OBSESSED WITH RESULTS

In the last year I have been helping to launch our performance marketing division and I have put together a list of criteria I use in order to select the top vendors to launch my campaigns.  My job is to guarantee that my client will get qualified leads and will continue to recognize the importance and value in lead generation campaigns.

In addition to the selection criteria I also take into account how quickly a vendor can build the campaign, flexibility, and reputation. Here are the questions I ask the list of potential vendors before I launch a campaign:

• If you have your own proprietary co-registration path – How many offers do you run at any one time? Do you provide exclusivity for certain categories?
• If you have your own “house” email lists, how often are they updated and cleaned? Do you specialize in any verticals or particular demographics? Do you have third party emailers that you work with?
• Do you own or use incentivized sites or paths?
• Do you provide lead validation? If so, is it through a third party or a proprietary system?
• Do you have your own sites as well as distribution partners?
• How many unique visitors do you reach and what kind of targeting you can do? (Geo-targeting, age, demographic and etc.)
• Do you offer scrub rates?
• How do you rate your lead quality compared to competitors? Can you provide open rates and CTRs?

I have learned vendors will offer value added services along with leads at no additional charge. The key is keeping your client happy by providing quality leads and your vendors need to be accountable in helping you accomplish that goal.

With Consumer confidence dropping in the USA and said consumer busily trying to get out and stay out of debt, people who sell things are having their challenges. When current customers have closed their wallets, “new business” becomes the mantra of the day. In fact, EMarketer, quoting a new study from CSO Insights states that “more than 91% of companies worldwide reported increasing new customer acquisition was one of their top strategic marketing objectives for 2010.”

New business acquisition requires a lead generation strategy. The latest tactics have included traditional and online media, with the most successful being email, followed by live events and then webinars. With two out of the three being online campaigns, it is surprising the report found that 51% of the respondents said that their efforts online this year were below expectations. Truth is that this number is better than the 68% in 2009 who felt their efforts were lacking, but disappointing still the same. Many feel that their online programs are in need of improvement.

The number one cause for disappointment and the biggest lesson learned was that those who had good tracking in place did much better than those without. “As more lead generation efforts shift to the Internet, tools to help develop, execute, and track campaign effectiveness will become a ‘must have’ rather than a ‘nice to have,’” said the report.

Tracking issues aside, with email being the number one method to garner leads, moving forward, how do we factor in the steady decline of “open rates” around the world? MailerMailer’s “Email Marketing Metrics Report” shows email open rates steadily declining from 14% in 2007 to just 11.2 % at the end of 2009. Looking at the industries whose open rates suffered the most we see entertainment, banking, medicine and general marketing messages. The winners were classified as agriculture, religion, transportation and those from large businesses.

The report concluded that cluttered in boxes and the growing use of mobile devices might be to blame. If true, then the ability to track results in order to make on the fly changes in messaging to get those emails opened becomes crucial.

But, getting your emails opened is just the first step. Enticing people to read and then click thru to your web site is quite another. The MailerMailer report showed click thru rates on opened emails have also been on the decline with a drop from 2.6% to 1.6% in 2009 alone.

It is not surprising then that in this mediocre economy religious and retail emails have some of the highest click thru rates. In fact, Experian Cheetah Mail reports that though nonprofit emails get opened more, catalogers get clicked on the most. One of the conclusions we can maybe draw then, is that today’s consumer is looking for ways to help others and perhaps find some bargains for themselves.

It is not surprising then that Coupons.com reports that this year they and their affiliates have already distributed more than $1 Billion dollars worth of coupons! They attribute much of the growth to more brands offering digital coupons along with consumers’ broader use of printable coupons. But let’s face it – people are printing coupons because they have to! Searches on Google for “printable coupons” are up 67% from last year and according to Harris Interactive 8 out of 10 current US coupon clippers say they will continue even when good times return.

Putting it all together, if you want new business – try emailing some coupons, tie them in perhaps with some charity or good cause and then track, track and track those redeemers and their conversions.

Source: Marketers Put More Lead Gen Budgets Online JULY 27, 2010 http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1007833, CSO Insight’s “2010 Lead Generation Optimization Key Trends Analysis”

Why Email Metrics are in Decline, July 26, 2010 http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1007831

Digital coupon clipping surged in the first half of the year July 27, 2010http://www.internetretailer.com/2010/07/27/digital-coupon-clipping-surged-first-half-year

Great marketing minds think alike. So I would like to believe we keep in good company with renowned marketer, Seth Godin. He recently made an accurate distinction between mass marketers vs direct marketers which got me thinking under which category we, as a company, belong to.

