Jason Stitt of The Wisconsin Technology Network wrote a glowing stoy on INSPIRE, the web-based project management software that we've created here at epicsoft. This is a great case study (for us at least) on how well timed and thoughtful PR efforts can work in your favor.

I wouldn't be me without doing some shameless promotion of something we've worked for so many months on!

INSPIRE, the first web-based, project team collaboration tool designed to specifically serve the business of creativity; the core business of ad agencies, design studios, video and media houses, and all other creative service providers that collaborate in-house and with clients.

INSPIRE was designed with the foremost goals of simplicity, accessibility and usability to facilitate user tasks, expedite the approval process and stimulate project collaboration within the creative environment. INSPIRE is the first web-based, hosted solution to deliver creative team collaboration seamlessly integrated with online asset approvals, content management and project management tools within the context of an easy-to-operate Macromedia Flash based application environment.

Developed in the latest Macromedia Flash, FlashORB and Microsoft .NET technology, INSPIRE is designed to cut costs and speed up the creative process through utilizing faster, more secure, and more reliable collaboration processes than current methods such as FTP, e-mail or overnight deliveries. Online functionality saves time and money by eliminating travel time and expenses, service fees, delayed approvals, and missed deliveries.

From what I can tell, INSPIRE does compete, somewhat, with Basecamp, but I think that the file upload/content management capabilites and the easy to use interface (I've run through both, and then some - I like INSPIRE better) give us a bit of an edge.

ePrairie.com: Wisconsin Technology Start-Up Delivers Project Management Relief

I love the new "Click & Build" donation page on the website of Habitat for Humanity. Here you can specify what elements of a house to donate, by clicking on different parts of a cartoon house.

Perfect use of the Web for a nonprofit donation page.
http://www.habitat.org/donation/clickandbuild

Since I know it's only a matter of time before I write my first book, I've been passively collecting tips and ideas on how/what/when to write. An issue of the MarketingVOX Copywriting newsletter has some great ideas from a couple of contributors this week that I'd like to paraphrase here.

How to Write a Book - Martha Retallick via MarketingVOX Copywriting

1. Make an appointment with yourself. Say, from 2 p.m. to 3 p.m. every day, you are going to write. That means no surfing the Web, no checking e-mail, and no answering the phone.
2. Write a certain amount each day, even if you're sure that what you're writing is pure garbage. Just get those words down on paper, or into your computer.
3. If your home or office just won't cut it as a place to write, then go out. Get an hour's time on a computer at your public library. Visit a cyber cafe. Just be sure to bring a floppy disk so you can take your work with you when you're done.
4. Get a writer's posse together. Their job is to keep you writing. And your job is to do the same for them. Motivate each other.
5. Become a hunter-gatherer for tips on how to write faster and better. Ask your writing friends. Read books and magazines.
6. Don't pace yourself. Write as much as you can when you are feeling creative and when you're not, proofread what you have written.
7. When it gets to be too much, take a couple of days off and do something that is totally unrelated to your writing to give yourself time to recharge.

Lessons Learned the Hardest Way, by Going Belly Up is a piece that ran in the NY Times on Feb. 24th. It tells the stories of four business owners and the closure of their businesses. Take note of which failures came from factors that could be controlled (one dominant customer leaves) and which failures were beyond control (D.C. sniper shootings keep customers home).

What did they learn?

Thanks to an AMA InternetSIG member for this resource. This is another great synopsis of some research-based web design concepts.

Designing a website that takes into account the human element requires both an understanding of our nature as well as our physiological limitations. Usable websites incorporate human tendencies and limitation into its overall design.

Criteria for optimal web design (designing for usability): Software Usability Research Lab, Dept of Psychology, Wichita State University

I'm not usually one for weighing in on personal or family issues, but my general dislike for television collides with news like this and I can't help but passing something like this on. I like what a friend of mine has done with her family. As a general rule, if they see it on TV, they can't have it. But alas, that's just one mother's way of handling the onslaught of ads geared toward children. Another friend of mine grew up virtually sans television. Their TV is relegated to a corner of the basement and last I heard, they still rented the VCR from the local video store when they want to watch a movie. Granted, these are measures that are not for all, and TV is unfortunately the path of least resistance for many when trying to keep kids occupied.

"For all children, a time limit makes a big difference," she said. "Parents need to provide other options so TV isn't the first resort or becomes a constant background in a child's life."

Chicago Tribune: Task force reports commercials have big effect on kids

Research shows about 65 percent of America's school children have televisions in their bedrooms. Even one of four toddlers has personalized TV access.

If you ask Joanne Cantor, this is not good. Part of her reasoning is based on a new, comprehensive report by an American Psychological Association task force calling for tighter government regulation of television advertising aimed at children.

"Sponsors spend a lot of money for a 30-second commercial to make the product seem so incredibly fun and enticing," said Cantor, professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin and member of the APA task force. "Then Mom -- or Dad -- is left with only words to provide a counterpoint of view."

Cantor and her APA colleagues spent two years poring over all available studies about kids and TV. Among other findings: The typical American child will see 40,000 commercials this year. That's more than 100 per day.

What's more, the task force confirmed what some behavioral scientists have been contending for nearly three decades. Kids who are 8 or younger can't discern what is a sales pitch and what isn't.

UPDATE: Chris O'Donnell bit into this one with a full set of teeth. I knew I'd like his point of view on this subject!

An article by Nicole Burdette, O'Keeffe & Company, "Good PR Needs Good PR"
maintains that PR teams neglect the crucial final step -- leveraging results. PR needs to support sales and sharing PR results can help achieve that goal.

Among the suggestions:
- Hand out PR results at sales seminars, demonstrations and user group meetings;
- give press clips to current and prospective employees and hsareholders;
- post news of speaking engagements, media placements in Intranets, all company publications
-
Source: Insider Pass E-Letter - http://www.technologymarketing.com/mc/index.jsp

[via DesignObserver] Top Ten Things They Never Taught Me in Design School

Michael McDonough's Top Ten Things They Never Taught Me in Design School

1. Talent is one-third of the success equation.
2. 95 percent of any creative profession is shit work.
3. If everything is equally important, then nothing is very important.
4. Don't over-think a problem.
5. Start with what you know; then remove the unknowns.
6. Don't forget your goal.
7. When you throw your weight around, you usually fall off balance.
8. The road to hell is paved with good intentions; or, no good deed goes unpunished.
9. It all comes down to output.
10. The rest of the world counts.

I've never been to design school, but working in the creative industry, I would whole heartedly agree with Michael McDonough.

