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For example, you think your friend may be interested in one of our offers, you give the click url to him/her, he/she copy and paste the link into his/her browser, then your friend visits the advertiser’s website and signup or buy something.

This is Not Allowed for our Campaigns. You must put our banners on your website then tell your friend to visit your website. Or you must send an email to your friend to introduce the offer.

Industry media have been taking note of a recent study by Direct Partners with headlines focusing on the findings that email is the most effective from of direct response. The finding echoes a study from last fall from MarketingSherpa, where participants reported that “house e-mail marketing” delivered the best return-on-investment in terms of direct response. According to the study, email is used by 35 percent of companies compared to 25 percent which use traditional direct mail. The April study sent to 30,000 executives at companies with 2007 revenues exceeding $100 million also found that 28 percent of respondents said that email works most effectively for them, followed closely by direct mail at 24 percent.

So far, 2008 has been the year for email, with study upon study proving its value as a marketing, retention, lead nurturing and sales tool. Prospectiv’s polls support this, with direct feedback from consumers who say they prefer email for receiving special offers and promotions from their favorite brands. Especially in these difficult economic times, Prospectiv’s consumer polls have shown opportunities for all marketers to reach consumers with enewsletters.

Tough economic times not only lead consumers to do online research, they lead to more time spent researching and comparing brands and prices. A recent Prospectiv survey, which discovered that 84 percent of those polled had changed their shopping habits due to concerns about recession, also showed that 74 percent would welcome more online offers, coupons and e-newsletters from their favorite brands and products. ]]> http://www.valuednetwork.com/blog/marketing/more-proof-that-email-rules/feed/ http://www.valuednetwork.com/blog/marketing/more-proof-that-email-rules/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/valuednetwork-com/~3/FRI5rOapgOc/ http://www.valuednetwork.com/blog/marketing/why-now-is-the-time-to-step-up-lead-efforts/#comments Fri, 25 Jul 2008 19:24:38 +0000 admin http://www.valuednetwork.com/blog/?p=30 With consumers tightening their purse strings, it’s more important than ever for marketers to reach out to potential customers with relevant offers they can’t refuse.

By Jere Doyle

Debate continues in the media as to the fate of the US economy:  Are we in a recession, or merely flirting with one?

For brand marketers, it turns out, the effect is the same.  Consumers, made wary by gas prices over $4.00 a gallon, the mortgage mess and less-than-stellar employment forecasts, have tightened their purse strings.  And when consumers spend less, marketing - traditionally a company’s first budget-cutting line of defense - is in trouble.

Yet there is much evidence, scholarly and anecdotal, that points to the wisdom of maintaining marketing spend during a recession.  In fact, a recession is an ideal time to take advantage of consumers’ comfort with familiar brands by creating web-based interactive, direct-response campaigns that offer special promotions and savings.

Why web-based?  A recent report by the Pew Internet & American Life Project reveals that 81 percent of internet users research products online - for convenience (78 percent), time savings (68 percent) and the ability to find bargains (ranging from 38 percent of 50- to 64-year-olds to 62 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds).

Tough economic times not only lead consumers to do online research, they lead to more time spent researching and comparing brands and prices.  A recent Prospectiv survey, which discovered that 84 percent of those polled had changed their shopping habits due to concerns about recession, gives further clues to consumer behavior in this economic downturn:

• 66 percent are logging more hours online researching and comparing brands and prices
• 74 percent would welcome more online offers, coupons and e-newsletters from their favorite brands and products
• 60 percent are more likely to sign up/join a website or online community that offers recipes, healthy meal ideas, cooking tips and savings they can use at home

As consumers under financial pressure ponder a switch from favored brands to generics, brand marketers must seek out ways to engage consumers online, using direct-response interactive marketing to reinforce the value of brand.

We strongly believe that marketers should consider countering the effects of the downturn by stepping up programs that build strong relationships with consumers who have exhibited interest in your goods and services.  Take the opportunity to add to your in-house opt-in email newsletter list and reach out with these tips:

• Consumers are eager for special promotions and savings during tough economic periods - now is the time to consider a brand-building campaign.
• Consider campaigns designed to generate leads as well as near-term sales.  Whether you have a brick-and-mortar store or website, use a well-timed, anti-recession campaign to drive traffic.
• Provide information that’s clear, relevant and easy to find online.  The Pew study found that 43 percent of searchers were frustrated by a lack of information, or the difficulty of finding information about brands they were interested in.  Another 32 percent were confused by the information they were able to locate.
• Be selective in your programs.  Market only to consumers you identify who have an interest in your product/brand and have requested your offers and promotions.
• Be aware that some 70 percent of internet users are still concerned about giving out personal information or credit card information online.  Treat your customers with care - many of them are wary.
• Monitor campaigns closely for performance and redirect your efforts as needed to improve results.
• Consider using pay-for-performance lead-generation programs.  You’ll pay only for results, versus clicks or impressions.

