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TFM&A 2010 Blog

Blog entries from Visitors, Exhibitors and Industry Experts - TFM&A 2010

Do Ad Agency MD’s get it?

Sir Martin Sorrell , WPP Chief executive, has claimed that “brands are not spending enough online because the people who run their agencies are too old and resistant to change”. Quite a statement, I’m sure you would agree, but is there any truth in the rumor?

Sorrell was discussing the news that brands globally are investing an average of 13% of their marketing budget online. “The people who run agencies tend to be resistant to change” he said. In a final crack of the whip he stated that “MD’s want to spend the last 3 to 4 years of their careers travelling the world rather than dealing with fundamental strategic issues on a daily basis”.

I can’t see Sir Sorrell being on the Christmas card (or even E-card?!) list of his peers after such comments and he also fails to mention that he is just 3 months away from officially being a UK pensioner himself?!

Mark Collier, 49, A partner at DARE has sympathy for Sorrell’s comments. “A generational shift is gradually taking place and we are seeing the emergence of a new breed of marketers who not only understand the new marketing agenda, they are diverting and increasing proportion of their budget towards implanting it in practice”.

As a stereotypically young workforce do these comments strike a chord? Are you banging your head against a digital brick wall trying to highlight to the resistant MD the new frontiers of the digital age and do you feel that this attitude is holding the Industry back from its natural progression into an interactive, individual and exciting future?

Ben Blackall, Senior Account Manager, RLH Advertising

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Email marketers need to move from “Don’t be evil” to “Be relevant”

Let’s face it; most email marketers behave like direct mailers. They mail files until they no longer work. Now with ISP’s like AOL and Hotmail implementing user engagement to filter emails I believe things must change.

Historically email deliverability has been a “Don’t be evil” exercise. Consider deliverability terminology - data hygiene, minimising bounces and complaints, authentication, domain reputation - these terms all conjure up a “Don’t be evil” approach. Email deliverability is about being good to ISP’s. Yet even more important than how marketers treat ISP’s is how they treat consumers.

In a survey by Merkle of over 2,000 US email users, 32% said they had stopped doing business with a company as a result of poor email marketers practices and three quarters said irrelevancy was the main reason for unsubscribing.

Consumers respond better to more relevant communication and that typically means targeting and segmentation.
I believe ISP’s using engagement to filter emails will ultimately be a good thing. It will force email marketers to do what they should already be doing; emailing customers and prospects in an appropriate and relevant way. To quote my old friend David Hughes “Email recipients are like snowflakes - every one is different”.

Mark Patron, CEO, RedEye.
Visit us at stand D8

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Trying to improve your conversion rates from 100 miles up?

Most people are now pretty familiar with great map applications that provide maps, satellite imagery, and now immersive photographic street level views.  And the latter is invaluable when you need to see how it really looks ‘on the ground’.  The satellite view is great for perspective, but nothing can compare to seeing it first hand.  Just like with weather maps – you need to be there, outside with the wind in your face, to really know what is happening.
To be able to fully optimise your designs and maximise your conversion you need to see the big picture and know first hand exactly what your customers are experiencing.
You can get closer by conducting detailed analysis of search terms, which reveal good insights into the likely intent of your customers.  There have been some great articles recently on this.  However this still isn’t quite the same as seeing the experiences of your customers first hand.

So how do you get ‘on the ground’ insights?
One-to-one usability testing, with eye tracking, is the only way to fully understand how your design is performing and why your customers are doing the things you see in the analytics data.

By investigating your site from both the top down and the ground up, you can finally get the full picture.

John Dumas, Direct of Usability & Accessibility, RedEye
Visit us at Stand D8

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Marketers as Mixologists: A Perfect Blend Indeed

Bartending my way through college was a fun job. Did I know at the time it was my early training for a Sales & Marketing career? Absolutely not! Frankly, it was the TFM&A’10 slogan that made me connect the dots. “The perfect blend for truly integrated marketing and advertising campaigns.” Catchy, and very appropriate slogan.

Working behind the bar, while there are recipes to follow, I learned quickly that patrons certainly have their special ways they like their drinks blended to their own idea of perfection. It was my job to assure they got what they wanted. Martini recipes?  There are dozens, if not hundreds of ways to blend this popular drink.  Gin (what brand?), Dry Vermouth (how much?), garnish (green olive, or twist of lemon peel?). Martini connoisseurs are quite particular on the blend, and this is just the basic Martini recipe.

