Category: The Marketeer

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Email Marketing Lead Generation Productivity Booster SalesForce.com SEO and Paid Search

Salesforce.com in Boston

So I went to the Hyatt Harborside (right next to the airport with a nice view back on the Boston skyline, small place though) for the Salesforce event today. It was time well spent, even if just for getting to hear from a product manager directly. He was able to explain Apex in about 5 sentences better than anything I’ve read anywhere.

Apex is a language that you can query and script Salesforce with. It’s a new language that looks alot like a mashup of SQL and Java. They key is it runs on Salesforce servers. The product manager was a hardcore admin in a prior life and was talking about how they would set up a linux box out in the dmz to query SF and do cool stuff – for example hit the database once a day and round up all the contacts that sent in POs and send them the thank you message and kick the accounting system to send them an invoice. Sort of like Automated Procedures for Goldmine folk, but on steroids.

My hopes for finding a SF/Adwords ninja were dashed when I was one of the few (maybe only?) guy to raise his hand when they asked who was using it out of the probably 200+ people in the room. Either I really do have superpowers, or I was the one-eyed man in a room full of blind people.

Some other interesting stuff – ConVoq has webinars integrated into SF including VOIP, Dreamfactory has some project management and even SCM stuff that I need to check out. SalesGenius can tell you when your contacts are visiting your site (and also did a cool lead gen that got me a $5 Starbucks card). iNeo had some interesting stuff that automated the creation of landing pages. And one of these days I’ll get a chance to become an ExactTarget customer again, their integration is very cool and would take some labor out of the cycle and standardize outgoing messages.

Overall it’s time well spent to see what the next round of features will be. Also a major brainbuster – I gave Salesforce kudos for their ideaExchange – basically a Digg site for features for the product managers. I didn’t realize that this fit into a master plan for them of having startups create apps in apex – using ideaExchange as the perfect customer survey tool. They even have office space in the valley for these people to use, and of course VC will be trolling weekly. Brilliant! I’m buying shares this week.

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Lead Generation SalesForce.com The Marketeer

Boston Salesforce.com meetup tomorrow

Even though I am insanely busy I am going to make time to go to this event since I’ve missed the past two. I really want to see the latest stuff they’ve rolled out with the 7 release this month (and maybe find somebody that can help me with my Google AdWords integration… Hello? Bueller? McFly?).

If you are in the area you can probably still register, I’ll report back after the meeting.

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The Marketeer

Marketing is Not Math

Will Herman led me to this post earlier this week. It’s a good read and the message is very important – the best marketers are the ones that have the most contact with the customer, they will have the greatest understanding of what motivates them. Mr. Herman is closer to the mark than the original post (which states “Marketing is Math”) when he mentions Marketing as Art.

Although you can apply mathematical analysis to marketing, that doesn’t mean that it’s a scientific pursuit. All of marketing is based on human behavior and human behavior is irrational. Marketing falls into the same category as economics – most economists can use mathematical analysis to explain the past but none of them to their chagrin can predict the future and profit from it. Can’t you just see MTV’s “Cribs of the Supply Siders” now? (Disclosure (because disclosures are all the rage right now) – I am an economist)
In marketing the math is filled with uncertainty – two campaigns are mailed, exactly the same content one happens to bog down at the USPS sectional sort facility, the first hits homes on Friday, the second on monday. The same action, different results. 2+2=4 here, but only 3 there.

(Now hardcore mathematicians could step in here and say “If you had the guts to go beyond calculus 2 and get into the funky stuff like Ring Theory, and other stuff beyond your tiny brain, you’d see that you can mathematically handle uncertainty”. If you’re that smart please get back to working on my flying car and cold fusion instead of reading this.)

Start working in probability and statistics – we sent out this message and it got the attention of x% of our customers. This creates 3x the splash over that. This banner kicks 2% out of their snoozing beta brain state. You need to try and guess human behavior, and that’s an art. Some people are conversationalists or public speakers and others aren’t. You can do some scientific analysis and make some improvements (in fact, that’s the essence of your job and duty), but some public figures will motivate the masses, others will have “365 stupid quote” calendars made for them. See if you can keep your calendar limited to one edition.

Ultimately you need to take Mr. May’s advice – stop looking for consultants (unless you have money for me, of course), and start testing ways to talk to your customer.

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SEO and Paid Search The Marketeer

The Bratwurst Defense

There’s been a lot of discussion going on about The Sausage Manifesto, a great peice of writing by Jeffrey K. Rohrs that is an open letter to the major search engines about some of the problems with pay-per-click advertising. Mr. Rohrs is living right out on the cutting edge of click fraud, and talking about something even more radical – auditing.

