I’ve always wished there was an interactive marketing version of the reality TV show Shark Tank, or something akin to a digital marketing version of American Idol or X Factor. I’ve also always wanted to be a rock star even though I have absolutely no serious musical talent apart from my claim to fame of briefly appearing as Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady and Action in West Side Story while in high school. Pretty far from Rock Star status. But I recently had both wishes granted and it was an awesome experience.

Last week I had the incredibly interesting opportunity to journey to Taipei to co-host an annual event called Interactive@Taiwan. This event brings together leading interactive agencies in Taiwan to host a meeting featuring select speakers from abroad whose companies have gained some degree of international recognition for their work in order to learn from them. Each agency participating sends a cross-functional team that then competes over the course of three days to ultimately present the best concept based on a Challenge Brief. The featured speakers work with each agency team in workshops to refine their ideas and concepts in a near crucible-like environment to arrive at a final presentation, which then is judged by the speakers, with awards granted to the best concepts.

While previous years they focused mostly on the creative aspects and invited speakers like the ECD’s of companies like AKQA and W+K, this year they wanted to focus on the importance of technology in combination with strategy, marketing and creative… they looked to companies who have really brought technology and creative together in a unified manner to make a difference.

I was pretty honored when they reached out and invited me based on their awareness of the great work we’ve done for Coca-Cola on their Open Happiness campaign and the work we’ve done for HBO’s True Blood.

It was also pretty cool to be in the company of the other speaker, Nathan Martin, the CEO of Deep Local which brought the world the Nike Chalkbot and Nog Pong. I can say that in the course of the week I gained a tremendous amount of respect for Nathan and the work Deep Local does.

We set the stage for the event talking about how our agencies marry the fields of creative and technology, art and engineering, marketing and digital, all while staying true to the importance of understanding the brand, the personas of the target market, the desired business results, and the importance of the insights and big ideas. We talked to them about our different models for how we do this to come up with truly innovative ideas and then be able to execute on those ideas. From there we issued them a challenge that basically involved them coming up with concepts for one of their current clients or prospects that involved both digital and post-digital executions that were “outside the box” and leveraged technology beyond simple basics or common approaches.

For two days straight we met with every team in succession, one after the other, several times a day. They brought concepts for brands like HTC, China Trust Bank, FamilyMart, Heineken, Giant Bikes, Samsung and more. It felt like Shark Tank with the weird aspect of being one of the judges and critics. I’m definitely not always right- just ask my wife, my boss, our CMO, or our ECD. But it was amazing to see how much they valued my input and commentary on how to improve their ideas and executions.

Not every idea was great, and many took a long time to work through to something really cool and viable. But in the end, 10 teams from 10 different agencies presented amazing ideas and concepts. There were a few that were fantastic, others that were great, and others that were good and just needed some work. I definitely learned things. I learned how agencies on the other side of the planet are thinking and operating. I learned areas where they are well ahead of the West like RFID/NFC, QR, and mobile gaming. I learned how they operate against very different demands, budgets, and cultures. I hope they learned a few things from me too.

Lastly, my hat is off to the people and culture of Taiwan. I did not deserve it, but they treated me like a rock star while I was there. They are some of the most hospitable people on the planet, I have rarely felt so welcome and well taken care of, and I would do it again in a heartbeat.

I only wish everyone back here in the U.S. thought I was as smart as everyone over there did.


Added bonus: While I was there it was Taiwan’s 100th anniversary. Fireworks abounded. Very cool to see. Watched it from the top of a building in Taipei thanks to a guy named Mouse and his company Webgene .

Recently, I had the pleasure to attend the ExactTarget Connections 2011 Conference in Indianapolis, IN.  One of the sessions I attended was for insights on designing email marketing to be actionable.  I learned a few ways to get subscribers to engage more with email marketing rather than just read it.

What’s in a number? If we’re talking about a bank account then quite a bit. But when it comes to email marketing, there are a lot of differing opinions. Some might say that the sheer size of the subscriber list is the driving force behind a successful campaign. The more subscribers they have, the better the campaign. I’m sure this has worked for many companies at one point but now it’s really time to rethink the shotgun email approach because frankly, I can’t take it anymore.  Recently I attended ExactTarget’s email marketing conference, Connections 2011, and the theme for this year’s event was “The Power of One.” One thought, one action, one individual. If each has the power to change the world just think about what it means to your company. It’s no longer acceptable to market to the masses with one message.
 

• Segmentation and Relevancy: Your customers are unique and the interests of one may not be the same as the interest of another. When you group your subscribers based on similar traits and characteristics, your message becomes more relevant. A relevant message will keep them coming back to their inbox again and again. One thing to remember is that what someone tells you they’re interested in may be very different from what they’re actually interested in. You’ll have to find the right balance between quantitative and qualitative analysis and optimize on an ongoing basis. Subscribers will never stay in the same segment forever so you have to be agile and keep up with their ever changing demands and give them what they want. 

• Trim the Fat: There could be many different reasons why people suddenly stop opening your emails. Maybe their interest has changed and your message no longer pertains to them, or maybe they’re just not that into you anymore. Whatever the reason, try to target them with a re-opt in campaign before you let them go. Give them the opportunity to tell you why they’ve been so distant lately. It could be hard to accept but if they unsubscribe, they’re no longer a liability to your reputation. If they’re still not responding then it’s time to let them go.  Update their status to “unsubscribed” and call it a day. Stay focused on those that really want to engage with your company because that’s where you’ll see the most return on your investment. 

