Didn’t know that was coming? You’re not alone!

In this webinar I’ll run through what this change means for your business, and the key things you need to consider before upgrading your Campaigns.

I’ll also be announcing a very special offer from indium online.

So whether you’re determined to do the upgrade yourself, or if you’d rather have the peace of mind that it’s done right and done for you – this webinar will leave you knowing just what to do next.

Wed, Jun 5, 2013 4:00 PM – Click to Sign Up (it’s Free!)

See you on the webinar!
Chloe

More than 90% of the visitors to your website will leave no mark – they won’t buy or sign up for anything. That means you can’t market to them… or does it?

If you use Remarketing you can capture these people and market to them again.

On this webinar we’ll explore how that works, and how it can be used for your business.

See you on the webinar!
Chloe

Register Now!

In its current form the legislation seeks to outlaw database profiling and to make it illegal to use many segmentation and targeting techniques. The potential impact of this will be increased costs, loss of efficiency, and less relevant, effective material for consumers and customers.

So why the call for change?  

The current 1995 European Data Protection Directive is in need of updating. It doesn’t cover new technology and its implementation is not harmonious across Europe. There have also been a number of high profile security breaches that have created consumer concern over privacy. The new regulation in its current form causes some major concerns for marketing – both online and offline.

 Key Concerns for Online marketing

• IP address tracking could become impossible. IP tracking provides much of the colour in website Analytics data – including geographic data.
• Profiling would be allowed, but only with the explicit opt-in consent of individuals. Profiling is analysing your database to find common themes (similar age, geographic region etc) and then using those for better marketing, and to find cold data.
• User specific experiences, such as people who bought this also bought would require explicit opt-in consent.
• PPC and Advertising activity would be restricted to non profile targeted areas. So keyword bidding fine, but geographic and demographic targeting in the Content network would be impossible.
• Email segmentation would be prohibited (yep you’d have to mail everyone, every time).
• The “Right to be forgotten” may impact email suppression lists, opening up the potential to email an individual who has already asked not to be emailed. (the “Right to be Forgotten” is too complex to go into here – but suffice to say, it’s going to be bad!)

The CatexDCA trade body are taking a leading position in tackling this – so to understand the full situation visit their website, or give them a call.

Before you do anything else though… there a couple of actions you must take right now.

First, email info@catalogueexchange.co.uk with the following information:

• Number of permanent employees in your business
• Number of temporary/contract employees in your business
• Estimated number of jobs at companies supplying your business
• Total annual direct/catalogue/online sales of your business
• Company name
• Your name

This will be used to add weight to their lobbying activity. If you don’t have precise figures your best estimate will be fine.

Second, write your own MEP/MP – you can find details of who that is, plus a sample letter to download on the CatexDCA website.

• Gmail is out infront and the gap is growing
  Figures from email service provider MailChimp show that Gmail are outstripping their rivals Yahoo & Hotmail in terms of how many email per month are being sent via MailChimp’s platform. The graph below shows the extent of Gmail’s growth over the past year. While Gmail should always be high on your list of priorities, this data highlights the importance of testing each campaigns appearance and functionality in Gmail.
  

• Mobile Email is growing, and here to stay
  Back in March eConsultancy revealed that roughly 15-20% of emails are being opened on smartphones. And with smarthpones becoming commonplace for business and personal users that number is set to rise, it’s likely that the time will come when your emails need to be aimed at mobile users over computer users. When thinking about email marketing, it’s well worth taking the time to gather some different mobiles with different operating systems and testing how your email is appearing on each.
  If you’d like some more info on Mobile Email, check out Adestra’s recent webinar.

• Outlook.com is going to have a big presence
  News that Hotmail.com was being rebranded to Outlook.com came just over two weeks ago, and already Microsoft are claiming that they’ve had over 10 million new sign ups – including 1 million in it’s first 6 hours alone. From an email marketers point of view, there is no immediate effect on how your emails will appear in the inbox, but it’s definitely worth keeping a close eye on appearance and Outlook.com’s share of your lists.

Do I need to recreate my Google Places page?

