Pepper Blue Blog

Email open rates rise: Epsilon study

Tim Pepper — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 23:43:00 GMT

Marketing e-mail open rates were up 18.2% year-over-year for the second quarter, according to a report by Epsilon that was released October 6. The period was the fourth consecutive one that open rates increased.

Fourteen out of 16 industries measured saw a jump in opens, with pharmaceuticals and financial services seeing the greatest growth, with 6.3% and 7.2% year-over-year rises, respectively.

The report also found that overall click rates remained the same - 5.9% - as in 2008.

The study helps to justify the e-mail marketing channel as a whole in terms of return on investment, explained Kevin Mabley, SVP of strategic and analytic consulting for Epsilon.

Title Element, Meta Description and Meta Keyword Tags

Tim Pepper — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 20:37:00 GMT

Title Element:

The title element (sometimes mistakenly called a tag) is the most important factor in ranking highly in the search engines, so it is worth taking some time to get it as near perfect as you can. Also the title is the most prominent text displayed in the SERPs and should be composed for users as well as the search engines. It goes without saying that every page on your site should have a different title.

The title element should be placed immediately after specifying the doctype, character set and language, like this:

<!doctype HTML PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN”>
<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv=”Content-Type” content=”text/html; charset=iso-8859-1″>
<meta http-equiv=”Content-Language” content=”en”>
<title>Your Page Title Here</title>
<meta name=”Description” content=” Your description here.”>
<meta name=”Keywords” content=” your, keyword, list, here”>
<link type=”text/css” rel=”stylesheet” src=”/path/file.css”>
<script type=”text/javascript” language=”javascript” src=”/path/file.js”></script>
</head>
<body>
.
The content of your page goes here.
.
</body>
</html>

There are several do’s and don’ts when constructing a title element:

Use proper grammar and that doesn’t mean it has to be a sentence, it can be just a phrase but make sure it is a grammatically correct phrase.

Make sure all the words are spelled correctly.

Avoid the use of symbols, numbers and special characters.

The title should be constructed from your keywords.

Do not repeat the keywords in the same phrase or list them.

Keep the length under 65 characters including spaces. Google will truncate the title around the 65th character although it does vary because it will try to end with a complete word.

Use none or only one stop word (and, the, a, if etc.) which is not so easy given that good grammar is required.

Don’t use your Company name in the title except on your ‘Contact’ or ‘About Us’ page. It just takes up valuable characters where you could have put a keyword.

Here is an example, let’s say that your business is selling organic dog food to dog owners in Arizona and you are creating a title for your home page. From your keyword research you have deduced that the following six keyphrases are the most searched for and are the ones for which you will need to optimize your home page.

dog food, dog kibble, natural dog food, natural dog kibble, organic dog food, organic dog kibble

The word frequency is as follows:

Word (Frequency)
dog (6)
food (3)
kibble (3)
natural (2)
organic (2)

Now it is a question of putting them in the correct order:

<title>Natural Organic Dog Food and Dog Kibble Phoenix Arizona</title>

Which makes sense and is 55 characters.

If you now use these keyphrases in your body text and make sure they are used in inbound link anchor text you will be well down the path of optimization!

Inbound Links:

These are links coming from other websites to yours. They are the second most important factor in SEO after the title element. Certainly in terms of the time involved inbound links will be the area where most of your effort in SEO will be expended.

There are five main aspects to consider when obtaining inbound links:

The anchor text
The linking page (the page on which the link is situated)
The linking site (the site which contains the page the link is on)
The linked page (the page on your site that is linked to)
Acquisition or link building (how to get them)

The anchor text.

The anchor text is the text that users will click on to reach your site and appears like this in the html of the linked page:

<a href=”http://www.yourdomain.com”>This is the anchor text</a>

and on that page it will look like this:

This is the anchor text.

It is essential that the anchor text should contain the keywords that you have optimized the linked page for, in various combinations. If we take the example used in the Title Element post where our keywords were dog,
food, kibble, natural, and organic, then these would be used in the anchor text of links to that page as well as the full title Natural Organic Dog Food and Dog Kibble Phoenix Arizona. The idea is to avoid exactly the same anchor text for every inbound link but also to ensure that every link contains either your title or keywords.

The linking site.

Inbound links are such an important aspect to ranking high in the SERPs that site owners are tempted into using any means possible to obtain them. Google says in their Webmaster Guidelines “Don’t participate in link schemes designed to increase your site’s ranking or PageRank”. They really do mean it and quite correctly refer to abusers as ‘spammers’ who are diluting the quality of their search results. Algorithmic spam detection has been implemented by all the popular search engines and improves day by day.

