Category: Post
April 15, 2004
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A9 — First Impressions
You may already know this, but Amazon.com just launched A9, the beta version of their much-anticipated entry into online search.
I find A9 fascinating and I recommend that you use it as your default search tool for at least a while to understand what this might mean. In particular I’d suggest downloading the toolbar version which adds some really unique features you need to experience.
Looking past the god-awful colour of the site (which isn’t that easy), the application does some truly brilliant things and starts to answer the questions we’ve been asking about how and when personalization and collaboration will be integrated into search.
If you do an A9 search for say “Internet Marketing in Canada” you get a page that looks a bit like Google (it seems to be using Google’s page results at this time) but with some interesting enhancements. For example, there is a “Site Info” button that allows you to access Alexa information with meta data about the sites listed. One data point provided — similar to Amazon’s book recommendations — states that “people who visited this site also visited…”. And because this is Amazon, there is a separate pane available for book search. And since book search integrates their “search inside the book” technology, it means that A9 allows you to search online AND offline knowledge.
The most interesting feature of the site is its use of personalization. Once you log-in to A9 using your Amazon log-on the site will begin to remember past searches for you and display them on the home page. The toolbar also keeps visited page history and I’m sure that some back-end manipulation of results based on this information is (or will be) happening.
A peek into the potential power of personalization is given in A9’s ability to add to search results the last time YOU last visited a site listed in the results. I just did the above search for the second time and found “clicked 21 hours ago” added beside a link that I had indeed clicked 21 hours ago.
While the site is still in beta and clearly needs some design and UI work, I have to say I’m pretty impressed.
I’d be interested in your impressions on this and some analysis around the implications for Google and Yahoo! of Amazon entering the market.
One big problem I see is that A9 doesn’t lend it self to wordplay like Google does. Will we say “Just A9 me” once we start “A9ing” things?
March 30, 2004
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Death Of Offline Ads By 2010?
Thanks to AIMS’ intrepid moderator June Macdonald for pointing me to Steve Ballmer’s prediction that 100% of advertising will have an interactive component.
While Ballmer’s projections might be hyperbole, I think that they may wake up a few offline marketers who are falsely comfortable in the knowledge that the Net has yet to topple them despite dire warnings in the past. I don’t agree with Ballmer that ALL ads will have an online component, but I would say that MOST will.
Here’s why:
1. ROI Marketing is about to hit a tipping point: There is a strong move towards accountability of all major business expenses. Marketing won’t be spared from the drive to measurability and accountability. CxO’s are asking tough questions like “What do I get for my ad dollar?” and “Did this campaign make or cost us money?” These are questions that traditional “awareness” marketing can’t answer except anecdotally. Marketers will be forced to adopt direct response models in order to justify their budgets and their jobs. Once enough people move this way, everyone will suddenly make the switch because their careers will be on the line if they don’t learn to go with the ROI flow.
2. The Net is a perfect response tool: As companies look for ways to measure marketing ROI, more and more cross channel marketing will be directed towards the Net (and inbound call centers which I also expect to do well). Search Engine Marketing is catching fire because marketers who “get direct” see that they can now build testable, trackable campaigns online and that means budgets will be diverted from less measurable channels. And as we get smarter about what works and what online marketing is worth, watch for other DM channels to have to fight for attention and ad dollars. Response marketers look for the most cost effective channel, and if it’s the Net, say goodbye outbound telemarketing and direct mail.
3. The Next Generation is a Net Generation: We’ve already seen reports that young males are “missing” from the TV audience figures. Look for today’s young adults — raised in a web-based, multi-tasking world to become the core consumers of the next decade, meaning that the Net will be a natural place to find consumers in their peak buying years.
4. All bits move to the Net: In six to ten years I’m sure that the majority of voice, TV, radio, music, and movies will be entering our homes over a Net connection. So for example, while we may not think of telemarketing as Net Marketing, the calls will undoubtedly be Voice Over IP by then.
January 29, 2004
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Furl — My New “Filing Web Page Filing Cabinet”
I’ve never been great a bookmarking stuff, mainly preferring just to redo the search. But lately I’ve been working on multiple projects all of which require lots of online research and collecting and synthesizing this information over time. After looking at a bunch of different bookmarking, archiving, and web page clipping options, I think I’ve found what I’m looking for in a service called Furl.
The service is free right now and it allows you to store, annotate, rate and sort pages that you’ve collected to Furl. Collecting links is simple because they have bookmarklets and a toolbar to facilitate this without leaving the page your capturing. And because it is online you don’t have to worry about losing them.
One suggestion for Furl: Let users add topics (categories) for filing directly in the pop-up for saving pages. Quite a few times I’ve gone to save a page and realized that I had not yet set up a proper topic to add the link under.
