January, 2008 Archive

I do a lot of shopping online. I buy a lot of stuff and I purchase a lot of services – theatre and cricket tickets for example.

So as a marketer what really bugs me is, when the sale is done and dusted, the confirmation email that pops into my inbox tells me nothing about the company, nothing about what I have just bought, and looks more like spam than the worst spam ever did!

The above is a snip (using the Vista Snipping Tool :-)) from my Gmail account. (Yes I have a Gmail account! I had it before I joined MS – Gotta keep up with the competition!)

These are all emails from companies I have bought goods or services from in recent weeks. What do they look like to you?

The only one in there that makes any sense is from Waitrose!

The email tells you who its from – Waitrose! The subject line tells you what the email is about. I can choose whether to open it or bin it. I don’t have to wade through wondering if it’s significant, or whether it’s just another ruse to get me to help a Nigerian vicar transfer $60m to a Northern Rock account in Jarrow!

And what are Fortnum & Mason thinking?!

At least have your company name in the From column, it’ll look so much more professional and mitigate any confusion or irritation if the mail gets re-directed to my spam folder. Also have something relevant in the subject line too – just a number is simply madness!

And another thing about aftersales – there is such a thing as over-kill! The seventh email on the list was the fifth….yes fifth!….from a plumbing company after I had received my chrome tap, telling me how great their customer service was, and that they pride themselves on it, and how grateful they were for my custom.

Hey Mr MD……that’s spam! You’ve just lost a customer because your excessive customer service is bordering on obsessive and creepy 🙂

I’m a huge fan of Banksy!

One of my biggest regrets was not buying the above print for £1000 from an art shop in Whitstable about 18 months ago 🙁

A few weeks later Alexander Litvinenko was poisoned and it came out in the press that he’d sold a Banksy print for a huge profit on eBay! That only meant the elusive artist became more notorious…….and expensive…..DOH!

Banksy’s brand of graffiti art has not just been confined to the studio – check out his book – Wall & Piece – to see where, and what his incredibly imaginitive mind has been up to.

One brave chap has decided to sell above wall Banksy once daubed on eBay with a Buy It Now price of £1m – a tad optimistic – but it has sold for over £200k……to a bloke with a 71% Feedback Rating and a reputation for not paying up! 🙂

Robin Goad from Hitwise and Tony Mooney from Experian Integrated Marketing have penned a great report which they’ve kindly let me let you download from here:

 “The Impact of Social Networking in the UK.”

The promotional blurb says:

“This White Paper looks in detail at the key social networking learnings from 2007, the trends that are most likely to play out in 2008, and the critical areas that brands need to consider when developing their social media marketing strategies.”

The report is in two sections. The first sets the scene outlining the landscape, and then follows up with some recommended strategies for 2008.

Interesting points to note:

Online email services were overtaken by social networking activity in the last quarter of 2007.

Social networking is not all about the KIDZ!

There’s also an interesting case study for brands about the British Legion which demonstrates how social apps can increase and enhance brand awareness.

So what does 2008 hold:

“Social networks will become the dominant channel for viral marketing campaigns.”

“Social networks will become the primary arena for highly targeted marketing and advertising campaigns.”

“Consumer power will manifest itself through social networks.”

All pretty bold statements that come with plenty of caveats, but food for thought nevertheless…

Must have been a tricky conversation…. :-!

The annual Reykjavik Internet Marketing Conference and Expo (RIMC) will be taking place on Friday 8th February at the Hilton Nordica in Reykjavik, Iceland.

The conference will focus on online marketing and advertising and feature a host of international and Icelandic speakers. The keynote speech will be delivered by the Icelandic Minister of Commerce, Björgvin Sigurdarson.

A number of companies, who work in advertising and publicity on the Internet, will also be exhibiting their products and services at the RIMC Expo which will be held alongside the conference.

RIMC 2008 is geared towards marketing professionals, web editors, sales managers and company directors, as well as anyone who uses the Internet for business. The organisers say the event offers an “excellent chance for peer-to-peer networking and a unique opportunity to learn about the latest developments in marketing and advertising.”

