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COLLECTING CUSTOMER INFORMATION "Users
who register on sites more than twice as likely to buy
online," Ch7 Europe, 4/7/99. Fletcher Research (UK)
found that 68% of web users who configured a website had
bought more online, compared to a mere 28% who had not.
Of users who registered on a website, 50% bought online
compared to 19% among those that had not. "FormTrack,"
Integration Logic, Inc.. Provides software that can be
hosted on a company's hosting service or in-house server
that sets ups up multiple response forms, writes them to
a downloadable database, and provides various reports. A
Pro version can send personalized messages via e-mailfrom
the server. Pricing starts at $499. The Pro version at
$1500, will handle multiple forms, and outgoing e-mail.
Uses Perl 5 code which is customizable by the user. Elizabeth
Clarkson, "Survey Says!" NewMedia, 4/1/99. How
to construct and use effective surveys to gather
information and responses from your visitors. Scott
Kirsner, "John Hagel -- Defend or Attack?" CIO
WebBusiness, 4/1/99. Interview distills John Hagel's
ideas expressed in 'Net Worth' concerning the economics
of customer information in e-commerce. Be aware of the
economic importance of profiles and customer information,
learn how to develop and capitalize this information. "Online
Researchers Say Email, Pop-Up Surveys Get the Most
Attention," ChannelSeven, 3/9/99. How to use surveys
to best advantage. Keep the survey brief and relevant,
place the survey in a context relevant to the visitor.
Pop-ups get high response, email can be even better if
done well -- as high as 70% response.
Paul Lang,
"Banner Comparison: Top vs. Bottom," Banner
Tips, 4/1/99. Study of five banners tracked click-through
rates for placement on top of a page vs. the bottom of an
article, with 5000 in each position. Results: top
placement, 1.5%, bottom, 2.1%. Theory: after reading an
article visitors are now ready to click onsomething new. Chris Maher,
"In Defense of Banners," eMarketer, 4/5/99.
Argues that banners are at least as effective as TV ads,
and are a bona fide advertising vehicle. That lower
click-through-rates may be due to unclear messages. At
least when you see a banner ad you know it is commercial
advertising. Michael
Tchong, "Click Here!" eMarketer, 4/12/99.
Though Wirthlin Worldwide found that 80% Net users ignore
banners, those who click on them do so because they know
or trust the brand being advertised, 25%; promise of free
stuff, 14%; promise of interactive learning experience
about productor service, 10%; humor or fun, 6%; visually
exciting graphics or music, 5%; research for offline
shopping, 5%; and ability to make online purchase, 3%. Bruce
Gottlieb, "Fortune and Men's Eyeballs: Applying a
bit of math to the great Internet giveaway.," Slate,
4/16/99. Discusses issues of how much targeting increases
sales rate in proportion to increased advertising costs. Tony
O'Connell, "Banner Advertising Report," Channel
One Strategic Internet Marketing, 4/15/99. 25 page
analysis of the Internet Advertising industry. Sections
include, analysis of the banner advertising market,
consumers attitudes and behavior to banners, branding,
banner advertising models, strategy development,
budgeting, targeting,timing, placement, rotation, banner
design, measurement and control. HTML and Word 97
formats. Tom Hespos,
"Lifting Response," ClickZ, 4/22/99. How to
fight the natural fall-off of banner ad response after a
given banner has been running at a site for a while
(about 20,000 impressions): lift response with some
offline tie-in advertising. It increases brand awareness,
and enhances credibility. Michael
Aaron, "The Nuts And Bolts of Advertising Online.
Part 1," ClickZ, 4/22/99. Why are many companies
still afraid to advertise online? 1) don't understand the
process, 2) not familiar with measurement techniques, 3)
bad experiences with the medium in the past. This part
details the process. Joel Gehman,
"Tough Love: Optimizing An Online Campaign,"
ClickZ, 4/22/99. Techniques for evaluating the
statistical results of a banner ad campaign, and using
the data to optimize future campaigns by tailoring
exposure quantities for particular sites, and maximizing
'unduplicated reach.' Sally
Richards, "Have a Banner Year: How to Increase Your
Website Traffic," CMP Net Smallbiz, 3/12/99.
