Yodeling in Purple

An advantage of direct mail, still unmatched online, is the ability to grab a customers attention with real stuff, as opposed to information, pictures, sounds, etc. Unlike the virtual world, direct mailers deal with atoms rather than bits. This can work, despite the increased cost, if you choose the right stuff and, of course, test your campaign.

These solid mailings usually get opened unless you're expecting a bomb or your company's mailroom intercepts them. The appeal of getting attention is not lost even on such a web centered company as Yahoo. I was reminded of this recently, when I received an unsolicited small plain brown square cardboard package.

The minimal label did not proclaim its contents - principally a circular purple plastic device perhaps 4" in diameter and 21/2" high. It looked like a large button. Press it and it would play Yahoo's signature yodel sound. The video below shows it in action.

The box also contained a note and small brochure proclaiming the benefits of search engine advertising through Yahoo. These were similar to other mailings I've received from Yahoo.

That's it. Not wishing to irritate my office neighbors or in need of a paper weight, I dumped it in the trash.

Questions left for the reader:

• What does this have to do with search engine marketing?
  
  
• Did the inclusion of the button significantly increase response rates?


• Did Yahoo choose this tsatske because they thought prospects would like it or because it was not selling well on Yahoo's company store?

I am not making this up! You can actually buy one of these for only $19.00 plus shipping at the Yahoo company store.

I guess I should have sold mine on ebay.

I Tawt I Thaw A Twitter

When I first heard of Twitter a year or two ago; its concept, as I understood it at the time, left me unmoved. It seemed to be a service which let you send short messages to anyone who chose to sign up to receive them. Rather than just going to the gym, mowing the lawn, or waiting for a root canal; you could inform at least some part of the world while you were doing so. The messages could be SMS text messages, Instant messaging, or via a web page.

These messages or “twits” differ from email, blogs, or conventional web pages. They are short and generally spontaneous - even in real time. Like so many media, Twitter has evolved other uses and applications. Even if you don’t feel the need to be advised every time a friend takes a coffee break, your organization could use twitter as a light weight way to keep in touch with key audiences. These could be sales, product launches, service announcements, or anything of real time interest. Twitter is only sent to those choose to subscribe (“follow” in Twitter speak) so this is not a spammers medium.

Messages can be no more than 140 characters – little more than fits in a fortune cookie or a Google text ad – so getting to the point is key. Twitter can readily be added to a blog or web page. This enables micro-blogging or very short spontaneous posts. Scroll down this page to see an example of this in the right sidebar.

If you're really having a tough time getting started on your company blog, this just might be the way to go.

How Social Are Your Bookmarks

The concept of "social bookmarking" probably isn't yet mainstream marketing. I was reminded of this recently when talking to a class of graduate business students. Most of them were unacquainted with the concept and unfamiliar with its leading plaftforms such as del.icio.us, digg, and stumble upon.

With social bookmarking, you can embed links such as this

on your blog or website. It allows visitors to bookmark, tag, comment upon, rate and share your site with a single click. They thus become a very inexpensive (as in free) way to help get your site noticed and increase its search engine rankings. If you want your site noticed add buttons like the one above to your sites.

Lee Lefever provides a clear, concise, and amusing explanation of social bookmarking on his excellent site, commoncontent.com:

Fries With That Book?

Clients of The Threshold Group and regular readers of this blog, know that we are not big fans of mass media advertising. This is not an aesthetic judgment. Rather it is because that 30 second spot on the local news is difficult to evaluate.

Of course, any marketing campaign in any medium can be problematic to track if we fail to add both tagging and defined goals.

Case in point - MacDonald's campaign to defend its share of lunch and extend its share of breakfast with the launch of “southern style chicken sandwich” and “southern style chicken biscuit for breakfast.” As usual, there is significant mass media support. What’s not usual is a massive distribution of coupons for free sandwiches in purchases form Amazon.com.

Amazon has a broad market in categories such as consumer electronics, fashion goods, home furnishings, watches and CDs/DVDs as well as books. The three packages received from Amazon this week all contained coupons for the sandwiches. Although Amazon has excellent database marketing capabilities, this is not a targeted promotion. There is nothing about our demographics, psychographics, or purchase history to flag us as prime McDonald's prospects, other than that our office is within half a mile of a McDonald's outlet.

Incredibly, the coupons are not coded. There are no barcodes, key codes, or other ways, which would enable McDonald's to at least gage the redemption rate from the “Amazon channel”. More interesting tracking would be to tag coupons by product category, geocode, purchase volume on many other attributes. McDonald's might then, to take a simple example, buy banners on Amazon’s pages for the most successful categories.

Without coding, it can only determine how many of the coupons were ultimately redeemed. Such a measure won’t even tell, if the promotion recruited new customers. Come to think of it though, the coupons make fair bookmarks for the new books from Amazon.

Your Web Site Won An Award. And ...

Recently, and on more than one occasion, a client has proclaimed that it has an "award winning" web site. Is this a good thing? Should winning a web award be one of your marketing goals? Aside from bragging rights or a bumper sticker, should you care?

The criteria for granting awards seem as obscure as the sites receiving them. Often this winning site has significant problems ranging from low traffic, to lack of focus, to low conversation rates, to poor usability, to being incomprehensible. The result of an award is often instant oblivion.

There is no shortage of web awards or those granting them. A search on Google for this phrase finds 46 million results. After a few pages of browsing the search results, I gave up tallying the unknown organizations, which grant these awards. Can't find an award for your obviously cool site? For the cost of a domain name, you can start your own award granting body.

One of the best known award sites is that of the Webby Awards. Its recipient sites, seem to be highly designed – some would say artistic. Webby lists lots of awards and finalists (the award for not winning an award?) in many categories. What award do you want your site, ad, or campaign to win?

Hollywood seems to care about Oscars - they believe an Academy award will boost attendance. I’ve seen no evidence that having an award winning web site boosts either awareness or sales. When looking for awards forget the trophy. Strive for a site, which increases one of the three Cs – customers, conversions, or cash.