RSS Marketing
Friday, April 6th, 2007Unleash RSS Marketing in Japan
Just got word from my Japaneese publisher that Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS is scheduled to be released in Japan in print end of July.
It’s great to finally go international:)
Japan is getting the short 2007 edition of the book … and yes, the longer US 2007 edition is still being written, unfortunatelly.
I can't believe how many times I've postoped it already. Actually, I'm quite ashamed of it.
But, I do believe it will be worth the wait.
I also wanted to thank Geoff Livingston for putting Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS on his list of 25+ Great New Media Books.
Geoff, thanks for the extra motivation to help me finish the 2007 edition:)
| How Can RSS Power Your Internet Marketing and Publishing? Find out more in the most comprehensive and best guide on RSS for marketers, as acclaimed by leading RSS experts, developers, marketers and publishers. Click here and get the step-by-step guide to taking full marketing advantage of RSS. |
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How Google's Acquisition of FeedBurner Will Change RSS Marketing
While the original plan for the RSS Diary blog was leaving on hiatus until the 2007 edition of the RSS Marketing e-book is done, the FeedBurner acquisition by Google is a story just to important to pass up … especially all the implications it might bring into the world of RSS Advertising, and RSS Marketing as a whole as well.
So, yes. FeedBurner, a leading RSS metrics and RSS advertising company was just acquired by Google. Finally confirmed after weeks of speculation. I won't go into the details of the acquisition, as you can read more about it at the FeedBurner blog and just by following the news at Google News.
Here, we'll take a look at the implications this brings to the world of RSS Marketing. Just my predictions of course:)
1. RSS Metrics Will Finally Become Integrated With Web Metrics
In my book, all marketing/communications channels should be judged using the same metrics, such as conversions, cost-per-order, cost-per-subscriber, sales etc.
Although you could already do all of this with RSS, it required some tinkering.
But, as FeedBurner gets assimilated into Google Analytics, tracking the key marketing metrics should become a breeze, giving everyone access to crucial internet optimization data.
2. RSS Metrics Moving Closer to the Mainstream
With RSS Metrics being integrated directly into Google Analytics (which I'm sure will happen very soon), marketers might finally start actually measuring their RSS feeds.
Means better RSS Marketing, finally.
3. RSS Advertising Going CPC
Although FeedBurner is cautions to provide any details about how their CPM pricing model might change with the integration of their ad services into Google, I'm quite certain that RSS advertising will move the way of cost-per-click.
Means less revenues for RSS feed publishers, but better ROI for you, the advertiser.
4. RSS Advertising Moving Closer to the Mainstream
RSS Advertising will finally reach the mainstream, utilizing Google's massive advertiser database.
Prices will go up, and RSS content monetization will again start becoming the talk at industry events.
On the plus side, it also means Google will be able to attract more RSS feed publishers, meaning more RSS ad inventory for you. Your RSS advertising reach potential is about to explode, finally enabling you to reach the masses using RSS Advertising.
5. Trouble for Other RSS Advertising Companies
I love Pheedo, another leading RSS Metrics and RSS Advertising company, but the FeedBurner acquisition makes me wonder what's in store for them as Google starts pushing RSS advertising to their massive database of advertisers, especially as part of an integrated online advertising service.
It’s certainly not the end of other RSS Advertising companies, but they might all soon see themselves transforming from RSS ad networks to RSS media planning & buying consultants.
Which would be a shame, especially considering the advancements in RSS Advertising developed by Pheedo.
6. Better Targeting for Google AdWords Advertisers (We Wish!)
Advertiser demand seems to be growing quicker than the inventory offered by Google.
The obvious choice for Google (in addition of course to increasing ad inventory through additional reach, media expansion through the content network, and expansion to new ad channels, like RSS and banner inventories) is to offer better targeting, for a premium price.
As a marketer, I clearly want to place my ads in front of the most relevant prospects. Keyword targeting is OK, but adding behavioral on top of that introduces another filtering element to my media planning, enabling me to really pin-point the users I want to see my ads.
How about displaying search ads only to people who have already visited my website, but haven't made a purchase? Google AdWords and Google Analytics integration could offer exactly this.
How about displaying search ads only to people that respond to marketing content banners on other websites? Integrating Google AdWords with one of the latest Google acquisitions, DoubleClick, can get us exactly this.
Of course, I might also want to target my ads to people who are subscribed to X e-mail newsletter. What do you know, Google already has that information through their Gmail service.
And then, how about displaying search ads only to people who are subscribing to other RSS feeds about RSS marketing? Integrating Google AdWords with FeedBurner would make this possible.
Now just take these concepts, put them all together, and expand them to banner advertising, feed advertising and any other online ad channel Google develops/acquires in the future.
This may either be science fiction or Google's actual long-term masterplan. As more advertising budgets rush to the internet, available quality ad inventory will continue shrinking.
By introducing such targeting, integrating the metric and capabilities of all of their properties, Google could come as close as possible to total ad targeting, the holy grail of marketing we are all striving towards.
Things will get much more interesting … and soon.
If I were an ad agency, I'd start developing a targeting department, focusing on targeted media buying.
| How Can RSS Power Your Internet Marketing and Publishing? Find out more in the most comprehensive and best guide on RSS for marketers, as acclaimed by leading RSS experts, developers, marketers and publishers. Click here and get the step-by-step guide to taking full marketing advantage of RSS. |
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Amazon Soft-Launches RSS Feeds for Product Tags
Just got a notice from Amazon (thank you) that they soft-launched RSS feeds for tags.
But first, how do their tags actually work?
You can tag any product you like, including your previous purchases, with a keyword that best describes the product. Easily search and access products tagged by others, using the keywords you're interested in. Tags are also used as a way for Amazon to provide you with personalized recommendations.
The good part is that Amazon now added RSS capabilities to their tags, available through most tag pages.
Subscribe to RSS feeds for the tags you're interested in, and get latest product releases that match these tags. Use the RSS feeds to display Amazon products on your website, using the appropriate tags, to earn affiliate commissions. Share RSS feeds for tags with your friends, as a recommendations vehicle.
An excellent RSS e-commerce application from Amazon!
| How Can RSS Power Your Internet Marketing and Publishing? Find out more in the most comprehensive and best guide on RSS for marketers, as acclaimed by leading RSS experts, developers, marketers and publishers. Click here and get the step-by-step guide to taking full marketing advantage of RSS. |
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The NewsGator Interview: RSS in the Enterprise - Manage Internal Information More Easily
In part 3 of the RSS interview with Greg Reinacker of NewsGator find out how Enterprise RSS makes information management easier within a corporation.
What will happen in the RSS space in 2007, for marketers and business?
Will RSS become integrated into every enterprise application? How will that change how information is used?
Will RSS i mprove information management within an organization?
What challenges do RSS management present to IT departments in larger organizations?
Will centralized RSS tools help solve the internal information management crisis?
What is Attention XML and how will it help you get more of the content you need and less of the content that is not relevant specifically to you?
Are smart RSS Readers only for corporations, or can consumers also take advantage?
What are NewsGator's plans for 2007?
Click here to listen to the interview [MP3; 13 min.]
| How Can RSS Power Your Internet Marketing and Publishing? Find out more in the most comprehensive and best guide on RSS for marketers, as acclaimed by leading RSS experts, developers, marketers and publishers. Click here and get the step-by-step guide to taking full marketing advantage of RSS. |
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The NewsGator Interview: RSS for Online Media and Branded RSS Readers
In part 2 of the RSS interview with Greg Reinacker of NewsGator find out how online media can take advantage of RSS beyond publishing RSS content.
Why should online publishers care about branded RSS Readers?
Does it still make sense to provide a branded RSS Reader, especially with the wide adoption RSS is getting through Internet Explorer 7?
What kind of value can publishers bring to RSS Readers?
How can online media enhance the user experience through third-party content via RSS?
Is visitor ownership still a possibility, or are services like MyYahoo! owning the game? How can online media compete?
How can small businesses compete with large portals and large media sites?
Does syndicating your content via RSS mean that you’re giving up content?
Is RSS becoming a significant traffic driver?
How can companies profit from pulling together relevant content on a specific topic from third-party sources?
Is there a difference in how summary and full-text feeds drive visitors to your website? When to use which?
Best practices for re-publishing third-party content on your website
Can you put ads next to re-published RSS content on your site? How to do it?
Click here to listen to the interview [MP3; 14 min.]
| How Can RSS Power Your Internet Marketing and Publishing? Find out more in the most comprehensive and best guide on RSS for marketers, as acclaimed by leading RSS experts, developers, marketers and publishers. Click here and get the step-by-step guide to taking full marketing advantage of RSS. |
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The NewsGator Interview: How are Vista and IE Changing the RSS Landscape?
I interviewed Greg Reinacker of NewsGator end of January, as part of the interview series for the 2007 edition of the RSS e-book.
NewsGator is one of the leaders in the Enterprise RSS space, a provider of top-breed RSS Readers and also a branded RSS Reader vendor.
So, you can imagine we had alot to cover.
In part 1 of the interview, find out about how Windows Vista and Internet Explorer are changing the RSS landscape …
How are Vista and Internet Explorer changing the world of RSS marketing and RSS content consumption?
How much and how quickly will they make an impact?
Are they really the game changer every marketer expects them to be?
What changes can we expect?
How can marketers take advantage of the advances Vista offers for RSS?
Click here to listen to the interview [MP3; 8 min.]
| How Can RSS Power Your Internet Marketing and Publishing? Find out more in the most comprehensive and best guide on RSS for marketers, as acclaimed by leading RSS experts, developers, marketers and publishers. Click here and get the step-by-step guide to taking full marketing advantage of RSS. |
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Flying to Boston for the ACCM Conference
Only a few more weeks until the ACCM (Annual Catalog and Multi-Channel Merchant Conference) event in Boston, one of the best DM conferences of the year.
If you're in Boston or are coming to the conference, drop me a note.
I’ll be speaking on RSS and other new internet marketing media, together with Scott Voight of Silverpop.
If you're at the conference, definetly reserve the Monday 3 PM slot to come hear us. The last presentation we did together with Scott in London was a huge hit, and we promise not to dissapoint:)
| How Can RSS Power Your Internet Marketing and Publishing? Find out more in the most comprehensive and best guide on RSS for marketers, as acclaimed by leading RSS experts, developers, marketers and publishers. Click here and get the step-by-step guide to taking full marketing advantage of RSS. |
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Bryan Eisenberg RSS Interview, part 2: RSS Marketing Best Practices
What works best in RSS marketing? How are RSS subscribers different than e-mail subscribers? RSS publishing best practices if you want to sell?
These and other practical questions are all revealed in the 2nd part of the RSS interview with Bryan Eisenberg. Without doubt, this is one of the best and most practical RSS marketing interviews we've done so far.
In part 1 of the Bryan Eisenberg RSS interview we focused on how the GrokDotCom.com is going beyond traditional RSS Radars by employing intelligent content aggregation tools, instead of relying just on contextual filtering, and what kind of results they are achieving.
In part 2 of the interview we move beyond RSS Radars to their overall RSS marketing strategy.
In this interview find out about …
1. How RSS subscribers are different from e-mail subscribers and why?
2. How to sell products through content-rich RSS feeds?
3. Do RSS subscribers mind seeing product promotions in your feeds?
4. When to publish your latest RSS content to get the most links from other websites and most readership?
5. What's the right RSS publishing frequency for promotional content?
6. Why branding your RSS feed is important and how to do it?
Click here to listen to the MP3 file [8:33 minutes; 2 MB]
| How Can RSS Power Your Internet Marketing and Publishing? Find out more in the most comprehensive and best guide on RSS for marketers, as acclaimed by leading RSS experts, developers, marketers and publishers. Click here and get the step-by-step guide to taking full marketing advantage of RSS. |
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Amazon.com Discussions and Reviews via RSS
I have to apologise to Amazon for missing on two of their RSS content delivery options, which I previously missed.
Sorry guys, and thank you for the heads up.
1. Product Discussions
Most Amazon.com product discussions are now available also as RSS feeds. An excellent way of keeping track of the conversations surrounding your favorite products, and certainly something more websites should implement … especially those that provide content that people are pashionate about.
The first one that comes to mind is TV.com and their community show reviews.
2. Customer Reviews by Author
Like a product reviewer? Subscribe to their Amazon.com reviews RSS feed.
| How Can RSS Power Your Internet Marketing and Publishing? Find out more in the most comprehensive and best guide on RSS for marketers, as acclaimed by leading RSS experts, developers, marketers and publishers. Click here and get the step-by-step guide to taking full marketing advantage of RSS. |
[Link]
Bryan Eisenberg RSS Interview, part 1: Making RSS Radars Work to Increase Your Sales
Part of the upcoming 2007 edition of the RSS Marketing e-book are also the interviews we are doing with various internet marketing experts and RSS practitioners. In the following days and hopefully not too many weeks, we'll be posting those interviews here.
