Dirkmonster

Facebook's hubris threatens their market leader status

With the launch this week of Google+ pages, Google is taking another step towards its goal of knocking Facebook off the top of the social network mountain.

Facebook's has gotten defensive in response.  This week Facebook founder Mark Zuckerburg took a shot at Google claiming Google was trying to build its own little Facebook.  Any market leader that says something like that in public is not taking the threat seriously at some level.  I'm thinking about MySpace's attitude toward Facebook before becoming totally irrelevant.

I notice that Google seems unafraid as the hunter. It has a Facebook page with 4.4 million "Likes".  But Facebook is issuing snarky sound bytes this week intead of establishing a Google+ page like most every other major technology brand did immediately.

It's not going to be very long before Facebook is going to have to acknowedge the Google threat in public by improving its advertising engine for starters.  Facebook can hit back at Google by building their "own little AdWords" or something comparable to Google's targeting and reporting capability.

A low budget pay per click test requires high commitment

It's not just the big brands with their million dollar PPC budgets that recognize the need for pay per click advertising.  It's simply the most effective online customer acquisition campaign channel.  But a great number of AdWords and Facebook advertisers have monthly budgets under $1,000.  How do they spend their limited dollars most effectively?

Commit to starting with a solid testing plan: Let's say this is your first time trying PPC advertising. You suspect that Google AdWords and Facebook Ads my help your business aquire new customers or qualified traffic to your web site.  You are on the right track.  Pay per click advertising works in retail, travel, technology, B2B and simply driving the right people to your site.  But your resources to prove it are limited to $1,000/month.  The greatest danger at this point is spending $1,000 and proving nothing one way or the other.  So a solid testing plan with built in flexibility is essential for success. For example, you will be tempted to manage the test campaign to make your $1,000 last for 30 days, spending an equal amount each day.  In my experience, that rarely makes sense.  In order to gather enough response data to learn what's working (and what's not), I tend to spend it over 1 - 2 weeks instead.  I have a hard time learning anything from a drip, drip, drip of impressions and clicks that $30/day buys me. On the other hand, $100 day spent wisely can give me some indication of where to focus.  Even better, save $3,000 for the test phase and speed up your learning over the first month.

I'll focus later some key aspects of a solid test plan, but if you are not willing to trust the process, you'll pull the plug after the first $100 spent because you don't see acceptable sales numbers.  I don't know of a successful advertising program that didn't start with a test campaign involving trial and error up front. Advertisers that were willing to trust the process with a solid test plan reaped the rewards down the road.

The key here is to resist testing half-heartedly.  Be committed with a good test plan and you will break through a barrier that many advertisers are afraid to approach.

Facebook gives Ad Manager Facelift

Log in to your Facebook Ad Manager and you'll see a facelift that adds new metrics, graphs and features.

Facebook offers a comprehensive guide to the changes here.

Interestingly, the top level Campaigns & Ads page remains the same.  Click through to study one of your campaigns and you'll immediately see the difference.

While the new metrics, such as Social Reach and Connections are interesting, Facebook finally made segmenting performace by common date ranges easier.  I can now take a look at performace from the last 28 days easily through a drop-down menu on a specific campaign page.

I cannot understand why the Campaigns & Ads page does not offer the same date ranges.  It still defaults to "Lifetime" stats, a metric that is virtually meaningless when I am managing current performance.  I would also love to see "Last Month" and "This Month" options.

Facebook's Ad Manager is not a elegant tool.  It will get better as Facebook's advertising offering matures.  Even without a powerful tool to manage campaigns, Facebook Ads now rival AdWords in reach and click volume.   I recommend Facebook Ads as part of the mix to almost all my clients today.

Lessons from Emma's cyber-security breach

Nashville based Emma, an email service provider to thousands of businesses, just experienced the ultimate nightmare scenario.  Hackers apparently compromised their database servers and accessed clients' email lists.  The company says that the hackers were able to export email lists and decode usernames and passwords in order to send spam from the client's own account. 

As an email marketing industry veteran, this gave me chills.  It's also an object lesson for me in the only way a company such as Emma can possibly survive it.  Just imagine if you were one of Emma's clients and you discovered your email service provider had been attacked, and unauthorized emails might have been sent to your customers from your account.  You're definitely thinking of finding a new company to host your email marketing capability.  But here's why if you're an Emma client, you have good reason to rest easier: Emma handled this crisis with transparency, made no excuses and you can bet they'll have the some of tightest security in the industry going forward.

