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Back on track!
2007-07-15 22:44:00
Hey gang, fell off the planet for a week...so I have a lot of things to catch up on .First, I am currently reading "Communities Dominate Brands" which so far is a very interesting read on community engagement and the future of business and marketing. When I finish it I will report back!I have also been working on a larger post that I should have ready by mid week. It's a little research experiment that I decided to conduct...on the presidential hopefuls.So thanks for being patient and I'll be back posting this week!
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The Top 5 Small Business Marketing Tips for Budget-Minded Business Owners
2007-07-03 04:13:00
I am fortunate enough to have made great friends in the blogosphere, some of which are the best marketing minds in the business. In particular, Caroline Melberg of the Small Business Mavericks blog has been a regular in my feed reader from almost my first day blogging. I read her posts regularly for all the best insight into small business marketing tactics which also happens to be a primary interest of mine.So I asked her if she would be interested in guest blogging and she politely accepted. Concerning her expertise in the small business sector I was very interested in what she considered to be the most important small business marketing tips for those who are on a tight budget (which is all of them!) Here is what she had to say:When it comes to running a successful business, marketing is essential. For a small business, marketing often seems like a daunting task ? especially when it comes to marketing your business on the web.Many times, budget-minded business owners fear that s...
More About: Marketing , Small Business , Marketing Tips , Tips

Porn emails have better deliverability than you...
2007-07-02 21:16:00
When I waltzed into work today my boss passed along a blog post that he thought was particularly interesting and I have to agree with him.In a recent study by Lyris, it was determined that content isn't always the factor that trips you up in the spam filters. Here are a few insights that stand out. Of the top 10 types of content that most often trigger spam scores, only two appeared with a frequency that might cause concern. Here they are:1. Heavy use of images, which can increase spam scores up to a full point and render poorly in email clients with image blocking enabled.2. Sending messages with a "From Name" composed of numbers or symbols rather than an actual name.Not rocket science, but interesting nonetheless concerning that its so high in relation to everything else on the deliverability list.Wendy at imediaconnection makes an interesting parallel about how the porn industry is able to endure high deliverability rates."Take the industry for adult content, for example. I'm t...
More About: Emails , Bett , Elive , Liver , Deli

If Seth Godin had hair...
2007-07-02 06:50:00
Okay, so I was chatting with an old college buddy tonight over Yahoo Instant Messenger and somehow we got to speculating about what Seth might have looked like when he had hair. Since we are both old photoshop hacks we pinged these pics back and forth.The one on the left belongs to my buddy and my attempt is the one on the right...I think the one on the left is a pretty convincing Top Gun...and I have no idea what I was going for.So which one do you think Seth most looked like pre-Kojak? Or if you think we missed the mark entirely, send in your own renditions!And if anyone has a real pic...we can put the speculation to rest.**Updated**We can put the speculation to rest! Can you find him in the line up?Thanks to Seth himself for commenting with the link to the image!
More About: Hair , Seth Godin , Odin , Godin

B2B and social media...wheres the love?
2007-07-01 23:19:00
Its interesting about how much buzz is given to social media marketing...I must have read ten articles over the weekend about it. But the more I read about marketing on sites like myspace, friendster, facebook, blogs, etc. the more I realize that it is primarily B2C companies taking advantage of this new medium with the B2B crowd staying cautiously out of the fray.Why is that?Of course it is inherently easier to mass market a consumer product. You have a much larger pool of potential customers and the marketing is less complex than that of B2B. It will always be easier to go viral talking about the iphone instead of email marketing deliverability rates. And you can market the iphone to millions while an email marketing solution is limited to hundreds of potential clients (maybe thousands if your lucky).So does it make sense to abstain from social media marketing then?In a word...no.The B2B approach to this kind of marketing should not follow that of B2C. You don't need to rely on ...
More About: Social , Media , Love , Where , Eres

Converting consumers with multiple impressions.
2007-07-01 05:29:00
An interesting study appeared late this week in e-marketer about how varied touch points across multiple websites can lead to increased conversion rates. It also reminded me of a great post by Jeremy Reynolds that explains the importance of understanding this. Getting to know where your customers "hang out" online is important to consider when you decide to start investing in online advertising.For online marketers who think that the last ad impression (or click) seen is the most likely to lead to a conversion, a look at the Atlas Institute's "How Overlap Impacts Reach, Frequency and Conversions" study may be in order.The study, conducted in the first quarter of 2007, found that US consumers were more likely to convert after viewing ads on multiple Web sites, suggesting that conversions should be attributed to a full set of impressions and/or clicks, rather than just the single one that preceded the conversion.Two out of three consumers who eventually bought a product or took a re...
More About: Cons , Consumers , Impressions , Impress , Impression