Suggestion for all free sites (Furl included): Make sure you tell people how you plan to make money. It is really disconcerting to find a product you like online without knowing if the company will be around for long, or if the service will start costing you at some point. People will pay for well thought out services like Furl, but you have to give us a chance to figure out what you are up to.
December 19, 2003
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Separating Store From Products
Signal vs. Noise Weblog asks whether Separating Store From Products is the best strategy.
My guess (and this is a brand new thought) is that for some sites there are three modes for using the site — browse, search, and shop. This implies that you should be able to access the same information in all three modes. It might be that a “Store” is a way of looking at the information on the site rather than a separate place. I would argue that product pages without a “buy” button are impotent and should be avoided as they leave the potential customer without a way of reaching an obvious goal.
In this model, “store” might not be a product catalog per se, but rather a view of product lists enhanced by retail merchandizing, suggestive selling, etc.
Like I said, this is a brand new idea, but I’m warming to it already.
December 18, 2003
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Wharton Discusses Online Music Business
There’s a great Knowledge@Wharton essay that examines “Which Online Music Service Will Have the Longest Playing Time?”
I think the article is pretty much spot on in its analysis of the market and its rather buried assertion that Rhapsody (or at least the streaming model) will be the long term winner.
The article makes one mistake I believe. In discussing consumers’ natural desire to own music instead of subscribing to it, I think the point is missed. I’m pretty sure that the average North American spends more time listening to radio than to CDs. To me this implies that streaming services replace BOTH radio and CD purchases. While most people look at a service like Rhapsody as “Renting CDs” which doesn’t sound that interesting, I think of it as “Having a personal radio station that I control completely”. That does sound interesting. Particular for $10 a month.
The article also makes a small point about value conscious consumers baulking at subscription fees, but I think that the opposite is true. If you only had $10 to spend on music per month, would you buy ten downloads or subscribe to unlimited access to over 400,000 songs?
December 17, 2003
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Predictions for 2004
Here, in no particular order are some of the things I expect to see in the coming year:
1. SEM rises to dominate online marketing: Any marketer looking to sell anything online should be starting (and in many cases ending) their online ad spend with search engine marketing.
2. Blogs become the best way to find out about most stuff: I regularly read over 100 blogs that provide me with greater depth, better commentary, and faster breaking news than anything other news source. Look for more and more of us to depend on blogs for our industry insights. Smart marketers will incorporate blogging into their overall corporate communications strategy.
3. Increased focus on meeting user needs instead of corporate goals: I hope for this one every year but I’m now seeing signs that companies are starting to take user experience and user benefit seriously. Let’s hope all sites work on meeting our needs instead of theirs.
4. A more pragmatic approach to e-mail: In 2004 e-mail marketers will be happy if the message even gets there. Watch for spam filters, increased privacy concerns, and inbox fatigue to reek havoc on response rates.
5. RSS prepares to take centre stage in 2005: I am a strong believer that RSS will dominate retention-based communication in the future, but I don’t think RSS will be on enough marketers’ radar to hit critical mass in 2004. Watch for leading edge companies to use 2004 to define the future of this amazing new channel.
6. Social Networks will have a make or break year in 2004: Social Networks were named THE hot technology of 2003 by Business 2.0 and I expect that 2004 will see the sites go mainstream and at the same time, work out privacy and business model issues. There will be an inevitable shake-out and many will fade away in the coming year. Watch for LinkedIn to gain momentum as the most privacy and value focussed network for professionals.
December 16, 2003
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Online Marketing Book Recommendations
Recenting I asked a whole whack of smart online marketers (the AIMS Discussion List) if they could recommend one definitive, current online marketing book.
I got a bunch of responses, but no one could identify one book that provided an overview of the essentials of online marketing. I can’t believe that the subject is too large because authors tackle much broader topics (like, say, how to market in ALL channels). It must be that publishers have lost THEIR appetite for this topic.
Here’s a summary of the feedback I received.
Pete Mosley says you can start and stop with:
“The Cluetrain Manifesto: The End of Business as Usual”
Rick Levine, Christopher Locke
Doc Searls, David Weinberger
Howard Firestone of iPerceptions suggests anything written by Seth Godin and particularly points out Seth’s latest:
“Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable”
by Seth Godin
Lisa Wong of the City of Calgary thought SEM was key and that this book was essential reading:
“Search Engine Visibility”
Shari Thurow
While not really a marketing book, Brian Bimm suggests you might want to check out:
Online! The Book
by John C. Dvorak, Chris Pirillo, Wendy Taylor
So my search continues. If you come up with other online marketing books worth a read, let me know.
