Spending On Email, Social And Search Rising

Posted by on Feb 14, 2010 in Blog, E-mail Marketing, Interactive Marketing | No Comments

ExactTarget released a study last week which indicates marketers plan to increase spending related to email, social media, and other non-traditional outbound channels this year.

The study of 1,000-plus marketers shows 54% of marketers said they will boost budgets for email marketing, and about 66% in social media (even though about 80% of those acknowledged the difficulty in tracking ROI in the medium).

Delving deeper into the report, the research showed social networking is the “fastest growing digital marketing channel.” More than 70% plan to increase spending on  “off-site” social media offerings such as Facebook and Twitter, and about 65% in “on-site” areas such as “blogs or ratings and reviews.”

The Anatomy of an Email Presentation

Posted by on Jan 24, 2010 in Blog, Interactive Marketing | No Comments

Abbreviated Marketing News Round-up

Posted by on Jan 18, 2010 in Blog, Marketing News Round-up | No Comments

Top Ad Networks for December: AOL, Yahoo, Google

AOL Advertising, the Yahoo Network and the Google Ad Network were the top three internet ad networks in the US in December 2009, according to a ranking of the top 15 ad networks based on their reach among US internet users, by comScore, Inc.

For December, the AOL network reached 187 million US internet users – or 91% of the total audience – and grew 8% over the same period in 2008, comScore reported. The #2 ranked Yahoo Network reached 180.9 million users (also up 8% over December 2008), and the #3 ranked Google Ad Network reaches 178.1 million (up 9%).

The fastest growing ad network by audience reach among the top 15 was Microsoft Media Network US, which grew 31%.

Email Follow-Up Brings Abandoned Shopping Carts To Life

Email marketing firms are often hired to develop systems and tactics that are looking to serve as what another industry may refer to as “a closer.” Shoppers graze online retail sites and place items into a shopping cart, but then abandon the process.

It’s an engaged audience that would seem to be low-hanging fruit for marketers. How much money is left on the table, as it were? A new report from Experian, which owns the CheetahMail email marketing business, shows that 61% of items left in an online shopping cart are not purchased.

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The research found that email campaigns with no offer brought an open rate of 15% and click rate of 12%. Those with a special offer had 11% and 7%, respectively.
 More importantly, research found that no-incentive-emails had a transaction rate of 2.9%—compared to 1.8% for those with an enticement.

New York Times Ready to Charge Online Readers

New York Times Chairman Arthur Sulzberger Jr. appears close to announcing that the paper will begin charging for access to its website, according to people familiar with internal deliberations. After a year of sometimes fraught debate inside the paper, the choice for some time has been between a Wall Street Journal-type pay wall and the metered system adopted by the Financial Times, in which readers can sample a certain number of free articles before being asked to subscribe. The Times seems to have settled on the metered system.

United States Internet Speed is on the Decline

According to Akamai’s Q3 State of the Internet report, the United States’ internet speed did not qualify for a place in the top ten list of countries with the fastest internet in the world, and its average overall speed has actually decreased by 2.4% year-over-year from 2008 to 2009.

The United States actually ranked 18th out of 203 nations tested in terms of average connection speeds, falling behind speed leaders like South Korea, Japan, and Hong Kong.

Would Apple Dump Google for Bing?

This week’s BusinessWeek cover story is about the increasingly competitive relationship between once-cozy Apple and Google. It contains a bold forecast by Jonathan Yarmis, a research fellow at consulting firm Ovum:

Yarmis thinks Apple may soon decide to dump Google as the default search engine on its devices, primarily to cut Google off from mobile data that could be used to improve its advertising and Android technology. [Apple CEO] Jobs might cut a deal with—gasp!—Microsoft to make Bing Apple’s engine of choice, or even launch its own search engine, Yarmis says. “I fully expect [Apple] to do something in search,” he adds. “If there’s all these advertising dollars to be won, why would it want Google on its iPhones?”

Well, Apple would want Google on its iPhones because it sells phones. Hands up, who wants a Google-less iPhone? But there’s a nagging truth here: Search engines on mobile devices haven’t been figured out yet. Typing text into a little box is aggravating. Voice-powered search tools have a high goof rate.

Abbreviated Marketing News Round-up

Posted by on Jan 14, 2010 in Blog, Marketing News Round-up | No Comments

Per-Person Online Video Viewing Jumps 13%

Total video streams, streams per viewer and time per viewer were all up in December 2009, led by 13% growth in time per viewer, according to US online video viewing data from The Nielsen Company. The December 2009 Nielsen VideoCensus reveals that unique viewers of online video topped 137 million for the month, representing a 10.3% year-over-year increase. Total streams viewed totaled more than 10.7 billion, a nearly 12% increase over 2008. Approximately 78 streams per viewer were watched, a 1.4% increase over 2008. Time per viewer increased 13.2% to 193.2 minutes, Nielsen said.

