As we begin wrapping up 2009 and prepare for a promising 2010, let’s take a minute and see how the ‘Virtual Events’ category has performed in this year. The economic woes, coupled with the accelerating decline in the demand for physical events, made 2009 the breakthrough year for Virtual Events – with the growth rate soaring to over 300%. According to research conducted by Marketing Sherpa, the budget allocated by companies of various sizes to virtual events increased by 37% during the first half of 2009, while face-to-face events declined by 30% during the same period.

Lead generation capabilities, actionable intelligence and integration with social media platforms are some of the capabilities that have made Virtual Events a ‘must have’ and ‘highly desirable’ solution for marketers. More and more industries and verticals are beginning to see the potential in Virtual Events and are starting to adopt them for both internal and external use, including Employee Training, User Conferences, Trade Shows, Job Fairs, Sales Conferences, HR Meetings, Demand Generation, and more. Clearly, the breadth of applications makes this platform a truly disruptive technology.

In line with the growing demand for Virtual Events as a whole, and our increasing brand recognition and deep market penetration, we have taken several steps to ratchet up our marketing presence online. I am very pleased to announce the launch of our new and dynamic VirtualEvents365 website (www.virtualevents365.com). The website provides valuable information about our capabilities, dimensions of distinction, client projects and partner community, so be sure to visit us for up-to-date information. We will soon be announcing expanded capabilities and offerings…until next time!

Best,
Tom Wieser

Provided by Marketing Sherpa.com

Email is Going Strong

SUMMARY: When consumers want to share something from the Internet with their friends or family, such as a video, link or article, what methods do they use? While social media is gaining ground on email, the latter still dominates as a sharing tool. When we look at media use over the last 15 years, we see a pattern of aggregation and adoption rather than replacement. Some media suffer in the exchange, but none are eliminated entirely. More commonly, their uses become more refined.

Last week, I attended the Marketing Sherpa B2B Summit in San Francisco, CA.  It was a pretty active event with Twitter conversations at #sherpaB2B09 and live streaming courtesy Hubspot TV. I just wanted to take a few minutes to recap some of the highlights from my perspective and hope to continue the discussion that we were having on site with this community here.

“It’s just marketing.”
Best quote of the event, courtesy Jeff Taxdahl owner of Thread-Logic. This comment came from his presentation on whether to work with or not work with an agency to manage his PPC Campaign which currently drives 95% of his sales. At the end of the day, there are no tricks. The fundamentals of marketing still apply. Know your buyer; deliver a compelling message to the buyer. And, if it is important to your business, you may be the best person/team to make it happen and you may need to ramp up the knowledge in house.

Continuing this line of thinking – we spent several hours on social media on Day 1. And, I have to say, I am “kinda over” social media. I am tired of us talking about it with shiny penny syndrome and marketers’ utter confusion on “How does it fit? Is it worth it?” It’s just marketing! The fundamentals of marketing still apply. Know your buyer and deliver a compelling message to the buyer. Build the relationships, don’t force the brand.

“Relevance requires major data”
Second favorite quote. This came from Thomas Hayden, Director of Marketing for Sage Systems. So true Thomas, so true. In the way that an in-person conversation requires excellent listening skills (human data processing), an automated conversation demands pristine data quality. Your data quality represents your ability to listen to your customer effectively.

“Be Helpful.”
OK, this is actually a quote from Chris Brogan who wasn’t at the event but I love the quote and it sums up an important theme in terms of content and delivery of that content. I really enjoyed the session that featured Troy Monney from Novell (and not just because they are an Eloqua client) but because they clearly demonstrated how they mapped out content for buyer personas at different stages of their buyers’ evaluation process (v. the internal selling process). I thought all of the sessions on Day 2 that focused on content and buyer personas really helped us to think in the shoes of our customer v. the mindset of just pushing our brand.

“Can you tell us about the ROI on that example? Ummm…”
Many marketers are still struggling with key metrics and demonstrating ROI. Yes, it is a controversial subject in terms of the HOW, but I think that a clear understanding of Campaign impact on revenue is still a struggle for most. It is still a very anecdotal and correlation game.

“Marketing is still from Venus. And, Sales is still from Mars.”
I can’t believe we are still so siloed in our areas of focus on the funnel. Marketing focusing only on “sales ready” with no clear “acceptance/rejection” points along the way to gain objective feedback on lead quality. The one presentation on Scoring seemed to even accentuate this further. To truly drive sales and marketing alignment – there needs to be a clear mapping of process, communication touch points, and responsibilities at every step of the funnel, not just the top.

