I go back and forth about putting the news here on the blog.
The reason I stopped for a while was that I buried a $10 Amazon gift certificate in a news story one day. All you had to do was comment or email me that you saw it and I’d send you the gift certificate.
No one wrote… not even my mom (who tends to read all my stuff).
So, I got the impression that the news wasn’t particularly helpful.
But, I have a new idea. I thought I’d try it again and put a summary of the news, or the past week, before the news items.
If you have other ideas let me know.
Here’s my take on the past week:
I have two prevailing thoughts tied to one theme: Back to the Past.
Email, and email spam, are getting attention again. I too have been bitten by the email bug. It’s just incredibly powerful. If you have a product that is expensive, or the sales cycle is slow, chances are that the best call to action on your site is to get people on your email list.
Also, here is a January 8, 2009 NYT article that talked about last Christmas’ sales:
After Weak Holiday Sales, Retailers Prepare for Even Worse – NYTimes.com
Industry sales fell 2.2 percent for the holiday shopping season, the biggest decline since at least 1970, according to the International Council of Shopping Centers.
This year, we are reporting a 4% increase.
So, people bought some more stuff. My experience is that it’s a whole new world.
I really feel an attitude of “Let’s start measuring success from here, ” more so than “Let’s get back to where we were.”
So, there’s my news wrap up. Here are the headlines that jumped out at me:
US Holiday E-Commerce Spend Up 4% Year Over Year
“The 2009 online holiday shopping season was a positive one as its growth rate slightly surpassed our forecast and returned to solidly positive rates after nearly a full year of marginally negative growth,” said comScore chairman Gian Fulgoni. “Among the highlights of the season was the first $900 million online spending day and a strong late season spending surge
18% of those without weight issues opened the spam emails and 5% actually purchased. Of those who identified themselves as having weight issues, 40% opened the spam and 18% purchased.
Google to Add Mobile ‘Click to Call’ Feature to AdWords
“your location-specific business phone number will display alongside your destination url in ads that appear on high-end mobile devices. Users will be able to click-to-call your business just as easily as they click to visit your website. You’ll be charged for clicks to call, same as you are for clicks to visit your website.”
Stop Selling Search, Start Selling Performance Marketing – Search Engine Watch (SEW)
You should know that the larger, more sophisticated agencies are already diving head first into performance marketing. They’re embracing the multiplicity of ad exchanges, leveraging the “fresh-out-of-the-oven” demand-side platforms, automating their paid search, experimenting with the emerging social advertising networks, deploying powerful (yet sometimes overstated) tracking solutions for multiple exposure attribution, and even managing plain vanilla affiliate programs.
Email Marketing for Freelancers | FreelanceSwitch
According to a recent Direct Marketing Association study, email marketing’s average return on investment (ROI) is a whopping $45.05 US for every dollar spent. That makes it the highest return of any marketing channel. Even other Internet marketing methods pale with an ROI of $19.94 for every dollar spent.
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