Last week I attended a great interactive marketing conference in Indianapolis (and yes, got a side dish of Katy Perry while there!) Of all the things I learned about unified marketing, one of the most interesting sessions I attended was about Email Design in the Mobile Inbox Age.  The presenter was Chris Studabaker from ExactTarget.

The Definition 6 team at the Katy Perry concert from ExactTarget Connections 2011.

Chris answered the question “What is mobile email?” with the following explanation: Email + mobile.

Another great Ragan event took place last week in San Jose, CA at the Cisco headquarters, and while we didn’t see the same antics that went on at the last event in Las Vegas, we still managed to have an incredible week. As a resident New Yorker, and not a car owner/driver, I was a bit apprehensive at first about driving in San Jose, by myself, as I'm not the best with directions.  My fears were proven true on the first attempt to attend the pre-conference workshops, where I got lost and ended up in a landfill.  When I asked for directions, the attendant told me he "only knew how to get from his house to this place" and I found myself surrounded by trucks, and in a bit of a pickle.  Eventually, I was saved by my Android phone and Google maps.  I missed the pre-conf sessions but oh well, at least the weather was nice.

When I finally made it to the conference the next day, the energy was incredible.  We were tweeting so fast that the Twitterfall couldn’t keep up, which resulted in #RaganCisco trending in San Jose, and in various other global locations!



Held at the Cisco headquarters in Silicon Valley, there were presenters you’d expect to see from this area including Cisco, Adobe, SAS, Facebook, Yahoo! and PayPal.



The conference kicked off with Cisco’s SVP, Corporate Marketing, Marilyn Mersereau, sharing an anecdote of a recent Cisco social media “crisis,” where a customer was not satisfied with his wireless router. After becoming frustrated with customer service, he did what we now see as a natural response – create a YouTube video called “Cisco Sucks.”



Luckily, it did not go viral, but it did get about 1,500 views. In this new reality where social media gives power back to the people, brands are held to a higher standard. Customers now have a very public medium to complain about things when they unhappy.

In response to this video, Ms. Mersereau told us that she bought the customer (whom she thought was very cute, and happened to be a fellow Canadian like Ms. Mersereau) a new router from Amazon.  Her philosophy here was that the router was a small price to pay to appease this customer, and she had hopes that he may go back to his viewers to tell them the problem was rectified. No word yet if this has happened. Although this seemed to rectify that particular instance, it does raise the question – how sustainable is that model? Thus, we dove into the Ragan Social Media Best Practices for Communicators event.

The conference was jam-packed full of great speakers, with Carlos Dominquez, SVP, Cisco, wishing everyone a happy @Cisco de Mayo (as it was Cinco de Mayo) in his opening keynote, and well, we were already ready for some margaritas! He then went on to define the role of a “Tech-Nowist” – “someone who embraces change, understands what technology is available, experiments with it, learns from the experiments, and leverages it for a competitive advantage.”



Other hot topics included internal adoption of social media tools for higher efficiency at large corporations like Adobe and SAS, social media CRM (a huge leap forward where social media will become scalable with the use of data: recent example of SalesForce acquiring Radian6) as presented by Altimeter Group, Shel Holtz on creating compelling content (content vs. context brought up yet again!), and of course, how to measure the effectiveness of social media, specifically when presenting to senior leaders in your organization to create more internal adoption.

The conference ended with an inspirational talk from Brian Solis at Altimeter Group, empowering us to not to social media CHAMPIONS, but instead, be LEADERS. Entitled “Engage or Die,” his twitter-friendly presentation focused on collaborating internally at companies, before promoting messages in social media channels, stating that the consumers only see one brand – we can’t be comfortable in silos anymore, sounding a lot like our unified marketing approach at Definition 6! We all know the world is changing rapidly.

We need to be comfortable with that change, and lead the way on how to act/react appropriately. One thing I’ll leave you with is something that Brian mentioned which epitomizes the current social media disconnect between some brands and consumers. He did a bit of role-playing where he described the point of view of why brands want to be involved in social media (using Facebook as an example) and what consumers are looking for when they “like” brands. Brand: "My customer will want to 'like' us on Facebook because they are really looking for more information on our products/services. Customers want to get more information. They want to engage with us to create a community." Customer: "I’m going to 'like' this brand on Facebook because I want coupons, specials, discounts or win free stuff. I want the ability to purchase items within my social networks."



By just having people follow your brand on Twitter or Facebook is not enough. If you don’t provide value to the consumer, they will essentially break-up with you on those social networks. How much harder will you need to work to gain them back? In fact, You need to have a strategy that provides value over time. Without that, you may as well not bother. Oh and you will want to plan for an F-commerce model, which sounds like it should be a bad word, when in fact, this is the future. For more recaps, check out Cisco’s blog for day one and day two or search on Twitter for #RaganCisco to read the top tweets.

As always, you can hear more of my thoughts by following me on Twitter @RachelConforti.

A few times per month an email called “Know New Ideas” with some of the top news stories that have captured our attention over the past few weeks gets circulated around Definition 6. The stories (no matter what they are or where they come from) make us ponder, somehow inspire us, or perhaps make us wince.  These are some of the stories that piqued our attention in the latter half of January.

