Tip: Timing Newsgroup Posting to Optimize Results

There is no doubt that our audience is on many very diverse newsgroups such as Yahoo! Groups, AOL Message Boards, Linkedin Groups, Facebook Groups, etc. Some groups have thousands of active subscribers. Many service providers for these groups will send an email whenever a new post is added, either with a summary or the full message. This is an essential way for the service provider to drive traffic back to the site or to sell ads. Most services will send a daily consolidated email with all posts from the previous day. For message heavy and well read groups, consolidated emails are very popular, so people do not get bombarded with lots of message all day long.

If you take a look at the timestamps from this type of consolidated emails, you would notice that daily consolidated emails from Linkedin and Yahoo! Groups usually come at around the same time every day. This is most likely true for all such services since they are sent automatically on a regular schedule.

Being the top post for this type of email has many benefits. Obviously, the top 2 or 3 posts get the most attention. In addition, for LinkedIn, see the example in the figure (click the image to see the larger version), you will see that the poster name for the first post even appear in the subject line!

If we are building awareness and traffic using newsgroups in popular and high volume newsgroups, the trick is to time your posting so your post appears on the top. The exact method is slightly different for different services.

For example, for linkedin, the latest post appears on the top, and the rest are listed in reverse chronological order, therefore, you would want to time your posting right before the email deployment time.

On the other hand, for Yahoo! Group, posts are listed chronologically for the day before. So if you post at 12:01am on Monday (make sure you take into account the time zone!), you will be the top message for Tuesday.

Try it out, experiment, and let me know how this works out for you!

More Video Ads than Search and Banner Ads Combined?

According to a survey conducted in December 2008 by PermissionTV 67% of US Marketers responded identified online video as a "primary focus" of their 2009 digital marketing campaign in 2009.

This amazing number is 50% higher than Social Media, and about double of Search, Podcast, and Rich Media. Does this mean we will see more spending on video ads than search and banner ads combine? I don't think so. I think this represents what's on marketers' minds as the next frontier but it does not necessarily represent their actual budget allocation. According to eMarketer's projections in November 2008, 2009 spendings for Search and Display Ads are still by far the highest online ad format at $12 and $5 Billion, however, we can see that Video also shows the most significant growth from $587 to $850 Million in this study. This speaks well for companies like Hulu.com and Google (Youtube), especially during recession when more people are expected to stay home and surf the web. We can also see another related trend with all the mobile video updates on sites like Facebook.

Regarding the marketing objectives, a vast majority (71%) stated it would help build brand awareness. Other objectives includes: lead generation (47%) and enhancing loyalty/retention programs (44%) and converting customers (41%).

As to the tactics, the highest priority, with 63%, is to invest in a branded content/video destination. Viral video (39%) and interactive experiences (38%) are the next highest. Only 22% plan to invest in simple syndication.

Sources:
eMarketer: Marketers Eye Online Video for 2009
PermissionTV: Industry Survey Forecasts Adoption of Interactive Video in 2009

eMarketer: The Next Step in User-Generated Content

According to Paul Verna, senior analyst at eMarketer:

With so much user-generated media populating the Web and mobile channels, content aggregation will become more important than ever in 2009. In the coming year, expect to see real-time aggregation tools that combine algorithmic approaches with human input—like a cross between Techmeme and FriendFeed.

Techmeme is an aggregation tool that uses algorithms to scan the Web for tech-related news stories. FriendFeed is also an aggregator, but it lets users set up custom feeds to pool content from other social sites.

These aggregation tools will develop from the ground up, much like the content itself. They could make it easier for consumers to find video and other content.

Furthermore, in a climate in which advertising is the main (some say the only) means of monetizing user-generated content, aggregators stand to earn more per visitor than the sites that actually carry the user-created content.

Source: eMarketer.com

Tool to Shrink PPT and DOC files

I just saw this tip from Techknowl.com, a German firm Balesio offers a software called PPTminimizer that can shrink PPT (Micosoft Power Point ) and DOC ( Microsoft word 2003 ) documents to about 98% of their original size in the native extension (not zipped or archived). The quality of the converted file is almost same as the original file.

This seems to be a handy tool to compress very large presentations for web viewing, and for downloading to mobile phones and USB drives. Techknowl.com readers can get a free download from the site, subscription to Techknowl.com is free, check it out!

Full article: http://www.techknowl.com/2008/12/shrink-ppt-and-doc-files-to-98-without.html
Free download for PC Advisor users: http://www.balesio.com/campaign/licensing/index.aspx?CID=pcadvisor

Top Online Purchase Categories During Financial Crisis

During the tough economic times, people tend to stay home more instead of going out, and naturally the Web use increase. According to comScore World Metrix, visits to financial news and research sites grew 10% to 8.8 million visitors in September, during the height of the financial crisis, from the previous month.

People wants to save money, get more for their dollars, so they would use the web to do more researches. So what are people buying online? According to Nielsen study released in November, top transaction sites are for Travel and Entertainment related sites are number 1 (Online travel), 6 (Hotel reservation), and 8 (Event tickets).

Credit card account management and home banking were the second- and third-most-popular transaction types for 2008.

Number 4 is clothing/shoes/accessories. Think Lipsticks. One of the top sellers at the Malls are Lipsticks during recessions, people need a pick-me-up, small purchases to make be happier.

Sources:
eMarketer: Online Banking During a Financial Crisis (12/8/2008)
New York Times: Hard Times, but Your Lips Look Great - Lipstick May Ben an Economy Indicator (5/1/2008)

Blogger Tip: How to add "Email Subscription Form"

Looking for a way to collect emails from blogger site visitors? Here are some good source I found:

• Feedblitz.com: This is a free (ad supported) service that enables publishers to collect subscribers and send emails for free.
  
• Feedburner.com (now part of Google): Primarily used to send new articles with a very light 'delivered by' footer, ability to export subscriber email addresses.
  

Here are a couple of nice posts on this subject: "how to add Email Subscription Form using Feedburner" and "Add RSS/Email subscription in Blogger".

Separately, Google added the "Subscribe to" feature which is different, it currently only supports 3 RSS readers: Google, Bloglinks, and Netvibes, and there is no email support.

eMarketer: 54% of Retailer still do not test email subject line

Personally, I am now getting about 2 emails a week from Amazon, more than one per week from Costco and Target. This is probably two to three times the normal frequency, it's probably the combination or final holiday push and desperation during tough economic condition. They are definitely trying harder, unfortunately, I don't think many of them are hitting the sweet spots yet, at least for me. What about for you?

Obviously, the sender's FROM address (both email and display name parts) is crucial in determining the open and response rates. Recipients needs to trust and feel they have a relationship to even consider opening the email.

After that, the subject line is the key. Much more important than time of day or day of week in most of the emails I have tried. Changing a couple of key words can have huge impact on open rate AND response rate. Subject lines set the expectation of what's inside the email. You can have a very provocative subject line to get people open the email, but if people feel they are cheated or if the email did not meet people's expectation, the click-to-open ratio could be much worse. This would hurt the long term relationship with the user.

Different subject lines can have huge swing in different age groups and achieve plus/minus 50% in overall response. Is it too much work for 54% of the retailers to do?

Sources:
eMarketer: E-Mail Marketers Get in the Spirit (11/26/2008)