December 11, 2003
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Perquest — Payroll as a Web Service
Good overview of Perquest by Rafe Needleman at Always-On:
“First of all, payroll is a difficult accounting function to track. According to David, there are over 3,500 payroll tax authorities in the United States, and if you mess up your compliance with one of the myriad payroll laws you could get fined. Apparently four out of 10 small businesses get nailed each year, for about $840 per infraction. So it’s important to keep a payroll system up to date, and as Marc, David, or any Web services wonk will tell you, that’s a lot easier when there’s only one central system to manage, instead of one at each of your customers’ locations. Small business owners, who are unlikely to have an IT department, are also less likely than large businesses to regularly update their line-of-business software.”
I really like ASP/Web Services like Salesforce.com and this looks like another winner.
The “kipple” as Philip K. Dick would call it keeps piling up in our lives blocking out what is important — the things we really get paid for (or enjoy doing for their own sake). We’re expected to manage more tasks ourselves all the time in this self-serve world. And all of those tasks become more complex and regulated over time, so the skill required to manage these tasks well often increases. Web Services and online applications can do a lot of the heavy lifting that allows people to have an “expert on call” when needed. I particularly like Rafe’s article because it points out that one of the key advantages of Perquest is the fact that best practice and legal compliance is baked into the application.
December 8, 2003
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Definitive Online Marketing Books?
While I’m using the lazyweb, I’ll add this as well:
Recently I was asked to recommend a really good (and current) book that explains the essentials of online marketing. I could think of lots of books that touched on one or two aspects of Net marketing, but I didn’t have any idea what to suggest for an overall “guide to online marketing”. Most of the ones I found on Amazon seem to be pre-dot-bomb, and therefore not that useful.
I’d therefore like to solicit the advice of you my good reader.
If you could recommend just one online marketing book what would it be? If there isn’t one book, do you recommend books on specific aspects of online marketing? Send me the name and author of your favourites and I’ll publish the list.
November 28, 2003
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Gary Hoyle (1954–2003)
Gary Hoyle died peacefully, but unexpectedly on Tuesday November 25th at the age of 49, while living and enjoying life in Costa Rica.
Gary worked in the online industry since the early days. He was one of the very first AIMS members, probably one of the first twenty or so to set the stage for the association’s later growth. At the time he was head of sales at the Virtual Billboard Network, one of Canada’s first online ad networks. Since then Gary’s been involved in a number of online ventures on several continents.
At the end of October Gary sent me this update on his life:
“Me, well living in lovely downtown Escazu, a gringo suburb of San Jose in Costa Rica, paradise.
Just finishing rainy season down here and looking forward to the beach in a few weeks — some sun, sand, and surfiing.
Workwise I am running the marketing for a London based gaming company. The founders of our division are American, young guys started in a hotel room in 1997, two guys one computer two cell phones.
They enticed me down here with the promise of riches, beautiful women, great weather, and great surfing. So far the weather is great, the women are incredibly beautiful, the surfing is real, waiting for the riches — but 3 out of 4 is not bad so far.”
While I didn’t know Gary that well, I always enjoyed the times we met at industry events and he was most generous with feedback on my various projects and ideas. Gary will be sadly missed and our love and thoughts go to his family and close friends.
Friends and family will be received on Saturday November 29th between 11 and 1 at Kane Funeral Home, 6150 Yonge Street followed by a memorial service in the Chapel. In lieu of flowers, donations to the charity of your choice would be appreciated.
November 23, 2003
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Anti-Spam Legislation May Make E-newsletters Impractical
Dana Blankenhorn sees possible new anti-spam legislation in the US as regressive enough to shut down small e-mail publishers. He says “If the present anti-spam legislation becomes law, I will have to close my newsletter, A-Clue.Com, effective at the end of the year.”
The point here is not that Dana is doing anything wrong with his list, or that he is even breaking the law. The is a business decision. Since it is easy to be accused under the proposed law and difficult to defend, it will become much more likely that e-mail newsletter owners will be taken to court. And since costs for defending these claims could be high, the value of the newsletter becomes negative and it make business sense to stop sending via e-mail.
Another firm vote for RSS, but also a very sad day for the once effective communication tool called the permission e-mail list.
November 18, 2003
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Cloudmark Saved My Inbox
I haven’t commented on Cloudmark’s Spamnet plug-in for Outlook (and now Outlook Express) in a while.
This product is just wonderful. If you are an Outlook user and you haven’t tried it yet, download Cloudmark’s Spamnet now.
Here are my spam stats for the last few months while using Cloudmark:
Total messages received — 59,359
Total number of spam messages — 52,113
Total spam caught by Cloudmark — 50452 (97% success rate)
Total spam missed by Cloudmark — 1,661
Total “real messages” — 5,585
Total “false positives” of messages from individuals — ZERO
Total “false positives” of messages from opt-in lists — 95 (<0.2%)
“Good Message Ratio” with Cloudmark — 77% (i.e. over 3/4 of the messages in my inbox are real messages).