As the search engines become better and better at spam detection the bottom line is to avoid obtaining links from networks of colluding sites or participating in linking schemes of any kind. At best the links will be of little or no value and at worst your site could suffer an outright ban.

The linked page.

The linked to page should contain text that is semantically or topically related to the linking page. For example a link from a page on the topic of the nutritional analysis of dog food to a page on your site about how to break your dog of separation anxiety would be meaningless unless you included a body of text that related the nutritional analysis of organic natural dog food to reduced incidences of separation anxiety.

Acquisition or link building.

With all these constraints you may be wondering how you are ever going to find the sites which will provide you with strong links? There are two aspects to this question, how to identify the sites and then having done that how to persuade the site owner to link to your site.

Identifying candidate sites. Finding the strong links that your competitors have obtained is a good place to start. Record the top 10 or 20 sites in the SERPs for your keywords and find the inbound links to those sites.

Most professional SEOs have software to do this kind of analysis for them (We use IBP by Axandra) but you can do it manually like this if you are methodical and spend sufficient time.

Let’s say for example that the keyphrase for which you are seeking inbound links is dog food. Google dog food and record all the sites in the first page of the SERPs. The first site is www.petfooddirect.com.

Now enter linkdomain:petfooddirect.com -site:petfooddirect.com into Yahoo Search

This will give you a list of all the inbound links that Yahoo knows about for the site. (we are using Yahoo search here because the Google link: operator

link:petfooddirect.com

only shows a sample of the links that it knows about.

These will all be possible candidates for linking to you but won’t tell you which the important ones are. If you repeat the process for all the sites on the first page of the SERPs and transfer the results to columns in an Excel spreadsheet you could perhaps write a macro to determine those links which are most common to all the sites. The sites that link to two or more of your competitors are the important ones.

That's why programs like IBP from Axandra are so helpfuly (but not cheap).

Obtaining the link. This is also a time consuming process and it is tempting to send a template email requesting a link to the site owner or webmaster. Resist the temptation because invariably 99.9% of such emails are never looked at or even considered. The best approach is to communicate by telephone in a very friendly way or to send a personalized email. Whichever you choose your success rate will depend on how much planning and effort you put into the communication and of course the links you require the most are the ones where you should put the maximum effort.

Meta Description Tags:

Meta description tags, on the other hand, don't really affect your rankings in the search engines. Still, they are very worthwhile to use because they allow you to control the description of your listing in some engines for some search queries.

The best (and most obvious) thing to do is to make sure your top optimized keyword phrases are being used in your Meta description tag.

Your Meta description will show in the search results only *if* it happens to use the exact phrase that has been queried at the search engine. So use this tag for marketing purposes, i.e., to entice people to click on *your* link as opposed to the other 10 in the search results.

If you're not a big brand that people are searching for by company name, then you don't need to worry about it. However, if people do indeed search for you by name, then simply control the snippet by making sure you put the company name in your Meta description or in a nice marketing sentence closer to the top of the page.

Meta Keyword Tags

These are a different animal altogether. It is known that Google doesn't pay any attention to it. Yahoo does look at the Meta keywords tag, and does index its contents.

Note that creating this tag with the same keywords you've optimized your page for will NOT boost it in the rankings. Putting the keywords in your content is far more important.

Many people will say that for most sites and pages, don't waste your time creating a Meta keyword tag unless you feel like it (I like to do it because it causes no harm and can only help - simple)

If you have some lesser known words that might apply to the site then put those words in like "client identification device"

It's not going help if there are a whole bunch of other sites with the words visible on their pages. But for unusual stuff, the meta keyword is still alive and well in a few engines.

It won't hurt anything, and who knows...maybe that page that fits the "all else being equal" scenario with your competitors, many of whom do not have the keyword tag, will show up one day and you'll have them beat by a meta keyword!

Social Networking Made Easy

Tim Pepper — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 20:18:00 GMT

Confused about all the different Social Network applications available? Check out this article which will clear things up for you, or complicate them even more, but at least you'll know what they are.

Social Networking Primer

Why do customers abandon the checkout process?

Tim Pepper — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 18:57:00 GMT

Problems with the checkout process constitute the single biggest loss of revenue for many e-commerce sites, with almost half of online retail transactions abandoned at this stage.

This article looks at the causes of this. A must read if you have a shopping cart and interesting read for anybody who has a conversion process on their website as it lends insite into what makes people "bail"

What is better: SEO or PPC?

Tim Pepper — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 19:23:00 GMT

A common question is what is bettter to do: Advertise a website with SEO (search engine optimization) or PPC (pay per click advertising).

Actually, most commercial websites work best if you use both SEO and PPC. The exact mix depends on your goals.

