I had an extremely interesting experience last week that forced me to undergo a thought exercise that I think can be extremely valuable for everyone to consider using on a regular basis. We all get so hung up in our particular expertise and the advanced nuances of our individual focus areas that we often fail to think about the basics and even more frequently we end up failing in our communication to others. My recent experience went something like this-

 

My wife came over to the Definition 6 offices along with my two year old daughter Mika to bring me some lunch. After lunch Mika began running around the office exploring a bit. I followed her as she ran into our main floor executive conference room. Now, I’m a bit biased, but for a child that just turned two she’s pretty impressively conversant with a great vocabulary. Here’s the conversation that followed:

 

Mika: What is this room?

Me: It’s a conference room.

Mika: What’s a conference room?

Me: It’s a room where people meet to discuss things.

Mika: Can I sit in one of the thinking chairs? (The “thinking chairs” reference is from her favorite show Blues Clues)

Me: Sure

Mika: What are we thinking about?

Me: Well, in this room we are usually thinking about interactive marketing?

Mika: What’s marketing, daddy?

Me: Hmmm… well, marketing is doing things that get other people to think a certain way, do certain things, or to buy things you want them to buy.

Mika: (thinks for a moment) I don’t understand marketing, daddy.

 

And there you have it. The question, my particular answer, and her response are in many ways less important than the thought exercise itself in my opinion. Try it yourself. Without thinking for more than a second or two, blurt out your definition of marketing as you’d answer it to a two year old. Try it again with “technology”, “managed services”, “open source”, “.NET”, etc. etc.

 

I’ve noticed in countless meetings how often people make assumptions about the level of understanding the audience has regarding certain terms or shared meanings. And also how often people throw around terms and concepts that they don’t seem to understand. I can’t count the number of people I have interviewed who list certain expertise and terms on their resumes only to be incapable of defining it in an interview. Go ahead- next time you interview someone lists the term “web services” on their resume ask them to define a web service, it’s components, and what exactly a web service does. You will be amazed and bewildered at the answers you receive.

 

Quite a few years ago when I worked at a different company and .NET first came out I recall the CEO asking via the discussion group email lists for people to explain to him the value of .NET. After dozens of convoluted and complex answers were offered he finally replied to all with the single line “Someone explain it me like I were two years old.” It’s not that he wasn’t an extremely bright and technical individual, he’s one of the brightest people I know. But it wasn’t until he asked the question in this way that people finally gave answers that culled things down to the key points and basic value.

 

Take this all for what it’s worth. I plan to run a lot more of my ideas and future presentations past my newly appointed diminutive advisor. There’s nothing like a two year old to keep you honest, accurate and off your high horse.

Project Manager, Lisa Seals, shared a great case study with us that she found on the Marketing Professionals site.  The study talks about how the Days Inn chain uses mobile text marketing as opposed to mass email marketing and rich media advertising to communicate with guests, build loyalty, increase revenue and provide value-add services.  The article boasts text marketing as “customer service 2.0” for the hospitality industry.  Here are a few key items Lisa shared with our Client Services team…

1. Building the opt-in list.  The campaign began by generating awareness for the new texting program - front-desk associates ask guests at check-in whether they'd like to participate.  Special contests are set in place driving people to text (and opt-) in order to win a weekend getaway.  The program was promoted through elevator notices, keycard holders, and other key collateral.

2. Engaging the opt-ins.  The chain implemented a marketing plan of text messages which consisted of general promotions, hotel-specific promotions, and customized messages based on guests’ specific needs.

3. Lessons Learned.  The chain used a double opt-in program to attract only those guests who were truly interested – guests were reassured that their information would not be shared.  The time of day for messaging was considered for nationwide messages and messages were managed on frequency depending on a guest's length of stay.

Days Inn had a 22% increase in room upgrades and substantial increases in website traffic through their text marketing campaign.  There was even an increase in the use of hotel amenities with a 15-20% increase in reward program signups – not to mention the immeasurable increase in brand awareness.
 

Definition 6 Client Manager, Ira Gross, shared an interesting article he came across on NYtimes.com that talks about how to identify leads and prospects through two new Web-based data brokers, BlueKai and eXelate.  This aligns very well with our customers who do online promotions tied to e-commerce.