Industry:

This is about a year old, but may be new to some.  If you haven’t seen the Logorama movie by H5, it’s worth a watch.  Check it out here.  Apparently it took six years to make.  Parental Advisory: Explicit Lyrics.

Hello Ladies... CBS News apparently finds Isaiah Mustafa’s return to TV newsworthy.  Do you?

The New York Times on why claiming “taste” is best for the Crunchy Nut brand.

No Right Brain Left Behind...who wants to participate?

Technology:

Engadget on Kristian Ulrich Larsen’s reimagining of the touch screen phone. In the meantime, John's Phone also made us think, there's not a whole lot of mobile marketing applications here.

Mashable on the changing face of word of mouth marketing. Wasn’t that what made WOM so great, the actual lack of brand presence?

Culture:

The New Yorker as inspiration to write incredibly deep target audience descriptions.

The Village Voice demonstrates how, once again, nobody can give nick names like Italian mobsters.

Daily Dawdle with 10 examples of brilliant shadow art.  Shadows as media...hmmm?

You can follow @ChrisWojda on Twitter.

Conversations are happening at record pace all around us across all channels. How do you determine which conversations to listen to? When should you pay attention? How should you respond? How can you start your own?

As a unified marketer, the art of establishing the framework to allow customers, prospects, and employees to have a conversation about your brand is increasingly challenging. When successful, the rewards can be great for all parties involved. So the question is, how do you fuel the conversation?

Here are a few core items to get you started: Stop thinking single media.

People don’t consume messages in a single channel anymore. A personal example of the number of media I consumed (several simultaneously) this morning. On the way to the airport, I was listening to the radio, viewing billboards, reading personal and work email, texting, checking in on 4Square, and checking my Facebook newsfeed.  If I stop and break down my goals by channel, what were my goals? This is what I have to understand as a marketer in order to deliver the right message at the right time.

• Radio: Morning traffic/weather updates enroute to airport (How late was my flight or I going to be??)

• Outdoor: Boredom in the traffic I was hearing about on the radio and sitting in on the interstate

• Personal Email: Plans with friends for the week and planning Halloween activities for the coming weekend

• Work Email: Trying to stay on top of the normal Monday flurry of emails as clients are back in the office so that I wouldn’t be too far behind after a few hours of ‘being unconected’

• Texting: Normal conversations with my inner most circle of friends

• 4Square: Seeing who else was at the airport? Any specials that look good? Getting those early week points on the leaderboard (and trying to earn my Mile High Badge in-flight).

• Facebook: Sharing frustrations about flight delays and seeing what the larger group of virtual friends have been up to since 11:30 last night

The reality is that I was open to receive marketing message during very few of these activities but I was absorbing brands every step of the way.

If you don’t know your target intimately you will be hard pressed to truly engage them.

A unified approach to messaging is essential!

Quit Talking To Me

I don’t trust you and I’m going to ignore what you have to say about your own brand. As a consumer, all I want you to do is have the best product or service possible and allow me to find the information I want, when I want it EASILY.

Let your customers tell me about what you do and why it’s superior.  I will automatically trust them more even if I don’t have a relationship with them because I see them being infinitely more genuine and unbiased.

As a brand, provide the framework for me to silently observe the conversation, obtain facts, and choose if I want to hear from you.

Be Different and Human

The one thing I consistently feel like I’m not getting enough of is human connection. 90% of the time I become loyal to a brand because of its personality or the connection I have and I guarantee you I’m not alone.  Brands are humanized differently based on the channel they are speaking in but the persona must be consistent to reach me, get my attention, and keep delivering.

All of this being said, here are the key takeaways to achieve success in my opinion:

If you’re a marketer – quit planning by channel.  Decide which conversations you want to fuel, where they occur, and build the framework:

• If you’re a brand – know your customers and who you want to be your customers.  You have to go way beyond demographics in today’s world – you need to get intimate. Pull it all together, Behavioural, Psychographic, Attitudinal. Put a name and face on these personas – it will help.  Secondly, if your product or service sucks, fix it!  You can’t afford to waste any more time.

• If you're a consumer – keep expressing your opinion and thoughts. Good, bad, confused, etc., because your peers care what you have to say. And you (collectively) continue to shape the world I work in and we all live in.  The conversation I’m trying to fuel comes from you (and it makes work challenging and fun)!

These are my thoughts on fueling the conversation. As you begin migrating to a unified marketing approach, the conversation becomes more critical to building experiences that unite brands and people.

What do you think?

(Image Credit: Pratts Fuel by conorwithonen)

While moderating a panel on “New Media” (I hate that phrase btw) at the Williamsburg Film Festival (Willifest) earlier this month, one of the panelists, Larry Banks, Chairman of Film/Media Arts Department at Long Island University, said “Context, not content, is king.”



Context? Hasn't content always been king? What happened?

Is Dr. Banks the only person to identify this shift? No, he’s not. Let’s take a look at what some notable people in the industry are saying about content versus context:

• In a recent NY Post article (the real paper of record in this town), Scott Kessler, Tech Analyst for Standard & Poor’s said about the music industry, “Companies are focusing more on user experience and distribution rather than content itself, and that is an overarching theme, it’s probably not something compelling for content providers.” Ya think?