I’m sure most of you have heard of Bryan Eisenberg before. Bryan is the leading worldwide authority on internet marketing optimization and website persuasion architecture. He was also one of the few marketers that got on the RSS Marketing bandwagon early on.
Recently, Bryan started exploring RSS Radars as a tool to increase the traffic to their optimization portal GrokDotCom.com, increase visitor loyalty, position the website as the key news source for internet optimization … and naturally facilitate online sales of their books and consulting services. Take a look here.
But while most RSS Radars are based on contextually filtering content from selected third-party RSS feeds, the GrokDotCom.com RSS Radars go far beyond anything else we have seen on the market so far.
Instead of relying only on contextual content filtering to select the most relevant third-party content, they are employing a number of additional filters, such as the amount of linkage the story is receiving, source relevance and credibility, and so on … and they're calling it a discovery engine.
What are their RSS Radar marketing goals? How their RSS Radar is different from what you can generally see online? What concrete results are they achieving? What you can learn from their RSS marketing?
All of these answers, and more, available in the audio interview.
Click here to listen to the MP3 file [14 minutes; 3 MB]
| How Can RSS Power Your Internet Marketing and Publishing? Find out more in the most comprehensive and best guide on RSS for marketers, as acclaimed by leading RSS experts, developers, marketers and publishers. Click here and get the step-by-step guide to taking full marketing advantage of RSS. |
[Link]
Defining Online Conversion: Combining Action and Exposure Elements
Defining Online Conversion: Combining Action and Exposure Elements
Conversions aren't just about new sales or subscribers versus your website visitors.
First, let's review the conversion rate definition from Defining Online Conversion: What Is It?:
The conversion rate is a % of unique actions that result from unique exposures.
The conversion rate metric can be used to measure anything you want to track, analyze and optimize, and is by no means linked only to sales or subscribers and your website.
Here are just some quick examples of conversion rates not used as often as the standard sales/visitors CR:
sales / e-mail clicks sales / e-mails delivered order finished / add to cart sales / ad impressions phone calls / website visits product recommendations / product views etc.
There are countless combinations available, depending on what specifically you want to measure and optimize.
Let’s return to our conversion rate definition for a second:
The conversion rate is a % of unique actions that result from unique exposures.
As you can see from the definition, the conversion rate is a combination of actions and exposures, with a simple formula of:
conversion rate = actions / exposures
Consequently, conversion rate optimization begins first with defining what you want to measure and optimize, and then by defining the action and exposure elements that help you get to the numbers you need.
Let’s presume you want to measure the overall effectiveness of your e-mail e-zine in driving sales.
The overall effectiveness of your e-mail e-zine can be measured as a conversion between the number of unique e-mail messages delivered [exposures] to your list and the number of unique sales generated [actions] from the e-mailing. [CR = unique sales / unique delivered e-mail messages]
However, this will only give you the overall effectiveness and a trend to watch over a longer period of time, telling you whether you are increasing or decreasing your overall effectiveness. It does not tell you what you need to optimize to increase your sales.
To determine this, consider the steps needed to make the sale via the e-mail campaign.
It starts with getting the click from the e-mail message delivered to your website. Increasing the number of clicks requires increasing the attractiveness of the Calls-to-Action [CTAs] in the e-mail message.
Hence you need to know how effective the CTAs are in driving recipients from the e-mail to the website, by measuring the conversion between the number of unique e-mail messages delivered [exposures] and unique clicks [actions] to your website [CR = unique clicks / unique delivered e-mail messages].
This will of course only give you the basic information — getting more will require measuring each individual CTA.
A click of course does not mean sales, so the next step is measuring the conversion from the e-mail clicks [exposures] to purchases [actions] –> [CR = unique purchases / unique e-mail clicks]. This will help you optimize the actual landing pages to which you lead the subscribers to your e-mail list, using your e-zine.
And finally, to fully optimize your process you may want to measure the conversion on the sales process level to help you optimize each step that leads to the purchase after the click, such as how good the product landing pages are in getting clickers to add the product to the shopping cart [CR = unique add to carts / unique e-mail clicks].
Much like everything else in series so far, this is just a simplistic demonstration, here primarily for the purpose of helping you see how to combine action and exposure elements.
In the case of e-zine optimization for sales, you would also need to measure relevant clicks (since only relevant clicks will increase your sales), different CTAs, open rates and so on.
The point is, combine different actions and exposures to come up with conversion rate formulas that will impact your bottom line.
| How Can RSS Power Your Internet Marketing and Publishing? Find out more in the most comprehensive and best guide on RSS for marketers, as acclaimed by leading RSS experts, developers, marketers and publishers. Click here and get the step-by-step guide to taking full marketing advantage of RSS. |
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Using RSS Radars in B2B CRM
RSS Radars are not just a tool to help you enrich your website content and allow you to easily conduct business intelligence, but can also be used as a B2B Customer Relationship Management tool to help you maintain customer loyalty and provide your customers with some additional added value.
Just recently I received an e-mail from David Koopmans of Mokum Marketing, who gave me the idea for this post.
David’s idea is simple:
Tag articles of interest to your customers using a service like Diigo or Del.icio.us Provide them with an RSS feed to deliver them the articles as they are updated
This is how David sees the usefulness of such an application:
“The idea is very attractive though; in B2B we often manage a relatively small number of relationships, but they are deep and we want to make them deeper."
But, there are two problems:
Tagging the articles using a public service like Diigo or Del.icio.us would make the feeds publicly available, making the service less value due to lack of uniqueness, as also noted by David Tagging relevant articles every day takes time … time that busy B2B marketers usually don't have, especially if you want to cater a tag-based RSS feed for each of your clients
This is where RSS Radars can come in, enabling you to aggregate dozens or hundreds of RSS feeds, filter them for the relevant keywords to get only the most relevant content for a specific client, and provide that client with his own customized RSS feed, using a service like MySyndicaat.com or pipes.yahoo.com.
Plus, using .htaccess you can easily password protect each feed for each individual client.
More details in the 2007 edition of the RSS e-book 
| How Can RSS Power Your Internet Marketing and Publishing? Find out more in the most comprehensive and best guide on RSS for marketers, as acclaimed by leading RSS experts, developers, marketers and publishers. Click here and get the step-by-step guide to taking full marketing advantage of RSS. |
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The 10-Step RSS Marketing Plan
While RSS has certainly become well-established with most marketers, few are using it to its full advantage.
Now, while the original Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS e-book focused on explaining RSS marketing in a world where RSS was just starting out, the 2007 edition will focus on optimizing your RSS marketing and getting as much as possible from it.
The 10-step plan is one of the tools we will be introducing in the 2007 edition, once it's launched (getting there:).
Going through this plan will help you get as much as possible from RSS, on all levels. It will help you bring your RSS marketing to the same level as your e-mail marketing, and more.
But for now, here's a very quick summary of the steps from the process view point.
1. Develop your RSS marketing strategy
It all starts with a strategy that defines all the other elements of your RSS marketing plan. Developing your RSS marketing strategy consists of planning your RSS usage for each marketing function and integrating it with the rest of your marketing mix, and setting the goals for each of the marketing functions.
2. Start using RSS for business intelligence
Conducting business intelligence using RSS is the first step to improving your marketing overall. You will start by finding the right RSS Reader for you, define your business intelligence needs, find the relevant information sources, and implementing the right RSS business intelligence tools.
3. Plan your overall outbound RSS content strategy
Outbound communications using RSS are the most complex part of RSS marketing, with numerous choices available to you. During this step you will define your outbound communications target audiences, define your goals for each of them, decide on your RSS feed publishing model, define your RSS feed content and define your RSS feed content sources.
4. Define your RSS marketing requirements & select your RSS marketing vendor
Defining your RSS marketing technology requirements and selecting the appropriate vendor to supply you with all the features you need to support your strategy.
5. Plan your RSS content strategy on the content-item level
Once you have prepared your overall RSS content strategy you need to plan your RSS content-item level strategy, which essentially means getting the right content in place within the feed to meet your objectives. This consists of defining your writing style, defining the content item structure and defining your calls-to-action.
6. Promote your RSS feeds internally
Simply publishing RSS feeds on your website is not enough to generate subscribers. In this section you will define your RSS feed subscription process, define the RSS feed promotion locations for your feeds, develop the subscription offer and implement the other neccessary technical items to increase your subscription growth.
7. Promote your RSS feeds externally
After setting everything correctly through your own channels, it is neccesary to promote the RSS feeds using external websites as well. This process includes optimizing your RSS feed for the search engines, submitting the feed to the search engines and performing periodic pinging.
8. Measure and optimize your RSS feeds
Measurement and optimization are the two areas that can have the most profound impact on your RSS success. This consists of defining the required metrics, establishing the technical capacities for measurement, measuring and optimizing your content strategy and measuring and optimizing your subscription generation tactics.
9. Use RSS to syndicate your content to other online media
Use RSS to get your content published on other relevant media. The neccessary steps for syndication are defining your target media, defining your RSS feed content, preparing the right syndication tools and promoting your syndication offerings.
10. Use RSS to enhance your website and brand
Enhancing your website is about adding third-party content to enrich the user experience, while enhancing your brand is about providing your own branded RSS Reader.
| How Can RSS Power Your Internet Marketing and Publishing? Find out more in the most comprehensive and best guide on RSS for marketers, as acclaimed by leading RSS experts, developers, marketers and publishers. Click here and get the step-by-step guide to taking full marketing advantage of RSS. |
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Defining Online Conversion: The Multi-Channel Component
Online conversion is not only the result of online activities. Rather, the conversion process can be initiated by an offline channel, such as direct mail, catalog, flyer, TV advertising, mobile, print advertising and even radio advertising … or even prompted by brand or retail.
On the other hand, the conversion doesn't really need to happen online, but it could happen in a physical retail store, over the phone or even using a mobile phone.
Consequently, measuring and optimizing conversion for multi-channel merchants, as well as for B2B marketers, where conversion is most often achieved in a live meeting, is a complex issue.
What Initializes Conversion?
Why do we even care which channel initiated the conversion?
Optimizing for the Source Consumer
Different sources of conversion always generate different results. A TV customer will convert at a different rate than a catalog customer, and an SEM customer will convert at a different rate than a print customer. The point is, each source of traffic delivers a different type of prospect. Being able to tailor the on-site experience to these different types of customers impacts our sales success.
Optimizing the Source
By measuring the conversion, and naturally sales, per source of conversion we are able to directly attribute revenues to that source. That allows us to optimize both the source (advertising) and the conversion touch-point (website). It allows us to evaluate each source, decide whether that source is performing according to our standards, and in the end helps us optimize our ad spend by channel.
So far so good. But it gets even more complex.
Imagine this scenario:
TV advertising generated demand for our product. But instead of going to our website, the consumer goes to Google and does a search for a phrase he remembers from the TV ad. Google delivers him to our website, where he does not make a purchase, but rather subscribes to our e-mail e-zine. Our new subscriber then receives 5 more e-mail e-zine issues, before deciding to make a purchase. But instead of coming directly to our website from the e-zine issue to make the purchase, he again uses Google to visit the website. He finally ads the product to his shopping cart, but then changes his mind. Because we already have his e-mail address and have identified an abandoned shopping cart, we initiate an abandoned shopping cart e-mail program. After 3 follow-up e-mail messages from the abandoned shopping cart e-mail program, the consumer finally completes his purchase and converts.
Or in graphic terms …
This isn't a sci-fi scenario, but rather a reality we're seeing in our webstores every day.
For example, in my own experience I’m finding that in our case e-mail e-zines don't convert the majority of subscribers directly, but rather facilitate the conversion indirectly. Subscribers receive the e-zine, which builds their trust, builds demand and gets them ready for the purchase. But when making the purchase, that same subscriber still enters the website through a Search Engine.
While looking at the conversion from this complex viewpoint does present difficulties, it simply needs to be done.
Just take a look at the number of steps outlined above. Each of these steps represents an optimization opportunity, enabling you to further increase sales. And every step also represents a threat that decreases conversion.
But in addition to the question of how to measure this process, the next logical problem is how you actually attribute conversion to the appropriate channel. It is clear in this scenario that TV started the process. So while each of the following steps assisted in achieving the conversion, the TV advertising needs to be attributed for starting the sales process.
The problem here is that the above scenario is really a simple one. In a multi-channel environment, the paths are much more complicated and can shift from channel to channel, including offline channels, before the purchase is concluded.
Also in many cases it will be difficult to establish the initial channel that started the sales process. If for example you're conducting a full-scale offline campaign through TV, print, outdoor and radio, all at the same time, all of these media will generate online search, consequently making it impossible to determine from which media exactly the prospect came.
Furthermore, we must not forget that an offline media cannot be taken out of the equation once the sales process has already started. Even while the consumer is receiving our e-mail campaigns, he may be exposed to our offline advertising, further facilitating the purchase decision.
Where Conversion is Achieved?
As if measuring the impact of various sources of traffic and conversion were not enough of a challenge, we also need to take into account that the conversion can be completed using an offline channel.