Just Two in Five Americans Read Newspaper Daily

Just two in five US adults (43%) say they read a daily newspaper—either online or in print—almost every day, while 72% read one at least once a week and 81% read one at least once a month, according to a December 2009 Adweek Media/Harris Poll.

The study found that one in ten adults (10%) say they never read a daily newspaper.

A similar study by Scarborough Research found that 74% of Americans say they still read a newspaper with at least some frequency. Readership levels in that study were higher among the affluent, educated and white-collar workers.

Gartner: Mobile To Outpace Desktop Web By 2013

Mobile phones will overtake PCs as the most common Web access devices worldwide by 2013, according to a new forecast by research firm Gartner. That’s an even more aggressive outlook than Morgan Stanley’s projection that the mobile Web will outstrip the desktop Web in five years.

Gartner estimates the combined installed base of smartphones and browser-equipped enhanced phones will surpass 1.82 billion units by 2013, eclipsing the total of 1.78 billion PCs by then.

But the firm warns that many sites still are not optimized for the mobile Web, even though cell users expect to make fewer clicks on their phones than on a PC. To successfully expand into mobile, publishers will have to reformat sites from the small form-factor of handheld devices.

VW Is Back In Super Bowl After Nine Years

For the first time in nine years, Volkswagen of America will advertise during the Super Bowl. The company will premiere a 30-second spot—the first from new agency Deutsch L.A.—during the third quarter of Super Bowl XLIV. The ad uses the “Das Auto” tagline introduced in 2008.

It will be followed by a new retail-centric campaign that the company says is meant to “increase model awareness and familiarity by reminding consumers of all the new Volkswagen products on the road,” per a company release.

International Email Marketing Metrics Benchmark Study

How do your email programs measure up against peers worldwide? Silverpop analyzed 7,000 emails sent to 188 countries to find the answers. Our latest study goes beyond traditional metrics to provide a baseline scorecard that enables you to gain a better understanding of where you stand.

Abbreviated Marketing News Round-up

Posted by on Jan 11, 2010 in Blog, Marketing News Round-up | No Comments

An Introduction to Website Split Testing

It’s a fact of life that when people hire a web designer, they don’t just want a website, they want a website that does something! There can be a world of difference between these two things. The “action” they need the website to take for them can be one of several common things: selling products for their business (an e-commerce site), generating sales leads, and/or providing free information in the hope that the visitor will make a purchase from the company at a later date.

Super Bowl Ad Prices Fall; Still Cost Millions

TNS Media Intelligence said Monday that 30-second commercials during next month’s Super Bowl on CBS are selling for between $2.5 million and $2.8 million. That’s a drop from last year, when ads averaged $3 million on NBC.

Some big players like Pepsi and General Motors are staying on the sidelines. This leaves holes for smaller companies like Diamond Foods and Dr Pepper Snapple to use the Super Bowl to get their wares in front of 100 million viewers who are practically guaranteed to watch their ads.

It’s unclear how much revenue Super Bowl advertising will generate for CBS. Nearly all of the 62 commercial slots have been sold. While not conceding that ad rates have slipped, CBS said the pace of sales has been better than it was for NBC a year ago.

Best-Liked TV Commercials of 2009

TV commercials featuring Clydesdale horses, a candy-eating llama, a pampered puppy and a golf-savvy baby made the 2009 list of the top 10 best-liked TV commercials, as reported by The Nielsen Company. The media measurement firm also released is lists of the top 10 most effective product placements on brand opinion and the top 1o programs with product-placement activity.

Growing Your List Via Social Media & Blogs

Social media can help grow your brand and possibly your revenues, but have you thought about how it can also help grow your email marketing list? Let’s explore some ideas for how to capitalize on this hot marketing medium.

Great Creative: Keen Promotional E-mail

Posted by on Oct 8, 2009 in Blog, Great Creative | No Comments

Most Popular E-mail Apps Feb-09

Posted by on Mar 27, 2009 in Blog, E-mail Marketing, Research | No Comments

Campaign Monitor analyzed six months of data covering more than 250 million opens. The result—a detailed analysis of e-mail client popularity and usage trends over time. I still find it stunning that only 6.1% are using Outlook ’07. You can review the entire analysis with a lot of valuable information and charts here.