These new sites are "information" exchanges where firms can purchase highly specific and timely information with which to market products and services to active seekers and buyers.  Here are a few items worth mentioning from the article:

1. The tools track who is interested in what via a cookie, and then they sell that cookie data.
2. BlueKai lets users choose the cookies they want and raised the cost of ads from $1- $2/thousand impressions to $4 -$10 for the same thousand eyes, but they are much more highly targeted.
3. eXelate wants to purchase registration data and publishing data for resale in a similar manner as Bluekai

These new data broker sources can provide significantly more tailored prospects for Interactive Marketing – check out the full article on NYtimes.com.
 

 

I recently finished reading an article entitled Why CPA's Twitter and thought most of the points were salient to all those who use social media (not only CPAs).

In summary the article rightly noted the ability to manage relationships and information as well as using social networking as a recruiting and retention tool.

As someone who works for an Interactive Media Agency, I noted that the article did not include the promotional aspect of social media and only tangentially touched on scalability.

One of the key aspects to using social media is the ability to promote yourself, your organization and otherwise influence or interact with peers and/or the general public. In addition to the tools recommended in the article, there are numerous applications one can use to promote themselves or their organization. They include Blogs, Forums, Social Bookmarking, and video/photo sharing to name a few. 

The beauty of all this is that accessibility and usability are non issues in regards to social media. Anyone can access social media with a computer or a phone. Scalability can be worldwide depending on how expansive one wants to make their promotional efforts.

To have success using social media as a promotion tool it is necessary to have a strategy that helps you accomplish whatever your objective is (i.e. educate customers, generate leads, increase sales, attract candidates, build awareness etc.).  In addition to many of the services we offer, Definition 6 (an Interactive Marketing Agency) has helped develop and implement social media strategies for many of its clients.

 

There is a quote in the book The Truth about Email Marketing:
"Email marketing has been called the original social networking tool..."

Social media does not replace emails.  The advantage continues to be that not everyone has a Facebook or LinkedIn profile, but everyone has an email address.

You can capitalize on your social media campaigns by integrating email marketing:
Capture email addresses on your Facebook page.
Promote your email services on your LinkedIn profile.
Test marketing messages and creative elements on social networking sites.
Use email to drive traffic to your social media initiatives.

Recent stats from EmailStatCenter.com you might find helpful in convincing your management team to continue to invest in email marketing in order to reap the benefits:

"50% of consumers surveyed said they're more likely to buy products from companies who send them email, whether their purchases are online or at a place of business."
- Epsilon "Branding Survey" (Feb 2009)

"80.4% of marketing executives surveyed say email performs strongly as an advertising channel for their companies."
- Datran Media "3rd Annual Marketing & Media Survey Results" (2008)

"While 60% of marketers plan to cut their traditional marketing budgets this year, 47% of marketers plan to boost their email marketing budgets."
- Aberdeen Group, "Recessionary Marketing: How Best-in-Class Companies Are Weathering the Storm," (Jan 2009)

Has social media replaced email marketing?  Hardly!  Has it changed it?  Sure.  It offers a new way to use email marketing.  Email marketing continues to drive relationships, retention, and revenue.

Definition 6 sends out almost 300 million emails on behalf of clients.  We also specialize in social media.  We can help you integrate your interactive marketing initiatives to maximize the benefit.

As the CEO of an Interactive Ad Agency, I have been in the digital marketing arena for about 14 years now and it still boggles my mind when I read an article that highlights the lack of metrics use in the world. I have included a link to the full article at the end of the post but I wanted to highlight this particular quote: "Less than half (47%) of marketing professionals in North America and the U.K. recently surveyed by Alterian reported that they currently use analytics to measure on-line campaign results." Are you kidding me, how can you not use web analytics? It is like not having a scoreboard at a game or a speedometer on a car. Driving traffic to your web site without a control panel is stupid! Sorry to offend those of you that are in the majority, non web analytic users. Why would you spend money on SEO, email marketing, interactive advertising or even hosting services if you are not tracking what is happening on-line and on your site?