Given that my “Good Message Ratio” without Cloudmark would be less than 10%, I can confidently say that Cloudmark has saved my inbox.
Note that many opt-in lists get caught by Cloudmark. That is because the software works collaboratively, taking other people’s “block” messages and blocking similar messages from everyone’s inbox. But the software allows you to “double unblock” or whitelist messages so that they always get through Spamnet regardless of what other people think of the sender.
November 11, 2003
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CMA “Web Site Best Practices” Seminar Next Week
My “Web Site Best Practices” Seminar for the CMA is happening on Wednesday, November 19th, 2003. Here’s what the CMA says about it:
“Whether your web site is state of the art or in a state of decay, this fast-paced seminar is guaranteed to send you back to the office with dozens of ideas to immediately improve your web site.
Using real-world examples of the do’s and don’ts of building useful web sites, Internet veteran Ken Schäfer will guide you through over 100 ways to make any web site a more effective marketing, sales, customer service, and communications tool.
Developed through ten years of online experience, Ken’s best practices library offers you a decade of bright ideas condensed into one action-packed day.”
If you will be attending the seminar, don’t forget to send me a link to your home page if you’d like to have it reviewed by the class.
November 10, 2003
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Internet Littered With Dead Web Sites
Yes, the Internet Is Littered With Dead Web Sites. In general it’s a good idea to keep all links on your site live so that bookmarks, external links, and search engine databases can find the content or be redirected to newer information. But what to do if the entire site is going to be adandoned?
Or you could leave it up for archival purposes. This is probably the best solution as there is a long-term issue with information that may have historic information disappearing. In “olden times” we could refer to people’s letters, diaries, and books to see what people in the past thought. With ephemeral electronic records much of what we rely on to decode the past will be gone. Archiving your site is less of an issue if the Internet Archive has already cached a copy of your site. In that case they are effectively hosting the archive of the site for you.
If maintaining the site as an archive is not an option, you may consider pointing all pages on the deceased site to one page that explains what happened and offers the reader suggestions on where to go for current information. If you have a site you can’t afford to host anymore, you could still maintain the domain for a few dollars a year and point the entire domain to a free/cheap page hosted elsewhere that explains the fate of the site.
If a site it to remain live after it is outdated, it is important to identify the new purpose of the site (historic archive) and to ensure that people know that your information may no longer be relevant. A “last updated” reference is particularly useful in this case.
(Thanks to Gerard Dolan for the link)
November 8, 2003
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Kudos: United Way Toronto
Kudos to the United Way of Greater Toronto.
Originally the non-profit organization used the very short www.uwgt.org as their official web address. That address was used on all advertising online and offline. This year’s campaign uses www.unitedwaytoronto.com.
While “uwgt” is 12 characters shorter than the new address, the longer address is in fact much easier to remember.
UWGT stands for United Way Greater Toronto, but how many of us would know or remember that? In this case, the longer URL means more typing, but a better chance of being remembered. And people tend to default to “.com”, so replacing the “.org” was also smart. Well done.
Wisely, the webmaster has retained the old URL and pointed it to the new site.
Unfortunately they forgot to redirect unitedwaytoronto.com to www.unitedwaytoronto.com, so visitors omitting the “dub-dub-dub” will be left thinking the site is down.
October 20, 2003
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Should Dave Winer Call Google A “Total Asshole Company”?
Dave Winer said “Google’s directory of weblog tools. None of the tools I wrote made the list… Google, this makes you look like a total asshole company.”
Google’s Directory is based on DMOZ Open Directory, but filtered through Google’s PageRank so that the most relevant links rise to the top. I don’t think Google has any say about what goes in the Open Directory in the first place. But it does decide what goes in its edited version.
Let’s compare:
Google’s Computers > Internet > On the Web > Weblogs > Tools > Publishers
Open Directory’s Computers > Internet > On the Web > Weblogs > Tools > Publishers
Sure enough, Radio.Userland is in the Open Directory and not in Google’s. Furthermore, Blogger is number 1 on Google, but listed alphabetically in Open Directory. And Google only lists 37 links while Open Directory lists 52.
So maybe Dave has a point.
How does Google decide what gets in its directories? They use PageRank. So maybe Dave’s problem is that his corporate web site gets far fewer links than Blogger.
Since we can’t see PageRank directly, let’s take a look at what Alexa says:
It seems that Radio Userland doesn’t appear in the Google directory because it shouldn’t. Blogger’s 3 month average page rank on Alexa is 714. Radio Userland’s is 7,885. If the site was more popular I’m sure it would rate a link in this directory (note that Movable Type is number two in the Google Directory, reflecting it’s rank at 6672 over the last 3 months — once again, according to Alexa.)
