ONLINE BIG IN 2007

Marketers plan to increase online direct marketing in 2007, but continue to overlook analytics.

According to Alterian's transatlantic annual survey of more than 500 direct marketers, marketing services providers and agencies, eighty-five percent of respondents expect their online direct marketing expenditures to increase in 2007. The spending projection is the largest expected increase since the Alterian Annual Survey began in 2003.

Over half (51%) of survey respondents also plan to boost their offline direct marketing spend in 2007. When asked about specific channel investments:

*    81 percent plan to increase spending on email marketing
*    50 percent say they will spend more on direct mail
*    45 percent will increase their budgets for personalized landing pages
*    94 percent of respondents who said they will decrease offline spending said they will increase online spending.

Thirty-five percent of respondents reported that their email activity was integrated with all other channels, and 26 percent of respondents said their email is at least integrated with other online channels. Only 18 percent reported that email is still used as a standalone channel.

*    70 percent of respondents said they apply basic or no analysis to any of their email campaigns
*    29 percent claim they carry out full analysis
*    32 percent, of marketing service providers reported carrying out full data analysis on email campaigns.
*    23 percent of agencies carry out full analysis, but reported the highest percentage, at 57 percent of agencies, that carry out basic analysis

Those with the most advanced level of online and offline integration also indicated that they are performing the most advanced levels of analysis, with 45 percent of respondents topping both these segments. Conversely, those not integrating email fully with other online or offline channels are doing the least analysis, with only 12 percent of respondents using email as a standalone channel completing full analysis of email campaigns.

David Eldridge, Alterian's chief executive officer, said "these results certainly indicate tremendous opportunities for marketers to use email and online marketing techniques linked with traditional direct marketing tactics to establish competitive advantages.

 

WEB 2.0: THE RISK, THE REWARD

Research from Hitwise identifies some of the ways marketers can take advantage of web 2.0.

Web 2.0 refers to social networks, blogs, wikis, online message posting, podcasts, and other web-based communities that create their own content to interact with one another. MySpace, YouTube, Wikipedia, Skype, blogs, online message posting and podcasts are part of the vocabluary and second nature to most 15–34 year olds around the globe. However, corporate Australia is regarded as 2-3 years behind the rest of the world when it comes to harnessing the potential of Web 2.0.

A recent study by web audience measurement firm Hitwise showed that Web 2.0 style sites now account for 12 percent of US web activity, up from just 2 percent two years ago. For Australian businesses, web 2.0 represents new ways of marketing to forge stronger ties with customers. It's also a great opportunity to monitor – free of charge – what consumers think about them and their products, competitors and industry.

There are also big risks in a format that is essentially word-of-mouth gone global. If a consumer has had a negative experience with your business or product, their online comments can reach thousands of people immediately, and stay in cyberspace forever, picked up by every Google search of the company name or product. Web 2.0 can impact heavily on businesses who may not place much importance on customer service, but will reward those brand who do. If you do want to utilise Web 2.0 to your advantage, be honest, be accessible, and above all be open to the comments your consumers feel the need to post.

 

Increase in online sales for SMEs

According to a recent survey, one in three small businesses reported dramatic increases in online sales during the Christmas season last year.

The survey also noted a growing number of SMEs investing a considerable amount of capital into online marketing - a 37 per cent increase in spending in 2005 compared to 2004. Click here for more information

 

Small operators have a big lift online

Friday, 27 January 2006
Almost one in three small businesses reported an increase in online sales in the lead-up to Christmas, according to a survey by NetRegistry, a domain name, web hosting and e-commerce service provider.
The survey found another third of small businesses sold the same amount while 10 per cent said sales had fallen compared with the previous year.

The online survey of 359 small and micro businesses was conducted in December and included business decision makers or owner/partners of businesses with one to five employees.

"It's been a merry online Christmas for small business," said NetRegistry chief executive and co-founder Larry Bloch.
"There are more small businesses selling online and those already online are selling more."

The survey also found that small business expenditure had increased with about 37 per cent spending more on online marketing in 2005 than in 2004.

Mr Bloch said small businesses were getting smarter about how they marketed themselves online. "If you look at how customers find your website, it's more important to have a prominent position in search results than pay top dollar for online ads," he said.

