 |  | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
30 Sep This post is from from my other blog here A recent State of Retailing Online 2007 report from Shop.org provides some very useful information about the effectiveness of email in retail. Here are some highlights: 1) Emailing a house list is delivering orders for less than $7 each. This is a real bargain when compared to banner ads ($71.89), paid search ($26.75), and affiliate programs ($17.47). 2) 88% of the merchants surveyed indicated that email became a higher priority during 2007. 3) The average click through rate on house email is 11% with a 6% conversion rate. 4) The average retailer mails its list 64 times each year. 5) Merchants rated different ...
28 Sep This post is from from my other blog here Monday, it looked like Microsoft was interested in buying 5% of Facebook for a sum of $300-500 million. The following day, the plot thickened as Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg visited Seattle—and Microsoft—according to CNNMoney.com. Senior editor David Kirkpatrick hits on the reasons why Facebook is so attractive to investors: Facebook is the closest thing the world has to a next-generation Internet, one structured not around Web sites but around people. In the Facebook topology, every data source or service is defined by who else is using it. The company has, in a crude way, solved the critical problem of Internet identity. ...
28 Sep This post is from from my other blog here Last week, AOL announced that it was restructuring its online advertising holdings to create a new ad division, Platform A. Ten days later, TechCrunch has rumors that Platform A will be destined for an IPO of its own:
One knowledgeable source tells TechCrunch that the decision has been made internally at Time Warner to try to spin off Platform A through an IPO sometime early next year. (AOL declines to comment). A lot needs to happen before that plan is put into action, but the writing is on the wall. . . . An AOL spokesperson confirms to me: ?The introduction ...
28 Sep This post is from from my other blog here According to Internet Retailer, Joann.com saw a 5.5% increase in revenue after implementing the HackerSafe logo into its site. They measured the increase with the use of a 30 day split A/B test. This reminds me of a few things I have learned about HackerSafe and similar services. 1) Pricing is negotiable. Joann.com paid $15,000/year for this service, but I am not sure why. My guess is that the average site can get HackerSafe or a competitors’ service for $500/year if you negotiate. HackerSafe’s largest competitor offered us the service for free for a year at one point just because they were ...
28 Sep This post is from from my other blog here How’s your iBrick iPhone this morning? I read that a lot of users are being locked out thanks to a new firmware update–and it’s not just those that bought unlocked phones either. For those of you who didn’t jump on the iPhone bandwagon, you’ll have no problem reading these stories on your phone this morning!
28 Sep This post is from from my other blog here
Ok, so Google has acquired another mobile social network–they previously bought dodgeball which is in mothballs right now. What does Zingku do? Our service is designed from the mobile phone, outward, allowing you to create and exchange things of interest ranging from invitations to “mobile flyers” with friends in a trusted manner. On the mobile phone, Zingku uses standard text ...
27 Sep This post is from from my other blog here We didn’t mention it (too many bad scraper experiences, perhaps?), but last Wednesday was Talk Like a Pirate day. According to the National Legal and Policy Center, Google’s taking it a bit far: Earlier this summer, the National Legal and Policy Center (NLPC) researched the extent of copyrighted material being hosted on Google Video and released a ?Top 50? list of apparently copyrighted movies. In the latest ?spot check? of the site conducted from September 10 to September 18, NLPC discovered 300 additional instances of apparently copyrighted films, including over 60 movies released this year. Additionally, the copyrighted videos have been ...
27 Sep This post is from from my other blog here
But let me tell ya, kid, just wait till you hit those double digits. Just look at Yahoo—they’re twelve now. Aren’t they awkward? Yeah. The lesson? Enjoy your childhood (and dominance) while it lasts! The Onion sent a quirky little birthday gift, “reporting” briefly yesterday about Google’s latest endeavor: TheGoogle.com. It’s designed “to appeal to older adults not able to navigate the original website’s single text field and two clearly marked buttons.” Alright, it’s so good, I just have to show you the whole news brief:
27 Sep This post is from from my other blog here Now, we all know that search engines have troubles with non-text-based documents. So when Yahoo opened Yahoo Podcasts almost two years ago, it looked like things were looking up for finding downloadable and streamed audio broadcasting on the Internet. But now it looks as though Yahoo is changing its mind, with the announcement that they’re closing up shop on October 31:
Right after Yahoo Podcasts opened, it looked as though podcasting were a bubble, when “28% of the people surveyed were aware of podcasting, but only 2% actually listened to podcasts.” However, two years ...