Pay per click advertising (PPC)

Advantages:

You get instant results. If you advertise your website on pay per click search engines, then you will get traffic now and not several months later.
PPC ads are perfect for time limited offers such as holiday sales.
You can stop PPC ads at any time.
PPC ads make it easy to test different keywords and landing pages.
PPC ads also work with websites that are not very well designed and wouldn't get good search engine rankings.
PPC ads allow you to bid on a large amount of keywords, including misspellings and other keyword variations that you cannot put on your web pages.

Disadvantages:

PPC advertising can become very expensive if you bid on the wrong keywords or if you don't calculate the maximum bid price correctly.
Click fraud can be a problem. Not all clickers are potential customers.

If you advertise your website with PPC ads then you should use a ROI tracking to make sure that you don't waste your money.

Search engine optimization (SEO):

Advantages:

Traffic through organic search engine results is almost free if the up-front work has been done.
After optimizing your website you can use your money for different things and the optimized site will still run.
A larger number of visitors and search result clickers is not a problem.
Search engine optimization delivers long term results that don't require permanent financial input.

Disadvantages:

SEO can be relatively time-consuming up-front.
SEO can require a redesign of your web pages to make your website search engine friendly. However, this usually also results in a better user experience.

Search engine optimization delivers lasting results and it costs considerably less in the long term. However, you must make sure that you optimize correctly if you want to get high search engine rankings.

Pay per click advertising and search engine optimization both contribute to the success of your website. If you use both wisely, you can get many new visitors and customers without spending a fortune. See the recommended resources below for PPC and SEO software tips.

Regardless, you should also use an analytics program (we believe Google Analytics is the way to go) to measure everything going on - without this you'll never be able to see what is really happening.

Search and the Buying Cycle

Tim Pepper — Thu, 21 May 2009 16:09:00 GMT

Great article that explains how 40% of online conversions occurr 5-12 weeks after the initial search, studies prove that most online buyers research purchases long before they transact. This pre-purchase period is likely the best opportunity to capture new customers and influence sales that might otherwise be lost.

ADVERTISERS SHOULD CONSIDER THE EFFECTS OF LATENT CONVERSIONS. Latent conversions demonstrate that search traffic has value beyond same-session online conversions. For example, 85% of purchases were not directly from a search session and 35% were made more than 4 weeks after the last search.

http://www.performics.com/docs/Combined_Comscore_Retail_Studies.pdf

Conversion Formula

Tim Pepper — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 16:45:00 GMT

At marketingexperiments.com they've distilled conversion rate down to a handy little equation:

C = 4M + 3V + 2(I-F) - 2A
It illustrates that the probability of conversion (C) is a function of the buyer’s motivation (M), how strong our value proposition (V) is, and the combination of friction (F) and incentive (I) elements that make up our registration process, further mitigated by any anxiety (A) experienced by the customer during the process.

Marketing Experiments is a reputable company and most likely came up with the formula after exhaustive research.

As a graduate of their Paid Search Certification Program, I can attest to the usefulness of formulas like this in helping to incease conversions.

Since conversions are where almost all PPC programs experience problems, this formula combined with specific landing page development need to be looked at very seriously to get the most ROI out of your PPC programs.

Latest Search Market Share

Tim Pepper — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 20:26:00 GMT

Here is the latest stats on Search Engine Market Share - Google still reigns - any surprise?

September Search Market Share

U.S. Search Engine Rankings, April 2007

Tim Pepper — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 15:37:00 GMT

Google continued to build on its lead in U.S. search market share, claiming nearly half of all searches conducted in April, according to research released by comScore Networks. Hitwise placed the volume at 65 percent of U.S.-based searches in April.

http://www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3626020

Key Differences Between Yahoo Search Marketing & Google AdWords

Tim Pepper — Sun, 15 Jul 2007 16:21:00 GMT

From Search Engine Land: You're probably tired of reading about cultural differences between the two search marketing leaders, Google and Yahoo. Does Semel have better hair than Sergey? Does Yahoo really hire people based on softball prowess? If you're actually using the search marketing platforms, or for that matter, interacting with Googlers or Yahoos to accomplish a marketing-related task, none of this matters. Let's run down some of the most impactful real-world differences between the two search marketing platforms, in the wake of Yahoo's Panama rollout and some recent Google AdWords updates.

http://searchengineland.com/070501-135832.php

Yahoo! Steps Up Click Fraud Efforts

Tim Pepper — Sat, 02 Jun 2007 03:52:00 GMT

Yahoo has announced several steps it has taken to beef up its click fraud detection and prevention efforts today, including an executive-level appointment focusing on marketplace quality and publicly disclosing for the first time the portion of invalid clicks it filters out before advertisers are billed for them.