I guess maybe it is because it cost so much to implement analytics when doing website development! I barely could type that sentence without laughing - it can be Free and done in less than 5 hours! So I understand that a full blown deployment maybe more than you can handle, but no software cost, no usage fee and less than 1 day of effort to track what is happening on your website, seems like a no brain-er to me.  Check out Goggle Analytics if you are part of the 53% that are doing nothing. If you are part of the 47% that are, what do you do with the information?

A good Interactive Agency should be making monthly or quarterly recommendations to improve conversion and a weekly adjustment to PPC spends (or even hourly) and a good Media and Advertising partner would be accountable to you for the results. Of course if you don't care about management, then I'm sure your agency is very happy to charge you without accountability. 

Sorry about the rant, I was just blown away.

Fewer Than Half Of Marketers Use On-line Metrics

by Karlene Lukovitz, Friday, February 20, 2009, 2:02 PM

http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=100692

Definition 6 Client Manager, Gabe Rand, on the impact of implement overnight sends on your next targeted email marketing campaign...

I recently read an article on the Marketing Sherpa site about how a company using email marketeing services ccontinued to test email send times after a previous test showed a surprising boost in CTRs for messages sent out overnight. They wanted to verify tests of this unconventional time to make sure the rate held up.  What the article points out is that:

1. Varying send times may impact click throughs, even if it does not impact open rates
2. Early morning sends positively impacted click through rates, while making minor impacts on open rates
3. Be sure to not only test send times for the entire send but do a/b or split testing for the same send for multiple times of day.

In summary, continuous testing of an email program leads to additional insights and the more you know about how your consumer interacts with the messages you are sending them the more power you have.  Check out the full article by logging into MarketingSherpa.com.

Definition 6 Project Manager, Lisa Seals, on what not to do on FaceBook…

Before establishing a social media strategy, particular as it involves FaceBook, it’s important to understand the laws regulating how you market your product or service.  Failure to adhere to these regulations can result in warnings, requests for immediate action, suspension, termination/disablement of an application or just plain user turnoff.  Online Ad Agency Definition 6 can help you avoid making these mistakes when launching a campaign on FaceBook.

1. Infringing on Intellectual Property Rights - The legal rights bestowed by regulatory trademarks and copyrights are binding in the social media realm.
2. Pretending to Be Someone You're Not - FaceBook explicitly states that applications must not be designed "to impersonate any person" or "in a manner that is misleading, deceptive or fraudulent."
3. Violating Users' Privacy Rights
4. Flouting the Accepted Rules of User Engagement - FaceBook policy dictates that applications may no longer offer incentives to users for inviting friends or adding profile boxes, etc.

FaceBook is implementing more controls for establishing trust between users and companies who market on the site and in November 2008, they launched an Application Verification program, which rewards marketers with a certification seal - similar to the VeriSign logo used on e-commerce sites.  To read the entire article, login to MarketingProfs.com.
 

Definition 6 Client Manager, Andy McCann, on how twitter is replacing search...

Tapping into interesting news and seeing what people (you care about)have to say is one aspect of Twitter but its also becoming more and more of a relevant tool for search.  It's strengths are in local search, news feeds and product and company news.  There is a great article on Media Post that you should take the time to read.  Here are a few key points that I took away from it:

• Twitter reaches a community that is multiple times larger than your contact list in your phone
• Twitter search is real time in reverse chronological order
• Product and company reviews are also a snap to find and address what is happening today, not last month or last year

There is a vast amount of news and information being transmitted through Twitter everyday which can be a good way to learn what users are saying about your own product or service.  Reversly, if you're in the process of a website design or redesign project, Twitter can be a useful viral marketing tool. 

I came across a great article yesterday on MarketingSherpa.com which summarized some very practical and useful tips on improving email opt-ins.  Below are 10 low-cost tactics collected from past MarketingSherpa case studies including how to’s on boosting referrals, establishing co-registration barters, optimizing registration pages and using offline channels for email address collection.

Low-cost Tactics for Opt-in Growth

 

1.     Increase incentive for referrals - offer a discount coupon to encourage your customers to recruit new opt-ins to their email newsletter and promotional messages

2.     Highlight relevance in co-registration placement - find relevant partners and present your offer in a compelling way

3.     Create co-branded sweepstakes – recruit partners to share the promotion with their own customers and in exchange, trade opt-in checkboxes on one another’s sites.

