February 2008 - Posts
If you are obsessed with what your competitors are doing, then check out
Competitio.us - an excellent resource for making the process of competitive
research much easier.
The service enables anyone a simple way to track who competitors are, what
they are doing and most importantly how their activities affect your company and
your bottom line. "Competitors" can either be a company, a service, even a
product. Competitio.us also enables users to find, save and share news about the
competition you've identified through a rather elegant "clipping" system. There
are quite a few other noteworthy features including the ability to create a
comparison matrix, RSS news feed subscriptions, and traffic data comparisons
from Alexa. Users can track multiple projects and collaborate with members of
your team.
I first came across Competitio.us about one year ago. While it fell of my
radar after initial testing, one of our readers sent in a request for free,
easy, ongoing competitive research tool. Competitio.us is a good one - so enjoy
- setting up an account would be a great weekend project.
Got a question about Web success? Need a critique of your current Website
design or a review of your online marketing techniques? Want to touch base and
tell me about your services or ask for a recommendation for a solutions
provider? I'll be streaming live today - 2-4 PM Central Time - so send me your
questions, your websites for review, anything - Website Magazine is here for
you. You never know, we might even have a guest appearance by Website Magazine
managing editor Mike Phillips.
Go to the Website Magazine Streaming Video Now
Working on that next revolutionary Web application? Online IT infrastructure
provider PEER 1 Network has partnered with Microsoft to offer 50 free developer
sandbox servers for a 30-day trial. If you're a Web developer interested in
gaining full control to a powerful collection of Microsoft website development
applications (pre-loaded into the sandbox server and connected to PEER 1's
extensive online network infrastructure) in a dedicated server environment, now
is your chance.
“We are pleased to offer this great program that meets the needs of
developers who want to explore new applications and ensure that they work well
before exposing them in a production environment,” said Robert Miggins, vice
president of business development for PEER 1. “With the sandbox servers we
give developers the platform and tools they require to build applications, test,
and deploy, all with a seamless experience.”
The developer sandbox supports IIS 6, .ASP.NET 2.0 and PHP 5 and provides the
following design and management tools:
- Microsoft® Expression® Studio: Expression Studio includes
Expression Blend, Expression Web, and Expression Design - The professional
design tools and innovative technologies in Expression Studio give you the
flexibility and freedom to bring your vision to reality.
- Microsoft Visual Studio Express Editions: Visual Web Developer
2005 Express Edition and Visual Basic 2005 Express Edition – This is the
ideal tool for productively building object-oriented applications for
Windows on the .NET Framework.
- Microsoft Silverlight: A cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in
for delivering the next generation of media experiences and rich interactive
applications (RIAs) for the Web
- Microsoft SQL Server Standard 2005: This tool contains features
that will help your team develop data applications in a fraction of the
time, helping to drive data to the corners of your business.
You are spending money on PPC advertising, but are those visitors real? Do
you genuinely have some hot prospects on your website or are you just accepting
automated traffic that will never convert into an actual sale? What's a good way
to measure traffic quality from PPC traffic? Perhaps it's
Page Depth.
Measuring the traffic quality of inbound visitors is a challenge for most
Internet marketers. While most of us are content at the end of the month to
understand the ROI (return on investment), the ROAS (return on
advertising spend) or even get a grip on the
lifetime value for each customer from individual traffic sources,
another important and yet quick metric for measuring lead quality is page depth;
the average amount of pages a visitor sees during a session on your website.
It's easy to determine page depth - just divide the number of visitors
received by the total number of pages viewed. While page depth often
includes conversion pages (which may skew the results slightly) it does give us
factual evidence on the quality of leads being paid for in a timely fashion.
There are many reasons for a minimal page depth including issues with site
architecture (confusing navigation), poor landing page choices, or the site’s
general appearance - any combination of these could be preventing visitors from
going deeper through your site. Assuming that there are no serious usability
issues with your site, Page Depth is a powerful means for measuring the quality
of leads coming from your different traffic generating sources.
