The Write Market newsletter just did a useful special issue on how to create a press area on your site. So, I asked editor Renee Kennedy to post it online so everyone can benefit, and she obliged at this free link.
According to an article in today’s MediaLifeMagazine, Microsoft has a new Hotmail rule. Previously Hotmail closed down accounts that hadn’t been visited in 60 days, then last month they changed it to 45 days, as of yesterday they changed it to 30. And it’s not out of the range of possibility that they could make that deadline even shorter someday, in order to save server space.
This is good news for email marketers because it means the lists you use will be a bit more likely to open and respond to your messages.
A business development exec for a direct marketing agency just emailed in this question: ” With all of this Anthrax stuff, our clients are desperate for us to help them get more email addresses from their customers/subscribers/members. In your opinion, who do you think is the best email appending service to work with?”
My answer: I can’t recommend that anyone use an appending service ever. It skirts waaaaay to close to the issues of spam and privacy. Your customers could make their customers awfully angry.
Instead I recommend that you tell them to use:
– telemarketing services to reach B2B clients
– quick postcard mailing with free offer for opt-ins
– ads in related ezines with same free offer
– ultra-prominent sign up form on EVERY page of their site
– co-registration barter deals with related partner companies’ sites’ sign up forms
– quick faxed note with free offer to B2B clients
A friend who just got back from exhibiting at the annual DMA conference phoned in to report, “No announced attendance number has been released yet. Sunday was nearly useless with a 1pm start time on a beautiful day in Chicago. Traffic was briefly near normal on Monday, otherwise you could have thrown a bowling party down the empty aisles. Exhibitor’s complaints included lack of paid attendees, hard to reach chairs for impromptu meetings, and spaces where exhibitors had cancelled at last minute were simply left blank so some aisles look very barren. The snacks provided were beyond belief they were so bad. McCormick Place has no restrooms in a conveinent location – one had to walk a block or two to go to a rest-room. And the food hall was an abomination.”
Normally a DMA show gets 12,000-15,000 attendees including paids, exhibitors and free hall pass folks. This year’s numbers probably dipped below half of that. A combination of the economy, anthrax, fear of flying, etc. hurt this grand old show. Reportedly the folks who did show up were mostly high level, which makes sense — if you’re cutting back your budget only the top people get to go to shows.
InfoUSA a party at the House of Blues featuring KC & the Sunshine Band. My friend said, “Seeing a 50 year old man running around on stage with a little too much booty and shaking it, was a wake up call for many of us.” However he gave high praise to the AIM party, which was one of the best as always.
Why is it that companies that are trying to market services or tech to marketers are often the worst marketers of all?
Here’s an excerpt from one marketing tech firm’s notice which appeared in Iconocast yesterday:
“‘A rules-based engine is not personalization,’ says David Blyer, president of SPSS Enabling Technologies Division (ETD). He believes personalization can only be truly realized when marketers apply analytics and predictive technology. That’s a specialty of his 50-person division in Miami, which practices “predictive analytics CRM.” Suffice it to say ETD is an MSP (marketing services provider) able to supply complete marketing solutions, most based on SPSS’ CustomerCentric Solutions (CCS) offerings. ‘We built a services organization because we want users to be successful with our software,’ notes Blyer. A perfect example is a dashboard ETD developed for MSP Azerity.”
You know, if I wanted to read something with that many acronyms I would have joined the armed forces. Why the rant? Well, because too many marketers (yes including pros with big budgets) are still learning Internet marketing 101 and 201, and writing like this doesn’t help. We’re all trying to build an industry and a knowledge base here. So, use dense terminology to impress venture capitalists if you have to. But write clearly to impress marketing professionals.
We’ve been running a lot of ads in other publisher’s email newsletters recently, and it’s made me think about one media buying factor for success in email newsletter media buying — time of day the letter goes out.
It’s not just day of the week (although, that can make a big difference too) but also what hour it goes out. And often that’s info that data cards and media brokers don’t tell you — sometimes because the time varies depending on when the editor gets their act together. I’ve found that ads going out in ezines published from Eastern Time 9am-3pm do the best for us. Anything outside of that just doesn’t get the clicks it deserves. Bear in mind — this is just us. You’ll need to test time-of-day for your own demographic.
