http://www.hothouse.com.au/blog/ Opinions, musings and commentary on our wired world. http://hothouse.com.au/images/hothouselogo.jpg http://www.hothouse.com.au/blog/ HotHouse no en Copyright 2008 Tue, 17 Jun 2008 09:51:24 +1000 http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/ http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Measuring marketing engagement is not an exact science as Simon van Wyk finds out. It all used to be so easy. In the early days of web analytics everything was focused on impressions, click-throughs, and conversion rates. However, with an increased marketing spend online comes increased expectations of measurement and tracking. Marketers are looking for different ways to measure the success of their digital marketing spend. Of course any campaign, whether on or offline should be measured by whether it meets its objectives. And those objectives are trending towards engagement. After all, when people are truly engaged with your brand, it's highly likely they will be loyal customers too. And to get them highly engaged, you need to create valuable content and tools that your customers need or want to interact with, when they want to interact with it, 24x7. Of course this means channelling marketing budgets into valuable content development and not short media bursts of activity. Continue reading the story. ]]> HotHouse no http://www.hothouse.com.au/blog/2008/06/measuring_up_engagement.html http://www.hothouse.com.au/blog/2008/06/measuring_up_engagement.html HotHouse Article User Experience Web 2.0 engagement marketing measurement Tue, 17 Jun 2008 09:51:24 +1000 measuring engagement in marketing. ]]> HotHouse no http://www.hothouse.com.au/blog/2008/06/hothouse_podcast_measuring_eng.html http://www.hothouse.com.au/blog/2008/06/hothouse_podcast_measuring_eng.html HotHouse Podcasts marketing+engagement+measurement Thu, 12 Jun 2008 11:33:04 +1000 podcast.]]> HotHouse no http://www.hothouse.com.au/blog/2008/05/hothouse_podcast_brands_adding.html http://www.hothouse.com.au/blog/2008/05/hothouse_podcast_brands_adding.html HotHouse Podcasts content+strategy Podcast Mon, 26 May 2008 11:03:38 +1000 Brands are getting behind content again. Simon van Wyk finds out why. Advertising clutter is the single biggest problem with marketing today. Advertising is inescapable, but that also means less effective. People are increasingly fed up with advertising in every way, shape and form. TV commercials aren't watched, banner ads are blocked or ignored, spam filters block your most recent mailing campaign. Consumers don't want to be sold. But they do want to buy things and they do want information, advice, comparisons and comment about these things. As such they value relevant information. They value content. And they will seek it out. Continue reading this story ]]> HotHouse no http://www.hothouse.com.au/blog/2008/05/brands_are_banking_on_content.html http://www.hothouse.com.au/blog/2008/05/brands_are_banking_on_content.html Content HotHouse Article content+strategy marketing+trends Mon, 26 May 2008 10:19:25 +1000 social media for non profits podcast.]]> HotHouse no http://www.hothouse.com.au/blog/2008/04/hothouse_podcast_social_media.html http://www.hothouse.com.au/blog/2008/04/hothouse_podcast_social_media.html HotHouse Podcasts Social Media nonprofits social+media Tue, 22 Apr 2008 15:33:08 +1000 Simon van Wyk thinks social media is mana from heaven for nonprofits. The major headline coming out of research conducted by the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth Center for Marketing Research late last year was that charities in the US are outpacing the business world in their use of social media/web 2.0. The study of the Forbes Magazine list of the 200 largest US charities, called Blogging for the Hearts of Donors found that more than a third of the organisations are blogging, forty-six percent report social media is very important to their fundraising strategy and the majority monitor their online reputation. Indeed, something like three quarters of those nonprofits studied were using some form of social media - including, podcasts, social networking, video blogging and wikis. Continue reading the story.]]> HotHouse no http://www.hothouse.com.au/blog/2008/04/social_media_works_wonders_for.html http://www.hothouse.com.au/blog/2008/04/social_media_works_wonders_for.html HotHouse Article Social Media nonprofits social+media Tue, 22 Apr 2008 14:08:41 +1000 mobile marketing podcast here.]]