Many website visitors will make the purchase through your call center, using the phone number on your website. Multi-channel merchants with their own retail stores or even with retail partners will often see the conversion happening in the physical store. A website visitor may order a print catalog from your website, and then make the purchase using the phone number in the catalog … or go back to the website and make the purchase there. In B2B, online will often generate the lead, which will then be processed in-person by live sales reps.
Unfortunately we can never expect to be able to measure the multi-channel environment with 100% precision, but we certainly can get close enough.
What we have to understand though is that measuring multi-channel conversion is not a one-time deal, but rather a long-term process that will slowly enable you to increase measurement precision.
We will return to these issues in more detail in many of the future posts on this blog.
| How Can RSS Power Your Internet Marketing and Publishing? Find out more in the most comprehensive and best guide on RSS for marketers, as acclaimed by leading RSS experts, developers, marketers and publishers. Click here and get the step-by-step guide to taking full marketing advantage of RSS. |
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The Quiet Revolution in Teleshopping
I just returned from Wiesbaden, Germany, where I gave a presentation at the 4th German Teleshopping Conference.
The topic was teleshopping in Central and Eastern Europe, the revolution that is taking place in teleshopping and multi-channel integration. Really one of my favorites.
Here are the key points …
1. Integrate
With the media evolution that is taking place, our view and expectations of teleshopping must change as well.
Without doubt, TV is still the strongest mass advertising channel, and in many cases, especially in Direct Response Television [DRTV], also the least expensive one when it comes to generating direct sales.
However, while our direct response TV advertising still needs to sell directly at a profitable Cost-per-Order [CPO], its key power can no longer be found primarily in direct sales, but rather in being the key demand driver and the key "lead generation" channel, while the sale may happen somewhere entirely else.
Consequently, it is becoming increasingly important to fully integrate our teleshopping activities with internet marketing, direct mail, retail sales, wholesale sales, print, mobile and of course telemarketing.
These channels not only capture the demand generated by direct response TV advertising, but also enable you to
(a) increase your customer conversion through complex follow-up activities,
(b) increase purchase frequency and
(c) grow your reach through various viral components.
Furthermore, integrating additional channels into your mix delivers new audiences, extends the life-cycle of your products and enables you to sell products with a longer purchase cycle.
If however you do not have these channels in place and fully optimized to capture the demand and convert it into sales, you are not only losing money, but are instead driving money towards your competitors.
Essentially, direct response TV advertising is still at the center of the marketing mix, but needs to be integrated with a full spectrum of other channels that enable it to fully achieve its sales potential.
2. Brand
Brand and direct usuall don't seem to go together hand in hand. The brand creative people don't have much love for the DM crowd, and the same goes in the other direction as well.
But, brand is crucial for direct marketing.
(a) Positive brand perception and recognition drive conversions up.
(b) Brand increases customer loyalty and satisfaction.
(c) Brand extends the product life-cycle, enabling you to spend less in the long-term to sustain or grow your sales.
The good part is that direct response TV advertising builds the brand … as long as you are willing to suffer through higher CPOs at the beginning and then watch them decrease gradually through ever-increasing sales through all of your channels.
It goes without saying of course that the advertising creative folk should remember that adding direct response elements to brand advertising will always increase sales:) But that's a story for a different time …
Anyway, brand is becoming a key issue for direct marketers.
The problem is, and most of the creative folks won't admit this either, that brands are no longer created through visual impressions, but rather through experienced impressions.
And building brands today goes in both directions. The marketer might start with the brand building, but the consumers are the ones that are going to actually build the brand online and through word of mouth … good or bad. Essentially, branding is becoming alot more Public Relations than anyone would like to admit … except of course the PR people, who've known this all along.
The simple solution?
Well, there are no longer any simple solutions. The right solution is to fully integrate brand, direct and PR.
3. Test Everything
This one is easy. Test everything, then go back and test everything again. And again.
There are literally hundreds of elements for you to test. But here's a quick one for US DRTV marketers –> stop relying only on your product-focused mini sites but rather consider testing "the good old webstore" model, with dozens or hundreds or thousands of products … with smart merchandising of course.
Doing so will drive your short-term sales conversion rates down, but it will drive your long-term sales conversion rates and profitability up. Remember, even with DRTV the game is no longer about making the first sale, but about making a series of consequtive sales to the same consumer. Even if he doesn't buy the exposed DRTV product …
4. Go Viral
The internet provides unprecedented viral marketing opportunities, especially for direct response TV marketers. And smart viral campaigns will enable you to generate leads for less than 10 Dollar Cents per lead …
5. Social Media Is Here
… and it's not going anywhere.
For direct response TV marketers, social media is both an opportunity and a threat.
(a) Everyone has a voice … and they’re not affraid to use it online. Got a faulty product or long delivery times? They'll find you, expose you, talk about you and demolish your brand.
(b) Price comparison is easy and quick. Consequently, your pricing strategies have never been more important.
(c) Dozens of competitors are just an “online search away", and often Google loves them better than you … even for your own product keywords.
(d) Watch the likes of eBay and other online auctions –> it's never been easier for a small-time entrepreneur to compete with the big advertiser, actually piggy-backing on his ad spend.
6. Diversify
Capture the product long tail by both expanding your product mix and repackaging your product combinations to cater to different target audiences.
Nothing new, right?
But how many are actually doing it?
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Defining Online Conversion: The Conversion Time Component
Conversion rate measurement and optimization must also take the time component into consideration.
A conversion can happen instantly or over a longer period of time. If you're measuring your purchase/visitor conversion rate, the purchase might happen on the first visit, after a few visits or even months after someone has visited your website, subscribed to your e-zine and received weekly communications from you.
I usually define the time component as
immediate conversion (1st visit), short-term conversion (2-5 visits), middle-term conversion (first subscribes to e-zine and purchases within a month) and long-term conversion (purchases after more than one month).
There is no rule of how you define the time component … as long as you understand it, adjust it to your internet marketing processes and use it.
The time component is one of the more important aspects of measuring the conversion rate.
Delayed Conversion
The conversion most often does not happen at the first visit, or often even doesn't happen after months of visits. Consequently, a specific website element you might be measuring or a specific campaign might not show their real results even months after you've implemented them. Judging too quickly and without knowing all the aspects, such as the conversion purchase time scale after the first visit, will often provide the wrong answer.
Comparing Different Website Elements
In a website test scenario, perhaps doing a simple A/B test, you might be interested in seeing how different modifications increase your e-zine subscribe/visitor conversion rate.
However, changing one element, such as the e-zine subscription box, might also reduce your immediate purchase/visitor conversion, because a strong e-zine subscription box might focus the visitor's attention to first subscribing to the e-zine.
The question now would be whether the additional number of e-zine subscribers on the long-term generate a higher long-term purchase/visitor conversion rate and if the long-term conversion rate makes up for the loss in the immediate conversion rate? The Conversion Time Component Example: E-zine Subscription Box
To better understand this, let's take a look at a quick example of the largest Slovenian webstore, Enaa.com.
The owner wanted to increase their e-zine subscriber/visitor conversion rate. Their first test was to move the e-zine subscription box from below the left-hand detailed navigation box to the top position in the left-hand column, putting it above the search box and above the left-hand detailed navigation box.
Now consider what this modification can cause:
The e-zine subscription box is now highly exposed, thus increasing the e-zine subscribe/visitor potential.
The search box and the left-hand navigation are now hidden deep on the left, with the left-hand navigation actually being below-the-fold, thus decreasing both the search potential and the ease of use with which users can navigate to all the product categories offered in the webstore. Hence, this modification might decrease the instant purchase/visitor and the short-term purchase/visitor conversion rates. Simply put, this modification means that we just decreased our short-term sales to non-subscribers.
Have you noticed that we mentioned three different conversion rates?
e-zine subscribe/visitor conversion rate instant purchase/visitor conversion rate short-term purchase/visitor conversion rate
One simple website modification (moving the e-zine subscription box to the left-hand column top) caused a change in three macro-action conversions!
While increasing the e-zine subscribe/visitor conversion rate was our goal, we also need to understand that this simple modification also changed our sales conversion rates.
This is where the time component comes in.
Increasing the e-zine subscribe/visitor conversion rate caused a higher influx of new e-zine subscribers.
These e-zine subscribers will now receive our weekly sales communications via e-mail, thus increasing the number of contact touch-points.
Since the increase in communications also increases our sales potential, it might be safe to assume that our long-term purchase/visitor conversion rate will increase, thus increasing our long-term sales volume.
However, it is also possible that our e-mail communications are so ineffective that the gains in long-term purchase/visitor conversion gains might not make-up for the loss in the instant and short-term sales conversions, for example by generating a lower average purchase value than that of short-term conversions.
The lesson here is that certain modifications might show their true results only after a certain period of time, and may be linked to many of the other activities we are doing.
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Defining Online Conversion: The Process Component
As far back as 2001, Bryan Eisenberg of GrokDotCom broke down conversion rate measurement and optimization by action type:
[BTW - check out Bryan's optimization e-books, which are an amazing resource for online optimization] Macro-actions
The macro-action constitutes a complete action performed by the subject, such as finish a purchase, download a whitepaper, subscribe to an e-zine, register at the website, become an affiliate, recommend the website to a friend and so on. This is the big action you want your subjects to take.
Micro-actions
Micro-actions are a series of smaller actions or steps that need to be taken by the subject to complete the macro-action. For example, the complete a purchase macro-action might constitute of the visitor viewing the product page, adding the product to the shopping cart, entering his shipping details, entering his credit card and confirming the purchase. 5 small steps needed to complete the big step.
Bryan argued that each micro-action is a potential leak, where you might be losing macro-actions. By measuring the conversion only at the macro-level marketers are missing the real optimization potential of the website, since in order to optimize the macro-action conversion, you first need to optimize the micro-level conversions.
Consequently it should be clear that measuring just the macro-action conversion rate won't take you far enough. You need to start measuring and optimizing on the micro-level.
Now, to better understand this concept and to add a third dimension, let's take a quick look at a model I've been presenting at seminars in Europe for a few years now: Internet Processing.
This is also the model I've tried to implement in any company I worked with, with varying success, since fully working under this model requires alot of measurement and optimization. But not to worry, you can also implement very basic variations of the model, which don't take that many resources.
Quick Internet Processing Overview
Internet marketing is a process, not an activity. Hence, measurement and optimization cannot take place only on a single activity level, but should be done for your entire internet marketing process.
I’d need alot more space and time to really explain all the aspects of this, so we'll just take a look at the simple version right now.
Internet Processing consists of five distinct elements:
The Macro-Process
The macro-process is your complete internet marketing process that takes an uninterested internet user (who still needs to belong to your target audience, of course) through a series of steps (micro-processes), which on the long-term aim to convert that internet user into an evangelist for your company … or any other status you wish to ultimately achieve with that user.
Micro-Processes
Micro-processes are the smaller steps needed for the user to reach your desired status. Each micro-process step changes the status of the user to a higher level. A micro-process can also be understood as a macro-action, but I'm using the term micro-process because each micro-process consists of a series of smaller steps needed to complete the process cycle.
Micro-Actions
Micro-actions are the smallest steps needed for the user to complete the micro-process. These micro-actions are the same micro-actions as discussed above.
Macro Elements
Macro elements are the various campaign types you are executing to get the user from one status to another. These are your input activities that influence the user. Examples include e-zine publishing, e-mail sales campaigns, advertising campaigns, search engine marketing and so on. E-zine publishing in this case would be a macro element.
Micro Elements
Micro elements are individual campaigns that you're executing. For example, if e-zine publishing is one of your macro elements, an individual e-zine issue would be a micro element.
Consequently, Internet Processing demands that you measure your conversion and optimize it on each of these five levels. Today we'll just take a look at the 3 parts that are most important for conversion rate measurement, and leave the details of the model for a later time.
Macro-Process
Imagine the macro-process as a sequence of all of the big steps you need to complete with a user to reach your ultimate goal, converting him from one user status to another.
The macro-process will be different for every company, based on your internet marketing strategy. The macro-process needs to support the strategy.
Let’s take a look at a quick example:
The image represents an overall macro-process, with the boxes representing the micro-processes within the macro-process, and the lines showing the current status of the user.
When measuring the macro-process conversion, you are measuring your conversion of getting the user from one stage to another, as displayed here:
For example, the 10% conversion rate from first-time visitor to e-zine subscriber tells you that 10% of your first time visitors are converting into e-zine subscribers. And then, 10% of your e-zine subscribers are converting into loyal subscribers.
What happens if we add some numbers?