Explains the basics of banner advertising for small
businesses.
Michael
Fischler, "Round-Up at the Branding Ranch,"
ClickZ, 4/9/99. Author says that banner ads do not work
for building brand awareness. Offline techniques do it
best, but e-mail marketing and brand-related content and
information on websites are also effective. Cliff Allen,
Deborah Kania, and Beth Yaeckel, "Branding Is
Everywhere, Including the Web," One-to-One Web
Marketing E-News, 4/1/99. Introductory article about
branding on the Web, including links to a few key
articles.
"IntelliQuest
Internet Study Shows 100 Million Adults Online in
2000," IntelliQuest, 3/3/99. An IntelliQuest report
found 79.4 million US adults with Internet access, 38% of
the population 16 and over. 60% of US users shop online,
20% purchase online. The typical user is becoming more
mainstream: 36% have a college degree compared to 46% in
1996.55% of homes report household income of $50K or
more, compared to 60% in 1996. Humphrey
Taylor, "On-Line Population Spends an Average of Six
Hours on the Internet or Web per Week," The Harris
Poll, 3/24/99. In a Feb 99 phone survey of 2015 adults,
the average Internet user spent 6 hours/week on the Web
(exclusive of e-mail). The heaviest users spent 9
hours/week and were aged 30 to 39. Time on the Net didn't
vary much by education level or race. "Online
population set to top 250 million in the next five
years," Datamonitor, 3/1/99. In the next five years,
the global online population is set to top 250 million.
Video and audio applications via the Internet will
increase rapidly - they now make up 2% of internet
traffic, and by 2003 will account for 6%. "Reaching
the New American Mosaic," ChannelSeven, 4/8/99.
Discusses how to reach ethnic minorities in the US that
are now flooding online. Focus on how to build a
relationship with black online consumers. "Free
ZIP Code Data," CACI Marketing Systems. Free samples
of ZIP code based demographic figures comparing the ZIP
with national averages. Trying to get you to purchase
ACORN (lifestyle) analysis of neighborhoods. Not
Web-related, but we couldn't resist. Daniel Roth,
"My, What Big Internet Numbers You Have!"
Fortune, 3/15/99. A look at the main sources of all the
e-commerce and web marketing research figures you see all
the time: Forrester Research, Jupiter Communications,
Zona Research. Does their quest for revenue influence
their numbers (and your decisions)?
"Banner
Values." Online banner design firm that caters to
small businesses. A standard 468x60 banner is $150, with
pencil sketches within 48 hours. Jennifer
Plonka, "Review: Create Ad Banners For the Web in a
Snap," InfoWorld Electric, 4/19/99. Headline Studio
1.0, a web banner creation tool. For the single purpose
of making ad banners, either animated or static GIF's,
'Headline Studio will handle the task very efficiently.'
But it doesn't offer many other graphics capabilities.
"Unclaimed
Domains." Master list contains 260,000 unused .com
domain names that can be idea-starters for selecting an
excellent name for an existing or new Net business. List
is $20.
"Lyris
News," Lyris Technologies, Inc.. Free, monthly
e-mail newsletter about using e-mail to build your
business. Articles on list administration, newsletter
formatting, etc. "Business
Week eBiz." "What Every CEO Needs to Know About
Electronic Business." Industry insights, analysis,
profiles and interviews to moving from
"Reengineering to E-Engineering" your
corporation.
"Translation
with Systran," AltaVista and Systran Translation
Software. Jim Wilson of VirtualPROMOTE points to this
resource as a way to translate your Web page and graphics
into 5 European languages, with all links ready for
translation, too. "World
Language Resources." Free online translations.