Mass marketers such as Best Buy and Microsoft capitalize on their ubiquity. They have successfully infiltrated our homes and our spending habits and in doing so, now enjoy massive revenue.

On the other hand, direct marketers focus on a capturing a specific niche, getting terrific response rates and only then will they venture into expanding reach. They don’t need to be in every home, but they need to count in each home they actually get introduced to.

Godin says, “The key distinction is when you know it’s going to work. The mass marketer doesn’t know until the end. The direct marketer knows in the beginning.”

These things considered, Ionic Media prides itself in being prolific direct marketers – with a huge emphasis on testing creative thoughts on a well-researched niche, followed through with the ability to analyze results. Only then do we expand into a bigger reach with data at hand and calculated, educated risks. This is not to say we are unable to go big and handle ubiquity. With big brands such as B+L and Disney under our belt, we need to think like mass marketers as well. But we do so intelligently and profitably. It doesn’t always work. But it usually does. And when it doesn’t, we figure out why and do better on the next go.

Bottom line is, we care enough to do the work upfront to reap the benefits of being right (or wrong) in the end. We understand that the best mass marketers, it seems, start off as excellent direct marketers.

Ameetess Dira
Account Director

— Jessie Johnson @ 4:30 pm

Among the most time-consuming tasks in media buying is gathering, organizing, and analyzing information, making sense of the piles of spreadsheets, PDFs, Word docs and other formats to get a clear picture of the advertising marketplace before finalizing the media plan.

Let’s say a media buyer has decided that it’s a mix of local radio, TV, online, and few print pubs that will best reach the target demographic. That was the easy part.

Now it’s a matter of finding the latest information on the advertising opportunities in that local market, and having the tools available to act on that information throughout the planning and execution of a simple or complex media buy.

Meanwhile, the media buyer is accustomed to engaging in social media in her personal and professional life, savvy enough to include those outlets in the advertising plan.

No matter what industry we’re in, we’re used to getting information the instant it becomes available, and being able to act on that info with the proverbial “few clicks” and to share it with a hashtag or two. We like to see what our “friends” are up to without having to ask them. We watch trending topics to gain insight about the world around us, as it happens.

It’s this same real-time technology that powers Avenue Right’s media buying platform, providing not only more accurate and up-to-date market information, but also increased efficiencies by automating manual tasks.

Last week Avenue Right had the opportunity to show off our product at the Speed Geeking demo hour at ReadWriteWeb’s Real-Time Web Summit in New York City.  This post expands on the talk we gave during our demo—why real-time matters to media buyers—with all the juicy details that didn’t fit into the 5 minute timeslot.

Power of the Platform
Avenue Right incorporates all media channels—online and offline—into a single platform without interfering with inventory supply and demand or negotiations, biasing information with a commission structure, or remaining static in a digital world grown accustomed to real-time information.

Powered by its user community, Avenue Right is not an ad network or an ad exchange, but rather a resource that brings offline and online local media planning and buying together, staying out of the commission chain in order to provide a non-biased exchange of information between buyers and sellers.

Media buyers can search the local media outlet database using any combination of search criteria and get an up-to-date list of relevant advertising opportunities and contact information. The database includes local radio, broadcast and cable TV, online, and print media outlets, and users can add any other media type they’d like to include in their campaign, such as OOH.

Users can assign search terms to media outlets and make them available to other users, and local media outlets not found in the database can be added and made available to other Avenue Right users. The information on media outlets in local marketplace stays up to date through a combination of efforts, including the media sellers who are actively engaged in their Avenue Right portal to help promote their inventory.

And to give things that social feel, media buyers can just check out their dashboard to see what outlets have updated their profiles lately, or responded to an RFP from the media buyer.

Managing the information collected and the schedules negotiated is a daunting task. Depending on the media mix and complexity of the buy, this could result in any number and combination of placements, and a whole lot of calculations to go with them. And sometimes—unless a format is specified—with the proposals received in as many different formats as there are response.

See more at: http://www.avenueright.com/blog/?p=454