More landing page advice...
2007-07-01 04:57:00
In an earlier post last week I outlined how to create simple and effective B2B landing pages. When I was catching up on my litany of RSS feeds over this weekend I came across this article in Marketing Profs highlighting their Top 5 Best (and Worst) things about landing pages.Almost everything I had covered in my earlier post was covered here. ..except for the following observation that speaks about self directed user segmentation (see clip). This is also a great strategy if you find that your visitors are still varying widely by interests or needs.On a side note, the article also speaks about the negative effect of landing pages on the brand. While I do believe that to some extent this is true it can be minimized by making the landing pages in high quality in both design and messaging...but I digress! clipped from www.marketingprofs.comNo segmentation?clicks are treated as a commodity. Not all clicks are created equal. Ad response traffic often contains a spectrum of different audi...
More About: Advice , Page , Vice , Landing

The Bounce Rate Crystal Ball
2007-06-29 20:25:00
The official Google Analytics blog makes a great point about the importance of bounce rates to your marketing efforts. They are a simple enough metric that can be applied to nearly any kind of website.It is a metric tailored especially for landing pages...where a high bounce rate can tell you almost as much as a defined conversion funnel.If you need a resource for understanding which metrics provide the most insight, check out the new book Web Analytics an Hour a Day. clipped from analytics.blogspot.comIf your site conversion rates are low, Bounce Rate can help you understand why. If your Bounce Rates are also low, your troubles are likely due to site design and usability issues. In this case, you might focus your efforts on streamlining your conversion funnel or making your site easier to navigate. But if your Bounce Rates are high, you can focus your efforts on redesigning entrance (landing pages), improving the quality of traffic to your site, and doing a better job of pairing la...
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ExactTarget Campaign Monitoring Widget
2007-06-29 17:29:00
In an earlier post I commented on a cool Google Analytics widget that allowed for key web metrics to be displayed as a widget on the users desktop by the Yahoo! Widget s desktop application.And then I ran across a neat email campaign monitoring widget for ExactTarget created by Doug Karr. In full disclosure I used to work for ExactTarget and my company is an agency client and preferred partner, so I may be biased...but I think this is a great tool!Basically you enter a "job id" (a unique id applied to an email send) and then it updates that campaign every 15 minutes so you get near real time reporting on campaign activity. Pretty slick.Also, There is another "Advanced Tracking" widget, but as of right now I could not get it to install properly on my computer. I do look forward to using it once they get it figured out! Once it is I will post it here.So if your an ExactTarget client and find yourself obsessively logging in to see how your email marketing campaign in doing...this litt...
More About: Campaign , Tori , Monitoring

Engagement Marketing - Free PDF Download
2007-06-29 04:53:00
I?ve got the latest Web 2.0 guide "Engage ment Marketing " by eMarketer and WebTrends that was just released and I'm providing it here free without cost or registration. It covers a lot of interesting data that supports the emergence of web 2.0 technologies and how they fit into the broader marketing picture.Download the study now.The WebTrends case study at the end is actually pretty weak compared to the rest of the document...but I guess thats to be expected since they are sponsoring it. Overall however, the document contains some solid information on the latest technology trends (social networks, podcasts, mobile media, video, digital downloading, etc.) as well as the opportunity that exists to take advantage of these trends.
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del.ic.io.us links for 2007.06.27
2007-06-27 23:19:00
Marketing Sherpa: How to Quadruple Lead Generation Response With Job Title Segmentation and Targeted MessagesSee how one financial tech company developed two separate integrated campaigns -- one that targeted by company size and one that segmented by job function. They're ecstatic that segmentation has quadrupled response rates and boosted conversions 24%. Includes test results and creative samples.A List Apart: Human-to-Human DesignHelp your audience fall in love with you by moving beyond human-to-computer interfaces and embracing human-to-human design.And the funny one. This made me laugh out loud!SEOmoz: We Add Words to AdWords... Google Subtracts them.Rand asked me for some help with AdWords content. But I really don't know how to grab someone's attention in two lines. That is, without being really crass. So it got a little PG-13 in our apartment this afternoon, what with the liberal use of words like "Viagra" and "Yo Mama" jokes
More About: Links