Internet users reached: 100,000,000
(our online advertising campaign)
First-time visitors acquired : 10,000,000 [10%]
(the number of visitors we received from the 100,000,000 users reached at a 10% first-time visitor/internet user conversion)
E-zine subscribers: 1,000,000 [10%]
(the number of e-zine subscribers we converted from the 10,000,000 first-time visitors at a 10% conversion rate)
Loyal subscribers: 100,000 [10%]
(the number of loyal subscribers we generated from the 1,000,000 e-zine subscribers at a 10% conversion rate)
Customers: 11,000 [10% & 0,01%]
(the number of customers we converted from the 100,000 loyal subscribers at a 10% conversion rate, and the 1,000 customers directly generated from first time visitors at a 0.01% conversion rate)
Satisfied customers: 1,100 [10%]
(the number of satisfied customers we generated from the 11,000 customers at a 10% conversion rate)
Loyal customers: 110 [10%]
(the number of loyal customers we generated from the 1,100 customers at a 10% conversion rate)
Affiliate partners: 11 [10%]
(the number of affiliate partners we converted from the 110 loyal customers at a 10% conversion rate)
New first-time visitors from our affiliate partners: 1.1 [10%]
(the number of new first-time visitors we received from our 11 affiliate partners at a 10% conversion rate) Micro-Process
Now, to understand the power of this model for optimization, consider what happens if you increase your overall conversion from first-time visitors acquired to e-zine subscribers acquired, keeping all the other numbers the same.
Let’s say that you manage to increase this conversion to 30%:
Internet users reached: 100,000,000
First-time visitors acquired : 10,000,000 [10%]
E-zine subscribers: 3,000,000 [30%]
Loyal subscribers: 300,000 [10%]
Customers: 31,000 [10% & 0.01%]
Satisfied customers: 3,100 [10%]
Loyal customers: 310 [10%]
Affiliate partners: 31 [10%]
New first-time visitors from our affiliate partners: 3.1 [10%]
Instead of 1,000,000 e-zine subscribers you now have 3,000,000, and this eventually converts to 30,000 customers as opposed to 10,000 customers … just by optimizing your e-zine subscription process.
It needs to be admitted that this demonstration is taking a much to simplistic view of the conversion process, but it should be enough right now to show you the power of taking an overall look at your internet marketing process.
But, in order to get this kind of increase, you actually need to optimize the lead generation micro-process, which in this case is also 10% when we start with it.
So, we need to take a look at the lead generation micro-process:
What does this process tell us?
50% of first-time visitors clicked on the whitepaper banner, which eventually leads to the e-zine subscription 90% of these entered their e-mail address on the first step 40% of these entered the additional required information to register 56% of these confirmed their subscription In total, 10% of first-time visitors completed the lead-generation micro-process to convert into an e-zine subscriber
To optimize this micro-process to achieve the increase of the e-zine subscriber/first-time visitor conversion rate to 30%, we have two optimization routes, and one of them takes place on the overall micro-process level.
The simplest thing to do –> remove the confirmation micro-action:
By removing the confirmation micro-action, the total conversion rate for the lead generation micro-processes jumped to 18%. This is optimization on the micro-process level.
Micro-Action
The other optimization route is optimizing the actual micro-actions that form the micro-process, for example optimizing the whitepaper banner in such a way that a higher % of first-time visitors take notice of it and click on it.
At the same time, we optimize the field for entering additional information, perhaps removing some required fields to make things easier for our visitors.
60% of first-time visitors now click on the banner. 80% of these enter their e-mail address. As you will notice, this decreased from 90% from the previous example, since the more attractive banner generated more clickers that really weren't that interested in going forward once they saw what it's about. 63% of thee entered the additional information and completed the lead generation micro-process. The overall conversion rate for the lead generation micro-process jumped to 30%.
This was optimization on the micro-action level.
Again, all of these examples were fairly simplistic and did not take the entire complexity of the issue into account, but they should be enough to demonstrate the Internet Processing model, which we will cover in greater detail in the weeks and months to come.
| How Can RSS Power Your Internet Marketing and Publishing? Find out more in the most comprehensive and best guide on RSS for marketers, as acclaimed by leading RSS experts, developers, marketers and publishers. Click here and get the step-by-step guide to taking full marketing advantage of RSS. |
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New Marketing Thinking Required for Second Life?
Mobil Avenue accuses me of 20th century marketing thinking. I'm not quite sure what he has in mind, but it seems that my Second Life posts ticked off some people.
Now, don't get me wrong, I see alot of development potential in virtual worlds, but Second Life as it is simply does not cut it.
I won't go into the details again, but the sheer lack of economy of scales shows that something is wrong when you compare the investments in Second Life and the actual virtual world penetration. Not to mention the difficult user interface.
Second Life is a good beginning, but virtual worlds have a far way to go before they deserve to be treated as seriously as some are treating them today. Yes, Second Life should certainly be treated as a marketing/communications playground, but not as a high importance marketing channel.
If you want to call this 20th century thinking, go ahead. It is. As are economies of scale, profitability, sales conversion, cost per order and other business “relics”.
And as you'll notice, 20th century thinking still works, even in 2007. We've all heard stories of the demise of advertising, the death of PR, the death of e-mail, the death of postal direct mail and so on … but they're all alive, well and kicking still today, and will remain so.
Actually, intrusive direct response TV advertising is still one of the most effective tools to generate sales. And it gives you more bang for the buck than almost any other marketing channel, including online.
Do I like this? No. I'd love to believe that the internet is the alpha and omega of marketing. But it's not. It's the key connector, but not the key driver. That's the way things are, and as markters we need to employ 20th century thinking and use what works best … and the numbers tell us that.
But this doesn't mean we shouldn't play and test. Quite on the contrary.
OK, this conversation is getting somewhat beyond the original topic, and it's quite possible I'm not even getting what Mobil Avenue is trying to say:)
And please don't get me started on 3D virtual webstores …
Of course, I might be wrong. And if I am, I'll be the first to change my stripes the next day. It's what marketers do. If a new thing comes up and works better than what you're doing, change. But every change first demand proof. Unless you're just testing … because when you're testing, the rules of the game change.
| How Can RSS Power Your Internet Marketing and Publishing? Find out more in the most comprehensive and best guide on RSS for marketers, as acclaimed by leading RSS experts, developers, marketers and publishers. Click here and get the step-by-step guide to taking full marketing advantage of RSS. |
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Defining Online Conversion: What Is It?
In previous articles we covered the conversion benchmarking problems and misinterpreting conversion data without understanding the entire picture. But we never really got around to taking a look at what conversion actually is, what it tells us and why it's important for interactive marketers.
If you're thinking “Nah, I already know all of this", give me a few more minutes. The conversion isn't just about knowing what % of your traffic is turning into buyers or comparing test variables against each other. And, if interpreted incorrectly, it leads to many mistakes that make a dent in the bottom line.
But first let's define the conversion rate …
What is Conversion Rate?
Wikipedia defines the conversion rate as …
“… the percentage of unique visitors who take a desired action upon visiting the website. The desired action may be submitting a sales lead, making a purchase, viewing a key page of the site, downloading a whitepaper, or some other measurable action."
While this definition is a good start, a broader definition is needed:
The conversion rate is a % of unique actions that result from unique exposures.
The keywords here are:
Actions - a clearly defined measurable activity performed by the unique subjects exposed to our call-to-action [CTA] Exposures - a clearly defined measurable CTA, presented to a number of unique subjects Subjects - the number of individuals exposed to the CTA Unique - all single and clearly identified actions and exposures are only counted once for each individual subject Call-to-Action - an expressed request for the subject to take the required action after viewing our creative
How is this different from the Wikipedia definition (which comes closest to how marketers view conversion)?
The conversion does not necessarily need to be linked to a website or even happen on a website.
For example, in my e-commerce work I measure the conversion for multiple interactive elements, such as conversion per e-mail open-rate, conversion per ad impression or even conversion from e-mail sent to telephone contact.
By applying a broader meaning to the term conversion rate you are able to apply the conversion rate methodology to a larger number of key interactive elements you wish to measure and improve.
Hence, in the definition, we need to get rid of “upon visiting the website" but rather use the term “exposure”.
Unique visitors really cannot be measured accurately online, due to several technical issues.
You can never be certain that two people you are counting as two unique users are really two different people. They might be just one person, accessing your website from two different computers.
And the same goes for an e-mail address; you might have multiple e-mail addresses in your database, belonging to just one real person.
Or even better yet, the visitor might not even be a person, but a computer script.
Consequently, the term unique visitor is really a bad choice of word that might lead to misinterpretation.
The Conversion Rate Formula
The conversion rate formula is simple:
Conversion Rate = Unique Actions / Unique Exposures
Two quick examples to make this easier to understand:
Overall Website Sales Conversion Rate = Unique Sales / Unique Visitors
[if your Overall Website Sales Conversion Rate is 5%, it means that 5% of the people that visited your website purchased something]
Overall E-mail Sales Conversion Rate = Unique Sales / Unique E-mail Addresses
[if your Overall E-mail Sales Conversion Rate is 2%, it means that 2% of the people that your e-mail was sent to purchased something]
This is of course a very simplistic conversion rate formula. In most cases you would need to go into much more detail to get any usable numbers.
What You Are Actually Measuring With the Conversion Rate?
The conversion rate is a measure of your efficiency. It tells you approximately with what efficiency you are getting the people that are exposed to your CTA to take the action you want them to take. There are several different types of conversion.
The conversion rate does not tell you the whole story about your efficiency –> it depends on the sources of traffic you are utilizing, the audience you are reaching, your brand, all of the elements of your CTA and so on. Consequently, the conversion rate is an indication of your overall internet marketing efficiency, not just your website efficiency.
The conversion rate is not a measure of your success. It only tells you part of the story. And in some cases, as we already discussed, a lower conversion rate might actually be generating better financial success than a higher conversion rate.
How Precise is the Conversion Rate?
Due to multiple internet technology issues, the conversion rate is not a precise measure. It should not be viewed as an absolute metric, but rather used as a trend indicator.
The more focused your conversion rate measurements, the more precise trends you will get.
For example, measuring the overall sales conversion of an entire website with all of its traffic sources gives you a completely useless number.
Measuring the overall sales conversion for a single type of traffic source, such as Google, gives you a number you can start working with.
Measuring the overall sales conversion for a single Google campaign gives you really the first usable piece of information.
Measuring the conversion rate of various sales process elements for a single Google campaign gives you a strong piece of information that you can use to improve your marketing.
How You Can Use the Conversion Rate?
Improve the performance of your campaigns without increasing your ad spend. Improve the overall performance of your website or other CTAs. Forecast the sales results of your online advertising campaigns. Compare different interactive test elements. And much much more …
OK, enough for the start. If this article seems a little technical in nature, don't run away. I promise the next one will be more practical, as we start looking at the various types of conversion rate you can measure.
| How Can RSS Power Your Internet Marketing and Publishing? Find out more in the most comprehensive and best guide on RSS for marketers, as acclaimed by leading RSS experts, developers, marketers and publishers. Click here and get the step-by-step guide to taking full marketing advantage of RSS. |
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What You Can Do With Amazon RSS Now?
If I keep this up, I might actually get the reputation of picking on Amazon.com as a hobby [just take a look at Is Amazon Missing the RSS Advertising Opportunity?, Why is Everyone Missing the RSS Transactional Messaging Opportunity? and Get the Most from RSS Marketing … Take Your DM Hat Off!].
It’s just one of those things. You see a company that could really go above and beyond with RSS and really use it to drive revenues, but they just don't do it.
But at least they're showing some activitiy lately …
[in addition to removing their list of relatively useless category feeds, which used to be available here]
a) Gold Box
Gold Box is a service that provides you with personalized deals every day. It finally has an RSS feed with your daily deals.
But, unfortunatelly, the RSS feed only provides brief information about the product, instead of also giving you a direct purchase link, some of the latest product reviews and other information that could facilitate the sale. Also, there's no personalization, or so it seems. Why not give me an RSS feed with just the special deals for me, based on my previous purchases?
b) Plog
This is one of the genius Amazon ideas. Each Plog is personalized to the individual user, giving him the latest blog posts from Amazon's authors (just from the authors' whos books you've purchased), and it also comes with a targeted RSS feed, matching the Plog content you see when you're logged-in. You can also subscribe to additional blog content manually.
Also, Amazon is promising that we'll be soon able to track latest releases, changes to our orders and "much more" through our plogs, which will presumably also come be published in our targeted RSS feeds.
Amazon, please keep this up. Make us happy:)
c) The Amazon API
But let's be fair to Amazon. Even though their end-user RSS feed offering is poor, they do provide developers with the ability to create their own RSS feeds from Amazon, by integrating with their API.
Here are some examples:
RSStalker.com - provides a variety of Amazon product tracking options via RSS, such as a 10% price drop feed that lets you know when a product that RSStalker is tracking via Amazon drops 10% in price; RSS feeds from your wishlists; last 25 price changes in a selected Amazon category, and more.
Baebo - provides a persistant search RSS feed for Amazon products, based on your keywords.
