MarketingSherpa.com : Practical News & Case Studies on Internet Advertising, Marketing & PR

By MarketingSherpa Publisher Anne Holland

According to MarketingSherpa data, only 28.7% of online marketers have Web analytics data at their fingertips and refer to it frequently to make better decisions.

Everyone else either relies on "gut" or "guestimates" because they either don't have decent analytics systems or they are "too busy to plow through the stack of reports."

But, checking the actual data pays off. Marketers who frequently check their analytics reports tend to get around 25% higher conversion rates than everyone else does.

Last week I flew to Utah to meet hundreds of marketers who are among the lucky 28.7% -- those who take Web analytics very seriously and are able to dedicate at least part of their working days to analyzing results. Here's a quick look at what I learned from them....

Three quick action items to improve site results

Action Item #1. Super-simple design rules

The most successful Web pages are BORING. Most designers would take one look at them and beg to be allowed to add something to "dress it up."

In general, more columns, more images, more razzle-dazzle (Flash), more hotlinks, more colors, more paths ... equals lower conversions. A confused visitor will leave quickly. A confused customer will be annoyed with your brand.

That said, test it. If you've got an idea that could help one of your major visitor segments more easily figure out where to click next, then test that puppy. That's what analytics are there for.

(Side note: A panel that included a marketer from Macromedia concluded "95% of Web marketing design using Flash is inappropriate - it's not helping the visitor scratch their itch. However, one panelist said if you're marketing to Japan that may not be true.)

Action Item #2. Track cannibalization between competing links

Yeah! You tested adding a hot offer or in-your-face graphic to a page and it's getting great results. Not so fast, say many analytics experts. Are you also tracking clicks on other links and offers on the same page or site?

Are increased clicks in one place cannibalizing the results of another? And, most importantly, which is ultimately the most profitable link path to drive traffic through?

As one marketer put it, "Don't just track conversions, track anti-conversions. Use fall-out reporting."

Action Item #3. Instead of pops, send image-clicks to another page

As we've reported in the past, loads of people click on images on your site. If your images are hotlinked so clickers actually see something new, congratulations, you may get better conversions than most of your competitors.

Now test the next step -- instead of presenting a pop of a bigger image, open a new window to an entirely new page that includes a bigger graphic plus sales copy plus an action button. More pages can help search engine optimization, plus you're letting the visitor follow the conversion path they're most interested in.

Segmentation is the hottest measurement standard - No traffic is "average"

After more than five years of relentless marketer-education efforts by consultants such as the Eisenberg brothers at Future Now Inc, persona-based Web design is finally coming into its own.

In simplest terms this means figuring out what sorts of people come to your site -- perhaps dividing them into three-to-seven distinct audiences with their own unique goals and personalities.

So, there's never an "average" or "typical" user of your site. Instead you've got a few different populations. For example you might have:

- newbies vs multibuyers
- techies vs executives
- parents vs kids
- impulse buyers vs careful researchers
- discount-driven vs quality-driven shoppers
- service seekers vs shoppers

Generally, none of these different groups are remotely interested in content aimed at the other folks. (One marketer told me at lunch he was surprised to see how little overlap in pages viewed his site's five main visitor groups had.)

Obviously you need content specifically created to please each group. Plus, you need to alter your site navigation bars, hotlinked text, and even site tabs, so these serve as overt flags, each waving a particular group of folks over to look at "their content."

Site navigation and copy is not about your company, your brand, your services, your products. It's about helping each very distinct group of visitors find what they are looking for more easily.

Today's better analytics programs make it fairly simple to split your traffic by these segmented groups and follow their activities. Then you can make separate tweaks to increase each unique group's conversion rates. (Conversions can be sales, registrations generated, clicks, surveys taken, etc.)

Plus, you'll want to track acquisition costs and lifetime value separately for these groups. Anyone who talks about "average" profit per "average" customer is glossing over giant differences between groups.

If you don't know which customers are more profitable, you can't go out and get more of them can you?

How to track customer lifetime value: 7 key factors

Otherwise highly sophisticated online marketers often equate lifetime value to initial order size. In fact, most marketers' paid search acquisition budgets are dictated by average first-time order size.

(Or, alternatively by the size of your CEO's ego when he/she demands you spend silly money to buy generic terms he/she thinks are critical to appear under regardless of proven conversions.)

Unless you sell only one thing and there's no other way to ever make another dime from that new customer, lifetime value is a glorious many-flavored thing. Seven key factors to weigh in customer valuations:

o Profitability -- what's their average order size, cost per unit, amount of handholding required (some demographics may require lots of service or sales rep assistance) and likelihood of cross-sell/upsell?

o Renewability -- do they order things you can sell to them repeatedly (updated versions, refills, subscriptions, etc.)?

o Recency -- when was the last time they ordered from you? Those who ordered more recently are invariably more valuable, because they're more likely to convert for additional offers.

o Frequency -- how often over an average course of time do they order from you? Are they one-shot buyers or do they return on a fairly regular basis that you can predict and encourage?

o Offer preferences -- do they leap for anything that's "new"? Are they only motivated by discounts? Are they clearly gift-shoppers buying for others on a predictable schedule? Do they view you as a commodity, and would be easy for a competitor to poach from you?

o Evangelism/advocacy -- do they adore your brand and will refer other new customers to you?

o Repeat visit bounties -- once they've found your site, how much will it cost you to get them to come again? Will they come directly to you (or via an email link you send them)? Or are they addicted to shopping engines, paid search engine ads, affiliate links, etc.?

Once you have this data for each of your main groups of visitors, you will know which to focus more visible site navigation elements and copy for.

Three Tips for measuring consumers across multiple channels (online and off)

For most marketers, lifetime value also includes offline activity. Merging online and offline analytics is a massive headache that started in about 1998 and shows no sign of letting up yet. (Heck, just getting your email data tied into the Web is hard enough...)

Three clever tactics I heard folks mention at the Web analytics conference:

Tactic #1. Campaign-specific inbound phone numbers

Depending on how prominently you display a phone number, calls can run from 2-20% of your responses. 10% is a good bet for sites with complex offers and very visible phone numbers.

Several sites at the conference (and others I've heard of) have asked the phone company for as many phone numbers as possible so they can use them to count inbound responses to particular campaigns. You're limited by the amount of numbers you can buy, but it's better than no data at all.

Tactic #2. Warranties or product registrations with gift online

If you sell via resellers or offline retailers, test offering a gift of some sort in your packaging to incentivize buyers into registering their purchase on your site.

Unlike general name acquisition campaigns, you can make the offer as soft and sexy as you want and still get good names. After all, these are *proven buyers*. It's the most valuable list you'll ever acquire. So don't be chintzy with the offer. Plus, use your analytics system to carefully test the landing page to maximize registration conversions.

Tactic #3. Personal offers printed on paper receipts

If you sell via brick and mortar, consider adding an offer onto all customer receipts. Perhaps it's a quick survey, "opinion poll", or a free digital gift (a printable coupon, a music download, a PDF, etc.).

The key is each entrant must type in their unique ID code from the receipt. That way you can tie the offline buying info together with their online registration data, creating a truly powerful customer database.

Three challenges for integrating multiple data sources into your Web analytics stream

Everyone in the audience gasped when HP's customer data team announced they have collected 18 terabytes of data so far, tracking everything from Web activity to email responses by customer.

Macromedia added they have 60 million customer records and counting... But then AOL's marketers trumped everyone by casually announcing they are at 100 terabytes, including offline and online marketing activity.

However, the size of the database needed to house all your records isn't one of the big challenges anymore. Server space is relatively cheap. The three biggies I heard were:

Challenge #1. Picking a common denominator per customer

Once you've decided to track customers via every media channel they interact with you, how do you pick the one unique item in a record that will identify that user no matter what channel they are in?

Most consumers have multiple (and changing) emails and multiple (and changing) credit cards. Plus, they wipe cookies, shop from different PCs, visit different store locations, and if they obey the IT department's urging, they've got a few different user names and passwords too.

If you want to track customer touches -- inbound and outbound -- inevitably you'll get a lot of duplicate records which makes your data less useful. Just consider everything you could consider a touch:

o site visits
o email responses
o online advertising responses
o in-store visits
o phone calls
o sales rep meetings
o webinar attendance/white paper readership
o direct (postal) mail responses

If you can tie this together with one common denominator per customer, you'll really know which customers and demographics are hugely interested in your brand, and which are ignoring you completely in every media.

Challenge #2. Getting everybody in your company to agree to mingle data

Larger organizations at the conference told me horror stories of various divisions and departments all using different Web analytics systems that didn't talk to each other (not to mention email vendors, ad agencies, etc.).

Politics can be hell -- especially when it comes to everyone agreeing on one common method and system to measure and store data. The most technically advanced companies often have the worst "data silo" proliferation because each department leaps to buy technology quickly rather than waiting for an organization-wide consensus.

The key to success? Top management must pick one exec to head the data project, and empower that exec with the budget and power to bring everyone else under a common system umbrella. Sounds impossible? HP did it.

Challenge #3. Training everyone to use the mingled system

Everyone agreed the best way to get marketers to actually use the new system is to have one report "front" even if the database has many mingled streams on the back-end. That way everyone (except for true experts in the data department) only has to be trained to use one system.

Do your darndest to make that one single front as easy to use as possible. It's all about usability.

Then you must routinely seek out and integrate "Excel spawn" -- spreadsheets that various marketers invented on the side to track something they couldn't use the official report front for. These spreadsheets are like weeds; there will always be new ones.

Given that this was a Web analytics conference, most marketers were talking about tweaking their analytics dashboard to serve as a front-end display for other data streams as well. So, they might integrate any of the following into their regular Web analytics reports:

- Sales lead management and CRM systems
- PPC campaign results
- Email campaign results
- Offline results data
- Appended demographic data from outside databases (Acxiom, etc)
- Survey results/visitor feedback

Biggest learning? Reality equals multiple touches, multiple media

When you begin integrating all data into your Web analytics stream, you learn the universal truth that most of the time no single marketing campaign or media is solely responsible for a sale.

These touches are happening in multiple media and each needs to be credited. For example, your retail store may have gotten the sale, but your Web presence helped educate, build awareness, build trust, etc. to enable the offline conversion.