I just finished a discussion with a co-worker about the merits of marketing/adversting online, vis-a-vis that yellow pages. Seriously folks, I had no_freaking_idea how much a yellow pages ad cost, even in Green Bay, WI.

A certain company pays almost $2000 for a 3/4 page ad in the yellow pages, amidst a blur of 4 page ads in a very crowded category - That's $24,000/Year!!! All of their ads say the same_damn_things. Fine, I get that...but there's NO WAY for them to track (OK, maybe there is a way, but seriously, how sophisticated to you want your average small business to be) Worse yet, the prices go UP every year! With, what I feel, is less return. (more people on web, less people in the pages)

I'm sure that there are ways to differentiate yourself in the YP, but why bother. Drop the size of the ad, and jam more of that budget into online.

I was almost angry when I heard how much the YP ad cost, I thought "what a damn ripoff" - just think what we could do with that in online marketing. A year-round combination ALL of the following ideas, used for a small, say 10 person local business, could be done more cost effectively and have have more impact than the Yellow Pages.

- Pay-Per-Click
- Targeted Microsites
- Personal Biz Weblog
- Permission e-mail marketing
- Banner exchanges
- Affiliate program with local complementory businesses
- Targeted online banner placements (on local high-traffic sites, in contextually appropriate areas)
- Sponsorships in other complimentory businesseses online or offline newsletters
- Do some online customer feedback/surveys to gain more intelligence about your customers - use to reinforce all of the above
- Promote your aforementioned efforts on all bills, stationary, biz cards, etc...
- Develop a Loyalty & Referral program, or at least facilitate said programs through your website and e-newsletters
- Do a few press releases on new services, new hires, or damn near anything that's press-worthy for your SMB

While hunting for a review of Onfolio today, I came across this site, Marc's Outlook on Productivity.

I'm always on the prowl for better and faster ways to get more done, and Marc's site has a lot of great news on tools such as OneNote and Onfolio, PDAs, and other misc. productivity enhancing tools.

One of Marc's latest reviews:

I've often noticed a tendency for people to compare new and innovative tools to something they already use as a way to define the new product. It's human nature, I suppose, to refer to the known when describing the unknown. In the past few weeks, this has been happening with regard to two new tools I've been testing and writing about - Onfolio and Scopeware Vision.

Both of these products have been described as alternatives to OneNote. In my estimation, this is way off the mark. In fact, I think a much more compelling argument can be made that both Onfolio, a research gathering and publishing tool which I've written about here, and Scopeware Vision, which I'm preparing a review about for you, are excellent companions to OneNote in a productive synergy of information management tools.

When products "blur the lines" like all three of these applications do, a lot of people try to define the new idea by a process of reduction. That is, they focus on one aspect of what the tol can do that overlaps with what they're familiar with rather than evaluating the new tool on its own merits. I think that's a mistake and can lead people to dismiss, out of hand, some very useful additions to their system.

Dave Pollard discusses some of the ways to increase your blog's readership.

THE TOP FIVE WAYS TO IMPROVE YOUR BLOG...

Marketing is useless if you don't have a good 'product'. Here are five ways to ensure you do.

1. Provide something unique
2. Provide something valuable
3. Be first
4. Do your research
5. Learn to write very well

... AND THE TOP FIVE WAYS TO ATTRACT MORE ATTENTION TO IT

1. Use other media to pull people to your blog
2. Write, at least sometimes, about 'hot' topics
3. Make a great first impression
4. Learn by studying who's reading what, and what works
5. Get outside more

When I started my weblog about a year ago, I had the express purpose of blogging so that I could work on my writing, (anyone who wants to write needs to write at least every day), keeping a personal knowledge base, and communicating with peers. I've not wavered from that purpose, but many who have started blogging and dropped it, have wavered.

David at Ripples (via Jennifer Rice@BrandMantra) discusses the topic of staying in blogging for the long haul, and outlines some of his ideas for what you need to do personally if you're going to be around in a few years.

"Would you like to be writing your weblog a few years from now? Can you even stand the idea of blogging for that long? I don't have the answers for you, but it has made me think about my own future as a blogger."

1. Understand why you are writing. Have a mission statement, even if you don't publish it.
Revisit it occasionally if production drops.
2. Write about things that interest you
3. Write so you do not have to apologize for your choice of words.
4. Try to make your topic as interesting as possible, without bending the truth too much.
Parodies are excepted, of course.
5. When the words don't come, work on something else.
6. Keep track of what you have written so you will know when you are revisiting subjects.

QuickTime, Windows Media Player and RealPlayer/RealAudio are dead web technologies

Why do we need the QuickTime, Windows Media and Real Players when it comes to video and audio on the web? I, for one, am seriously tired of Apple's persistent begging for me to upgrade to Pro when I launch their player. I am absolutely frustrated with Windows Media Player and its inability to either find a codec or to tell me which flipping codec is missing. Real, to me is a litterbug, strewing my desktop with RAM files. Not only that, I have absolutely no guarantee the users even have the plug ins and can see the content.

Flash isn't just for website intros anymore!! (I know better than that, but seriously, everytime I ask a group of people what Flash it to them, the inevitably come up with "website intros"...)

These facts became readily apparent on a recent venture where we were experimenting extensively with the merits of the .flv format, and it's power within Flash. Consider the following stats.

Media Player Market Penetration:
Macromedia’s Flash - 98%
Viewpoint Media Player - 64.3%.
Shockwave - 58.1%
Windows Media Player 9 - 57.5%
RealNetworks RealPlayer - 46.5%
Apple’s QuickTime - 43.1%

Taken from: Bye Bye Quicktime, By: Tom Green

For those of you reading who are athletes, or for anyone who's ever choked down a PowerBar (I've eaten thousands - literally), this is a pretty sad moment, and a shocking one as well. Here, a world-class athlete turned successful entrepreneur, Brian Maxwell, passes on at age 51 of a heart attack.. Strange stuff...

VeloNews: PowerBar founder dies at 51

WTN: The "Big Squeeze" - Look for a job or be an entrepreneur?

Tony DiRomualdo in todays edition of the Wisconsin Technology Network newsletter, discusses the fever pitch of sentiment surrounding offshoring. Having just reviewed the presentation of the St. Norbert College SIFE (Students in Free Enterprise) group last night, and having listed to the stories about finding jobs in this economy, it seems to me that promoting entrepreneurship is a damn good idea. Which, in short, is the point of Tony's article

Despite two years of recovery, our economy is not producing anywhere near the number of new good-paying jobs needed. How then can America begin to redeploy and grow our human capital and economic assets? First, stop depending on big corporations for job growth. To create more jobs we need to start more businesses. Business ownership needs to be as much a part of the American dream as home ownership. It is vital to encourage entrepreneurship and help displaced workers to venture out on their own or join with others to start businesses.