Don’t forget the most important metrics of a brand campaign - quality and relevance.  In difficult times consumers aren’t shopping for nice-to-haves; they are focused on must-haves.  Here, pay-for-performance lead-generation campaigns that build your own opt-in email lists and produce consumers who are interested in your product and brand are particularly useful because they make it easy for marketers to ensure relevance, and simple to measure lead quality at several points in the campaign, before hand-off to sales.

Finally, in a down market brand marketers must maintain a laser focus on lead-generation best practices to ensure high quality leads and maintain a respectful relationship with consumers to build trust and discourage abuse of consumer privacy.

Opportunity for brand marketers comes in many forms.  In these unstable economic times, it is incumbent on marketers to reach out to consumers with offers, promotions and information that reinforce brand preference, provide much-needed purchase information, and offer advice, tips and ideas for living well while saving.

Consumers Turn to E-Newsletters, Search, Branded Sites to Learn About Your Products

In the latest of several studies showing surprising power for digital marketing among package-goods brands, more than two-thirds of consumers who use the internet have used it to research package-goods products, according to a new survey by Prospectiv, a firm that provides online customer leads for marketers.

The survey, conducted late last year with more than 4,000 consumers culled from Prospectiv’s online database, showed a slight plurality of the consumers who use the internet to research package-goods brands (48%) do so primarily to get product information. Another 46% use the internet to seek savings or coupons, while 6% are primarily looking for tips on how to use the product.

Turning to e-newsletters
A slight plurality (27%) in the Prospectiv survey said they got most of their product information from e-newsletters, compared to 25% who favored search and those who favored general savings and shopping sites or branded product sites (tied at 14% each). Only 12% of consumers used seemingly more objective sites run by newspapers and magazines for such research, and only 8% used comparison-shopping sites.

The survey would seem to indicate substantial potential for package-goods marketers to use e-newsletters, either their own or those published by others, said Jere Doyle, CEO of Prospectiv, whose clients include Procter & Gamble Co., General Mills and Nestle. He conceded the makeup of the panel, some of whom were pulled from groups the company had recruited into marketers’ e-newsletter programs, could have weighed on the results.

But he said the group overall was made up of people who had responded to a number of online offers and some who had simply responded to a survey request. The survey didn’t include phone or mail sampling to reach people who don’t use the internet regularly.

The data appears to dovetail with recent research from other sources showing surprising consumer interest in using the internet to research package-goods brands, whose relatively low prices and low glamour once seemed to preclude consumers ever seeking them out online.

Branded CPG websites
Deloitte Consulting last year found 62% of consumers read online reviews, including 17%-18% who read online reviews of household cleaning or personal-care products. In separate studies last year, ComScore found 47% of traffic to package-goods websites came from search queries and that branded CPG sites had seen traffic grow 10% last year, twice the rate of the overall internet population. ComScore also found online display advertising was a significant driver for much of the increased traffic to branded sites.

Prospectiv’s survey found broad-based interest across several segments, with 70% of respondents saying they had done internet research on “everyday grocery products,” and 63% saying they had done so for health and beauty products.

Mr. Doyle was most surprised by the relative pull of information over promotional offers, though Prospectiv’s results are similar to those of ComScore, which also found a slight plurality of consumers using search on consumer package-goods brands for information rather than savings.

Even so, Prospectiv’s survey found discounts continue to have particular pull in getting people into branded sites and e-mail programs. Of respondents who said they did most of their product research on brand sites, 52% said they were primarily attracted by savings or offers. And when asked what would induce them to sign up for a branded e-newsletter, 76% said specials or savings, compared to only 22% who said they would be lured by new-product information.

Digital-marketing tools
Prospectiv’s survey combined with other recent studies would appear to show considerable power for the digital-marketing tools most employed by package-goods marketers, including search and display advertising, branded websites and e-mail.