> HotHouse no http://www.hothouse.com.au/blog/2008/03/hothouse_podcast_mobile_is_get.html http://www.hothouse.com.au/blog/2008/03/hothouse_podcast_mobile_is_get.html HotHouse Podcasts mobile Podcast Wed, 26 Mar 2008 10:30:54 +1000 Simon van Wyk takes a look at why mobile's getting exciting. It's hard not to get carried away with the freewheeling mobile bandwagon. According to research firm, Informa, the worldwide cell phone market passed 3 billion units in November last year. Indeed, a staggering 1.12 billion phones were sold around the globe in 2007 with sales forecasts predicting something like 1.2 billion this year. By the end of this decade 70% of the world's population will carry a mobile phone which would suggest that we are officially entering the mobile age. But for mobile to fulfil its potential, the barriers which have so far kept a lid on mobile data consumption will need to be removed. And surfing the web on a mobile device needs to get a lot easier too. Continue reading this story at the HotHouse website. ]]> HotHouse no http://www.hothouse.com.au/blog/2008/03/hothouse_article_the_age_of_mo.html http://www.hothouse.com.au/blog/2008/03/hothouse_article_the_age_of_mo.html HotHouse Article mobile Wed, 26 Mar 2008 10:22:58 +1000 user experience podcast.]]> HotHouse no http://www.hothouse.com.au/blog/2008/02/hothouse_podcast_user_experien.html http://www.hothouse.com.au/blog/2008/02/hothouse_podcast_user_experien.html HotHouse Podcasts User Experience user+experience Mon, 11 Feb 2008 12:18:16 +1000 Simon van Wyk discusses how user experience is so much more than usability. As global brands try to work out how to make their brands relevant in the social media age, user experience begins to take on a far more strategic bearing. Indeed, according to the second Annual Online Customer Engagement Report by E-consultancy and cScape, ninety percent of companies are paying more attention to online customer engagement than ever before, with three-quarters of organisations (77%) saying that its importance has increased in the last 12 months. So with customer engagement key, marketers are learning fast that good user experience is the backbone to online customer engagement. And that user experience is far broader than just usability. Hygiene factor Certainly usability is important, and websites do need to be easy to use. Clearly you can't have a good user experience without good usability. But it's just a small part of the whole user experience. HotHouse's User Experience Manager, Piero Colli, likes to describe usability as the site's hygiene factor - something that's important, but simply the minimum standard required. Read the full story on user experience. ]]> HotHouse no http://www.hothouse.com.au/blog/2008/02/experiencing_engagement.html http://www.hothouse.com.au/blog/2008/02/experiencing_engagement.html HotHouse Article Internet User Experience user+experience Mon, 11 Feb 2008 12:07:00 +1000 search marketing podcast.]]> HotHouse no http://www.hothouse.com.au/blog/2008/01/podcast.html http://www.hothouse.com.au/blog/2008/01/podcast.html Search Podcast Search Tue, 15 Jan 2008 14:22:25 +1000 Simon van Wyk takes a look at the emerging opportunities in local search Research from Nielsen//NetRatings and WebVisible that came out over a year ago called "I Clicked, I Contacted, I Transacted" showed that 70 percent of U.S. internet users have used a search engine to find a local service vendor. Up until recently, helping to find local businesses was of course the tightly held territory of the Yellow Pages. Increasingly however, people intuitively use search instead of either the print or online version of Yellow Pages. Indeed last year, TMP Directional Marketing commissioned a study with comScore Inc. to understand consumers' attitudes and behaviour toward offline and online local media sources when looking to make an upcoming purchasing decision. According to the study, on results of 3,000 survey respondents, one out of three consumers still regarded the printed yellow pages as their preferred source for local information, but the internet in general was cited as the most prominent source referenced by over 60% of participants. Interestingly eMarketer estimates that by 2011, 51.3 percent of U.S. local online spending will go to paid search, compared with 43.1 percent today. Read the full article on local search ]]> HotHouse no http://www.hothouse.com.au/blog/2008/01/the_promise_of_local_search.html http://www.hothouse.com.au/blog/2008/01/the_promise_of_local_search.html HotHouse Article Search Local+Search Tue, 15 Jan 2008 11:23:37 +1000 Simon van Wyk predicts one of the biggest trends in 2008 will be brands creating content and not ads. One of the biggest things that we're going to see in 2008 is this much written about, much discussed and much anticipated shift of