• Ashkan Karbasfrooshan, guest writer for “TechCrunch” said, “The context—Facebook, Twitter, email—in which people are introduced to media and consume it is becoming more important than the content itself.”  As this chart shows, 81% of discovered video content comes from the blogs that people arguably already visit.

• “Context makes content relevant,” says Jeff Korhan of the blog NEW MEDIA & SMALL BUSINESS MARKETING. “If I give you information that is valuable, you will appreciate it, but possibly never use it.  If I help you appreciate the value of that information by showing you how it works for me or someone like you, then the context makes it invaluable.”

Alrighty then! These folks have a definite point of view. It’s about relevance, placement and a set of circumstances that surrounds the content. But I have a different take on it.

On TV context can help spell success. News, sports and specials have built in context. Comedy can be topical and relevant (From “Cosby" and "Seinfeld” in the 80’s and 90’s, to the more recent “Modern Family.”). Dramas can show real “ripped from the headlines” relevance with programs like “Law & Order.”

In advertising, both traditional and non-traditional, context is very important. That’s what targeting is all about.

Film is experience-oriented, but context is always at play in any given compelling scene. But after a movie plays out in a theater, viewing trends show that on line viewing is often the place for the following runs. Now there is a second layer of context…the place you go to when you want another experience and the way-in is more-and-more, an App. That is a condition that is relevant to the event.

Whether you’re listening to talk radio in your car, reading a billboard in Times Square, looking at a blog that takes you to a piece of video, watching the “Today” show in the morning or “Letterman” at night, you are doing so in “context,”

But at the end of the day (I hate that phrase too), there is no reason to engage with any content regardless of the context if the storytelling isn’t strong.

So what does that say?

Maybe content, not context, is king!

As the CMO of a unified marketing agency, I attend a lot of marketing conferences (more than you would believe). You get to a point with marketing conferences where they all start to look the same - and it takes a lot to surprise me. I was surprised twice last week.

First, I attended the best marketing conference I've ever been to... and it was in Indianapolis. Second, it was hosted by a software company. The ExactTarget User Conference, Connections 2010, was an outstanding educational, inspirational and impressive experience. I was blown away.

Then again, it's hard not to be moved when you have conference speakers like Sir Richard Branson. He is an amazing guy. He really believes he cannot fail at anything - and therefore rarely does. He spoke of commercial flights to space NEXT YEAR on Virigin Galactic. 

I mean, I still am impressed I can to the Internet when I am on a plane.  He also gets it.  My favorite quote was “Conversations can change the world, one person at a time, one moment at a time.” Branson has built his success by bringing the right message at the right time to the right people. Which is fascinating, because historically brands have felt consistency and repetition were keys to success. But Virgin’s founder has built a brand based on collective and dimensional experiences.

There were several other fascinating speakers who contributed as well…Andy Sernovitz, author of “Word of Mouth Marketing  was spot on in his thinking when he said, “Advertising is the cost of being boring ” - and that earned media was gained by creating things worth talking about. Jeffrey Hayzlett, former CMO of Kodak, is always entertaining and did great on his panel. 

From an educational standpoint, the guys from ExactTarget did great showing us not only where they are taking the platform as a centralized location to manage the conversation, but also backed it up with some wonderful research on email and social media…reminding us yet again, that social media only increases emails importance vs. kills it. 

I also enjoyed some great insight from Michael Donnelly of The Coca-Cola Company (disclaimer: they're a client). He reminded us of the power of Metcalfe’s Law: “Fans aren’t necessarily there to share with us, fans are there to share with each other.” He also made it evidently clear to one audience member that you should not misquote him on Twitter. 

Overall, Connections 2010 did a great job of really demonstrating this brave new world of marketing…one defined not just by the message, but the intersection of message, context, and persona.  Conversations with your customers are what matter.  Real-time relationships are how you move the bottom line.  Are you ready to change your approach?  Your customers are moving with or without you.  In the immortal words of Richard Branson, “Screw it…let’s just do it.”

I recently read that the White House has chosen an Open Source CMS (Content Management System) to develop their government Web site. This announcement caught my attention for several reasons--not only are many agencies moving their clients to open source and praising it's virtues, I also started using Drupal this past year and found it remarkably fast and easy to setup and maintain my own Web sites with quality results. Despite some criticism of open source over the years--more and more commercial (and government) developers are choosing it.

It's hard to argue against the benefits of free software, especially when results show that the software does what we expect, often exceeds expectations, and provides more opportunities for expansion than many proprietary products. While relative newcomers Drupal and Wordpress lead the pack for CMS offerings, open source mainstays such as Linux and Perl have been around for many years--not only surviving, but thriving over time. In a study by Amit Deshpande and Dirk Riehle of SAP Labs, LLC, Total Growth of Open Source results have shown that "the total amount of source code and the total number of projects double about every 14 months." Open source enables freedom for both users and developers to move & change quickly when needed, as well as providing more flexibility with software decisions such as to upgrade or not to upgrade. It's really no surprise that businesses and individuals are moving to open source at exponential rates.

Of course, Open Source has always been very much associated with Free, although there are other solid reasons to choose it beyond its cost. The pool of development resources is not limited to a specific company or provider, but instead is seemingly unlimited. As a specific open source project becomes popular, more and more developers start contributing, growing and adding to the code. Not only do they enhance the software to make it better for everyone, but they also create markets for their own support services. The better the code is--more people will use it-- and the more support is needed. Large developer communities have evolved around each software project, contributing to its growth, and administering its support. These open source communities are continually coming up with new innovations, powerful add-ons, extensions, and effective tools.