Reggie Davis, who has served as an attorney for Yahoo for the past seven years, has been named the company's new VP of marketplace quality. His most recent role was as associate general counsel managing litigation, including Yahoo's click fraud litigation. Davis is based in Burbank, Calif., and will operate within the marketing products division of Yahoo's recently-formed Advertiser & Publisher Group, led by Susan Decker.

"This is an opportunity for me to get into an area where we've shown leadership in the past, and expect to continue to show leadership in going forward," Davis said. "I'm especially excited by the commitment of resources. Previously, I've seen a disconnect between how hard the company is working on these issues and outsiders' perception. Now we can help remedy that."

Davis will be given resources to hire a dedicated staff to focus marketplace quality efforts across several product and click protection teams, which are currently operating independently. His team will focus on click fraud, traffic quality, network placement and other marketplace quality issues, including working closely with advertisers and publishers on quality-related matters.

John Slade, senior director of product management for Yahoo Search Marketing, had previously split his time between building the Panama platform and managing clickthrough protection issues. Now that Panama is complete, and Davis is taking over these duties, Slade will move into a role where he can focus full-time on building Yahoo's next-generation of search and display advertising products.

Davis' role will be similar in some respects to that of Google's Shuman Ghosemajumder, business product manager for Trust & Safety at Google. Ghosemajumder has been the voice of Google's click fraud prevention efforts at industry conferences and in the media, and leads the Click Quality Team at Google.

Davis will have operational, reporting, and communications functions within his role, as well as strategic and tactical ones. He will begin by driving the consolidation of several existing quality efforts at Yahoo, and creating new teams to address network quality issues.

Click Fraud by the Numbers

Earlier this month, Google revealed specific data on invalid clicks in its AdWords system. He also announced several planned click-fraud-related initiatives, including IP Filtering capabilities for advertisers, enhanced invalid click reports, educational initiatives, and an improved reporting format.

Ghosemajumder said that invalid clicks on Google AdWords ads have consistently remained under the 10-percent mark, and are generally in low single-digits. In addition, the amount of invalid clicks that are not proactively detected and are caught by advertisers is less than 0.02 percent, according to Ghosemajumder.

Today, Davis revealed that Yahoo's "network discard rate," representing the average number of clicks (in aggregate) that its clickthrough protection filters identify, tag and do not bill to advertisers, is between 12 and 15 percent. He pointed out that this is an aggregate figure, so advertisers should not assume their own discard rate is in this range, but only that the overall average of all advertisers falls into this range.

That number is in line with third-party estimates of click fraud, and reflects Yahoo's aggressiveness in protecting advertisers from click fraud and other clicks that Yahoo thinks should not be billed to advertisers, Davis said.

"It shows the level of our robust clickthrough protection methods, and shows the commitment by Yahoo to be an industry leader, and to dedicate resources to these issues," he said.

While it's heartening to see an increase in transparency from both Google and Yahoo, advertisers should be wary of getting a false sense of security from these kinds of numbers, according to Tom Cuthbert, president and CEO of click fraud monitoring firm Click Forensics.

"They are meaningful because less than a year ago [Google CEO] Eric Schmidt told people click fraud was 'not a material issue.' These moves clearly show click fraud is meaningful, especially to advertisers. But these numbers certainly don't tell the whole story," he said. "We believe Yahoo is taking a more honest approach than others in dealing with the issue of click fraud. But the truth is no advertisers can be sure these figures are accurate without the involvement of a third-party auditing service like there is in other mature media industries, such as television and radio."

Advertisers have been pushing both Google and Yahoo for a stronger focus in this area for years. Earlier this year, Jeffrey Rohrs enumerated 11 specific requests to pay-per-click network providers in his "Sausage Manifesto."

More Anti-Click Fraud Efforts Ahead

Davis also stressed the importance of addressing advertiser concerns about click fraud, which Yahoo has done in the past and will continue to do. He said the improved geo-targeting controls in the new Panama platform, which help advertisers block traffic from countries where they believe invalid clicks are originating, were one of the top requests from advertisers.

The next two most frequent requests were for discounted pricing of certain types of traffic and domain-blocking capabilities, both of which are in the works and expected to be released to advertisers in coming months. Quality-based pricing will aim to price traffic in a manner that is consistent with the quality it delivers to advertisers, so traffic will be priced at different tiers. Domain-level blocking will allow advertisers to identify individual domains from which they do not wish to receive traffic.