Emma sent an email to customers alerting them to the situation and letting them know if they were affected.  Emma posted details about its embarrassing and business threatening disaster on the company's blog.  Emma got humble and asked for outside help to address the issues.  And Emma did it all in a timely manner.

Here are the lessons this underscores for me:

1. A company that has clients needs a blog and needs to know how to use it to build relationships. Emma had a blog and had made it relevant long before this crisis.  They had clearly gained the trust of many of their clients through the blog.  Otherwise, you would not see dozens of positive and supportive comments from customers in response to Emma's embarrassing debacle.
2. A company that has clients needs a disaster plan.  For big companies like Emma, a disaster plan is a required document in order to get certified.  Emma clearly had it and knew how to implement it.
3. I'll stick with a company that knows how to handle itself when the stuff hits the fan.  Every one of Emma's clients now has to make a decision about whether to stay or go.  I'm advising my clients to stay with Emma.  We now know we can trust them and they are now tested by fire.
4. A company with clients needs an email marketing strategy and, with few exceptions, should leave the technology to the experts.  Deploying commercial email is a technologically advanced undertaking.  And as this episode demonstrates, it's dangerous.  FedEx delivers packages, but does it make its own airplanes or trucks?  No, it outsources that critical technology to the people that do that for a living.
5. This is a warning that there are sophisticated, dedicated and capable cyber-terrorists out there with an ambition to ruin American businesses.  Companies should examine their own security and look also to ensure their vendors are, like Emma, prepared for an attack.

Companies with web-based services live on the edge.  The service can become instantly popular and grow at an incredible pace.  Just as quickly, it can disappear if those who run it have not cultivated the trust of their customers.

Turning the page on a career

After 10 years with the same organization, today is my last day at Acxiom Corporation.  I decided it was time to jump on an opportunity to join a search engine marketing agency - Page Zero Media.

I'm experiencing a number of feelings as I exit this job and enter another.  The overwhelming one is gratitude.  I'm grateful for the countless opportunities I've been given over the last decade.  Those opportunities have afforded me so much experience and maturity that I really needed.

In gratitude, I'd like to thank some people.  Rich Maradik and Jay Graves founded a company called Data Mark in the mid 1990's.  These two guys put it all on the line and grew that database marketing company into SmartDM.  In 2000, they decided to invest in online marketing technology and services.  They gave me the opportunity to get in on the ground floor of that effort.  For the next 5 years the company grew in fits and starts - and I didn't become a dot com millionaire.  However, I experienced personal growth that was much more valuable.  Working with Rich, Jay and my colleagues at SmartDM taught me how to believe in a vision even if you can't clearly see the path to get there.  The vision won't even become total reality - but that's not really the point either.  It's the relationships, experiences and challenges on the journey toward the vision that make it worthwhile at the end of the day.

In 2005, a much larger company called Acxiom took notice of SmartDM and snapped us up.  That was a big change with a lot of uncertainty.  The big picture was that we had a place in Acxiom to provide multichannel agency services and standardized marketing database technology.  I was pretty excited because Acxiom didn't really have the capability to do email marketing for its clients and that's exactly what my team did.  We had run email programs for big companies like Harrah's and American General Finance.  And then, a few months later, Acxiom bought a company called Digital Impact which did email marketing on a much bigger scale with a much bigger staff from offices in the Silicon Valley to New York City.  Quite soon, it dawned on me that I better cozy up to these folks.

Long story short, Scott Tansey and I laid the groundwork for building an Acxiom Digital team in Nashville, TN.  Competition for technically skilled talent was less than what it was in the Silicon Valley.  So we thought we could hire and retain a group of talented associates.  In an era where off shoring work was the thing to do to lower expenses, we said "off shore" it to Middle Tennessee or "Nash Dehli" as Jay called us.  Middle Tennessee might as well have been India to these Digital Kingpins.  The main cost savings came from the difference between what it cost to lease office space in the Silicon Valley and Manhattan vs. our somewhat dumpy mixed-use space at the end of a runway in Nashville, TN.  I am grateful to the bosses that signed off on this idea and have supported it ever since.

We started slowly at first, adding two Acxiom Digital associates to my small team that still did work for legacy SmartDM clients.  We moved a little work from the San Mateo, CA office to Nashville...and...it worked!  Clients were pleased, we learned how to work effectively with teams in other locations and the team thrived.  Before long, we were hiring like crazy in Nashville and had more than 30 associates here in a couple years time. As I leave today, I will argue that this is as good a team as any other Acxiom team in the world.  They are just incredibly talented and dedicated - and I give them the credit.  My role was to recruit good talent, put them in the right roles, make sure they had the tools they needed, advocate for them within the company and most importantly, get out of the way and let them do their jobs.  Building the team here in Nashville is the most gratifying thing I've been involved with in my career to date.  I want to thank the team here in Nashville for the honor of working with you.  It is bittersweet to leave this team but the sweet part is knowing they are headed for ever greater things.  Thanks to my bosses past and present - Tony Espiritu, Robbie Fang and Chris Marriott.

