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Email Marketing by the Numbers
2007-05-10 22:38:00
I just want to take a moment and tell you about a book that has come out recently that I highly recommend - "Email Mark eting by the Numbers ". It is a great book by Chris Baggott and Ali Sales - both of whom I collaborated very closely with during my days in marketing department at ExactTarget. They are both extremely talented marketers to which I can personally attest.I bought the book as soon as it came available and was delighted to find it not just a book by Chris, but a compilation of work from many talented internet marketers from around the world. Many of those talented professionals are people I worked with while at ExactTarget like Morgan Stewart, Chip House, Joel Book, and Ali Sales. Other contributors, specifically Amol Dalvi, I continue to work with in my current position at tech start up Right On Interactive.I also want to mention Kelly Rusk with Card Communications who is an email marketing expert who contributed to the book as well - she both posts and links here and...
More About: Email Marketing

Google Analytics gets a facelift
2007-05-10 22:14:00
Here it is...If you logged into your Google account recently you saw a notice about Google Analytics undergoing a face lift. So I was pleasantly suprised when I logged into my account today and saw that my account had been migrated already and I was able to take it out for an initial test drive!I have to say that I really love the new interface. Its much more intuitive and even simpler to use and understand than before...which was hard to do since it was already a pretty sleek and easy to use interface.Here are the main improvements:Email and export reports: Schedule or send ad-hoc personalized report emails and export reports in PDF format.Custom Dashboard: No more digging through reports. Put all the information you need on a custom dashboard that you can email to others.Trend and Over-time Graph: Compare time periods and select date ranges without losing sight of long term trends.Contextual help tips: Context sensitive Help and Conversion University tips are available from every ...
More About: Facelift , Gets

Outlook 2007 - more like 1999...
2007-05-02 20:39:00
If you are a marketer you have to be pulling your hair out at the new Outlook 2007.Check out the article at Marketing Sherpa.What we have here is a major shift in how marketers will have to approach email marketing, since Microsoft has decided to move away completely from usability and technology in favor of security. (It should be noted that I don't accept the premise of the argument that it is ultimately a choice of one or the other...)If you are a web designer - you may want to relearn how to design using tables because the new Outlook does not support CSS floating or positioning. The irony for us old web designers is that we actually remember what it was like to hack together a design using tables - most new designers are unfamiliar with the old way of designing on the web...welcome to 1999!If you put forms in your email - don't expect those to render either. You know those sophisticated emails that contain surveys or registrations...kiss them goodbye because they are now the ...
More About: More , Like , Outlook 2007 , Look

Marketing Tool Review: Crazy Egg
2007-04-25 04:18:00
When I first started blogging I came across an analytics tool called Crazy Egg. I saw that it was free and decided to take it on a test drive. It has been almost 2 months now and I have to say that its a pretty neat tool and has some cool features - however because of its simplicity I would not use it as my lone solution for analytics.Crazy Egg is marketed primarily as a testing tool. This can be misleading for those looking for a real testing solution ala Offermatica or Website Optimizer (Google's free tool). If you are looking for a way to do complex multivariate splits do not turn here - it does not handle content serving.What Crazy Egg does allow you to do is to set up simple tests within the application where a specified number of visitors are tracked per page. Once that number of visitors is reached the test completes and stats are recorded for the test. The next step is to make a change to the page and run another test - typically with the same visitor count. This is suppo...
More About: Marketing , Review , Tool , View

Mr. Marketing - Add him to your calendar
2007-04-23 16:23:00
Sometimes its the simplest of posts that inspire me to write. This post from Duct Tape Mark eting is a great example..."Many small business owners could benefit from using a marketing calendar as their primary marketing planning tool. The idea is to keep doing something related to marketing, according to plan, month in and month out."This is simple but extremely important advice - particularly for small businesses who have little to no marketing department. A common mistake made by small businesses is to overcompensate for a lack of marketing strategy by throwing money at something new and seeing if if it sticks. Instead - put that money into a long term approach and make marketing an investment. Start building sound marketing strategies now (no matter how small). You will have a much better chance for success than chasing the next big thing.It is important to have regularly scheduled meetings with Mr. Marketing - he is an important client that can bring in alot of revenue for your c...
More About: Cale , Calendar , Lend