Yet, when Web Analytics Association President Jim Sterne asked the audience, "How many of you have produced a report that produced change in your company offline?", a tiny number of hands rose up. Pretty sad.

Aside from the obvious stuff -- improving and measuring your Web site -- Web analytics can provide invaluable research data to improve offline marketing campaigns.

Suggestion: perhaps your analytics department should schedule a quarterly presentation to the offline marketers and agencies to reveal the top data points you've learned about customers and prospects that might help offline marketing.

Have you discovered a particularly profitable customer segment that offline ads don't target yet? Are there any powerful keywords they should add to offline copywriting? Are there any particular SKUs or offers they should test in offline promotions due to unexpected online success?

Small Budgets, Eager VCs, and Down 'n' Dirty Measurement

Like marketers everywhere, attendees complained about their budgets. Hardly anyone was pleased with the amount that management thought analytics could make due with. (Even big household name companies were complaining.)

That said, according to a budget survey MarketingSherpa ran in partnership with AD:TECH in December 2004, 52.7% of online marketers plan to invest in new site analytics software this year.

Which explains why I met several VCs (venture capitalists) at the conference -- felt like 1999 all over again.

It also explains why in the past week Google's snapped up a big analytics firm (Urchin); NetIQ's management team decided to take the company private so it's no longer part of WebTrends; and every email service provider on the planet is seeking more Web analytics system integration agreements.

I expect to see loads more business news with firms merging, revamping, partnering, etc.

Which makes it harder to buy analytics in the short-term because you don't know what the vendors you're talking to now will look like in six months or a year from now. Be sure to ask about deals on the horizon that might affect you, but don't expect an entirely straight answer. Reps may not know everything or be allowed to tell you.

Good luck!

Useful links related to this article

Omniture - the Web analytics firm that hosted the conference I attended in Utah last week:
http://www.omniture.com

Web Analytics Association -- note: this is a new organization and I'm on the advisory board. Definitely check them out and let me know what you think:
http://www.webanalyticsassociation.org/

MarketingSherpa's Buyer's Guide to Web Analytics:
http://sherpastore.com/c/a.pl?1150 p.cfm/2146

Web Analytics Demystified: A Marketer's Guide to Understanding How Your Web Site Affects Your Business -- useful book by conference speaker Eric Peterson:
http://sherpastore.com/c/a.pl?1150 p.cfm/2148

Future Now Inc - Persona-based Web design experts I mentioned above:
http://www.futurenowinc.com

Sponsor:
Bestseller! Step-by-Step Instructions to Raise Your Conversions
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Want to raise your conversions up to 40%?

MarketingSherpa's Landing Page Handbook gives you
step-by-step instructions to turn clicks into
online buyers or registered leads:

* Search, email, & B-to-B landing page tactics
* 59 Real-life campaign samples
(Use as your own templates)
* Heatmaps from landing page Eyetracking Study

Click to convert more visitors today:
http://sherpastore.com/c/a.pl?1150 p.cfm/2182
Or call 877-895-1717
~~~~~~~~~~~~

MarketingSherpa.com : Practical News & Case Studies on Internet Advertising, Marketing & PR

By MarketingSherpa Publisher Anne Holland

According to MarketingSherpa data, only 28.7% of online marketers have Web analytics data at their fingertips and refer to it frequently to make better decisions.

Everyone else either relies on "gut" or "guestimates" because they either don't have decent analytics systems or they are "too busy to plow through the stack of reports."

But, checking the actual data pays off. Marketers who frequently check their analytics reports tend to get around 25% higher conversion rates than everyone else does.

Last week I flew to Utah to meet hundreds of marketers who are among the lucky 28.7% -- those who take Web analytics very seriously and are able to dedicate at least part of their working days to analyzing results. Here's a quick look at what I learned from them....

Three quick action items to improve site results

Action Item #1. Super-simple design rules

The most successful Web pages are BORING. Most designers would take one look at them and beg to be allowed to add something to "dress it up."

In general, more columns, more images, more razzle-dazzle (Flash), more hotlinks, more colors, more paths ... equals lower conversions. A confused visitor will leave quickly. A confused customer will be annoyed with your brand.

That said, test it. If you've got an idea that could help one of your major visitor segments more easily figure out where to click next, then test that puppy. That's what analytics are there for.

(Side note: A panel that included a marketer from Macromedia concluded "95% of Web marketing design using Flash is inappropriate - it's not helping the visitor scratch their itch. However, one panelist said if you're marketing to Japan that may not be true.)

Action Item #2. Track cannibalization between competing links

Yeah! You tested adding a hot offer or in-your-face graphic to a page and it's getting great results. Not so fast, say many analytics experts. Are you also tracking clicks on other links and offers on the same page or site?

Are increased clicks in one place cannibalizing the results of another? And, most importantly, which is ultimately the most profitable link path to drive traffic through?

As one marketer put it, "Don't just track conversions, track anti-conversions. Use fall-out reporting."

Action Item #3. Instead of pops, send image-clicks to another page

As we've reported in the past, loads of people click on images on your site. If your images are hotlinked so clickers actually see something new, congratulations, you may get better conversions than most of your competitors.

Now test the next step -- instead of presenting a pop of a bigger image, open a new window to an entirely new page that includes a bigger graphic plus sales copy plus an action button. More pages can help search engine optimization, plus you're letting the visitor follow the conversion path they're most interested in.

Segmentation is the hottest measurement standard - No traffic is "average"

After more than five years of relentless marketer-education efforts by consultants such as the Eisenberg brothers at Future Now Inc, persona-based Web design is finally coming into its own.

In simplest terms this means figuring out what sorts of people come to your site -- perhaps dividing them into three-to-seven distinct audiences with their own unique goals and personalities.

So, there's never an "average" or "typical" user of your site. Instead you've got a few different populations. For example you might have:

- newbies vs multibuyers
- techies vs executives
- parents vs kids
- impulse buyers vs careful researchers
- discount-driven vs quality-driven shoppers
- service seekers vs shoppers

Generally, none of these different groups are remotely interested in content aimed at the other folks. (One marketer told me at lunch he was surprised to see how little overlap in pages viewed his site's five main visitor groups had.)

Obviously you need content specifically created to please each group. Plus, you need to alter your site navigation bars, hotlinked text, and even site tabs, so these serve as overt flags, each waving a particular group of folks over to look at "their content."

Site navigation and copy is not about your company, your brand, your services, your products. It's about helping each very distinct group of visitors find what they are looking for more easily.

Today's better analytics programs make it fairly simple to split your traffic by these segmented groups and follow their activities. Then you can make separate tweaks to increase each unique group's conversion rates. (Conversions can be sales, registrations generated, clicks, surveys taken, etc.)

Plus, you'll want to track acquisition costs and lifetime value separately for these groups. Anyone who talks about "average" profit per "average" customer is glossing over giant differences between groups.

If you don't know which customers are more profitable, you can't go out and get more of them can you?

How to track customer lifetime value: 7 key factors

Otherwise highly sophisticated online marketers often equate lifetime value to initial order size. In fact, most marketers' paid search acquisition budgets are dictated by average first-time order size.

(Or, alternatively by the size of your CEO's ego when he/she demands you spend silly money to buy generic terms he/she thinks are critical to appear under regardless of proven conversions.)

Unless you sell only one thing and there's no other way to ever make another dime from that new customer, lifetime value is a glorious many-flavored thing. Seven key factors to weigh in customer valuations:

o Profitability -- what's their average order size, cost per unit, amount of handholding required (some demographics may require lots of service or sales rep assistance) and likelihood of cross-sell/upsell?

o Renewability -- do they order things you can sell to them repeatedly (updated versions, refills, subscriptions, etc.)?

o Recency -- when was the last time they ordered from you? Those who ordered more recently are invariably more valuable, because they're more likely to convert for additional offers.

o Frequency -- how often over an average course of time do they order from you? Are they one-shot buyers or do they return on a fairly regular basis that you can predict and encourage?

o Offer preferences -- do they leap for anything that's "new"? Are they only motivated by discounts? Are they clearly gift-shoppers buying for others on a predictable schedule? Do they view you as a commodity, and would be easy for a competitor to poach from you?

o Evangelism/advocacy -- do they adore your brand and will refer other new customers to you?

o Repeat visit bounties -- once they've found your site, how much will it cost you to get them to come again? Will they come directly to you (or via an email link you send them)? Or are they addicted to shopping engines, paid search engine ads, affiliate links, etc.?

Once you have this data for each of your main groups of visitors, you will know which to focus more visible site navigation elements and copy for.

Three Tips for measuring consumers across multiple channels (online and off)

For most marketers, lifetime value also includes offline activity. Merging online and offline analytics is a massive headache that started in about 1998 and shows no sign of letting up yet. (Heck, just getting your email data tied into the Web is hard enough...)

Three clever tactics I heard folks mention at the Web analytics conference:

Tactic #1. Campaign-specific inbound phone numbers

Depending on how prominently you display a phone number, calls can run from 2-20% of your responses. 10% is a good bet for sites with complex offers and very visible phone numbers.

Several sites at the conference (and others I've heard of) have asked the phone company for as many phone numbers as possible so they can use them to count inbound responses to particular campaigns. You're limited by the amount of numbers you can buy, but it's better than no data at all.

Tactic #2. Warranties or product registrations with gift online

If you sell via resellers or offline retailers, test offering a gift of some sort in your packaging to incentivize buyers into registering their purchase on your site.

Unlike general name acquisition campaigns, you can make the offer as soft and sexy as you want and still get good names. After all, these are *proven buyers*. It's the most valuable list you'll ever acquire. So don't be chintzy with the offer. Plus, use your analytics system to carefully test the landing page to maximize registration conversions.

Tactic #3. Personal offers printed on paper receipts

If you sell via brick and mortar, consider adding an offer onto all customer receipts. Perhaps it's a quick survey, "opinion poll", or a free digital gift (a printable coupon, a music download, a PDF, etc.).

The key is each entrant must type in their unique ID code from the receipt. That way you can tie the offline buying info together with their online registration data, creating a truly powerful customer database.

Three challenges for integrating multiple data sources into your Web analytics stream

Everyone in the audience gasped when HP's customer data team announced they have collected 18 terabytes of data so far, tracking everything from Web activity to email responses by customer.

Macromedia added they have 60 million customer records and counting... But then AOL's marketers trumped everyone by casually announcing they are at 100 terabytes, including offline and online marketing activity.

However, the size of the database needed to house all your records isn't one of the big challenges anymore. Server space is relatively cheap. The three biggies I heard were:

Challenge #1. Picking a common denominator per customer

Once you've decided to track customers via every media channel they interact with you, how do you pick the one unique item in a record that will identify that user no matter what channel they are in?

Most consumers have multiple (and changing) emails and multiple (and changing) credit cards. Plus, they wipe cookies, shop from different PCs, visit different store locations, and if they obey the IT department's urging, they've got a few different user names and passwords too.

If you want to track customer touches -- inbound and outbound -- inevitably you'll get a lot of duplicate records which makes your data less useful. Just consider everything you could consider a touch:

o site visits
o email responses
o online advertising responses
o in-store visits
o phone calls
o sales rep meetings
o webinar attendance/white paper readership
o direct (postal) mail responses

If you can tie this together with one common denominator per customer, you'll really know which customers and demographics are hugely interested in your brand, and which are ignoring you completely in every media.

Challenge #2. Getting everybody in your company to agree to mingle data

Larger organizations at the conference told me horror stories of various divisions and departments all using different Web analytics systems that didn't talk to each other (not to mention email vendors, ad agencies, etc.).

Politics can be hell -- especially when it comes to everyone agreeing on one common method and system to measure and store data. The most technically advanced companies often have the worst "data silo" proliferation because each department leaps to buy technology quickly rather than waiting for an organization-wide consensus.

The key to success? Top management must pick one exec to head the data project, and empower that exec with the budget and power to bring everyone else under a common system umbrella. Sounds impossible? HP did it.

Challenge #3. Training everyone to use the mingled system

Everyone agreed the best way to get marketers to actually use the new system is to have one report "front" even if the database has many mingled streams on the back-end. That way everyone (except for true experts in the data department) only has to be trained to use one system.

Do your darndest to make that one single front as easy to use as possible. It's all about usability.

Then you must routinely seek out and integrate "Excel spawn" -- spreadsheets that various marketers invented on the side to track something they couldn't use the official report front for. These spreadsheets are like weeds; there will always be new ones.

Given that this was a Web analytics conference, most marketers were talking about tweaking their analytics dashboard to serve as a front-end display for other data streams as well. So, they might integrate any of the following into their regular Web analytics reports:

- Sales lead management and CRM systems
- PPC campaign results
- Email campaign results
- Offline results data
- Appended demographic data from outside databases (Acxiom, etc)
- Survey results/visitor feedback

Biggest learning? Reality equals multiple touches, multiple media

When you begin integrating all data into your Web analytics stream, you learn the universal truth that most of the time no single marketing campaign or media is solely responsible for a sale.

These touches are happening in multiple media and each needs to be credited. For example, your retail store may have gotten the sale, but your Web presence helped educate, build awareness, build trust, etc. to enable the offline conversion.

Yet, when Web Analytics Association President Jim Sterne asked the audience, "How many of you have produced a report that produced change in your company offline?", a tiny number of hands rose up. Pretty sad.

Aside from the obvious stuff -- improving and measuring your Web site -- Web analytics can provide invaluable research data to improve offline marketing campaigns.

Suggestion: perhaps your analytics department should schedule a quarterly presentation to the offline marketers and agencies to reveal the top data points you've learned about customers and prospects that might help offline marketing.

Have you discovered a particularly profitable customer segment that offline ads don't target yet? Are there any powerful keywords they should add to offline copywriting? Are there any particular SKUs or offers they should test in offline promotions due to unexpected online success?

Small Budgets, Eager VCs, and Down 'n' Dirty Measurement

Like marketers everywhere, attendees complained about their budgets. Hardly anyone was pleased with the amount that management thought analytics could make due with. (Even big household name companies were complaining.)

That said, according to a budget survey MarketingSherpa ran in partnership with AD:TECH in December 2004, 52.7% of online marketers plan to invest in new site analytics software this year.

Which explains why I met several VCs (venture capitalists) at the conference -- felt like 1999 all over again.

It also explains why in the past week Google's snapped up a big analytics firm (Urchin); NetIQ's management team decided to take the company private so it's no longer part of WebTrends; and every email service provider on the planet is seeking more Web analytics system integration agreements.

I expect to see loads more business news with firms merging, revamping, partnering, etc.

Which makes it harder to buy analytics in the short-term because you don't know what the vendors you're talking to now will look like in six months or a year from now. Be sure to ask about deals on the horizon that might affect you, but don't expect an entirely straight answer. Reps may not know everything or be allowed to tell you.

Good luck!

Useful links related to this article

Omniture - the Web analytics firm that hosted the conference I attended in Utah last week:
http://www.omniture.com

Web Analytics Association -- note: this is a new organization and I'm on the advisory board. Definitely check them out and let me know what you think:
http://www.webanalyticsassociation.org/

MarketingSherpa's Buyer's Guide to Web Analytics:
http://sherpastore.com/c/a.pl?1150 p.cfm/2146

Web Analytics Demystified: A Marketer's Guide to Understanding How Your Web Site Affects Your Business -- useful book by conference speaker Eric Peterson:
http://sherpastore.com/c/a.pl?1150 p.cfm/2148

Future Now Inc - Persona-based Web design experts I mentioned above:
http://www.futurenowinc.com

Sponsor:
Bestseller! Step-by-Step Instructions to Raise Your Conversions
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Want to raise your conversions up to 40%?

MarketingSherpa's Landing Page Handbook gives you
step-by-step instructions to turn clicks into
online buyers or registered leads:

* Search, email, & B-to-B landing page tactics
* 59 Real-life campaign samples
(Use as your own templates)
* Heatmaps from landing page Eyetracking Study

Click to convert more visitors today:
http://sherpastore.com/c/a.pl?1150 p.cfm/2182
Or call 877-895-1717
~~~~~~~~~~~~