It strikes me how some of the most difficult challenges I've encountered laid the ground work for future opportunities.  In 2002, Jay suggested that I figure out this search engine marketing business so we could offer it to our clients.  I was skeptical at first - caught too deep in the day to day grind to see the next big opportunity.  But ultimately I dove in and discovered a fascinating means of acquiring new business using search engines - it revived the geek in me.  I came across a book that got me started.  About 8 years later, I'm going to work for the author of that book.

First it was web sites in the mid 1990's.  Then it was email marketing.  After that, search engine marketing.  Now I believe a number of digital channels are just about ready to break through in terms of proven commercial viability.  What an interesting and fast developing industry to be in!

Finally, I have not enjoyed any success at all over the years all on my own.  I've needed help every step of the way.  The biggest support has always come from my family - and so my biggest thank you goes to Lyn.  Ross and Jenna Claire both came along in the middle of all this - thanks to them for motivating me. 

I'm moving on to the next thing.

Help wanted - Advice to Generation Y's job search

Despite the difficult economic circumstances, I've continued to recruit this year for positions on my team.  I'm not recruiting like I did in 2007 though - when there were quite a few more positions to fill.

The positions I hire for and manage appeal to Generation Y - often men and women who have recently graduated from college. It may be the first career oriented job search they've conducted.  Unfortunately, the economic downtown may leave most of the class of 2009 without the job they were looking for right away.  So how should they conduct an effective job search and what should they do if it takes longer than they wished?

A piece in Businessweek online offers some excellent advice:
Gen-Y: How to get a job now

I can always count on Seth Godin for some outside the box thinking.  Take a look at what he has to say on the topic:
Graduate school for unemployed college students

Finally, I found that networking is one of the most powerful tools in a job search.  Start by listing everyone you know who you respect for some reason whether it be professionall or even personally.  Add to that list people you identify at companies in your chosen field even if they may not be hiring.  Now, make as many appointments as you can to talk with these people - in person whenever possible.  When you get a chance to network with these people, ask good questions.  The last question should be a request for 3 people from their rolodex they think you should talk to.  If you then pursue those people with the strategy above, your network expands exponetially and eventually you will run into opportunities.

Back to work 2009

The holidays are officially over and millions of Americans are back to work today after a healthy vacation.

Our kids' afternoon sitter is back after travelling a couple thousand miles with her sister and grandmother in a car. 

My buddy JB is back after two weeks off - all indications are that he's fired up and ready to tackle 2009.

The Titans are back from a long weekend and are getting ready to play the Ravens in a NFL Divisional Playoff game Saturday in Nashville.

But, sadly, over 10 million Americans have no job to go to today.  The U.S. unemployment rate is almost 7%.

Which brings me to something a good friend told me today when asked how he felt about being back at work: "...the holidays were nice, sure we'd rather be on the couch watching the playoffs still, but thankful for a grindstone to nose."

Let's ask God for His grace, mercy and peace to those who are not back to work this first Monday of 2009.

Tracking should be the key to unlocking online marketing spend

As usual, Seth Godin has it right - your marketing budget should be unlimited so long as the results are greater than the spend.  This is especially true for online marketing.

Unfortunately, many marketers do not close the loop on their online marketing campaigns. By that I mean, they cannot directly quantify the results and know whether they are winning or losing.

I've found over and over that marketers don't close the loop on tracking and don't clearly know what constitutes success.  Unfortunately, this is more often the case with bigger companies that spend more.  Marketers should look at every online initiative they are running in 2009 and ask 2 basic questions:

1. Am I able to directly tie acquisitions/revenue to each online campaign or segment?
2. For each conversion or sale, what constitutes an acceptable cost per acquisition?

If you cannot answer yes to #1, make it a 1st quarter 2009 goal to get tracking in place such that you know the quantifiable results of each and every online campaign - email, search, online media, even web 2.0 channels.  How?  In email, for instance, each link in the message needs to have tracking code that will register actions either on an aggregate or individual level.  Search campaigns, like AdWords, are even easier to track.  Free tools are available through Google Analytics to track most any online campaign.  For high end conversion and online behavioral tracking there are a handful of players: Coremetrics, Omniture and Webtrends.