Yahoo is also working on building automated advertiser inquiry submission processes, and providing greater detail around advertiser and publisher adjustments, he said. An "ad marketplace quality council" of advertisers is being formed, to help Yahoo better address advertiser and publisher concerns, and an online traffic quality center will be launched soon to provide a one-stop shop for click fraud-related information, he said.

Disclosing individual advertiser discard rates is not something that many advertisers are asking for, according to Davis, but it is something his team is considering. He stressed the need to balance disclosure with preventing fraudsters from getting too much data that would enable them to game the system.

Cuthbert said these efforts are helpful, as long as Google and Yahoo continue in the same direction, both in search and content networks. "Advertisers are looking to ensure they get what they pay for. These programs help but don't address more critical issues such as easing the submission process, reconciliation and third party audits," he said.

Davis said that Yahoo is indeed planning on continuing down the path it has undertaken. "We're focused on the concerns of our advertisers. We're really committed to providing visibility, control, and transparency on behalf of our advertisers. We want to put them in a position to ensure they'll be getting quality traffic," he said.

Eye Gaze Patterns while Searching vs. Browsing a Website

Tim Pepper — Tue, 15 May 2007 15:43:00 GMT

Introduction

According to Nielsen (2006) users tend to focus on the left side of the body of a webpage when reading and fixate very little on information located on the right-hand side. Users maintain this ‘F’ viewing pattern with a few horizontal scans, the first one being longer than the second and a long vertical scan (Figure 1). Implications of this are that users may miss valuable information located on the right-hand side of the page.

http://www.useit.com/alertbox/reading_pattern.html

Figure 1. The “F” pattern as noted by Nielsen (2006).
(The red areas indicate the highest number of fixations, followed by yellow and blue.)

This study investigated whether the “F” pattern style of viewing was dependent on the page content (text-based vs. picture-based) and/or on the user task (searching vs. browsing). This information could play a valuable role in determining where companies should place certain types of information on web pages.

METHOD

Twenty undergraduate students (17 female, 3 male) at Wichita State University participated in this study. Sixty-five percent of the participants were between the ages of 18 and 26 years. A Pentium IV-based PC computer with 96 dpi, 17” monitor with a resolution setting of 1024 x 768 pixels was used. The monitor was integrated with the Tobii 1750 eye-tracking system, which was used to detect and collect participant eye-gaze data during testing. The Tobii 1750 eye-tracker samples the position of the user’s eyes on an average of every 20ms (i.e., 50Hz) and has the eye-tracking hardware (e.g., high resolution camera and near infra-red light-emitting diodes) in the monitor frame. This allows for more natural user behavior by not placing restrictions on the participants (e.g., helmets, chin-rests).

Participants were seated approximately 60 cm away from a computer monitor. All participants completed three tasks each (one search task, one browsing task, and one search task for a non-existent product). Participants were allowed 20 seconds to complete each individual task. Participants were shown two web pages, one at a time (Figure 2). The search task for Figure 2a required participants to find the product category for backpacks. The search tasks for Figure 2b required participants to find information on what kind of backpack was best suited for travel along narrow, uneven trails. Browsing tasks for each page asked the participants to simply browse the information on the page with no specific goal. All participants were also asked to find a product category for a Mountain Bike shown in Figure 2a. This product was not available on the site.

Figure 2a. (left) Picture page viewed by the participants
Figure 2b. (right) Text page viewed by the participants

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

Gaze Patterns While Viewing a Picture Page

Hotspot plots for the browsing task and the search task are shown in Figures 3 and 4. When browsing this page, the users scanned the categories in a horizontal pattern (left to right and right to left) line by line. It should be noted that the area visible when the page displayed (i.e., area "above the fold") received the most fixations even though all users scrolled the page as they browsed.

Figure 3. Hotspot plot while browsing the product categories. The area "below the fold" of this page was located below the fourth row of product categories.

When searching specifically for the backpack category, users appeared to follow a less systematic scan path. Eye tracking of the page was stopped immediately after the target category was identified. For this reason the hotspot plot below shows very light exposure to the areas other than the target area of interest.

Figure 4. Hotspot plot for the backpack category search task.

A sample of individual gaze plots from users browsing the page (top 3 screenshots in Figure 5) also show the left to right search pattern. The gaze plots of searching for the backpack category (bottom 3 screenshots in Figure 5) show that the users followed a more random path.

Figure 5. Gaze plots for browsing (top) and searching (bottom) a page of product categories. (The blue circle indicates the duration of fixation with larger circles representing longer fixations; and the blue lines connecting the dots indicate the saccade path)

Figure 6 shows the hotspot plot for the search for the nonexistent Mountain Bike category. The user gazed almost uniformly across all the categories with the heaviest concentration in the top left.