10 Best Analytics Blogs
2007-04-20 20:14:00
Here they are from Avinash.Normally I would make a crack when someone creates a top ten list where they put themselves at the #1 spot...but hey, the guy is an analytics guru!# 1: Occam?s Razor by Avinash Kaushik# 2: Web Metrics Guru by Marshall Sponder# 3: Google Anal ytics Blog by Jeff Gills# 4: Web Analytics World by Manoj Jasra# 5: Eric T. Peterson?s Analytics Weblog by Eric Peterson# 6: Increasing your website?s conversion rate by Robbin Steif# 7: Unofficial Google Analytics Blog by Michael Harrison# 8: Lies, Damned Lies? by Ian Thomas# 9: WebAnalytics.be Blog by Aurélie Pols# 10: Web Analysis, Behavioral Targeting and Advertising by Anil BatraHave fun!
More About: Blogs , Best , Logs

Catching your competition with their pants down
2007-04-18 20:00:00
Imagine if you knew when a major competitor came to your site and what pages they were spending all of their time on? Wouldn't it be great if you could catch the bastards spying on you?I read a great post from the WebAnalytics.be blog that did a simple walk-through on how to do some pretty cool competitive analysis using Google Analytics.This is a great idea if you are worried that you might have competition lurking in the weeds. Once you know a competitor (or multiple competitors) are eyeballing a particular product - you can begin asking yourself why. You may find that you can turn the insight into a competitive advantage...Who doesnt like catching the competition with their pants down?
More About: Competition , Pants , With , Your , Petition

Targeted bigotry from adsense?
2007-04-17 04:51:00
I was shocked when I went to my blog tonight and saw this adsense ad combo on my top banner...I clicked the link to see what nonsense was being linked to from my site and I was taken to an online quiz to assess your gayness or stupidity.I have to say that I was personally offended by the ad appearing on my website especially the two of them together which implies that being gay is indeed stupid. While I do not plan to bring my personal politics into this blog I will state for the record that I am adamantly opposed to stereotypes and bigotry of all kinds and apologize to anyone who took offense as I did.I will be notifying Google to see what they have to say about this kind of "targeted messaging" appearing on a small business marketing blog ...(If you have any advice on how to protect my site from this crap I would appreciate your comments.)
More About: Adsense , Bigotry , Target , Ense , Sens

Do search engines have a bias against small business?
2007-04-17 03:38:00
If you arent new to search optimization then you know all about the fear that search engine companies instill in marketers. The dreaded banning from Google or Yahoo because they caught you using "black hat" methods to get your page top listings.We have all been warned against hiding text with background colors, spamming alt tags, using hidden css, multiple re-directs, link farms, cloaking, ect. These methods are unethical and have no place in fair competition for search traffic. You should be able to build a great website using white hat methods and compete on a level playing field with the big guys.But I have found that this is not always true.I had a client that was aggressive in their pursuit of SEO and I was actively engaged in competitive analysis for over a year against the companies top fifteen competitors. My client was considered an SMB and many of its competitors were large business or enterprise. These were also the search placement kings of our space.I spent alot of time...
More About: Business , Search Engines , Small Business , Search , Small

Simple tool to improve your SEO
2007-04-14 14:33:00
There are alot of tools out there to help you with SEO. Some of the best tools are extensions for Firefox. You can see some of them here. They are a must have in any optimizers arsenal.But a cool SEO tool I have used previously is SEO Doc by Instant Position.This is a great little tool especially if you are new to search optimization and need some guidance when getting started in SEO. It evaluates everything for you based on what keywords you want to target - and lets you know in simple terms how well you score on individual areas of search optimization (meta, title tags, keyword frequency, inbound link popularity, body content, ect.)I have used SEO Doc to do search optimization for clients and had great results. It helped me target the keyword phrases that I wanted to use for my most important pages and proved extremely helpful in helping me get them to the top of the search listings in all of the major search engines.But that doesnt mean that I used it once and then sat back and...
More About: Simp , Tool , Your , Simple , Improve

Quit making me wait!
2007-04-10 23:00:00
I was reading an article over at Grok that reminded me that in one of my earlier articles I said that I was going to go explain my feelings about flash...Don't mistake me when I say that I don't hate all things flash...I believe that there is a time and place for such indulgence. But what absolutely drives me nuts is when it gets in the way of me doing what I came to do in the first place. If I was intending to play an flash game or sit through an online demonstration it would be a different story. But thats rarely what I go online to do.What ultimately pisses me off the most are loading sequences. I hate them. It reminds me of when I was 5 years old and my dad would grab me by the back of my shirt in mid stride to keep me from wandering off. I hated that feeling of not being able to get to where I wanted to go and being brought to an abrupt stop...every time I get to one of these loading sequences it feel that tug on the back of my shirt.And those sequences are everywhere. Some...
More About: King , Quit , Maki , Makin , Wait