Languages available: Brazilian Portuguese, Croatian,
Czech, Danish, Dutch, European Spanish, Finnish, French,
German, Greek, Hungarian, Icelandic, Italian, Latin
American Spanish, Norwegian, Polish,Portuguese, Russian,
Spanish, Swedish, Serbian (Latin), Slovenian, UK English,
and American English. Leslie Helm,
"World Wide Web living up to its name," Nando
Times News, 3/28/99. Half of Internet users live outside
the US, and by 2003 half the content will be non-English,
up from 20% today. Article discusses various webpage
translation services, such as AltaVista Babelfish that
gets 500,000 hits a day. Even the lowest-quality
translations allow consumers to understand 95% of the
computer translation. Marius
Meland, "Europe: The Next Frontier," Forbes,
3/29/99. Article compares ranks European countries on
their Internet readiness ranking. The UK was ranked A-,
with Germany B-, and France C+. Lowest in terms of
infrastructure, etc. were Spain, Portugal, and Greece.
Compared with the US, Europe has 6% online (vs.16%), 352
PCs per 1000 (vs. 580), cost to get online US $49 (vs.
$35), disposable income US$14K (vs. $21K), and 39 credit
cards per 1000 people (vs. 148 in the US). Sari Kalin,
"The Worldlier Wider Web," CIO WebBusiness,
3/1/99. Detailed analysis of the e-commerce opportunity
in various international (non-U.S.) markets, according to
demographics, Internet usage, online buying habits.
England, Germany, Brazil, Hong Kong are good targets. James Wolf,
"China Opens the Door to E-Commerce . . .
Slowly," E-Commerce Times, 4/22/99. China could
become one of the world's largest markets for online
goods, especially in business-to-business trade.
MeetChina.com will be the official e-commerce portal for
China, with plans to link to 4 million Chinese businesses
within three years. Eric
Silberstein, "The Web World Wide: Globalizing Your
Web Site," E-Commerce Times, 4/1/99. Developing
versions of your site to appeal to international markets
is more complicated than translating the words. Build
global versioning into the site design to reduce ongoing
expenses: aim for content flexibility, and organize for
centralizedsite development.
David T.
Meier, "Effective Web Marketing," Earth Group,
Inc., 2/18/99. Free downloadable book about Web
marketing. Includes information about newsletters,
reciprocal links, press releases, search engines, doorway
pages, free promotions, etc.
Andy Oram,
"Duties of a Good Host: Are you liable for the
copyright violations of your users?" Web Review,
4/23/99. Concludes that if an ISP follows the law and
makes it easy for copyright owners to contact them, takes
material off their site when content owners challenge it
properly, and follows rules that protect users from false
challenges, ISPs are protectedfrom lawsuits. "Court
Cases Regarding ISP Liability," Web Review, 4/23/99.
Gives a synopsis of various court cases regarding
liability of ISPs for copyright infringement and other
matters.
"Monster.com Chalks Up Super Bowl Ad as a Victory," TMP Worldwide, 2/2/99. The number of job searches conducted on job site, Monster.com surged to 2.2 million in the 24 hours following an advertisement during the Super Bowl, up from 500,000 two weeks previously. http://www.tmpw.com/today/1999/feb2.htm Deborah
Kania, "Locking in Loyalty," ClickZ, 3/30/99.
How to use loyalty programs to develop customer loyalty
online -- incentives, membership clubs, frequent buyer
and rewards programs. In addition to repeat traffic, you
can build valuable profiles, and tie in with targeted
marketing efforts. Jesse Berst,
"The "Secret" Formula for Internet
Success," ZDNet AnchorDesk, 4/13/99. Sees the metric
of a site's success is five-fold: (1) page impressions,
(2) reach in unique users, (3) average time spent on the
site, (4) shelf space or high visibility on portal sites,
and (5) lifetime value of earnings from each customer.
"@Home
Network Rich Media Study," @Home Network, 3/1/99.
