Data Protection and Privacy Laws

Below is a useful compliance checklist from 'Internet Marketing' by Dave Chaffey:

1. Follow privacy and consumer protection guidelines and laws in all local markets. Use local privacy and security certification where available.
2. Inform user, before asking for info on:
   * who the company is
   * what personal data are collected, processed and stored
   * what is the purpose of collection
3. Ask for consent for collecting personal data.
4. Reassure customers by providing clear and effective privacy statements and explaining the purpose of data collection.
5. Let individuals know when 'cookies' or other covert software are used to collect info about them.
6. Never collect or retain personal data unless strictly necessary. If extra info is required for marketing purposes this should be made clear and should be optional.
7. Amend incorrect data when informed and tell others. Enable correction on site.
8. Only use data for marketing when a user has been informed and agreed (opt-in).
9. Provide option to stop receiving info on all comms (opt-out).
10. Provide contact details on communications.
11. Use appropriate security technology to protect customer info on site.

Web Analytics

Avinash Kaushik "Web Analytics: An Hour a Day" shows you how to assess and improve your organisation's performance and capabilities across all aspects of digital marketing.

1. What = Clickstream
   Understand your audiences by analysing what pages they are clicking on. It's important you segment your audience so the information is used context (e.g. visitor of a certain source, keyphrases used, entry page, visited a page, date, time or length of visit, exit page, country etc...). Use tools such as: Google Analytics, NetInsight, WebTrends, IndexTools, ClickTracks, CoreMetrics, Omniture.
2. How much = Multiple Outcomes Analysis
   Define at least 2 reasons for your sites existence (e.g. goals, conversions, brand impact, likely hood to visit store, customer satisfaction etc...) and measure these through analytics or surveys. Use tools such as: Web Analytics tools plus iPerceptions, ForeSee.
3. Why = Experimentation & Testing
   Create an ideas democracy to test new layouts, content, imagery, etc, and learn what makes people perform the desired outcomes. Use tools such as: Google Website Optimizer, Offermatica, Optimost etc
4. Why = Voice of Customer
   Discover the "Segments of Discontent" by asking:
   a) Why are you here? (Look at the distribution of reasons)
   b) Were you able to complete your task? (Decide if to change)
   c) If not able to compete your task today, why not? (Here are the answers)
   Use tools such as: iPerceptions, Ethnio, ForeSee, perhaps even self service mechanisms.
5. What else = Competitive Intelligence
   How compare to others - #visits (attraction), time on site (stickiness), who and which keywords are sending traffic, who is competing for my keywords. Use tools such as: Compete, HitWise, Technorati etc.

View Avinash Kaushik presentation or read the book!

How to Evangelize a Blog

Good article about writing a blog...

http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2006/04/the_120_day_won.html

Bring back the love...

This is a video created by Microsoft Digital Advertising Solutions showing the the disconnection between advertisers and consumers: http://bringtheloveback.com/2007/05/16/mdas_europe/

Web 2.0 is about interactivity, engagement and 2 way communication and helps bring back the love!

Web 2.0 ... The Machine is Us/ing Us

A fantastic video explaining "Web 2.0" in just under 5 minutes by mediatedcultures.net:

It's very fast so keep up...The Machine is Us/ing Us.

Brand Lift Campaigns

Metrics to measure:

• Depth of Visit – The Depth of Visit report displays the range of visitor interaction
• Length of Visit – How much time do people spend visiting your site?
• Loyalty – How many of your visitors are returning for the 2nd, 3rd, 10th or 200th time?
• Visitor Recency – The Visitor Recency report shows how long it has been since your visitors' previous visits.
• Top Content – Are visitors looking at the content that you would expect them to look at for this particular campaign?
  

Improve Conversion

To improve landing page conversion Susan Minniear has wrote Six Steps to Conversion Health.

She states the basic landing page should have a search function, contact information and a strong marketing message. You have a few seconds to convince them to stay, let alone convert to a customer. Here are her six tips to improving conversion rates:

1. Relevancy:
   Create specific landing pages for every search term creating consistency from keyword to ad to landing page. They will stay for less time, but are about three times more likely to convert. Do not include a navigation bar but include some branding to help consumers understand who you are and what you offer.
2. Images - Size Does Matter:
   Bigger, more detailed, clear and full-colour product images. Pictures of people can also increase conversion rates.
3. Confidence Messaging:
   Counter customer fears by placing third party endorsements such as "VeriSign secured" to give visitors confidence to buy.
4. Registration Forms:
   Keep font size over 10-point type and just one column of copy. Make the marketing message short and sweet and above the fold. Place conversion activity in a clear and prominent location. Clear, uncluttered and easy to read - no flashing buttons, overly bright colours or fancy fonts. Keep registration forms short - 6/7 fields - and not too personal like phone numbers. Include e-mail privacy infor so know you wont share info. Position the reg form above the fold so that the user does not have to click to convert
5. Newsletter Subscriptions:
   Not require registration for free downloads like white papers, instead, on the thank-you page, offer a sign-up for further updates and offers. Keep visitors coming with an easy e-mail newsletter sign-up.
6. Test it:
   Try changing the most obvious items on the page such as images, promotions, marketing messages and headlines.

Driving Traffic - Conversion University Tips

Google Analytics companion site Conversion University offers valuable marketing and content optimisation tips from industry experts. Here are some tips on how to target your marketing and get the most out of your spend.

1. Google Sitemaps - a service that allows you to submit ALL your pages to the Google index, to complement compelling and useful content. When you sign in to Sitemaps and click on the Statistics tab, the right-hand column of the report shows how you rank organically for the top searches to your site. You can put this ranking information together with click-through information from Google Analytics to understand how visibility for specific keywords has translated into conversions.


2. Tip No. 1: Target geographic markets with AdWords Campaigns.


3. Tip No. 2: Track ROI by geographic market.


4. Tip No. 3: Target and track "Search" and "Content" networks.


5. Tip No. 4: Use Ad Groups to target your ads


6. Tip No. 5: Track each ad's conversion rates.
   

Keyphrase analysis - Keyphrase qualifiers

To get the best result from their search results users type in qualifiers with their keyphase.

Here is a list of 7 different types of quantifiers taken from Overture represntative talking at Search Engine strategies in 2004:

1. Comparison / quality - compare car insurance
2. Adjective (price / product quality) - cheap car insurance, woman car insurance
3. Intended use - high milage car insurance
4. Product type - holiday car insurance
5. Vendor - Churchill car insuance
6. Location - car insurance uk
7. Action request - buy car insuance

(Source: http://www.davechaffey.com/Internet-Marketing)

Best day to send emails differ in B2B and B2C markets

According to research by eRoi:

• B2B email recipients prefer to receive messages on Tuesday (36%) and Monday (33%)
• B2C email recipients prefer Friday (31%) and Wednesday (26%).

The highest click rate (6.2%) is around the lunch hour and the second-highest click rate is at 10am, with 5.9%.

Another interesting difference is:

• Nearly 8 of 10 B2B email recipients subscribe using their business address.
• However, only 57 percent of B2C email recipients subscribe using personal email addresses; 24 percent use an address created for email lists; 19 percent use their business addresses.

Source: [eROI (via Marketing Vox and MediaPost), August 2006]

Want a bigger Digital Marketing budget? - You need to prove the results!

Marketeres need to be be able to show return on investment from thier digital budget - whether through an increase in direct online sales or indirect offline sales prompted by online channel.

For non-transactional brand sites, KPIs such as brand favourability, time with brand, submitting content, feeding back, brand loyalists against triallists can all be used to help show ROI.

This should be part of the objectives you set your agency!

Designing emails - preview panes and blocked images

The majority of email clients, especially business ones, block images as default and allow you to preview the email through a small pane (vertical or horizontal) so the top (or left) of the email is all the receiver could see before they decide if to read or delete the email. Therefore this is very important real estate and should maximise the message impact to ensure the receiver reads the message!

The email needs to draw the receiver in within the first few lines and work both with and without images turned on so the standard large image headers containing the logo and a visual may not be the best design...

Online Segmentation Analysis

A summary of digital segmentation variables and a short case study:

www.clickz.com/experts/crm/analyze_data/article.php/3351231

By Jason Burby, The ClickZ Network, May 11, 2004

Definition of CRM

An interesting definition of CRM:

'A system that functions as a clearinghouse of data from various sources of customer information.'

'CRM is about better serving the customer through a more efficient use of databases not about new ways to contact the customer or use digital channels.'

Source: CRM: Behind the buzz, written by Brian Strachman (2001)

Setting up a blog

Having decided to set up my first blog to write about Digital Marketing, I asked the techie's 'how do I do it' only to be told "blogging is so old news, why not set up a forum on FaceBook". In digital marketing, I sometimes find people are so eager to move onto the next new trend they forget to look for the best solution to fit the purpose and in this case it's a blog!