It's ironic that SIFE members are going out into the community pitching entrepreneurship but come back to school, hit the PC, and troll for jobs online while feverishly updating their resume, trying to eek out every last bit of relevant experience that will land them a job. While I realize that it takes money, luck, and balls to venture out as an entrepreneur, I know for a fact that I had less of the former and more of the latter when I was graduating.

There are other benefits to democratizing business ownership. Trust between workers and top management is gone and can't be restored simply or easily. Instead, new kinds of companies and organizations must be created that blend people-centered management practices with commercially sustainable business models. These principles need not be mutually exclusive, but can be synergistic engines of economic growth and human development. They define what we call Next Generation Companies. America's future depends on our ability to renew and redeploy our economic, human and knowledge assets and to move away from the dysfunctional behaviors and practices so prevalent in mainstream business

It seems fitting to be writing a review to evangelize a book written on the topic of making evangelists out of your customers. I can’t help but think after reading Creating Customer Evangelists, “how can I let as many people as possible know how wonderful this book is!”

I’d venture a guess that many of you reading this review have delved into a lot of business books in your lifetime. I’m sure that the best of intentions were taken into each book, only to find out that ½ way through the majority of them, they had lost their relevance and hadn’t delivered on their promise. I mean, really, how many books about marketing can possibly have any really interesting and immediately helpful ideas?

While CCE is not a fiction thriller, it will keep you as engaged as any good novel would, because at it’s heart, it tells a lot of great short stories, and it tells them with insight and conviction. The book follows a “case study” approach and illustrates a world-class case example of a company doing CE right in each chapter. And, unlike those feel-good business books about how breakthrough something is that leave you hanging with no action items, CCE includes a full set of appendices on how you, yes you and your business, can get going on your CE efforts.

The book lays out the process of creating customer evangelists in the following order:
1. Customer Plus-Delta (you need to be continuously gathering customer feedback)
2. Napsterize Your Knowledge (share and share alike, and freely, and not cheap crap either – put some good material out there!)
3. Build the Buzz (find the WOM networks in your industry and tap into them, not blatantly, but intelligently. Oh, and give to get. See principle #2)
4. Create Community (encourage your customers to mingle, either physically or virtually – build a coalition of customers around your cause)
5. Make Bite-Size Chunks (devise specialized, smaller offerings to get your customers to bite) The software industry uses this tactic with abandon. When’s the last time you bought software w/ out a trial download?
6. Create a Cause (focus on making your world, industry, community, and company a better place because you were involved)

These are easy enough principles to understand, but NOT_EASY_TO_EMBRACE. How many of you are prepared to “Napsterize” what you know to everyone in and around your industry? Really, how many? Do your marketing managers actually “participate” in the industry and community, or are you all a bunch of bystanders.

Creating Customer Evangelists is about more than “implementing a few best-practices”, this is not six-sigma, but there are ways to measure, and Ben & Jackie have an entire appendix devoted to those to!

Are you ready to embrace your best customers as customer evangelists? Get the book – get the culture!

**This book was read and reviewed in conjunction with the Business Blog Book Tour

Thanks to Ben & Jackie for stepping in and providing their insights on Creating Customer Evangelists! I love the BBBT because it gives the bloggers a chance to interact with world-class authors, get some great ideas, and forces me to add another book to my reading list for the month!

Thanks also to Todd for setting up the tour, this is a great idea, and I trust that it's been as valuable to the readers as well.

The tour wraps up this week with the following blogs:
3/23 - StartupSkills.com
3/24 - SBBlog
3/25 - A Penny For

Ben & Jackie keep their own blog as well: Creating Customer Evangelists

So many corporate marketing initiatives that I've seen are driven by ad agencies. That's become even more apparent now that I'm on that side of the fence and working more with agencies doing work for clients. In my experience, ad agencies are not the most "innovative" when it comes to new techniques, technologies, or methods that do not involve creating ads or print pieces.

How does a company's Customer Evangelism efforts fit into the client agency relationship? Have you encountered any agencies which adovcate customer evangelist principles and develop/support programs to build CE initiatives within client companies (besides yours)?

In a recent client meeting, I encountered a perfect opportunity to introduce some CE techniques, yet the agency would hear nothing of it. My fear is that they uptake of valuable programs like this will take exponentially longer if companies are using marketing and ad agencies as their filters for ideas or to set their frame of reference on what's "new, cool and effective" in the world of marketing. (Not that WOM is that new anyway, but to some it's a very new concept - evangelism is even edgier in some circles)

According to Ben, The ad agency model is optimized for mass-media purchases. Most of their profit arrives from commissions on purchased media, or the billable hourly rates of their people. This model incents agencies to dream up marketing strategies that optimize the model. Unfortunately for them, the effectiveness of traditional media are declining in effectiveness, especially network TV, and clients are demanding more accountability for their dollars.

Jackie Huba and I spend the majority of our time writing, speaking and evangelizing the tenets of customer evangelism. The rest of the time is spent training companies on how to do it themselves and facilitate the creation of a customer evangelism plan. In the end, the client must own a customer -focused strategy. Management and employees must live it.

You can't outsource your soul to an agency.

I've worked in companies where customer satisfaction data is collected, and passed on to market research for analysis, and maybe even passed on to product development for improvement. But that's it. Very little about the "customer experience was ever recorded let alone questioned and improved. What ever can be done quickly and impersonally is usually the road taken.

An article from the e-Prairie newsletter (from Chicago also I believe!) today highlights some of the great and inexpensive ways to get real-life, street level customer feedback, the kind that you speak of in your book. Yet, despite your efforts with the book, and knowing how much of the aforementioned article will fall on deaf ears, I continue to wonder what the big road block is to companies getting real data and using that real data to make marked improvements in their customer-facing experiences?

In your experience, why is it so hard for some companies to take that first step and engage the primary principal of creating customer evangelists, going out and getting real "customer plus-delta" feedback? Outside of what's written in Chapter 16 about getting started, are there any grass-roots (aka - mid-management level, not executive order) tactics that you've seen to get companies to take this first step to creating customer evangelists?

According to Ben, "The biggest obstacle to knowing what customers really think about us is fear. It's easy to fear customers will tell us you your product or service stinks, that you're horrible people and you should never have set foot on earth. That's the worst-case scenario.

Realize, though, that people are already talking about your product and services; they're telling colleagues, friends and family about product quality and service experience. They may be evangelizing you or discussing slipshod quality or defectiveness in online or offline forums. An organization focused on creating customer evangelists knows what people are saying by going after feedback before it goes too far out of bounds.