Recall percentages of rich media ads tested 34% higher
than IPSOS-ASI's average for narrowband ads,
comprehension and shift in brand imagery improved over
narrowband benchmark statistics by 30%, and on average,
consumers who chose to click spentbetween 30 seconds and
five minutes interacting with the ads. Bill
McCloskey, "Rich Media 101: The Good, The Bad, and
the Java (Part 2)," ChannelSeven, 4/12/99. While
Java isn't a plug-in, the author argues, it can be turned
off easily. However, plug-ins, once installed allow more
viewing of rich media. Java also must be served from a
single server. But it offers rich functionality for ad
campaigns. Nelson Wang,
"Technology No Substitute For Good
Fundamentals," Internet World, 4/5/99. Study
compares rich media ads vs. standard GIF banners. The
result: bells and whistles are much less important than a
clear message, the right context, and good placement.
Rich media showed higher click rate, but no increase in
sales.
"Cluetrain
Manifesto," , 4/1/99. 95 Theses (ala Luther)
declaring truths about the new networked voices in
contrast to corporate-speak. Thesis 18 says it well:
"Companies that don't realize their markets are now
networked person-to-person, getting smarter as a result
and deeply joined in conversation are missing their best
opportunity." Opportunity to sign as well as
contribute to the discussion. From Rick Levine,
Christopher Locke. Doc Searls, and David Weinberger. Nick Usborne,
"Do Incentives Work Online?" ClickZ, 4/23/99.
Author argues that it's much harder to create loyalty
online than face-to-face, because choice and alternatives
are so much more common on the Internet.
"Business
News Media Directory," EditPros Marketing
Communications. Business Editor and Reporter E-Mail
Addresses for news releases. Sachin Shah,
"PR's Trickle-Down Theory," ChannelSeven,
4/15/99. Sees news releases as junk mail of the 90s
unless the target a Tracey-Lee
Batsford, "How To Pitch PR Effectively,"
ClickZ, 4/1/99. How to get attention from journalists and
media. You can't just write a standard press release then
wait for journalists to flock to you. Wow them with
something that relates to the beats they cover. And
target the right journalists in the first place.
"FairContest."
Allows siteowners to easily set up a fairly designed
contest. A free (banner-supported) contest is available.
Paid rates are relatively low. Could be a real time
saver. Contest design ideas on site. Jennifer
Johnson, "Articles on Site Design and
Promotion," PromotingYourSite.com. Numerous original
articles on site promotion. Topics such as banner ads,
make your site sell better, etc. Charlie
Morris, "How Not to Promote Your Web Site,"
Computer Currents, 4/13/99. Discusses bogus search engine
registering services, the dangers of spam, banner ad
pitfalls, and some suggestions and resources for the best
ways to promote. Charlie
Morris, "Promoting Your Web Site Sans Snake
Oil," Web Developer's Journal, 3/30/99. Longer
article on how not to promote your site. Warns of
spamming, using submission services, etc. Gillian
Newson, "Bus Stop Branding," NewMedia, 3/1/99.
Off-line promotion can be highly effective for websites
seeking mainstream acceptance. Examines the use of TV,
radio, billboards, bus ads and 'wild posting,' in
campaigns by Wired Digital, Snap.com, Excite and others. Gillian
Newson, "Inventive Incentive," NewMedia,
2/1/99. The best incentives to attract surfers to your
site, or get them to click your banner ads: cash, reward
points and the word 'instant.' Eric Ward,
"E-commerce marketers should check out new mega
portal features," NetMarketing, 4/1/99. New low-cost
banner ad targeting and promotion options at major portal
sites like Alta Vista (Centraal, Real Names), Infoseek
(Clicks), Yahoo! (Business Express), and GoTo.com are
worth investigating, even for B2B marketing and niche
marketing.
Jason Busch,
"How Well Do You Really Know Your E-Customer?"
Internet Week, 4/19/99. Author recommends close
discussion with small groups of customers as the best
source of information for planning e-commerce strategy.
Don't just look at logs and profiles, pay attention to
what people actually say, think and do.
Jacob Ward,
"Bogus Clickers Are Cheating Ad Networks," The
Industry Standard, 4/9/99. Tricking banner ad tracking
software with 'phantom clicks' is a growing hacker
phenomenon. Targets are usually banner networks,
especially Link Exchange, Flycast, DoubleClick and
ValueClick. Phantom clicks may be as high as 20% of the
total count. Steve Roth,
"Free To A Good Home: Impressions," ClickZ,
4/13/99. If you sell advertising, and have excess
(unsold) inventory, don't throw it away -- give it away
to your paying advertisers. The over-delivery will be
appreciated, your ad space will outperform the
competition, and you'll generate new and repeat business.