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Emily Salus, Sr Mktg Mgr, CollabNet

Need to filter and control what becomes sales ready leads. Send only qualified leads to sales.

Steps:

• Build the right team
• Open communications
• Agree on definition of sales ready lead – what does sales want to see?
• Create a demonstration – only have one chance to make a first impression. Build it in a spreadsheet first to show what would happen in the future. Make sure you’re sending the right leads, not sending the ones they’re not going to follow up on anyways.
• Roll-out

 Attributes to consider for the right leads:

• Geo
• Industry
• Company rev / size
• Role / Title
• Recent activity – downloads, event participation
• How recently did this activity happen

Scoring methodology:

Start with a round number as sales ready (i.e. 10 or 100)

Top level steps:

• Implement
• Gain near-term feedback
• Measure results
  • Funnel – Web activity / Marketing Queue / Sales Queue
  • Waterfall – average time between the above buckets – relates to sales cycle
  • Flow – once in system, what is timing and success rate to get through Marketing and Sales funnels

Marketo is vendor

Objectives –

• Increase quality of lead going to sales
• Increase pace of lead to sales flow
• Measure and analyze marketing and sales funnels – “how many leads of what quality do we need in order to hit our revenue targets?”

Michael Rapp, Mgr of eMedia, Fujitsu –

A very insightful presentation focused on driving marketing messages based upon the persona of the recipient / target, rather than role.

Buyers Persona Exercise:

• Industry
• Existing Customer
• Department
• Active contact
• Role (not title)

 Market to the persona’s not to the channel or title.

 As day one comes to a close I find myself having seen some GREAT B2B marketing best practice and some good case study. Below, my notes reflect much of my interest in the best practice presentations. Funny but true, I found myself at times so absorbed in the presentation that I didn’t take enough notes for this blog entry… I guess that this is a good thing, it says that the content was really very good!

Brian Carroll, CEO, InTouch

Nurturing (definition): Relevant and consistent dialog with potential customers regardless of their timing to buy.

Marketing should co-create lead nurturing process and lead it:

• Take inactive leads back from sales – calculate from leads not touched in 90 days 

Five fundamentals necessary to enable a successful lead nurturing program

1. Shift from campaigns to conversations
2. Find the right amount of friction
3. Develop the one team mindset
4. Who should you re-engage first… recency,
5. Script an opt-in process, messages and calls. 

Dr. Flint McGlaughlin, Director MEC Labs (founder too!)

A highly engaging speaker with magnetism that drew the audience in very successfully. His presentation style is also very well honed… he successfully hung a thorough presentation on a short construct, allowing the audience to absorb his points well.

Here are his key points…

4 Conversion Impediments:

1. Lack of clarity

• Where am I at?
• The eye moves in a triangle when the user is trying to gain meaning… the goal is to make the page clear so that information is revealed appropriately, the eye path is more controlled.
• What can I do here?
• Why should I do it?

2. Undisciplined eye path

3. Insufficient value promise

4. Excessive friction

• Quantity first page
• Quality second page
• Remarket to get quality data if user abandons

Then we worked through several real-life case studies of landing pages that were submitted by attendees… excellent learning and feedback for those who were brave enough to have their pages reviewed.

Erin Daly, PTC

Tactic #1: The data you have, and the data you don’t

Increase your footprint at existing accounts

Calculate the number of relevant contacts you have within target companies.

Tactic #2: Get contact that don’t know

Get third party endorsements – Analysts, media, etc.

Make sure your messages aligns.

Tactic #3: Engaging new contacts

“Risk” options from low to high:

• White paper / report – 2 seconds to download, 10 mins to read
• Webcast – 2 seconds to register, 30 mins to listen
• Seminar – huge commitment in time and resources
• Sales meeting – if not interested in product, the “date” is futile and boring… I don’t want to hear it, don’t have time for it.

Build integrated marketing relationship to move a person towards a sales relationship…

• Don’t reach too far on the first “date”
• Send value to list on the subject you’re wanting to promote, then solicit the webinar or higher reaching step. Since you’ve already fertilized the environment.

Tactic #4: Asking all the right questions

What to say when you don’t know what to say, surveys:

• Low risk for response = lots of response
• User 3rd party rental contacts + inhouse
• Offer quick tell me more about yourself and I’ll give you a $10 retail card
• Break into groups:

1.  
   1. Take highly qualified leads and send to sales opportunities,
   2. Put the rest in nurturing campaigns

What works?