6 Ways to Increase Your PPC Traffic
2007-06-27 21:18:00
A great post today from the PPC Hero blog...as I stated in my previous post, this is a great search marketing resource.Source: PPC Hero: 6 Ways to Increase Your PPC Traffic Whether your goals are to drive sales, leads or sign-ups, increasing traffic to your site is one action you can take to get closer to your goals. Below I?ve described six ways I was able to increase traffic for my clients without spending additional money. And in turn, I was able to generate more leads and revenue for my clients.1. Stop Ad Text Testing, Temporarily - If it?s near the end of the month, one way I increase traffic for my clients is to pause my ad text testing and only use the ad with the highest click-through rate to get maximum traffic. Then, at the beginning of the next month when goals and budgets start over, I un-pause my ad text and begin re-testing.2. Separate Content Network - After speaking with my Google rep, she said that one way to increase traffic to your site is to turn off the content n...
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Pay-Per-Click Hero
2007-06-27 16:50:00
I have a friend who is an extremely successful pay-per-click marketer and as he has grown out his business his team has taken to blogging on the topic of PPC. After checking out the posts for a few months I have to say that I am impressed. I have worked directly with Patrick and his company Hanapin Marketing in the past and can attest first hand to their expertise and success in the search marketing arena.So if you are doing any paid search marketing go check out PPC Hero , it has some great tips and advice.
More About: Pay Per Click , Click , Pay-per-click

Simple Newsletter Changes Bump Clicks 190%
2007-06-27 15:12:00
I was reading Marketing Sherpa this morning and came across this interesting case study about how a simple change to your newsletter can make all the difference.This is a great reason to start doing that email testing that you have been putting off because the results can be amazing. Every email that goes out without a split is a missed opportunity to gain insight into your recipients behavior. clipped from www.marketingsherpa.com SUMMARY: Sometimes even the smallest change can make a world of difference in your email design. See how one publisher transformed a related stories link into a gray utility button and immediately saw a 190% increase in clicks and traffic is up 6% on a different landing page.It's an easy tweak that if you haven't considered, you may want to test on your own newsletters.
More About: Newsletter , Bump , Simple , Changes , Chang

11 Tips for Successful B2B Landing Pages
2007-06-25 20:42:00
Chances are good that if you do even a small amount of online marketing you have come into contact with landing pages.Landing pages are described in Wikipedia as "a specific web page that a visitor ultimately reaches after clicking a link or advertisement". This could be anything from a search campaign in Google to a banner ad placed in a local business association. These are almost always transactional pages that exist to help fuel the customer conversion, whether it is to purchase a product, download information, or simply sign up for an email newsletter.We place a lot of importance on these pages as they are the gateway to all customer interactivity with your company. Get it wrong and you could miss out on a lot of potential revenue. It is especially important in the B2B realm - where the value of the conversion is typically greater.So in an effort to help you get off on the right foot I have compiled a list of tips that have served me well when creating successful B2B landing pa...
More About: Tips , Landing Pages , Pages , Ages

Putting Email Design in the Hands of the Subscriber
2007-06-25 20:23:00
I was doing my regular surfing of my favorite website today and came across another cool article that I wanted to share...clipped from customer-driven-marketing.blogspot.comWhy not let your customers pick an email template and color theme from a set of available themes when they register/optin to your marketing campaign? It could be something similar to how blogger lets you choose a template and color theme for your blog. Your mailer program could then leverage this to send out visually personalized email. I am a fan of the Customer Driven Marketing blog and it never fails that I run across some interesting ideas every time I visit. This little musing got me thinking about how we always fret over the look and feel over our email templates...and what if we just turned it over to the subscriber? And make it a part of their preference center so they can change whenever they want? Its food for thought.
More About: Design , Email , Hands , Putting , Subscriber

Changes to Skatterbox.com
2007-06-25 16:36:00
If you haven't noticed, Skatterbox is undergoing some cosmetic changes...primarily intended to increase the focus on content. I decided that it would be a much better experience for my readers, because thats who I care about and why I write.The first noticeable change has been the elimination of the sub header (with the stacked stone image) which was taking up way too much screen "real estate" and pushing a lot of content below the fold.The second (and biggest) change was the removal of advertising. My intent was not to blog to make money...but I did want to understand it. So using my blog as a testing ground was a great learning experience and a lot of fun...but its time to devote full focus to my audience now.So I hope that the changes make it an overall better experience for you. Over the next few days I will be expanding my blog roll to include a bigger list of sites I frequent. If you would like to be included, please let me know and we can possibly do a link exchange.Be well!
More About: Changes , Chang , Chan

