Year: 2013

Why Email Marketing Still Matters

I got my start in online marketing in 2002 working for an email marketing group in Columbia, SC. I was fresh out of an Ivy League masters program with a degree in ancient religion and literature (and some archaeology experience). Needless to say, that wasn’t a highly valued skill set for a 22 year old just moving to South Carolina.

However, those years I spent with that email marketing (eventually affiliate and search marketing) company were the perfect trial-by-fire for finding my legs in the wider world of performance marketing. I realized some very important things about online marketing in general and email marketing specifically. It was a great education in the various ways of doing agency business in a post 9/11 but pre CAN-SPAM world of glitzy conferences, making lifelong connections and getting deals done with great agility and detail.

Although “the long tail” is a term that has lost much of its 2007 cache, there is still a great amount of truth to the term within the concept of online marketing. I’ve argued to clients and friends over and over that email is (and will continue to be) a very long term prospect of increasing returns over time in a world of short-lived Twitter and Facebook promoted posts as advertising.

The SumAll folks have a great post laying out a similar argument and some nice tips you should read at the end…

Why E-mail Marketing is More Valuable Than Ever – SumAll – Blog: “It’s been a widely held notion that after you’ve sent out your campaign, you have 12 hours to get the most opens you can before your e-mail is lost in inbox limbo. But based on our research, e-mails have a much longer tail than people are aware of. “

Whatever marketing channel you’re using, email is a great compliment and something you should bake in early in your campaigns.

Free Isn’t Bad

Dr Drang nails it:

Free – All this: “I’m sure you’ve noticed the backlash against free internet services over the past couple of years. Not that there are fewer free services, just that a certain set of people have been arguing that we shouldn’t be using them. Their rallying cry is ‘If you’re not paying for the product, you are the product.’ This is considered a deep truth among the anti-free set. It’s certainly true, but it isn’t deep, and I’m not convinced it makes free services bad.”

Read the rest for great connections to services such as TiVo. “Free” has taken on a religious sentiment amongst many technologists, marketers and users that simply doesn’t hold up when you look up the numbers (or economies behind them).

Pew Report On How Facebook Bubble Is About to Pop

Middle school students I talk to frequently point to Instagram, Kik, Snapchat, WhatsApp or (increasingly) Twitter as their preferred social network over Facebook:

Teens, Social Media, and Privacy | Pew Internet & American Life Project: “Focus group discussions with teens show that they have waning enthusiasm for Facebook, disliking the increasing adult presence, people sharing excessively, and stressful ‘drama,’ but they keep using it because participation is an important part of overall teenage socializing.”

While Facebook did (wisely) acquire Instagram last year, the bleeding of usage is significant. Teens and the prized 18-24 demographic will continue to have a presence on Facebook as a namespace, but usage is the key demographic here.

Replacing demographics are much more ephemeral and harder-to-monetize situational networks like Kik or Snapchat.

How We Sign Documents

We’ve been using RightSignature the last few weeks for client docs, contracts, insertion orders etc… really a great service and highly recommend if you need to pass signed docs back and forth in a legal and consistent (and transparent manner):

RightSignature | Sign Documents Online, Electronic Signature, e-Signature: “The easiest, fastest way to get documents
filled out and signed online.”

Avoiding SEO Mistakes and Finding the Right Agency

Great post that highlights a few of the mistakes that companies make when having to deal with SEO, but this is the highlight:

The SEO Mistakes That Wiped Out 80% of My Organic Traffic: “The best marketing and SEO is done by a committed in-house team that builds real relationships with others in their niche. And if you’re marketing your first site, I strongly recommend doing your own SEO and marketing to learn the ropes and build your experience. If you ever do decide to outsource it in the future – or hire your own in-house team – having the knowledge from doing it yourself will be crucial to properly manage the process.”

We do SEO for many of our clients. They trust us with this very crucial and necessary facet of doing business, or just having a presence, online. However, I’ve had great fun and success working with companies where I ended up teaching an in-house team or person how to manage their own SEO and eventually their affiliate management etc.

In the long run, the web becomes a better place when agency and marketers stop trying to keep an Oz-like curtain up in order to keep the income flowing in. Sure, we have to pay our bills but the clients will come since what we’re offering is good.

It’s much more satisfying to work with a company (large or small) as it learns and grows along with this constantly evolving web. We much prefer those types of clients than the “set it and forget it” types.

Affiliate Marketing After Coupons

Affiliate marketing as a mainstream channel is something we talked about a great deal in 2006 and 2007 when the industry was largely dominated by either email marketing or coupon marketing.

It has been fascinating to watch the combination of social media and content marketing really transform the paradigm of affiliate marketing from faceless high volume publishers to a more transparent stream of traffic and clicks. That’s been a positive development:

Affiliate Marketing Going ‘Mainstream’ Says VigLink CEO Roup: “Roup adds, ‘[Affiliate marketing] has gone from coupons to content. Though coupon sites were dominating up until a few years ago, what you’ve seen since that time is mainstream publishers, who deal in real content are starting to delve into the affiliate world.’  Huffington Post and Wanelo are among the larger media companies using VigLink products today which, he asserts, ‘proves’ that affiliate marketing is less on the fringes than ever.”

More to the point, the idea that the affiliate chain can include compensation beyond the last-click has been a hot button topic for over a decade now. Roup speaks on that as well:

But we suspect that coupon sites intercept a lot of the value that our publishers are creating and that the coupon site gets the credit. At this point, publishers are not compensated for any click other than the last one. We are working to try and understand that more deeply. Ideally, we would like to compute that value and be able to deliver as promised to the publisher. I wouldn’t say we’re there yet. We are doing some fairly detailed experiments with some merchants though.

It’s interesting to see the notion of affiliate marketing becoming both mainstream as well as realizing the pitfalls of having a core publishing center based on coupling. As the economies and scales of affiliates and performance marketing channels continue to evolve in the next few years (with the steady rise of social media and location based advertising), I suspect we’ll see a very real and solvent affiliate space that need not rely on coupons.

However, what does that look like?

“…parked a big blue box on the rug.”

My favorite line from my favorite episode of Dr Who:

Doctor Who “The Impossible Astronaut” (Episode 6.1) | Planet Claire Quotes: “The Doctor: Mr. President. That child just told you every you need to know, but you weren’t listening. Never mind, though, ’cause the answer’s yes. I’ll take the case. Fellas, the guns? Really? I just walked into the highest security office in the United States, parked a big blue box on the rug. You think you can just shoot me?”

At Least Give a Disclosure, LinkShare

You’d think there would be … I don’t know … a disclosure near and/or at the top of a post on a blog such as MarketingLand clarifying the author’s intended purpose (or at least job) here:

Managing The Migration To A New Affiliate Network: “The topic of affiliate network migration is at the top of the agenda for a lot of advertisers these days. Whether a transition is driven by the urgency around the closing of the Google Affiliate Network, or you’ve bandied about the idea of switching networks for some time, moving to a new network requires thoughtful, strategic planning. Otherwise, you may find yourself hopping across different networks while you disrupt your brand, sales and publisher relationships.”

Kinda scummy, Scott.