Web analytics

By MarketingSherpa Publisher Anne Holland

According to MarketingSherpa data, only 28.7% of online marketers have Web analytics data at their fingertips and refer to it frequently to make better decisions.

Everyone else either relies on "gut" or "guestimates" because they either don't have decent analytics systems or they are "too busy to plow through the stack of reports."

But, checking the actual data pays off. Marketers who frequently check their analytics reports tend to get around 25% higher conversion rates than everyone else does.

Last week I flew to Utah to meet hundreds of marketers who are among the lucky 28.7% -- those who take Web analytics very seriously and are able to dedicate at least part of their working days to analyzing results. Here's a quick look at what I learned from them....

Three quick action items to improve site results

Action Item #1. Super-simple design rules

The most successful Web pages are BORING. Most designers would take one look at them and beg to be allowed to add something to "dress it up."

In general, more columns, more images, more razzle-dazzle (Flash), more hotlinks, more colors, more paths ... equals lower conversions. A confused visitor will leave quickly. A confused customer will be annoyed with your brand.

That said, test it. If you've got an idea that could help one of your major visitor segments more easily figure out where to click next, then test that puppy. That's what analytics are there for.

(Side note: A panel that included a marketer from Macromedia concluded "95% of Web marketing design using Flash is inappropriate - it's not helping the visitor scratch their itch. However, one panelist said if you're marketing to Japan that may not be true.)

Action Item #2. Track cannibalization between competing links

Yeah! You tested adding a hot offer or in-your-face graphic to a page and it's getting great results. Not so fast, say many analytics experts. Are you also tracking clicks on other links and offers on the same page or site?

Are increased clicks in one place cannibalizing the results of another? And, most importantly, which is ultimately the most profitable link path to drive traffic through?

As one marketer put it, "Don't just track conversions, track anti-conversions. Use fall-out reporting."

Action Item #3. Instead of pops, send image-clicks to another page

As we've reported in the past, loads of people click on images on your site. If your images are hotlinked so clickers actually see something new, congratulations, you may get better conversions than most of your competitors.

Now test the next step -- instead of presenting a pop of a bigger image, open a new window to an entirely new page that includes a bigger graphic plus sales copy plus an action button. More pages can help search engine optimization, plus you're letting the visitor follow the conversion path they're most interested in.

Segmentation is the hottest measurement standard - No traffic is "average"

After more than five years of relentless marketer-education efforts by consultants such as the Eisenberg brothers at Future Now Inc, persona-based Web design is finally coming into its own.

In simplest terms this means figuring out what sorts of people come to your site -- perhaps dividing them into three-to-seven distinct audiences with their own unique goals and personalities.

So, there's never an "average" or "typical" user of your site. Instead you've got a few different populations. For example you might have:

- newbies vs multibuyers
- techies vs executives
- parents vs kids
- impulse buyers vs careful researchers
- discount-driven vs quality-driven shoppers
- service seekers vs shoppers

Generally, none of these different groups are remotely interested in content aimed at the other folks. (One marketer told me at lunch he was surprised to see how little overlap in pages viewed his site's five main visitor groups had.)

Obviously you need content specifically created to please each group. Plus, you need to alter your site navigation bars, hotlinked text, and even site tabs, so these serve as overt flags, each waving a particular group of folks over to look at "their content."

Site navigation and copy is not about your company, your brand, your services, your products. It's about helping each very distinct group of visitors find what they are looking for more easily.

Today's better analytics programs make it fairly simple to split your traffic by these segmented groups and follow their activities. Then you can make separate tweaks to increase each unique group's conversion rates. (Conversions can be sales, registrations generated, clicks, surveys taken, etc.)

Plus, you'll want to track acquisition costs and lifetime value separately for these groups. Anyone who talks about "average" profit per "average" customer is glossing over giant differences between groups.

If you don't know which customers are more profitable, you can't go out and get more of them can you?

How to track customer lifetime value: 7 key factors

Otherwise highly sophisticated online marketers often equate lifetime value to initial order size. In fact, most marketers' paid search acquisition budgets are dictated by average first-time order size.

(Or, alternatively by the size of your CEO's ego when he/she demands you spend silly money to buy generic terms he/she thinks are critical to appear under regardless of proven conversions.)