Figure 6. Hotspot plot while searching for the nonexistent Mountain Bike category.

Further investigation of the individual gaze plots, shown in Figure 7, shows how each user followed a unique and random path while searching for the nonexistent Mountain Bike category. It was interesting to see that several of the participants did not fixate on all of the categories.

Figure 7. Individual gaze plots while searching for the nonexistent Mountain Bike category.

Gaze Patterns While Viewing a Text Page

Figure 8 shows hotspot plots when browsing and searching the text page. During both tasks, users seemed to follow by the “F” pattern suggested by Nielsen (2006). Users had more fixations at the beginning of a line than the end of a line, and also the fixations were more for the first few lines than for subsequent lines.

Figure 8. Hotspot plot while performing the browsing (left) and searching (right) task for the text page.

A sample of individual gaze plots for browsing (top 4 plots) and for searching for the specific information (lower 4 plots) are shown in Figure 9. It can be noted that the gaze plot in the browsing task is somewhat more dispersed than the gaze plot in the searching tasks where it is more concentrated to the upper portion of the webpage. This was due to the fact that the participants searching for the specific information tended to read the text more closely than the participants that were browsing. However, some individual differences can be seen in the second plot on the browsing and third plot in the searching tasks, which actually show an opposite pattern.

Figure 9. Sample individual gaze plots for the browsing (top) and searching (bottom) task for the text page.

Conclusion

From this study we have replicated what Nielsen (2006) called the "F" pattern of viewing for a text-based webpage as shown in Figure 8. With a few exceptions, we also found the browsing task elicited this same "F" pattern though it was more dispersed than the search task. This pattern and the exceptions can be seen in Figure 9.

The "F" pattern style of viewing does not seem to hold true while browsing or searching a picture-based webpage. Much of the participant's gaze was on the categories of pictures that were above the fold as shown in Figure 3. Participants were very efficient at searching for a particular category among the 31 categories of pictures, however, the pattern of search for each participant was unique. The participants fixated on only 8-15 items before the target was identified. The style of viewing while searching for a non-existent category was more uniformly distributed above and below the fold unlike in the browse task where categories below the fold did not receive many fixations.

These results reinforce the importance of conciseness in the delivery of text on web pages. Since the right hand side of the page and the content below the fold is typically ignored, pages should be structured so that the important content falls in the "F" pattern. Further investigation is needed to see how the viewing pattern changes when the text is divided into columns. For picture pages, positioning the important or featured products above the fold is most effective. Further investigation is needed to determine what kind of pictures draw more attention and how viewing patterns change for web pages containing both pictures and text.

ReferenceS

Nielsen, J. (2006). F-Shaped Pattern For Reading Web Content. Retrieved January 18, 2007, from www.useit.com/alertbox/reading_pattern.html

Invalid Clicks on Google

Tim Pepper — Tue, 01 May 2007 18:14:00 GMT

Frequently we are asked about what the bugetary impact is on invalid clicks or "click fraud" on a pay-per-click program when using Google's AdWords. Here is a link to the latest information provided by Google's Inside Adwords, the "official source for information about AdWords".

http://adwords.blogspot.com/2007/02/invalid-clicks-googles-overall-numbers.html

Renting Email Lists - Costs, Deliverability & Targeting

Tim Pepper — Sun, 15 Apr 2007 14:43:00 GMT

-> Step #1. What’s a list rental and what should you ask your list broker

First a definition: A list rental is the purchase of a third party’s email list for one-time use (unless negotiated otherwise). The emails are sent on your behalf using your creative and your subject line to a list of people who have knowingly signed up to receive email offers from the named list owner. Other points:

- You review the lists on the market by looking at their data cards. List managers and brokers include these on their sites. (In Part II, we’ll include sample data cards and show you how to read them.)
- This is not affiliate or co-registration (see hotlinks below for more on that).
- You never get access to the list of email names.
- The name of the company in the “From” line is the list owner's, not yours.
- You and the list owner agree on the number of recipients and the send date/time.
- You forward the creative.
- Have the list run against your supression Do-Not-Email list (see CAN-SPAM below).
- The list owner sends from their server.

If you haven’t rented before, be sure to not only research which list brokers are best for your niche, but also request tests and negotiate for the best trial prices. Plus:

o You have to be experienced at measurement if you want to be successful at renting
o You have to be good at measuring lifetime customer value

-> Step #2. Lists that work best, plus costs to rent them

Before testing a list -- much less renting one -- ask who else has been renting the list in continuation to get a feel for what marketers are having success with the brand and if it makes sense for your brand. Look for marketers with good direct response reputations who repeatedly use the list. They must be seeing decent metrics on the back end.