You hear it all the time: Content is King. And if you're a
Website Magazine reader you've heard it here too. But you can have pages and pages of content that ends up harming your reputation if you're not careful. Misspellings, poor grammar and jumbled sentences can ruin any website, no matter how useful the information provided. When a reader of your website sees poorly-written copy they will immediately question your credibility. And it's not just for bloggers - messy product descriptions can be a major turn-off, sending potential customers to another site. For many, bad copy translates to unreliable information.
So, it's always a good idea to buff up on your writing skills.
DailyWritingTips.com is a great resource. Not only does this site keep writing skills sharp, but even provides useful strategies - such as their recent post, "A Freelance Writer's Basic Guide to SEO."
And if you're not yet a
Website Magazine reader, get your
free subscription today!
Lead Scrubbing is a process of removing paid leads that
are bogus (
contact information is invalid) or duplicates of files they
currently have on hand. Lets try to uncover some truths
about the process.
Lead scrubbing prevents buyers from having to pay twice for the same lead. As
an advertiser, you would not want to pay for information you already had, right? Also, if you buy 1,000 leads and 100 of them are bogus, you're essentially paying more for each good lead than you bargained for. This, in turn, begins to price some advertisers out of the market - the advertisers can't afford to buy the good leads and the affiliates begin to lose customers. Therefore, lead scrubbing and de-duping leads keeps the payout high for affiliates and their networks and ensures advertisers do not end up losing money on leads that don't even
carry the potential to convert into a sale.
If all the leads you received were good leads, you'd make more money. If you
spend on leads that do not carry the potential to convert, you'll quickly find
yourself out of business. This is the reason why there are many businesses which
provide real time lead-scrubbing. Companies such as leadQC, MelissaData,
TargusINFO, and ServiceObjects are notable in this industry and they've earned a
respected status by ensuring the value of information provided by affiliates.
Now that you understand lead scrubbing, would you buy a lead that's not
scrubbed?
Studies show that only about one in five people read past the headline of an article. I would venture to guess that number is even lower when it comes to press releases. Especially in a point-and-click world, grabbing a user's attention is critical. While scanning through PRWeb this morning, I came across two very good examples of headline writing about a topic that's not easy to sum up.
Example one: Headline writing gone awry.
OpSource Provides Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) Delivery for the New Rollbase Platform as a Service (PaaS) for Business Users
The problem: It's vague, I'm confused and not interested. Who is OpSource? What's a Rollbase Platform? Who are these "Business Users?" The headline is too long and makes my eyes glaze over. This headline may be intriguing to a select few, but lacks in mass appeal. On the upside, it's stuffed with a few keywords that may pop up when searched. This press release is intended to announce a partnership between Rollbase and OpSource that will help non-tech savvy businesses owners launch custom Web-based applications - did you get that from the headline? And if it's aimed at non-programming experts, why the jargon-filled headline?
Example two: Headline writing done right.
What SaaS Vendors Don’t Want You to Know about Software as a Service
Why it works: It's direct, concise and pulls me in. If you're interested in SaaS you're probably going to need to go through a vendor. And if there is something these vendors don't want you to know, it probably involves you saving money - always an effective headline element. In addition, anything promising inside information and making you a more informed consumer is an effective lure. This also has some keywords built in that may show in search results. This press release is promoting a webinar about ways to select SaaS vendors and save you from paying hidden costs - hinted at nicely in the headline while still urging further reading. This headline could be even better by removing "SaaS." It's spelled out at the end and provides an unnecessary stumbling block for the eyes.
What should be considered when writing headlines - especially for press releases - is what you're trying to accomplish. As noted before, the first example has some keywords stuffed in there that may be good for searches - if that's what people are searching for. The problem is that for general mass appeal, it's not going to work. The point of a press release is for it to be read. And confusing people from the start is just not a good idea. Detail should be reserved for the deck (the descriptive area below a headline) or for the first few sentences of the body of the press release. The headline's job is to pull people in, not turn them away. The rest of your copy can explain your service but you first need to get your readers wanting to know more.
If you are researching a topic or want to keep track of what is being said about
a certain product or brand, there is often no better place than an active
Internet forum. While search engines are wonderful resources to help us locate
information, where they often fail is in the immediacy of the content provided.
