OTOinsights

One to One Interactive Represented At New MITX Event

Earlier today, I had the pleasure of being a panelist for a new MITX event called the Marketing & Technology Series.  This new track is focused, as the topic might suggest, on bringing Marketers and Technologists together (A scary concept, yes?) to discuss insights and swap war stories about the technical/integration side of the business.  Joining me on the panel was Marc LeCours, moderator and Director of Consulting Services for Unica, Nick Ruotolo, VP of Analytics at VistaPrint, and Don White, Managing Director at Quaero.  The topic of the day was Data Collection & Enhancement, broken up into 2 sections. 

First, we spoke about the data itself. Where it comes from, how to qualify it, and how to aggregate it in ways that make the data most actionable.  While many insights came up, there were some consistent messages that came out of all our experiences:

1. Before worrying about your data, make sure you have clearly outlined your business goals. Then you'll have plenty of time to delve into your data sources.
2. When goals are in place, be sure to bring both your technical/data stakeholders as well as business folks to the table AS EARLY AS POSSIBLE IN THE PROJECT.  This will save you time and money down the line and avoid significant rework.  This is also the appropriate time to lay all your data sources on the table, identify gaps, and work to fill them.
3. Take the time to clean, de-duplicate, and rework your data up-front as necessary to support your long-term goals. Otherwise, you're always playing catch-up with your own content.

Second, we addressed how to make the best use of the data as part of program execution, customer follow-up, targeted messaging, and the like.  Again, there was consensus in the takeaways:

1. Test & Learn - Best-in-class marketers are not afraid to spend the time and money trying numerous channels for their campaigns.  Targeted/personalized e-mails, "scenario" a/b testing on Websites, and path analysis are all effective ways to drive traffic and conversions.  However, it's important to remember that any particular idea has a window of effectiveness before you need to pull up the tent and move on. 
2. Measure, Measure, Measure! - There is no excuse for not measuring the success rate of every campaign you put into market.  Don't assume that buying a huge block of paid search advertising is going to give you the ROI you expect.  Yes, you may be converting more customers, but pay careful attention to your cost per acquisition.  Thanks go out to my learned colleague Charlie Ballard for stressing this point to me before the event.
3. Maintain - You invested good money into building your database. Continue to expend the efforts needed to maintain the quality of your data, otherwise you will find your $50,000.00 - $5,000,000.00 database is out of date 2 weeks after you begin your campaigns. 

Again, numerous stories and insights were traded during the event, but this gives you a general idea of the content.  I encourage folks to keep an eye on http://www.mitx.org to learn about upcoming events.  Thanks also go out to my OTO cohorts for coming and not heckling supporting me during the event.

One to One Interactive Briefs RBC Investments

  Last night One to One Interactive joined other senior executives from Digitas, BrightCove, Burst Media, WhenU.com, MediaContacts, Tech Target, and Yes Direct to brief a group of RBC Institutional Investors and Traders on current trends associated with the Digital Marketing Industry.

Specific attention was paid to price inflation in in both paid search and display advertising media, Q4 2005 spending, broadband advertising and content distribution, direct navigation developments, and Microsoft's foray into search.

Monitoring your Online Reputation

The most recent findings from the Pew Internet & American Life tracking surveys and comScore Media Metrix estimates 60 million American adults are using search engines on a typical day.  Furthermore, they report in two surveys of American adults conducted between January 13 and March 21 that involved 2,871 Internet users, that 9% of Internet users now say they have created blogs and 25% of Internet users say they read blogs.  Another way to render these numbers is to note that 6% of the entire U.S. adult population (Internet users and non-users alike) have created blogs. That’s one out of every 20 people. And 16% of all U.S. adults (or one in six people) are blog readers which is approximately 20% of the size of the newspaper-reading population. 