“You never know how many emails are going to break through the clutter,” says Elizabeth Arnold, Associate Marketing Manager with Rand McNally, who has tested B-to-B lists to generate leads for their mapping/locator API. “You have to make sure it's targeted. Small lists are usually better.”

You'll hear a lot of different pricing numbers out there (and we'll address this more thoroughly in Part II of this Special Report), but for the time being, let’s state that targeted consumers lists are running anywhere from $90 to $160 per thousand names (CPM). Prices range from $65-$125 per thousand names for larger, aggregated databases.

For B-to-B, lower-end aggregated small business or opportunity seeker lists start around $75 per thousand. The higher-end lists targeting controlled circ publications and taking aim at specific groups, such as CFOs, can run as high as $300 per thousand names.

Make sure you’re renting lists that are double opt-in (emails are gathered, but rather than added to the list immediately, the names are sent a secondary email requiring a response to opt in to the list). To be completely sure:

o You may want to check the opt-in form personally to be sure it’s clear.
o Sign up for the list yourself and watch what else you get.

-> Step #3. Deliverability and CAN-SPAM considerations

Anyone marketing with a rented list -- especially heavy emailers -- needs to ask the list owner/broker to run a suppression file. In short, suppression files remove records from a database that are no longer accurate or current, or a name and address that one has an obligation to remove.

More specifically, for both CAN-SPAM and branding concerns, you have to ask the list owner to run their names against your “Do Not Email” file and “Unsubscribe” file.

MarketingSherpa also advises that you provide two kinds of opt-out links for campaigns involving rented names: a regular unsubscribe button and a “Do Not Email” option.

The difference between the two is that unsubscribes get scrubbed from *your* list, while people getting placed into the Do Not Email file represent a faction who haven’t joined your list in the first place. You need to have the mechanism in place to act on their request that they do not want to hear from your brand via email. You do not have the right-of-way to email them more than once simply because you paid for their name.

You also have to include a physical street address at the bottom of your creative to keep in accordance with CAN-SPAM. And, make sure to have the time/date stamps for all of the rented addresses at your disposal. The good news is that these types of datapoints are becoming more granularly available.

“When a recipient complains, what you should do is go back to that record and find out where that person opted in,” says Rob Fitzgerald, VP Interactive Division, Walter Karl. “And you can say, ‘On April 5th at 2:30 p.m., you might not remember, but you opted in to receive third-party information.’ You can validate what you are doing.”

Another tip: give a staffer the subtitle of “Reputation Manager” to keep an eye on blacklists and abuse email groups. He or she should check these weekly if not daily, while also keep watch of both partners’ and competitors’ campaigns by opting into all of their programs. They also should keep separate email files for each partner and/or competitor, vetting affiliates’ campaigns to make sure they are maintaining best practices. You cannot wait for your prospects to complain.

And, of course, your offers have to be relevant to what they opted in for; otherwise, your message is going to be treated by the recipient as junk and your reputation will suffer. Other suggestions:

- Watch to see if the list owner switches IP addresses
- Set up dummy mailboxes to catch junk
- Verify the original point of name collection

-> Step #4. Creative that works best

Do not assume that your top-performing house email creative will test well with a rented file. In fact, Sherpa recommends that you develop completely separate creative for your acquisition campaigns. Many marketers new to renting will test their best campaigns on a rental, see crappy results and say, “Whoa, rentals don’t work!”

Not necessarily.

Remember that the recipients are in a different point in the relationship than your past customers -- they are brand-new to you! And do not hold the belief that since you are a well-known brand (if that’s the case) that the identity will equate into an automatic email relationship. Email relationships have to be established on their own.

For introductory campaigns, use benefit-driven copy (as opposed to offer-driven copy, which works better for your house file). You want to give them an idea of who you are.

Most consumers and businesses are a little afraid of getting hoodwinked online, so give them evidence that suggests credibility. For instance, use an “About Us” box on your landing page to say, “Here’s who we are and what we offer.” Or, tell them if you have 2 million repeat customers or have been in business 17 years.

In short, establish “trust points.” If the list owner comes from a high-trust brand, mention “as recommended by Business 2.0” or “brought to you with permission from Business 2.0" on the landing page.

-> Step #5. Measurement and considerations when conducting a list rental test

You don’t know how bouncy the list really is -- because we can only truly measure hard bounces. For instance, 97% delivery rates don’t take into account the number of emails going into filters. So, the only certain way of accurately assigning value to the list is to look at the opens, clickthrough rates and what percentages of those numbers are converting to sale in your test.

