Marketing with Technology and More

Google AdWords Marketers - Beware! Phisher's are Out There

I think I am pretty savvy when it comes to on-line purchasing.  The last thing I thought is thatI would ever fall prey to is a Phishing scam, but Phishers are crafty. 

As a business we are regular Adwords users on Google.  I had not used them in a while, so I reactivated a somewhat dormant account the other day.. A day later I ger an email telling me that my account information is not up-to-date, and that I need to correct it.  Diligently I clicked in the message and went to the site that the email pointed me to adWRods.com .  When I spell it out, it is obvious, but without the emphasis, it is easy to go to a bogus site.

When I arrived at the site, it looked just like the Google site, and I readily provided the requested information.  The last thing I would want is our Google campaign shut down because my credit card information was obsolete.  Fortunately, the latest versions of the major browser try to give you a heads-up.  In my case, I received a message that made me look closely at the URL.

I was like they fly in the spider web.  Once I was caught, I was doomed.  Phishers are creative and ingenious.  You have to be diligent every time you provide credit card information.  The identity you save may be your own.

United Airlines - What were these people thinking

I received an email from United Airlines today asking me to participate in a study on the "Elite Membership" kit they sent to me.  I looked at the survey and thought - who put this together, their marketing intern.  Actually, I think a marketing intern would have done a better job. 

The four data points related to all items were (you could only pick one):
- Received it
- Read it
   Received it and Read it
- Don't remember

So here is the question - can I read it if I don't receive it?  It would not taken much brainstorming to figure out that this did not make any sense.  Then it asked me about my membership card, and had the same four options.  I don't know about you, but I don't usually do much reading of my membership cards when I get them.  The second page of the survey asked how useful this information was to me.  I can't believe that they really think much of the advertising they throw into their envelopes these days is very useful to anyone.

It brings me to my point.  We assembled and sent out SubscriberMail's annual email survey in conjunction with the EEC this week.  We initially sent a small sample to test questions and reports.  When we got the sample back, there was a major back end issue with reports.  We were able to reconfigure the survey and send it out correctly.  If you are doing a survey, testing a small sample can give you great feedback on how to improve questions and what the reporting will look like.  Don't trigger a survey without testing.   Perhaps I was in the United test group - for their results sake, let's hope so.

Cool Little Service for Web Marketers

I found a great new little service that will help any marketer working on Search Engine Optimization.  Yoocrawl crawls any web site and provides you with all of the related data to a site.  Check out the IP addresses, outbound links, list of keywords, titles,etc.  This is all data you can search for by reading the code and checking for the ip address, however, this little tool does it all in one place...for free.

The Web - Instant Market Research

I love the power of the web for feedback.  I had a community project I was involved in, and as part of that project I needed to conduct a simple survey.   Before the web, undertaking this task would have been daunting.  I would have had to print up surveys send them out (if I could afford the postage).  Then wait until the surveys were returned and then tabulate them.  If I wanted to get more details, I could get really fancy and run cross tabs. The cost of doing this kind of research was out of the scope of most community organizations (and many marketers).

Tonight, I sat down at my computer, used Zoomerang to put together a very simple survey.  I used our SubscriberMail system to send a message to the community (who had opted in to hear from us).  Literally five minutes after I launched the survey, the data started to pour in.  I can easily run cross tabs, and I can automatically send a follow-up email to anyone who has not clicked through to the survey.

As a marketer...what is not to love.

DMNews Article on Email Marketing in a Down Economy

When the economy goes South as it unfortunately appears to be doing, marketers need to scramble to get better ROI from fewer marketing investments.  I recently wrote an article for DMNews that discusses the steps smart marketers are taking now to use email marketing as a great tool as the economy tightens.  You can read the article titled "Email Marketing - A Bright Star in a Down Economy" here.

A Pen that is Mightier than A Computer

Every year at TED there are some cool new technology introductions.  This year was no exception, and one that really captured my attention was a new "pen."  It is actually much more than your average pen however.  It is called the Pulse SmartPen by a company called LiveScribe.  What makes this device interesting is that when you take notes (using special note paper), it captures the ambient sound in the room where you are writing.  Later, if you want to review your notes, you can tap the pen to any word on the page, and it will play back what was going on at the time you took the note. 

This is a fantastic concept for any situation where you need to take notes, but might want more detail (a lecture in school for example).  The pen has a variety of other functions too.  For example, if you have a phrase that you have written down, you can touch the pen to the phrase, and it will repeat it back to you in a foreign language.  Another feature is that you can write down numbers, and then arithmetic statements such a plus or minus.  By touching the numbers and math statement, plus adding an equal sign, the pen will give you the correct answer to the math problem.

The pen is not available yet, but will sell in both  one and two gigabyte models for under $200.

Marketing's Philosopher

When I was out at TED this year I ran into Seth Godin.  I wish I had more time to spend with him as I think he is a marketing genius.  He's often referred to as a guru.  I think that is the wrong moniker.  I think he is really a marketing philosopher.  Sometimes he makes simple statements that boil things down to their essential nature.  Today he posted the following:

"Persistence isn't using the same tactics over and over. That's just annoying.

Persistence is having the same goal over and over."

If more salespeople and marketers paid attention to this advice, the world would definitely be much more enjoyable (and less annoying).

A TED Talk You Must See

I my earlier post titled A Stroke of Genius, I posted some details about Jill Bolte Taylor's fabulous TED talk this year. This is the scientist who experienced a stroke, realized what was happening to her, and made amazing note of the experience. Her talk was rated as one of the most amazing presentations at any TED. TED has posted this amazing talk on-line, and is something that you must see. It is eye opening and an incredible story.

Navigating to success

My daughter is in college, and is working on a project for one of her classes.  She is working on a presentation for her speech class about the effect of web design on consumer behavior.  She sent me a copy of the speech outline and one of the key items in her talk really hit me as it relates to web interfaces:  “Shopping patterns and consumer behavior are not just random acts.”

This is basic marketing, but it is amazing how often major organizations forget about this.  From experience I know that the challenges related to user interface design is that many organizational factions get involved and everyone has a perspective.  What you often end up with is a design that looks like the elephant that was described by six blind men. 

Never forget that in most situations, people come to your web site with a specific goal in mind.  Very few will end up there by random chance.  Don’t design a website or email message from your perspective as a marketer, but from the perspective of the visitor.  Marketers are so used to push marketing that sites are often designed from the perspective of “here is where we want to push you” or “this is what we want you to buy”.  When you do this with little regard to ease of navigation, your website is doomed to underperform.

A great example she uses to illustrate this is walmart.com.  Just visit the site and move your mouse around.  There are so many navigation components that you can easily get lost.  Her research indicates that on an average day, the number one retailer in the world has .2 percent of all global internet traffic (compare this to Amazon, whose daily reach is as high as 5 percent).

In addition to these points, as a father, it is wonderful to see your daughter have such insight – she makes me very proud.

TED 08 Pictures up on flickr

Some of my images from TED have now been installed on flickr.  I hope you enjoy them.

www.flickr.com

This is a Flickr badge showing photos in a set called TED08 Conference. Make your own badge here.