Smart approach to dashboards
2007-04-10 20:28:00
I have another post that has inspired me so I want to be sure to share it. Its a great article about how to approach dashboards. It's a great follow up to one of my previous posts.What is addressed very eloquently is a 5 step approach to creating dashboards that are actionable.Benchmark & SegmentIsolate Your Critical Few MetricsDon?t Stop at Metrics?Include InsightsThe Power of a Single PageChurn (and stay relevant) You can read the full article at Occam's Razor here.
More About: Dashboard , Smart , Mart , Board , Roach

Throwing in the towel on PPC
2007-04-09 20:46:00
I have seen a growing number of businesses drastically cutting or eliminating their search engine spending. This is mostly due to low conversion rates and the rising cost of keyword phrases...so marketers are looking into alternative ways to spend their advertising budgets.This is ridiculous to me.You cant blame anyone for a lack of conversion - this responsibility rests solely on the shoulders of the marketer. A poorly converting site will always be a poorly converting site.I have heard the argument made about lead quality from Google going down as a retort. This is factually wrong since Google is spending all of its time making the results even more relevant. To single out Google or any search engine as becoming poor in lead quality is a cop out - the searchers habits didn't change overnight...it is more likely that the competition is heating up and why keyword phrases are getting more expensive.Unfortunately alot of marketers have grown to view Google as a cash cow, and hold i...
More About: Wing , Throw , Rowing

Great article from B2B Magazine Online
2007-04-09 20:15:00
There was a great article posted by B2B that does an outstanding job of discussing Web 2.0 and I wanted to share it here. If you have time check it out - its a very good article.Happy Marketing!
More About: Magazine , Article , Great , Online , Magazin

Is All Email Marketing Spam?
2007-04-08 14:03:00
This guy seems to think so...My first reaction was to get defensive and debunk everything he said - I come from an email marketing background so we're a little edgy about being called spammers. But I realized that this guys opinion is really just like alot of people's opinion of email marketing - he believes that everything he receives is junk.So the second half of his rant makes sense about building trust economies and speaking to customers as individuals. Email as come a long way - but alot companies are still catching up with using email correctly. For a smart marketer this is the opportunity.Unfortunately the comment that all email is spam is just not true. If you do email correctly and build out your opt in email customer database you should have no problem segmenting your audience and providing extremely relevant information to them. Email is just another way for a company to connect with its customer...its how you talk to them thats important.He speaks about social network...
More About: Marketing , Mail , Spam , Email Marketing

Landing Pages That Work
2007-04-07 15:45:00
I have created a lot of landing pages since I joined the internet marketing community. I was trying to keep track for awhile and eventually gave up - my last count was somewhere around 5 hundred individual landing pages that I designed, maintained, and tested. ..all for various employers, companies, and clients.The reason that these pages were so important was because they were the gateway from all of our internet marketing efforts. If you clicked on a banner, search listing, affiliate link, press release, or anything else we used for online promotion - you were taken to a unique landing page. We even tracked print response by driving activity online. There was no campaign we ran that did not have its own landing page to test and measure its success.So at this point I can say that I am somewhat knowledgeable about landing pages. Lets have some fun and check out two LED sign manufacturers that use pay-per-click advertising to drive traffic.Here were the top two listings...LED Signs b...
More About: Work , Page , Hat , Landing Pages , Land

3 blogs I visit every day...and you should too
2007-04-05 16:31:00
I was told once that there are ?no new ideas, only new ways of presenting old ones". And the more I surf around the more that holds true...especially with blogging.That doesn't discourage me because I take away much more from individual perspectives and experiences, as do most bloggers. I actually love the smaller blogs that are "finding their voice" much as I am doing here...they have some great perspectives that you wont find anywhere else.But that being said, there are 3 that I visit every day - and you should too. These are the best blogs on marketing and provide plenty of info for the small business marketer.1.GrokDotComIf you are serious about web analytics (and you should be...) this is one of the best blogs on the internet. This is the home of Bryan and Jeffery Eisenberg - they are web analytics gurus and founders of the Web Analytics Association. I also highly recommend their book "Call to Action" it is a must read. If you visit this site only once in awhile you will c...
More About: Blogs , Blog , Ever , Should , Visi

