NONE: ONLINE-ADS>> Day Two - Web Marketing '98
ONLINE-ADS>> Day Two - Web Marketing '98
richard_at_tenagra.com
Fri, 16 Oct 1998 09:45:06 -0500 (CDT)
Below is a special mailing to The Online Advertising
Discussion List about Web Marketing '98 in Washington DC,
written by Ann Handley, editor-in-chief of The ClickZ
Network. You will receive these reports in addition to your
normal Online Ads posts/digests.
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Web Marketing '98
Day 2 Coverage: Turning Browsers Into Buyers
Ann Handley
Editor in Chief
The ClickZ Network
http://www.clickz.com/
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During the second day of Web Marketing '98, some overriding
questions prevailed: What's email marketing all about? How
do you choose the most effective sites for your advertising?
But more importantly, just how DO you send an email to
Volvo?!
It was more laps and pushups during day two of Thunder
Lizard's (http://www.thunderlizard.com) boot camp for 'net
marketers, ending yesterday in D.C.
Drill sergeant Jim Sterne of Targeting Marketing
(http://www.targeting.com) led the charge to the top of the
hill Wednesday morning, when he took Volvo to task for its
pitiful approach to customer service on the internet. In a
one-hour sermon about the right way of managing service
online, Sterne took the audience on a painful tour through
the various loops of (http://www.volvocars.com) Volvo's U.S.
site.
After a series of prolonged lapses on the Volvo site for
heavy (and unsatisfying) site downloads, punctuated by
Sterne's exaggerated sighs from the podium, the path
ultimately circled back to a customer service screen from
the carmaker. That screen informed users that Volvo did not,
in fact, offer an email customer service program.
Similarly skewered was (http://www.southwest.com) Southwest
Airlines, which doesn't accept customer email communiques
from its site, either.
So what's the big deal? In Sterne's view, that's a customer
service shortfall of the most serious kind. It's a breach
akin to shutting off the bell on your telephone or locking
the main entrance to your store.
"They took a perfectly good telephone, and removed the ear
piece," Sterne said. "They turned it into a radio.
"I can go on for several weeks about the importance of
answering your email," he added.
Companies who do customer service right not only offer email
response. They offer personalized email response They also
offer a killer FAQ page, with appropriate hyperlinks to
drill down for more information; clear and direct paths to
appropriate customer support personnel; and create (or at
least support) online forums for customer support,
discussion, and (sometimes) venting.
In today's business environment, customer response is far
more immediate. Sterne's grandfather, who designed
suspension systems for Chrysler for 30 years, would contact
a vendor or customer by drafting a letter longhand and
walking it to the secretarial pool for transcribing. "In a
few days it was typed up, a few days later it went out. That
was the pace of business."
The pace has quickened...well, a bit since then, of course.
He painted a vision for the audience of a business world
where online is the main mechanism for customer service. In
the not-too-distant future, a fender-bender is handled
completely (and more efficiently) online through email
communication with your insurance company, the sending of
digital photos of the wreck, and wiring of cyber-cash to the
garage that ultimately performs the repair. "None of that
technology is impossible right now," Sterne pointed out.
The bottom line for customer service is email
responsiveness, according to Sterne. "If I can stress just
one thing," pleaded Sterne, "it is to please, please answer
your email."
Create an effective system for logging, responding to,
archiving and personalizing your company's email from
customers, he said. "I can't stress that enough."
(And the sound you now hear is Sterne climbing off of his
soapbox.)
Crunching Cookies
Later in the day, conference chair and self-termed
unsolicited pundit (http://www.glenns.org) Glenn Fleishman
gave a highly detailed look at analyzing the avalanche of
data that comes with any web marketing campaign. From
caching to cookies, Fleishman offered up a literal ream of
information to help online marketers track and analyze just
who is coming to their sites, how they are getting there,
and how they behave inside the door.
It wasn't exactly sexy stuff...but necessary nevertheless.
And the audience was hungry for it.
The "big lie" in online marketing, according to Fleishman,
is that "everything is measurable." The big truth, however,
is that "every request gets time-stamped. And everything
else is negotiable."
Analyzing the data generated by your server logs and cookies
is fundamentally a matter of analyzing the "hierarchy of
uniqueness," Fleishman said. "What's unique is what will
give you the most information."
All About Advertising
More nuts and bolts came from Brad Aronson, founder of the
Philadelphia-based i-frontier (http://www.i-frontier.com)
who gave an insider's view of online advertising: What it
is, how to manage it, and how to buy it.
Aronson leans toward those sites that offer:
* Reporting
* The ability to quickly rotate creative if necessary
* The right banner size and placement (preferably right
under the masthead on page)
* A method for limiting frequency
* Performance guarantees
Interestingly, Aronson won't buy more than 10 percent of
available inventory on any site the first go-around. "If it
works, I'll gradually go and buy more and more inventory.
But not on unproven sites," he says.
He also suggests a little-known technique: that advertisers
buy inventory on the exit pages of sites. One buy i-frontier
did for a client there garnered a whopping 36 percent
click-through. "We simply gave visitors something else to do
after they were done with that site," Aronson said.
