eMedia Daily

Search is First?

In a recent article on eMarketer, they site a research study by Forbes, indicating:

Forty-eight percent of marketers said that search engine optimization (SEO) was the best method for generating conversions online. More than one-half of marketers with budgets over $1 million agreed.

Following search, the best method for “smaller markets” was email and email newsletters. As a marketing professional, I’d be curious to know how these marketers were measuring the effectiveness of SEO as a marketing tool. My experiences with SEO indicate that they do generate additional traffic, but to tell which elements of SEO drove which traffic; well, I haven’t personally seen this in action.

As a searcher (and buyer), if I know there’s a product I want, then yes, I’ll likely search for that product name to find the best price. I don’t get to the site and make a purchase because of their SEO. I make the purchase based on my need, and probably an offline marketing channel that has led me to this desire.  If I have an unrecognized need, then email is more likely to draw me into the purchasing cycle.

What are your thoughts? Is SEO the biggest driver of conversions? How do you manage success?

Read the rest of Online Marketing Effectiveness from eMarketer.

Posted in Marketing, SEO | No Comments »

K.I.S.S.: Keep it what?

Most of us have heard of the KISS principle for years: Keep It Simple, Stupid. So when I saw the headline about KISS and social media from digidayDaily, I thought I had it figured out. Of course, the best strategy for social media is simple. It’s about making one-to-one connections (even when the one seems to be a company or brand). But B.L. Ochman used K.I.S.S. to represent something else – Keep It STRATEGIC, Stupid.

Ochman’s point is important, not only for social media but for business in general. It’s so easy to become mired in the tactics and the details that we forget our overall objectives and strategy.

If you’d like to read more from Ochman, check out KISS: The Difference Between Strategy and Tactics – and Why It Matters

Posted in Marketing, Social Media | 1 Comment »

The Wrong Times to Use Multimedia

Slide shows and multimedia presentations have a growing presence the online media world. Tools like YouTube, Picasa, and more make it easy for even novice users to build a “slide show.”

But there are times when the slide show is just overkill. Case in point – the 10 Things Cable Companies Don’t Want You to Know from WalletPop. Don’t get me wrong, I love WalletPop and their content, but in this case, is a slide show really necessary?

Here’s the flow from headline to actual article content.

1 – Click on headline. In my case, it was from an RSS feed

2 – Arrive at article landing page with a picture of a television, and arrows indicating that I can scroll through slides. Not exactly what I expected, but acceptable. I click on the arrow.

3 – A new window launches! What? I thought I could view the slides here! So the first slide… picture of the White House.  I’m wondering what this lovely picture has to do with the cable company.

… and so on.

Do the pictures add to the value of the content? Marginally. Is it reader friendly? Hardly. After clicking through a couple of slides, I realized that there’s an ad on each slide page, which changes as you go through. This slideshow isn’t for the reader – its to increase ad impressions.

My recommendation: Use a slide show or multimedia presentation when it enhances the value of your content, not because you wanted to put up a slideshow today. If you really must do a slideshow, then do an alternate version of the content for those of us who just want to skim, and not wait for unrelated images to load.

Posted in Website Design | No Comments »

Sometimes I fall behind on my RSS feed reading. When I find a website I like, I subscribe to their feed, because I’m pretty sure that if I don’t, I’ll forget to go back.

Of course, that means that on a given day, I’ll get upwards of 100 new feeds in my reader. Of course I’m going to fall behind.

I’m glad I didn’t today, because there was, yet another, amazing post from Seth Godin.

What you say, what you do and who you are.

This has never been more true than in the ever-growing world of emedia. We think that the network of the internet is so large – that it’s easy to be lost in the noise, and to be anonymous. But just like we talked about our environmental and carbon footprints this week in honor of Earth Day, we should also be cognizant of our emedia footprints. More about that later – if you need more food for thought now, check out more of Seth Godin’s blog.

Posted in Marketing | No Comments »

When Blogging Goes Wrong

Blogging, believe it or not, is about personality. They started as web logs, evolved into journals, and to this day are most effective in gathering readers and inspiring action when they have a personality with which the reader connects. The blog movement has allowed the web to become personal again.

When I was flipping through a Martha Stewart magazine (hey, she used to be a marketing mogul), I found the point in which blogging officially went too far.

Martha Stewart’s dogs have a blog.

If you have nothing better to do, you can check it out at The Daily Wag. I wonder if the writer puts with pleasure on their resume that they wrote for Martha Stewart while just omitting that their ‘voice’ was the voice of Francesca or Sharkey, or if they hide from their family what they do, simply saying “yes, I’m writing.”

Posted in Just for Fun | No Comments »

Unsubscribe Link Location

It’s something that I’ve seen more and more: unsubscribe links being placed at the top of an email template, rather than in the traditional location at the bottom. At first, I was appalled; while I know we need to make it easy for readers to unsubscribe, I felt like placing the link at the top of the email made it all together too easy. But in “The Unsubscribe Link Location: Top, Bottom Or Both?” from MediaPost, McDonald helped to convince me that the top placement wasn’t the atrocity that I originally thought.

Her reasoning, particularly with B2C messaging, is related to the proximity of the spam button. If a reader is feeling overhwelmed by the number of emails that they’re receiving, or that the content is no longer relevant to them, the “spam” button is right there, next to the reply and delete buttons. And in the mind of the consumer, the spam button just makes the messages stop appearing in the inbox. That is the goal, afterall. They don’t consider the consequence to the business, or that flagging a message as spam may also remove it from the inboxes of other readers.