Today's darling could be tomorrow's outcast, so keeping tabs on what's being
said is imperative. The challenge of forums is that there are so many and
engaging in those communities for the sake of research takes a great deal of
time and effort.
Enter Dipiti (beta): from the Dipiti.com
site: "Dipiti currently connects online users to 2,322 communities and
28,979,436 conversations. Dipiti does this by discovering, qualifying, and
organizing thousands sites of all sizes across the web so online users can
quickly and easily find the most relevant information, connect with others on
communities and expert sites, and gain answers and support."
Dipiti only focuses on a few categories of interest (Health, Legal, Money, Pet
Care). I conducted a search for "IRS audit" in the legal category and found only
two site results. Another search however for "Flu" in the health category found
a respectable 41 results from some good sites with seemingly active
conversations happening.
While there is room for improvement in the depth of forum coverage, Dipiti
could end up an essential part of online research for marketers.
Page views are dead - long live "engagement mapping".
Microsoft announced Monday that it would begin testing a new way to measure
the effectiveness of Internet advertising. Engagement mapping is due to begin
(in beta of course) on March 1st. This for many has signified a radical
departure from the current standard wherein marketers tie sales, leads and
traffic to the last advertisement that a user clicked on online.
Engagement mapping will take into account all Internet interactions that lead
consumer to purchase products, giving advertisers a more accurate assessment of
how to plan their online marketing campaigns. The new approach will better
convey how each ad exposure (display, rich media, search - seen multiple times
on multiple properties) influences eventual purchases.
From a Reuters article, ""The 'last ad clicked' is an outdated and flawed
approach because it essentially ignores all prior interactions the consumer has
with a marketer's message," said Brian McAndrews, senior vice president of the
advertiser and publisher solutions unit at Microsoft.
Syndication across many channels is essential to success in the Web 2.0 landscape. Often the problem is keeping track of your content, where it resides and how its performing.
Traackr (not the same as Trackur,
reviewed earlier) does just that.
With Traackr, you can set up an account to monitor your media offerings across different sites and get feedback as to how much its being accessed and a buzz rating - whether that content is growing in popularity or fading, even compare your success with others. Create campaigns filled with assets (a piece of content) and follow the progression. You can track material on YouTube, MySpace, Flickr, Revver and others.
It's a nice, effective way to see how your marketing efforts are going with these sites - rather than needing to log in to each one of them every time you want to take a look.
Lyris announced a new pricing structure this week that will bundle many
technologies essential to the success of online marketers.
For an initial seat price of $299 per month, marketers get a set volume of
5,000 emails each month, along with unlimited use of Lyris’ hosted digital
marketing solutions; Web analytics (ClickTracks), Web content management (Hot
Banana), deliverability monitoring (EmailAdvisor), and PPC campaign management (BidHero)
technologies.
“For the price of one point solution, we’re giving marketers everything
they need to be successful online,” said Blaine Mathieu, SVP Marketing,
Lyris, Inc. “Marketers know that everything they do online is interconnected
– so why should they have to work with disparate technologies and pay extra for
each piece? Search ads, landing pages, Web sites and email messaging – they’re
all part of the same ecosystem. We’re giving marketers what they need to manage
all of this effectively – a product that integrates everything, and a disruptive
pricing model that gives them this valuable product at a great price.”
Minimum bids for a number of Sponsored Search keywords will no longer be fixed at $.10 for Yahoo Search Marketing advertisers. The new minimum bids can be lower or higher than $.10. Content Match minimum bids currently however will remain at $.10.
According to the YSM weblog
post on the minimum bids subject, the amount set as the minimum bid on a keyword in Sponsored Search can vary depending on multiple factors, such as the relevance of your keywords (as measured by the quality of the ads associated with them), and the number of bidders and bid amounts in the particular keyword market. Advertisers, are you listening? You'll now have to meet a "reserve price".
As you can imagine, some advertisers are none too pleased with the Google-esque pricing model. One comment on the post sums up the thoughts of a few advertisers - "
This is terrible, I'm going back to Google."
The following are press releases that caught our attention today, February 27th, 2008. If you have a news announcement you would like to share with the
Website Magazine community, please
contact Website Magazine
editors now or submit it to WM Share.