Doing a comparison of Google’s link count for Blogger, Movable Type, and Userland we see:
Movable: 116,000
Blogger: 62,500
Userland: 33,500
Of course PageRank combines number of links with quality of those links to determine page rank, so it may be that Blogger has better quality links. That may explain why Blogger outranks Movable despite the larger number of inbound links.
In any case, I don’t see any reason Dave should be calling Google a “Total Asshole Company”.
October 18, 2003
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Sympatico’s E-mail Woes
The Globe and Mail reports that “Spam is slowing down e-mail all over the world, but subscribers to Canada’s Sympatico Internet service seem to have been particularly hard hit.”
That’s an understatement. We use Sympatico Ultra for Internet access and love it. Our connection is fast and rock solid.
We don’t use Sympatico e-mail accounts. Our mail goes through our own POP3 server so we were unaffected by the problems with incoming e-mail, but because Sympatico blocks port 25 (used by SMTP servers) we have not been able to connect to the schafer.com outbound servers since moving to Sympatico. So we have been forced to use Sympatico’s outbound servers.
This wasn’t a problem until last week when we started having trouble sending mail. First messages appeared not to send at all. When they did send, we got messages back from recipients wondering why we were sending five or six copies of all our messages. It turns out that Sympatico’s overloaded outbound e-mail servers couldn’t keep up with confirmations from recipient servers and therefore they would keep resending until they got the hint that the messages had indeed gone.
After a few days of this, I threw my hands in the air and said: “there’s got to be a better way”.
After some serious Googling, I discovered “Alternate SMTP Servers”. No-IP.com and DynDNS.org (and probably many others) offer simple services where you can send your outbound mail via their servers after connecting on a port other than port 25 (which many ISPs, like Sympatico, now block).
This simple solution seems to have done the trick and after a few days of using DynDNS we seem to be communicating with the world again.
Between this and the increased use of overly-aggressive spam filters, I find myself questioning whether e-mail is getting to people or not. Soon we’ll be back to where we were ten years ago before people started checking e-mail regularly. We’ll have to phone people to say “did you get my e-mail?” Ugh.
October 17, 2003
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Blogger = Moderator: The Ultimate Solution To Comment Spam?
Great post on “Comment Spam” at Weblogging for Poets:
“Most of all, though, we should push back any time someone even remotely mentions ‘blacklist’ and ‘weblog’, or ‘blacklist’ and ‘internet’ in one breath. Always. These words, they don’t go together.”
I’ve been doing a lot of work in (legitimate) e-mail marketing for the last 7 years and it is incredibly frustrating to see honest e-mail lists getting blacklisted for arbitrary, unchallengeable reasons. And equally frustrating that willing subscribers do not receive messages they are expecting because someone upstream has decided a block of IP addresses aren’t worth bothering about.
I also remember days and nights (including Christmas and New Years) logging in to the Sony Music Online BBS back in 1994 as we fought an unending war with the kids posting trash all over the discussion boards. So I’ve come to appreciate the need for the unsung heroics of moderators.
It seems to me that comment-enabled blog owners need to think of their blogs more as communities or discussion boards and their role as being a moderator. Most moderators quickly realize that truly open systems are unworkable because there is no check against anonymous abuse.
IP banning is one way to check that anonymous abuse, but a flawed one, as Shelley discusses in her post.
So serious consideration must be given to one of two options:
1. Pre-post Registration by commenters
2. Pre-post Comment Approval by moderators
While many may argue both of these go against the intent of open dialogue and limit the speed at which ideas flow, these solutions are undoubtedly the price we will have to pay to get a signal-to-noise ratio that is acceptable.
Believe me, after spending a few years babysitting tweens who spend all non-school hours posting “ sucks” on your discussion board, you don’t want to have unfettered access to your space!
Of course, the other option (which I’m currently using) is not allowing comments on the blog, but rather encouraging others to blog responses and link back.
October 16, 2003
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My Strategic E-mail Marketing Seminar Is Fast Approaching
On October 23rd I’ll be starting my third year teaching the Strategic E-mail Marketing Seminar for the CMA.
All but one of the past seminars have sold-out and I expect this one to do so as well, but as I write this there are still a few spots left.
Here’s the overview from the CMA:
“E-mail is hot! Why? Because it works.
We all use e-mail every day, but don’t think an overflowing inbox means you’re an e-mail marketing expert. Ineffective e-mail marketing can do more harm than good, so it is imperative that you learn from the successes (and mistakes) of others.
Using over 70 real-world examples and an interactive learning format, this seminar provides both novice and veteran marketers with the resources they need to plan, build, execute and evaluate e-mail marketing campaigns within their companies.