4.     Combat email address typos – conduct tests to capture email typos before they reach your database

5.     Test a delayed intercept for opt-ins i.e. test a version of on overlay that appears only after your visitor spends 1+ minute on the site.

6.     Test additional locations for opt-in checkboxes i.e. add them on higher traffic web pages

7.     Test small tweaks of registration form such as offer type, images, required fields, amount of information and submit button copy

8.     Use telesales and customer service reps to collect opt-ins – have your inbound call center representatives ask for email opt-ins during calls

9.     Print an opt-in URL on receipts for POS registrations – let customers enter their own information through a custom URL on a sales receipt

10.   Add change-of-email address form to site - place reminders throughout your site that ask customers to report a change of address.

 

Definition 6 leverages expertise in website integration, managed computer services, design, marketing and consulting to create solutions that help our clients increase revenues and reduce costs to build competetive advantage,

Client Manager, Gabe Rand came across a Marketing Sherpa article discussing 6 steps on how a simple referral process can create a surge in registrations.  The 6 steps mentioned in the article include preparing your email servers, building a referral page, building your email message, protecting the information, providing incentives and keeping the process as simple as possible.

Kiwibox's registration process has 3 simple steps:
1. choose a username
2. enter personal information
3. refer friends

After selecting which of your friends will receive the email and clicking the 'invite your friends' button, the registrants are dropped onto the welcome page where they being interacting.  A screenshot of the welcome page is provided here as an example.
 

Login to Marketing Sherpa to learn how Kiwibox, an online magazine and social network for teens, launched a redesigned site and saw an immediate lift in their registrations.  Contact Definition 6 to find out how we can help in the website integration process of a new or existing email service provider.

Project Manager, Lisa Seals on viral marketing...

Search Engine Watch recently ran an article on best practices and strategies for creating successful viral marketing campaigns.  If you’re an interactive media agency, interactive ad agency or SEO firm with limited knowledge on your client’s industry, there are helpful sites to help you compile data and uncover information about which sites have influence over your target audience.  For example, this illustration from Quantcast shows monthly traffic for a popular virtual world site.

 

Successful viral marketing campaigns lead to better branding, exposure, and links. The trick is creating the awareness.  Read through our blogs and find out how Definition 6 can help increase the likelihood of success for your next marketing campaign.  Or for more information on Definition 6's services, contact us today.

Project Manager Lisa Seals presented an article to our Client Services group on the effectiveness of optimzing PPC campaigns through targeted email marketing -geotargeting.  The article reinforces the importance of geotargeting to deliver relevant customized keywords, ad copy and offers to searchers in specific geographic locations.

And according to MarketingSherpa’s 2009 Search Marketing Benchmark Guide, marketers agree that geotargeting is an effective tactic that delivers high ROI.

 

Lisa highlighted three major points from the report:

 

1.     In addition to targeting PPC campaigns to searchers in specific locations, ecommerce sites (or other national search advertisers) should also consider geotargeting to optimize their overall search strategy.

2.     Shifting resources to regions that deliver the best performing traffic, or highlight brands based on regional popularity, will deliver the highest ROI.

3.      Always remember to test.  As a geotargeted ad group demonstrates its effectiveness, you can move on to a new region or increase spending in those areas to maximize results.

 

Check out the full article on MarketingSherpa.com to learn how a national jeans company developed a comprehensive search marketing strategy that included geotargeting to advertise a popular apparel of brands in major metropolitan areas.

 

Check out our some of our blogs for information about Definition 6's search engine optimization solutions.

 

 

Companies are scaling back on their IT staff and supporting the often necessary multiple fully loaded  FTE’s to monitor, manage and maintain their sever infrastructure.  This is often seen as an expense they could more easily outsource and reduce costs on.

What We Deliver:
• Hosted or remote managed services for web and general Windows server infrastructure and most key network appliance devices
• A full range of per device monitoring and management services on a monthly basis.  It can be done by hosting the devices with us or remotely, leaving all of the devices and network where they currently reside

Estimated timeframe for delivery: Monitoring services can begin in less than a week, management typically in less than 2 weeks.  Contact us today for more information.