More great examples floating around …
| How Can RSS Power Your Internet Marketing and Publishing? Find out more in the most comprehensive and best guide on RSS for marketers, as acclaimed by leading RSS experts, developers, marketers and publishers. Click here and get the step-by-step guide to taking full marketing advantage of RSS. |
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Quick RSS SEO Tips
WebProNews has a short summary from Amanda Watlington's tips for SEO optimization of your RSS feeds:
1. Subscribe to your own feed and claim it on blog engine Technorati
2. Focus your feed with a keyword theme 3. Use keywords in the title tag; keep it under 100 characters 4. Most feed readers display feeds alphabetically, title accordingly 5. Write description tags as if for a directory; keep them under 500 characters 6. Use full paths on links and unique URLs for each item 7. Provide email updates for the non-techies 8. Offer an HTML version of your feed 9. For branding, add logo and images to your feed
Now, let's add some tips from Stephan Spencer and continue with the numbering:
10. Full text, not summaries
11. 20 or MORE items (not just 10) 12. Multiple feeds (by category, latest comments, comments by post) 13. Keyword-rich item [title] 14. Your brand name in the item [title] 15. Your most important keyword in the site [title] container 16. Compelling site [description] 17. Don't put tracking codes into the URLs (e.g. &source=rss) 18. An RSS feed that contains enclosures (i.e. podcasts) can get into additional RSS directories & engines
And to round this off, a summary of my own tips [part 2 here] for using RSS to drive traffic to your site:
19. Get your RSS content (proactively) syndicated on other relevant websites [just the headlines and summaries of course]
20. Submit your RSS feeds to all the RSS search engines and directories
21. Use RSS to add relevant third-party content [again, just headlines and summaries] to your website to gain additional SE weight for your keywords
22. Use RSS to deliver all of your frequently updated content, not just for your latest blog posts
23. Whenever the content in your feed changes, ping the most important search engines and directories [yes, you don't need a blog for this]
Do you have more tips?
(a) Post them in the comments form below.
(b) E-mail me at info@marketingstudies.net and let's set-up an interview
| How Can RSS Power Your Internet Marketing and Publishing? Find out more in the most comprehensive and best guide on RSS for marketers, as acclaimed by leading RSS experts, developers, marketers and publishers. Click here and get the step-by-step guide to taking full marketing advantage of RSS. |
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RSS Marketing With Christopher Knight: Use E-mail to Promote RSS
How does EzineArticles.com, one of the largest websites to help you syndicate your content, use RSS for their marketing?
To answer this question, we interviewed Christopher Knight for the 2007 edition of the RSS marketing e-book (coming shortly). But if you want to know more, click here to read Christopher's summary.
BTW - did you know that EzineArticles.com publishes more than 40,000 RSS feeds?
| How Can RSS Power Your Internet Marketing and Publishing? Find out more in the most comprehensive and best guide on RSS for marketers, as acclaimed by leading RSS experts, developers, marketers and publishers. Click here and get the step-by-step guide to taking full marketing advantage of RSS. |
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F Trains: Another Example of Getting RSS Wrong
RSS Specifications point to the F Train from NYC and their RSS feed, which lets you watch traing schedules and changes.
The essential idea of course is good –> use RSS to get your latest and most important content to your prospects and customers. Train schedules certainly seem relevant enough for someone in NYC to subscribe to them.
But again, someone is missing the point.
If I want to know about traing schedules and changes, I don't care about all schedules and changes. I just care about the routes I take.
If I'm only taking the Queens-bound route, don't talk to me about Manhattan-bound trains.
F Trains, great idea, but now makes this a little more usable and allow people to select which routes they're interested in and then give them an RSS feed just for those.
| How Can RSS Power Your Internet Marketing and Publishing? Find out more in the most comprehensive and best guide on RSS for marketers, as acclaimed by leading RSS experts, developers, marketers and publishers. Click here and get the step-by-step guide to taking full marketing advantage of RSS. |
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I'm Not Spamming You!
… but someone certainly is, using a non-existant MarketingStudies.net e-mail address.
If you receive an e-mail with the subject "Got It, I Think" from tahaseggdzf@marketingstudies.net, or something simillar, it's spam. Not from us though …
This is how it works:
(a) The spammer finds a number of open relay e-mail servers, which allow the spammer to send e-mail using an e-mail address that's not "hosted" on the e-mail server and often without even having a user account at the server provider.
(b) He or she then uses your e-mail address as the "Reply To" e-mail address in the spam messages and sends out the spam blast.
(c) Everyone receiving these e-mail messages will now think they are coming from your domain, unless of course they have enough knowledge about the subject to check the headers of the e-mail messages received. Those show that the e-mail is in fact not coming from MarketingStudies.net.
The funny thing about this spam is that the spammer didn't include any links in his spam e-mail.
Looking for ways to stop this, but I'm affraid it might be impossible …
| How Can RSS Power Your Internet Marketing and Publishing? Find out more in the most comprehensive and best guide on RSS for marketers, as acclaimed by leading RSS experts, developers, marketers and publishers. Click here and get the step-by-step guide to taking full marketing advantage of RSS. |
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MarketingStudies.net Back Online and Comments Working Again
After a rather painful week, MarketingStudies.net is back with its full functionality, including comments.
As already noted, we started the move to a new hosting provider about a week ago, when the comments on this blog were again turned off by the old hosting provider without notice.
The move went relatively smoothly, thanks to the great MovableType architecture and excellent cooperation from both the old and the new hosting providers. Plus, we're now running on MovableType 3.3, which really is light years ahead from the old 2.x versions.
The only thing that really went wrong with the move were the sub-domains. Everything else was smooth.
Quick Steps for Changing Your Hosting Provider and Installing a New MovableType Version
If you're thinking of doing the same, here are the quick steps:
a) Sign-up for your new hosting package and contact your new hosting provider. Contact them in person and explain to them what you're doing and that you might need a little more assistance from them to finalize the transfer.
b) Make a replica of all of your files from the old hosting provider and upload the exact folder structure with all the files to the new hosting provider.
c) Export the SQL database with your MovableType data, directly from the SQL interface. You want a full copy of your database with practically everything.
d) Install your current MovableType version on the new server. Do not just copy the files from the old MovableType installation, rather do the installation again on the new server.
e) Import your old SQL database from the old server into the new SQL database on the new server. Make sure you import it into the new database created by MovableType.
You should now have all of the data and settings from MovableType on the old server in MovableType on the new server.
f) Log-in to MovableType on the new server. You will probably need to modify the server paths for storing files, so open the settings for each blog and change the server paths if needed.
g) Rebuild your files on the new server.
h) Install a new MovableType version on top of the current one, of course on the new server.
i) Once everything is working, ask your domain host to point your domains to your new server IPs.
This is it. Good luck!
| How Can RSS Power Your Internet Marketing and Publishing? Find out more in the most comprehensive and best guide on RSS for marketers, as acclaimed by leading RSS experts, developers, marketers and publishers. Click here and get the step-by-step guide to taking full marketing advantage of RSS. |
[Link]
Directly Grabbing RSS Subscribers and Getting Syndicated Through Pheedo RSS Advertising
Pheedo just released a new RSS advertising concept, called FeedPowered Advertising, that helps you generate new subscribers to your RSS feeds using RSS advertising, through Pheedo's RSS advertising network or through other ad networks.
The Key Facts
Their new RSS ad format …
[a] Displays the latest content items from your RSS feed, including video content with direct "watch" links
[b] Allows the user to also add your content (directly from the ad) to del.icio.us, digg, Reddit, Furl or e-mai it to a friend
How the New Format Integrates DM, PR and Brand
The implications of this are quite strong.
[a] The ad format allows you to syndicate your RSS content to targeted online media, displaying your content there directly to generate more brand awareness, build your credibility and get new readers by actually demonstrating your value
[b] Furthemore, the ad itself contains further syndication options that will virally spread your content through the key social networking sites
[c] The ad functions as a direct subscription generation tool, enabling you to quickly capture new subscribers through other sites … and actually works towards increasing your conversion rate by first demonstrating the content and so making the subscription decision easier and more educated, thus generating better qualified subscribers/prospects
In essence, the ad format integrates PR, direct marketing and brand advertising.
Is it perfect? While it is an amazing idea, it does need some further refinement.
Further Improvements Needed
[a] Looking at their example on their site using Internet Explorer 7 shows that the feed subscription option in the ad is not highlighted through the IE7 native RSS Reader, making it less intuitive to subscribe
[b] The existing example is clearly targeted to RSS Aware users. But data shows that more than 80% of RSS users are not actually aware of using RSS. The ad format also need to include other subscription options, in addition to the RSS button, such as Add to MyYahoo!
[c] The ad also needs some space at the bottom to better entice viewers to subscribe, using enticing copy and perhaps bribing the viewers to subscribe by offering them a free whitepaper
[d] For direct marketers, the ad format should also allow an in-between data capture window, allowing the direct marketer to capture prospect information prior to being given access to the feed
[e] The next step would be for Pheedo to add additional metrics for advertisers, such as new subscriber retention and long-term customer conversion, and perhaps even the CPO.
If you want to check it out yourself, here's the screenshot (working version available here):
I’m a little biased here, because I've always dug Pheedo work, but in my opinion this is the best RSS advertising development yet … and finally an RSS advertising tool to generate real results by taking advantage of the power of RSS.
| How Can RSS Power Your Internet Marketing and Publishing? Find out more in the most comprehensive and best guide on RSS for marketers, as acclaimed by leading RSS experts, developers, marketers and publishers. Click here and get the step-by-step guide to taking full marketing advantage of RSS. |
[Link]
How Traffic Sources Impact Test Element Conversion Rates
Website conversion rates are some of the most important Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for measuring how well your internet marketing works. However, measuring conversion is daunting task, since conversion rates themselves do not tell us enough to really asses our performance adequately or benchmark our website against industry averages.
One of such problems, covered in the previous example, is that a higher conversion rate may actually be costing you money. We took a look at a real DVD sales example where 2 price points were tested. The higher price point generated a lower conversion rate (CR), but greater overall profits due to a higher margin.
In this case, looking at the CR, but not looking at overall project profitability, would lead us to making the wrong decision.
Today I want to cover one last example of CR measurement problems, before we move into actually using CR to measure and optimize your performance.
For this example, let’s take a look at a single website that's testing two different elements to see which one generates a higher conversion rate.
| Element #1 | Element #2 | |
| CR | 5% | 7% |
With the above numbers, we're looking at the aggregate CR data for each element, trying to asses the one we should go with to reach the best possible results.
Not looking at any additional data, Element #2 would be the clear winner.
But in this case, the website did the test using two different traffic sources. Today we won't look at all of the traffic source specifics, such as costs, sales, CPO or profits, but just at the implications of what using different traffic sources means for your CR.
| Element #1 | Element #2 | |
| Total CR | 5% | 7% |
| Traffic Source #1 CR | 8% | 4% |
| Traffic Source #2 CR | 2% | 10% |
When evaluating these numbers let's presume that both the traffic sources:
generated an equal amount of traffic in total, generated an equal amount of traffic per test element, cost the same, generate the same value per converted customer.
This would of course never be the case, but adding additional data would just further complicate things at this point.
So, looking at the data, it's clearly evident that Traffic Source #1 generates a high conversion rate for Element #1 and a lower conversion rate for Element #2, and vica verca.
When doing your online advertising, this is a very realistic scenario. Each traffic source caters to different audiences, who will react differently to your marketing messages.
In this case, each traffic source's audience responds better to an individual test element.
Everything else being equal, this means that determining any of the two test elements in the test as a clear winner would be a big mistake, wasting you customers and money.
What’s the solution?
Quite simply, if and when your tests prove that different traffic source audiences respond differently to your different test elements, the only solution is to implement a solution that allows you to display the winning element for that traffic source to the audience that comes through the source.
Essentially, both of the test elements are winners. You need to select both.
| How Can RSS Power Your Internet Marketing and Publishing? Find out more in the most comprehensive and best guide on RSS for marketers, as acclaimed by leading RSS experts, developers, marketers and publishers. Click here and get the step-by-step guide to taking full marketing advantage of RSS. |
[Link]
Selling Eric T. Peterson's Books
Eric T. Peterson continues showing the practical implications of his visitor engagement metric by analyzing his own website, questioning what he can do to increase the sales of his books to visitors referred to his site by some of the bloggers that are delivering traffic with high engagement but low sales conversion.
Now, I haven't studied his visitor engagement metric well enough yet to really comment it as it applies to this example, but let's try some basic optimization techniques to see how those could increase his book sales.
1. Establish a Call-to-Action at the Bottom of Each Blog Post
I’m not familiar with Eric's clickstream paths, but the first question is, how many of his visitors from the referring blogs are actually exposed to his "Buy My Book" Call-to-Action (CTA). How many actually click to his first page, where the CTA is more exposed, even if below the fold?
The first thing to do would be to add the CTA for the book directly below each blog post, actually building on the blog post to try to directly sell the book then and there. Basically telling them what to do, after they're done reading the post –> buy the book.
2. Provide Multiple CTA Options
However, as Eric states in his post, a good deal of the visitors entering his site from the problematic blogs actually start the purchase process, but don't finish it.
He is generating some interest, but not enough to have them to complete the purchase process. And then we still have the prevailing majority that don't even start the purchase process.
This would demand some testing, but my first instinct would be to go with a soft offer, such as a free whitepaper, and then try to make the sale through the whitepaper and the additional 7-day, 14-day or more e-mail or RSS follow-up sequence.