Some tactics for gathering customer plus-delta (the plus, meaning what do customers love, and the delta, meaning what would customers improve):

- Google your company name, products, and your name to see what people are saying on the web. Google makes it easy for you to receive an email alert when your name pops up on the web.
- Call at least one customer every week, just to chat. Ask a lot of questions and listen, listen, listen.
- Form a customer advisory board. The purpose of this group is to provide ongoing insight into improving current products and feedback on new products and strategies. An outside company that facilitates the board can be invaluable.
- Make it easy for customers to provide their feedback, such as on every page of your website, through point-of-sale displays, after every meeting with vendors, etc.
- Put pictures and email addresses of people in the company, even the CEO, on your website."

My first query deals with the concept of "corporate loyalty to customers". I know, not a new concept, but I have experienced a great deal of cynicism at companies I have worked with when I brought the concept of "corporate loyalty" when discussing "customer loyalty." How can we expect customers to be loyal to us, when we have shown very little in the way of being loyal to them?

The typical responses are:

"With the Internet, customers are just a click away from a lower price, so why bother?"
"Customer loyalty - there is no such thing as customer loyalty anymore!"
"We can't afford services like that for our customers. Let's just start a formal loyalty program with a frequent buyer card."

The most pertinent example of corporate-to-customer loyalty that I have seen is Southwest Airlines' approach to reaching out to customers and coddling their evangelists. But they are but an example, and few (at least that I have seen) have walked in their shoes.

How can companies even think of creating customer evangelists when there seems to be such a lack of corporate-to-customer loyalty? Why would customers even want to be become evangelists for most companies?

According to Ben, "There's compelling evidence why focusing on your most loyal customers makes good business sense:"

Good Morning! Today the Business Blog Book Tour makes a stop here for some Q&A with Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba, the authors of Creating Customer Evangelists: How Loyal Customers Become a Volunteer Sales Force. Please check back throughout the day for updates!

Dear MarketingSherpa Business-to-Business Reader,

I'm writing to ask for your help today. I'm frustrated by the lack of benchmark data on B2B marketing - especially in high-tech.

No one really knows what a good response rate for a lead generation or direct sales campaign is for 2004. So, we've set out to create a benchmark report for you.

You'll get a *complimentary* copy of the executive summary with useful charts in April. But first, I desperately need your input to create it....

If you haven't already, please take our three-minute IT Marketing Metrics questionnaire posted here:
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.asp?u=63026421363

GOAL: 309 of you have taken the Questionnaire so far. We need 500 total (and preferably more) to make sure results are statistically significant for you. Every single answer counts. Your answer will make a real difference.

And thank you for helping us create this resource for the B2B high-tech marketing community.

P.S. Got questions? Our Metrics Editor, Andrew Latzman, is available at andrewl, marketingsherpa.com

Forbes.com, Bitpipe study examines white paper usage

According to the study, which was conducted by market research company Insight Express, 63% of survey participants said they use white papers or case studies to evaluate technology products and services.

The study also found that after reading a white paper or case study, 78% of all respondents passed it on to a colleague.

Also, 93% of respondents said high-quality vendor white papers positively influenced a company's image

But what really matters is "Does it make them want to buy?" Yep - they help in that area too! 57% said that the reading of white paper content influenced thier purchase decision (let's feel good about this and think that a positive impression was made).

The Register: The value of PC real estate

Flash Player is the world's most pervasive software platform, reaching 98 per cent of Internet-enabled desktops worldwide as well as many other popular devices such as mobile phones and PDAs (source: NPD research April 2003). By comparison, Windows Media Player and Real Player have less than 60 per cent market penetration, and QuickTime Player has less than 40 per cent.

Flash Player was initially developed to deliver a rich media experience on Web sites, but it is now evolving. Macromedia Flash enables designers and developers integrate video, text, audio and graphics into effective and engaging user experiences.

Macromedia is able to leverage the power of the Flash Player to deliver one of the best desktop video conferencing experiences available. The ubiquity of the Flash player enables Macromedia to deliver high quality media streams while being economical of bandwidth. This is of key importance in Web conferencing, and Macromedia recently announced Macromedia Breeze to exploit Flash Player capabilities.

It never ceases to amaze me though, no matter how pervasive Flash becomes, it always becomes a rallying point when discussing web design amonst market-techs (marketers with enough technical knowledge to be dangerous). People always struggle to define just what Flash is, and when you take a poll and go 'round the room, Flash means different things to different people.

Someday...we'll get there...

Mark Cuban rocks! From his post today about telling the media that from now on they could reach him through his blog. He said, in no uncertain terms, that he would be "...posting whatever I had to say on my blog"

"The satisfaction of knowing that each will have to explain to their editors what a blog is — and argue for who knows how long about whether or not BlogMaverick.com is an attributable source — crept over me and that jaunt on the gauntlet flew by.

DMNews: Survey: Many Loyalty Rewards Go Unclaimed

Customers love loyalty programs, as evidenced by their shopping habits, but often do not do anything with the points or incentives. I'm as guilty as anyone. I have thousands of frequent flier miles and other varoius points in various programs, but have yet to capitalize on them! Bummer.

A new survey from Maritz Loyalty Marketing claims almost 40 percent of longtime members of retail loyalty programs have never redeemed rewards. In a paradoxical finding, the survey also reported that 49 percent of participants said retail rewards programs influence where they spend their shopping dollars. It is clear retailers are not doing enough to bridge this disconnect, or to convince consumers that loyalty points are an effective proxy for money.

One of the best executions of how to engage loyal customers who have loyalty points but are not redeeming them on your products was a cross-marketing opportunity which was done by NorthWest Airlines where they sent me a flyer where I could sign up for number of magazine subscriptions, depending on how many miles I had. Now, every time I get my monthly issue of Wine Spectator, I remember NorthWest and how valuable their miles are, whether I'm flying or not!

MarketingSherpa: 57% of Consumers Will Give Email Addresses to a Local Retailer

I know, this is old news. But I know that I'll need this information somewhere down the line so it's best to blog it. Which brings me back to the mission of this blog as a personal KM device, and a way to share ideas with others. Can't forget the personal KM elements...

How can you take advantage of the fact that people trust local retailers with their email addresses? Well, for one, start with your in-store promotions!

Have consumers will fill out a card to receive email alerts when asked to by a clerk at a local small business such as a beauty parlor, car-repair shop,
or restaurant.

When you couple this with data from Quris' email study last summer, that revealed consumers vastly prefer receiving email from local "traditional" businesses to any other type of marketing messages, it opens up a world of opportunity.