Reporters, consumers, clients, investors and employees are learning about your organization every day when they search the Internet. Tracking, measuring and managing your company's online reputation (or your competitor's) is becoming increasingly important.  Your company's reputation is its most important asset, not being immediately aware of a negative or erroneous article, blog post or forum comments can begin to quickly and significantly errode that asset.  One nasty rumor that circulates freely on the Internet can have a lasting and damaging effect on your company's reputation, image, brands and public relations efforts. An article entitled "The blog in the corporate machine", published on February 9th, 2006 in The Economist, states:

The spread of “social media” across the internet—such as online discussion groups, e-mailing lists and blogs—has brought forth a new breed of brand assassin, who can materialise from nowhere and savage a firm's reputation. Often the assault is warranted; sometimes it is not. But accuracy is not necessarily the issue. One of the main reasons that executives find bloggers so very challenging is because, unlike other “stakeholders”, they rarely belong to well-organised groups. That makes them harder to identify, appease and control.

Monitoring thousands of news sites, millions of Web logs (blogs), message boards and user groups can be a daunting and time consuming task, however today's content discovery and  mining technologies can help your company track, react to and counteract damaging rumors and issues that exist and thrive in blogs and elswhere the Internet. But doing so requires a commitment that stretches from the CSR department to the executive suite.

Corporate marketing and PR departments must begin to augment their current interactive strategies with a Consumer Generated Media (CGM) strategy that focuses on anticipation, prevention, management and education.

Nearly 90 % of Internet Users Share Content via Email

Today, The Center for Media Research highlighted a study by Sharpe Partners that revealed that 89 % of adult Internet users in America share content with others via email. Conducted by Greenfield Omnibus, Sharpe Partners polled 1,071 adults from September 23-26, 2005.  Notable among their findings:

• 63% of their respondents share content at least once a week.

Frequency US Internet Users Share Content	(% of respondents)
Daily or most days	25%
Several times a week	23
Once a week	15
Several times a month	11
Several times a year	15
Never	11
Source: Sharpe Partners, Inc, January 2006

• Humorous content is the most viral material with 88% of the respondents forwarding jokes and/or cartoons.

Content Shared by US Internet Users (%of respondents)
Content	% Sharing
Humorous/jokes/cartoons	88%
News item/article	56
Health care/medical	32
Religious/spiritual	30
Games	25
Sports/hobbies	24
Business/personal finance	24
Sexually provocative content	12
Source: Sharpe Partners, Inc, January 2006

• Adding overt brand messages only slightly reduces the likelihood that the content will be shared.

Impact of Brand Sponsorship on Sharing	(% of respondents)
Positive	19%
None	74
Negative	7
Source: Sharpe Partners, Inc, January 2006

One of the more interesting items the study uncovered were profile characteristics of individuals most likely to forward e-mail content. 

• Most likely sharer is a woman in her late 30's/early 40's who resides in the South or Midwest.
• 64% percent of the female respondents share content at least once a week versus 58% of the males
• Residents of the South (68%) and Midwest (66%) are likely to be more frequent forwarders than their counterparts in the West (58%) and East (55%).
• 63%  of African-Americans and Caucasians share content at least once a week
• 56% of Hispanic/Latin-American and 46% of Asian-Americans share at least once a week
• 64% of those without a college degree share weekly versus 61% with a college degree.

iMedia Brand Summit

Over the next two days I will be reporting from the iMedia Brand Summit in Bonita Springs, Fl.  Held this year at the Hyatt Regency in Coconut Point, the summit's agenda includes:

• Keynote Address: "Convergence Culture: Consumer Participation and Branded Entertainment" by Henry Jenkins III, DeFlorz Professor of Humanities and Director of Comparative Media Studies, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
• Panel Presentation: "The Future of Media Planning: Art or Science?"
• Targeting: Contextual & Behavioral - Striking a Balance
• "Media Without Borders: How the world’s great media organizations are transforming themselves on the web.”
• Integrated Marketing Case Study
• Podcasting & iPod Videos

Stay tuned for my thoughts, notes, and photos.