With a high-energy, fast paced, hands-on approach, Ken Schäfer condenses ten years of “live on the Net” marketing experience into one day of practical advice.”
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Two New Services Launched Today
My postings have been sparse this last week or so as I’ve been putting the final touches on site updates in advance of the launch of two new services today:
One is a Report called “The Schafer Group Guide To Corporate Web Sites”. This 145 page Report covers 123 best practices using more than 100 screen shots. I’ve been looking for something like this for years and in the end I needed to create it myself. I’m excited to be sharing this with the world and hope others will find it as useful as I do!
The second is a Web Audit. This service provides clients with an expert assessment of how they are doing (good and bad) with respect to all 123 best practices identified in the Report. The Audit features a Priority List of suggested improvements, ranked by their potential to improve the site’s usefulness to customers.
September 25, 2003
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Globe And Mail Article On RSS
Globe And Mail: Will RSS kill the e-mail newsletter?:
“What does RSS mean to the content-rich e-newsletter industry? About three months ago, Ken Schafer, president of the Toronto-based Internet consultancy Schafer Group and a founder of The Association for Internet Marketing and Sales (AIMS), simultaneously launched an e-newsletter and added an RSS feed to his company’s blog. Though it’s difficult to determine exactly how many RSS users subscribe to a feed — marketers cite this as one of the few limitations of the system — he estimates that there are about 10 times as many people viewing his feed as the e-newsletter.
Mr. Schafer credits the concept behind RSS with the popularity of the program among his subscribers. ‘[RSS] feeds give the control back to the reader.’
As Internet content publishers, both Mr. Pirillo and Mr. Schafer believe that RSS could replace the need for e-newsletters.
‘It gives us everything we wanted from e-mail newsletters, and everything spam has taken away,’ Mr. Schafer says. ‘I would be surprised if in three years there are any e-newsletters left.’”
September 19, 2003
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Cloudmark Rating System
I’ve used Cloudmark’s SpamNet since it was in early beta. I think it is one of the best anti-spam products out there. In a typical day, I get about 150 spam messages and SpamNet removes all but 3 or 4 of these. I don’t have a spam problem anymore.
Well, as a consumer I don’t have a spam problem. But as someone who sends e-mail newsletters to people who have subscribed at my site, it is a very big problem.
Overaggressive spam filters continually block legitimate e-mail communications, primarily newsletters and other corporate communications which can look “spammy” even if they are not.
In fact, the only problem I’ve had with Cloudmark is that it traps a fair number of legitimate newsletters I’ve signed up for as spam. This happens because Cloudmark users “vote” on whether messages are spam or not and Cloudmark then uses Bayesian filters to block similar messages from other users’ inboxes. This works well until a bunch of people decide that news.com’s newsletters aren’t worth reading and they “block” them.
Cloudmark got one step closer to the perfect solution this week when it introduced the Cloudmark Rating System which is effectively a global whitelisting process to avoid the blocking of mailings from people who are willing to identify themselves.
“The breakthrough email reputation system solves the industry-wide problem of false positives, or good email getting caught in spam filters. In the race to stop spam, false positives are crippling email as a viable way to do business. Ferris Research estimates the cost of false positives to businesses could be as high as $3.5 billion. Consumers, legitimate e-mailers and ISPs are all becoming collateral damage in the war against spam.”
This is good news. Now if only we could get everyone to switch to Cloudmark we’d have this problem licked!
September 15, 2003
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dugg.ca
People are starting to talk about the subliminal ads in the recent McDonald’s Canada TV ads.
During the ad you will notice the URL dugg.ca. The URL is carved into a bench in one scene, a licence plate on the grand prize a few times, and a subliminal insert in other shots.
This might be something that McDonald’s is doing (as suggested by Marketing Wonk in their McDonald’s Has Lost Its Mind post).
Or it may be more along the lines of Vicker’s vote2day.com offline to online effectiveness campaign last year (which was absolutely brilliant by the way).
dugg.ca is registered to The Marketing Store.
September 14, 2003
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Seth and I Do The Technorati Dance
Seth Godin was nice enough to drop by this page a few days ago.
How do I know? FeedDemon and Technorati.
I subscribe to Seth’s Blog and read his feed using FeedDemon. Seth most likely subscribes to an RSS Feed from Technorati that tells him whenever someone posts something pointing to his site.
A few days ago I posted about Seth and just below it I provided some perspective on RSS as a marketing tool. When Seth followed my link to see what I said about him, he read my RSS post and pointed his readers to my post:
“It’s a tricky topic, but I’m going to start taking us through it over the next few weeks. Ken Schafer’s Blog is way ahead of me.”