After word of mouth (46.9 per cent), search engines were the main source of customers for one in four small businesses.
Fewer than 5 per cent said paid search engine advertising or online banner ads were the main source of customers to their website.
Ref: Click Here

Click frauds: beware of your online competition

Many businesses are Google advertisers, paying this popular search engine a few cents for every referral.

However, click fraud has become an increasingly threat. Instead of receiving clicks from customers, unscrupulous competitors are clicking on their rivals' ads, forcing their rivals to pay for clicks that are not from potential customers. Click here for more information

Clicking hell: the way to bankrupt your rival
Friday, 27 January 2006
Advertisers on the internet's most popular search engine can face devious opposition, writes Charles Miller.

John Carreras was once a contented Google advertiser. He used text advertisements that appeared alongside searches to bring people to his trade exhibition website. He happily paid Google a few cents for every referral, believing that anyone who clicked through to his site from Google was a likely customer. But then he attended a conference in Las Vegas, and he noticed something strange: the number of Google referrals he was getting dropped dramatically, only to rise again once the conference was over.

Carreras became convinced the "missing clicks" weren't from customers but from his competitors, who had been in Vegas with him. He believed his unscrupulous rivals whiled away their office hours clicking on his Google ads, knowing that every tap cost him money.
If you add in a second kind of scam, where people earn themselves a little money from Google by clicking on ads they're hosting on their sites, you can see the potential for malice. Click fraud, as it's called, is acknowledged by Google as a problem: last year, Google's chief financial officer, George Reyes, described it as "the biggest threat to the internet economy".

While Google Labs, as the company calls its development division, turns out new products at a cracking pace, Google remains largely dependent on just one source of income: advertising. Google would never admit to being uneasy about that reliance. Why should it? Advertising is doubling the company's revenue every year, and is expected to generate almost $10 billion this year. But for all the undoubted strengths of its pay-per-click system, some worrying vulnerabilities have emerged.

Marissa Mayer, the company's vice-president of search products, is reassuring. She calls it "a serious problem for us, but also a very solvable problem".

In principle, the company will not charge its advertisers for clicks that aren't from genuine potential customers. Typically, Google is hoping to use technology to detect suspicious click patterns.

Which brings us back to Carreras. As a result of his experience, he got out of the trade exhibition business, believing that click-fraud detection would be a more lucrative field. He now sells software under the name Who's Clicking Who? that promises to solve click fraud for Google advertisers, first by sending "we know who you are" messages back to fraudulent clickers, and then by compiling click dossiers to help fraud victims reclaim their money from Google.

For the company, click fraud has the potential to become the kind of technological arms race that has been a drag on Microsoft in its battle against ever-changing security threats. Nobody knows the exact extent of it. But, says Google-watcher John Battelle, "right now,advertisers are getting such a good return on their investment that it doesn't matter to them whether [click fraud] is 5 per cent or 30 per cent". But he believes that as Google advertising becomes more competitive and the level of fraud grows, "eventually the rubber will meet the road and we'll see how much fraud there is in the system".

There's no question that Google's ad system is a runaway success, but with click fraud on the radar, it's a good time to be exploring new ways to increase revenue. It is preparing to add a second string to its money-making bow, by charging users for video downloads. It may not sound earth-shattering, but if it works, it may represent the start of chapter two in the Google story.

Previously, Google Video, unveiled in January last year, only offered a chance to upload and view uncopyrighted videos free - creating a jungle of thousands of weird, searchable amateur videos (try "party", "family" or "vacation" to get the flavour).

But Google is now signing up professional broadcasters, and soon users will be asked to pay for downloads. But how will users take to paying a company that has so far offered them so much for nothing? "It will be a new experience for them," says Jennifer Feikin, director of Google Video. "If you look at our product today, we refer people off to somewhere where they purchase things; this is something brand new, where it [the purchase] will be happening on Google."

Google's new interest in selling is a worrying trend for the likes of Amazon, but Battelle believes online retail is only the start of Google's commercial ambitions: "They are changing the economic presumptions of a number of industries. You can start to tick the boxes of all the information-driven, intellectual property-driven businesses in the world. And it's a very, very big bundle of businesses - the biggest bundle one can imagine."

So far, Google has remained tight-lipped about whether its video payment system will be the basis for other services.

When I suggested to Feikin that it would allow the company to sell almost anything to its customers, she hesitated for a moment, then replied with cheerful mock-surprise: "That's a good idea!"

Ref: Click Here