'Net Features : week252012

Social Metrics to Watch: Exposure and Frequency

Allison Howen — Fri, 22 Jun 2012 12:27:00 GMT

Advertising on Facebook is currently a hot topic due to GM’s public pulling of its ads from the social network, which led many marketers to wonder if advertising on the social site is a smart move.

After a year-long study, Resolution Media and Kenshoo are providing marketers with insights on the effectiveness of Facebook ads. The companies analyzed global data spanning 65 billion Facebook ad impressions and 20 million Facebook ad clicks over a wide range of brands and categories – including entertainment, finance, retail and insurance.

“Social media has quickly become one of the preferred channels for brands, and when done right, can foster meaningful relationships between brands and consumers in ways that were never before possible,” says Alan Osetek, president of Resolution Media. “The purpose of this study was to define what ‘doing it right’ means in terms of measureable actions and outcomes, and giving marketers a model for demonstrating effectiveness.”

The study reveals that Sponsored Stories and Post Ads receive about double the click-through rate (CTR) of Social and Web Ads, which means that ads with social context resonate better with audience members likely due to a personal connection. Additionally, Post Ads are prone to draw more attention because they often feature special offers and are larger than normal ads.

The data also shows that higher CTR leads to lower average cost-per-click (CPC) rates, with Post Ads averaging a CPC of $0.24, Sponsored Stories averaging $0.46, Web Ads averaging $0.59 and Social Ads averaging the highest CPC at $0.78. But for advertisers that choose the cost-per-thousand (CPM) model, Sponsored Stories are the most expensive ad type – averaging a CPM of $0.31 compared to Web Ads that averaged the lowest CPM of $0.18.

However, some of the most interesting insights of the study regarded a new metric called “Exposure Rate,” which measures targeted engagement on Facebook. This metric determines the percentage of the target audience that a brand is reaching and exposing its message to. The study reveals that high exposure rates correlate to high CTR and conversion rates, with the ads that reached 76-100 percent of their intended audience also receiving an average CTR of .038 percent and conversion rate of 31.92 percent. In comparison, ads that only reached 0-25 percent of the intended audience resulted in an average CTR of 0.028 percent and a conversion rate of 11.81 percent.

But the study also notes that high exposure rates don’t guarantee success, because brands should balance this metric with frequency, which is the amount of times the average Facebook user has been exposed to a specific advertisement. The data from the study shows that there is a conversion rate drop-off of 32 percent when ads are shown to consumers more than six times. This means that the ad is being exposed to the user too frequently, which results in consumers ignoring it. Additionally, the CTR averaged 39 percent lower after the sixth impression.

According to the study, one way that marketers can optimize exposure rate and frequency is by maintaining a CPC above the maximum recommended bid. This is because the study’s data showed that the exposure rate was higher for ads with CPCs that were greater than the maximum recommended bid, driving the average exposure rate up by 11.5 percent. Additionally, the data showed that frequency dropped when the CPC was above the maximum recommended bid, by an average of 1.7 exposures.

“With new channels and ad formats come new tracking capabilities," says Sivan Metzger, general manager of Kenshoo Social. "And with new tracking capabilities come new data points. With new data points come new insights. And with new insights come new key performance indicators. This study is the first in a series from Kenshoo and Resolution Media to surface KPIs and help brands define a new measurement paradigm for improved social media investments.”

Validate PCI Compliance with New Guided SAQ Wizard

Allison Howen — Thu, 21 Jun 2012 09:10:00 GMT

Payment processing solution provider Payment Alliance International (PAI) has partnered with Qualified Security Assessor Panoptic Security to provide PAI merchants with access to an online PCI compliance portal.

The partnership integrates Panoptic’s ExpertPCI solution into the PAI Secure program, which is a PCI compliance and indemnification program. The integration allows merchants to complete their PCI industry-mandated Self-Assessment Questionnaires (SAQs) and Network IP Scans online by using a guided step-by-step SAQ wizard.