27 Sep This post is from from my other blog here I received an interesting offer from the folks at Goodmind. They offered me $150 to take part in a study that would take about 90 minutes of my time. I don’t have the time, but Goodmind agreed to let me pass on the offer to Marketing Pilgrim readers, so here it is: My name is Darrin and I work for Goodmind, a market research company in NYC. We?re currently looking for participants for a study on bloggers and social media writers. Participants must be active bloggers and post their own blog, blog for a company, or blog for business reasons. Participants ...
27 Sep This post is from from my other blog here Hello, world! Err, is this thing on? Anyone listening reading? Oh well, I’ll just get to today’s new links, shall I?
Here’s what’s going on in the Google Reader Link blog…
Pilgrim Partners: Drive Quality Traffic to Your Website - Get $25 in free clicks when you open an account today.
27 Sep This post is from from my other blog here TechCrunch is reporting LinkedIn will allow users to add photos as of this Friday. As Mike Butcher suggests, the move by LinkedIn is likely in response to the growing number of people using Facebook for business networking. Is this too little, too late for LinkedIn? While I have a LinkedIn account–and like the service–since joining Facebook I’ve found myself using it for business instead of LinkedIn. I’m not sure I’d go back to LinkedIn. What about you, which do you prefer for business networking? Pilgrim Partners: Unlock the power of Google Analytics with ROI Revolution’s FREE 7 Day Mini Course. Start today!
27 Sep This post is from from my other blog here
The updates are now live and here’s what Microsoft says you’re getting (from the release):
27 Sep This post is from from my other blog here By Janet Meiners. According to a report by E-consultancy retailers in the UK are seeing positive results from affiliate marketing. The research group surveyed 239 merchants this year and most of them have both online an offline presence. I A full 95% of brands said that affiliate marketing is ‘very cost-effective’ or ‘quite cost effective.’ The next most effective ways to acquire a new customer is paid search and then email marketing. On average the retailers spend 18% of their online marketing budget on affiliate marketing. Retailers like affiliate marketing (also called CPA or cost-per-acquisition) because they only pay an affiliate when ...
26 Sep This post is from from my other blog here The New York Times today covers Microsoft and their pending battle against Google/DoubleClick. No, not the legal mess they’ve been pursuing—the fight for advertising dollars. With aQuantive’s and DoubleClick’s acquisitions earlier this year, Microsoft and Google are now in direct competition in the online advertising arena. The Times article leads with three of Microsoft’s past endeavors which have enjoyed “varying degrees of success”: Internet Explorer, Windows and the Zune. Internet Explorer sucks (just ask the 100+ people who’ve commented on that post!), Windows is okay (I don’t mind it, at least, but I haven’t “upgraded” to Vista yet), and the Zune ...
26 Sep This post is from from my other blog here Speculation has been flying today about an update at Yahoo. Aaron Wall noticed:
Loren Baker spotted “some sites with high authority domains, in the perception of Yahoo, such as TheFreeDictionary.com, and all of its keyword heavy definition pages, rising in Yahoo rankings.” And now Yahoo confirms the rumors:
We’ve rolled out some changes to our index with fresh web data and updates to our crawling, indexing and ranking algorithms ...
26 Sep This post is from from my other blog here Yo, yo, yoyo. Here’s what’s hot and happen’n this morning.
26 Sep This post is from from my other blog here
As ESPN’s Lee Corso would say: “Not so fast!” It appears that Google had to fix a major flaw that allowed hackers to infiltrate Gmail and set up a filter to forward all email to the account of their choice. ...
26 Sep This post is from from my other blog here Those attending are under embargo until 9:01pm EST tonight. Unfortunately for me, I’m just too busy to make the event. Fortunately for you, that means I can give you a peak at what to expect. New Live Search Interface Microsoft is expect to launch a complete redesign of their search interface. The new look appears to take its cues from Google’s Universal Search and ...
25 Sep This post is from from my other blog here Ingenio, Inc. announced yesterday that they will be joining forces with Network Solutions to incorporate Pay Per Call services into the Network Solutions suite of interactive marketing packages. The Pay Per Call feature will allow Network Solutions customers the ability to generate phone calls from their potential clients through their online marketing campaigns and only pay for the calls that they receive. Once the Pay Per Call feature is fully implemented later this month, Network Solutions customers will be able to advertise to consumers who are searching for local businesses and wish to interact with a live person. Pay Per Call ...
25 Sep This post is from from my other blog here There’s no other way to ensure your success than to tell everyone a month before your private beta launch that there will be failure in your new service. Announced last month, YouTube-rivaling Hulu.com will have failures, as George Kliavkoff, NBC Universal’s chief digital officer, told MediaPost (speaking at the Online Media, Marketing & Advertising conference Monday): “The most important thing is to not be presumptuous about what’s going to work,” Kliavkoff said. But to fail successfully, he added, you have to fail fast in order to quickly identify your errors and cut your losses. Success involves setting up “processes to fail fast,” ...