Jeremi Karnell-President, One to One Interactive

Trackback (Ping) Spam

   It's nothing new...but its the first time its happened to me.  Yes, I have finally been effected by Trackback Spam (or Ping Spam).  For those of you that are still unfamiliar with some of the concepts and terminology associated with blogging, Trackback is a method by which a web publisher can reference another site or post by providing a link to it on their site. It acts to notify a blogger owner that someone has commented on that post in another blog. In this way, readers can see an aggregated list of which sites refer to the post and can read additional comments on that post.

Not only is a Trackback a good method to provide appropriate reference to original thoughts/ideas, its also used to establish link authority in many search engine's natural ranking algorithms.

Trackback Spam is a method where someone (insert: unsavory, bottom feeding, white trash, jackasses) submits a TrackBack URL to a bloggers post that links through to a site that has nothing to do with the post (generally hawking MP3 ringtones,  male erectile enhancements, college degrees for cheap etc.).  In my inaugural experience with this annoying trend, I had a trackback url submitted to a post that I had written in my personal blog about a club in Boston called Sanctuary.  The title of the Trackback was "Ringtone for Motorola"-click on image above.  It linked through to a site site offering...you guessed it, RINGTONES!

Since I require any Trackbacks to be approved by me first (instead of being automatically posted), I was able to delete it before the link was published.  Since that time, I have caught two more incidents of Trackback Spam on OTOinsights. 

Thankfully, I am using Six Apart's Typepad to manage both my personal and professional blogs.  They have been very committed to ensure that their platform helps bloggers stem the tide of Trackback/Comment Spam.  To that end, I see this trend as a minor annoyance, but nothing to get too worked up about.

Jeremi Karnell-President, One to One Interactive

One to One joins CTAM

 

One to One Interactive has recently joined CTAM, an association that focuses on cable telecommunications marketing.  As the acting Director of One to One's Technology/Media/Telecommunications (TMT) vertical practice, I am excited about the opportunity for the firm to begin to participate in CTAM conferences, awards, and networking events.  Furthermore, this move will allow us to work even closer with our current TMT customers to share best practices and develop industry strategies and approaches to digital marketing. 

Jeremi Karnell-President, One to One Interactive

The End of the Internet?

The Nation is currently running an article about internet service provider’s ability to control content, and their willingness to do so.  What the piece foretells is a PPC (pay per content not pay per click) world were sites that attract a lot of traffic would have to pay ISPs for the use of the pipeline.  This would have one of two effects, either traffic hogs (Google) would have to pass the fees on to users or advertisers. Google VP Vinton G. Cerf stated that this "would do great damage to the Internet as we know it."  This article sounds a little far fetched, until you begin to look at the warning signs that have been popping up lately

Verizon trys to charge Google for access : Verizon is beginning to set aside up to 80% of its consumer pipeline for its own TV service, the reason stated has to do with maximizing ROI on network instillations.  Content providers would then have to compete for space as consumers expect more and more. ISP's could potentially alter the quality or quantity of the content from any online source to its' user base

For Example "Customers of Apple's iTunes music store, say, might find their downloads slowed down, or blocked completely, if Apple refuses to pay a transaction fee to their ISP. Users of the Vonage Internet phone service might lose their dial tones if their Internet provider wants to sell its own brand of phone service."

"When you introduce discrimination of any kind, it's anti-innovative," says David Isenberg, a networking pioneer who is currently a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University.

And Finally, "BellSouth and Verizon have been trying to force big Web sites to pay extortion-type fees if the sites want adequate bandwidth, with Google a prime target. But Google has news for them: It won't pay".  At least for now.

All this comes on the heels of an OTO Insights post a few days ago. Yahoo! search is currently blocking paid search content from competitors in partner SBC's footprint.  Is this the beginning of the end of internet neutrality?