“There are thousands of email lists on the market, but less than 20% of them [B-to-C and B-to-B together] are worthwhile,” says Josh Perlstein, President Response Media, a list brokerage firm. “It’s important to test, and it’s key that you use single-source lists or transparent-source.”

And, don’t be afraid to ask a broker how many names on a list should equal 100 clicks. That equation can take you a long way in the test assessment. Then, do the math to determine what results meet your criteria.

Generally speaking, if you run a test for 5,000 names, you can’t always be sure about the trial’s accuracy. It’s not exactly earth-shattering news, but the fact remains that a minority of less-than-above-the-board list owners/brokers might quietly send your test campaign to 10,000 in order to raise the response rate and get you on board for a huge buy. (Of course, no list company that we would be caught dead speaking to.)

Also ask if the list has a recency selection. Recency makes a big difference in response rates. Many list owners don't charge extra for this, but it's often not on the formal rate card. Plus, only 25% of lists offer recency.

Really large list buys can contain names already in your house file. Both B-to-C and B-to-B publishing marketers should be especially wary of paying for those names.

“Certain lists -- we’ll see up to 40% duplication,” says Nicole Delma, Email Marketing Coordinator, Conde Nast. “We often request a sample in order to run a test. Or we will have a third-party vendor run a check of our list against theirs, and that will help us with the pricing. When we do go to a third-party vendor, the reason is because there’s a code or a demographic that we do not collect in our database.”

4 Specific B-to-C Tips
Tip #1. Study all of the possible demographic segments and values -- because it can be a lot like car sales in that they will try to sell you a lower-valued demo and mark them up. If you overpay, you’ll lose the profitability.

Tip #2. Give yourself enough time to get at least three to five quotes.

Tip #3. Try to rent from marketers who don’t email more than twice a week.

Tip #4. Advertisers need to know where the addresses originated from. Find out where the names are collected URL by URL. Know what they opted in for.

4 Specific B-to-B Tips
Tip #1. There are more opportunities for more targeted lists than there were just a few years ago. You can target the IT market by renting CIO Magazine’s list, as just one example.

Tip #2. Don’t be surprised to see a list deal where you also have to buy a webinar and a space ad. Such arrangements may or may not be in your favor.

Tip #3. Take note of domain name expirations in the news (publications/vendors/software firms) and scrape them from your campaigns.

Tip #4. Selects are still important, but don’t forget about source. You can tell a lot about the potential effectiveness of a file by looking at the source.

Top 10 Organic Optimization Components

Tim Pepper — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 16:40:00 GMT

If you want to get high rankings in the search engines it's important to know how search engines actually index web sites. Click here to read the top 10 list as voted by search professionals. This is good stuff. If you need more help, contact us.

http://searchengineland.com/070403-145435.php

Google Website Optimizer - Google Unwraps Multi-Variate Site Testing

Tim Pepper — Sun, 08 Apr 2007 18:20:00 GMT

With pay-per-click (PPC) we are limited to 25 characters in the title and 2 description lines of 35 characters each.

With these limits the objective should be not to sell, but to qualify serious prospects, or disqualify window shoppers.

The place to start selling is the landing page that you bring searchers to.

An analogy is to look at your website as a retail store. With PPC, we have brought them into your store, which is your landing page. Now you have unlimited space to begin the sales process.

To help out with this, Google has introduced their Website Optimizer. I am using it on our homepage to measure the difference between 2 offers.

I think all PPC customers should be using it too.......

http://www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3625473

Pandora - Created by the Music Genome Project

Tim Pepper — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 17:28:00 GMT

If you like music (who doesn't?), the you'll love the Pandora. Created by the Genome Music Project, it is a fascinating collection of music of all genres. It allows you to develop your own music streams, called "stations" based off the kinds of music you like.

For example, I have one station I call "Real Guitar Players". I love guitar shredders, old and new, and here I can listen all day to the classics from Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Steve Vai, Eric Johnson, Joe Satrini, Eddie Van Halen, Jimmy Page, Jimi Hendrix - etc.

What a blast it is hearing old Cream, Yardbirds or Robin Trower.

You can create as many "stations" as you want. And you can even refine them. If it's not quite right you can tell it more and it will get better for you.

And, staying true to its social media roots, you can share your stations with your friends.

http://www.pandora.com

Google Cheat Sheet

Tim Pepper — Sun, 01 Apr 2007 16:23:00 GMT

Ran across this today, a very cool lists of all Google services and tools as well as background information. The Cheat Sheet offers a great reference for understanding Google's building concepts and ideas. You can also download a PDF of it. ...

http://www.adelaider.com/google/

A very cool lists of all Google services and tools as well as background information. The Cheat Sheet offers a great reference for understanding Google's building concepts and ideas. You can also download a PDF of it.