Google Website Optimizer Open to Everyone!
2007-04-04 18:27:00
I have been testing this tool for a few months now and I am excited about its release to the public!This finally brings sophisticated split and multivariate testing to the small business marketers that don't have the budget for an expensive tool like Offermatica. The beauty once again is that Google provides it for free.My personal experience with it has been great.The power of Webs ite Optimizer tool is evident. It is very easy to set up simple test right away - it took me 30 minutes to get my first one set up. You can test simple page elements or entirely different layouts - the choices are entirely up to you. All that is required is a little knowledge of html and what makes sense to test. Everything is available to you - long term and short term tests, A/B splits, or large multivariate tests.Once note: Some people may run into issues if they are running a fairly sophisticated content management system or don't have access to the back end. However this shouldn't hinder using it ...
More About: Open , Site

360 Customer View vs. Big Brother
2007-04-04 16:24:00
I am a firm believer in learning as much as you can about your customer by analyzing all of the data available to you. This allows marketers to make informed decisions that will ultimately build out a relationship with their customers based on mutual benefit. This is a win-win and is the only real way to achieve long term customer loyalty and build brand awareness.But the question is when does it all get a little weird?I was once charged with looking into a product that was able to cookie a person when they became a lead and then recorded all of their individual browsing behavior into the company CRM. So every time they came back to the site - the activity was recorded and sent to the appropriate sales person where they could act on the information.But I was forced to ask - how?I understand that it could help prod conversation without actually having to come right out and say"Hey, I noticed that you looked at but didn't download that whitepaper - how come?!"But it was still extreme...
More About: Big Brother , Other , Customer , View , Brother

Bloody Knuckles and Email Marketing
2007-04-04 01:29:00
I ran across this video today and it made me laugh out loud...so I thought I would share it with you.I'm tuning into his next video where he passes out drunk and his friends write all over his face...and then gives me advice on search optimization...Have fun!
More About: Marketing , Mail , Email , Email Marketing , Market

9 Firefox add-ons I cant live without
2007-04-03 17:15:00
First off - I am a rabid Fire fox fan...not because its open source (I love that too) but because its a very thin application that you can build out and customize.Being a marketer, I find that I have rapidly accumulated a ton of tools to help me with everything from search marketing, web design, usability, social networking, and competitive research. I have way too many to list in one article - and some are more of a personal preference than practical, but I thought it would be a good place to share my favorites... and more specifically those integrated with Firefox.Web Developer 1.1.3Its safe to say that I use this application daily. It is the ultimate companion for any website designer/developer. This tool is so versatile that covering everything it does would be impossible to do here -it could be its own article. If I had to sum up what I use it for mostly would be for its validation ability, real time style sheet editing, visual guides, and document control. Go here to see ever...
More About: With , Live , Add-ons

PPC 101
2007-04-03 17:08:00
I was going to do a post on beginning search engine marketing tips but came across a great article that covered alot of the points for me...10e20's article on paid search is a great article for those marketers beginning the foray into PPC marketing. Its a great (and comprehensive) article - so check it out!

Web 2.0 Explained
2007-04-03 04:21:00
This is the best video I have ever seen explaining Web 2 .0. Very cool...It explains it in a way that I think might resonate...especially with those marketers who are critical of all things Web 2.0 .Let me know what you think...h/t: to Michelle MacPhearson for the article and video...
More About: Plain , Laine

Branded Desktop RSS: Lessons Learned
2007-04-03 02:31:00
Have you ever heard of Southwest "Ding"? They have achieved crazy success with their RSS based desktop application - driving over 1 million downloads and $60 million in sales per year since its launch.When I was with a previous company I managed the development of a similar application. It was closely modeled after the Southwest Ding desktop app as a way for customers to make the most out of their membership. When I left the company over a year ago, the product was getting serious traction - but not after some interesting lessons were learned.The company I worked for was in timeshare (or vacation ownership...the word "timeshare" is taboo now in the industry) and the desktop application was available for members to find good deals on vacations to exchange for their own. It was also a good way for the company to promote inventory they wanted to move. It seemed like a win for both the company and the customer.When we launched it the adoption rate was steady, but soon after the compla...
More About: Desktop , Earn , Brand , Learn , Less

The future of SEO
2007-04-02 20:46:00
I was reading a small but cool article that sums up the future of SEO...If you haven't checked out this blog its pretty cool - I run over and catch up with them every once and while...Web Analytics WorldWhat I believe will continue to play a huge part of SEO will be inbound links and relevancy. With the rise of social media I believe that individuals will play an even bigger part in determining the SERP of particular keywords and topics.What are your thoughts?
More About: Future , The Future

