turns out great Web page design from style-sheet perspective is often too heavy for great email design. Oops. Also turns out folks using Compuserve or Netscape got a horrible-looking version of our HTML. Oops.

The good news is, SherpaStore sales are up roughly 70% since we made the switch last Friday. That will probably stabilize to a lot lower once people get over the novelty factor, but it’s still a happy thing.

Next time I have to pound it into my head! Test much more prior to launch!

Bruce Rogers VP Marketing over at Forbes phoned me up about my Blog (see below) on their new streamed headlines to desktop
offering. Turns out they launched this as a limited test about 60 days ago, only a portion of the 4.8 million monthly visitors to
Forbes.com get the pop-up offering them the feed.

So far 50,000 people have accepted the offer and downloaded the feed to their desktop. Bruce couldn’t give me exact data on what
sort of clickthrough rate these headlines get, but he’s “happy.” I asked him to see if it’s very different from clicks on story links in Forbes email newsletters and he said he’d look into it.

Forbes’ ad sales team have been bugging him to see if they can sell text links through the system, but Rogers says he’s keeping
it very non-commercial for now. “I want it to be as non-promotional as possible; the whole point is our currency is page views at the end of the day.”

However, I bet this may change in time because I keep hearing media buyers rave about text links as the hot ad unit now. I’ve heard other sites, such as SportingNews.com, are
considering selling sponsor links in their desktop headline feeds.

Anyway, desktop apps are turning into the BIG content trend for the second half of 2003. Bigger, I think ultimately, from a potential revenue standpoint than Blogs and contextual PPC ads (Adsense etc.). Bruce says, “Desktop apps are the gotta-have this week. The real trial is, is it worth the effort to add incremental traffic?”

He also notes, this is no ordinary incremental traffic. The people who download your app are the true believers, the inner core, the brand evangelists. Each one may be worth dozens of
hundreds of clicks from a relative stranger. As sites get beyond commodity ad sales by proving their audience is “better” than
competitors’, this loyal core may make a difference.

Bruce says be prepared for some customer service problems. “I got an I Hate You note today. It’s a small percent, but nevertheless
very loud.” Turns out a handful of people forgot they downloaded the app and now think Forbes is desktop-app-spamming them. Also,
some people will blame your app for other people’s pop-unders.

BTW: Forbes is using a Trigger News to power this test.

http://www.triggernews.com

Really enjoyable story in Editor & Publisher on a day-in-the-life of a syndicated content sales rep, and why she visits customers’ offices personally instead of relying 100% on email and phone.

The one-to-one pitch and meeting is becoming more prevalent these days, as travel budgets loosen up a tad.
See the story here.

I just went to sign up at KeepMedia’s site so I can check out their sub sales conversion materials. What’s interesting about their
pitch is the whole “We don’t ask for your credit card upfront” copywriting.

It’s something I’ve seen on several new sub sites recently, gaining traction now that most sub site trials do request a card.
Of course you’ve got to be awfully, awfully good at converting freebies to paids to run things this way, because everyone I know
who’s tested it has found the cc upfront always winds up with more subs in the end, even if the raw number of sign ups is slightly lowered on the intake.

Anyway I’ll post notes on how good KeepMedia’s conversion process is. To begin with after I signed up, they should have asked me
to fill out a new member profile that would help me find articles of interest to me, instead of just pointing me toward a list of
topics in their archives. People like filling out quizzes and getting “personal” responses. Witness eDiets’ and RealAge’s
success.

http://www.keepmedia.com