advertising budgets from traditional advertising to online marketing in all its many forms. The time is right, and it's not just the signs of the oncoming recession in the US. Marketers are growing in confidence online. They are beginning to understand that it's not just about transferring the principles of traditional marketing to the web. Sure, a few years ago, online marketing was restricted to email and banner sizes or whether sites would take pop-up ads. But so much has changed. And marketers can finally move beyond traditional advertising conventions in order to capitalise on digital marketing opportunities. And that's precisely what Nike achieved in 2007 with its evolution of Nike+ - using the power of the web with the idea of community to deliver a highly engaging experience. They provided motivational goals and progress tracking, virtual racing and global community comparison tools - effectively satisfying a broad target market and giving them something that they truly value. Read the full story.]]> HotHouse no http://www.hothouse.com.au/blog/2008/01/2008_the_year_of_getting_engag.html http://www.hothouse.com.au/blog/2008/01/2008_the_year_of_getting_engag.html HotHouse Article Internet online+marketing Tue, 15 Jan 2008 10:48:08 +1000 Lasoo, an innovative pre-shop search engine has been launched just ahead of the frantic Christmas shopping period. Lasoo scans through a stack of catalogues and direct mail flyers to find all the best bargains, displaying all the current specials from participating catalogues around Australia. The site features comparisons of automotive accessories, homeware and furniture, beauty products, electronic goods, appliances and toys and games. Items can be searched also by shopping centre or post code to find the cheapest deal near the user's home. With six or seven thousand offers on the site at any given time, within a matter of seconds consumers can find the best deals without having to spend time on and off line hunting around for them. Lasoo CEO Paul Marshall said that for consumers, Lasoo offers the ultimate in convenience shopping. The site has been built using J2EE technologies from Endeca and FatWire in a load balanced web farm in a managed hosting environment. The platform scales horizontally at each tier across redundant infrastructure, and these services can be extended independently as the product is further developed. Lasoo's platform also supports 'white box' editions of the core catalogue and guided search facilities which are hosted in the shared infrastructure. These 'editions' can be readily skinned with CSS transforms without the need for bespoke development. The site features Endeca guided search technology providing pre-categorised search results, allowing consumers to prioritise their choices in their own personalised way, helping consumers to ask smarter questions by exposing all the choices available to them. As of early December, two weeks after its launch, the site had recorded over 2.5 million page views and over 1 million searches had been conducted. Check out the Lasoo site. ]]> HotHouse no http://www.hothouse.com.au/blog/2007/12/browse_here_buy_there_the_new.html http://www.hothouse.com.au/blog/2007/12/browse_here_buy_there_the_new.html Search search Wed, 12 Dec 2007 12:18:41 +1000 Fortune Small Business. Wearing his customary ear-to-ear grin, Branson's Virgin Money is cited as something to watch in 2008. Virgin Money of course is the new name for the social lending site Circle Lending which Branson's Virgin USA bought earlier this year. And with its cut-through and cheeky marketing launch using tags like "Go Fund Yourself", Virgin Money is certainly standing out from the other contenders in the rapidly emerging peer-to-peer lending arena. For borrowers, person-to-person lending sites offer lower-cost alternatives to conventional financial institutions, while lenders have the opportunity of higher returns and the altruistic benefits of helping a real person. According to research firm, Online Banking Report, about US$100 million in new person-to-person loans will be issued this year, jumping to as much as US$1 billion in 2010. Of course the peer to peer lending revolution is just one form of new competition that is biting at traditional banks and compelling financial services providers to adapt, evolve and re-engineer their product and service offerings. Continue reading the article. ]]> HotHouse no http://www.hothouse.com.au/blog/2007/12/innovation_in_financial_servic.html http://www.hothouse.com.au/blog/2007/12/innovation_in_financial_servic.html Financial Services HotHouse Article financial+services Wed, 12 Dec 2007 12:08:13 +1000