At least in my own tests adding a free whitepaper offer + follow-up sequence always increased total sales, CR and profits.
3. More Compelling CTAs
Eric does offer free chapters of his book on the first page.
However, to capture more leads, it might work to test offering a full free e-book VS just sample chapters. Usually, I wouldn't be interested in free chapters unless I was already in the purchase process … but if you give me a "10 KPIs That Make or Break Your Internet Sales" free e-book, I just might budge.
4. Provide Multiple CTA Opportunities
Following the steps above, Eric would put a CTA for the book below each blog post. But to really maximize the opportunities, I would also put a CTA (perhaps a different one, but one that would still lead to the book purchase in the end) in the top right hand corner of the website.
5. Optimize the Purchase Process
Add more information (sales letter, list of chapters, testimonials, add risk reducers etc.) to the product landing page Shorten the sales process to fewer steps Make purchase buttons much more visible
| How Can RSS Power Your Internet Marketing and Publishing? Find out more in the most comprehensive and best guide on RSS for marketers, as acclaimed by leading RSS experts, developers, marketers and publishers. Click here and get the step-by-step guide to taking full marketing advantage of RSS. |
[Link]
I Want a Lower Conversion Rate!
In parts 1 and 2 of Conversion Benchmarking Hell we discussed why benchmarking your conversion rates against industry figures just doesn't work, basically saying that conversion benchmarking is the one of the greatest hoaxes in internet marketing.
The key message throughout the two articles was that conversion rates tell only a small part of your internet sucess (or failure) story, but never enough to enable you to come to any concrete conclussions, at least without taking a look at all the other relevant data.
Today, to bring the final point home, we'll take a look at an example of when the conversion rate missleads you into making the wrong decision.
I Want a Lower Conversion Rate
The following data is from a real example we had a couple of months ago. When selling a DVD package, we split-tested two different price points againts eachother: $54.95 and $77.
Here are the conversion rates (CR) for both of the tests:
| Price Point | $54.95 | $77 |
| CR | 6.8% | 4.2% |
Price point $54.95 generated 61% more sales quantity than price point $77.
Just by looking at the CR, it would seem that $54.95 is the better way to go, right?
The results stay the same even after we add the sales quantities and other data:
| Price Point | $54.95 | $77 |
| Reach | 1,000 | 1,000 |
| CR | 6.8% | 4.2% |
| Sales Quantity | 68 | 42 |
| Revenues | $3,736 | $3,234 |
Even with a bigger price tag, the $77 price point generated 13.5% less revenues. But is it better?
The CR would certainly indicate so, but not when we also add the margins:
| Price Point | $54.95 | $77 |
| Margin | $10 | $32.05 |
| Reach | 1,000 | 1,000 |
| CR | 6.8% | 4.2% |
| Sales Quantity | 68 | 42 |
| Revenues | $3,736 | $3,234 |
| Profits | $680 | $1,346 |
Essentially, the $77 price tag generated more profits, even though it generated a smaller CR, smaller sales quantity and smaller revenues.
Clearly, in this case, using the CR, sales and revenues to determine the best price tag would result in lower profitability of the project. Instead it was better to opt for a smaller conversion rate, less revenues and smaller sales quantity, but better profits.
So how important the CR really is?
What do you base your optimization decisions on?
Will be discussed in future posts …
| How Can RSS Power Your Internet Marketing and Publishing? Find out more in the most comprehensive and best guide on RSS for marketers, as acclaimed by leading RSS experts, developers, marketers and publishers. Click here and get the step-by-step guide to taking full marketing advantage of RSS. |
[Link]
Why is Everyone Missing the RSS Transactional Messaging Opportunity?
OK, I admit it. I'm on a fighting streak today. Just one of those days.
After discussing how Yahoo! Pipes may facilitate content theft and unfair use, and bashing against Amazon for not taking better advantage of RSS advertising, it's time to take on e-retailers, online service providers and basically anyone that does transactional messaging.
Let’s take a look at my inbox. Today I received …
A transactional e-mail “from PayPal" A transactional e-mail “from eBay" A transactional e-mail “from Amazon" And some other brand names as well
Of course, none of these e-mails were actually from PayPal, eBay or Amazon. Simply spam, as every other day, intended to capture my private data.
Even if PayPal really sent me an e-mail, I would never read it or respond to it, simply because I would consider it spam and would never believe that it's actually from PayPal.
As I'm sure you've noticed as well, transactional e-mail messages have become a horror story for the big brands, with spammers constantly trying to take advantage of their well-known brand names.
But here's the catch …
There is no SPAM with RSS, at least not in this form When you receive content from an RSS feed that you proactively subscribed to, you can be 100% certain that the message is legitimate and from the publisher to whom you subscribed RSS is perfectly capable of delivering personalized transactional information RSS is perfectly capable of delivering protected personalized transactional information, granting access only to those with the required username/password combination RSS transactional capabilities are easy to implement, if your user database is in order
So why aren't any of these guys using RSS to deliver transactional information?
PayPal, eBay, Amazon … I really want my transactional messages from you. But when I receive them, I don't believe them. Please start delivering them via RSS and make me a happy customer … a happy customer that actually trusts messages from PayPal, eBay and Amazon.
| How Can RSS Power Your Internet Marketing and Publishing? Find out more in the most comprehensive and best guide on RSS for marketers, as acclaimed by leading RSS experts, developers, marketers and publishers. Click here and get the step-by-step guide to taking full marketing advantage of RSS. |
[Link]
Is Amazon Missing the RSS Advertising Opportunity?
Is Amazon missing the RSS opportunity?
Yes, in almost all regards. A company of their size, financing and almost unlimited content could be the poster child for smart RSS marketing uses, but insteady they choose to almost ignore the channel.
But today I would like to touch-up especially on the RSS advertising segment, where many marketers still seem to ignore the various opportunities offered by the channel.
Even more specifically, this is about RSS advertising in RSS feeds for blogs.
What Are the Key Advertising Issues Faced by Bloggers?
Bloggers like to keep their act clean, and in many cases that means either completely evading paid advertising or at least completely evading non-contextual paid advertising. Even when bloggers do decide to offer advertising, they are hard-pressed to find advertisers offering high-context advertising that would closely relate to the bloggers' content, especially their individual blog posts. There are still few RSS advertisers, making it difficult for many bloggers to monetize on their every post. However, if bloggers were to monetize their every post, the ads would need to be so highly contextual that they would not feel that they are betrying their readers. In essence, the ads would need to be an extension of their content, but at the same time clearly marked as third-party content. Following this line of though further, bloggers would prefer ads that provide real contextual value to their readers, instead of simply pushing blatant advertising messages.
Where’s the Opportunity for Amazon?
Before I explore this further, please take a look at any post at MasterNewMedia. Or just click here and take a look at this one.
Robin Good is a master at taking advantage of the functionality offered by the Amazon affiliate program. Each of his posts concludes with recommended books, related to the overall topic of his in-depth articles.
For Robin's readers, these book ads are not just ads, but rather extensions of Robin's own content, giving them the opportunity to further explore the topic.
What’s the opportunity for Amazon?
Create and promote a program that would make it easy for bloggers to publish contextually related book ads directly in their RSS feeds, enabling them to at least somewhat monetize each of their content items with relevant book ads.
Providing Valuable Context Advertising
But, to some bloggers providing book ads just as ads might not be contextual enough.
Now go to A9.com and do a search for "RSS marketing". In addition to displaying relevant books, the A9 search engine also displays quotes from these books.
How about if Amazon enabled bloggers to post RSS ads in their feeds, displaying a paragraph from each book that most closely matches the topic of the article, with a direct link to the page for that book on Amazon?
Or in the case of blogs about music, why not provide an automatic direct link in the ad to a 1 minute or 30 second demo of the song or group, mentioned in the blog post, which Amazon already has on their website?
Picking on Wikipedia
We all love Wikipedia, right?
Many of Wikipedia users love them so much that they constantly promote the website. So why can't the people at Wikipedia make this easier for bloggers?
For example by allowing them to automatically insert references to Wikipedia in the form of inline RSS ads, providing additional contextual content, related with the topic of the blog post?
No revenues for the blogger, but at least a good way for them to extent their content and provide more value to their readers.
Perhaps not a good RSS advertising example, but certainly one that can get you thinking about the various opportunities provided by this channel.
| How Can RSS Power Your Internet Marketing and Publishing? Find out more in the most comprehensive and best guide on RSS for marketers, as acclaimed by leading RSS experts, developers, marketers and publishers. Click here and get the step-by-step guide to taking full marketing advantage of RSS. |
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Will Yahoo! Pipes Increase Content Theft?
First of all, I was want to emphasize again that I strongly believe that Yahoo! Pipes is a dream come true for marketers, finally offering us a tool to easily conduct business intelligence and create RSS Radars.
However, the more you think of it, the more obvious all the dangers become obvious.
Sure, these were here before, but never before have they been accessible on a mass scale, for free, and with such ease of use.
Just consider it …
Yahoo! Pipes gives anyone, with some time on their hands to learn how it works, the power to remix, filter and manipulate third-party content. In essence this means that you can easily take someone elses RSS feed and repurpose their content to best suit your needs and at the same time ignoring the needs of the publisher who is investing time, money and other resources into his content creation.
1. Creating Third-Party RSS Feeds with Your Standalone RSS Ads
Let’s get started with something easy. Yahoo! Pipes allows you to combine any amount of XML data sources and filter them to create an output that best matches your needs.
For example, you could take 100 RSS feeds that talk about search engine marketing, combine them, deduplicate the posts, and filter the posts by various keywords to really create a highly focused content stream, for example on optimizing your site for Google.
With the power that Yahoo! Pipes gives you, you could now add your own content, via your own RSS feed, and create an output that mixes all the above feeds on SEM with standalone ads for your SEM services.
Now just promote the RSS feed on your site and start grabbing subscribers. If the RSS feeds you're using as inputs are offering full-text content, your subscribers will be able to read third-party SEM tips from your RSS feed, directly from their RSS Readers, without even taking notice that these articles weren't written by you. But at the same time they would be exposed to your ads, offering your own SEM services.
In essence, using this approach you could leverage the content written by third-party experts, without their permission, to directly build your own brand as an expert and directly generate sales.
The other possibility would be to use the same third-party content, but instead of also publishing ads for your own services, rather publishing paid ads. Again, you would be using third-party content to fuel your own revenues, without the publishers' permissions … actually directly stealing from them.
2. Adding Ads into Content Items / Removing Native Ads in Content Items
Now, I'm not really 100% certain this is doable (haven't played with the service enough yet), but articles floating around the internet seem to indicate so.
Again, imagine taking the same SEM feeds and creating a new remixed output using them. But this time, you also use Yahoo! Pipes to remove the ads their content items already contained, replacing them with your own.
The result would be a full-text article from an SEM expert, with your SEM services ad directly below the article, taking direct advantage of the article to sell your services … perhaps even miss-leading the reader that you are the author of the article.
3. Creating Spam Sites
Spam sites are becoming an increasing problem, with unethical webmasters taking advantage of third-party RSS feeds to fully fuel their own sites, in the hopes of targeted content increasing their search engine rankings and serving as a vehicle to drive Google AdSense clicks and revenues.
Yahoo! Pipes now makes this even simpler, actually enabling these webmasters to build full websites of highly relevant and smartly remixed content that will actually provide their visitors with some value and thus even further increase their AdSense revenue potential.
How Can Your Protect Your Content?
Yahoo! Pipes lists 3 ways for publishers to protect their content:
Configure your web server to block the user agent "Yahoo Pipes" Add a "noindex" meta to your RSS feed: E-mail pipes-optout@yahoo-inc.com with a list of the feed URLs you want blocked
Of course, the dillema here is that by blocking Yahoo! Pipes in fear of unethical practices you are also blocking acceptable uses of your content by legitimate users and are thus decreasing your content syndication opportunities.
Is It the Tool or the Users?
The four examples are just the tip of the iceberg. With the power of Yahoo! Pipes the "opportunities" for content theft are becoming nearly unlimited.
Of course, this isn't the fault of Yahoo! Pipes. It's just a tool … and it's in the hands of users what they do with the tool.
Unethical webmasters have actually been doing this for quite some time now even without Yahoo! Pipes. But now they have a stronger tool in their hands, and it's only a question of time when this will hit "the black market mainstream".
What Can Yahoo! Do?
Yahoo! Pipes isn't a problem yet, but when it reaches "the black market mainstream", publishers will start taking notice, and that my create a backslash against Yahoo.
But what can they really do?
Somewhat limit the level of manipulation you allow with third-party feeds, at least preventing the removal of inline ads Create a new RSS element that will allow the RSS feed publisher to request an e-mail notification of Yahoo! Pipes use of his feeds, by simply placing that element in the RSS feed Allow the RSS feed publishers to mark their feeds as "Yahoo! Pipes syndication available only on-request", enabling them to authorize the use through the Pipes user interface [this one might be going a little far:)] Implement a stringent "no unfair use" policy, immediately blocking users that exhibit such uses
On the other side, adding all of these administrative hurdles to the pipes creation process for the user would greatly dimish the service's mass appeal.