SherpaBlog reader, Mark Smith-Windsor, CEO Rapid I Media, writes, “The Microsoft ad on c-net was a little annoying, but I have to say it is definitely the future of banner advertising. Although its novelty will wear off by yesterday, It is the only platform that says ‘hey look at me.’ It affects 1 more of my senses than most banner ads do. I saw it and heard it, where as most banner ads just stink. It is the first example I have seen of a really great format for internet advertising, Although I am still not upgrading to XP.”
And just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water… yet another new online ad format is coming our way. Christine Mohan Sr Mgr PR for New York Times Digital wrote in to tell me about the hot new idea they are pitching to media buyers right now, “‘Surround sessions’ are a series of ads that follow a user through his/her session, showing a succession of ads with a linear story line as the user clicks through pages on NYTimes.com. The concept is closer to the broadcast model of reach and frequency…”
While I don’t think “surround sessions” will change the face of online ads as we know them, I’ll bet a few folks test them out (probably including Windows XP which is pretty much throwing money at anything that moves right now — bless its heart in this recession!) This idea reminds me of when broadcasters touted ultra-short 15 second ads as the hot new idea for TV ads to use as brackets following viewers from the beginning to the end of a commercial break. They’re still occasionally used for headache medicine or other pharmaceuticals. (The actor takes the pill, and then a few minutes later they are all better.)
However, amongst all these new ad formats, I must say that I miss the big excitement that was whipped up for a bit about 18 months ago about contextual advertising. Frankly I’d rather plant a highly-readable text ad right in the midst of content directly relating to my product, than have dancing and singing graphics show up anywhere else. But then I’m old fashioned that way.
Vividence just released a free Holiday Readiness research report for eretailers. I’m no statistician, but am aware nobody should take numbers based on a few hundred shoppers who volunteered for a study going to an undisclosed number of online shopping sites incredibly seriously. This is more qualitative than quantitative and may not apply to you. That said, here are some fun data bits according to this report:
– At 72%, shipping prices are the #1 shopping cart abandonment rate reason. Which means if you aren’t running a free shipping offer, maybe you should test one; and, if you are running a free shipping offer, maybe you should make a bigger stink about it in your check-out process.
– 61% of shoppers surveyed abandoned carts because they were comparison shopping or browsing. As a recent heavy online shopper, my biggest disappointment was that carts didn’t keep stuff if I left the site and then came back to it unless I was already a “registered member” and sometimes not even then. Hey isn’t that what they invented cookies for? I love the fact that I can put stuff in my cart at Amazon, not even bother to register, leave, and then come back whenever and it’s still there. It’s spelled “convenience.”
In fact this research showed that 45%-57% of online shoppers were putting stuff in their carts for later purchase. They treated the cart like a wish list, instead of using the wish list function on the site.
– Only 27% said the check out process is confusing. Maybe these are really Web-savvy shoppers, because based on personal experience this seems low to me, and lets way too many site designers off the hook!
– 82% said they were planning to shop online this Holiday season because of convenience. Just 65% said it was because of better prices. It’s nice to know it’s not just about the price tag anymore. However, makes me think about that shipping thing again because I bet shoppers don’t include shipping into their price-is-not-critical thinking. Has anyone tried adding a factoid about the average “price” shipping is for consumers offline? You know– gas, waiting in line, driving time… Maybe if you let shoppers know the real-life cost is equal then they would buy more.
– Most of the other “results” in this report are either ‘duh” or kinda bogus (who isn’t going to answer that they are concerned about safety? and the fact that more consumers plan to shop at click and mortar stores is probably more due to the fact that dot coms done gone, than consumer “self directedness.”) however I did like the appendix showing screenshots of best practices from 800.com, Amazon.com, OldNavy.com and buynow.com.
Thanks to Tara Calishain for sending a link to Despair.com – a site that sells de-motivational materials to help you and your company do worse. I especially like the site’s Permission Harrassment (TM) opt-in area which truly echoes what far too many of us marketers plan to do to our opt-in names.
If you haven’t already, click over to Cnet’s home page today, where the brand new online ad “Launch Pad” format is playing. I kinda like it. What do you think?
When you enter the page a little pop-up rich media ad with audio appears. It plays for a few seconds, and then reduces itself to a smaller, static banner on the page. The banner has a little “Play” button so you can check it out again. The first advertiser to use it is Microsoft for their Windows XP launch.