John Yengo, partner with Barefoot Advertising, Cincinnati, which handles digital work for P&G and SABMiller among others, said no particular sub-discipline appears to be growing faster than the others, but he said most programs now incorporate sweepstakes or some other response element, such as one last year for Dawn dish soap in which people could enlist friends to join them in populating virtual duck ponds. ]]> http://www.valuednetwork.com/blog/marketing/cpg-brands-if-youre-thinking-digital-these-are-your-tools/feed/ http://www.valuednetwork.com/blog/marketing/cpg-brands-if-youre-thinking-digital-these-are-your-tools/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/valuednetwork-com/~3/dK9cSRYrjHo/ http://www.valuednetwork.com/blog/marketing/trying-out-the-zohark-advertising-service/#comments Fri, 25 Jul 2008 18:50:56 +0000 admin http://www.valuednetwork.com/blog/?p=16 I was meaning to test the Zohark Social Advertising Service this past weekend but still have not been able to do so. Since it is Tuesday, I thought I would post yet another source of Social Advertising to go along with Social Media .

Zohark is another social advertising service that allows you as a publisher, Application developer and/or advertiser to take advantage of their money making service. Reading in the past archives of the Zohark blog I read that they had delivered over 120 million impressions in March alone. Another easy resource is that Zohark also allows you to run banners easily on Facebook.

The main reason I use them is to get around the Facebook Ad Approvals ( or disapprovals to be honest). I really dont know what is going on there but when I really think about it, they must have hired some of the most inexperienced people to ever work in advertising. Aside from the fact that they are trying to protect their userbase (yea, I get that) I think they do it on purpose. If they wanted to really protect their users then they would not allow so many spamholes to be flowing throughout their network.

Anyway…

Facebook nukes ads. They do it with a passion. One way to get around this is to realize that not all Advertisers are created equal. I’ve seen Adbrite ads, Microsoft ads and of course Social Media ads flowing thru Facebook with some of the crappiest and sometimes “dirtiest” ads I have seen. How do they get away with it? Big and reputable companies such as these do not get the same restrictions just because of the amount of dollars they put into Facebook. Use this to your advantage and make it easier on yourself.

Of course we dont want to give up on Facebook completely so if your a die-hard Facebook advertiser then using Social Media will only help increase the exposure you have already created for yourself. Here are a few tips to use when using Social Media as an advertising source. Keep in mind that they do serve ads to Facebook, Bebo, Myspace and Hi5 currently. You can also geo-target by country.

You can literally get a ton of traffic fast. You can burn dollars FAST. Use some of these tips to help maximize your returns and you should be able to make some easy money.

1. Single most important thing - Tell people what to do in your ads. Let’s face it. Your ads are going to show up in some really shitty places. One example is that on Facebook App pages your ad is located above the application. A lot of times people mistake the button and think they are installing the application when they are really clicking on your ad! How pissed would this make you? Tell people EXACTLY what you want them to do in the ad.

2. Your call to action on the button - On the last line of creating a Social Media campaign you have the call to action which actually resembles a button. People mistake this for installations of the applications and tend to click on it and only end up with an advertisement they were not planning on. This is wasted dollars. Instead of saying “click here” “continue now” or something lame like that, put something such as “Enter Email Now”, “Enter Zipcode Now” or even “Get Free Trial”. This little tip alone will save you a bunch of potential wasted ad dollars.

3. Know the demographics of the sites your going to advertise on. Jeez, this should have been first probably but if your not mining data and demographics on potential sites you want ads on then you dont belong in advertising in the first place. Use sites such as Quantcast, Compete or even Alexa and start gathering as much data as you can on percentages of sexes, ages and whatever else you can come up with. Although, you cannot choose what Apps to advertise on at least you are armed with some information to tell you a lot about the demographics of the people visiting these sites.

Google has always been refining their content network traffic and placements and it just keeps getting better and better. Here are some quick ways to ramp up the Return on Investment with Content Network Campaigns.

1. You have to track your conversions. First and foremost this is the most important aspect of any paid advertising campaign. If you dont have the information that tells you what converted into sales or leads then your swinging blind. With Google it can be as easy as grabbing their pixel and messaging your Affiliate Manager to have it placed on your offer’s success page. We have the advanced tracking technolody On Valuednetwork.com, you can easily track which keywords convert, which website your leads/sales are from.

2. With Content Network specific campaigns your ads can literally show up anywhere. Parked pages is where a ton of ads will show up. You ABSOLUTELY must track where your ads are showing up. There are a few programs out there that will do this. Unless you have some sort of in house tracking then you are probably going to be at the mercy of spending a little money. If it costs you $130 a month to track ALL your content network campaigns and armed you with the data of knowing what domains converted and which ones didnt then I think its safe to say that such a fee is minimal.