So what's the right way to do it?
Please comment below …
[you can now post comments, but you will receive an error message after you submit them … but they will still be published]
| How Can RSS Power Your Internet Marketing and Publishing? Find out more in the most comprehensive and best guide on RSS for marketers, as acclaimed by leading RSS experts, developers, marketers and publishers. Click here and get the step-by-step guide to taking full marketing advantage of RSS. |
[Link]
Comments Off Again
I just love my hosting company.
They again disabled my comments script on the server, of course without giving me any kind of notice.
Usually I'm patient, but what's too much is too much.
So, I apologize for the inconvenience. Comments will be back up as soon as we find a new hosting provider and implement the website there.
In the mean time, please e-mail your comments to info@marketingstudies.net
| How Can RSS Power Your Internet Marketing and Publishing? Find out more in the most comprehensive and best guide on RSS for marketers, as acclaimed by leading RSS experts, developers, marketers and publishers. Click here and get the step-by-step guide to taking full marketing advantage of RSS. |
[Link]
Examples of Yahoo! Pipes in Action to Wet Your Appetite
Yahoo! Pipes is finally back online, and it's certainly something to fall in love with instantly.
I’ve always been a supporter of NewsMastering for business intelligence and enriching your website, but Pipes simply brings this concept to a whole new level.
The small applications it creates for you can be easily used by any end-user, while the actual "creation" interface still leaves much to be desired. While the interface is relatively easy to grasp and use, and especially powerful, it is not something for people without at least some relational database logic/experience.
Will it be used by end-users to create new content streams on a mass level? Most certainly not. And if the bloggers are calling this a victory for Yahoo!, finally beating Google at being first at something, the entire concept is really waiting here for someone with Google's muscle to take it and make it more user friendly.
But that's not really the point right now. To really understand the power of this service, it's enough to test just a few of the different pipes its users have been creating yesterday.
Here’s a quick selection to wet your appetite. To see how they work just click on the pipe name.
Merging all the Official Yahoo! Blogs
Let's start with a simple one. This pipe combines all the official Yahoo! blogs, by tapping into their RSS feeds, and creates a new combined stream of content featuring the latest posts in all of the blogs. This is as basic as it gets, simply combining multiple content sources, without applying any kind of advanced filtering.
Hedge Fund News
This pipe really nicely demonstrates the 101 concept of NewsMastering, tapping into various content sources to bring you the latest news on hedge funds. Either subscribe to the output with your RSS Reader to be constantly updates on latest hedge news, or display this content on your website to enrich it for your visitors and the search engines.
Aggregated News Alerts
Various news engines, like Google News, Yahoo! News, Technorati and others either search through different sections of the internet, or provide different results due to how they capture and rank the content. Using this pipe you can tap into all of them at the same time, performing a keyword search for the latest news and getting the results from all of the sources in a single stream of content.
Latest Blog Mentions Search
This pipe will allow you to search for a keyword in the latest blog mentions around the blogosphere.
Apartment Near Something
Want to find an appartment near a certain location, like the park, opera or similar? This pipe lets you specify which location you would like to find an appartment near, minimum distance from location and the city you're interested in. The pipe gets its content from a single source list, but manipulates the data to help you better reach your objective.
eBay Price Watch
Want to watch a product at eBay, above and under a certain point? With this pipe you can.
Example: Using the Babelfish Module
Yahoo! Pipes is not only about taking existing content and remixing it. This example shows how you can tap into the Bablefish translation service to automatically translate the output you just created to any language supported by the service. My experience with Bablefish's translation accuracy isn't exactly favorable, but it's a good demonstration of the things you can do with Pipes.
Two more things:)
Thanks to Marjolein Hoekstra of CleverClogs for the pointer. I was so busy with other stuff that I totally missed all the "hype" that was going on around Yahoo! Pipes. Thanks Marjolein! Robin Good just did an extensive analysis of Yahoo! Pipes.
| How Can RSS Power Your Internet Marketing and Publishing? Find out more in the most comprehensive and best guide on RSS for marketers, as acclaimed by leading RSS experts, developers, marketers and publishers. Click here and get the step-by-step guide to taking full marketing advantage of RSS. |
[Link]
Yahoo! Pipes a Dream Come True for RSS Marketers … and a Huge Threat
A Marketer's Dream Come True
Robin Good must be licking his fingers right now. In an interview we did back in February 2005 we discussed RSS NewsMastering, the act of …
taking multiple RSS feeds, search engine results and other content sources, mixing and aggregating them together, filtering the results with the keywords pertaining to your interests, and creating a highly relevant and automatically updated content resource on a specific topic, pulling content from dozens, hundreds or thousands of content sources around the globe.
This was a dream come true for marketers, enabling them to …
enrich the visitor experience on their websites to increase visitor loyalty and visit frequency, by automatically providing visitors access to the latest and most relevant focused content in your industry, without having to actually write the content yourself; make your website more relevant to the search engines for your top keywords; become a prime access point for key influencers looking for latest and most relevant news in your industry; conduct business intelligence easier and quicker than before, constantly knowing what the market is saying about you, about your competitors, what your competitors are doing and so on.
The only problem back then was that applications offering NewsMastering capabilities were few and far between. Things started improving with FeedDigest, mySyndicaat, Feed Rinse, Ning and others, but with farily limited functionalities.
Yahoo! Pipes Offering NewsMastering on Steroids
But today Yahoo! changed everything with its launch of Yahoo! Pipes.
The general idea behind Yahoo! Pipes is to allow its users to "easily" connect various internet data sources, mix them together in various ways, add additional functionality to them and create a new single output, pertaining directly to your settings.
In simpler words …
Select various online content sources, RSS feeds or others Define your own rules on how you want to use these different content sources Create an output that matches your needs
While this may sound alot like the standard RSS aggregation & filtering tools we mentioned above, it actually goes much further than anything on the market in enabling you to manipulate outside sources and come up with a new content output, all of this in a visual programming environment.
The "old services" simply allowed you to combine various RSS feeds, set some basic rules on how you want to get content from them, such as limiting the output to only the content items that match your keywords and removing duplicates, and get a new single RSS feed from them. You could then subscribe to this RSS feed in your RSS Reader (for business intelligence purposes) or use it to display its contents on your website.
But Yahoo! Pipes goes much further.
[BTW - in the Yahoo! Pipes glossary, a pipe is an output you create from mixing and manipulating various content sources]
Aggregate and Filter any XML Feed
Aggregate any kind of XML feed, not just RSS, which means that if your application provides an XML data output, you can now aggregate that data feed with other different feeds you might be interested in, and create a single RSS feed that you can subscribe to in your RSS Reader. Just as an example, imagine having an RSS feed that brings you various data from your organization in a single output, such as the latest sales data from your webstore, latest account of company expenses, notifications of new employees, important team communications, your website visitor counts and so on. It even lets you combine other pipes into a new single pipe.
Content Manipulation
Apply various filters, such as a keyword content filter to give you only the content you're interested in, sort, count, truncate, join or even create your own filters. It even lets you add your own input fields. For example, you could create a pipe that aggregates all the RSS feeds from top online retailers, and include an input field that allows you to enter the name of the product you want the latest deals on, and then creates an on-the-fly output with the latest deals for this product. Essentially, it allows you to add simple or advanced search functionalities to filter out only the content you're really interested in … from hundreds or even thousands of content sources.
Screenshot of a pipe with an input box to define which products you're looking for
[borrowed from Read/WriteWeb]
Social Applications
Browse through pipes created by other users to either use them as an end-user, or use their pipes to create your own new pipes. It of course also allows you to make your own pipes public and even provide them as a service to end-users.
There are really almost countless opportunities of what you can do with Yahoo! Pipes, and various new applications will surface when the service gets some milage.
The best part is, you can either create your own application that you use when the need arises from the Web, or an RSS feed that you subscribe to in your RSS Reader, to constantly deliver to you the content that you want. Or you can use the RSS feed to display that content on your website.
All of this is done through a visual interface, which might be daunting for the average user, but shouldn't present a problem to marketers that either have the time to learn the ropes or pay a little something to a person that already has.
Yahoo! Pipes visual user interface
[borrowed from Anil Dash, since Pipes is down again; hopefully he won't mind]
How Marketers Will Profit from Yahoo! Pipes
If you're thinking of how you can profit from Yahoo! Pipes as a marketer, there really are countless opportunities.
Provide highly relevant streams of content on your website to enrich the visitor experience. Become a preferred access point to relevant and latest content in your industry. Build applications that allow your visitors to easily access the content they're interested in. Take your business intelligence activities to the next level. And much much more …
With all the capabilities available through Yahoo! Pipes, countless new opportunities will certainly arise quickly.
The best part is, you can now more easily take advantage of them.
Threats for Marketers
But while Yahoo! Pipes makes the NewsMastering process increadibly easy, it also comes with as many threats for marketers.
Mass Syndication of Your Content
RSS by itself already made syndication of your RSS content easy.
While you may (and should) be happy about easily spreading your content to help you generate more credibility, brand recognition and traffic from other sources, Yahoo! Pipes will bring these syndication levels to a whole new level. It will make it easy for anyone to access just individual content items from your RSS feeds through countless applications, putting your content entirely out of your content context and brand context.
Your website and your own stream of content as a whole will start mattering less and less, since individual pieces of your content will start being increasingly syndicated more than your content as a whole.
There is now immediately more potential for just a single piece of your content to get more readership and reach than all of your content combined together. In many cases this may be good, but it also means that this decreases the number of total touch-points you will have with your audiences.
It might mean more exposure for a single piece of content, but much less exposure to the entire universe of your content, making audience loyalty and conversion even more difficult to achieve.
Mass Manipulation of Your Content
But it's not just about syndication. Yahoo! Pipes actually allows users to further manipulate your content items, for example removing your links, calls to action, advertising or mixing your content with other content sources. While you may want to syndicate your content as widely as possible, you will now need to invest special care to also protect your content more.
Easy Access
And finally, Yahoo! Pipes will provide easy access to NewsMastering and other capabilities to practically everyone. It hasn't been that difficult before, but with the success Yahoo! Pipes is likely to achieve, these capabilities will now be in the hands of many many more people.
On one side this means that if you were counting on NewsMastering to enrich your visitor experience, the power of this approach will be greatly reduced since so many other companies and even end-users will be able to provide the same or do the same for themselves. It means losing your unique position. It also means that influencers that would otherwise perhaps come to your website for their daily dose of latest content will now be able to create the same functionalities by themselves.
But it also creates an even easier way for abusers to abuse your content. It's now even easier to steal your content and display it on a different website for various purposes.
Am I overexaturating?
Certainly, the possibilities are here, but it remains to be seen how much penetration this service will achieve and who is going to use it.
Additional News, Comments and Resources
Yahoo! Pipes really is the most talked about online subject right now.
Here are some additional selections to get more information and different views:
TechMeme - Access all the latest conversations and blog posts about Yahoo! Pipes O’Reilly Radar - An extended discussion on how Yahoo! Pipes is the most revolutionary internet development as of late ZDNet Photo Galleries - Yahoo! Pipes screenshots flashpoint - Good examples of possible Yahoo! Pipes applications Anil Dash - An excellent look at Yahoo! Pipes Niall Kennedy - Yahoo! Pipes threats for publishers, and more
| How Can RSS Power Your Internet Marketing and Publishing? Find out more in the most comprehensive and best guide on RSS for marketers, as acclaimed by leading RSS experts, developers, marketers and publishers. Click here and get the step-by-step guide to taking full marketing advantage of RSS. |
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Conversion Benchmarking Hell, Part #2
In Part 1 of Conversion Benchmarking Hell we went from a single-dimensional conversion rate (CR) comparison between two websites to a two-dimensional display that broke-down their conversions by traffic source type.
As we could see, the overall CR of the two websites is in fact the end result of the CRs the websites are achieving from each traffic source type.
Since their traffic sources structure differs, it is immediately more difficult to compare their conversion rates side by side, making benchmarking highly unreliable, even as an indication. The question we left off at was whether the data we have is enough to at least benchmark their internet marketing efficiency.
Round #3: Adding Traffic Source Data
While the CR can be a so-so indication of their efficiency, it does not provide nearly enough data to come to any reasonable conclusions.
The next logical step is adding their traffic source data to the comparison table.
| Website #1 | Website #2 | |||||
| CR | Traffic | Customers | CR | Traffic | Customers | |
| Overall | 4% | 586,500 | 23,455 | 8% | 82,300 | 6,588 |
| Direct Traffic | 10% | 15,000 | 1,500 | 3% | 15,000 | 450 |
| SEM | 12% | 165,000 | 19,800 | 8% | 15,000 | 1,200 |
| SEO | 3% | 4,500 | 135 | 6% | 7,300 | 438 |
| 1% | 2,000 | 20 | 10% | 45,000 | 4,500 | |
| Banner Advertising | 0.5% | 400,000 | 2,000 | / | 0 | 0 |
Now we can finally see the tremendous differences between the websites and how they are marketed. Website #1 receives app. 7 times more traffic than Website #2 and has 3,5 more customers than Website #2, although it has a much lower conversion rate.
