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Email Marketing Answers the most common Statistics Frustration.
by Ross Lasley
I love empowering businesspeople with information about the Internet – it's my personal passion, it's what makes me get up in the morning, it's what I love to do. |
When I explain web site statistics to someone who has never heard of them before, I usually ask if they've ever seen one of those counters on the bottom of the web site (you know those little odometer looking things). Most have, and then I remind them it's been some time since they've seen such a counter. The basic reason is that statistics have gone behind the scenes and gotten much better.
As most of you know, a web site statistics program can tell you how many people came to the site, which pages they clicked on, what time of day they came, what kind of computer they have, what products they purchased, if any, and lots and lots of other details.
When someone who isn't familiar with web site statistics first understands them, they often want to know why we can't identify the individual person who took the actions the statistics report. I then explain the reality that people visiting web sites are not individually identifiable unless they log in; tracking systems do use cookies to identify repeat visitors, but this is not a wholly reliable technology, and it simply tells you that the person has been there before, not who the person is.
Here at KISS we spend a lot of time talking about the most desired response, or MDR – which the vast majority of the time is to buy something. The secondary desired response or SDR is almost always e-mail address collection.
There are lots of powerful and impressive features of e-mail marketing, and the topic could be discussed over many newsletters. For our purposes here, we'll talk about one simple feature of e-mail marketing – the statistics it offers.
E-mail marketing statistics answer the most common statistics frustration – who did that clicking.
E-newsletters are sent to specific individuals. The links within the e-newsletters are formatted to indicate who received it. This means your newsletter statistics can tell you who, specifically, clicked on your email offer.
This feature of the newsletter statistics allows for grouping and segmentation, one of the most powerful off-line marketing techniques there is.
Say you sent an e-newsletter to 2000 customers – the newsletter contains several topics (perhaps you have three kinds of products) – the statistics will help you determine who of your customers are interested in which topics.
When done correctly, this information allows you to segment your list, sending customers who are interested in only one type of product you offer information on just that type of product. The possibilities for segmentation and grouping your marketing materials through the use of this technique are limitless. The important thing for you to remember is the e-mail marketing not only provides statistics - - it finally tells you precisely who did the clicking.
Armed with this information, your e-mail marketing efforts will become more and more effective over time. It is possible to achieve conversion rates of over 25% -- amazing results that are the direct result of the type of statistics email marketing offers.
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Search Takes on New Life
by Josiah Cole
This spring Amazon.com launched a beta of their new competitor into the world of online search. Residing at A9.com, this new entry into the hotly contested world of online search boasts many features unmatched by rivals Google, Yahoo! and MSN. Using the new and rising star Ajax as it's code base (which also powers Google Maps and Flickr), A9 offers a powerful interface that offers the web searcher new tools to help find information. |
The beauty of Ajax applications is their great power (which rivals desktop based software) and interface, which goes beyond what most people are accustomed to with typical online applications. Many people were introduced to Ajax with Google Maps, Gmail and Suggest, which offered slight variations for a browser based application. OS independent and browser based, these applications are run without the user having to install any third party applications or plug-ins (a good thing these days with so many scripting holes and fears).
Amazon's block-view technology is the most interesting of all the new tools. The beta, allows you to see, using a split layout, the street photo view and two overhead maps of about 20 major cities. You can navigate using the overhead map as well as the photos, where you can “drive” down each street and visually see what's on both sides. Clicking the block view opens a new window with a larger shot of the selected image. Amazon employed teams of vans for over a year to take over 30 million images (so far) of the top 20 US cities (see Wired article for more information)
The regular search engine by default splits search results into 2 window panes, the left for regular text results and the right for image results. While admittedly a small change over similar systems from Google and Yahoo!, having the images right there without having to toggle is a nice addition, especially for people who, like me, have higher resolution monitors. However the user has further control over what panels are shown - - simply checking off the box for books, yellow pages, movies or blogs adds another panel immediately to the view so the user can customize the layout to his or her liking. This is where the power of Ajax comes into play, as the interface for searching is fully customizable on the spot, no re-loading pages or “saving” with web forms. In order to save your settings and customize the engine further, you can use your regular Amazon.com username and password. A9 also tracks your history, bookmarks, diary and offers pane to help you “discover” new sites and information.
The world of search, once thought dead business-wise, is starting to emerge as the next great battle, and it goes beyond simply CPC (which kick started this innovation-fest in the first place, injecting tons of money into the search business). New takes on web searching like A9 and some of the new tools from Yahoo! and Google are proving that innovation in search is not dead, and that people can change the way they search for information and products. New revenue models beyond CPC can emerge from this technology as people move beyond just searching for text based web sites and begin to look for local services, videos, photos and other more dynamic media.
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No More Pity Pot Tunes for Small Businesses |
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by Michael McGrath
I'm accustomed to hearing the old refrain, “Nobody likes me, everybody hates me, think I'll go eat worms.” Small and medium businesses sing that song with regularity, feeling neglected by Internet giants like Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft, who have tailored their online advertisement sales to the big boys.
Seems they'll have to learn a new song now, though. Last week, Yahoo! released the beta of an expansion to its existing Yahoo Publisher Network, which enables large Web sites such as CNN.com and ESPN.com to run Yahoo sponsor ads and receive revenue when users click on those ads. Now Yahoo is extending that opportunity to small and medium-size Web publishers through a beta self-service platform that allows companies to choose what kind of ads they want to be placed on their sites.
Through the Yahoo! self-service center, Web publishers such as Weblog and e-commerce sites will be able to choose not only ads linked contextually to the topic of their sites, but also ads in other topics that they think their visitors might be interested in. They'll be able to select from a scroll-down menu in a service called YQ Beta, according to Yahoo. They also can choose the look of the ads so it fits into their sites, and also block URLs from sponsors that might be competitive to their site.
Google has offered this service for a while, now, and I've used it on my sites (yes, I'm a small business, too) with success. Yahoo! has rolled out this beta for testing to 2000 invited publishers, and expects the final version to be available by year's end. Competition is great, and I love seeing Google and Yahoo! slugging it out like this. The stakes remain high, with billions in play, and this is very good news to the estimated 1.05 million small businesses in the United States.
No more “poor, poor, pitiful me” for the small businesses - - time to learn a new tune. |
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