Track conversions and track placements. Most likely if marketers were doing this then 99% of them would be profiting on the Google Content Network. Sadly only maybe half (if that) actually track their placements. This is what seperates profit from loss and the smart from the not-so-smart.

Ok, so Google will remove officially removed protection from advertisers bidding on brand-owners’ trademarks. However, you still will not be able to have these brand name terms visible in the AdText portion of the ad.

Are you prepared? Are your clients?

Are you going all out aggressively to bid against competitors trademarks?.

Are you going to start bidding against your own brand as protection?.

Perhaps a mixture?. Or are you going to wait and see what your competitors do?

So what does this mean for affiliate marketing? Well - I feel it’s pretty simple:

MERCHANTS SHOULD EMPLOY SEARCH AGENCIES TO PROTECT THEIR BRAND

So if affiliates bid on a brand and go via their own site, merchant’s can still stipulate that they don’t want that. But each merchant will have to do the calculations on their ROI between monitoring and responding to brand name “abuse”, hiring a search agency to conduct a review of the possibilities and implement a solution and just letting market forces dictate the way forward.

If there is going to be mass-scale brand name “abuse” then won’t this have an impact on the profitability of the channel for the merchant? Won’t this in-turn have the possible result of lowering commissions in certain circumstances?

But overall, I see the results as:

1. More affiliates randomly bidding on brands without checking what the merchant wants;
2. Merchants devoting more time to policing their brand;
3. More merchants removing their heads from their rear-ends and invite other affiliates to compete;
4. Google earning more;
5. Some affiliates spending a couple of months to work out how best to monetize this opportunity while forgetting to work on their generic campaigns;
6. More affiliates using PPC to bid on their content sites;
7. If “all hell breaks loose” then commissions may be reduced by big brand merchants;
8. The high life that agencies have (cough) been shattered - they’ll have to do some proper consultancy;
9. Egotistical, maniac, hypocritical, established brand-name bidders shit themselves as hoards of affiliates start to say “it’s ok with Google now remove your closed bidding groups or we’ll just saturate the SERPS with adverts for your competitors”.
10. People like me just plug away with SEO getting the brand traffic for free whilst the others fight it out;

For more information on Google’s Trademark Policy Change, please check out the official announcement. ]]> http://www.valuednetwork.com/blog/marketing/google-pulls-the-trademark-trigger/feed/ http://www.valuednetwork.com/blog/marketing/google-pulls-the-trademark-trigger/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/valuednetwork-com/~3/Q3_7XYni5DM/ http://www.valuednetwork.com/blog/marketing/6-tips-for-better-email-deliverability/#comments Fri, 25 Jul 2008 18:44:59 +0000 admin http://www.valuednetwork.com/blog/?p=8 Whether you are building your first list or you happen to be a seasoned email marketing veteran, we can all admit that email deliverability can be a pain in the butt! I am sure if you have done any email marketing in the past you can appreciate the steps that go into achieving top notch delivery rates with the many different ISP’s.

1. Use a recognizable “from” name - Most people open or delete emails simply based on the “from” name. Be sure to use a name that the members on your list will recognize. Also be sure if you are promoting any email campaigns from the network to use the approved “from” name.
2. Use a clear subject line - A subject line that represents who you are and what your email is about will help your recipients recognize your email as legitimate. Keep it short and sweet and try to limit your character count to around 50 characters including any spaces or special characters.
3. Target your list - While content is just one of many factors ISPs look at, it is the main concern for the members on your list. If you are sending out irrelevant communications, your members will not hesitate to click the “This is spam” button the next time they receive an email from you. This is a fast way to destroy a good list.
4. List Hygiene - Get rid of the nonexistent addresses you are sending emails to every month. The ISPs notice when you don’t. By removing defunct email addresses, you will help you to improve your overall deliverability. If you use an Email Service Provider (ESP) like Aweber to send your email, you should have the option to easily delete nonexistent email addresses.
5. Authenticate - This is similar to “registering” your domain name with the ISPs so they can begin to give it a reputation. If you are an Aweber customer, I encourage you to turn authentication on in your account. This will help your deliverability and will help position you for future success as well. For more information on authentication, read the article below.
6. Offer confirmed opt-in - Also known as double opt-in, this is a surefire way to know that the people on your list really want to be there. When a person signs up through your website or other avenues, they will automatically receive an email from you asking them to confirm their subscription. This approach is seen as a best practice. It’s important to tell new subscribers that if they do not respond to your confirmation email, they won’t be added to your list.