10,000 Vulnerabilities
Updated Daily to Protect Your Website : Application vulnerabilities are
the Achilles heel in the protection of websites. GamaScan, an online web
vulnerability assessment solutions product, identifies web based security
vulnerabilities.
Read the release :
Comment in the forum
Ping Identity Sunsets Open Source
Content Management Solution for CommonSpot(TM) by PaperThin : Cites
Stability and Reliability as Key Reasons for Move to the CommonSpot Content
Management System.
Read the
release :
Comment in the forum
Young Copy Launches Optimized Press
Release Services : Companies can now utilize search engine optimized
press release writing and distribution services to increase online marketing
efforts.
Read the release :
Comment in the forum
Datran Media Announces StormPost
4.0, with Facebook Social Media Targeting and Coremetrics LIVEMail 2.0
Integrations : The latest release of Datran Media's leading email
marketing delivery and monetization platform increases marketers' ability to
interact with customers and prospects in the most sophisticated ways.
Read
the release :
Comment in the forum
Winpopup Lan Messenger
to Abandon Software Activation : Fomine Software announces today that
its flagship product, Winpopup LAN Messenger, will no longer use the software
activation technique to combat end-user piracy, and abandon the time-based
expiration of the freely downloadable evaluation version by offering evaluation
users three free licenses for Winpopup LAN Messenger.
Read the release
:
Comment in the forum
Scribe Software Releases
Adapter 4.0 for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 : The Scribe Adapter for
Microsoft CRM strengthens Microsoft's "power of choice" by offering integration
capabilities to both on-premise and CRM Live customers.
Read the release
:
Comment in the forum
Brickstream Launches Clarity
Video Analytics Appliance for Security Applications : Brickstream's
category leading Clarity Video Analytic Appliance is now available for Security
Applications. Brickstream's Clarity for Security provides industry leading
accuracy with lowest total cost of ownership in an Edge based stereo video
appliance.
Read the
release :
Comment in the forum
Social/Business networking site LinkedIn has announced that they are now mobile-ready.
Of course, with anything mobile these days, the site is optimized for the iPhone but will work with other handsets. The announcement follows other social networking mobile announcements, including Facebook and MySpace.
Check out
LinkedIn mobile.
DoubleClick/Performics released data from a survey of affiliates which revealed
some interesting information on what publishers want from advertiser promotions.
If you are running an affiliate program or are thinking about launching a
program, the information discovered through the survey will be interesting:
- Fifty-three percent of affiliate publishers expressed the most interest
in “free shipping” promotions, followed by “exclusive affiliate channel
offers” (48 percent)
- Long-running offers are preferred by 31 percent of affiliate publishers,
followed by 28 percent preferring new offers weekly
- A majority of affiliate publishers (58 percent) prefer one week advanced
notice for communications on upcoming short-term advertiser offers
- Expiring offers are preferred by 48 percent (“agree” or “strongly
agree”) of affiliate publishers
But what motivates consumers to act on specific advertising offers?
This is important to understand for a number of reasons, but by helping the
affiliates you have recruited sell more efficiently, the return on your
affiliate program will be much greater. Findings from recently conducted
consumer focus groups include:
- “Dollar-off” types of offers are cited by consumers as most likely to
“motivate” a purchase
- Consumers view online promotions and online shopping as providing an
element of control
- Many consumers report that they like free shipping, but if they want a
product, they do not mind paying a “reasonable” shipping fee
The following are press releases that caught our attention today, February 26th, 2008. If you have a news announcement you would like to share with the
Website Magazine community, please
contact Website Magazine
editors now or submit it to WM Share.
JumpBox Selected for Under the Radar
Showcase of Emerging Startups : Virtual appliance company chosen to
demonstrate how its web applications are changing the way business views server
software.
Read the
release :
Comment in the forum
RegistryPro/NCC Group Partnership
Ensures Continued Security of .Pro Top-Level Domain : NCC Group will
provide registry escrow service for all critical registration data managed by
RegistryPro.