With so many open source choices available, even the ubiquitous LAMP stack (Linux, Apache, MySQL, and Perl) has come to be accepted as generic term for any completely open source application stack--substituting interchangeable parts from other sources that include "PostgreSQL, SQLLite, Apache Derby," as well as "PHP, Python, Ruby, Groovy and JavaScript." Even behemoth Microsoft has entered the game with their own Open Source CMS Platform.

Additionally, interactive ad agencies are able to offer their managed computer services at lower rates when developers take advantage of Open Source technologies. This enables clients to do more within their budgets. Every size company can now take advantage of Website integration, online advertising, and interactive media development due to the emergence of open source and accumulation of knowledge brought to us by the developer community. Businesses across industries are now embracing these technologies, taking advantage of interactive media, and using a more integrated approach to marketing with the vast number of new tools that are now available from these creative, innovative communities of developers.

I've been hearing the phrase "Drinking from the fire hose" more often than usual lately. The curious thing is that it's coming from Interactive Media Professionals (including myself), as much as from end users. With the exponential growth of the Internet and its related technologies, we now have access to more information, in more places, in more ways than ever before. Web 2.0, Social Media, Application Software Development, Mobile and related technologies are having a profound impact on Interactive Marketing Strategies. Many agencies are capable at traditional & online media marketing, or they may have strong technical capabilities--but, it is rare to find an agency that has all of these abilities and deep technical resources such as Definition 6.

To follow the fire hose analogy--anyone faced with that situation would get out of the way. The high volume and velocity of incoming data require some type of control and direction to be useful to ourselves, our clients, and our business.  Developers, interactive designers, and marketers are faced with the same questions as consumers--how to manage the onslaught of incoming information. Interactive Ad Agencies are faced with the additional responsibility of creating new tools to distribute information in a clear and meaningful way. These interactive professionals are the firemen holding the hose. 

At the height of the dotcom boom, an old colleague used to remind me that technology is simply a way of doing things. As the old broadcast model of advertising becomes obsolete, and user discovery & social interaction drive engagement, the function of marketing itself must now change to meet these communication challenges. This new model now poses new questions about where marketers should be, how they communicate, and when that interaction will occur.  I still remember the first  7-Eleven convenience store that opened in my neighborhood, and discovering that name comes from its operating hours—--it was a big deal to be open until 11PM! Marketers didn’t create more ads to attract customers from 9-5, they simply changed to meet customers on their own terms.

Integrated interactive marketing campaigns must be open and immersed in the culture to create value and be relevant. Successful marketers are positioned alongside their target market, making use of tactics such as Branded Content and Branded Entertainment to engage the user, enabling them to discover that value on their own, and decide what truly fulfills their needs. This is not an easy task, and creating meaningful user interaction grows out of qualified analysis of users and their interactions. Those of us in Media and Advertising have been exposed to these ideas before, but never before have these been more important to interactive design. Today's consumer has become a partner in the design process, and defines how we approach our interactions with them. Social media tools such as MySpace, Facebook and Twitter provide marketers with a limitless cache of information to help segment, target and engage users as never before— which only highlights the need for efficient processing of data.

Our obligation to clients is to find the relevant information, manage and organize it, and disperse it to potential customers.  To do this, we interpret client requirements and translate those requirements into a meaningful Interactive Experience. We need to collect and analyze enough user data to create strong, branded messages that reach the intended target. In addition, we must combine data with the tools and applications that make it meaningful to those target consumers.

In this new age of discovery, the true Integrated Interactive Agencies are taking the time and effort to find the tools necessary to do the job, or when needed, create them. With information coming constantly from every direction, those who are efficient at organizing, managing, and presenting it will be successful. Otherwise, we're just spraying a fire hose.  If we attempt to do that, consumers will just get out of the way.

I read an article on MediaPost that showed how 2 major retailers, The Home Depot and Best Buy, targeted the U.S. Hispanic community.  One company failed while the other is gaining more sales.  What is interesting to me is that it appears that they both took the same approach, got back the same unexpected results, and then went in two different directions.

Both companies created a "U.S. Spanish" website.  Their target was U.S. Spanish speaking consumers.  What they discovered was that they were getting a lot of non-U.S. Spanish speaking visitors to their websites.  These visitors wanted to buy online just like U.S. consumers.  In many cases, the non-U.S. consumers were either visiting relatives or friends in the U.S. or were Mexicans crossing the border to shop.  The prices in the U.S. were cheaper than in their country and so they wanted to get their items in the U.S. and then bring them back home.  So what is the problem with that?

For Home Depot, the problem is that they did not take the foreign credit cards on the U.S. Spanish site.  Best Buy on the other hand embraced the additional and unexpected consumers and did allow the foreign credit cards.  Best Buy is finding that, even though they don't ship overseas, people will order online and ship to friends or family where they will pick up the items later.  They also have found that U.S. Hispanics are using the website to print out information before they go to the stores to purchase the items.  In many cases it is easier for them to understand the information in Spanish.