As companies cut back on IT spending, and potentially personnel who may have been responsible for making site updates, they need to find ways to make the site more self-service so that it can be managed by marketing and other non-technical personnel.

What We Deliver:
• An Umbraco based Web CMS site with up to 5 templates, leveraging your existing branding, content and look and feel migrated to the new platform
• 4 hours of Umbraco CMS training

Estimated timeframe for delivery is 4-5 weeks.  Contact us today for more information.

The best part of having an Interactive Advertising Agency is seeing how leading edge thinking evolves and grows. Years ago we would just talk about eMail Marketing, Search Engine Optimization Consulting, Website Development and hosting services. That was it and then the crash of 2001 came along and Interactive Advertising Agency life became harder and many companies went out of business. If the last two days are any indication of things to come, interactive advertising is going to only become stronger in the next 18 months. Take a look at this chart from Media Daily News:

ZenithOptimedia, GroupM Forecast U.S., Worldwide Ad Recession In 2009
	2008	2009	2010	2011
ZenithOptimedia
U.S.	-3.8%	-6.2%	+2.1%	+2.8%
Worldwide	+1.3%	-0.2%	+5.5%	+5.8%
GroupM
U.S.	+0.3%	-3.2%	NA	NA
Worldwide	+2.6%	-0.2%	NA	NA

Who would want to be in the traditional adverting and media business next year?  Not me, and not because traditional isn't important and can't help brands, but compared to Interactive Advertising - look at this chart from Online Media Daily:

Share Of Worldwide Ad Spending By Medium
	2007	2008	2009	2010	2011
Newspapers	27.1	25.4	23.8	22.3	21.2
Magazines	12.0	11.5	11.2	10.7	10.4
Television	37.3	38.0	38.3	38.5	38.5
Radio	8.0	7.6	7.1	6.9	6.7
Cinema	0.5	0.5	0.5	0.6	0.6
Outdoor	6.5	6.7	6.9	7.0	7.1
Internet	8.6	10.3	12.1	13.9	15.6
Source: ZenithOptimedia

Next year Interactive Adversing will exceed Outdoor, Radio, Magazine and I personally believe by 2011 will be equal to newspaper even if  others don't yet. Look for our upcoming posts on some rapid start programs on how to get involved in Interactive Advertising solutions for 2009.

Nearly across the board companies are lowering their spending or holding off on marketing and IT projects given the state of the economy.  You still have a need to market, drive sales, lower costs, and generate revenue using things like interactive marketing solutions, perhaps even more so now.

Read through our daily blog posts to learn how Definition 6, a leading interactive agency, can help identify smaller, lower cost solutions that can be delivered quickly and efficiently.  Below are example offerings (bucketed into revenue creation, growing market share and reducing IT costs) that we bring to our clients in an overall turbulent economy. Most solutions can be up and running in under 2 weeks:

Sales - Revenue Creation
• Mobile Sites
• Site Search
• Desktop and Web widgets
• Rapid SEO
• Email Marketing
• Web Analytics

Marketing - Growing Market Share
• Social Networking
• Mobile Sites
• Blogging
• SMS Campaigns

IT - Reducing Costs
• Offshore IT Solutions
• SaaS Infrastructure Workshop
• Hosted SharePoint
• Web Content Management
• Managed Services

Frequently, in larger-scale Custom Application Development, a good architectural approach is to model the processes for the application using Business Process Modeling (BPEL). and Business Process Execution Lanaguage (BPEL).