Unless you sell only one thing and there's no other way to ever make another dime from that new customer, lifetime value is a glorious many-flavored thing. Seven key factors to weigh in customer valuations:

o Profitability -- what's their average order size, cost per unit, amount of handholding required (some demographics may require lots of service or sales rep assistance) and likelihood of cross-sell/upsell?

o Renewability -- do they order things you can sell to them repeatedly (updated versions, refills, subscriptions, etc.)?

o Recency -- when was the last time they ordered from you? Those who ordered more recently are invariably more valuable, because they're more likely to convert for additional offers.

o Frequency -- how often over an average course of time do they order from you? Are they one-shot buyers or do they return on a fairly regular basis that you can predict and encourage?

o Offer preferences -- do they leap for anything that's "new"? Are they only motivated by discounts? Are they clearly gift-shoppers buying for others on a predictable schedule? Do they view you as a commodity, and would be easy for a competitor to poach from you?

o Evangelism/advocacy -- do they adore your brand and will refer other new customers to you?

o Repeat visit bounties -- once they've found your site, how much will it cost you to get them to come again? Will they come directly to you (or via an email link you send them)? Or are they addicted to shopping engines, paid search engine ads, affiliate links, etc.?

Once you have this data for each of your main groups of visitors, you will know which to focus more visible site navigation elements and copy for.

Three Tips for measuring consumers across multiple channels (online and off)

For most marketers, lifetime value also includes offline activity. Merging online and offline analytics is a massive headache that started in about 1998 and shows no sign of letting up yet. (Heck, just getting your email data tied into the Web is hard enough...)

Three clever tactics I heard folks mention at the Web analytics conference:

Tactic #1. Campaign-specific inbound phone numbers

Depending on how prominently you display a phone number, calls can run from 2-20% of your responses. 10% is a good bet for sites with complex offers and very visible phone numbers.

Several sites at the conference (and others I've heard of) have asked the phone company for as many phone numbers as possible so they can use them to count inbound responses to particular campaigns. You're limited by the amount of numbers you can buy, but it's better than no data at all.

Tactic #2. Warranties or product registrations with gift online

If you sell via resellers or offline retailers, test offering a gift of some sort in your packaging to incentivize buyers into registering their purchase on your site.

Unlike general name acquisition campaigns, you can make the offer as soft and sexy as you want and still get good names. After all, these are *proven buyers*. It's the most valuable list you'll ever acquire. So don't be chintzy with the offer. Plus, use your analytics system to carefully test the landing page to maximize registration conversions.

Tactic #3. Personal offers printed on paper receipts

If you sell via brick and mortar, consider adding an offer onto all customer receipts. Perhaps it's a quick survey, "opinion poll", or a free digital gift (a printable coupon, a music download, a PDF, etc.).

The key is each entrant must type in their unique ID code from the receipt. That way you can tie the offline buying info together with their online registration data, creating a truly powerful customer database.

Three challenges for integrating multiple data sources into your Web analytics stream

Everyone in the audience gasped when HP's customer data team announced they have collected 18 terabytes of data so far, tracking everything from Web activity to email responses by customer.

Macromedia added they have 60 million customer records and counting... But then AOL's marketers trumped everyone by casually announcing they are at 100 terabytes, including offline and online marketing activity.

However, the size of the database needed to house all your records isn't one of the big challenges anymore. Server space is relatively cheap. The three biggies I heard were:

Challenge #1. Picking a common denominator per customer

Once you've decided to track customers via every media channel they interact with you, how do you pick the one unique item in a record that will identify that user no matter what channel they are in?

Most consumers have multiple (and changing) emails and multiple (and changing) credit cards. Plus, they wipe cookies, shop from different PCs, visit different store locations, and if they obey the IT department's urging, they've got a few different user names and passwords too.

If you want to track customer touches -- inbound and outbound -- inevitably you'll get a lot of duplicate records which makes your data less useful. Just consider everything you could consider a touch:

o site visits
o email responses
o online advertising responses
o in-store visits
o phone calls
o sales rep meetings
o webinar attendance/white paper readership
o direct (postal) mail responses

If you can tie this together with one common denominator per customer, you'll really know which customers and demographics are hugely interested in your brand, and which are ignoring you completely in every media.

Challenge #2. Getting everybody in your company to agree to mingle data

Larger organizations at the conference told me horror stories of various divisions and departments all using different Web analytics systems that didn't talk to each other (not to mention email vendors, ad agencies, etc.).

Politics can be hell -- especially when it comes to everyone agreeing on one common method and system to measure and store data. The most technically advanced companies often have the worst "data silo" proliferation because each department leaps to buy technology quickly rather than waiting for an organization-wide consensus.

The key to success? Top management must pick one exec to head the data project, and empower that exec with the budget and power to bring everyone else under a common system umbrella. Sounds impossible? HP did it.

Challenge #3. Training everyone to use the mingled system

Everyone agreed the best way to get marketers to actually use the new system is to have one report "front" even if the database has many mingled streams on the back-end. That way everyone (except for true experts in the data department) only has to be trained to use one system.

Do your darndest to make that one single front as easy to use as possible. It's all about usability.

Then you must routinely seek out and integrate "Excel spawn" -- spreadsheets that various marketers invented on the side to track something they couldn't use the official report front for. These spreadsheets are like weeds; there will always be new ones.

Given that this was a Web analytics conference, most marketers were talking about tweaking their analytics dashboard to serve as a front-end display for other data streams as well. So, they might integrate any of the following into their regular Web analytics reports:

- Sales lead management and CRM systems
- PPC campaign results
- Email campaign results
- Offline results data
- Appended demographic data from outside databases (Acxiom, etc)
- Survey results/visitor feedback

Biggest learning? Reality equals multiple touches, multiple media

When you begin integrating all data into your Web analytics stream, you learn the universal truth that most of the time no single marketing campaign or media is solely responsible for a sale.

These touches are happening in multiple media and each needs to be credited. For example, your retail store may have gotten the sale, but your Web presence helped educate, build awareness, build trust, etc. to enable the offline conversion.

Yet, when Web Analytics Association President Jim Sterne asked the audience, "How many of you have produced a report that produced change in your company offline?", a tiny number of hands rose up. Pretty sad.

Aside from the obvious stuff -- improving and measuring your Web site -- Web analytics can provide invaluable research data to improve offline marketing campaigns.

Suggestion: perhaps your analytics department should schedule a quarterly presentation to the offline marketers and agencies to reveal the top data points you've learned about customers and prospects that might help offline marketing.

Have you discovered a particularly profitable customer segment that offline ads don't target yet? Are there any powerful keywords they should add to offline copywriting? Are there any particular SKUs or offers they should test in offline promotions due to unexpected online success?

Small Budgets, Eager VCs, and Down 'n' Dirty Measurement

Like marketers everywhere, attendees complained about their budgets. Hardly anyone was pleased with the amount that management thought analytics could make due with. (Even big household name companies were complaining.)

That said, according to a budget survey MarketingSherpa ran in partnership with AD:TECH in December 2004, 52.7% of online marketers plan to invest in new site analytics software this year.

Which explains why I met several VCs (venture capitalists) at the conference -- felt like 1999 all over again.

It also explains why in the past week Google's snapped up a big analytics firm (Urchin); NetIQ's management team decided to take the company private so it's no longer part of WebTrends; and every email service provider on the planet is seeking more Web analytics system integration agreements.

I expect to see loads more business news with firms merging, revamping, partnering, etc.

Which makes it harder to buy analytics in the short-term because you don't know what the vendors you're talking to now will look like in six months or a year from now. Be sure to ask about deals on the horizon that might affect you, but don't expect an entirely straight answer. Reps may not know everything or be allowed to tell you.

Good luck!

Useful links related to this article

Omniture - the Web analytics firm that hosted the conference I attended in Utah last week:
http://www.omniture.com

Web Analytics Association -- note: this is a new organization and I'm on the advisory board. Definitely check them out and let me know what you think:
http://www.webanalyticsassociation.org/

MarketingSherpa's Buyer's Guide to Web Analytics:
http://sherpastore.com/c/a.pl?1150 p.cfm/2146

Web Analytics Demystified: A Marketer's Guide to Understanding How Your Web Site Affects Your Business -- useful book by conference speaker Eric Peterson:
http://sherpastore.com/c/a.pl?1150 p.cfm/2148

Future Now Inc - Persona-based Web design experts I mentioned above:
http://www.futurenowinc.com

Sponsor:
Bestseller! Step-by-Step Instructions to Raise Your Conversions
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Want to raise your conversions up to 40%?

MarketingSherpa's Landing Page Handbook gives you
step-by-step instructions to turn clicks into
online buyers or registered leads:

* Search, email, & B-to-B landing page tactics
* 59 Real-life campaign samples
(Use as your own templates)
* Heatmaps from landing page Eyetracking Study