For M Show fans that appreciate the explanation of the Inside Baseball – those paid ads in Google on the right charge the advertisers every time somebody clicks on them. The people who advertise alot (hundreds of thousands of dollars per month) are starting to wonder about the quality of those clicks – there’s an obvious incentive to support anything that generates clicks, and more importantly – there’s an economic penalty to investigate or actively prevent fraudulent clicks that make money for everyone except the advertiser.

If you’ve read the manifesto, read on, if not and you are not sure what I am talking about, click the link above to check out the whole thing. If you already understand pay-per-click and click fraud you can jump to the major points by starting here.

For the amusement of all I decided to try my hand at a rough draft response for the search providers.
1. Talk don’t lecture – it’s not that we think you are children, the problem is that there are millions of you and you have millions of questions. It’s not possible to do one-on-one, everything must be based on algorithm, that’s how this model scales. (Ronin comment – maybe they want to get the top 500 customers in a room and start there? But I almost worry more about that for the rest of the world.)

2. Unique circumstances? We’re the most powerful information system on the planet right now (until wikipedia kicks our ass to the curb), we got there first, we got the loot. We’re unique – you are ants (see #1).

3. Invest in proportion to the problem – as long as we keep the data hidden in the black box we’re all set. Shut up and enjoy your sausage.

4. Tracking alone is not the answer – Yes, but you’re willing to pay for the clicks even though I don’t even give you the number of conversions in a default view. It’s easier to make you dig for it, or better yet – get tired of digging and get back to stuffing your face with the sausage.

5. More customer service – ROFLMMFAO! Right, when in the history of the world has anyone added service without adding a premium pricing plan. Like that’s gonna happen. I have a better chance of getting good service at a retail store in the mall.

6. Click Quality Education Resource Center – Hmmm, build a marginally effective school that eats up the revenue – sorry, you’ve got us confused with Public Schools. (Ronin comment: I was educated in the public schools and I feel I was well prepared for the world.)
7. Get the IAB involved – Silence. (Ronin comment: Adding an industry association would be turning the sausage dial up to 11, but that’s just my personal bias.)

8. Click fraud firms – silent stare. subject begins to perspire. (Ronin comment – I LOVE THESE GUYS. This is the coolest field, these guys are the new Eliot Ness posse rolling into town. They are blowing on the fuse on the dynamite to get it to burn faster. You are the Jack Bauers of search. Let the questioning begin!)

9. Punish the guilty – Why waste money on litigation against someone that could be your best customer next week. Besides we know the courts are going to be behind on this for maybe even 10 years and we haven’t even been around that long. We are beyond the law.

10. SCMODS for the Perps (sorry for the oblique Blues Brothers reference) – We don’t want to punish those who know the system best (see #9). And building an offender database is pretty Big Brother don’t you think? (Ronin – I like this one a whole lot too. The auditors could do this amongst themselves and start printing money. I think I’m in the wrong industry.)

11. Give me data or give me death! – There’s no defense for this one, something will have to be done. But maybe we’ll only listen to a class action suit – I’m sure there are no attorneys out there looking for a deep pocket with only $152B in market cap out there. Or better yet, we’ll just wait for the federal regulation.

That’s it folks, I’m done channeling. In case you couldn’t tell, today is the first real day of winter cold here in the northeast. That’s why we get cranky.

Why can’t an engine with volume just switch to a pay per conversion? I’d pay 10x for that…

Thanks to Mr. Rohrs for starting a great discussion.

Categories
Lead Generation Productivity Booster The Marketeer

Rock the Webinar 12 Ways

So I run these webinars. I have to admit it’s kind of cool doing a virtual classroom. A lot of pubs are charging 10-40k to do these events, I’ve managed to get a GoToMeeting account and a conference call line and do it for a fraction of the price. Although GoToMeeting is kind of in the doghouse with me right now (we were upgraded to GoToWebinar and it’s missing some of the functionality we used to have). C.C. Chapman ran a crazy event over in Second Life recently, anybody else doing anything interesting on the meeting front, or have questions about it?

After some thought, here are some tips on how to run a webinar (How about “J-Funk’s Webinar Best Practices”):

  1. A good webinar has 4 emails – thank for registering, 24 hour prior notice (exactly 24 hours), 1 hour prior notice, day after thank you with a link to the recording.
  2. If you are playing a recorded presentation get a patch so you can run the sound from the source directly out to the line.
  3. No speakerphones. Polycoms rock, but not here.
  4. 45% Attendance is good.
  5. Cough up the cash for a good conference call line, the freebie services fall short.
  6. If possible automate the entire registration process (put your leads in salesforce and set up your emails for #1 as automated processes.
  7. If your presenter is new, or this is the first time the pitch is being done, record it rather than running live.
  8. Have a second system in your control room so you can always see and hear what attendees see.
  9. This second system should have all the same software and content on it as the first so it also serves as your disaster plan.
  10. Even if you have a complete disaster it’s not that big a deal. Apologize to everyone, and send them the link to the recording (unless they are paid attendees, then you have to do a little more to make good).
  11. Always do a follow up survey (I’ve found surveymonkey useful), you never know when you’ll need data on performance.
  12. In the survey as about the quality of the content, the entire user experience, including the phone and meeting software.
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SEO and Paid Search The Marketeer