Thus, the placement of the unsubscribe link at the top of the email allows readers a second and easy choice: to unsubscribe instead of hitting the spam button. Its at least worth a test.

Even better is to place a link to update email preferences – to adjust frequency, change email addresses and more.

Stephanie Miller of Return Path suggests an “unsubscribe flip — offering choices or frequency options.” Using this technique, “some of our clients have seen up to 50% retention of those who started out unsubscribing,” she adds.

The email programs at my company have not evolved to the “frequency management” level, but after this bit of research, it’s definitely a priority for me in 2009.

Posted in Email | No Comments »

Improving eMail Stats

A few suggestions on how to improve email performance stats from MailChimp.

• If you want people to open your emails, you need to get past their spam filters first. Avoid using spammy keywords and phrases, and avoid using ALL CAPS or too many exclamation points. The best way to avoid spam filters is to learn how they work.

• Too many hard bounces is a sign of an old, stale list. People change email addresses every few months. Make sure you keep in touch with your list regularly (at least once a quarter) so they can stay subscribed to your list.
  * Soft bounces usually mean the recipient is “temporarily unavailable.” Maybe they’re on vacation or their mailbox is full. You can keep those emails and re-try them later.
• Hard bounces mean an email address failed. Maybe it no longer exists, or maybe someone typed their email wrong when they subscribed to a list. But hard bounces might also be spam filter rejections. If you see an abnormally high number of bounces after a campaign, you should read your bounce back records for any messages or “clues” from spam filters.
• Abuse complaints happen when recipients click the “This is spam” button in their email programs. That usually means they don’t remember you. Make sure your “From:” and “Subject” contain your company name (so they’ll instantly recognize you).

Posted in Email, eMail Marketing | No Comments »

Just because you can…

Marketing guru Seth Godin makes (another) brilliant point in his blog “Is Marketing Evil”

Just because you can market something doesn’t mean you should.

I see this all too often in online marketing – with a low barrier to entry, everyone gets into online marketing. But Seth is right – just because you *can* market something doesn’t mean that you should. I’ve found even more of these examples when people are trying to monitize on social networks. 3 months ago, Facebook was recommending wedding dresses for me. I guess since I didn’t buy (even though there has been no change in my status), my ads now recommend that I not be afraid to propose. These contextual ads are well intentioned, but the targeting is all wrong.

The same is true with so many Google ad word campaigns that run on content networks. Ads for miracle weight loss solutions, teeth whiteners, and other unmentional products just stand to remind me: just because you can market something doesn’t mean that you should.

Posted in Marketing | No Comments »

Tips for Working from Home

Many of us e-media workers will spend either all or part of our working lives working from home (or at least trying to). While the source of this is completely unrelated to anything and everything emedia (The ScrapGirls newsletter), I think they still have some useful tips to keep in mind:

• Always dressing up as if I’m going out to work. Most days, I choose to wear something that is appropriate for public outings (even if I don’t go out). I fix my hair, put on lipstick, and even wear earrings. This helps me see myself as a working professional, even if I remain barefoot.
• Honoring both home life and work life. When my work is done, I rarely stay in front of the computer for personal reasons. I walk away from the office, cook dinner, and enjoy my family. They are the most important reason why I do what I do anyway.
• Setting consistent work hours. I try to be in the office between nine and six. On days that I have personal appointments or a late start, I opt to work the later part of the day. Even if I’m working late, I’m only a door away from my family and not across town in an empty office building. Fortunately, I also have a separate room in the house to designate solely as an office.
• Making sure others know that I’m at work. Sometimes, one of the hardest things to communicate to friends and family is that I cannot accept their invitation to lunch, shopping, or phone calls during the day when I’m working. Although they know that I work from home, I think they naturally forget that I can’t always be available for personal matters. And yet, I try to be reasonable about this by making myself available for occasional outings or important phone calls. After all, people do come first.
• Riding the ebbs and flows of financial income. This is where working from home discourages a lot of people I know. My younger brother is also a graphic designer, but he chooses not to work independently because he likes his paycheck every two weeks. The biggest lesson I’ve learned about this is to diversify my income and trust God as my ultimate source. I’m blessed to work at Scrap Girls and it provides a regular source of income for me. However, to supplement it, I also accept other design jobs as they come for additional short-term pay as well as career growth.
• Remembering to take breaks. I think a lot of people in all sorts of roles can relate to this. If I’m in a flow, I can easily forget about meals, taking breaks, or when to end the day. But, taking short breaks helps me to clear my head, stretch, and work easier, not harder, even if it’s a long day.
• Separating personal chores from business tasks. Oddly enough, I only recently realized that doing laundry, going grocery shopping, and responding to my personal emails don’t have to happen during work hours. What a time saver!

If you’re interested in digital scrapbooking (like I said, not related to the topic of this site…) then check out ScrapGirls.com

Posted in The World of Work | No Comments »

Save Your Pennies and Revive Your PPC Campaign!

Ah, those great guys and gals over at MarketingProfs always know how to get my attention. Today’s headline was “Code Blue: A First Aid Kit to Revive a Failing PPC Campaign” – and who wouldn’t like to either save money or increase the value of their PPC Campaign?

Their tips:

1. Eliminate irrelevant traffic by identifying and blocking negative keywords.

2. Optimize ad copy – make sure that your words reach the right audience

3. Improve landing pages.

Read all the details: Code Blue: A First Aid Kit to Revive a Failing PPC Campaign

Posted in Lead/Demand Generation, SEM | No Comments »