MarketingSherpa Blog

The Comcast ATTBI email address switch took place today, and although they told me in interviews that they were going to carefully transition one section of the US at a time, slowly making sure that each worked properly before moving on to the next, it appears that they switched the whole darn Nation (about 1.3 million users if I recall correctly) all at once.

They did email everyone lots of notes prior to with links to a “Transition Wizard” which if you clicked on the link would supposedly set up your PC to start accepting email in the new system in a lovely flawless easy fashion.

You know technology, the Wizard only worked for Outlook Express (although it wasn’t altogether clear in the copy that was the
case) so anyone using regular Outlook didn’t get email today. Plus, I’m now hearing from some Mac users that although there as a Mac-specific Wizard, it doesn’t appear to have worked either.

I’ve heard from users on both sides of the Country that the transition is very bumpy.

If you are an email list owner, expect lots of bounces, lower opens and lower clicks from ATTBI addresses for the next few days until stuff gets sorted out.

P.S. Noooo, do not simply switch the @attbi names on your list to @comcast. There is overlap in between the addresses on two lists and you will end up sending mail to the wrong people.

I’m typing this from the Internet Cafe in Times Square after speaking at the Online Publisher’s Association breakfast this morning on selling subscriptions online. Gotta hang out in NYC until the OPA webcast from 1-2 P.M. of same speech (only more
awake) for west coast people and then blow this steamy town for the beach.

Which, seeing how many empty cubes there were at Primedia/About Inc offices today (where breakfast was held), is what everybody’s doing.

Some stuff I picked up in between pontificating:

– About has just lured Debby Richman (sp?) away from heading up marketing at Overstock to now head up some of their subscription sales online. I know from interviewing her that Debby is the Queen of Stats-based direct response marketing online. If anyone can kick sub sales a** it’s her, so look for About sub stuff to rocket soon.

BTW: Utah is now such a hotbed of sub site selling. Between Debby and Ancestry and Sandlot, guess they’ll have to start their own little lunch group of sub bigwigs.

– Epicurious.com’s Taste Test paid newsletter which launched early this year is apparently doing fairly well and testing lots of neat marketing tactics. I look forward to interviewing them later in the year.

– Condenet among others is having solid success selling subs to print mags on its sites. Michael Zimbalist cited 70-90k subs per year as an “average” sales figure for average print mags online. Someone else said it can be a lot higher. Everyone agreed it was often a vastly different group of buyers than the traditional ones.

My take on this is: For years mag sub sales have depended for a large part on two things: 1. People who respond to direct mail (vast majority of subs) 2. People who use mag blow-in cards (the ones that fall in your lap when you read a new issue) to subscribe (tiny percent of subs, but highly profitable marketing
tactic).

Many many people out there don’t respond to these two tactics. While the online and offline demographics may be incredibly similar, for the first time you are putting a new type mag offers in front of people who were proven non-DM responders in the past. Enough like it to make 80-90% of online subs sold be people who never bought through traditional sub channels.

It doesn’t mean people are different, it means you widened your channel to appeal to more types of buyers.

OK, one last thing and I’m out of here in search of restroom (oh the fun of business travel). Hotmail is counting all messages in one’s “junk box” toward your total messages. If you get too much junk then you start bouncing the email you do want to get.

In the past this wasn’t a problem, because the box auto-deletes everything after 7 days. Now with the higher incidence of junk, I routinely lose incoming hotmail mail due to full-box bouncing, even when I ruthlessly delete stuff every day. If it’s happening to me, then it’s happening to all hotmail users because it’s a system so open to dictionary spam attacks (where spammers create lists tacking on words and letters to @hotmail.com endings and send until they get a live account).

This means anyone in the email publishing or list building game should be pushing hard to get Hotmail names to switch to other accounts, and you might even add a note next to your sign-up form saying something like “Hotmail accounts not recommended, if you want to make sure mail gets through please use a different email address. Thanks”

In our case, you’ll notice all MarketingSherpa sites ask for “Your work email” on purpose. That one little word “work” inserted into the sub form does wonders for us.

Several biiig media companies have already started fretting about the latest version of the Google toolbar. This incredibly popular download (no nobody at Google will give me an exact number of downloads, but hey don’t you see it on everyone’s desktops?) will now block all pop-ups for sites you visit.

The problem for publishers is two-fold:

1. You still serve the pop-up. It’s just blocked on the recipient’s end. Your site stats will show you served a whole lot but suddenly your conversion stats will plummet. Oh goodie (sarcasm).

2. Many sub sites depend on pop-ups for the majority of their sign ups to new ezine, new magazine and new site trial takers. I’ve known some folks who tested an eyeblaster creative instead to use interruptive creative that’s not a pop-up. It didn’t work. At least for them.

They say their true strength is in customer service, but NetFlix will probably end up spending much of their time and attention on lawyers bills as they defend their brand new patent for the idea of running an online subscription service.

http://www.patentlogistics.com/patents/US65/US6584450.pdf

A new report from Borrell Associates on how local TV stations are making money online, shows their sites only get 4% of total estimated local advertising online ad dollars. In comparison local newspaper sites get 40%. The rest is divided between big national sites offering local services and search marketing. (I suspect search is growing by far the fastest.)

http://www.borrellassociates.com/research.html

Want to know how much America’s top 100 National advertisers are spending online specifically, and how their ad spends in each media channel varied between 2001 and 2002? Here’s a link to the 79-page PDF of AdAge’s free report. (Includes agency names too.)

http://www.adage.com/images/random/lna03.pdf

This week Ford gets a major slap on the wrist.