No, Google have automatically migrated your Google Places page and you can still use Google Places to manage your business listing.

Is Google Places now part of my Google+ page?

Unfortunately not. Google+ Pages and Google+ Local Pages are different. So if you want to appear for your locality, you need a Google+ Local Page too. So, if you already have a Google+ Page (and if you haven’t, add it to your to do list) the migration will have created a separate Google+ Local page for you.

However, Google are looking to merge them so watch this space.

Why have Google made the change?

Google has been trying to establish its place in social interaction and this move will help them encourage local, social interaction. It’s all about making Google+ central to everything Google.

How will this benefit me?

The old Google Places was a great method for achieving high results with the search engine results pages (SERPs) for location searches relevant to your business. As the mobile platform becomes more and more prominent, this achievement isn’t as beneficial as mobile users aren’t searching in the traditional way.

The new Google+ Local will allow you to benefit from the ever growing mobile market. Using a phone’s GPS, users will be presented with local results including reviews, click to call options and quite possibly relevant special offers.

What do I need to do differently?

From a managing your placement point of view, there is little change for the time being – watch this space for updates.

However, from a user’s point of view, it will soon be easier for (logged in) Google+ users to post reviews about your brand. In many ways this is great but it does mean you will need to keep an eye on your Google+ Local page to make sure you’re up to speed with what’s being said about you so you can respond as you feel the need to – and it’s always worthwhile keeping an eye on your competition’s reviews too.

1. Yahoo/Bing still has a long way to go to catch Google
   Google Adwords’ functionality is still streets ahead of Micrsoft adCenter, even after adCenter’s interface upgrade (which created some challenges of it’s own). Little things such as seeing revenues in the campaign/ad group/ad text/keyword views are still missing, decreasing usability, is just one example. Factors such as these make it much more difficult to optimise an account efficiently and effectively.
2. Yahoo customer Service hasn’t merged, it’s disappeared
   Faced with what you would consider a relatively simple task of getting hold of a missing credit note, we found Yahoo customer service hadn’t exactly been incorporated into Microsoft’s offering. After numerous, merry-go-round call transferring we eventually gave up after being given the number of a lady in Singapore.
3. UK companies still aren’t committing to Yahoo-Bing
   A report carried out by Econsultancy highlights that while 59% of advertisers increased their paid search spend on Google over the last year, only 21% spent more on either Bing or Yahoo. Furthermore, the report goes on to reveal only 20% of companies stated that they would consider spending more money on advertising on Bing or Yahoo as a result of the merger:

While Yahoo/Bing still suffers from limitations, our existing clients are still seeing impressive results on the platform. If you’re interested in Yahoo/Bing, find out more here and get in contact today.

Our previous blog posts on the Yahoo-Bing merger:

• Yahoo Microsoft Search Alliance Finally Here (May 2012)
• Yahoo-Bing Search Alliance Update (Mar 2011)
• Yahoo! Transition Europe Update (Nov 2010)
• Yahoo Bing Search Merger – 5 Things You Should Know (Aug 2010)
• Yahoo Bing Merger Impact on the UK PPC Market (Aug 2010)

Debenhams
http://www.debenhams.com/
A lot of this homepage is dedicated to special offers and discounts. There’s also mention of Free delivery on orders over £30. “Free” things are vital conversion factors for any ecommerce website. One of the best things about this homepage is the use of flags to represent each of the 40 countries delivered to. This enables site visitors to quickly work out whether or not they can receive goods and therefore whether or not they need to proceed with their journey.

Play
http://www.play.com/
This homepage features a rotating banner linking to some of their best deals. One of these offers is their “Deal of the Day” which features a real-time countdown to expiry. This is a nice touch as it creates a sense of urgency to buy.

ASOS
http://www.asos.com/
The “Shop Women” and “Shop Men” calls to action on this homepage leave visitors with little doubt as to which direction they should be heading on their journey. Sending customers the “right way” as early as possible in their journey is always good for conversions.

Sainsbury’s
http://www.sainsburys.co.uk/
This homepage is a good example of how to use colour to highlight important parts of your site. The sale red really stands out and makes it highly apparent there are discounts to be had. Like “Free” things discounts also serve as vital conversion factors.