Open Source CMS Done Right
2007-06-25 10:13:00
Okay...the time has come for me to formally endorse a content management system.I have come across ALOT of content applications in the 7 years of developing on the web. I have even built some of my own from scratch.In my career I have used Interwoven, Hot Banana, Web Side Story, Plone, Drupal, Post Nuke, and a host of smaller PHP and .NET applications.About three years ago I came across an open source CMS that went by the name of Mambo. While at the time I was impressed with the functionality, i was not entirely sold on the ease of implementation and the community was somewhat fractured.So I went on about my search and settled on some smaller open source program that did "just enough to get the job done".Fast forward to about 6 months ago where I revisited Mambo. It appeared that the community had finally split into 2 camps...the new community calling itself Joomla. I decided I would take them out for a spin.What I learned right away was that this new Joomla application was an unbel...
More About: Open Source , Open , Source , Open-Source , Done

List Rental...the Right Way
2007-06-23 14:48:00
I came across an awesome article the other day and definitely wanted to share it with you. Kelly Rusk at Card Communications has hit the "mail" on the head (okay, bad pun!) with 5 easy tips to do it right. I clipped my favorite below...but you have to check out the full article here! clipped from www.cardcommunications.comMake the most of your rental, ask for an opt-in - Make the primary call-to-action a request to subscribe. You could try to sell a product, and that may bring in X amount of dollars, but if you convert the rented names to join your own house list, you can sell to them time and time again. 
More About: Rental , List , Rent

The B2B Pricing Mystery
2007-06-22 19:59:00
There is a great post on Grokdotcom today about the reluctance of B2B companies to list pricing on their website. If you are competing on quality over price...maybe you shouldn't be afraid to say so.While posting price might not be a good idea or make sense for all companies, it is worth thinking about and reconsidering. Go read the full article and see if it makes sense! clipped from www.grokdotcom.comIt?s usually companies that aren't competing on price who want to keep price a secret. If a company doesn?t compete on price, they're probably competing on quality; customer service or other factors. But why avoid the question? Tell the visitor what your price is and even explain that it?s higher than the competitors?just explain WHY it?s higher. If you don?t compete on price and your visitor is shopping on price, then that visitor isn't your customer. Give him what he came searching for and sell him on your unique value. If that doesn't work, don't shy away from sending him el...
More About: Mystery , Myst

Great Free Tool for Building Online Presentations
2007-06-21 21:34:00
I have built alot of Flash presentations in my lifetime and they can be really effective at getting a point across, especially if you have a complex story to tell.The problem was that developing those presentations either in house or outsourcing it to an agency quickly costs a lot of time and money. They were "nice to have" but always fell into the ever elusive "3rd Phase" when talking about our phased online strategy. No one ever wanted to commit the resources and budget to it.Lately I have been marketing a lot of software and putting together an effective presentation whether it is in Powerpoint or Flash has become as important as ever. An online demonstration can help prospects a great deal when they are narrowing down their selection. The more info you can show them...the better.So thats why I was very impressed when I came across this little tool called "Wink". Its extremely simple to understand and use...and the best part is that its free!You can get up and running almost inst...
More About: Building , Free , Great , Tool , Online

Constant Surveys in Emails? Not likely.
2007-06-21 19:19:00
Constant Contact just released a survey component to their email marketing product, a great addition...except that its late in the game to be joining the email survey crowd. The problem is not with the idea, but instead with Outlook 2007 and the future of email rendering. Since form elements in emails rendered in O'07 do not render, you are forced to view blank form elements in the email itself and required to view the email as a web page in order to interact with it. Email rendering rules are getting tighter...not lighter. Don't misunderstand me on this... I am a huge evangelist when it comes to the importance of surveying and obtaining qualitative data, it is infinitely important when conducting analysis. My point is that its just as possible to integrate with a dedicated survey vendor who specializes in conducting surveys like Survey Gizmo or Zoomerang. It may be a better use of your money...especially with the current email rendering trends.As a marketer I loved having surveys...
More About: Surveys , Emails , Const , Like , Cons