“We are very excited about our partnership with Panoptic Security to deliver an even more efficient way for our merchants to become PCI compliant. We understand just how critical PCI compliance is in protecting their customers’ card information,” says John J. Leehy, III, president and chief executive officer of Payment Alliance International. “By integrating ExpertPCI into our PAI Secure program, we can offer a truly turnkey package for our merchant customers that includes education on the PCI DSS and how to become compliant, online PCI compliance validation, as well as a level of financial protection from losses that may occur in the event of a security breach.”

This partnership and new enhancements to the PAI Secure program will enable enrolled PAI merchants to more securely and efficiently validate their PCI compliance. For the third consecutive year Panoptic Security’s ExpertPCI received a Global Excellence Award from Info Security Products Guide for the best PCI solution. The solution delivers higher compliance rates than industry averages by simplifying the process, shortening the time for merchants to complete the SAQ and guiding them through the process.

“Our solution is second to none in the industry in driving PCI compliance, and we look forward to bringing these benefits to PAI’s customers,” says Matthew Hoffman, Panoptic Security’s chief executive officer.

Mobile Leading an Email Revolution

Michael Garrity — Thu, 21 Jun 2012 07:15:00 GMT

Inbox placement solutions provider Return Path recently conducted a study to examine the role of mobile devices on email marketing campaigns, and what effect they may have on the future of email.

The results of the study were released in an infographic, entitled “Email in Motion: Mobile is Leading the Email Revolution,” and found that 88 percent of people check their email on a mobile phone at least once a day. It also predicts that by the end of the year, more people will be reading emails on a mobile device than on a desktop or webmail client.

Other noteworthy findings include:

- 85 percent of all mobile emails are read on an Apple device

- 50 percent of mobile phones in the United States are smartphones

- In the U.K., 38 percent of the population use smartphones; in Germany it’s 34 percent; and in Brazil 30 percent of mobile phone owners are using smartphones

- Desktops are still the most popular tool for viewing emails during the weekdays, but that shifts dramatically during the weekends, when people largely prefer their mobile devices

- 63 percent of American respondents and 41 percent of Europeans said that they would close/delete an email account that was not mobile optimized

- A paltry 2.39 percent of respondents said they would open the same email on both a desktop and mobile device

- Over half (56 percent) of U.S. consumers said that they’ve made at least one purchase using their smartphone as the result of a marketing message they received in a mobile email

- Oddly enough, 48 percent of online marketers still don’t know how many mobile subscribers they have on their email lists

You can view the entire infographic below:

Creating Connections for Multi-channel Retailers

Michael Garrity — Thu, 21 Jun 2012 04:50:00 GMT

On-demand e-commerce platform provider OrderDynamics wants to create connections for multi-channel retailers to help them extend the consumer experience, from retail stores to e-commerce channels, with Connected Commerce.

Connected Commerce was spurred on by the rapid adoption of mobile mediums, such as tablets and smartphones, which have greatly increased the number of potential touch points for retailers to reach out to consumers. OrderDynamics wants to ensure that the integrations of physical and virtual environments will improve the entire retail experience by focusing on various aspects of running an online retail business, including the following:

Customer information: Connected Commerce can increase a retailer’s number of repeat customers by sharing multi-channel data across in-store applications, online properties and direct marketing programs.

Merchandising: The solution can now integrate promotions and multi-channel content, and drive order values using rich media, various in-store features, promotions and loyalty programs.

Marketing: Through the unification of brand touch points and the alignment of channel-centric interactions, retailers can cultivate more meaningful and mutually beneficial relationships with customers.

Order management: In an effort to provide consumers with greater transparency (and increase customer satisfaction), OrderDynamics is now offering optimized, automated customer service tools.

Warehouse: Retailers will be able to ship packages faster, and for less money, by leveraging OrderDynamics’ distributed inventory and advanced fulfillment methods.

Adwords Scripts for Account Management

Pete Prestipino — Wed, 20 Jun 2012 20:05:00 GMT

Managing performance-based advertising accounts can be a cumbersome and inefficient process – well, it can be if you’re not focused clearly on automating processes and using all of the data at your disposal.

Google recently announced the introduction of AdWords scripts (a limited release) which enable PPC marketers to make changes to their Adwords account by writing small/simple Javascript programs. The scripts function enables advertisers to use external inventory data to change bids or pause/unpause keywords, output stats to a spreadsheet (useful when creating reports and visualizations – we’re looking at you third-party developer) and even use statistical trends to change keyword or ad group bids.