One of the more interesting sides to this story is that The Home Depot has stores in Mexico, they have a Mexican website (in Spanish, of course), they have an English Canadian website and they have a French Canadian website.  So they are marketing to everone across North America except the the growing number of Spanish speaking Hispanics in the U.S. and those Spanish speaking visitors who wish to purchase in the U.S.

Not knowing the full details of the costs involved, it would be interesting to see the cost for Home Depot to maintain the U.S. Spanish site and the revenue the site could bring in (if they allowed foreign credit cards) and the revenue brought in by those in the U.S. who used the site to gain more information about products they wanted.  It seems to me that 4 months of running the U.S. Spanish site is not enough time to determine its impact and that if Best Buy can make it work for them, The Home Depot should be able to make it work, too.  Besides, if a French Canadian site can work for Canada, why can't a Spanish U.S. site work here?  I wonder if Home Depot is looking for a way to recreate the U.S. Spanish site in a way that will embrace those consumers that liked having the site available.

Are you looking to build a website to market your products or services to the fast growing U.S. Hispanic community?  Definition 6 is an Atlanta interactive marketing agency that can help you.  Besides doing website development and web application development, we can manage your Search Engine Optimization, your Search Engine Marketing and your email marketing campaigns while providing web analytics that ties everything together.  As we gather more and more valuable information about your consumers, we can tweak all methods of marketing to maximize your dollars.  Contact us and let's get a plan in place for you.

MarketingSherpa released its 2009 eCommerce Benchmark Survey and reminds us that we should be gearing up for what is projected to be an improved holiday season: up 9% over 2008.  Nearly 1,500 eCommerce marketers rated tactics for improving website conversions.

1.  Perpetual shopping carts

These take many different forms:  from a simple note that there’s a product sitting in the cart to dynamic overlays showing images of the product, price, and estimated shipping costs.  The perpetual shopping cart keeps the purchase in the mind of the customer; that psychological anchor helps guide them back to the purchase.

2.  Website search

Consumer research suggests that almost 50% of shoppers prefer internal search over traditional menu options.  This number naturally rises when they have a specific product or brand in mind. 

The first priority is to test your internal search regularly to ensure that it works effectively. Second, examine the different business factors that can be used to optimize internal search results.  Some marketers use a ‘last in-first out’ method to move inventory, while others use their analytics and database systems to sort products by profit margin.  The choices are as broad as your technology and creativity.

3.  Enhanced display

Consumers are enthusiastic about getting multiple, varied photos of a product.   People want to know as much as they can about a product, and even static images can help.  Showing videos how to use products or explaining complex features can bring products to life for the user.

Definition 6 is an Atlanta ad agency and has extensive experience in building and designing eCommerce websites.  We can improve your Search Engine Optimization.  We are experts in Google Search technology and can implement search at your site.  We can also help you with your interactive advertising campaigns and targeted email marketing.  Do you need a mobile advertising strategy?  We can help!

In my previous post regarding the need to include auto-generated emails within a email marketing strategy, I reflected on the lack of love given to emails automatically generated through end-user website activity. It's time to give benchmarking some love too!

The promise of a new web project or marketing initiative leaves stakeholders dreaming of online success, higher conversion rates, higher traffic volumes and positive bottom line results. Quite often, the strategy for measuring success gets lost in the shuffle.

Some of you reading this might be thinking, "Why waste the time? Higher conversion equals success." In some cases you may be right on track with that thought, but most of you probably know it's more than that. Success can be measured in many ways, I'll get into that in second. But understand that it's worth a deeper dive into the metrics that are important to you, your company or your industry, before you start on a new initiative. Ask yourself what data you'll be reviewing a week after a website launch to determine if you're on your way towards a positive ROI. It might be PPC reporting, website analytics, email marketing, CRM comparison or another set of metrics that is specific to your industry. I've seen it before, 2 months after redesign and stakeholders are trying to figure out what to measure. By that point, you're probably not going to have the baseline data needed to show a comparison. Solution? Benchmark. And do it early. The strategy and planning phase of any project is the perfect time to start thinking about it.

So what metrics should you benchmark? There is no perfect answer. Sally, who manages an online retail business will have different success factors than Frank, the owner of a property management services company. Sally cares about online sales and revenue generation, but Frank wants to see an increase in online lead generation. It can be a daunting task, so here are a few good places to start:

1. Website analytics - If your initiative includes the enhancement or redesign of a website, start the project with an examination of your existing analytics data. If you don't have any, stop reading this and go get it. Figure out what will be important to you later. It may be as simple as traffic volume, visit duration, cost per ad spend or conversion rates. But you may find a need to collect custom data as well. Almost every analytics package out there has that capability.
2. External data - In this context, external data is performance data obtained through your CRM package or 3rd party sources. Call center volumes or in-store data would fall into this category. You need an adequate way to access it and you need historical references.
3. Email marketing - If your initiative includes modifications to email marketing programs, make sure your provider is collecting meaningful data on open and click-through rates. And make sure you'll have access to historical data to create a trending analysis.

There are plenty of other data sources to benchmark against to determine success. The main goal is to ensure you have the data you'll need to measure success after you've spent time and money to get there. And do it early. Your ROI calculation will depend on it.