Realistically, the whole idea of leading the proverbial "SMB Horse" to the proverbial "E-Marketing Waters" has been a hard road for some . Many SMB (small to medium size business) owners are not e-biz savvy, and take time to convince. In fact, recent research bears out that only 11% of SMBs are using pay-for-performance search.

For nearly every SMB out there, e-mail marketing and loyalty programs are an outstanding idea. For those small business owners who actually have a head for business, they'll reap the benefits of their technologically backward competitors sitting on the sidelines.

Entrepreneur Magazine: CHEAP Ways to Drive Site Traffic

Entrepreneur waxes on about the low-cost high return strategies of per-click (PPC) search engine marketing and affiliate programs. ...

That's all good and well, just don't drop the ball on conversion when you get 'em there...

I thought that this was just too cool! We don't have much in Green Bay for free wireless yet, save for Kavarna, but Milwaukee has a bit of a base already. Check out the Milwaukee Wi-Fi Hotspot map that Stanley Miller has put together on the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel website.

Local Goes Live By Aaron Swartz

Google Local integrates yellow pages-style information right into your search. Search for pizza 54217 (Luxemburg, WI - Where I live) or plumbers Luxemburg, WI and up will pop a little compass with a couple results. Click the compass, and you'll get a full listing of nearby results, with distance, maps, directions, related web pages, phone numbers, and more. You can narrow it down by category and distance, and look at a map of all the results.

Google's really done a nice job of combining various sources of information for this service.

I came across this site today, "The Unofficial Cookie FAQ".

The site is chock-full over every detail on Cookies that you never knew...such as where the name Cookie comes from.

According to an article written by Paul Bonner for Builder.Com on 11/18/1997:

"Lou Montulli, currently the protocols manager in Netscape's client product division, wrote the cookies specification for Navigator 1.0, the first browser to use the technology. Montulli says there's nothing particularly amusing about the origin of the name: 'A cookie is a well-known computer science term that is used when describing an opaque piece of data held by an intermediary. The term fits the usage precisely; it's just not a well-known term outside of computer science circles.'"

ePrairie: Too Many Tech Entrepreneurs Lack Marketing Understanding

Darrell Dvorak of Tatum Partners has a great piece on ePrarie about getting your shit together when it comes to marketing your tech startup.

The world’s greatest management consultant (Peter F. Drucker) doesn’t mince words: “There is only one valid definition of business purpose: to create a customer. Because its purpose is to create a customer, the business enterprise has two and only these two basic functions: marketing and innovation. Marketing and innovation produce results. All the rest are costs.”

If you as the tech entrepreneur don’t have the experience and skills to answer questions like these, you need to hire marketing folks who know all the questions to ask and how to get the answers. Because of your limited resources and small margin for error, you need to work hard to get the very best with your first personnel selections.

A good start would be to probe marketing candidates about their skills and experience in successfully addressing issues like those above. If all they can discuss is their advertising expertise, move on.

This is a response that I drafted to a request from an American Marketing Association member on how to setup an Internet Marketing division within his company. Some potentially valuable stuff here that I thought I'd share.

1. Develop rock solid goals and objectives for your team and ensure that everything you do under the guise of your Internet Marketing banner is done to explicitly serve one or more of the objectives. Examples of some of the goals of companies I have worked with:
- Develop leads for field sales
- Make our company "easier to do business with"
- Retain customers through e-mail marketing and loyalty programs
- Drive incremental revenue through web channels
- Close sales of a certain $$ through web channels to minimize transaction cost

2. You and your senior management need to discuss, in detail, your expectations of what Internet Marketing is to bring to the organization.

3. Additionally, a vision for success needs to be established. How will you know when you've 'arrived' or that you're even on the right track. I know, this is basic, but I can't tell you how many quandaries I've seen due to a simple lack of a shared or at least mutually agreed upon vision of success for an e-marketing initiative.

4. A common language of what constitutes a lead, inquiry, conversion, ROMI, and other web metrics needs to be established, and benchmarks need to be setup for each metric.
(here's a link to a great e-marketing tracking spreadsheet http://www.danavan.net/weblog/archives/emarketing_tracking_spreadsheets.html)

5. Selling the initiative *laterally* is sometimes one of the hardest things to do in an organization. Not knowing the specific structure of your organization, I can only speak generally on this topic, but at one of my former companies, we conducted full-scale presentations to every single department in the company, explaining the mission of our e-marketing program, the benefits to the company and the employees, and related to each department how they fit into the e-business puzzle.

6. Develop a quarterly action plan for your division. The e-marketing space still moves pretty quickly and you need to have an action plan which you can throw new ideas against to see if they meet your mission. There are things like loyalty programs and never fit in certain organizations I've worked with, that were blockbusters in others. You need to be able to evaluate every element of the e-marketing mix for feasibility in your own environment.

7. Rely on your analytics. If you do nothing else, track the effects of your e-marketing initiative. It's appalling how many companies still charge headlong into this space without a proper "Plan-Do-See" model for evaluating successes and failures and adjusting accordingly. Depending on how important this initiative is going to be to your company, it pays to develop the proper models to be able to forecast what will and won't work within your environment. Moreover, if you are diligent about your analytics, you will have an upper hand on marketing vendors who come calling making outrageous claims of improving ROI. In a former role, we saved over $100,000 in online media just by using the numbers we collected from our garden variety analytics to refute vendors' inflated traffic claims and negotiate more agreeable terms.

8. Know when to outsource. Things like Pay-Per-Click campaigns can be a sinkhole of time and e-mail marketing can consume small e-marketing departments. With each turn, it pays to evaluate outside assistance to augment your internal efforts. Always know what your time is worth.

9. How will the Internet effect other channels? Channel conflict has brought many a budding e-commerce program to its knees. Know how your channels will benefit from your e-marketing and e-commerce efforts and be able to articulate those benefits to channel partners, your internal sales force, VARS, and anyone else who interfaces in the distribution and sales of your products/services.

10. Do your homework. Subscribe to the right e-newsletters, get involved in the AMA Internet SIG, and keep your eyes open for new ideas. While much has been done, there is still much innovation left in this space. Be at the forefront and keep ahead of your competitors by devoting a certain percentage of your time to online R&D. Experiment with different models and tactics. For example - we tried an "RFI (request for information)" model of acquisition vs. our standard "RFQ (request for quotation)" model for a period of 2 weeks once, and found that 25% less people converted on the RFI model. Keep experimenting for decimal points. They all add up at the end of the year.