The scripts will run on the Google Apps Script infrastructure, and developers will be able to integrate with Google Spreadsheets and URL Fetcher to integrate external data, and even email results of a script execution within the script itself.

Video: Camtasia for Mac 2.2

Pete Prestipino — Wed, 20 Jun 2012 19:25:00 GMT

Screen recording and video editing software solution Camtasia (from Techsmith) for example just released version 2.2 for the Mac and it comes with quite a few new and interesting features to dig into. Let’s take a look!

Camtasia for Mac 2.2 now includes the ability to create clickable objects (aka hotspots) so video marketers can embed hyperlinks within their creation, sending them to online content and one step closer to the end of a conversion funnel. This release is also focused on optimizing the cross platform experience but providing one output that will work on any device, be it iOS or Android, smartphone or desktop. The entire list of featuers is available here.

“This edition of Camtasia for Mac brings completely new marketing, sales and teaching capabilities for business professionals and educators. It’s important because video is quickly becoming the fastest growing, most popular content on the web,” said Shane Lovellette, Camtasia for Mac Product Manager at TechSmith. “Interactivity, and hotspot linking, along with a lot of interactive and ease-of-use features such as smart sharing, table of contents, closed captioning and search put video-creation in the hands of novices and intermediate users. We can’t wait to see what kind of creative things people will do with interactive video.”

A free, 30-day trial of Camtasia for Mac 2.2 is available with discounted pricing options available for EDU and nonprofit organizations. New users can purchase the software for $99 and existing Camtasia users can upgrade to version 2.2 for $49.50 per user.

Who Wants a Qwiki?

Pete Prestipino — Wed, 20 Jun 2012 18:07:00 GMT

Last week Bing announced a rather notable change to it search results – the inclusion of interactive, multimedia presentations through an integration with Qwiki.

The Qwiki platform combines images, videos, maps and even spoken narration. As you might expect, integration of this type of "univeral" content into the search results may just forever change the information retrieval experience (and expectations) of users.

Initially, Qwikis will appear alongside Wikipedia results (although we’re not seeing the Qwikis appearing just yet), with deeper integration to follow in the coming months. In the meantime, it might be prudent to assemble a few of your own Qwiki’s should the time come when Bing opens up its search results and starts returning Qwiki’s associated with a broader scope of information. A demonstration of the Bing integration is available here.

Qwiki recently announced a new “Creator” platform for publishers and bloggers that is now being used by the likes of ABC News and others. What’s most noteworthy however is that Qwiki has made available a developer API which will make it easier for companies and individuals to create their own Qwiki’s.

WordPress Wednesday: Facebook for WordPress Plugin

Michael Garrity — Wed, 20 Jun 2012 17:00:00 GMT

Facebook is undoubtedly the driving force behind the rise of the social Web, and the social network is increasingly becoming a vital component of ‘Net success for online retailers, content publishers and pretty much anyone else working on the Web.

For many, this means finding ways to integrate Facebook functionality directly into their website(s). A recent Pingdom survey of the world’s top 10,000 websites reveals that nearly a quarter of them (24.3 percent) feature some type of official Facebook integration on their homepage, and when one considers “regular” links to Facebook, the number shoots up to 49.3 percent. This integration can be anything from widgets to social plugins.

Now, WordPress website owners can harness the power of Facebook by adding the officially sanctioned Facebook for WordPress plugin to their site, with no coding knowledge required. In addition to offering a range of Facebook functionality, the plugin also supports internationalization and mobile sites, and is WordPress.com VIP approved.

Whenever one publishes a new page or post on their WordPress site, they will have a number of options for distributing it directly to Facebook. This includes the ability to mention specific friends or pages on the social network, as well as add a message that will be posted with the content. Then, once it is published, the content will appear on the friends and pages’ Timelines, and the mentions will also show up in the post on the WordPress site.

Author’s can alter the plugin’s settings so that the post shows up on their Timeline as an Open Graph action, the Timeline of any friend or page mentioned as part of the post and any Facebook page the author chooses that automatically publishes the WordPress site’s content once it is live.