Read
the release :
Comment in the forum
SmartDraw Helps Users Create
Flowcharts and Other Graphics without Ever Touching a Mouse :
SmartDraw.com announced today that users can now create polished,
professional-looking flowcharts in minutes--without ever touching a mouse. With
SmartDraw 2008, business professionals can use keyboard shortcuts to create
flowcharts quickly and effortlessly. Flowcharts practically draw themselves,
based on the user's instructions.
Read the release
:
Comment in the forum
Atomic Public Relations Wins Hotwire
PR Review : Atomic Public Relations Wins Hotwire PR Review. Additional
new Atomic clients include Vurv, Method, ThePoint.com and Animoto. PR Agency to
provide mix of media services from classical PR to SEO, SEM and Digital Video.
Read the release
:
Comment in the forum
System76 Announces Servers with
Ubuntu 7.10 and Canonical Support Services : System76 Inc., a leading
provider of Ubuntu pre-installed laptops and desktops, introduces the first
available line of certified, pre-installed servers featuring Ubuntu 7.10 Server
Edition -- delivering a new choice in quality server platforms.
Read the release
:
Comment in the forum
INM Announces Development Services for
Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR) : Enhances company's ability to deploy
rich Internet applications (RIAs) to the desktop.
Read the release
:
Comment in the forum
New Web Site Provides
Merchants a Safe Haven for Payment Industry Information and Consolidated
Services : BankCard Central announces the launch of its new company Web
site. The website focuses on educating merchants on credit card processing,
payment card its capacity as a full-scale merchant services provider.
Read the release :
Comment in the forum
Localized Data Recovery Services
in USA -- Disk Doctors Data Recovery Labs Expands its Operations :
During hard drive and RAID crashes users tend to seek Data Recovery services
locally. Disk Doctors expands its presence with additional lab locations
worldwide and specifically in United States of America to cater to the growing
demand for its specialized services.
Read the
release :
Comment in the forum
Online forums are loaded with content - and it's not always easy to find or indexed by the search engines. As more users participate in these online communities and forums, more content is being overlooked.
Twing.com (in beta) is a new search engine focused on discovering and filtering the online chatter.
“Online forums are an established medium people have been using to communicate since the early days of the internet, even predating the web. The number of users of these forums has been consistently growing year over year, and recent estimates of U.S. users alone exceeds 50 million,” said Kevin Shea, General Manager for Twing.com.
Twing could be a very useful tool for following the conversation about your industry, or even your own brand. By searching these forums you could discover what people are saying about your site - it's no secret that online discussions can spread rapidly, for better or worse. Find out what you're doing right and where you need to improve. There's only one true test for the value of your brand, and that's your audience or consumers.
Twing allows you to search by keyword, search particular forums, exclude terms, search by media or even language, among other filtering tools. You can also submit your own forum to the Twing directory to generate traffic and become part of the Twing community.
Online reputation management software Trackur launched today. The service
will allow users to monitor social media, webblogs and news sites for predefined
keywords or phrases (company name, product name, brand name, etc.). The service
is designed for those that do not have the time, or skills, to set up their own
reputation monitoring system, but could prove to be very helpful for serious
bloggers and marketers looking to keep their fingers on the pulse of what's
happening on the Web in relation to their brand or a topic of interest.
As you can imagine, the solution (as I see it) is appropriate more for those
that have a greater number of Web mentions and need to keep an eye on what is
being said about their brand or the brands and products of their competitors.
Case in point, reviewing the thousands of citations for a big brand like Google
each day (over 13K results for a search on that brand today) could be quite a
time-intensive task. While Trackur lacks the ability to assign value to each
source or sort based on community influence, it is a handy way to organize
reputation monitoring tasks. Trackur does fortunately feature the ability to
filter results and mark "favorites" which helps work your way through the
potentially infinite number of results. For example, from the 13K "Google"
results, I added "must include: advertising" and "does not include: adsense" and
was able to get the number of results down to a manageable 200 hundred items or
so. There is also an "advanced search" feature which enables users to search all
sources, text only sources or video and image sources only.
There is currently a free, no obligation 14-day trial - while still a little buggy, it's
definitely one of the must-tests for this week.
Unless you are seriously behind the times, you know that online video is surging. But you don't need to record someone falling on their face, a hilarious dance video or exploding soda and mints to have a hit video. Some of the most viewed are tutorials. And you don't always need a video camera or actor. Screencasting is an excellent way to show users, step-by-step how to accomplish a task, use your software or navigate your site.