Business Pundit starts it off today with some questions on "Napsterizing" your knowledge and what you didn't you learn in B-School.

Newsweek International: Pushing the Buy

Why is it that the Europeans get to have all the fun when it comes to Neuromarketing research?

Ford of Europe is researching "neuromarketing" techniques to better understand how consumers make emotional connections with their brands. DaimlerChrysler has funded several research projects at the University of Ulm in Germany, using brain-imaging technology to decode which purchasing choices go into buying a car. Firms like Oxford-based Neurosense have sprung up to make neuromarketing a bona fide business tool.

Since the 1950s, the best tool for identifying which ads and products people will like has been the focus group. The problem is, it's notoriously unreliable, largely because social dynamics get in the way of truthful answers. Some subjects want to please the focus-group leader. Others want to dominate the group. "Almost every focus group throws up someone more vocal and bossy, who either inspires others to follow or react against [them] or both," says Tim Ambler, senior fellow at London Business School. Perhaps that's why only one in 100 products survives in the marketplace after the typical product launch.

I had thought that "subdomain marketing" was out of style until I saw an ad from Honda tonight where they show various profile shots of cars along with their seemingly happy owners (they should be, I've owned a Honda, I loved it too). Anway, the ad closes with a subdomain "love.honda.com", which is a departure from the typical "honda.com/love" that you would normally see in advertisements.

Nevertheless, this is an awsome integrated campaign with a well-designed microsite! You can send to a friend, see the original commercial, sign up for a newsletter, and check out the full range of Honda lovers who've submitted pictures.

I'd love to see a case history on how well subdomains vs. redirects work in TV-to-web drive-to marketing.

Boston.com: MIT professor sees far-flung future workplace

According to Ray Ozzie, Lotus Notes creator and founder and chief executive of Groove Networks Inc; "The real story is what technology-augmented decentralization is doing to business and society." also... "Fundamentally, the technology is being used to reduce the cost of coordination to get a problem solved."

I think that we're see much this happening already, but it's not being driven by employees who need by rather by management who requires it. Part of the great "jobless recovery" is utilizing the technologies we've put in place over the past few several years to augment some of the previously inefficient business process such as archaic communication and collaboration modes. Not unlike children who grow up today and don't know a world without the Internet, new companies are growing up in this economy that know little of the old ways and could not survive were it not for a highly coordinated and collaborative remote collection of centers.

Dr. Meir Russ of the University of Wisconsin, Green Bay discusses some of the factors in his two-part series on why the creative economy proposed in The Rise of the Creative Class is not functioning in Northeastern Wisconsin.

What's choking the New-Creative Economy - Part 1
http://fridayreport.titletown.org/fridayreport/past+issues/past+articles/articles02-27-04.asp
Some of factors contributing to our plight:
- Digital copyright issues
- Under-utilization of intellectual property in our corporations
- The system that largely benefits only large corporations for innovation

What's choking the New-Creative Economy - Part 2
http://fridayreport.titletown.org/fridayreport/current+articles/economic+news.asp
This article takes a positive spin and deals with some of the key success factors, and the barriers for creativity and innovation within the company.

DM News: Web Is Major Awareness Builder for Consumers

Internet marketing is stealing share from television as a medium that creates awareness leading to consumer purchases, according to DoubleClick Inc.'s second annual Touchpoints survey. The influence of TV dropped in the past year in categories like automotive, movies and electronics. Broadcast dominates only five out of 10 categories DoubleClick measured as the medium with the most influence on the first-learn, or awareness, phase of the purchase process.

As an interactive marketer, I'm keen to find local e-marketing opportunities that I can bring to clients in the greater Green Bay area. One such opportunity is with Internet Yellow Pages provider SuperPages.com. They recently introduced PPC options I'm really anxious to explore. From the information on their site, they don't have much automation in place, as you must call a rep and have them setup an account, which makes sense I guess, as most people (SMB owners) who are likely to engage the service are not Internet marketers and will do well to have some assistance in the process.

The beauty of doing local search marketing is that uou may be as broad or as specific as you like in selecting locations. If you are setting up a local campaign, you may choose nearby towns and cities. National / Regional advertisers can target metropolitan areas, states, or the entire US.

FindWhat powers SuperPages.com and word has it that it will be early April before advertisers can use Pay Per Click at Superpages.com.

My bet for the future is on local search advertising (yep, I'm jumping on that bandwagon) and the gradual refinement and effectiveness of content targeted advertising. There will also be a huge influx of new PPC advertisers who are getting fed up with contstant algorithm changes at Google.

Media Life: Peddling a nifty scheme to trim fat

I really don't know if this could work in the US, let alone in Green Bay, Wisconsin, but I'd love to see it work!!!

It’s been a problem of growing concern in Britain: how to halt the ever-expanding waistlines of her majesty’s subjects. The answer? Free bikes. “This isn’t pie in the sky. It is based on concrete plans.” Note: These are not just any bicycles but those that carry advertising. A similar free bicycle scheme underway since June of last year in Vienna, Austria.

There are bike stations around the city where you can swipe a credit card and pick up a bike. It’s free for one hour. After that there is a small hourly charge. When you are finished with the bike, you return it to one of the stations. In return, the cyclist becomes a pedal-powered billboard, transporting advertising messages printed on the enlarged hub caps and the chain guard. Three advertisers -- mobile phone companies Nokia and One, and local Austrian bank Raifeissen -- have sponsored 333 bikes each for three years.

What are your thoughts? Could this work here?

In the WTN email newsletter today, I noticed the following blurb, which excites, yet confuses me.

WTN announces website syndication

   The Wisconsin Technology Network is now offering WTN’s news and headlines for syndication. The technology, XML, allows any web host to take WTN’s up-to-the minute headlines and run them on their own companies website, with direct links back to WTN’s homepage. See Portofino Group as an example.

Sure, XML, or RSS allows other sites to syndicate your data, but is that really why you'd do this? Why not broach the subject of the benefits of RSS for your corporate readers, or mention how much easier it might be to get your news if you used a feed vs. the email, or how you can get around corporate spam filter issues by using RSS...nope, they chose to tout the syndication benefits.

I got an email from someone at MarketingFind.com today alerting me of some new articles that they had on the site and asking for a link exchange. I'm not usually one to do link exchanges, but they do have some pretty good basic info up there. They also have a section called the "expert's corner" which features the likes of    Al Ries and Andy Beal. There's a lot of me too stuff, but they have some great newbie articles that people new to web marketing will find useful. They have forums on the site too, but I could not find one with more than 2 posts. Not the strongest area of the site yet.

All in all, MarketingFind.com is not a daily read just yet, but keep an eye on it, they may come up with something unique!