Rise of the KPI
2007-03-30 16:54:00
I was reading an interesting Marketing Sherpa article that summarizes top marketers analytics frustrations and had a couple of thoughts.Check out the article here...The second frustration listed in the article discusses the wealth of information and how such a small amount of it is useful. This is the place where I think some SMBs gets overwhelmed.The article goes on to discuss how Key Performance Indicators (KPI's) can help you decide what information is worth tracking and measuring. This is where the playing field levels considerably.The truth is that you don't need a huge analytics platform to measure against most of your KPIs. If you understand what impacts visitor behavior and how you can measure that you are already half way home. Something as simple as "average depth of visit" can be a truly telling statement if you run an ecommerce website that has a defined purchase conversion funnel. If buying the red widget takes 5 steps to complete an order and your average depth of v...
More About: Rise

The great social media experiement of 2007
2007-03-29 18:44:00
I was working for the advertising agency for a major sporting league when I came up with a concept I call the "event blog time capsule."I got the idea when I was standing directly in front of the stage at a U2 concert - the band was two feet in front of me with thousands of fans shouting, dancing, and screaming around me.What I noticed was a phenomenon that was extremely interesting. Everyone around me was taking pictures and short movies on their cell phones. There must have been hundreds of them - all with their own angle and point of view.And I thought - how cool would it be if all of these people took the extra time to send those pictures to their blog...or even better, the same blog?Which got me thinking about chronicling huge events - sports, concerts, political rallies, ect on an open blog that is available for the duration of the event.Imagine capturing something like the Indy 500 or Ozzfest from the unique perspectives of not just 1, 5, or even 10 people - but from hundred...
More About: Social , Media , Men , Great , Soci

Why I chose Google Blogger
2007-03-28 19:44:00
The decision to start blogging had come to me a long time ago. I had developed blogs before but did not fully understand the shear amount of time involved with creating and posting to one regularly.After shelving my ambitions for a year and doing more research/reading I decided to pull the trigger and fully devote myself to blogging on a topic that I am passionate about. I have to admit that I am excited and slightly intimidated to put myself out there.Unlike a lot of bloggers who begin on a whim - choose a blog publishing solution and move on, I actually evaluated a handful of them for a year before deciding on my choice.I looked into typepad, blogger, wordpress, and social network blogs like myspace and xanga. I also tried open source content management blogs like Joomla with varied results for each.What pushed me over the edge was the new Google Blog ger .The first conclusion that I came to was that I did not want to mess with hosting if I didn't have to. I fully understand the im...
More About: Hose , Google Blogger

Easy Landing Pages for salesforce.com
2007-03-27 22:39:00
For those of you that are building out multiple landing pages with individual salesforce.com web collect forms I have a simple javascript that may help you with consolidating them.If you have landing pages that contain identical forms and only need unique "lead source" information you can use this javascript to pull a variable passed in a url string to change the lead source information.Place the following code where you would normally put your hidden lead source fields.<script>function getQueryVariable(variable) {var query = window.location.search.substring(1);var vars = query.split("&");for (var i=0;i<vars.length;i++) {var pair = vars[i].split("=");if (pair[0] == variable) {return pair[1];}}}</script><script type="text/javascript" language="JavaScript"><!--document. write('<input ');document.write(' type="hidden" ');document.write(' name="lead_source" ');document.write(' value="' + getQueryVariable("ls") + '">');//--></script>You...
More About: For Sale , Sales , Page , Sale , Force

Efficient Testing vs. Test Everything
2007-03-27 20:47:00
The concept is drilled into our head over and over to test everything...that "time spent testing is time well spent".Don't mistake me when I say that I agree with this. I truly believe in smart marketing.I just have one thing to add to that however - few people are willing to write it and fewer are willing to say out loud."Not all testing is necessary."If you are a small business owner or marketer you probably don't have a ton of free time - so you have to spend your time wisely if you choose to do any testing at all. So the mantra to "test everything" is really quite unrealistic for the SMB trying to stay afloat.I appreciate the idea of "left brained marketing", but at some point you have to use common sense as to when and how you spend your time.Does it really matter that my headline is cornflower blue instead of teal? You could (and Ive seen it done...) spend months split and multivariate testing that variable...with little to no effect.Instead, make larger changes. Form placem...
More About: Testing , Everything , Ever , Sting , Test