Click to convert more visitors today:
http://sherpastore.com/c/a.pl?1150 p.cfm/2182
Or call 877-895-1717
~~~~~~~~~~~~

Wired News: Search Rank Easy to Manipulate

Wired News: Search Rank Easy to Manipulate

Greg Boser manipulates search engines for a living, and there's little the Googles of the world can do about it.

Boser, who owns and operates WebGuerrilla, a web marketing outfit based in Valencia, California, is not alone. An entire industry of search engine optimizers, called SEOs, has sprung up, many of which take advantage of loopholes in the way rankings are calculated.



Media HackGoogle the term "search engine optimization," and you'll find more than 7 million results, with companies like Submit Express ("guaranteed top 10 placement based on your keywords"), SEO ("rank(s) more sites in more top positions than anyone in the business"), and AddMe ("Equip your site for e-success") topping the list.

Since search engines are usually the first stop for online shoppers (with 40 percent of them choosing Google), your business could very well be toast if it doesn't crack the top 10 -- preferably the top 5, which would require no downward scrolling. (Not unlike the increased readership an article that begins above the fold in a newspaper gets.) One study concluded that sites that appear on the first page of results attract six times the traffic they did before landing there and earn double the sales.

With so much at stake, it's not surprising that some search-engine-savvy geeks, like Boser, will do whatever it takes to get a client to place high in the rankings, something for which he makes no apologies. He claims he's just being realistic.

"The search engines created the monster," he said. "It only exists because Google's algorithm places a lot of emphasis on link popularity."

PageRank, the software at the heart of Google's technology, may also be its Achilles' heel. For every search, it "performs an objective measurement of the importance of web pages by solving an equation of more than 500 million variables and 2 billion terms." In reality, Google relies mostly on two criteria: The number of sites that link to yours and, to a lesser degree, the content of your page as it relates to the keywords selected. (For example, the number of times the words appear on that page).

As the company explains: "PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page's value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves 'important' weigh more heavily and help to make other pages 'important.'"

That means that links have value. They are a type of currency, and the more links to your site you can attract, the better your chances of cracking the top 10 of results. This is especially important because about 90 percent of searchers looking to shop rarely venture past the first page.

"The search engines live in a fantasy world," Boser said. "Every link is a vote. But people buy and sell links."

Although Google claims its "complex, automated methods make human tampering with (the) results extremely difficult," that's simply not true. Digital vote rigging is merely part of doing business, according to Boser.

"I could create a blank page without a keyword anywhere present, or a 404 error message, and if I can get enough sites to link to it, I could get it to place first on Google," Boser said. But it's not just quantity, it's quality. Theoretically, Boser could have five inbound links and end up as the No. 1 result -- provided they originated from mega sites like Yahoo and MSN. Barring that, 5,000 links from cheesy guest books, online diaries, blogs, zany products, porn sites and anyone who honors link exchanges might do the trick.

How do you think some of these search-optimizing firms made it to the top of the heap?

For example, if you consult a list of sites that link to SEO, which comes in at No. 2 on Google for the keywords "search engine optimization," you'll encounter a staggering 32,300 results -- many of which have nothing to do with search engines. There are weather sites, articles published in the Christian Science Monitor (that don't mention the company) and several links on a site that bills itself as "the guide to the XML galaxy" -- and which is only sporadically updated. It also helps that SEO's corporate name is Search Engine Optimization Inc. -- and for every inbound link to its site, the link text is "Search Engine Optimization Inc."

The No.1 site on Google is Submit Express, which promises "website submission to over 75,000 search engines and directories." It has 5,290 links from other sites, including a Hungarian travel zine, a page devoted to "The War on Art" and another that touts the "Relax a Sac," a pillow filled with flaxseeds that promises relief for "pain caused by Stress, Tension, muscle Strains, Sprains, Repetitive Motion, and Arthritis," and a blog that follows "news trends that point to the End of the World as We Know It."

Although many potential customers might wonder how good a company is if it can't rank near the top with its own term, Boser says he wouldn't want to show up high in search engine optimization as a keyword. It gives your company too much visibility (Read: makes it a bigger target.)

He gets most of his clients through speaking engagements at conferences, and says there are two types.

First, corporations that are seeking a "white hat" consultant. These clients want to do everything by the book and make their sites attractive to search engines without resorting to tricks that artifically boost rankings. The other group is merchants who offer revenue-sharing deals. Under these arrangements, the better Boser does in moving the clients up in the rankings, the more he earns.

"We make a lot more money doing this," he said.

There are other techniques designed to fool search engines. One consists of cloaking pages by hiding text in website backgrounds in a way that users won't see but that targets Google's ranking technology. Another method is link spam, aka "blog comment spam," in which automated bots plaster ads with return links on the comments pages of blogs. Most common are ads for pills, porn and casinos. Finally, there is "search spam," which are machine-generated pages designed to appear in the engines to attract traffic (and ultimately increase revenue).

But Boser defines search spam another way: "It's any site that ranks above mine."

Sell Experiences

CMO

Sell Experiences, Not Products
By Mark Kingdon
March 15, 2005



A few weeks ago, I was on a panel with IS (define) executives to discuss the "Future of the User Experience" at Forrester's annual Automotive Summit. It was a thought-provoking day and the inspiration for today's column.

The automotive industry is one of the online biggest marketers. Several research studies find roughly 70 percent of car buyers perform research online before buying a vehicle. Most consumers in the market for a high-consideration product or service, be it a car, home, engagement ring, computer, or new bank or brokerage firm, conduct a significant amount of online research to inform their purchase decisions. Because of this, $8.4 billion was spent in 2004 in online advertising, according to Jupiter Research (a Jupitermedia Corp. division). This figure is expected to double by 2009.

Where does the money go? Much of it is intended to position products or services in very crowded marketplaces. With so much money pouring into online advertising, it's amazing how slow most industries are to respond to customer inquiries or leads. According to Jupiter Research, 40 percent of automotive leads, 37 percent of travel leads, and 25 percent of retail leads take three or more days to respond to.

If I were CEO of a company producing high-consideration products or services, I'd invest in improving the buying experience from initial impression to final close. While I was at it, I'd reinvent the product or service, in the spirit of creating the "Purple Cow," Seth Godin endorses. If you're thinking about reinventing your customers' total experience, look outside your industry for inspiration.

Last year, I bought an iPod at an Apple store. It was more beautifully and luxuriously packaged than a Rolex watch. Opening the box, I felt as if I'd bought something truly wonderful. What I bought wasn't a product, but a total experience that was seamless from beginning to end. Here's what makes the iPod exceptional (and enables Apple to command a premium for the product):

Holistic marketing. Every detail of the marketing mix is synchronized beautifully and obsessively. The advertising, Web experience, product, store, and packaging all feel connected. Each is beautiful on its own. That's why opening the box feels like a rite of passage.


A total experience perspective. ITunes' business model ensures the experience extends beyond purchase and becomes an integral part of the customer's lifestyle. Beyond iTunes, communities have sprouted around podcasting (define) and playlist sharing.


Great service after purchase. Many brands fail with service. I was concerned about this when I had trouble connecting my iPod to a new computer. I went online to sniff around but required human contact to sort out the problem. Apple has a Genius Bar in its stores, and customers can sign up online for an appointment.
This very highly sophisticated experience is for a product that costs under $500. A nicely appointed business laptop is $3,000. The sticker price for a good car now runs north of $30,000. Luxury cars cost twice that. Shouldn't we expect more from the experience of buying some of the most expensive, highly considered purchases in our lives?

Learn from Apple. Think about how to make your customers' experience exceptional. Here are a few items that I discussed on that panel for your consideration:

Think experience. It's not just about the car. After the home and workplace, it's where many Americans spend the most time. Apple thinks experience. The iPod isn't an MP3 player. It's a complete experience; together with iTunes, it's a command central for buying, enjoying, and sharing music.

When I'm looking for a neighborhood retail store, I go to Citysearch to find it. I print out a map with directions, carry it to my car, and either input the destination into my navigation system or read the printed directions. I'm solving a transportation problem, but I don't do it on an automotive site. I must cobble together the experience myself. It'd be great to visit my car site, get directions, and click a button to transmit them to my vehicle's navigation system. Navigation is just a small part of the overall transportation experience the auto industry could solve. The Internet could easily be command central, and an automaker could own it.


Make the Internet work harder. When my car needs service, I call the dealership to schedule an appointment. This should happen online, or the vehicle could let me know and put me in touch with my local dealer. Many telematics companies are working on these kinds of solutions.


Make the purchase process transparent. Car buyers are frustrated by the process of finding a dealer, getting quotes on the desired vehicle, then negotiating a fair price. They arm themselves online with competitive pricing information to do battle with a dealer. The manufacturer's suggested retail price (MSRP) provided on OEM (define) sites often differs from the actual price paid, and this can confuse consumers. The OEM that cracks the code on online local pricing information will have a winning proposition.


Reinvent the vehicle around the user. My computing experience is customized to my needs technically, in terms of basic functionality, and aesthetically. My desktop is a photo of a recent vacation; I smile every time I see it. My Yahoo! has the news and information I want to read. How customizable is a car? Not very. I'd like the my car's interface to reflect my desire for simplicity. The dashboard could be a screen I can easily customize on my computer by dragging and dropping the controls I want to see. Memory controls on the seat and mirror positions is a starting point, but there's much more that can be done to make the transportation experience exceptional.
Regardless of your industry, we can all learn lessons from Steve Jobs, and Virgin's Richard Branson, as we strive to reinvent the product and the purchase/ownership experience. I enjoy your feedback, so please share your opinions on how the Web can reinvent the personal product experience.

The Great RSS Reader Bandwagon

ClickZ Experts on Interactive Marketing Strategies

The Great RSS Reader Bandwagon
By Pamela Parker
March 4, 2005



Every day seems to bring news of another publisher jumping on the branded RSS newsreader bandwagon. First we heard about The Guardian in the U.K., then the Los Angeles Times. CNET followed suit, and the Denver Post is the latest to join the fray.

What do these publishers hope to accomplish, and how can marketers get in on the game? These are the questions I sought to answer this week in wide-ranging discussions exploring these issues with experts.

At the center of the trend -- because it's partnering with both The Guardian and the L.A. Times -- is a Swiss-American technology company called Consenda. It's created an RSS reader designed to be branded by publishers and offered to their readers. (It's not alone in doing this. Newsgator is doing the same for the Denver Post.) The idea is consumer habits are changing, and the only thing publishers can do is go with the flow.

"It's very interesting because newspapers that we have talked to -- broadcasters as well -- they're coming to understand the role that they can play. Not just for the distribution of their own content but the aggregation of all content," said Xavier Ferguson, CEO of Consenda.