MarketingSherpa: MarketingSherpa Experiment Diary: Can a New Desktop Application Replace Email Newsletters?

For those of you who are big fans of Marketing Sherpa and have trouble with email getting caught in your companie's SPAM filters, they've introduced a small desktop tool, similar to Weather Bug or the Google Toolbar which will plug their articles right to you when they're published.

Get new MarketingSherpa Case Studies, job listings, & how-to articles "zapped" directly to your PC, so you don't have to wade through email or fret about filters. Easy and risk-free. Install (or uninstall) in just 5 seconds. Click here for details. Updates about 8 times per week - free. No ad banners or pop-ups - guaranteed!

I've already installed it. We'll see how it goes.

My thoughts on the matter are that you have do be a damned useful purveyor of information to propose putting an intrevenous feed into a user's computer. Why not just do RSS instead? If I were them, I'd have entered into a partnership with some RSS reader companies to promote the adoption of RSS by those who don't have it, and encourage migration to RSS for people with SPAM filter issues. Better yet, why not team up with other sites like Marketing Profs and offer a package co-op deal, kind of how when you sign up for a newsletter and the thank you page offers you another 10 like-minded newsletters to sign up for.

WEBSITE Marketing Tracker - Search Engine Positioning and Web Marketing weblog Rugles.com has recently launched Website Marketing Tracker v1.0. The software - which is available for free from the Rugles website, provides users with a basis for developing effective e-marketing and website tracking.

Neuromarketing - the emerging field of studying the brain to help advertisers tap into people's unarticulated needs, drives and desires, is being employed by Caltech and a Los Angeles marketing company to discern which movie trailers resonate most with potential moviegoers. While this technology is still in the lab, can't you just see the day when those little black bubbles that house store cameras also have neuromarketing sensors. Just like we use CTR metrics, among others, on email, to recognize patterns and shift our tactics toward those patterns, stores will be able to ascertain which displays evoke the right "purchasing thoughts" and spur buyers on the sales. From those numbers, they'll design better displays, Hollywood will make better trailers, and we'll all consumer like mad... OK..maybe that's a bit nuts, but as long as it's legal, marketer's will strive for it!

W3Schools: Browser Statistics
Browser trends is important information. What we you can read from the statistics here, is that Internet Explorer 6 is the dominating browser, XP is the most popular operating system, and most users are using a display with 800x600 pixels or more, with a color depth of at least 65K colors.

Managing Wireless, Non-Computer Networks
Software to tap personal social networks for business is
spreading. Should you be interested--or worried?
http://update.informationweek.com/cgi-bin4/DM/y/efhp0GJKqA0Glu0CPUE0AK

Commerical Alert: Neuromarketing overview
http://www.commercialalert.org/index.php/category_id/1/subcategory_id/82/article_id/202

Douglas Rushkoff: Reading the Consumer Mind The age of neuromarketing has dawned.
http://www.cognitiveliberty.org/neuro/Rushkoff_Neuromarketing.html

Paul Zak: The Neurobiology of Trust
http://www.corante.com/brainwaves/archives/000447.html

Neuromarketing 2004 Conference
http://www.hnl.bcm.tmc.edu/NeuroMarketing/index.html

Business Pundit: Neuromarketing is Not so Hot
http://www.businesspundit.com/archives/001182.html

TIME Online: The Why of Buy: Theory says we are rational about money. But brain-probing scientists are discovering otherwise
http://www.time.com/time/insidebiz/article/0,9171,1101040308-596161,00.html

The Center for Cognitive Liberty & Ethics (CCLE): Cognitive Liberty & Neuromarketing
http://www.cognitiveliberty.org/issues/neuromarketing.html

Forbes: In Search of the Buy Button
http://www.forbes.com/infoimaging/free_forbes/2003/0901/062.html

Smalltimes (Zack Lynch): THINK NANO HAS ETHICAL PROBLEMS? JUST WRAP YOUR BRAIN AROUND NEURO
http://www.smalltimes.com/document_display.cfm?document_id=7522

The Word Spy: neuromarketing
http://www.wordspy.com/words/neuromarketing.asp

AdAge: AIRLINE MARKETERS INCREASE DEPENDENCE ON WEB SITES
The one shining star in the travel industry has to be the ability for consumers to control the buying experience of thier tickets via the web. Everything else is still going to hell in a handcart. Seriously though, look at these numbers! How many industries are drooling over the airlines' ability to motivate customers to purchase online.

* In 2000 JetBlue drove customers to its Web site with its advertising. Within two years, 68% of its bookings were online. Today, that number is 75%.
* 55% of Southwest's bookings are online.
* An average 22% of reservations for the major carriers are made online.

"The Web is the great liberalizer. People can do it from their desk and that makes everybody equal," said Richard Ford, executive creative director for brand consultancy Landor, New York. Landor has worked with Delta for the last 10 years to create a synergy in its advertising, in everything from corporate branding to TV spots to having the same look on its Web site and airport kiosks.

We're just like Super Wal-Mart," said Mr. Mapes, the vice president of marketing for Song Airlines. "When people go to flysong.com, they can book a ticket, pick a seat, print out a boarding pass and even pre-order a meal."

Simple ideas, but when you see how few companies actually do this well, it bears repeating over and over.

Man the Site.
Offer live chat on your site so a visitor's questions can be answered on the spot, which may draw them in further. Not enough staff for that? Companies, such as LivePerson.com, offer online operators for about $99 a month per operator.

Analyze the Site.
Not enough sales teams take the time to analyze site traffic. Make sure to evaluate who is visiting your site, how long visitors stay, and what pages they hit most often. Funny, David Ogilvy wrote about this same issue in the 80's when he wrote Ogilvy on Advertising. It's really a shame that not much has changed.