Question #2 is can cause marketers headaches, an indication that it's a vital concern.  Especially in retail, the acceptable cost per acquisition varies by product and even changes based on a customer's RFM  and lifetime value profile.  But if we're talking about revenue, at the end of the day, did the campaign create more revenue than you spent creating and deploying it?  That's a start from which you can get as analytical as you'll allow statisticians to go - but don't over think it either.  In any case, you can't afford not to know what constitutes winning or losing.

What challenges face your 2009 marketing spend?  Could you address them better if you knew what every online campaign broght in and whether that constituted profit or loss?

I love my team at work

Team, there is some yummy breakfast in the cube across from Jennifer. Enjoy.

This week I am so grateful for the dedication and hard work displayed on a daily basis by my colleagues at work. 

In the face of very difficult circumstances, they figure out ways to deliver value to our clients.  They don't give up when the technology does not cooperate.  They encourage and help each other with problems as if they were personally responsible for every one of them.  They share their knowledge and teach each other how to work smarter and through an easier and softer way.

They care about each other.  When one is hurting, they rally around that person and show kindness.

When we make a mistake, we don't hang our heads.  We work to make the situation right for our customer.  When a customer makes a mistake, we do our best to fix it and help them avoid it the next time.

They are ambitious. They are not satisfied with their career as it is, they have a vision for what it could and should be.  And at the same time they know the work it takes today to get there.

Many of them are young (younger than me, anyway) and smart (smarter than me, anyway).  They bring skills unencumbered by the old ways of doing things.  They have energy.

They love to have fun and laugh.  They like to play together.  Ping pong, walks around the block, IMAX movies...anything that's an experience.

I am humbled and grateful to get to work with my team in Nashville.  I love you guys.

Email marketing pays my bills

I was joking with some friends at work that what we're doing here is "making the world a better place, one email at a time."  The truth is that creating and deploying email marketing campaigns for huge brand name companies is hard work.  Not only that, but in most people's minds email marketing is synonymous with spam.  So telling friends and family what you do for a living always has to include an ironic disclaimer that "we hate SPAM as much as you do".

Don't believe me?  I don't blame you.  I get SPAMMED a thousand times a day and if a commercial emailer told me they were not spamming, I'd be skeptical...if I didn't know better.  It turns out, however, that in fact I work for a company that sends targeted permission based electronic messages on behalf of my clients to their own customers.  Why?  Because my clients need experts and technology that can do the job.  And as I said, it's a hard job to do.

How can I make my living on commercial email and still hate spam?  Spam makes it a lot harder for my clients to communicate with their customers.  Spam clutters up my inbox too.  And, spam is the reason my chosen profession is so commonly misunderstood.

I'll try to explain.  If you're like me, you have chosen to receive email from some companies you do business with.  Mine include a professional sports team, a cigar store and my alma mater.  With all the personal and job related email I receive daily, there are only a handful of companies I've done business with that I've given permission to email me.  The rest get trashed.  My clients are businesses that have customers who have given their permission to receive email.  Marketers call this relationship or current customer email marketing.

By contrast, most of what we would call spam is prospect email marketing.  Prospect email marketing consists of messages sent from companies to consumers without a pre-existing business relationship.  Of course, it depends on what your definition of spam is, but most people I believe would agree that commercial email sent without explicit permission is spam.  When a business "rents" a list of email addresses and pays for their offer to be sent to them they are prospecting for new customers - and more often than not, spamming them.

Spamming is easy and cheap.  Unsolicited and untargeted messages are sent either by the business using some off the shelf software or by professional spammers.  A lot of it bounces or goes undelivered.  Even less of it reaches an inbox.  Much less of it is opened.  Much less than 1% of that get clicked on, and much less than 1% of the clicks result in some action.  Still, because it is so cheap to send email this way it often pays off.  Why do you think spam still thrives?

Once again by contrast, my clients use the company I work for because we are experts in doing email marketing that is far more difficult, compliant and in accordance with all the best practices in the marketing industry.  The messages are targeted to my client's customers based on their preferences and consumer behavior.  The email creative is tested to make sure it appears correctly in outlook, gmail or anything in between.  The message contains a prominent link that allows the recipient to opt-out instantly.  Our system is designed never to send a message to that address again.  Our company maintains good relationships with all the Internet service providers who we send email to.  We constantly run tests for our clients to determine what strategies are most effective.  We provide our clients detailed reporting and analysis of all their campaigns.

I am proud to work with a dedicated team of expert, lawful and ethical email marketers.