Unfortunately this hasn't really solved our mystery, but only reinforced the questions we started with.
Which of the websites is more efficient? The one with higher traffic and more customers, or the one with lower traffic, less customers, but a higher conversion rate?
The one thing that is clear is that Website #1 needs twice more traffic to generate the same number of customers as Website #2 … if we look just at the overall conversion rate.
But what happens if we remove banner advertising from Website #1 from the equation?
| Website #1 | Website #2 | |||||
| CR | Traffic | Customers | CR | Traffic | Customers | |
| Overall | 11,5% | 186,500 | 21,455 | 8% | 82,300 | 6,588 |
| Direct Traffic | 10% | 15,000 | 1,500 | 3% | 15,000 | 450 |
| SEM | 12% | 165,000 | 19,800 | 8% | 15,000 | 1,200 |
| SEO | 3% | 4,500 | 135 | 6% | 7,300 | 438 |
| 1% | 2,000 | 20 | 10% | 45,000 | 4,500 | |
| Banner Advertising | / | 0 | 0 | / | 0 | 0 |
With banner advertising out of the picture, Website #1 is now clearly the winner, strongly outperforming Website #2 in terms of CR, traffic and customers.
Just removing one traffic source from our strategy utterly changes the overall CR.
It’s the same when you try to benchmark your website and internet marketing against the industry standards. You are comparing your unique mix of traffic traffic sources with hundreds of other websites with their own unique mixes of traffic sources. Change just one on your side and the story changes completely.
Is it clear now that industry conversion benchmarking is a hoax?
OK, if you don't believe me yet …
Round #4: Adding Monetary Data
The key reason we are in the internet business is to make profits, making it impossible to benchmark without also knowing the monetary values behind the % and the traffic numbers.
Let’s bring back banner advertising to Website #1 and also add the needed monetary data to bring the case home.
| Website #1 | |||||||
| CR | Traffic | Customers | Costs /visitor | Revenues /customer | Total revenues | CPO | |
| Overall | 4% | 586,500 | 23,455 | 0,2 | 31 | 718,950 | 16,89% |
| Direct Traffic | 10% | 15,000 | 1,500 | 0 | 40 | 60,000 | 0% |
| SEM | 12% | 165,000 | 19,800 | 0,6 | 30 | 594,000 | 16,67% |
| SEO | 3% | 4,500 | 135 | 0,1 | 30 | 4,050 | 11,11% |
| 1% | 2,000 | 20 | 1 | 45 | 900 | 222,22% | |
| Banner Advertising | 0.5% | 400,000 | 2,000 | 0,05 | 30 | 60,000 | 33,33% |
| Website #2 | |||||||
| CR | Traffic | Customers | Costs /visitor | Revenues /customer | Total revenues | CPO | |
| Overall | 8% | 82,300 | 6,588 | 0,132 | 44 | 291,030 | 3,73% |
| Direct Traffic | 3% | 15,000 | 450 | 0 | 45 | 20,250 | 0,00% |
| SEM | 8% | 15,000 | 1,200 | 0,4 | 35 | 42,000 | 14,29% |
| SEO | 6% | 7,300 | 438 | 0,05 | 60 | 26,280 | 1,39% |
| 10% | 45,000 | 4,500 | 0,1 | 45 | 202,500 | 2,22% | |
| Banner Advertising | / | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | / |
Now things really became interesting, and we can finally start seeing the big picture.
Website #1 is generating 2,5 times more revenues than Website #2 Website #1 has a CPO (cost-per-order) of 16,89% against a CPO of 3,73% for Website #2, meaning that it spends much more money to make a $ than Website #2 Website #2 generates much higher revenues per customer, indicating either that it is selling more expensive products or has a better cross-selling mechanism in place [another element that the CR does not take into account]
What’s the conclusion?
Website #1 is more efficient overall in terms of conversion, since it seems that only its banner advertising is driving conversion down Website #2 is spending its advertising money much more wisely, since its CPO is a fraction of the CPO of Website #1 Website #1 is spending much more money on advertising
Based solely on all of this data, is there any way we can conclude which website (and marketing) is performing better?
By any means no.
Round #5: Profitability
To get the final answer, we need to look at actual profitability of both of the websites. Without going into much detail, here's the new comparison table:
| Website #1 | Website #2 | |
| Total Revenues | 718,950 | 291,030 |
| Direct Advertising Costs | -121,450 | -10,865 |
| Total | 597,500 | 280,165 |
Just looking at their revenues and advertising costs, Website #1 is still doing much better than Website #2, although it is not spending its money efficiently if compared with Website #2.
But to get the answer, we still need to look at their other costs.
| Website #1 | Website #2 | |
| Total Revenues | 718,950 | 291,030 |
| Direct Advertising Costs | -121,450 | -10,865 |
| Overhead | -70,000 | -20,000 |
| Cost of Goods Sold | -611,107 (15% margin) |
-197,900 (20% margin) |
| Profits | -83,607 | 62,265 |
Just by also taking into account their overhead and cost of goods sold the picture is now entirely different. Website #1 is now actually unprofitable, while Website #2 is showing a good profit.
Again, just by looking at the numbers it now seems that Website #2 is much more successful than Website #1.
Round #6: Figuring in Business Goals
We could leave it at that. Website #2 is more successful, since it's more profitable.
Now, to complete this game, let's also figure in their individual business goals.
Website #1 is contending to become the market leader and is so investing alot more money right now into capturing market share. They understand that short-term losses will transform into long-term profits. Website #2 is struggling in its market and is only hoping to keep its current market share, and they do not have enough financing to make the move towards market leadership.
In this regard, the final winner would be Website #1.
Going from start to finish, it should now be apparent that is doesn't make any sense whatsoever to benchmark your conversion rates against any industry standards, because:
Each website employs different sources of traffic Each traffic source is converting at different levels Each website is paying different amounts per visitor Each website is achieving different revenues per visitors, either due to initial product value or due to the differences in their cross-selling approaches Each website has a different CPO Each website operates under different costs Each website generates different profits Each website has different goals
And I could go on and on and on.
All of these elements, and many others, make it impossible to compare websites side by side.
Stop benchmarking your conversion rates against industry standards. It doesn't work and it doesn't tell you anything. It only either puts you in a good or bad mood, but makes you ignore all the other factors that really impact your overall marketing success.
| How Can RSS Power Your Internet Marketing and Publishing? Find out more in the most comprehensive and best guide on RSS for marketers, as acclaimed by leading RSS experts, developers, marketers and publishers. Click here and get the step-by-step guide to taking full marketing advantage of RSS. |
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Interactive Optimization Blog Launched
As I already explained, MarketingStudies.net is expanding its content to also covering Interactive Marketing Optimization and Analytics.
Essentially, this was the next logical step in the website evolution, considering that B2C e-commerce is in my blood, a passion, and something I do every day.
While I did say B2C e-commerce, the lessons learned can be applied to any other interactive field and to B2B is as well.
Why Read This Blog Anyway?
Get the spin on interactive marketing optimization from an e-commerce director's point of view, working from the perspective that every online activity needs to generate a positive ROI Learn channel integration strategies and processes that combine everything from direct response television, telemarketing and direct mail to online Get a view of interactive optimization from the Central and Eastern European perspective, although rooted in US experience and approaces Take a fully actionable approach to online analytics and optimization
What Qualifies Me to Write About Interactive Optimization?
I'm the International Internet Director for Studio Moderna, managing our internet operations in 21 CEE countries, with more than 130+ e-commerce sites Interactive optimization, in addition to long-term strategy development, is the key focus of my internet marketing activities I'm responsible for direct internet sales in 21 countries, as well as keeping all internet costs within strictly set boundaries I work in a 100% multi-channel environment I know my business:) It's not just work, but a hobby and a passion
But enough about me.
This blog is about how you can optimize your interactive marketing activities.
To get us started, here’s a quick reading list of the top online analytics blogs, and here’s the first part of the discussion of how conversion benchmarks are the greatest hoax in internet marketing.
| How Can RSS Power Your Internet Marketing and Publishing? Find out more in the most comprehensive and best guide on RSS for marketers, as acclaimed by leading RSS experts, developers, marketers and publishers. Click here and get the step-by-step guide to taking full marketing advantage of RSS. |
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Conversion Benchmarking Hell, Part #1
Imagine this conversation …
Project Manager: “So, what's our average website conversion rate?"
Internet Marketer: “Oh, I don't know. Somewhere around 3.5%."
Project Manager: “Really … Because I just read the latest ACME Conversion Rate Report and it says that the average conversion rate for our industry is 5.8%. Why is ours so low? What are we doing wrong?"
Just replace project manager with any title that comes to mind, like CMO, CEO, CFO and any other title that doesn't do conversion optimization for a living.
Everyone wants to know about your conversion rate (CR) and everyone is keen to compare it with the latest figure they read in one of the numerous benchmark reports, naturally written by reputable research companies. "Why aren't we doing so well?" or sometimes even "Wow, we're doing great!" is the feedback you receive after reluctantly giving the answer.
Welcome to conversion benchmarking hell.
But the simple truth of the matter is, website conversion industry benchmarking is the biggest hoax of the interactive industry.
It’s the one piece of data that doesn't tell you how well you're doing in comparison to anyone else, period. Simply because there is no such thing as "average conversion rate".
No Conversion is Created Equal, Period!
To bring the point home, let's compare two websites from the same industry just from the overall CR viewpoint.
Round #1: Overall Average Conversion Rate
| Website #1 | Website #2 | |
| CR | 4% | 8% |
Knowing only this data, one would assume that Website #2 is performing better than Website #1 in converting website visitors into customers.
But is it really?
Round #2: Overall Conversion Rate by Traffic Source Type
| Website #1 | Website #2 | |
| Overall CR | 4% | 8% |
| Direct Traffic CR | 10% | 3% |
| SEM CR | 12% | 8% |
| SEO CR | 3% | 6% |
| E-mail CR | 1% | 10% |
| Banner Advertising CR | 0.5% | / |
If you look at our table now, the various traffic sources utilized by the two websites come into focus, showing how well the websites are converting traffic by traffic source type.
This only makes sense, since the traffic generated to each website comes from a mix of different sources, each with its own specifics.
But because the website's efficiency is also impacted by the quality of the traffic it gets, the CR is an overall indicator of our internet marketing efficiency, not just our website efficiency.
This is where things get more complicated.
If we want to compare the two websites in terms of conversion, we first need to understand how specifically they are generating traffic.
In this case it might seem that Website #1, while being less efficient overall, is doing better in terms of converting direct traffic and SEM traffic, but is not performing as well in other departments. Website #2 is doing better with SEO and e-mail, but is not doing any banner advertising at all.
Here’s the first catch. Banner advertising will almost always drive your overall conversion down. Just the fact that Website #2 is not doing any banner advertising at all should tell us that it is impossible to benchmark the two sites against eachother.
But is it enough to benchmark their internet marketing efficiency?
To be continued …
| How Can RSS Power Your Internet Marketing and Publishing? Find out more in the most comprehensive and best guide on RSS for marketers, as acclaimed by leading RSS experts, developers, marketers and publishers. Click here and get the step-by-step guide to taking full marketing advantage of RSS. |
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My Online Analytics Reading List
Since it's going to take some time before this blog gets enough content to brag about and provides enough valuable insight, here's part of my online analytics reading list.
Eric T. Peterson's Analytics Weblog
Eric is considered one of the top authorities in the online analytics space, and his blog is simply said a masterpiece of advanced online analytics. One of his specialities is the Visitor Engagement index that allows you to measure long-term engagement of your visitors and their value beyond "just sales".
GrokDotCom
The Eisenberg brothers are masters of conversion optimization, especially specializing in persuasion architecture. While I don't always agree with their methods, especially when it comes to e-commerce conversion, their blog is some of the best places in the industry to help you optimize the return on your traffic.
Lies, Damned Lies …
The place to go if you're interested in the state of the online analytics industry with a no-prisoners-held approach.
Marketing Experiments
The best resource on the planet if you want to know what works and what doesn't. These guys do optimization for the biggest websites and then report on their results, with clear how-tos and insights. I actually had my Internet Analyst take their testing course.
Occam’s Razor
Another top resource for hard-core online analytics. Highly recommended.
The Unofficial Google Analytics Blog
If you want to learn how to use Google's free analytics solution, this is the place to go.
WebMetricsGuru
The name say it all:) Also highly recommended.
Please post your own recommendations below.
| How Can RSS Power Your Internet Marketing and Publishing? Find out more in the most comprehensive and best guide on RSS for marketers, as acclaimed by leading RSS experts, developers, marketers and publishers. Click here and get the step-by-step guide to taking full marketing advantage of RSS. |
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