BPEL actually stands for BPEL4WS (BPEL for Web Services)

Other Business Process technology includes:
Workflow&Rules Engines
* Business Rules can dictate flow of control
* Long running transactions - where completion can take days or weeks (think telephone company)

Business Activity Monitoring (BAM)
* Alerts and information for management dashboards
* Allows management by exception
* Frequently integrated with portals and BPM
* Still in the Early adoption stages

Collaboration Software
* Examples: Groupware Portals, Web 2.0 collaboration, B2B exchanges
MS Project (Enterprise) & PM Tools

There are also:
Process Driven Integration (PDI) Best Practices
* Make an organizational commitment to continuous process improvement
* It is a discipline and a journey, and the highest rewards require the highest investment.
* Measure Process Performance.
* Time / Cost, Profitability, Customer Satisfaction.
* Reward Process Improvement.
* Provide Real-time Dashboards
* Promote Reuse

As the holiday season approaches, the prospects for record setting sales appear dim for most retailers.  The economy is, well, you know...  Competition is keen and consumers are spending on necessities, if that.  This will make the 2008 holiday season especially challenging for marketers and retailers.  So for eTailors, and those in the electronic commerce space, getting it "right" this year can mean staying in business, or not. 

So I suggest a pre-holiday, eCommerce audit to ensure a successful holiday season.  Make sure your web site is search engine optimized by reviewing page tags, keywords, meta data and header information.  Ensure your home page has a strong call to action.  Are there special promotions prominently displayed on the homepage and above the fold?  There better be, because your competitors will have that nailed!

Have you checked the web channel integration with your inventory application?  Better make sure that inventory purchased on-line is reflected in your database in near real time, as the costs of returns will be higher this year, with gas prices as they are.

Are you planning special promotions and marketing events in your other channels?  Ensure that the web is being leveraged to support and augment those initiatives.  Are your call center employees up to date with your latest web promotions? 

If your website is hosted by a third party hosting provider, have you alerted them to that great new web promotion you are planning?  You'll need to ensure they can handle the anticipated increase in bandwidth.  Those managed services providers might also offer some ideas on how to keep that traffic even by varying messaging by the time of day and even day of the week.  This will smooth out traffic and promote a more consistent user experience.

And let's not forget the all important email campaigns.  Have you segmented your target audience so they can receive offers indicative of the part of your website that got them to opt in in the first place?  Are you promoting higher margin products so you don't generate a lot of traffic and revenue but no profits?  Are you sending emails often enough to keep your prospects engaged, but not too often that they stop opening your emails?  Can you do timely email clickstream analysis to identify which promotions are generating the most traffic, and stop the low performers and supplement the rain makers?

And have you reviewed your search and SEO strategies?  Will you be doing a lot of paid search?  Buying brand terms, category terms or product names?  Do you have a comparison or analysis regimen in place so you can add to the converting keywords and dial down the laggards?  Can you run timely metrics reports to get a good snapshot on how your website is performing on a daily basis?

If you have not thought through all of these interactive marketing concepts thoroughly, 2008 might be the year you learned a lot more about eCommerce than you bargained for.  And the way 2009 is shaping up, that job search will be long, prolonged and difficult.  So contact Definition6 now, and have us perform that eCommerce audit and tune up for you.  You'll sleep better, outpace the competition and ensure that 2008 is a stepping stone to a more prosperous 2009.

At Definition 6, I get this questions quite a bit, as an Interactive Advertising Agency we are often on the front lines of business managers arsenal of what to do during troubling times.  Most organizations have a flight or fight response to troubled times and we help both type of customer's needs with our core services.  I wanted to just provide two examples of why I feel the Interactive Ad Agency is a critical strategic asset for marketers today.

If you are one who is looking to "run from trouble", and I mean this to say you are thinking; "The economy is in trouble and I need to pull in the reins on spending and cut costs".  I would suggest you talk to your agency about search engine optimization solutions and move away from paid search as your only expenditure. This will allow you to earn traffic instead of pay for traffic. The effort might take a few months to begin seeing results, but the cost savings over a 6 month period will be dramatic.

If you are inclined to believe that in hard times it is time to pump up the effort. We would recommend that you look closely at leveraging your in-house email lists and focus on email marketing. By simple taking some of your existing offers from your direct mail budget and rapidly moving them to online email marketing you should be able to impact sales within 3-4 weeks and reduce costs per sale by 1/3 to 50% just by channel shifting your efforts to online.

These are certainly simple examples, but I wanted to just wanted to start a thread about what to do in uncertain times. For additional points of view on this topic check out http://www.beyondmadisonavenue.com/2008/10/invest-in-online-advertising-now/ by Brian Yalung.

More to come soon.