FreeScreencast.com is making it remarkable easy. With their free flash-based software you can select the portion of your screen you wish to record, make the screencast, upload it to their website, share it with the community and embed it on your own site. It's quick, simple and effective. And how's this for refreshing - you don't even have to give them your real email address. No spam, no hassles.
One of the many challenges that many small businesses face is that establishing
a new and unique phone number for every website that you come up with can be
expensive. While VoIP does provide some solace in terms of price, another option
might be to use solutions such as Google's GrandCentral, a service which offers
"
one phone number for everything".
GrandCentral has been in private beta for months. If you've been waiting
on your own invitation, you can
sign up now,
courtesy of Blogger.com. The word on the street was that this was only for
Google's Blogspot users, but follow the link and you'll find that anyone can
sign up. Once you're in (and I have not tried this yet, so post in the comment
if I'm wrong) you should be able to invite a few other people (maybe even
yourself which would give you multiple numbers for all your small business
needs).
Previous Coverage of GrandCentral:
Google
acquired GrandCentral back in early July of 2007.
The following are press releases that caught our attention today, February 25th, 2008. If you have a news announcement you would like to share with the
Website Magazine community, please
contact Website Magazine
editors now or submit it to WM Share.
The following are the top voted Web news stories, posts and article submitted to Share.WebsiteMagazine.com
for the week ending February 22th, 2008. Share the news (industry articles,
blog posts, tutorials and more) that you find important at
Share.WebsiteMagazine.com. You'll also find the top Website Magazine weblog posts and features from our new Consumer Corner weblog featured below. If you're not yet a Website Magazine reader, sign up for a free subscription to the most widely read and distributed print publication on Web success in the industry!
Top Stories From Around the Web
Top Posts at Website Magazine
Top Posts From Website Magazine Consumer Corner
A Website Magazine reader called in this morning and inquired about Web database
solutions. It's always good to hear about the needs and wants of subscribers as
it helps us understand what they are working on and how Website Magazine can
help them be successful. I provided a few suggestions based on the explanation
of the project and I thought I would share with our other readers.
The objective was to create a searchable database available on the Web. Sounds
simple enough, right? Not really, depending on budgets and expectations for the
finished product, there are a variety of possible solutions. Here are a few that
I recommended:
1) Caspio Solution: The Caspio Bridge is
an enterprise-grade platform for creating and deploying web database solutions
that does note requir any programming expertise. I've tested Caspio and found it
an intuitive, stable platform that would be an excellent choice for those
thinking about launching their own Web application.
2) Open Source Solution: There's usually an open-source solution
available that at least somewhat mirrors commercial, enterprise-level software.
Sourceforge.net is a repository of such
open-source solutions and contains hundreds of database offerings such as Simple
Directory Listing, which with a few tweaks might render a workable database app.
3) Custom Software Solution: Open source solutions work fine for many as
do hosted database creators like Caspio. There will come a time however when you
want a little more control over the finished product. When that happens,
developing a custom software solution will be the way to go. If you're looking
for specialists in the Web programming industry, look no further than
Website Magazine's Who's Who
directory. A past issue of our magazine contained a
buyers guide to purchasing custom software - take a look.
4) Mashup Solution: Perhaps the easiest way to accomplish our objective
of building a Web database is to mash up some existing services through
Yahoo! Pipes or
Microsoft's Popfly. Let's look at Pipes to see how we can create mashups for
this purpose. The "Location Input" module is a module that accepts user-defined
location strings. These values can be 'piped' in to other modules or pipes (such
as the Yahoo! Local module) that accept a location as input. This module can
also be used to let users enter their own location data on a Pipes run page.
I hope that helps readers looking for solutions to creating Web databases. Keep
sending those questions, and we'll keep offering up answers to help you achieve
Web success. If you're not yet a Website Magazine subscriber,
sign up for free right now to
the most popular print publication for those in pursuit of Web success.
Microsoft is releasing its Skydrive
service from beta today, increasing storage space to 5GB, up from its previous
limit of 1GB.