25 Sep This post is from from my other blog here I know, you were all shocked last month when I had to break the news to you that there were perverts on the Internet—even on the hallowed (and supposedly fenced-in) “grounds” of Facebook. I’m sure you’re just now recovering from the shock, so I hate to have to do this to you again, but: there are still perverts on Facebook. Yes, nearly six weeks after we first brought this to the general public’s attention, Facebook hasn’t done anything to the nasty people using their network for nefarious purposes. Okay, okay, </tongue in cheek>. That was my initial reaction when I ...
25 Sep This post is from from my other blog here Americans get dumber every year. It’s true. If you doubt it, just watch an episode of the gameshow “Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader.” Most people, frankly, aren’t. But are we getting dumber or just more dependent on technology to remember details for us? In this month’s issue of Wired magazine, Clive Thompson examines how we’ve allowed machines to remember so much for us, possibly allowing us to focus on other human thoughts and even accelerate intelligence by sharing thoughts online. I personally embrace the lifestyle where computers can remember the details for me, and when needed, I can pull out ...
25 Sep This post is from from my other blog here Just finished recording another episode of Marketing Pilgrim Live. In this week’s show I discuss:
Here’s the video:
Pilgrim Partners: Drive Quality Traffic to Your Website - Get $25 in free clicks when you open an account today.
25 Sep This post is from from my other blog here By Janet Meiners Mozy, a company that provides remote backups, is being acquired by EMC for $76 million. Mozy started in May 2005 with an investment of just $1.9 million. That makes for a big return ? almost 40x. CEO Josh Coates and Wasatch Partners should be elated. Since I’m based in Utah, I tried to get comments from Mozy or their VC firm Wasatch Partners. No one will comment, won’t comment on why they won’t comment, and won’t say when they might. Mozy doesn’t even answer the phones and there is no announcement anywhere on the site. That’s probably forthcoming. ...
25 Sep This post is from from my other blog here Efforts to force internet retailers to collect sales tax seem to be strengthening. Brick and mortar retailers are spending a lot of money to try to get federal legislation passed because states currently cannot force businesses outside their jurisdiction to collect sales tax on orders shipped into the state. The impact of this legislation will be felt by internet retailers at two levels: 1) It will remove a competitive advantage. The fact that most e-tail purchases do not require sales tax to be collected is partly responsible for the huge growth in online retail. It is important to understand however, that this ...
25 Sep This post is from from my other blog here SEM is so powerful, so successful, that there’s a relentless quest to find the “next search.” Attendi, a startup that launched today at the Demo conference, applies search to instant messaging conversations. To join Attendi, you create a profile that can include blogs, keywords, favorite web sites and your social networks; the idea is to position yourself as an expert on whatever you want — cooking, motorcycles, SEM. Automatically generated tag clouds attached to profiles show what else you’re up to speed on. Other people can come to the site and search for experts who are logged in, then request a chat. ...
25 Sep This post is from from my other blog here So why do we have “Pilgrim’s Picks?” It’s like this. We often come by news that is important enough to share, but not deep enough to justify its own post. While other bloggers might take a single story and turn it into 300+ words of fluff, we know your time is valuable. Pilgrim’s Picks is 100% natural with no artificial flavors, colors, or additives.
24 Sep This post is from from my other blog here Last week, Rand Fishkin gave a good round up and reasoning behind what appears to be a recent Google penalty for sub-par directories. It looks like he might be able to add one more devalued directory to his list: DMOZ. Search Engine Land reports that DMOZ is no longer showing up in search results for keywords [dmoz], [www.dmoz.org], [open directory] or [open directory project]. Pages from subdirectories and several folders deep (and the ‘unavailable’ page) still show up in search results, however, the root page does not:
This is just the latest in a string of negative publicity for DMOZ. As we’ve ...
24 Sep This post is from from my other blog here Is Microsoft shopping for a social network? The Wall Street Journal reports today that Microsoft may be purchasing as much as a 5% stake in Facebook, a share valued at $300-$500 million. The WSJ speculates that a deal like this could push the value of Facebook into the $10 billion range—exactly the price tag investor Tim Thiel named in July. Further rumors state that Google may also be looking to purchase a stake in the social network.
An investment in Facebook could give Microsoft or Google greater opportunities to tie their services in with Facebook at a time when they’ve both ...