Google Content Network

Twice now we’ve experimented with the Google Content Network and it’s been the same story both times. As soon as you activate it the clicks come pouring in, and they are mostly garbage. There are two problems with this – the economic and google juice cost (I use google juice for any stat that affects googles black box ranking that you are given when you play the game).

So many clicks get expensive quickly, our campaigns easily jump 4x in cost. More disappointing is the impact on clickthrough rates. Based on feedback from SES in Chicago I’m shooting for half a percent and when the content network is on we often drop down to one one hundredth. As soon as we switch it off it pops right back up to the .4-.5 range. I’d like to think that Google is taking this into account in the scoring, but no guarantees of that. It’s not a tough decision though, as long as the network makes the cost per lead 3 times what I’m willing to pay, it’s a no brainer.

I’d love to hear if anyone else out there has seen similar numbers.

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Brain Buster The Marketeer

Pandemonium

Pandemonium is a one of my favorite albums by The Time, but that’s not what I’m talking about here. I know the hardcore marketing content has been light this week, my CAPOW buddies know about my Web 2.0 initiative and that’s what’s been taking up all my time. Throw a Board Meeting into the mix and this has been a very stressful week. But this is the kind of stress that begats great things (birthing pains if you will).

I don’t have the energy to write it up now, but for those interested here’s a video clip that’s part of the master plan. For those of you not in the Software Configuration Management space – AccuRev is the company I work for and the other company is our (much larger) competitor, some guys with a penchant for large azure.

[youtube]msDuQoKqysw[/youtube]

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Lead Generation Podcasting The Marketeer

Podcasting – Not Across the Chasm Yet?

I ran a test recently to get a feel for the acceptance of podcast versus video. Readers were given the option of a link to a video clip or a link to a podcast and they chose the video clip at a ratio of almost 10 to 1.

Until the average user understands that a video clip is one item, whereas a podcast is subscribing to a channel, the true value of them goes unrecognized. Unfortunately with limited resources, that means a lot more web videos before podcasting becomes a core part of the marketing mix.

On the other hand – it will come. Being excited about podcasting now is like being hooked on TiVo 5 years ago, you know it’s good, and you know that eventually everyone else will come along. We’ve had a new car for a half a year now and I still haven’t listened to or set the presets for the radio.

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SalesForce.com The Marketeer

SalesForce.com IdeaExchange

For all Salesforce admins out there – have you checked out the IdeaExchange yet? It’s a cool combination of Digg, Wiki and Product Management tool. Users can rate what features or bugs the want to see developed in the next release of the product, and then Salesforce can brag about doing the stuff that you asked for.

Kudos for a great implementation of new technologies, but did you really expect anything less from SF.com? Bonus activity – go and vote for my “Add RSS” request, add a comment, and tell me you did and I’ll send the first 3 people a $10 iTunes gift card.
I’m finally going to be able to attend one of the local meetings here in Boston at the end of the month, they’re also showing off a new development language of some sort. I tend not to get too excited about that kind of stuff until it’s survived for a year or two.

And of course I’m already wondering how cool SF will look on the new Apple iPhone…

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Productivity Buster The Marketeer

Microsoft Crayonville Connection Uncovered

You heard it here first. Last week I was trying to compile my results from my HTML vs. text email test and having some trouble with a SQL query (I have to use the Access tool, I only write SQL code as comic relief for the true developers I work with). While trolling the Microsoft help center I came across this page showing an official Microsoft phonebook. In the event that the absurd traffic that this scoop generates brings that page down, I’ve done a screen cap of the book for your convenience:

MS Phonebook As you can see they have Jaffe not once but twice! They must be using “Jo” as either a feminine disguise or reference to the Curry “Bend over b!tich” scandal.

The feminine disguise theory could also mean that Holly Holt is a cover for Shel Holtz, and I’ve been told on good authority that Wei Yu loosely translates to “C.C. Chapman“.
You heard it here first.

Disclaimer: It seems like people occasionally have trouble with this stuff, so to be clear – this is a joke. I have no idea if there is a connection or not, but since you have hit my link bait perhaps you’d be interested in some other posts if any of the categories on the right catch your attention. Or better yet, listen to The M Show! More news as it happens.