Odeon
http://www.odeon.co.uk/
This homepage features plenty of “Book Now” call to actions. It also has a “quick book” facility that takes visitors straight to the booking page of a specific showing. This is nice feature as it eliminates a lot of the potential barriers to conversion.

1. Get Your Facebook Page Ready For Timelines (Deadline 30^th March 2012)
2. Successfully Adapting to Facebook Timelines
3. Upgrade Your Keyword Research Project For Free By July
4. SEO 2012 – The Death of Linkbuilding?
5. Cookie Law Thoughts
6. Yahoo Microsoft Search Alliance Finally Here
7. Top 5 Yahoo/Bing PPC Mistakes
8. Cookies – What Did We All Get So Worried About?
9. Google Base – The End Is Nigh! Or Is It?
10. Why Remarketing is a Must-Do for 2012

Here’s a summary of the changes, what it means and how you need to manage your adtexts going forward.

What is Ad Rotation?

In order to make sure you have the best adtext for your campaign, we have always suggested running at least 2 adtexts at a time. This allows you to gain an idea of which adtexts work best for impressions, for click throughs and for conversions.

After a period of time you can then decide which adtext is best for reaching your goals. You may then choose to run just the best performing adtext, or leave the best running and create yet another option to gauge if you can improve performance further – therefore constantly optimising your campaign.

So what did Google change?

Up until last month Google allowed you to set the way you wish to display your adtexts. The 3 options were:

1. Optimise for Clicks – the default setting (i.e. over time Google works out which ad is best for getting clicks and this ad gets more prominence)
2. Optimise for Conversions (i.e. over time Google works out which ad is best for getting conversions and this ad gets more prominence)
3. Run ads evenly (i.e. each adtext has the same amount of exposure)

You were able to select which setting best suited your campaign goals and these settings remained until a time that you decided to change them.

In May, Google announced they were changing the Ad Rotation tool so that any ad could only run evenly for 30 days. After this period, the ad which has the best click through rate will become the main adtext.

Essentially, Google are imposing the Optimise for Clicks setting.

Why are Google making this change?

According to Google’s official blog:

This change will enable us to provide users with the most relevant ad experience and should help advertisers improve the performance of their AdWords accounts.

Is this a good thing?

This is clearly a matter of opinion but the over whelming majority of Adwords users don’t think so.

Google will benefit from an increase in clicks (and therefore revenue) but for those people who are optimising their ads for conversions – i.e. ensuring their Adwords activity is actually profitable – the change means they will need to rethink their strategies.

If you have a long period from click to conversion, 30 days is a relatively short period for full adtext testing. If you have cyclical sales, again, this change restricts your testing abilities.

For anyone carrying out any kind of adtext testing and optimising – something we suggest everyone should do – this change means strategies will need rethinking.

People power

As Google is one of the big boys, you would imagine there’s little that can be done about changes which really could affect the profitability and effectiveness of your account. It appears you would imagine wrong.

This change was announced in early May and last week, due to the huge outcry from Adwords users, Google announced 2 changes to the new Ad Rotation system:

1. The test period will now be 90 days instead of 30
2. You can opt out altogether if you wish to

In order to opt out, Google are currently asking you to complete an online form but they have said if the response is sufficient they will ad an opt out to the Adwords interface.

The question is therefore, will we eventually have the same system we had before?

For Google’s full reaction to the outcry – including more information on why they made the change in the first place visit their blog.

So what do I do next?

With the setting now changed to 90 days, it will be easier to build this into your strategies. Look at your current adtext testing process and ensure the 90 day window is built in. If you think you would prefer to opt out, fill in the opt out form.

We’ll keep you up to date on any future changes to the Ad Rotation tool but if you’ve any specific worries about your Adwords account or want to know how this change affects your strategy, do get in touch.

So if you want to keep up to date with our reviews of Twitter Tools and Facebook Apps then please sign up at indiumonline.

This change means we can keep brining you the great social media tool reviews, but also focus the indiumonline blog on great ways to increase traffic to your website.

Let us know what you think.