OTOinsights

Bluestreak IonMX Acquisition

One to One Interactive announced today that it has acquired Bluestreak's IonMX (http://www.ionmx.net), a Rhode Island-based email marketing solutions and services company, as well as its messaging platform and corresponding technologies. The IonMX brand, formerly of Bluestreak, Inc., will be incorporated into the growing portfolio of opt-in messaging products offered by One to One’s OTOlabs division. The current version of the IonMX technology is an advanced permission-based marketing platform with applications for both email and RSS. Additional features, including SMS capabilities, are currently in development, and will be released in the coming months.

Desktop Applications, Screen Mates, Widgets, Gadgets, Modules, Oh My!!!

Consumer control of media continues to shatter old paradigms of content publishing and distribution.   More and more enterprises are exploring disaggregated media strategies that embrace the web as a platform for services and allowing consumers of information to install, embed, and/or configure small executable applications that are customized to fit into very individualized and personalized media portfolio.  From Branded Desktop Applications such as Southwest Airline’s Ding! to Apple’s iPhone Mobile Widgets, the marketplace is heating up with new and innovative solutions to answer the consumer cry for rich, modular, and customizable streams of content and information. 

Last week, One to One Interactive and MITX hosted the second Digital Marketing Series event that explored these emerging platforms, case examples of successful deployments, and best practices.  Participating in the session was Chris Heitmann, EVP One to One Interactive & Managing Director of OTOlabs, Stephen DiMarco, CMO of Compete.com, Nick Quagliara, M.S. IU School of Informatics, and Dan Gallagher, VP Audience & Architecture of NetworkWorld. 

The presentation and survey data that was discussed at the session may be downloaded here:

Speakers' Presentation (PDF, 11MB)
Compete Disaggregated Media Survey (July 2007)

Special thanks goes to Jeffrey Bardzell, Ph.D. and Shaowen Bardzell, Ph.D. for their valuable contributions.

eROI

MarketingVOX reported today that in the first quarter of 2006, the best email open and click rates were on weekends.  This report was based on  eROI's most recent, Q1 2006 email study. The report  also disclosed that open and click rates increased significantly in the first quarter (40 percent and 60 percent increases, respectively), compared with rates for Q4 2005, when open and click rates decreased 29 percent and 21 percent, respectively, from the previous quarter.

The highest click rates in the first quarter were on Sundays - 6.6 percent - when the open rates were 25.9 percent, the second-highest open rate for the week. Tuesdays had the highest open rates at 26.4 percent, and the second-highest click rate, at 6.2 percent.

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.