Incredibly, HTML banners generate a 300 percent better
response rate than standard animated gif banners, he said.
Which sites should you lean toward? WellÖit depends on your
goals and objectives, obviously. But there are reliable
places to look:
* Your server logs. "Look at where people are coming from
and advertise there. You might question why pay for it if
you are already getting traffic from there. But we've
found that the extra exposure is good for our clients,"
Aronson said.
* Services like MarketMatch (http://www.marketmatch.com) and
SRDS )http://www.srds.com)
Another consideration is the type of media sites to target.
Aronson identified four tiers of sites:
* Big brand, high-traffic, high-priced sites like Yahoo!,
ESPN, Netscape
* Lesser-brand, lower-traffic sites that offer greater
pricing flexibility like DogPile (http://www.dogpile.com)
* Hobby sites with ridiculously low prices but equally low
traffic
* And niche sites that have less inventory but can command a
higher CPM like, well, ClickZ (http://www.clickz.com)
Aronson's tell-it-like-it-is delivery and no b.s. content
rang true several times. But never more so than when he
said, "Remember that the measure of success is not
impressions. It's not clicks. The bottom line is orders."
Kicking the Spam Can
Richard Hoy of (Tenagra http://www.tenagra.com) reminded of
us that email marketing is not - repeat, NOT - Spam.
In fact, email is actually an excellent tool to advertise
your product or service, driving traffic, build brand
awareness, generate revenue and talk to the media. In short,
it's an online marketer's best friend, if - with a capital
"I" and "F" - it's used correctly.
That means email marketing only to those who have signed up
to receive messages from you because they are interested in
the subject. Spam might be cheap and occasionally
successful. But it also ultimately wastes internet
resources, brands you as a bottom-feeder, and may get you
kicked off your access provider. You simply won't make any
friends, Hoy said.
"Spam is just sloppy marketing. It doesn't take advantage of
email's strongest capability - building a relationship with
a prospect or customer," he pointed out.
Not only is email targeted, it's incredibly inexpensive and
effective, Hoy said. An emailing Tenagra did to its
tennisserver.com list for a specialty racquet drew an ROI of
250 percent. A Postmaster Direct campaign for Ichat pulled
$50,000 in sales over 5 hours. And a Tenagra client -
Ski-Europe - estimates the likelihood of closing a sale
triples if a salesperson can engage a prospect in an email
exchange.
Quotes of the Day
"Hundreds of thousands of people having individual
relationships with a web site is what it's all about. It's
not Yahoo!...it's My Yahoo!" - Jim Sterne, Target Marketing
"If we have a client who wants to get a completely accurate
ad report...well, first, they are out of luck there." - Brad
Aronson, i-frontier
"One of the first things you do is your frequency asked
questions document. And the first person you ask what to put
on it is the secretary." - Jim Sterne
"We have to get past the vision of the web as a Viewmaster.
We must get past 2D." - Larry Chase, Larry Chase's Web
Digest for Marketers
"Some people will tell you that they get 75 percent of their
traffic from the search engines, hence the search engines
are the most important way of attracting people to your
site. This is faulty logic. In fact, if 75 percent of your
traffic comes from search engines, you have done a poor job
marketing your site." - Eric Ward, NetPost
"Customers have 'expectation inflation.' They want instant
access to information." - Jim Sterne
"Your reporting may have to be home brew. You may have to
build it yourself." - Glenn Fleishman
"Shopping online is not about money. It's about time." -
Larry Chase
"I'd say that audits will be the bible on the internet, as
they are in the print world. But right now, they are very
inaccurate." - Brad Aronson
"This is my most favorite button on the entire world wide
web. That's it...that's the whole ball game." - Jim Sterne,
describing a hyperlinked button on the Bank of America home
page that reads, "Take Me To My Money"
Conference Kicks
* The spawning of a new marketing term to describe seminal
site traffic days, "Monica Mondays"
* When a follicle-y challenged Jim Sterne slapped his own
mug on a page of the Clairol site that allows users to
virtually try on different hairstyles. The verdict: He
looks good with the Monica Lewinsky wedge cut. But he's
afraid he wouldn't be taken seriously.
* Brad Aronson suggesting that 24/7 was among the most
"negotiable" networks on pricing.
* Unmerciful trashing of the Southwest Airlines
(http://www.southwest.com site) by three separate speakers
in three individual presentations. The site was described
as "cheesy" and "lame" before Jim Sterne reamed it for
having a significant web presence but no mechanism to
accept customer email. "This is beyond lame," said Sterne.
"This is insulting."
Clarification
A reference to the IBM e-business rich media banners in Andy
Bourland's presentation Tuesday neglected to mention that
the ads were produced by (http://gadfly.com) Gadfly
Communications, in partnership with OgilvyOne
(http:www.ogilvyone.com).
*********************************************************************
Copyright (C) 1998 ClickZ Corporation. All rights reserved. May
be reproduced in any medium for noncommercial purposes as long as
attribution is given.
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