The online file storage service launched in beta last year, but is now openly
available to the public. Users of the service can choose to make uploaded files
privately, share them with select contacts or even open them up to completely
public access. In addition to upping the storage and dropping the beta
tag, Skydrive is now available in many more countries outside of the U.S.
The following are press releases that caught our attention today, February 20th, 2008. If you have a news announcement you would like to share with the
Website Magazine community, please
contact Website Magazine
editors now or submit it to WM Share.
Email solutions provider Campaigner
announced this week the launch of Workflows, a new feature of its CampaignerPro
V2.0. The feature will enable marketers to develop and deliver emails to
customers based on a specified time, date, event or action. Coupled with the
solutions' existing segmentation and dynamic content features, CampaignerPro is
certainly a solution to consider if your focus is on executive sophisticated
and successful email campaigns. The list of clients using the offering is
impressive to say the least. Companies such as LinkedIn, Nokia, and TransAmerica
just to name a few are using Campaigner.
Workflows enables users to program automated emails with drag-and-drop
tools that create a virtual flowchart for visualizing and mapping out elements
of the campaign, including:
- The event, action or specified time that initiates the sending of an
email
- Filters to include or exclude contacts
- Timer delays for scheduling and initiating message delivery
- Post-condition setting to assign value fields for tracking contacts
“The launch of Workflows helps marketers realize even higher
response rates as it allows our customers to design more targeted, timely and
relevant campaigns,” said Frank Tersigni, Campaigner’s CEO. “With the
evolution of email marketing, relying solely on opt-in is not enough. Today’s
marketers require enhanced direct customer relationships with improved marketing
program performance and returns. Campaigner designed Workflows to help our
customers reach this level of email marketing sophistication with easy-to-use
tools and services.”
As many online affiliates and publishers are noticing earnings decreases, Google has formally announced Adsense for Video.
Google has been quietly testing a variety of ad formats since last May.
Adsense for video will use the InVideo ads adopted on YouTube, enabling
advertisers to make a "single buy" at scale. Google is also making available
text overlay ads which will be contextually targeted to signals in your videos
and on the page where the video resides. InVideo ads will be paid on a CPM basis
and the text overlay ads will be paid on a CPC basis. Demos of the advertising
are available here. Adsense for video is available to publishers who at a
minimum, according to the official post, serve one million video streams each
month and are based in the U.S. with English language sites.
Sample of Adsene for Video:
The following are press releases that caught our attention today, February 20th, 2008. If you have a news announcement you would like to share with the
Website Magazine community, please
contact Website Magazine
editors now or submit it to WM Share.
Social networking has risen to great heights over the past couple of years, with sites like
MySpace and
Facebook becoming some of the most trafficked sites on the Web. But there have been some growing pains along the way and some of those seem to be catching up to the social networking craze.
There are problems with spam (via email, bulletins or comments), unsolicited friend requests and hacked accounts, all of which can be damaging to a brand or business. Security and use of private data have become top concerns. Facebook's debacle of an advertising scheme proved that social networking is still figuring out how to take advantage of user data. It's also been revealed that Facebook keeps user data long after a user deletes an account, unless a lengthy and less-than-obvious process is followed. More recently, Bill Gates (after investing $240 million in the network) quit Facebook after receiving thousands of mortgage finance offers and even more requests from non-friends. When a top investor quits ... what is that saying? And today,
The Wall Street Journal reports that Owen Van Natta, chief revenue officer at Facebook and a key part of that $240 million investment from Gates, is resigning. Is social networking fatigue setting in?
It takes a tremendous amount of time to be truly active in these networks, especially if you want to belong to more than one of them. Adding to the problem is the time required to delete unwanted friend requests, spam messages and comments, etc. But unless you are consistently active, the networks have little to offer.
There is help on the horizon. Google's
Open Social project and services like
PageOnce (in limited beta testing) promise to deliver a viable way to keep up with your networks without having to spend an inordinate amount of time visiting each site and managing each profile. But is it all worth it? Is it better to spend your valuable time spreading your brand around the networks (it is a huge audience), or taking time to further your brand on its own merit? We would like to know how our audience feels. Please take a second to vote below.
