Sunday, April 27, 2008

Web 2.0 Expo 2008 SF - Key Take Aways

Some key take away's from the Web 2.0 from week of 4/21/08 in SF.
  • I went to a Facebook Platform Eco session, they ask how much total money is in the FB eco system to a panel of 3 experts, one venture capitalist said over $300MM/year, one successful FB app develop company said less than $10MM, the third said somewhere in-between but closer to $10MM. Most people are primarily talking about ad revenue.
Buzz.
  • Windows Live Mesh - finally Microsoft recognize the cloud. they made a very touching video, showing a mother capturing video of her boy diving into the pool, at the same time, the video shows up at dad's portable computer, grand parent's digital picture frame, and cousin's X-box. Basically all connected devices to the data.
  • Enterprise Web 2.0 - there is a lot of interests in this area but nobody seems to know what it means and how to do it yet. Our company does have an unique niche and approach.
  • Mobile (iPhone, Nokia, Tellme, etc) has lots of interest but as Andreessen pointed out, there are no defining standards/players at this time, and we need a monopoly like what Microsoft did to the PC.
  • Location based services. Lots of maps and location based services showing interesting ideas (twitter to show where are friends, crime map showing where to buy drugs, geo-coded wiki pages, sensors) but no killer apps yet.
Mood.
  • Generally upbeat, we are still at the 'early days' for Web 2.0 and lots to be done.
  • Marc Andreessen was quoted to be "happy to get a round of funding before the upcoming nuclear winter".
DB Marketing focus - I was looking for the following two things in particular:

1. Viral.
  • I was looking hard for platforms for viral that we can use as our next wave of adoption tactic, I did not really find anything. most of them are either email referrals (like some FB apps) or built in to the social network.
  • Tipping point Myth. New research indicates that centralized ripple-like distribution depending on a few 'Influentials' are not reliable, these influentials are mostly hindsight biased and generally not repeatable for future. The more reliable approach is to use a distributed social network approach with lots of interconnections. (check out a picture of Twitter "Social Graph")
2. Targeting
  • behavior targeting is the buzz (since most apps don't have profile, they only know what people do), I did not see anything concrete yet, but most people are looking at it from targeted ad perspectives, "people who like to throw sheep and vote this way tends to respond to this kind of ad."

Tuesday, April 8, 2008

Email Marketing Open Rates by Industry


Industries with over 20% average open rates: Banking/Finance (28.84%), Religious/Spiritual (26.76%), Transportation/travel (25.69%), Telecommunications (24.91%)

Source: eMarketing.com article: E-Mail Works for Banks and Card Issuers

Online Entertainment Activities of US Internet Users by age group

As expected the amount of online entertainment activity is inverse proportional to the age, with most of the Millenials already involved in producing & consuming content online.

Source: eMarketer.com article: The Growing Influence of Online Social Shoppers


Wednesday, January 30, 2008

eMarketer: B2B Checks Out Marketing 2.0

Similarities between B2B and B2C: both focus on own website, Email marketing, and SEO.
B2C focuses more on: on-line advertising, wiki, viral video, and social networking.
B2B focuses more on: webinars, podcasts, and blogs.



2007 B2B tactics in the US. It's odd that 20% used Mobile and I have not really seen much.



Tuesday, January 22, 2008

MarketingSherpa: When's the Best Time to Send Email to Target Consumers at Work? Test Results

MarketingSherpa had a recent article testing when is the best time to send email. I think the result is 'interesting' but I don't think it is really universal.

Offer: ipod, promotion date: 8/30/2007

RESULTS
Test returns produced a clear winner -- 9 a.m. The clickthrough rates for each:
o 9 a.m. performed 15.63% better than 4 p.m.
o 9 a.m. performed 9.4% better than 12 p.m.
o 12 p.m. performed 6.9% better than 4 p.m.

Based on my personal tests, different offer performs differently on different Day of the Week. For time of the day, unless you know and specifically targeting the receivers' time zone, it is pretty random. Personally, this result just shows that you send it earlier in the day on a Thursday is better than later in the day on a Thursday. This is actually relatively consistent to my observation. In my 2007 Summer Email test (6/1-8/31) Thursdays evenings have the worst average Open Rates while Wednesday evening gets the best open rates. However, what I found was the day of the week overall has relatively small (11%) variance.

The more significant factor for day of the week is Age Group. There is a much wider difference in day of week behavior for 35+. where there is 41% between best days (Wed/Tue night sends) comparing to worst days (Thu/Fri night sends). Offer response is also quite different among age groups, where each age group has different hot items in their 'barometer'.

In my humble opinion, it's MUCH more important to figure out offering what to offer to whom than to worry about day of the week and time of the day.

Monday, June 4, 2007

eMarketing: Giveaways Key to Mobile Marketing

Looks like only 17-26% of people are willing to watch advertising on their phone for mobile applications.


However, over 44% of people are willing to watch up to 4 ads to get a free phone. Do they think they are getting an iPhone or a Google phone?


What we have found was people really responded well to free ring tone offers.

Reference: eMarketing article: http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?id=1004978&src=article2_newsltr

Saturday, May 5, 2007

eMarketing: Viral Marketing's Video Love Affair

Viral Marketing Tactics with "Great Results" according to US Marketers.




Frequency of referrals...



Price Estimates for Video Clips for Viral Marketing Campaigns:




Source: http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?1004845&src=article2_newsltr