As an interactive marketing agency, we deal in both the email marketing and the application development arena. Most of the time these two items go hand-in-hand. A company builds or enhances their website while marketing that website through emails, offering special deals, newsletters, subscription services and a variety of other services and products to its users. The combination of these can show impactfull and bottom-line results. But what often gets lost is auto-generated emails from the website or application. Marketing departments tend to create silos of activities, there's email marketing, and then there's website creation and management. Time and money is spent on creating an effective email marketing program that supports online activities. Auto-generated email should fall into this category as well.

There are various reasons this important form of communication get overlooked, but why are they important in the first place:

Branding - Any email generated from your domain represents your brand. Guess what, users aren't always left with an impression of your brand based on their website visit, they're often left with a confirmation, newsletter or subscription email based on their website activities. Why let that confirmation email negatively impact how you're perceived? It's just as important as that promotion email you're gearing up to send them next week.

Call-to-action - Auto-generated emails are often utilized to seek verification or ask users to continue the process started at the website.

Communication - If a user feels strongly enough about your website or your company in general, they're going to seek more information and allow you to keep in touch with them through automated emails. Keep them enganged and thinking about your products or services.

So where do most companies fall short? The biggest thing that we see is that auto-generated emails simply are not given much thought during the website enhancement or build process. As an afterthought, it will never be an adequate means of communication or engagment with your customers. Spend some time with the design. You spent time reviewing comps and making adjustments for various ESP's for standard email marketing initiatives, do the same for your auto-generated emails. ExactTarget provides a great reference for do's and don'ts conerning email marketing. Spend some time and follow as many best practices as possible. Make your calls-to-action precise and easy to comprehend (even 2 months later). Represent your brand, make sure your emails maintain company branding standards.

People tend to hold onto emails. Why not? Storage capacity is longer an issue at most ESP or client programs. If they're going to hold onto something that represents your business, make it worthwhile for them when they open it again 2 months later. It is still a representation or your company and they can still act on something you wanted them to previously. Don't be afraid to give auto-generated emails some love.

I recently read an article in BusinessWeek titled "What's a Friend Worth?"  The article gives an interesting perspective about social media strategy and how online media tools can help provide massive insight into consumer and employee behavior.

"What do these relationships say about us and the people in our networks? Companies armed with rich new data and powerful computers are beginning to explore these questions. They're finding that digital friendships speak volumes about us as consumers and workers, and decoding the data can lead to profitable insights. Calculating the value of these relationships has become a defining challenge for businesses and individuals.

Marketers are leading the way. They're finding that if our friends buy something, there's a better-than-average chance we'll buy it, too. It's a simple insight but one that could lead to targeted messaging in an age of growing media clutter.

The second arena for study is inside companies. Businesses such as Hewlett-Packard and IBM (IBM) are researching employees' relationships with an eye to quickening the flow of knowledge and the generation of ideas within their ranks. One team at IBM Research, studying anonymous data of Big Blue's consultants, concluded that employees who forged tighter e-mail connections with their boss brought in on average $588 more in monthly revenue. This is early-stage research, but the goal is to distill patterns of successful communication and replicate valuable links throughout the company.

For most of us, the business value of networked friends is tied to a third area, personal opportunity. In addition to companionship, friends online represent a turbocharged Rolodex for entrepreneurs and job seekers inside and outside companies. These collections of contacts expand social horizons, keeping us in touch with more people who can provide ideas, answers, business leads, and even legal advice. Those who master these connections stand to win a big edge: the connections and brainpower of a large team."

While monetizing social media marketing can, at times, be challenging increased brand awareness and buzz around your product, service, or company can help you reach new consumers with very targeted messaging.

As more and more data is collected and analyzed over time the insights will become more valuable. 

Read the full article here.

Learn more about Definition 6's Interactive Marketing Services.

As an Interactive Ad Agency executive I get questions all the time from various people about eMail Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, Website Design, Social Media Marketing, and Online Advertising. Often times it is from a frustrated marketing manager who says something like: "My boss doesn't get digital marketing and it is frustrating", so one of the things I try to do is help map digital marketing back to a deep seated belief in the executive mind.

Let's take banking and social media marketing, this conversation came up at Mashable Atlanta, "how can I convince my banking boss that social media is something we should use?"  I asked the marketing manager if her boss believed that banking was based on relationships? And of course, the answer was "yes", then I asked if he was one of those bankers that thought it was important to be a member of the right country club, right business club and school alumni network; And of course, the answer was "yes". Well, then it is very clear to me that the banker was the perfect candidate for social media marketing, because social marketing is about "RELATIONSHIPS" and the banker clearly believes that you need to have a relationship with your customer and prospects. So I pointed out that we should talk to the boss about joinning the best new club in town, "the social media networks" - be it Facebook, LinkedIn, or Affluence, it was the new club where RELATIONSHIPS were made and strengthened.

We will see how the conversation ultimately goes with her boss, but I wanted to share that the technique to selling Interactive Marketing to management is to start where they are and move from there to the digital world. Check out our thoughts at twitter.com/Defintion6 or my personal tweats at twitter.com/mkogon.

Here is an article I found about targeting Hispanics with mobile ads and apps.  Why you should target them specifically?  Well, it turns out that many younger generation Hispanics in the US will get their first internet experience on their cell phone, not on a computer.  And some recent surveys have shown that Hispanics are more likely to view mobile advertisements and respond to them than other groups.  One company mentioned in the article is targeting Hispanics by offering English training on their cell phones in exchange for them watching a short 2 - 3 second advertisement.  With the responses offered up by Hispanics, it can become quite easy to figure out what different demographics are doing and what they respond best to.  Given that Hispanics will be in a better spending position once the recession settles, it seems like a great opportunity now to start planning your mobile campaigns that are directed toward Hispanics.