"LinkPopularity.com,"
PCEdge. Lists the number of sites that link to yours.
This number affects your ranking in some search engines,
and shows a balance in attracting site traffic from
multiple sources. "Link-O-Matic."
Creates instant links to your site on 450 sites. Said to
increase random traffic. While I doubt it brings much
qualified traffic, it does create instant
"popularity" which affects your ranking in some
search engines. Seth
Fineberg, "Alta Vista's 'Search Ranking' Move Met
with 'Wait and See' Attitude," ChannelSeven,
4/16/99. Discusses reaction to AltaVista's announcement
that it will sell the top two positions in its search
results for keywords. Notes GoTo.com's good results with
this business model. David
Gikandi, "Search Engine Spam: Useful Knowledge for
the Web Site Promoter," Sell It!, 4/17/99. Describes
the many methods and tricks used to 'spam' search engines
in the quest for higher rankings. Avoid these unethical
techniques or risk losing your listing altogether. Paul Lang,
"Product Review: GoTo.com," Sell It!, 4/3/99.
How to get the most out of advertising at GoTo.com, the
search engine that allows advertisers to bid for keywords
and pay per click. Author says GoTo.com is the best
advertising buy available. David
Gikandi, "How to Get Top Search Engine
Positioning," Sell It!, 3/27/99. Techniques for
creating effective gateway pages to secure top ranking on
individual search engines. Also describes the author's
SearchPositioning.com service, which creates gateway
pages for subscribers at $35/year. "About
Internet Keywords for Netscape's SmartBrowsing
Feature," Netscape NetCenter and Excite. Allows you
to determine what sites come up when you enter keywords
in Netscape 4.06+ URL window. Uses reviews and selections
by Excite. "Pay For
Placement?" Search Engine Watch. Links to articles
on sites such as GoTo.com that allow top positions to be
purchased.
Bobbie
Halfin, "Case Studies for Innovative Branding:
Telecom Companies," ClickZ, 4/14/99. Sophisticated
web advertisers look beyond the banner, to sponsorships
and branding that are well integrated with site content.
The objective is to perceive the marketing message as a
useful part of the site's content, not mere advertising.
Tim Wilson,
"Web Site Mining Gets Granular," Internet Week,
3/29/99. Describes some of the data siteowners can
retrieve using next generation traffic analysis software:
Aria from Andromedia, Netrics.com's SurfReport, Accrue
Software Inc. Engage Technologies' I/Pro package helps
track closing a sale. Discusses use ofcookies, and notes
that only 1% of browsers are set up to reject cookies.
"BBBOnline
Privacy Program," BBBOnline. BBBOnline launched a
new privacy seal of approval to assure customers that
siteowners follow clear information privacy rules. Jesse Berst,
"E-Businesses May Be Discriminating Against
You," ZDNet AnchorDesk, 4/6/99. Explains how
customer databases, including buying patterns, may cause
some online businesses to discriminate against you (or
for you). Sees this as part of the larger privacy issue. Nelson Wang,
"IBM To Spurn Sites That Lack Privacy
Policies," Internet World, 4/12/99. Taking privacy
issues seriously is crucial to gaining widespread
acceptance of e-commerce. IBM is using its muscle as the
#2 web advertiser to force the issue, plans to stop
advertising on sites without adequate privacy policies.
"LivePerson
Network." Pop-up chat box that allows instant
customer contact with a real person. Pricing varies with
plan and number of operators needed. Jesse Berst,
"How Eservice Could Put You Out of Business,"
ZDNet AnchorDesk, 3/22/99. Warns that existing companies
are vulnerable to Internet upstarts if they neglect
eService to customers. Most frequent forms: FAQs,
discussion groups and chats, and e-mail inquiries and
answers. Jesse Berst,
"Pioneers Point Way to Eservice Revolution,"
ZDNet AnchorDesk, 3/22/99. Brief description of customer
service products by several newer companies: ActiveTouch,
Aditi, Ask Jeeves , Brightware, Delano, Primus, Motive,
and Servicesoft.