Document sharing service Scribd launched a new platform called
iPaper that allows for the uploading
and embedding of PDF documents to Web pages. It's a pretty interesting concept
sure to be appealing to many, but unfortunately, those engaged in optimizing
their PDF's for placement in search engines could lose some value along the way.
iPaper utilizes Adobe Flash which presents some pretty serious indexing issues
for search engines. While certainly a visually attractive solution (see below),
webmasters using the iPaper solution from Scribd should also consider offering a
standard link to their traditional PDF which will allow search engines to index
the valuable content contained within those documents.
How do you optimize PDF's for SEO? Much the same way HTML
documents are optimized for placement in search engines, PDF's by all accounts
work the same way. For example, if you are creating a buyers guide or white
paper for a product at your ecommerce store, you could create a Word document
and optimize the copy (keywords, key phrases) in the body text and focus on
descriptive headers (H1, H2, H3, etc.) where necessary. After creating a PDF
from the Word document, adding descriptive meta-data within the PDF is pretty
simple. If you have access to Adobe 6, open the PDF, select Advanced
from the menu and open the Document Metadata option. You will be
able to enter information for the title, author, description, keywords and even
copyright information.
While Google and Yahoo often ignore available meta information in PDFs (just
as they do with traditional Web content), focusing on the body content will
be the best use of your time. Entering metadata within PDF's however will ensure
optimal click-through's if properly indexed by the search engines.
Search Engine Roundtable followed up its poll of
Adsense Publisher earnings for 2007 from last week with a new poll asking if Google Adsense
earnings were down in January 2008. Of 187 responses to date,
63% said their earnings were down. There are quite a few possible explanations - the one that comes to mind immediately is that there is much less competition for traffic in January than there is in December, when most are clamoring for visitors during the bustling online holiday shopping season.
The following are press releases that caught our attention today, February 20th, 2008. If you have a news announcement you would like to share with the
Website Magazine community, please
contact Website Magazine
editors now or submit it to WM Share.
CRE Loaded Ecommerce Software Releases Free
ZenCart to CRE Loaded Database Conversion Tool : Now ZenCart shopping
cart users can easily step up to the CRE Loaded Ecommerce Ecosystem with this
free and easy-to-use database conversion script.
Read the release
:
Comment in the forum
.Asia Trademark Sunrise and Company
Sunrise are Over : The Landrush is about to start. There are only 2 days
left to submit all your names for the .ASIA Landrush at the promotional price of
4.-Euro.
Read
the release :
Comment in the forum
Brickstream Launches Video Analytics
Accelerator Program : The Brickstream Video Analytics Accelerator
Program provides an industry first fixed fee, fixed time, turnkey implementation
of advanced video analytics. This Video Analytics Accelerator Program further
demonstrates Brickstreams' lead in stereo video analytic appliances.
Read the release :
Comment in the forum
MidMarketer Releases New Report on
Setting Optimal Prices Using Strategy and Price Triangulation :
MidMarketer.com released a new report today entitled "Setting optimal prices
using strategy and price triangulation." The report gives readers a simple
exercise to help better understand and set optimal prices for their products and
services. Read the
release :
Comment in the forum
ProductCart E-commerce Software
Integrates with Stone Edge Order Manager : Integration Adds Multichannel
Order Management Features to Popular Shopping Cart Software.
Read the
release :
Comment in the forum
BackboneITGroup.com Slams SEO
Advice in AMEX Guide : Search engine optimization provider
BackboneITGroup.com respond to advice given to small businesses in American
Express's OPEN book guide. The validity of an article advising AMEX business
customers to avoid professional SEO services is called into question.
Read the release
:
Comment in the forum
New Website Translation Service
Delivers Affordable Professional Human Translation : ICanLocalize
enables translation of complete websites into a variety of languages. It employs
professional translators and uses a unique process to deliver up to 60% saving.
This new service provides a complete solution for website translation and
produces human translated websites in ready-to-publish condition.
Read the release
:
Comment in the forum
Defragmenter Software Keeps IT
Systems Cost Effective in Slow Economy : Automatic disk defrag extends
hard drive life and increases system stability and reliability.
Read the release
:
Comment in the forum