And so Seth and I complete the Technorati two-step as I (one of Seth’s humble readers) am told to go visit my own site.
Note that, unlike a mailing list, I can’t “see” that Seth came and I don’t know if he has now subscribed to my RSS feed because you don’t get a subscriber list when you publish RSS. The only way I’ll know if Seth does subscribe is if he responds, say to the “Don’t Call It RSS” post below.
BUT, what are the chances that Seth would have subscribed to my newsletter had I posted my thoughts in that format instead?
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Don’t Call It RSS
In reading Sam Ruby’s RSS presentation to Seybold I was once again struck by the variety of standards, non-standards, and standards-in-waiting that get generically lumped together as “RSS” in a non-technical setting.
My concern is that “RSS” is too cryptic, unintuitive, and inaccurate to encompass all we mean by “RSS”. And I’m also looking for an over-arching metaphor that can be used to describe aspects and things related to “RSS”.
Let’s look at e-mail as a starting point in developing a “grand metaphor” for “RSS”.
The term “e-mail” means “electronic mail” an easily understood metaphor devoid of acronyms. Once a user grasps the basic metaphor, all the accompanying metaphors are self-evident.
So a new user quickly learns that:
“It’s mail, but on your computer. Instead of typing a letter then printing and mailing it, you just send it from your computer outbox to the other person’s computer inbox over the Internet. The Internet acts as the printer, the envelope and postal service.”
The mail metaphor is all-encompassing of the technology. Almost everything related to e-mail uses metaphorical equivalents from physical mail — “inbox”, “message”, “check your mailbox”, “you’ve got mail”, “cc”, “newsletter subscribers”, etc. We use a flying envelope as its symbol without a second thought. Acronyms are buried in administrative settings.
Imagine if instead of using this grand metaphor e-mail had instead been commonly referred to by the underlying technical specifications (as RSS is):
“It’s a POP2/SMTP reader. You use it to download POP3 or IMAP feeds from a remote server and compose SMTP replies that a recipient can read using their POP2/SMTP reader. Oh yeah, no one uses POP2 but that’s still what it’s called because that was the original standard people used.”
What we need is an grand metaphor for everything related to all aspects of this:
“The process by which a publisher provides recurring content that people can read via applications that automatically check for new content from all publishers the reader chooses to monitor.”
Right now we talk about “RSS”, “Syndication”, “Feeds”, “Channels”, “Subscriptions”, “Publish and Subscribe”, “Readers”, “Aggregators”, “NewReaders”, etc. None of these terms provide the over-arching metaphor I think we need to really move RSS past the tipping point with average users.
A global RSS metaphor would have to:
1. Clearly capture the essence of the process defined above.
2. Provide “sub-metaphors” for all processes, people and things related to the global metaphor, and do so consistently. (i.e. no mixed metaphors)
3. Be easy for non-industry types to understand, explain, spell, and remember.
4. Should not overlap with metaphors already used online. (I don’t think you can have multiple metaphors in the same medium, but that may be open for debate)
5. Should not get over-extended and tacky.
What might this grand metaphor be?
September 12, 2003
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At Home With Hitler
Tom Coates has posted scans of an old British Home and Gardens magazine the includes a feature called “Hitler’s Mountain Home”.
Because the article is written in gushing “better homes” language and is oblivious to the world war Herr Hitler will start less than a year after the article first appeared, it provides some unintendedly hilarious copy (if anything about Hitler can be called hilarious):
“The Fuhrer is his own decorator, designer, and furnisher, as well as architect. He is constantly enlarging the place, building new guest annexes, and arranging in these his favourite antiques — chiefly German furniture of the eighteenth century, or which agents in Munich are on the look out.
It is a mistake to suppose that week-end guest are all, or even mainly State officials…”
(via Joi Ito)
September 11, 2003
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Feeding Ads Through Feeds
Lockergnome’s RSS Resource: Feeding Ads Through Feeds
The conversation around RSS Marketing is heating up quickly.
A few quick observations:
1. It’s nice to think that everyone will make rich useful content free to all users unencumbered by ads to support the production of that rich useful content, but it is unlikely that we live in that world. Most people like to get a cheque from someone at some time for their efforts. People do things for non-monetary reasons, but businesses don’t. Individuals may blog and provide RSS feeds for reasons other than money, but in the long-run, companies won’t.
1. Publishers will need to decide if they want to use RSS as a notification or a delivery system.
2. If you use RSS as a notification system, there is no need to advertise directly within the RSS feed. The goal of the feed is to compel readers to click through to the site for details. Once on the site the publisher can execute their revenue model — paid or ad-based as if the reader had come to the site through other channels. My guess is that many marketers will be compelled to insert out of context, irrelevant ads into feeds and those efforts will fail. I’d also suggest that for most businesses, this is where they want to concentrate their efforts. How can you use RSS to drive traffic to your site?