How do publishers benefit not only by acknowledging users are going to spend time with other content, but by encouraging and facilitating those outside relationships? Through advertising, of course. In Consenda's model, the branded newsreader, called Newspoint, is also a vehicle for ad distribution.

Though all Consenda's partnerships involve limited beta releases, I've been looking at a demo of the LATimes.com version. In it, banner ads (approximately 185 x 62) appear both within the lists of content feeds, and between items on the feeds themselves. The ads, according to Ferguson, are served by the publishers' own ad serving technology and can be targeted in the same ways as ads on their Web sites.

"We're creating more premium desktop inventory for these publishers," said Ferguson.

Consenda also plans to offer an option for smaller publishers in which contextual ads from one of the search players -- Ferguson hinted it was either Google or Overture, but wouldn't say which -- appear on the reader instead. In that model, Consenda shares its cut of the revenue with the publisher, who pays nothing for the reader.

Ferguson doesn't seem to be worried about copyright issues that might arise from an ad model. Wouldn't content owners -- like Trademark Blog's Martin Schwimmer -- be upset about Consenda and the L.A. Times both benefiting financially from the relationships they've built with their RSS subscribers?

"That's not something that concerns us or the publishers," said Ferguson. "It's only headlines and summaries that are being delivered into Newspoint anyway. Once someone clicks through, we're still displaying the page in its full glory."

Susan Mernit, who works with publishers as part of her gig at consulting group 5ive, says the folks she talks with have very different opinions than Ferguson.

"Everyone is very, very sensitive to the copyright and revenue issues of not wanting to inappropriately profit off other people's work," she told me. "I don't know that anybody's figured that out yet."

Still, Mernit backs the idea of publishers trying branded RSS readers, but mostly so they can extend their own brands and increase time spent on their sites.

"Incorporating news readers into media sites or information sites is a really good idea because it provides a way for readers to be exposed to a new technology. They get the benefit of their destination's feeds at the same time and then further customize the package," she said. "I think that's a very good thing."

One thing publishers definitely shouldn't do is hide their heads in the sand and hope consumers never notice the content consumption revolution going on around them.

"We're seeing a profound shift in the way people interact with content," Simon Waldman, director of digital media at The Guardian, told me. "I don't know what business models are, or what the roles should be for the content providers and aggregators. All of that is pretty much up in the air in the moment. For us as the market-leading player in the U.K., we went to be in there, be in there early and understand it."

For The Guardian, a branded RSS reader is only one of the ways it's preparing itself. It's also talking with players like Yahoo!, MSN, and the aggregators, trying to get its feeds maximum exposure.

Waldman believes the most promising avenues for advertisers in this new environment are not within branded RSS readers, but within the content feeds themselves.

"As the audience grows, you'll have sufficient scale in high value inventory feeds -- such as personal finance and travel -- for very effective targeted advertising," he said. In time, Waldman expects consumers to grow more sophisticated. "They'll build their own information streams," he said. "The need will be for much more fine-grained feeds, which will also be much more suited for targeted advertising."

What should one do now? For publishers, it's probably time to dive in. As Waldman says: "Because if you're not in the place that people want you to be, there's a sense you disappear."

Start creating those RSS feeds (if you haven't already). Let users create custom RSS feeds for searches on your classified ads. If you've got a really sophisticated audience, maybe a branded RSS reader is the way to go.

As for advertisers, you haven't yet got many choices. If you're sick of "wait and see" mode, you might talk with one of the players deploying these readers and experiment with RSS reader ads. Better still, talk with a big media company about sponsoring some of its feeds.

There are a lot of big ideas being tossed around out there, but it's going to be a step-by-step process. Most initial steps are going to be small. With consumers going in that direction, however, you're bound to head that way sooner or later. Why not get a head start?

Customer Service Tech Solutions 101

ClickZ Experts on Using Internet Advertising Technologies

Customer Service Tech Solutions 101
By Jeremy Lockhorn
February 28, 2005



In this column, I did a little ranting and raving about some bad customer service experiences I've recently had. Bad customer service is bad business. It's easier and cheaper to maintain a current customer than acquire a new one.

Yet when companies hit rough economic times, service budgets are often among the first to be cut. There are no easy decisions in times like these, but the damage resulting from customer dissatisfaction and frustration can long outlast economic downturns. The amount of effort and money required to correct a negative perception of a company is likely to be much higher than what it would cost to initially satisfy customers with quality support services.

I'd like to continue this discussion and make it more relevant to advertising technology by focusing on technology solutions for improving customer service.

The idea behind many of these solutions is to use automation and relational data warehousing to make customer service more efficient. When possible, organizations should seek to give customers the tools they need to find answers by themselves.

At the same time, it's absolutely critical the system be designed to facilitate resolution of the issue should a customer not be able to find what she needs unassisted. This might be accomplished through live chat, computer desktop remote control, or pushing the consumer to a call queue to speak with a live representative. The key to maximizing the efficiency of such a system is all the components need to talk to each other.

When the customer arrives in the call center, the agent should have immediate access to that customer's records, any previous inquiries (through any channel) related to the issue, and what's already been done to address the problem.

Technology can help in several functional categories.

The Knowledge Base

The online, self-service knowledge base might be the core of any customer service application. I've seen it done well, and I've seen it done very poorly. Subtle differences can make or break a system. The best systems are those permitting flexibility in search options. Ideally, users should be able to select from a Boolean search engine, an "expertly" guided search, a natural language search, and so on. If the user starts with a broad, general search, a good system will use a decision tree to ask key questions to narrow it. Many systems also employ automated learning, allowing them to constantly refine the rankings of potential solutions based on customer feedback.

Response Management

Enterprise customer service applications often include facilities for handling responses to customer inquiries. Let's say a customer searched the knowledge base and didn't find what he was looking for. So he e-mails the support center. Most systems can automatically reply with a generic message that includes a rough timeline for response by an agent. Some systems also use complex models to identify keywords and key phrases in the message that are likely to require specific responses. The system might then fire off an e-mail with a potential solution and/or route the request to a queue where a live agent can address the concern.

Of course, there are potential pitfalls in automated responses that go as far as to suggest solutions. The user may already have found that solution in the knowledge base and deemed it unhelpful. The engine may produce an irrelevant result. These situations can be very frustrating for the user but can often be avoided if the system constantly keeps a record of all customer interactions. If the system knows which knowledge base articles a user reviewed before e-mailing the support center, it can avoid sending duplicates. It has a better idea of what the user wants.

Live Chat

This is one of the easiest ways to improve the efficiency of customer service. A single agent may be able to handle four simultaneous customer discussions, giving the user immediate access to potential solutions from a live agent while allowing the agent time to do on-the-spot research to resolve the situation. Live chat can be extremely useful in online shopping and order processes. A potential customer might have last-minute questions about a product that aren't answered as part of the on-site product description.

Service Analytics

Most systems include analytical applications for service center managers. These interfaces allow managers to check response time and overall efficiency, accuracy of responses (through any channel), and other critical metrics. Managers use these reports to quickly get a sense of how the operation is performing. They can take appropriate action to address potentially negative situations.

These are the functional categories of the customer service management solutions driven by Web technology. Some systems offer other modules that further enhance customer service. As with many enterprise-class software packages, costs can be high. The expense is likely justifiable when considering the potential increase in overall customer satisfaction and retention.

Improving E-Mail Performance Through Testing

ClickZ Experts on Intellectual Capital Strategies

Improving E-Mail Performance Through Testing
By David Daniels
February 28, 2005



Too often, marketers cling to the same campaign elements and tactics without thoroughly testing e-mail variables to determine what will drive performance higher. In fact a Jupiter Research study I recently concluded on the topic found that overall, about 60 percent of marketers don't test. Challenged by resource constraints, most of these non-testers simply feel they don't have the time to regularly test their campaigns.

Yet our research found the marketers who are testing on a regular basis (at least every other mailing) are almost twice as likely to have e-mail conversion rates that exceed industry averages by one to two percent, as compared with marketers who don't test. Clearly, the effort of testing e-mail variables (e.g. subject lines, content) is offset by better results. Testing is really the only way for a marketer to determine which element drives higher results. It's critical for optimizing e-mail campaigns. To ease into testing, let's take a look at some of the rudimentary items to test.

Identify Marketing Goals. While this sounds very basic, I do find on occasion that e-mail becomes a primary promotional tool simply because it's inexpensive. It is easy to get mired in the monotony of getting the e-mail out and lose sight of specific campaign or mailing goals. Before you can conduct any testing you must first know what the desired outcome is.

Identify Consistent Audience Segments. One of the first elements to test, and an early deliverable that comes out of testing, is audience segmentation. Ensure your e-mail solution can support multiple lists, and customer profiles can be easily divided into segments. Some attributes you'll want to test related to audience segmentation include demographic data (e.g. income, age, sex); behavior (e.g. open, click); purchase history (e.g. recency, frequency); acquisition source; attitudes and domain (e.g. AOL, Yahoo!). I've discussed using behavior and attitudinal segmentation in previous columns; take a look at those for more ideas.

Experiment With Message Formats. While HTML is the preferred format for most marketers, anti-spam measures, including image and HTML blocking at many leading ISPs, underscore the importance of testing message format. Look for differences in delivery, open rate, clickthrough rate and conversion. Testing formats on a domain level and obtaining insight into the domain level performance is critical to really understand the impact the message format has on performance.

Tinker With Content. One area likely to have the largest impact on campaign performance is testing different creative elements. Experiment with the subject line, personalized campaign elements, number of products and/or offers presented, and message tone. Research I've conducted has found personalization can have a dramatic impact on e-mail conversion rates. Determining if personalization is appropriate for your campaigns can only be achieved through testing.

Test Frequency. In order to determine your optimal mailing frequency or the impact of triggered lifecycle campaigns, test message frequency over time. My column on message frequency offers some ideas on alternate mailing intervals.

While testing is beneficial and all the above items are just some of the variables you can test, it's very important to adhere to the following basic testing guidelines to measure which element is driving the results.


Test only one variable at a time. Do this to determine which element is impacting performance test offers and subject lines, but don't test both at the same time.


Maintain a control group. To understand how the segments that are being tested behave over time, maintain a control group that doesn't receive any of the testing treatments.