Email Subject Line Testing
2007-06-21 18:03:00
A recent article in Marketing Sherpa points out a study done by Pivotal Voracity that concludes 53% of all email subject lines are broken and what you can do to help ensure that yours are not included in that number. I come across this alot when I people ask me why wierd characters end up in thier subject lines. The quick and easy way to ensure that your subject lines are viewed correctly is to paste them into notepad first and then re-copy and paste it into your email program. This will remove any non-ASCII formatting. If you require special characters then you will need to brush up on encoding them correctly. This article is a must read for any serious marketer - and even more so for the SMB out there conducting thier own email marketing. You dont want to get flagged as spam... And while your at subject line testing here is a cool little tool by Email Labs that will help save you alot of time. It will help you see how your from name, from email, and subject line will appear in al...
More About: Testing , Line , Subject

Boy does this sound familiar!
2007-06-21 15:22:00
I ran across this today and have to say that this is one of the funniest cartoons I have run across lately!If you understand this comic all too well then I truly sympathize with you!
More About: Sound , Familia

Podcasts by Avinash Kaushik
2007-06-20 13:15:00
If you are a big analytics fan like I am you have to run over to Grokdotcom and view Bryan Eisenberg's interview with Avinash Kaushik. Its broken down to two podcasts that you can find here (1st) and here (2nd).I was able to finish his book over my vacation and I am greatly impressed...there is not a better book on the topic, and I have read alot of books that cover web analytics (Jim Sterne's "Web Metrics" is another great read). But this one is by far the best of its class.So forgive me if I sound like a broken record...but you must go out and buy his book. If you want to know exactly how I feel about his book you can read my amazon review.Great job Avinash!
More About: Podcasts , Casts

6 Marketing Tactics Worth Paying For....
2007-06-20 12:39:00
I ran across this article in Forbes.com and wanted to share it with you.It really sums up some great tacctics that I put into use on a daily basis. If you arent doing at least 3 of these then you're not doing enough.Make sure that you view the link at the bottom of the article that describes the article in pictures...its a great read.
More About: Marketing , Tactics , Worth , Mark , Wort

Google Analytics Desktop Widget for Yahoo
2007-06-19 16:04:00
I have been evaluating a cool tool provided by VivAlytics for the Yahoo widgets desktop application.Its pretty simple to get up and running. You just download the Yahoo Widget Engine and then download the VivAlytics Google Analytics Desktop Widget ...and after customizing the application to view the reports you want regular access to - Voila! You have all of your favorite metrics available to you right from the desktop.If you dont want to get deluged with scheduled email reports and dont want to have to login to Google Analytics every time you want to recieve your favorite metrics then this little tool may be for you.I actually found that the Yahoo Widget Engine 4.0 to be a very cool application and have found a number of tools that I am using it for so its worth checking out on its own. There are hundreds of widgets available for it and its increasing every day.If you take VivAlytics for a test drive let us know your experiences here!

Back in the Saddle!
2007-06-17 04:05:00
Some of you over the past month have been nice enough to politely inquire as to why I have been posting less frequently lately. The simple answer is that I got really super busy at work... and then took a much needed vacation in the Smoky Mountains. I had to hit the pressure release valve on my head before it exploded...What I realized while I was gone was that I have a great set of dedicated readers who really care about my little blog. To those of you who were nice enough to inquire let me tell you that its you who make this all fun and worthwhile.So I am back with a renewed sense of purpose and excited to get back to work. I had a lot of time to clear the head and with that new ideas formed... and I'm just itching to share them with you here!So to the one faithful reader who politely ribbed me if all I was going to post about this month was book reviews...I say no.But I did get them finished while on vacation and will be the inspiration for many of my next posts. Book reviews...
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Web Analytics an Hour a Day
2007-06-05 03:39:00
I just received my pre-ordered copy of Web Anal ytics : An Hour a Day by Avinash Kaushik!I just broke it open and will be frantically reading through it for the next day or so. I have been skimming the chapters already and it looks to be an outstanding read. I know it makes more sense to post about a book after you have read it - but this is one of those occasions where I have been eagerly anticipating its arrival since I am a frequent reader of his blog posts! Between this and Email Marketing by the Numbers, I am in heaven.If the book is half as good as his blog then we will all be very informed!

Right On Interactive launches new website
2007-06-05 03:26:00
Okay, maybe this is a self serving post but it explains why I have been somewhat absent the past week and a half. We have been updating the look and feel of our website as well as adding new information. There is much more to come in the way of content and product offerings in the coming weeks and I look forward to your comments and suggestions as we continue to update it. So stop by, take a look, and let me know your thoughts!
More About: Website , Interactive , Active , Tera , Interact