3. If you use RSS as a delivery system, you need to figure out why you are doing so. I see a few options:
a) To generate revenue directly from the RSS feed. You could send ads or “ad-like” content to users but you’d want to be very careful about clearly explaining the value to the reader and keeping reader-benefit at the top of your mind whenever you “feed the feed.” My guess is this will be the hardest category to figure out, but also the most profitable for those that get it right.
b) To create awareness of your product, service, stance on an issue, expertise, etc. so that the reader will take a future action. I blog and support an RSS feed so that people are aware of my company’s best practices services. I am therefore quite happy to provide all my content via the feed because the reading of the content by an interested audience meets my goals.
c) To charge for the content delivered. I don’t know enough about the technical and business issues around charging for RSS feeds to comment on this at this time.
This conversation is just starting but my sense is that it is moving much quicker than it did when we first thought of marketing via e-mail. Let’s hope we learn from past experience.
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Global Rich List
I just discovered the Global Rich List via Wired. I love the concept and the site, but I did feel compelled to send them this constructive criticism:
Hi there,
I love the site and the message behind it. Well done!
Three small suggestions:
1. The site design is fantastic, but the background image of stacks of money is visually very distracting. It made my eyes “buzz” all over the place. It also makes it look at first glance like it will be an anti-money screed (looking like old socialist “money bags” imagery). I’d suggest removing the image and going with a white background or a light shade of grey.
2. The graph of global income doesn’t seem to make sense. The axis labeled “billion people” seems to imply that six billion people’s income is right off the chart it is so high. I know that’s not what you meant, but that chart says that.
3. The “spread the word” banner seems to have the message backwards. Promoting “I’m the richest” doesn’t seem to be what you want to have people talking about, rather you want them to think about the fact that “There are 5,280,616,966 people poorer than me”.
Good luck with the project! I’d add links to CARE in the US and Canada to really boost giving!
September 10, 2003
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First Spotting of “ALT Tag Ads”
I just saw a new ad format that I haven’t come across before. I’m not sure if there is a technical name for this, but here’s what happens and how to experience it.
1. Go to Designtechnica Reviews Sony VAIO TR1A Review. Scoll down to the body of the review.
2. Wait about 20 seconds. See those double-underlined links? They’re ads:
3. Hoovering over the link shows an “ALT Tag Ad” (I guess), and clicking takes you to the advertised site.
While I guess I’d give this technique points for being in context, I’d have to deduct those very same points for deviousness as I’m not sure that users would expect ads in the middle of a review for a different product. Maybe the site has a clear description of their editorial policy and an explaination of these links, but I didn’t see it.
Has anyone seen this before? Is it a formal ad product provided by a third party? What are they called?
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No More Blogger Pro
I just got an e-mail from Evan Williams:
Hi there. Evan Williams here, co-founder of Pyra/Blogger.
I wanted to give you a heads-up about something we’re announcing shortly: We’re no longer offering Blogger Pro as a separate product and we’re folding most of the features into regular (free) Blogger.
It’s sad but true. (Except it’s not really that sad.)
Don’t worry — nothing you paid for is going away. And while you won’t be charged, your subscription is still valid. You will continue to have access to features like RSS and post-via-email that are still not in the free version. You’ll also have priority support from our expanded team and new support system:http://help.blogger.com .
More importantly, I want to stress that we couldn’t have gotten to where we are today without you. Pro subscribers helped keep us going as a struggling start-up, when servers and bandwidth were at an extreme premium. We wanted to keep basic Blogger free, but we needed to start charging in order to keep the lights on. So we built new things that would appeal to some Blogger users (namely, you).
Thanks to supportive people like yourself, this plan allowed us to grow and build a better service — and, eventually, get us to much more stable ground. We’re eternally grateful, and I hope you were happy with the relationship, as well.
Today, as you may know, Blogger’s situation is much different.
For one thing, we’re part of Google. (If you missed that announcement, check the FAQ).
Google has lots of computers and bandwidth. And Google believes blogs are important and good for the web.
This is a good thing.
So we’re in the fortunate position of being able to give back to our users. Specifically, we want give all of you who paid for Pro, a Blogger hoodie as a way of saying thanks. Just go to [url] by October 1, 2003 to claim yours.
We feel this move will be good for all Blogger users, and we’re excited about the many new things we have in the pipeline. Stay tuned.
Thanks again,
Ev.
That’s got to be one of the nicest e-mail messages I’ve received. In fact, when I started using blogger, I loved it so much I felt compelled to sign up for the Pro version specifically so that those guys would get a bit of cash to keep the thing going. Being thanked felt really good.