So, too, it is with marketing campaigns. Where to start, and what blend makes for the ideal campaign? Online/offline, package creation/adaptation, list research & selection, print buying, data processing, ESP/mail shop, campaign setup in your database, invoice payments, results reviewed, to touch on just a few ingredients. As with a good Martini, the perfect marketing blend will depend greatly on many factors. Our job as marketing mixologists is to be sure patrons get the ideal mix to meet their very particular marketing palate. Like my college job, this is also a lot of fun!

Cheers, and may all of you have a wonderfully successful and information-packed TFM&A’10!
Oh, here’s a resource for you Martini fans… http://www.martinirecipe.net/.

Marty Shaw, Global-Z International, Inc.
Stand D28

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Beyond Post click: Technology for campaign value chain management and optimization

Online campaign management presents new challenges literally every day. On the one hand, we face the sheer enormity of the quantity of data that needs to be processed during the course of a campaign, including all the possible combinations of promotional offers, creative items, conversion funnels and diverse landing pages – right up to the bottom line results. On the other hand, we have to navigate the maze of a diverse array of media sources, tools and platforms to choose from and work with.

This requires a new level of optimization, integration, insight and ingenuity throughout the entire value chain to monitor, analyze and optimize in real-time so that we can learn and respond on-the-fly with the correct changes and improvements.

For this kind of integrated results-based online marketing, tackling all those elements aren’t enough. The right technology is key to bringing it all together.

Campaign management and optimization technology allows high level of integration, optimization and automation that can handle vast amount of data in real time so the outcome is meaningful and actionable.

Tsafrir Peles, Co-CEO, DSNR Media Group
Speaking on Day 1 in the Online Advertising & Social Media Theatre

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Is there a True DSP?

As an ad network we have been struggling to make some sense in all these new technological platforms and their relationships and evolution.

I see the "adserving" as just one piece of the puzzle, where DSPs and exchanges are additional pieces which can be separated or integrated in one product.
In this case, a "true DSP" (if it can even be defined) is actually a platform that is able to efficiently buy large amounts of media in various platforms and in various buying methods (mainly offline and real-time).

Billing format and transparency are just good business practices and in no means a part of a definition of a "true DSP".
A true DSP should refrain from being involved in the actual bidding process, thus negating all conflicts of interest (even if he owns media) or excess need of transparency. If the price is good for the advertiser (or agency or ad network) he should buy the impression regardless of who makes how much money in the process.

To me a true DSP is measured by its capability to:
1. Buy large amounts of media (reach)
2. Buy this media efficiently (how much media can one media buyer buy)
3. Facilitate an intelligent selection and pricing of media to buy

Gilad Hellerman, CTO, DSNR Media Group
Visit us at Stand H7

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Creating the right call to action – is there one magic button to rule them all?

The simple answer to the question in the title of this blog – No! Below are a few examples of different buttons to enable online customers to purchase a product. Some are obvious, some subtle, some persuasive and some very persuasive; all are different.

                       

Nearly ever website has a different style, colour and copy for their call to action button and that’s without thinking about overall strategy, customer segment, placement, nomenclature, structure…Every website is different, every user is different. There is no ‘one size fits all’ approach. So the real question is - how do you know what’s best for your site?

The answer – what online marketers do have in common – the ability to use data and testing to optimise your website and improve conversion.

The below Conversion Maturity Model (taken from the Econsultancy Conversion Report) shows how a step by step process of testing and analysis will lead to a fully optimised website.

Andy Stockwell, Head of Account Management, RedEye


Evolution of behavioural email

Behavioural email is evolving. The first genuine example I know (that’s email driven off behavioural information not simple transaction confirmation) is William Hill. Initiating a basic registered not deposited email programme in 2001, the results were so impressive a multitude of behavioural email campaigns soon evolved within the company.

A year later the AA became the first company to test the genuine value of behavioural emails. I was lucky enough to carry out this particular study proving behavioural emails increased the likelihood of a user retuning to a website by 78%.

Around this time email also began to be seen as a key retention tool. A chief reason – deliverability; users becoming savvier to spam meant a clear need for improvement.

Today behavioural email still has a long way to go. Econsultancy’s email marketing census reported only 12% of respondents use vendors for behavioural response marketing. The encouraging news is 47% of respondents plan to use behavioural targeting based on web analytics as part of their email marketing efforts.

There is much more I could discuss but hopefully this conveys a little about how behavioural email has grown and why it’s important for the future.

Garry Lee, Director of Analytics, RedEye

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Digital   Email Marketing, Social Media, Web 2.0, Pay-per-click, Mobile Marketing, SEO, Affiliate marketing, Web Analytics, Interactive Advertising, eCommerce.....