Ford’s Forddirect.com Web site must have launched a major traffic-driving campaign, because we received identical offers to visit the site from no fewer than five CPA mailers who send to junk lists on a regular basis: WhatanExtreme.com, Cosmic Offers, ForumXpress, and National Deal Club.

Industry-wise, consumer magazines’ were as a group the biggest offenders, including:

USWeekly
Body & Soul Magazine
Elle Magazine
Shape Magazine
Family Circle
Yoga International
Grace Woman
Budget Living Magazine (repeatedly)

More brands featured in mail clogging our junk address this week:

Oil of Olay
Target
Doubleday Book Club
Victoria’s Secret
Fredericks.com
Gevalia Kaffe
Fox Sports
DirectTV
LowerMyBills.com
T-Mobile
Disney Home Video
Frontline Phonics
iwon.com
Norton

Weirdly enough, both Harry Potter and William Shakespeare.

How it works: We have a junk mailbox here that’s not used by any human being, although the address is posted on one of our Web sites.

When mail hits that box we know for a fact that no one ever signed up to receive it. Once a week we pluck through the box, looking for brand names and add them to our List of Shame.

If your brand is listed here, you can get a copy of the offending email in order to track down the bad list owner by emailing me at AHolland@MarketingSherpa.com There’s no charge for this service.

Thanks for your support,

Anne
Anne Holland – Publisher
MarketingSherpa

#2. PR on a Low Budget: Combine 3 Tactics for Peak Impact

When Matt Pitchford started his new job last May, his boss gave him 10 months to make their Company a lot more famous. Here’s how he used classic PR tactics including:
– Getting reporters to pay attention to releases
– Planting articles in trade publications
– Gaining speaking gigs at conferences for his execs
If you’re a PR pro, you won’t find anything radically new in this Case Study. However, it’s a great tip-sheet for folks new to PR, plus a nice reminder of best practices for experts:
http://www.b2bmarketingbiz.com/sample.cfm?contentID=2375

#3. Can Email Newsletters Sell Subscriptions to Print Newsletters? HCPro’s Tests & Results

If email is an important part of your marketing mix, definitely check out this Case Study for notes on how to database and report on your email list names (as opposed to your regular customers).

Also includes results data on using a printed postcard mailer to gain email names, and lifetime value of email-sold vs. offline-sold customers.
http://www.contentbiz.com/sample.cfm?contentID=2376

#4. Tower Records Combines Print Catalog Plus Email Marketing: Sales Boost from 8% to 11%

Tower Records’ direct response team recently tested an integrated campaign, and we have the results for you. Their test cells included:
o Catalog only
o Catalog plus email offering no-cost shipping
o Catalog plus email offering 10% off any purchase
o Catalog plus email offering $5 off any purchase
o Control group � no marketing whatsoever
Find out what moved the needle:
http://www.greatmindsinmarketing.com/sample.cfm?contentID=2380

#5. Almost 40% of Kelly Clarkson CD Buyers Sign Up for Content Sent to Their Desktop (Bypassing Email)

Marketers at RCA who distribute the American Idol II and Kelly Clarkson albums are in the midst of testing a new relationship marketing tactic: Offering a desktop app that fans can download to get more news about artists on a regular basis.

If you are involved in loyalty marketing in any industry, this article may be useful for you. Applies to high-tech, finance, pharmaceutical and many other industries:
http://www.emailsherpa.com/sample.cfm?contentID=2377

#6. Marketing to the US Hispanics Online: 8 Tips, 6 Creative Samples, & Useful Links

US Hispanics spent an estimated $4.2 billion online last year, and they are one of the swiftest-growing Net demographics. We polled several top experts to find out how you should approach this market.

Includes creative samples of 6 email campaigns to inspire you:
http://www.consumermarketingbiz.com/sample.cfm?contentID=2381

#7. How to Get Your Article Published in MarketingProfs

80,000 marketers and marketing students read MarketingProfs’ email newsletter every week. Unlike other publications, it’s comprised entirely of contributed columns, so if you’ve written a great article you’ve got a good shot at planting it there. Here’s how:
http://www.marketingfame.com/sample.cfm?contentID=2379

Doug Kneeland of www.faberkneeland.com just sent this note in:

“On Wed some hackers put up a mirrored version of the BestBuy website and then sent out a bunch of spam pretending to be the BestBuy customer service department. The email said that some purchases were recently made using your card but that BestBuy thinks the purchaser is not the cardholder. There is a link to click on to confirm that you did not, in fact, make those purchases. When you went to the form, it asked for your credit card and address to confirm. When I got the email I called BestBuy to tell them what was going on and they said they had received thousands of phone calls in the previous hour about it. ”

According to Online Journalism Review “News Sites Experiment With
‘Dayparting: Studies show that people want different content at different times of the day.'”

Who is going to convince advertisers of this? Because nearly everyone I’ve spoken to on the ad sales side says they can’t sell online daypart no matter how hard they try. Dumb but true.

http://www.ojr.org/ojr/aboutojr/1055792590.php