Facebook for WordPress also offers users a variety of social plugins that they can easily enable on posts and pages. This includes Like, Send and Subscribe buttons, comments with SEO support (meaning they can be indexed by search engines) and a Recommendations Bar that lets users start getting recommendations, “Like” content and add what they’re currently reading to Timeline.

Finally, the plugin features a number of WordPress Widgets with drag-and-drop functionality that allows users to include social features like recommendations, recent activity and Like, Send and Subscribe buttons in their sites’ sidebars.

Click here for instructions from Facebook Developers on how to install Facebook for WordPress to your site.

SaveLocal Now Open to All U.S. Merchants

Allison Howen — Wed, 20 Jun 2012 01:00:00 GMT

Small businesses can now leverage Constant Contact’s SaveLocal platform to run customizable local deals.

The platform, which is the company’s answer to the daily deals industry, originally launched in February, but was previously only available to Constant Contact customers. However, now SaveLocal is available to all U.S. businesses.

The platform addresses some of the problems with the current daily deals model by offering merchants complete control of their promotions, as well as allowing them to run deals that incentivize social sharing, attract new customers and drive repeat business.

According to Dave Gilbertson, the vice president and general manager of SaveLocal, merchants not only requested a deal tool that they could control, but that would also help them make a profit and acquire new customers.

“Those all seemed like pretty reasonable things to ask from a business owner trying to make a living, but unfortunately, the traditional deals model fell short on every one of these goals,” says Gilbertson. “SaveLocal flips that model on its head and gives the merchant complete control of the deal: they control the discount amount, the terms of the deal, timing, and how many coupons to sell. And we’ve already seen some truly amazing results. We couldn’t be more excited about making this product widely available.”

SaveLocal enables merchants to set deal parameters, including the discount amount, terms of the deal, timing and how many coupons will be sold. Additionally, merchants only pay a $1, $2 or $3 fee per coupon purchased, depending on the value of the deal. Interested merchants can learn more about the platform, or sign up for free here.

Responsive Drop-Down Navigation with SelectNav (JS)

Pete Prestipino — Wed, 20 Jun 2012 00:00:00 GMT

There's a whole lot of interest right now on the part of both designers and those that employ them to make their digital properties as accessible as possible - meaning that they must work and appear well on desktop and mobile devices simultaneously.

As an industry we are learning how to make the most of responsive design and to our great fortune, there are numerous techniques and technologies to support this initiative. Case in point - SelectNav.js.

SelectNav.js is a JavaScript plugin that enables designers to convert their website navigation into a "select" drop-down menu (see images below). The JavaScript is used together with media queries to create a space-saving, responsive navigation for those using small-screen devices.

Inspired by TinyNav.js, SelectNav.js requires no external library, is very lightweight (only 1.5kb minified), is customizable, and compatibility with a variety of modern browsers.

WordPress 3.4 (Green) - New and Noteworthy

Pete Prestipino — Tue, 19 Jun 2012 23:00:00 GMT

Wordpress 3.4 has arrived and comes with some significant improvements worthy of note - let's take a look!

Perhaps the most important change in 3.4 is the theme customizer which allows users to change the look and setting of an active theme without publishing the changes for everyone. Users can change colors, backgrounds and custom image headers on themes that support it. Wordpress also make it easier to use images from a media library to popular custom headers and now empowers users to choose the height and width of those header images.

Wordpress also expaned its embed support to include tweets. Now, users only have to put a Twitter permalink on its own line in the post editor and Wordpress will turn it into an embedded tweet.

But that's not all. Wordperss users can now also include HTML (and links) within image captions. Read through the list of user and developer features within the Codex.

Recent Wordpress Coverage at Website Magazine

- 10 Minimalist WP Themes for Maximum Inspiration

- Best Wordpress Comment Plugins

- 10 Plugins You Can’t Live Without

Making Gamification a Reality

Pete Prestipino — Tue, 19 Jun 2012 20:00:00 GMT

The gamification trend, which brings game mechanics into the real world, took another big step forward recently as Bunchball unveiled two new product lines (Spark and Fuse) that will bring plug-and-play gamification and integration into over eighty enterprise applications.