E-Mail Is Not Enough.
Don't turn visitors off with just e-mail contacts. Include phone and fax numbers, and make sure those numbers appear on every page of the Web site, so visitors don't have to hunt for a company's information.

ePrairie.com: Troika of Cable, DSL, Satellite Soon to Have New Power Line Opponent
CHICAGO – Not surprisingly, the number of flavors in which broadband will be served up this year is going up. Soon, the familiar troika of cable, DSL and satellite will have some new opponents to contend with: one in the clouds and the other buried in the ground, writes wireless expert Spiro Papadopoulos.

iMedia: CPG Marketers Can Find Loyalty Online
http://www.imediaconnection.com/news/617.asp

iMedia: CPG Best Practices
http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/1767.asp

Forrester: The CPG Digital Marketing Gap
http://www.forrester.com/ER/Research/Report/Summary/0,1338,11543,00.html

Forrester: CPG Digital Marketing Best Practices
http://www.forrester.com/ER/Research/Report/Summary/0,1338,16108,FF.html

Sharpe Partners Case Study: The Role of Digital Marketing in a CPG Brand Launch
http://www.sharpe-partners.com/pdf/sp_casestudy_soj_brand.pdf

HamptonRoads.com and CoolSavings team up for national coupon distribution
http://home.hamptonroads.com/stories/print.cfm?story=46547&ran=229566

IAB: Dove Cleans Up Online Advertising's Image
http://www.iabuk.net/files/657.pdf

Marketing Wonk: CPG Article Link Archive
http://www.marketingwonk.com/archives/categories/consumer_packaged_goods/

I've had online CPG tactics on the brain this morning... Some great ideas to drive action at the website. However, I was stumped by the question of "how do these various web-drive-to tactics compare?" What are THEIR response rates?

Oddly enough, The Promotion Marketing Association has taken the lead on a project to come up with a benchmark study for response rates.Such metrics have long been sought after by agencies and brands alike, and are a key component in developing budgets and determining return-on-investment.

If the industry-wide study comes to fruition it would be the first of its kind for promotion, an industry that has typically been unwilling to share response rates and other metrics considered proprietary. The study would seek to establish performance benchmarks for promotion marketing tactics, such as sweepstakes, games, contests, rebates and others.

Here's to hoping that study gets done sooner than later!

John Cass has been musing about how to build credibility via WOM advertising and 3rd party advocates. He's got a few ideas on how to get this going. If anyone has more, please add them via comments on John's site.

* Associate your company with national or regional associations
* Find credible spokespeople
* Write case studies that tell compelling stories from real customers
* Get some good press from your industry's media
* Understand your company’s strengths and larger connections, communicate the strengths and connections consistently

These are pretty fundamental, but that still doesn't mean that everyone is doing them.

Seems there's now more than enough evidence to support the fact that popups have always sucked. Peronsally, I sitll think they're a valid tactic under certain, very acute and defendable circumstances.

Bunnyfoot Universality: The efficacy of pop-ups and the resulting effect on brands (pdf, 600K)
netimperative: Pop-ups take new battering
MarketingWonk: Web Publishers Weep at Imminent Pop-up Extinction

Answer: With PFP, you are paying for top results, whereas with Site Match you are just paying to be listed in the index.

With Site Match, users pay an annual subscription fee to submit their URLs for review. This does not guarantee inclusion into the Yahoo index; however, Site Match does promise more exposure for users, claiming the sites accepted will reach 75-80% of Internet users and 50% of searchers.

THE NEW RULES OF SEARCHING
Some Internet search sites let advertisers pay to ensure inclusion in a user's search results, while others don't.

Here are the policies of some of the major players:
• Yahoo: Allows paid inclusion
• Google: Doesn't allow paid inclusion
• Ask Jeeves: Allows paid inclusion
• Time-Warner (AOL): Doesn't allow paid inclusion
• Microsoft (MSN): Allows paid inclusion

Related Resources:
ClickZ: Yahoo!, Overture Debut New Paid Inclusion Program
WebProWorld: Yahoo launches their own Pay for Inclusion Program
netimperative.com: Yahoo! goes 'pay for exclusion!'
Wall St. Journal: Yahoo Search Results To Include Paid Links (subscription)

David Jung posted about an ad in a trade rag that leads to a word document for a landing page. Nice.

Technology Executives Club: Micro-Sites: They're not the only mini with a lot of power

In "Micro-Sites: They're not the only mini with a lot of power," Ian Turvill & Bill Hanekamp illustrate a very effective approach for companies that are finding their corporate portals growing out of control. Be sure to check out their article on Micro-Sites, which could be considered a Best Practice approach.

The micro-site is certainly not a profound new concept. It's pretty simple. But it does require a shift in thinking - and responsibilities. The key is to remember that a company's Web site is communications tool, so it should be targeted, relevant, and built to sell.

Mounting evidence suggests that brevity is key in E-mail marketing. via OPA Intelligence Report

NN/g: Keep e-newsletters brief, less frequent
Let's keep this simple. Nielsen Norman Group's second email newsletter study brought good news, bad news and some tips for online publishers. Good news: Recipients can tell the difference between spam and opt-in newsletters. Bad news: Recipients are still stressed about inundated inboxes, and have less tolerance for newsletters that waste their time. Tips: People want email newsletters that are informative, convenient, and timely. "General information such as that in human interest stories and columns works best in traditional media," study co-author Jakob Nielsen told Clickz News. "Email newsletters must leverage the benefits of new media -- instant transmission and narrowcasting." Duly noted.
» Study: E-Newsletter Readers Grow Itchy Trigger Fingers (ClickZ News)
» Nielsen offers e-newsletter usability guideline (Publish)
» Study: Email Newsletters Too Long, Too Frequent (MediaPost)
» Email Newsletter Usability (NN/g executive summary)

If you've been following this thread, AMA Internet/eCom SIG Leader TobyBloomberg asked Jay Berkowitz to post from the WebMasterWorld.com Pub Conference VI in Orlando. It has been my pleasure to share the latest news from one of the leading groups of internet marketers in the world.

I met the dynamic team from http://www.monstercommerce.com/. They have created a self-serve eCommerce store builder that is easy to use and fully featured. The product line includes: a newsletter tool, Search Engine
Optimization service and web design.

Stephanie Leffler, CEO of Monster Commerce shared a classic dot.com start-up story, of seeing an opportunity, starting out of Partner Ryan Noble's parents garage in St. Louis in 1998, and building a successful business with over 4,000 customers. "Our niche is medium size Commerce businesses, our clients include the US Open, John Deere, Road and Track and Woman's Day." Stephanie's favorite stories include a 20 year old woman profitably selling Nike Air runners at http://www.krazykickz.com and a woman in the Midwest who's puppet business has been such a winner she has had to add a canopy onto her garage just to protect outgoing orders.

Monster Commerce President Ryan Noble added "The product costs $194 for set-up and $79 a month and we offer a 30 Day Money Back Guarantee. We have 24/7 customer service and our tech. and sales teams handle over 500 calls per day."

Competitors include Yahoo! Stores, http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/merchant http://www.freemerchant.com/, Nexternal and Microsoft's Commerce Server which ranges between $7,000 and $19,000 http://www.microsoft.com/commerceserver .

My wife and I hired an agency to build our first eCommerce store for $15,000 in 1997. Where was MonsterCommerce when I needed them?

Jay Berkowitz
CEO
http://www.tengoldenrules.com