Definition 6 is an Interactive Marketing company in Atlanta that can help you with your mobile marketing strategies and help you tie them in with application development consulting, web 2.0 applications, email marketing and search engine optimization.  Contact us and let us help you market to this growing community of consumers.

Social Media Strategy is one of the most interesting things we do here at Definition 6, Atlanta Interactive Agency.  The rise of Web 2.0 Applications as commonplace within our daily lives has made Socail Media mainstream.  Sometimes we are asked how can we use social medai to improve search engine optimization and other times we are asked how can make social media fit into an integrated online marketing plan.  But it is a daily topic of conversation and I've found a really good report from destinationCRM.com that talks about a 5 year forecast for social media. The key points from the author, Jessica Tsai citing Jeremiah Owyang, are:

The report breaks down the past, present, and future state of the social Web into five overlapping eras:

1. The era of social relationships: Beginning in the mid-1990s, people signed up for online profiles and connected with their friends to share information.
2. The era of social functionality: As it exists today, social networking is more than just a platform for "friending," but one that can support a broader array of what Owyang calls "social interactive applications." However, identities are essentially disconnected silos within individual sites.
3. The era of social colonization: By late 2009, technologies such as OpenID and Facebook Connect will begin to break down the barriers of social networks and allow individuals to integrate their social connections as part of their online experience, blurring the lines between networks and traditional sites.
4. The era of social context: In 2010, sites will begin to recognize personal identities and social relationships to deliver customized online experiences. Social networks will become the "base of operation for everyone's online experiences."
5. The era of social commerce: In approximately two years, social networks will be more powerful than corporate Web sites and CRM systems, as individual identities and relationships are built on this platform. Brands will serve community interests and grow based on community advocacy as users continue to drive innovation in this direction.

So if we are doing a good job of being Interactive Marketing Strategists to help prepare our clients for the "era of social context" and upgrading our customer's sites to incorporate OpenID and Facebook Connect today. This will help them meet their customers where they are and with what they are doing online today.  I'll talk more about being ready for your customer in some future posts.

The mantra of our time seems to be “do more with less.”  Nowhere in business is this sentiment more pronounced than marketing.  With the economy in free fall and marketing budgets slashed to the bone, maintaining market share, let alone growing market share, is more difficult than ever.  Enter the Interactive Marketing Roadmap.

One of the keys to “doing more with less” is reuse.  Most marketing organizations spend a lot of resources developing marketing collateral for various tradition channels.  These artifacts include direct mail pieces, television spots, brochures, catalogues and the like.  The goal of the interactive marketing roadmap is to identify the optimal re-use of these items on the web.  The challenge is to employ limited incremental spend to leverage existing assets created in traditional channels for re-purposing in the web channel.  Definition 6 has spent a lot of time and intellectual capital trying to address this challenge.  Via our Interactive Marketing Roadmap, you can get the benefit of this cumulative effort and knowledge base.

So let’s start with a simple example.  Your company is about to launch a new product, so the marketing manager has created a new direct mail piece to explain the offering.  For educational purposes, let us say that it cost one dollar for the design, development and distribution of the direct mail piece.  And let us also assume the target market for this effort is 50,000 households.  That would equate to a cost of $50,000 to reach 50,000 prospects, or $1.00 per prospect.  If the piece got a 2% conversion rate, the program would be considered wildly successful.  More likely, most of the direct mail pieces end up in the circular file.  And identifying the one’s that didn’t is no easy task.  Plus, the “shelf life” of the entire promotion is no more than a week or two.

Now, let us leverage the Interactive Marketing Roadmap.  In this instance, we would identify the best re-use of the promotional direct mail package for the web.  First, we would most likely turn the direct mail copy into a targeted email marketing campaign.  The cost to turn the direct mail content into an email friendly version is a few thousand dollars.  Then there is the cost of the email blast, usually no more than pennies per email.  So we can spend $5,000 to make the direct mail piece email friendly, and spend an additional $2,500 on email distribution.  At that point, we can blast the email to 100,000 prospects for roughly $7,500.  Hence we tripled the total audience of the initial direct mail piece for an incremental spend of less than 20% of the cost of the original direct mail piece.  And click through and conversion rates from targeted email marketing campaigns is in the 4% conversion range.  At even less incremental cost we can add the direct mail piece to the website as new and additional content.  This will boost natural SEO results.  We can also allow the promotional coupon to be live on the website for an extended duration, thereby increasing its shelf life.  And through all of these initiatives, we have the added value of web analytics to give us insight into who is actually receptive to our overtures, so we can do even better next time!

Now, imagine that you have multiple brands, each of which employ a wide range of traditional marketing tactics, and the messaging of those tactics varies by market.  The Interactive Marketing Roadmap will literally map out the alignment of traditional and web programs across all of these brands, assets and markets to create a uniform, comprehensive marketing and tactical strategic plan.  And we can create this plan in matter of weeks.  That enables the marketing department to get the benefit of this analysis for the duration of the year.  I consider that a prime example of “doing more with less.”  And Definition 6 is the only online ad agency to offer such a service.