Sparks are essentially gamification apps which provide everything that is needed to set up a gamificaiton program, with deployment targets including enterprise applications, websites, and mobile devices. The "Sparks" include opportunities for motiviating users to create and share content, loyalty programs, rewards for channel partners, support in dirinv purchases, motivating collaboration and discussion and more.

Bunchball's other new product Fuse acts as the connector, enabling Bunchball customers to connect their gamification programs to more than 80 enterprise applications, including ADP, Box, NetSuite, Oracle PeopleSoft, SAP, Sharepoint, SugarCRM, Taleo, Workday, and more.

"After years of building gamification products and numerous customer deployments, we know it has immense value and can prove ROI across multiple industries. Our Spark Solutions take everything we've learned about gamification and package it into effective, turnkey applications for site owners who need to address a business issue with a quick and easy solution that shows immediate value."

Thrive on the Mobile Web with ClickTale Analytics

Michael Garrity — Tue, 19 Jun 2012 19:00:00 GMT

As mobile browsing moves from being a novelty to a necessity, many Web professionals are concerned about how they will be able to accurately study user behavior and adjust their mobile sites to meet the needs of their visitors.

This has opened up numerous opportunities for analytics solutions providers to attempt to rectify this growing problem. Customer experience analytics company ClickTale is the latest to offer an answer with the release of the beta version of ClickTale Mobile.

The solution will offer mobile customers a true-to-life browsing experience at all levels of detail, meaning everything from aggregated views to playable videos of individual sessions, and businesses will be able to use the data gleaned to improve mobile usability, raise customer satisfaction on average and increase their online ROI.

Seeing as mobile Internet usage has begun to surpass desktop usage over the past year (according to Kleiner Perkins), it’s becoming increasingly important for Web workers to optimize their mobile websites in order to stay competitive. ClickTale Mobile can assist in those efforts by offering up data that can be used to tweak a mobile site to reduce abandonment rates and increase engagement, ultimately making it more beneficial to the company’s Web success.

ClickTale anticipates that the full version of ClickTale Mobile will be available by the end of the year.

Global Email Spam Rates on the Rise

Linc Wonham — Tue, 19 Jun 2012 18:00:00 GMT

A new study by email certification and reputation monitoring company Return Path tracked more than 130 million IP addresses and nearly 20 trillion messages last year and concluded that 85 percent of them were classified as spam, posing an on-going challenge for ISPs.

The research used Sender Score, an index of an email sender’s reputation and a measure of the same metrics that ISPs use when making deliverability decisions. Businesses with high sender reputations or Sender Scores above 90 saw 95 percent of their messages delivered on average, whereas those with lower sender reputations, Sender Scores between 60 and 89 — the majority of businesses — saw delivery rates of only 68 percent on average.

Return Path studied senders’ reputations across the globe and industry sectors examining the major factors affecting inbox deliverability, including the following:

•    Unknown user rates or those email addresses no longer in active use
•    Complaint rates, when email recipients mark a message as spam
•    Spam traps set by ISPs to deliberately catch spammers

Industry Breakdown
While most industry sectors performed at or near global averages, there were significant outliers in a number of categories. There was a high frequency of spam traps among social networking senders.

One of the most important tools social networks use to grow their subscriber base is the address books of their current users. This presents a risk as most email recipients do not actively manage their address books, resulting in numerous unused or abandoned emails being present.

As a result, social networking sites were hitting an average of 20 spam traps, as opposed to the global average of 1 to 3. Social networking and gaming had the highest degree of unknown user rates, around 5 percent for the same reasons as mentioned above.

Banking, retail and social networking had the highest complaint rates, coming in at over 3 percent, whereas on average other industries had complaint rates of 2 percent.

Geographic Breakdown
There is a marked increase in the worldwide number of senders and a sharp decline in inbox placement rates (IPRs). While every country and region has different challenges, universally speaking, marketers with poor reputations have significantly lower chances of making it to the inbox.

When emails fail to reach inboxes, businesses fail to communicate, resulting in a direct impact on the bottom line.