Ensure tests occur on the same day. To minimize fluctuations in day-of-week response patterns, ensure all segments receive the tests on the same day of the week. That is, unless you're testing day of week mailing patterns. If so, constrict the test to that one variable.


Ensure tests are statically accurate. While the size of mailing test cells depends on your mailing list and testing method (A/B, Nth, etc.), it's recommended that each test cell can return at least 100 qualified responses. Based on response rates, this may require cells that contain as many as 10,000 to 15,000 names.

Trial and error is a central part of marketing. Hopefully, these suggestions will make your trials a bit more scientific. Good luck -- and let me know how it turns out.

Guidelines For Successful Link Development

ClickZ Experts on Search Engine Marketing Strategies

Guidelines For Successful Link Development
By Shari Thurow
February 28, 2005



Link development has long been a cornerstone of a successful search engine optimization (SEO) programs, yet few search engine marketers do the process correctly. With free-for-all (FFA) link farms and poor Web rings polluting search results, how do Web site owners know which SEM companies to avoid, and which are legitimate?

This column addresses some basic guidelines for successful link development. It will help Web site owners avoid common sales pitches from unethical SEMs.

Link Development 101

At a basic level, a link counts as a vote. If a Web site owner finds content on a site is particularly useful and informative, he'll link to that site.

As both a Web developer and graphic designer, I always visit and purchase from stock photography and digital image Web sites. Therefore, I have a page on my site that links to the stock photography sites I use most. I link to these sites because I find their content to be useful.

One might think if a site receives more "votes" than another site, then the site with more "votes" has higher link popularity. Unethical SEMs have promoted this myth for years, just so they can close a sale. As outlined in a previous column, Link Development: The Key to Successful SEO, the quality of a link always carries more weight than the quantity of links. It's much better for a site to have a small number of high-quality links than to have a large number of low-quality links.

In an ideal situation, of course, a site should have a large number of high-quality links. Link development takes time. If a site has (a) a large number of high-quality links; (b) keyword-rich text; and (c) a site and page architecture the search engines (and end users) can follow, then qualified search engine traffic isn't an issue. It's very difficult to imitate high-quality link development.

Reciprocal Linking — Is It Flawed?

I do not and never have believed in reciprocal linking because the fundamental concept: you link to me and I'll link to you, is flawed.

If you find a site's or page's content to be particularly useful and believe its content will benefit your visitors, then link to the page. You won't link to another Web page because they wouldn't grant you a reciprocal link? Perhaps you didn't find the content as useful as you thought you did.

Many Web site owners receive e-mails from SEMs saying they've added a link to their site, with a request the site owner read and edit the listing. The e-mail commonly mentions PageRank, or "PR," as it's known in the SEM industry. The expectation is the site owner will return the favor. Otherwise, the link will be removed.

Whenever you receive this type of e-mail, promptly filter out the address and delete it. If the SEM company truly felt your site's content were valuable, they'd link to your site with or without that link being reciprocated.

Besides, last time I checked, people who search for home refinancing don't type "search engine marketing" into a search query. A high-quality link comes from a site with content related to your site's content.

Web Rings — Good or Bad?

Another way unethical SEMs try to score link development points is by creating artificial Web rings. Unfortunately, many Web hosting and design firms try this strategy as well. What they do is create a directory of sites that are somewhat related and encourage these companies to link to each other.

Quite often, you'll see a link that says, "Site designed by XYZ Company." It in turn links to the various Web rings.

First of all, no client should be obliged to link to their Web design firm's site. When people visit your site, they aren't searching for the company that designed it. They're searching for the products, services, and information offered on your site. Unless you're selling Web design or development services, or offer products related to this industry, it's not a good idea to link to your Web design or hosting company.

I've seen more bad uses of Web rings than good uses, which is a shame. There are some cross-links site visitors certainly will find useful. If all domestic violence shelter sites would link to each other on a state-by-state basis (shelters in New York, shelters in Arizona, etc.), that type of cross-linking will make it easier for victims of domestic violence to find the shelter closest to them.

Non-competitive vs. Supplemental Content

I get an e-mail from a link development company every day asking me to link to their client's site. I wrote a book about search-engine friendly design, and have a book Web site. Many search engine markers seem to think is a magnet for link development. What amazes me about these link requests is they violate a fundamental concept: not only should link requests go to sites with related content, they should go to non-competitive sites.

Let's return to what I wrote above. If a site offers useful and informative content, then I'll link to it without expecting a reciprocal link. I'm always bookmarking content in Search Engine Watch and HighRankings.com. So I have no problem linking to those sites.

Additionally, whenever a company sends a link request, someone must read the content on that site before sending the request. Nothing is more annoying to a site owner than someone who doesn't read their site, but still expects you to modify your own site in his favor.

Here's another example. In my book site, I'm not in favor of Web positioning software. I've never supported Web positioning software, and I write about the topic quite often. Every week, without fail, I get a link request from SEM firms who offer Web positioning as a service, or I receive a link request from a Web positioning software company.

My reaction? Filter and delete. I won't even read the entire e-mail. If a person requesting a link doesn't have the courtesy to read the content on my Web site, then I certainly won't grant that person the courtesy of reading his e-mail. Common sense isn't always link development firms' forte.

Conclusion

Link development is fundamental for search engine marketers. It's very difficult for a site to get long-term search engine traffic without it. The focus should always be on high-quality links, not a large quantity of low-quality links. SEMs must teach their clients how to correctly request links from high-quality, non-competitive sites. With successful link development, Web sites can receive long-term, cumulative search engine traffic. Just do it right.

How Seasonality Affects Best Day of Week to Send Email

http://www.marketingsherpa.com/print.cfm?contentid=2927


How Seasonality Affects Best Day of Week to Send Email

02/25/2005

Last year, eROI and MarketingSherpa made waves by attacking conventional wisdom and suggesting that Monday might be a better day for some marketers to send email than the traditionally favored mid-week hump.
This week eROI released its data for Oct-Dec 2004 and MarketingSherpa got an early peek.
The bottom line? Performance by day of week is a moving target that may be affected by seasonality as well as overall email send trends. See the link at the end of this article for fascinating charts comparing send volumes, open rates, and click rates by day of week across the three quarters -- from May 2004 to December.
The research is based on open/click and send data for more than 60 million emails sent by more than 7,000 different marketers using the eROI system.
Clicks are defined as percent of emails sent minus hard bounces. (Some people call this "emails delivered" however we don't because it doesn't take filters into account.) Unless specified as Pacific Time, times of day were generalized to reflect whatever time zone the recipient is in.
It's not a strictly scientific study, but more of an indicator showing trends you should consider when planning 2005. Here are our quick notes on the results:
Monday -- High Opens, Higher Volume and So-So Clicks
When we last looked at the data, we saw that Mondays had strong open and click rates, but represented only 8% of weekly volume. By the fourth quarter, Monday's volume had grown to almost 15%. In part that's due to increased frequency overall, as well as the impact of the initial study, which opened the door for eROI's customers to Monday as a viable day for email.
Monday had the highest open rate of the week at over 32%, but a 4% click rate that was third, behind Tuesday and Thursday. The high open rate may reflect that many people get ready for their week by clearing their inboxes, and look through the weekend's email.
The low ratio of opens to clicks -- 12.5% -- seems to be related to two things. First, lots of weekend spam. Second, it may be that people are reading emails, but don't have the time to act on them on Monday, leaving that for later in the week (especially when it comes to shopping at work, which seems to happen on Thursdays).
Tuesday -- The Heavy Lifting
In the first half of last year, Tuesday was the most popular day to send email, with almost 29% of total volume. In the fourth quarter, Tuesday had dropped to the second most popular day with 19% of total volume. Its 23% open rate is third behind Monday and Thursday.
The CTR on Tuesday is 4.3%, second only to Thursdays. Interestingly, the click to open ratio on Tuesday is the highest of the week, with a higher percentage of people who opened the email going from open to click.
Wednesday -- High Volume and Lackluster Results
More than 21% of weekly email volume went out on Wednesday in the fourth quarter, the highest for the week, but down from 25% earlier in the year.
The click rate was only 3.3%, fourth for the work week, and just ahead of Fridays.
The expression 'email fatigue' has often been attached to Wednesday, with an assumption that by Wednesday the sheer volume of emails has taken its toll on interest.
But the results may be more about Wednesday itself than its place in the trend of the week, since Thursday shows an increase in clicks.
Thursday -- It Clicks
It's often assumed that greater volume decreases interaction, since recipients must choose among more messages. But the data for Thursdays suggests that may not be the case. It's the third highest day by volume, with almost 16% of the total, but has the highest click rate of the week at 4.7%, representing nearly 20% of all clicks. Mills believes that there is a natural tendency for emailers to want to put their messages in front of users as the weekend approaches, and most people do their 'real world' shopping.
Friday -- It Doesn't Click
Even though the volume numbers are only slightly lower than Thursdays, the open and click response is poor. Opens come in at 21%, and clicks at only 3.2%, both lows for the work week. Fridays also tie Wednesdays for the lowest click to open ratio at 15%. In this last fourth quarter, there were three Friday holidays (or Fridays next to holidays, at least) so that may have something to do with it. The data is in aggregate, so we can't be sure.
Weekends -- Gaining Ground
In previous quarters, weekend email volume made the data difficult to analyze, with wide variations in click and open rates. But with the large increase in volume, the numbers seem to have normalized. Both days have low open rates around 16%, but the click rates are substantially different, with Saturdays getting the week's lowest at 2% and Sunday getting about 3%. In terms of click to open ratio, Sundays are second only to Tuesdays at 18%. So while fewer people are opening their emails, a high percentage of them act on the messages.
How seasonality affects email response rates
We know from research and common sense that the volume of eretail emails skyrockets in the fourth quarter. Occasional emailers save their campaigns for the holiday season, and those who have regular email communications ramp up their frequency. Fortunately, consumer interest seems to rise as well. Fourth quarter open and click rates were lower than the rest of the year, but not by much, even though volume was approximately 29% higher than previous quarters.
Perhaps the most remarkable finding was the degree of change. Most email metrics move slowly into new trends, but in Q4 mailers and recipients behaved very differently than they had in previous quarters.
You can tell a lot about data from the shape of the curve formed by the numbers. In previous quarters, the graph of email volume looked like a witch's hat -- flat volume for ends of the week and a spike in the middle. However, in the fourth quarter that trend changed sharply as marketers seemed to explore the whole week.
"During the holiday season marketers are looking for every opportunity to connect with customers," said Jeff Mills, Senior Analyst for eROI. "Their frequency of mailing increases and they experiment with mailing on weekends, Mondays and Fridays to differentiate themselves from the barrage of email marketing."
In fact, in the previous quarter the volume of email sent on Saturday and Sunday represented around 5% of the total weekly volume, in Q4 the two combined for over 15%. However, overall performance on weekends lags behind the work week with lower click and open rates. Interestingly, Sundays did have the highest click to open ratio, a metric that can describe how relevant the messaging is to the consumer.