Among speakers attending will be Dennis Mortensen, head of IndexTools, who will speak on web analytics and its importance in measuring website success, and Joost de Valk who is gaining many plaudits from the industry as an SEO expert and designer of WordPress Plugins.

RIMC 2008 will be held in collaboration with Nordic eMarketing and Árvakur on the tenth anniversary of mbl.is – the online edition of the Icelandic national paper, Morgunbladid.

The conference is being organised by Kristjan Mar Hauksson, director of Nordic eMarketing, and Ingvar Hjalmarsson, web editor at mbl.is.

For further information and registration for the RIMC Conference, send an email to skraning@rimc.is

For further information and registration for the RIMC Expo, send an email to expo@rimc.is

Dave Naylor and I were comparing tools the other day and both agreed the snipping tool in Microsoft Vista is a life/time saver.

It’s available is some of the more advanced versions of vista and can be found in the accessories folder.

Slip it onto your quick launch menu and it’s ready and waiting when ever you need to grab a quick screenshot.

Once you kick it off just use the cursor to lassoo the bit of the screen you want to grab.

You can quickly email the shot straight from here. Click on the envelope…

It then opens up in an email and you just add a recipient and send…

You can highlight stuff in the screenshot before you email it off just to be precise!

Finally, you can also save really easily AND copy and paste into Word or Powerpoint!

All in all a fabulous little gem which is saving me hours a week, and making it easier for me to irritate my collegues by sending them more stuff than I ever did before 😉

Get more info at Windows Help

Having posted the Microsoft Context Matters Funeral, Dance and Art videos on my blog over the last few days, they’ve now been viewed through MSN Video by over 1500 marketers around the world so far.

Some people loved them, some people didn’t! Some people were confused as to the message they were giving out, and some people even thought they were a little inappropriate.

Most though, were willing to wait to see them put into context before making a judgement.

As any marketer knows an advert needs some context in order to draw an audience in, and none more so than online.

So our research guys here at Microsoft have collaborated with MEC Interaction in order to delve much deeper into how users connect with internet advertising.

What they found was that time, place, mood and motivation play a significant role in how impactful your advertising message can be.

Key objectives were:

•      To delve beyond the “time spent” measure
•      To identify and describe key online “occasions” and their contexts
•      To examine advertising fit across these occasions
•      To help our partners optimise their online media planning

Identifying the “online occasions” as being entertainment, creation, communication, transaction, information and general surfing, the research shows the different ways in which we are willing to accept “pull” mechanisms, or advertising where we may be asked to interact with it, or “push” messaging , where we’re too busy to connect but are susceptible to the branding effect.

There’s a load of info in the report about what percentage of time people are multi-tasking, home versus work, week versus weekend, and some specific quotes and case studies.

There are even stats on what mood people are more likely to be in at various times of the day, and how focused they are likely to be while performing certain actions during these occasions!

Now the concept of “context” in planning your marketing strategy is not a new one, however no one has done as an indepth study of how consumers behave online across the ever-expanding, multi-channel opportunity that we have through the internet.

So whether you’re a search marketer, a display planner/buyer, you’re into email marketing or are just plain curious, you can check out the Context Matters page on our advertising site and download the 11 page report from there as it’s well worth a peek:

Context  Matters – Microsoft Internet Marketing Research Report

And now let’s hear it for those videos now I’ve put them in context 😉

http://alpha.search.wikia.com/

OK so it’s only just launched, but the results are pretty bad. I’m struggling to understand the benefits to be honest. But as someone’s just commented at DaveN’s blog, Rome wasn’t built in a day. However I’m sure the Roman’s had better foundations!

I just tried to add an article but it crashed on me 🙁

From About Wikia Search:

“We are aware that the quality of the search results is low.” – No sh*t!

“…before we start, we have no user feedback data. So the results are pretty bad. But we expect them to improve rapidly in coming weeks, so please bookmark the site and return often.” – OK…..

They have picture results returned too – not sure who the guy on the right is!

Will revisit soon….

Not sure where the whole thing is!

But there’s an edited version here and a recap of the 15 minutes Rory Cellan-Jones had with Bill here.

 It’s all about Surface 😉

Fancy asking him if he had any Apple Macs in his house! I ask you……