North America’s Sender Score of 67 was the highest of any region. Canada had the highest reputation metrics with a score of 70, while the U.S. weighed in at 67. Despite having the highest sending reputations globally, both the U.S. and Canada have issues with complaints, unknown users and spam traps.

The U.S. also has very few restrictions around non-permission acquisition of email addresses, which puts marketers at risk for acquiring spam traps and receiving high subscriber complaints.

European Results
Reputation metrics in Europe were surprisingly poor given the strict laws around acquiring email addresses. In Germany, where double opt-in has been the law, the average Sender Score was 33, and complaint rates, unknown users and spam traps were all above average.

At a score of 47, France had one of the highest Sender Scores in Europe, but had the biggest problem with high unknown users and spam traps, at 10 percent and 11 percent, respectively, indicating that marketers have issues with list hygiene and keeping their lists up-to-date. Italy and Spain also had slightly above average complaints, unknown users and spam traps with Sender Scores coming in very low at 22 and 27, respectively.

The U.K. had the highest Sender Score of 51, but is struggling with unknown user rates of 6 percent and spam trap rates of an average of 6 per IP address. These findings indicate that European marketers are at high risk for blocking and filtering.

China’s low Sender Score of 36 is not surprising as it is an emerging market and senders may have a harder time understanding reputation factors and what it takes to get delivered to inboxes outside of China. While their reputation metrics appear to be low, it’s because a majority of their email is blocked and never delivered.

Australia has typically high deliverability rates, which is somewhat reflected in their Sender Score of 56. However, with unknown user rates at 9 percent and having nearly 6 spam traps per IP address, marketers need to focus on how they acquire and handle new and old addresses, the report suggests.

An emerging market in which email marketing is still relatively new, Brazil is struggling with deliverability and sender reputation. Brazil sends out a lot of email that would be considered spam resulting in the extremely low Sender Score of 16. With a complaint rate of 3 percent, unknown user rate of 7 percent and average spam traps at nearly 5 percent, most Brazilian marketers have a long road ahead in resolving their deliverability and reputation issues.

The complete study and infographic are available for download.

Payvment Introduces One-click Facebook Ad Service

Linc Wonham — Tue, 19 Jun 2012 15:30:00 GMT

Social commerce platform Payvment has launched a one-click Facebook advertising service that enables sellers to quickly turn their promotional posts into Facebook Ads.

The new service automatically targets the ads using a proprietary algorithm that predicts which audience segments are most likely to be interested in a seller’s products based on previous social shopping data. Initial tests of the service have shown up to a 25-percent increase in click-through rates over standard self-serve Facebook Ads.

A recent survey of Payvment’s customer base of over 165,000 small and mid-sized businesses revealed that more than 60 percent have yet to try Facebook Ads, with 25 percent saying they haven’t tried them because they don’t understand how to use them.

Of those who had bought Facebook Ads, two-thirds who said they weren’t satisfied cited low click-through rates or poor targeting as reasons not to use the service again.

Payvment’s new one-click Facebook Ad buying service is integrated into the company’s standard promotions tool. When sellers create a promotional post, they can opt to reach beyond their fan base via a Facebook Ad. The seller edits the headline and body of the post, selects their budget (which generates an estimated reach for the ad), then clicks “promote” to launch the ad. Once the ad is live, sellers can track performance in their Payvment dashboard.

Payvment instantaneously analyzes a seller’s inventory and shopper engagement patterns and correlates this with aggregate profile data from the more than 40 million Facebook users who have interacted with Payvment storefronts, and uses this analysis to predict which types of users are likely to be interested in the seller’s products.

“Targeting Facebook Ads can be a bit of a guessing game – it’s hard for sellers to know exactly which audiences will respond to their products,” says Christian Taylor, founder and CEO of Payvment. “Since Payvment powers a majority of the shopping on Facebook, we see patterns that we use to create very effective targeting. No one else can do this. The small and medium-sized businesses that use Payvment have historically looked at Facebook Ads as out of reach for their business – either they’re not clear on how they work, or they don’t want to spend money learning as they go. They can now use Payvment’s new ad offering to get started with very little effort or cost – in one click they’ve placed the ad, and Payvment does the rest for them.”