Carter
Stowell, "All About HTML Email," Webmonkey,
2/26/99. Gives basic overview of HTML e-mail and how it
works. Tells how to test using a Unix shell account. Dana
Blankenhorn, "Chain Letter Marketing,"
A-Clue.com, 4/12/99. Sees forwarding "goodies"
to one's personal list of friends as a powerful form of
marketing, which he calls "chain letter
marketing," more memorable than Audette's
"propagation marketing" or Tchong's
"multi-connected marketing." Bottom line:
"If you offer real value up-front, people will be
happy to pass it along, even if it's ad-supported, even
if it's essentially a pitch." "Broadc@st
2.0," Brooklyn North Software Works. E-mail merge
program that can collect names and e-mail addresses from
a variety of databases and PIMs, remove duplicates, and
create personalized e-mailings. Takes data from: MS
Access, MS Outlook, Eudora, ACT!, GoldMine, FoxPro,
Maximizer,dBase, MS Excel, FileMaker, etc. Personal
edition up to 500 e-mails, $99. Business edition up to
5,000 e-mails $495. "RadicalMail,"
, 4/1/99. Streaming multimedia e-mail with no plug-in or
attachments, under 2K in size. Recipients can buy within
the e-mail, and advertisers have full tracking to point
of sail. Opt-in deployment only. Recipient must be
connected to Internet for streaming.
Kay Ingram,
"Creative Newsletters Boost Revenue," Lyris
News, 4/13/99. Describes how various companies are using
e-mail newsletters to promote their business and bring
back buyers to "Format
Your Newsletter," Lyris News, 4/13/99. Tips on
formatting a newsletter to appear well on any e-mail
client program. "Text
vs. HTML Email: What's Right For You?" Lyris News,
3/15/99. Brief discussion of advantages of ASCII vs. HTML
e-mail for newsletters and product announcements. "World
Wide Information Outlet." Provides free content for
e-mail newsletters. Posts articles with author's
permission to reprint already secured. "FIGlet
Service," SparkNET. Online utility makes large,
customized letters using ASCII text for newsletter
headings, etc. It's fun, try it. "Sparky's
List Tips," SparkList. Archives of dozens of brief
tips on discussion list and newsletter list management,
list promotion, list advertising, list Business, list
branding, list lingo, and list resources. Provided by
major list service bureau. Example: "10 Commandments
for List Owners," and "How to Reduce the Number
of List Members Who Leave." Bob Dorf,
"Email Newsletters See Growth Spurt," Inside
1to1, 4/1/99. Increase the effectiveness of your
marketing email newsletter by offering brief, chatty
articles with useful information. Examples are Inc.
Online and eMarketer. Also tips on outsourcing the
delivery service: Exactis.com, CompanyNewsletters.com.
Brian D.
Chmielewski, "Why Opt-in Direct Email Doesn't
Pay," Upromote, 4/1/99. Explains that the quality of
an opt-in list may be devalued by collecting names from
sites offering free offers. Visit the subscription form
to see how the offer is made. Question how easy it is to
opt-out of a list. Make sure recipients have the means
tomake a purchase. Advises keep your message short, keep
your price point under US $20 and market your message
consistently. Deborah
Kania, "See Ya Later, Spam," ClickZ, 4/13/99.
Use spam-less, targeted, opt-in email for marketing.
Benefits include reaching only qualified prospects,
ability to differentiate and segment your customers,
building loyalty, and improved company reputation.
"MailSwap,"
Muenchhoff & Janz GmbH. Similar to banner exchanges.
If you join MailSwap, e-mail ads, usually 2 or 3 lines of
text, will be included in the e-mails you send, and your
ad will be included in other members' mails. For every 3
e-mail ads you send, you will get 2 e-mailads in return.
The remaining 1 e-mail ad is used to keep MailSwap free.
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