Mills suspects that during the holiday season, Saturdays are 'action days' when people are out of the house, shopping in the real world. Sunday may show better results because people are at home, and more likely to have the time to consider online shopping.
Fascinating side note: one fourth quarter characteristic is less attention to deliverability. eROI's VP of Marketing, Dylan Boyd, notes that in that heavily trafficked period, a huge number of eretailer messages ignored some deliverability basics, and had red-flagged words like "Free" and "Act Now" screaming from the subject lines. Seems that when the competition is especially heated, and consumers are ready to open their pocketbooks, some retailers throw deliverability concerns to the wind so they can be aggressive in their messaging.
MarketingSherpa's 5 Lessons
Because of the nature of this research, there's no way to separate out what kinds of marketers and campaigns saw success trying new days for their emails. But we do know that the numbers varied substantially from quarter to quarter.
Lesson #1. Experiment. Take random segments of your list and try different days of the week, and different hours of delivery. Make sure you are sending them the same email for comparison's sake, and that the segment is random.
Lesson #2. Factors change over time, so your opportunities are changing as well. For example, people may be in 'shopping mode' during more days of the week during the holiday season, but get back to business in January. Set up a monthly or quarterly schedule to test which day of the week performs best for your list segments, and make sure to regularly create new groups for testing.
Lesson #3. It's worth considering whether the flattening of the curve of email response across the week indicates that people at work are becoming more willing to engage in personal shopping and business. It's a trend we've seen in other research, and we suspect that it's especially true in the weeks leading up to the holidays, as the office environment is typically slower and more relaxed than at other times of the year.
Lesson #4. Consider altering day of week for sends based on seasonality. This may not be smart for beloved content newsletters that readers have come to expect on a certain day, but it's certainly doable for sales alerts.
Lesson #5. Forget the fiscal quarter and focus on the season. In future reports on this topic, we'll not lump months into quarters that don't make sense together -- such as August & September. If time of year really has such an impact on emailer and recipients' activities, we should examine the data that way.
Useful links related to this article:

ClickZ Experts on Interactive Marketing Strategies

ClickZ Experts on Interactive Marketing Strategies

Marketing in a 'Long Tail' World
By Pamela Parker
February 18, 2005



Bloglines was one of those companies I couldn't help but watch, partly because its site was so often pulled up in my browser. When Ask Jeeves bought it a couple of weeks ago, one word kept coming up among the Jeevesters: "addictive."

Why is Bloglines so captivating?

From the user perspective, it's because you can so easily keep up with hundreds of different sources of content: favorite blogs, online publications and keyword searches. What was Bloglines' business model? Subscription? Advertising? None of the above. Not yet, anyway. For advertisers, though, there were intriguing possibilities, which founder Mark Fletcher did more than hint about. Because of the acquisition, however, it looks like plans to implement advertising have been put on hold.

For industry-watchers, Bloglines and its ilk represent a fundamental change in media consumption -- from mass to micro, from push to pull, from human editing to machine editing. The problem for advertisers is they're largely cut out of the process, save for a few low-volume possibilities. Publishers, too, stand to lose, as the power of their brand is discounted and they potentially lose pageviews (and ad impressions) to feed aggregators.

All these issues were at the forefront at the recent Media Center Emerging Technology conference in Palo Alto, which really got me thinking. One concept that kept recurring was the "long tail" -- an idea that's been brewing out there for some time, and was notably explored by Wired editor-in-chief Chris Anderson back in October. The idea is that technology -- including XML feeds, recommendation engines, prospective search tools -- make it easier for consumers to find (and consume) niche content and products. So rather than a world of mass-market hits, we're living in a much broader universe in which each person's media and product consumption are tailored to his or her specific desires.

The technology "agents" making this possible are fueled by the incredible amount of data individuals generate online, whether deliberately or inadvertently. On flickr, 43Things (an Amazon.com investment) and del.icio.us, users create content and tag it with keywords. On Bloglines, people subscribe to feeds based on their interests. On Technorati, Feedster, PubSub, and more, people can create prospective searches (with keywords) that generate feed entries whenever related content pops up. There's also plenty of data generated by people's interactions with all of these tools. Needless to say, these data can be extremely valuable to advertisers who seek to reach audiences with particular interests.

I'm not advocating rummaging through the data willy-nilly, but so far all the above services are free to consumers. I think users understand the idea of trading off utility for advertising. If marketers also used the data to make ads especially relevant, that's all the better.

This concept is already playing out on 43 Things, a site dedicated to goal setting. On a page on which 16 people say they want to "actually learn to play my guitar," four Google AdSense for Content ads offer products and services aimed at helping people learn to play guitar. Could one get more targeted? No wonder Amazon.com invested in the start-up behind the site. Sell-side advertising, which my fellow ClickZ columnist Dave Morgan wrote about last week, is another way of using data to better match ads to content to audience.

There are a few missing pieces, however. One is publisher involvement. 43 Things, with its user-generated content (to which 43 Things owns the copyright), is one situation, but what about feed aggregators? Much of the content people view on the likes of Bloglines is created by major publishers, the rest is written by bloggers. The publishers or blog authors presumably own the copyright and would feel proprietary about having others make money from their content.

This has played out in microcosm in a dispute between Bloglines and trademark attorney Martin Schwimmer. Schwimmer, the author of Trademark Blog, asked the aggregator to remove his feed from its system because he didn't want Bloglines to benefit from ads sold to viewers based upon the content of his full-text feed. Undoubtedly, issues like this one have led Ask Jeeves to table the advertising issue until things settle down a bit.

When people subscribe to a prospective search feed, such as those provided by Technorati, Feedster or PubSub, things become still more removed. People aren't even subscribing to a publisher or a blog brand -- they just subscribe to a keyword or key phrase. Does the source of the information -- sometimes a brand the publisher cultivated through serious investment -- matter anymore? And if advertisers want to be associated with those brands -- and the Online Publishers Association says they do -- how do you accomplish that in this new world? How are publishers paid at all? There are plenty of experiments going on in that arena, but, as PubSub's CEO, Salim Ismail, told me, "I don't think the RSS model has fully settled down yet."

Missing piece number two is the brand advertiser. Text ads targeted by keywords are so far largely direct response players' domain. These advertisers pay when people click because that's what they're surfing for -- a visit to an e-commerce site, which hopefully results in a purchase. But what of the likes of Procter & Gamble, Unilever, Ford, and GM? Will text ads targeted by keywords provide them enough value? Seth Goldstein, co-founder of Majestic Research, feels ads in feeds must allow users to interact within the aggregator experience, not force them to click away (a behavior they're trying to avoid by using the aggregator in the first place). So what about ads that suggest users subscribe to a marketers' proprietary content feed? (GM is doing interesting things with feeds, even experimenting with podcasting.)

I've probably raised more questions than answers in this column, but that's the point. The new environment raises a lot of issues that must be pondered, explored and experimented with. Have you been thinking about these questions? I'd love to hear your thoughts.

ClickZ Experts on Email Delivery Systems

ClickZ Experts on Email Delivery Systems

How Geeks Can Increase E-Mail Delivery
By Kirill Popov and Loren McDonald
February 16, 2005



Ensuring permission-based e-mail is delivered to recipients' inboxes requires an equal amount of effort on marketing and technical fronts. Last month's column looked at ways marketers can bolster delivery. This month, we focus more on the technology behind e-mail sending and ways to ensure your e-mail delivery doesn't resemble a spam attack.



Following, 10 tactics to help increase the likelihood your e-mail messages will be accepted by the receiving ISP and avoid future deliverability problems.



Create a reverse DNS. Make sure your outgoing mailing IPs have valid RDNS (define) entries set up. This ensures when a receiving e-mail server checks who owns the IP trying to connect to it, you'll come up as the result, passing one of the many basic checks ISPs do to deter spammers.


Set up an SPF. SPF (define) is an additional step to verify an e-mail sender's identity. The protocol is fairly easy to set up; your network administrator should be able to do it in under five minutes. SPF adds another layer of authentication to your outgoing e-mail and protects against phishing (define) attacks on your brand. Some ISPs, such as AOL, require SPF to be implemented to be considered for their white lists.


Make only one connection. When connecting to an e-mail server, send only one message per connection. Some systems still try to shovel as many messages through one connection as possible, akin to throwing 500 e-mail addresses into the BCC field. ISPs frown on this technique, as spammers who want to get as many messages in before being blocked typically use this approach.


Limit sending rate. Just because you can send a million messages per hour doesn't mean doing so is prudent. Large spikes in traffic can be seen as dictionary (define) or denial of service (define) attacks. Though the ideal send volume depends on the list's nature (e.g., B2C or B2B), a good rule of thumb is to limit your transmission to 150-200K messages per hour. Keep in mind you will also need to accept feedback in the form of bounced messages; your outgoing speed shouldn't hamper your ability to receive bounces.


Accept bounces. Some e-mail systems, especially older ones, have a nasty habit of rejecting bounce messages. These "bounced bounces" arrive at the receiving ISP and can raise red flags. Nothing irks an ISP more than sending a response that a recipient doesn't exist, only to have the notification rejected and the mailings continue.


Validate HTML content. One of the dirtiest tricks in a spammer's arsenal is invalid, broken, and malicious HTML code, used to obfuscate his payload. If you use HTML in your messages, make sure your code is error-free and follows W3C HTML guidelines.


Avoid scripting. Security risks due to script vulnerabilities in e-mail browsers have increased over the years. The result is most scripts, such as JavaScript and VBScript, are stripped out of messages. Some e-mail systems reject messages outright if scripting is detected. For greatest compatibility, avoid using scripts in messages. Instead, drive your readers to your Web site, where dynamic components are easily rendered.


Understand content filtering basics. Ignorance of filtering approaches is no excuse for not getting messages delivered. Though no one can be expected to keep up with the nuances of common content filtering, you should understand the different kinds of filters and types of content considered high risk. Read bounce messages, track which messages had high bounce rates and low open rates, and see if you can reverse-engineer offending content.


Monitor delivery and bounce rates by ISP/domain. Periodically (if not after sending every message) run reports by major ISP and domain on your messages. Look for unusual bounce, unsubscribe, spam complaint, and open rates at specific domains. A domain showing off-kilter results likely has a filter or blocking problem.


Monitor spam complaints. Even the best permission marketers with world-class practices receive spam complaints, particularly if they have a high AOL subscriber base. Monitor the number of spam complaints for each mailing, and establish a benchmark average. Look for mailings with spam complaint percentages that vary from the norm. See if you can determine what may have caused the problem. Was it an overly aggressive subject line? Too many messages sent within a short time? The fact you sent an unexpected type of e-mail? Another factor? A high percentage of spam complaints may result in an ISP blocking current, or even future, messages.
Till next month, keep on deliverin'.