24 Sep This post is from from my other blog here
1. Open Source Add-ons: Forget waiting around for Microsoft to update Outlook with that killer feature you know would rock. There is a whole community of developers out there doing just that with Thunderbird add-ons. If someone else hasn?t gotten around to developing ...
24 Sep This post is from from my other blog here By Janet Meiners Advertisers who want to keep their costs down must keep the quality of their landing pages up. Nothing new. But Google recently reiterated their policies on the Inside AdWords blog. What does Google reward? In both natural and paid search the answer is quality - from a customer point of view. Google rewards landing pages that are easy to navigate and transparent. I will add trust and credibility. Create landing pages and sites that provide a good experience (quality content) for searchers and customers and Google will be happy. Google was clear about what is not considered quality. ...
24 Sep This post is from from my other blog here How was your weekend? Did you get to enjoy the first day of Fall? While you try and figure out where the Summer went, here are today’s top news links.
24 Sep This post is from from my other blog here A couple of weeks ago we reported Google’s Shuman Ghosemajumder had attacked Click Forensics latest click fraud report. Forbes has now taken Shuman’s criticisms and given Click Forensics Chief Executive Tom Cuthbert the opportunity to respond. Here’s a snippet… Are your estimates inflated by “fictitious clicks”–clicks that Google doesn’t count? …All of our data is also based on Google Click ID, and Shuman knows that. He may be correct about other auditors in this space, but what he’s said and the way he said it is misleading. How do you handle “click-backs,” situations in which a user reloads an advertisement’s landing page? Do you and ...
24 Sep This post is from from my other blog here This is one of two Google rumors that surfaced over the weekend. The other one is here. Google has a weakness when it comes to keeping new products a secret. According to Garett Rogers, Google uses volunteers to do much of its foreign translation–they provide them when a sentence or two and the volunteers provide the translation. While Google gets all of their translation needs fullfilled for less than minimum-wage, it can make it hard to keep new products a secret. Rogers first provided us with a screenshot that suggests a new interface for Gmail might be forthcoming.
Next, Rogers did some ...
24 Sep This post is from from my other blog here This is one of two Google rumors that surfaced over the weekend–the other one is here. Apparently Arizona State University sent out invitations to students that mention a super-secret, sign-an-NDA-or-else, social networking project.
A few teasers have led most to conclude this must be a Google project:
21 Sep This post is from from my other blog here Michael Arrington seems pretty confident in his sources and is suggesting Google will open up on November 5th. On November 5 we’ll likely see third party iGoogle gadgets that leverage Orkut’s social graph information - the most basic implementation of what Google is planning. From there we may see a lot more - such as the ability to pull Orkut data outside of Google and into third party applications via the APIs. And Google is also considering allowing third parties to join the party at the other end of the platform - meaning other social networks (think Bebo, Friendster, Twitter, ...
21 Sep This post is from from my other blog here AT SMX Advanced in June, someone asked about eyetracking for personalized results. Gord Hotchkiss took on the challenge, and today writes about Enquiro’s new eyetracking studies on Google Universal Search results pages, revealing a new scanning pattern in personalized search results. Historically, we’ve seen the “Golden Triangle” or the F-shaped scanning pattern, which shows that users focus their gaze on the upper left hand side of the page, trailing off to the right and bottom of the page.
However, with personalized results, these studies found a more E-shaped eyetracking pattern. Universal results kept users’ attention further down and across the page. Where ...
21 Sep This post is from from my other blog here Did NBC jump ship too soon? TechCrunch reports that now Fox will be offering their shows for free download via iTunes. The deal will feature season premiere episodes of Fox shows including Prison Break, Bones, American Dad and K-Ville—mostly returning shows. Fox hopes to expose more viewers to its shows. Interestingly, the reason that NBC decided not to renew their agreement with iTunes was allegedly that they wanted more control over individual show pricing, rather than the standardized pricing that Apple enforced. However, it’s now obvious that, at least in select cases, Apple could set different prices. Although NBC Direct’s free episodes ...
21 Sep This post is from from my other blog here Well, I guess it was just a matter of time, but today I got my first phishing scam disguised as a Yahoo! Search Marketing customer email:
Very clever, oh devious ones! What are some of the tell-tale signs that this message is NOT from Yahoo!? Here’s what to check for:
21 Sep This post is from from my other blog here Google has officially taken over the world today. Either I need to fine tune my RSS feeds or just about every marketing news story is about Google.
21 Sep This post is from from my other blog | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
by 
So now it’s Google.com’s birthday, and apparently it’s 9. Oh, they’re so proud of themselves. 
Live Search
