Left to its own devices, email marketing is unlikely to survive. However, if email marketers take responsibility for developing great strategy and execution, we are likely to bring on its evolution.
Continue reading »Spread the word: 
« Read the whole series: 1,2 »
In this teleseminar, Netconcepts’ founder Stephan Spencer moderates a panel of email marketing experts, including Chris Baggot, Rok Hrastnik, Eric Kirby, Jim Sterne, and Shar VanBoskirk. The output of which is an insight into email marketing’s true power and potential. Produced by MarketingProfs.com.
Read the Executive Summary: part 1 and part 2
Download the Transcript: PDF (300 K)
Spread the word:
ShopperANSWERS offers a retail marketing and measurement solution that helps retailers keep informed of shopper behavior at the moment of purchase across a wide variety of retail outlets. Their corporate website gives an insight into the minds of shoppers. The site isn’t just marketing fluff; it educates the visitor on such topics as observational research and intercept interviews.
[ database | client admin cms | SEO ]
Visit The Site: ShoppersAnswers
Geneva Health is a recruitment company specializing in the health sector, including nursing, medical, clinical support and allied health professionals. Geneva Health has three websites targeting their three primary markets — the UK, Australia and New Zealand. Each is a functionally-rich job site with supporting helpful articles, including such things as CV guidelines, making an overseas move, registration requirements and more. Job applicants can of course apply online. The site is built with search engines in mind, and includes spider friendly URLs along with optimized HTML and content.
[ database | client admin cms | SEO ]
Visit The Site: Geneva Health
eTail East 2005 — Philadelphia
Another innovation at eTail. Set away from the hurly burly of the conference, we are providing you with the opportunity to get an in-depth diagnostic treatment for your site.
4 dedicated stations will help you optimize every element of your website, from Search, to Analytics to CRM and Visualization, there is a cure for every pain point! Make sure you sign up for your 30-minute session today.
Spread the word:
Here’s a startling bit of research, done by EmailLabs and written up in MarketingSherpa, for all of you folks responsible for crafting email campaigns and newsletters:
This [past] fall tens of millions of emails from permission mailers were tested for a brand new metric: actual read time.
Turns out 15-20 seconds was the average. Consider the last email campaign or newsletter you sent. Could a typical reader skim the entire thing, digest the graphics, and decide to click on the best item for them in just 15-20 seconds?
Yes, people. You read that right. The read time of your precious prose is, on average, a lousy 15 seconds… 20 seconds, tops!
You labor so hard over that e-newsletter: spending countless hours writing it, then perfecting it, then testing it, then further refining it… and to what end? The bloody inconsiderate recipient spends a mere 15 seconds absorbing it! How rude!
So, what to do? Email marketers must become masters of the 15-second soundbite. The conventional wisdom in email marketing of short sentences, short paragraphs, placing the call-to-action so it appears above-the-fold in the preview pane, etc. etc. just won’t come close to cutting it any more.
Based on this study, I’ve been totally rethinking how we’re doing our regular “communiques” to our clients & partners. Perhaps we should ditch our current approach of a roughly-monthly, short-and-sharp 400-word e-newsletter? I think we’ll test another approach: where I strive to deliver a single idea or tip that offers real value to the recipient and coaxes that person into engaging in a dialogue with me — within a mere 80 words! (This paragraph, including this parenthetical note, is 80 words.)
Bite-sized chunks of relevant advice, personalized to that individual client’s situation, sent on more regular intervals than our current “communique”… Sound like a plan? (Actually it sounds like an extranet blog, but done less frequently and delivered via email instead of RSS.)
Spread the word:
I found the eyetracking study from Enquiro and Did-It unveiled last week at Search Engine Strategies and covered in Search Day fascinating. The aggregate heat map shown on the right (larger version here) shows where participants focused their eyes (and their attention) the most. As you can see, the first listing not only drew the most attention; the full listing was read more fully from left to right, than other listings.
Visibility drops the further down the search results you go, and clickthroughs drop even more markedly (as you can see from the graphs below). This got me thinking about Zipf’s Law. Zipf’s Law is applicable to Top Ten Lists, as Seth Godin explains, perhaps Zipf’s Law might be applicable to the SERPs (search engine results pages) too? (In general terms, Zipf’s Law states that being #1 is much, much better than being #2 which is much, much better than being #3 and so on. So dominating a Top 10 list is critical.) Although these graphs don’t follow Zipf’s Law exactly, nonetheless given this data I’d consider it foolish to be complacent if your search listings are not at the very top of the SERPs.
What is it about searchers that makes them so blind to relevant results further down the page? Is this due to the “implied endorsement” effect, where searchers tend to simply trust Google to point them to the right thing? Or is it just the way humans are wired, to make snap decisions, as Malcolm Gladwell insightfully explains in his new book, Blink? According to the study, 72% of searchers click on the first link of interest, whereas 25.5% read all listings first, then decide. My guess is that both effects (”implied endorsement” and “rapid cognition”) play a role in searcher behavior.
A few other important take-aways from the study:
In all, a superb research study. Great job Did-It, Enquiro, and EyeTools!
Spread the word:
This ecommerce site offers a range of items from cabinet hardware to telephone booths and from rubber duckies to magnificent clawfoot bathtubs. AntiqueHardware.com offers original restored antiques as well as flawless replica pieces perfect for any home or office. Visitors are greeted with their own account pages and an easily navigated shopping cart experience.
[ database | client admin cms | SEO ]
Visit The Site: Antique Hardware
Circulation and the Internet: Co-hosted by American Business Media and National Trade Circulation Foundation, Inc. — New York City
Gloria Adams, Pennwell - Moderator
Laura Wilson, NEJM - Panelist
Sean Fulton, GCN Publishing - Panelist
Brian Klais, Netconcepts - Panelist
Spread the word:
The Marketing Association, formerly the New Zealand DMA, is an industry body serving New Zealand marketers with professional development, networking, advocacy, government lobbying, and more.
Being on the leading edge of marketing in New Zealand, the organisation needed a website that conveyed that they understood the evolving model of the Web from passive publishing to participatory conversations. So the site was redesigned to have a very bloggy feel to it. Functionality includes a banner ad management system, content management system, and a members-only area.
[ database | client admin cms | SEO ]
Visit The Site: Marketing Association NZ
HEADQUARTERS
2820 Walton Commons West, Suite 123
Madison, WI 53718 USA
Phone: (608) 285-6600
Toll-free: 888 207-1109
REGIONAL OFFICE
36 Anzac Rd., Browns Bay
Auckland, New Zealand
Phone: (+64) 9 476-4601
infodesk@netconcepts.com