• Flattery – you’re the best and it relates to you. Make sure recipients are qualified.
• Laziness – low risk
• Bribery – what’s in it for the recipient. Make sure incentives are achievable and realistic. You’re paying for recipient attention and information, not just response. Have everyone win something, even $5-$10, rather than a chance to win something larger.

With schools everywhere back in session, it’s the perfect time to brush up on some marketing terms you’ve seen bandied about. Let’s start with “remarketing.” 

In a nutshell, remarketing is the approach of targeting visitors who came and then left your site. Remarketing aims to bring them back to your site with highly customized ads. 

It’s a timely topic. Marketing Sherpa research director Stefan Tornquist and others recently batted around the topic of customer retention and ways to reduce cart abandonment. It’s incredible that traditional online ads convert at an industry average of just four percent. Targeting ads to users who’ve already shown interest greatly improves chances for conversion while raising brand awareness at the same time.

Using a simple visitor tagging technique, advertisers set the stage for remarketing by creating a handpicked group of very qualified web users for upcoming marketing campaigns.

Remarketing works with all channels of traffic – search, display, SEO, CPA, email, natural. 

Want more info.? Here’s our press release.

 –Advertise.com Team

Recently I dealt with a company that I had purchased a laptop from with less than stellar results. The laptop that was shipped to me didn’t include the full version of software that I purchased. Admittedly I should have nipped this issue in the bud when I realized that I had not been sent the correct software. (Laptop was loaded with a sixty day trial). Without going into too much detail (and raising my blood pressure to a dangerous level) my husband made numerous phone calls on my behalf with no resolution. I was finally assigned a case manager after five days after the initial call. I had to argue with the case manager about what was loaded on the computer versus what I had paid for as she didn’t subscribe to the philosophy that the customer was always right. Eventually I got a bit more than I paid for. But I will not be purchasing this company’s products ever again.

A few days later, the company sent me a customer satisfaction survey. Being thoroughly irritated, I was more than happy to provide feedback. I started thinking about when companies should send out a survey. Is it best to wait until resolution has occurred before it is deployed? Or should an email with a link to the survey be sent out when contact is first initiated?

Many companies all ready use surveys to gain customer feedback after a customer touch point: recent call into a service center, follow up on a sale, or a visit to a tradeshow booth. Deployed correctly, surveys can provide customers with an opportunity to provide more than a sounding board to complain about their recent call center experience.

In my experience, people like to respond to surveys when they are upset about the company, product, or service they have received or the survey looks fun. If your company sends out a customer satisfaction survey at the end of the customer service experience, think about sending a short survey when the call is first initiated. Or send out a survey to customers who haven’t purchased a product recently to find out how their current product is operating.

Most companies operate on the ‘no news is good news’ philosophy. I think this isn’t the customer-centric thinking that today’s consumers are demanding. More frequent check-ins with customers can provide your company with actionable feedback or customer testimonials. For more information on the beauty that is surveys, check out Marketing Sherpa’s latest article “How to conduct Email Surveys-Tips to Lift Response & Write Subject Lines”.

Guest Blog

Seven prospecting rules that produce leads

By Brian Carroll

Roughly 92% of b-to-b buyers are open to cold calls if the sales person’s pitch is relevant, according to MarketingSherpa. That means that despite all of those poorly trained prospectors in sales, picking up the horn can still be a very effective lead-generation tool. In fact, if you follow a few simple rules you can tremendously improve your tele-prospecting efforts.

Step 1: Sustain the calling – This means that you have to be in it for the long-haul. You can’t pressure your prospects to make a decision on the first call. Take your time and follow up with more information. Listen to what they’re asking and if you don’t know the answer, just say so and then follow up to provide the answer.

Step 2: Make every call count – Teleprospectors should never end a call upon hearing that the targeted individual is unavailable. Take time to be helpful to the assistant, or update and verify your database by working to share information for this source. Always ask if there is an alternative decision maker available.

Step 3: Lose the scripts – Telemarketers use scripts. Teleprospectors use call guides. Scripts leave little room for conversation. Call guides are simply strong outlines designed to perpetuate conversation with suggested areas to be discussed and questions to be asked. They must be built with flexibility and assume variable outcomes while still staying on message and promoting key relevancies to the customer.

Step 4: Respect Executive Assistants – Don’t view the Executive Assistant as a barrier to initiating dialogue. Don’t treat anyone as lesser and don’t be afraid to develop a relationship with people with the title “Assistant.” EAs can occupy a significant place in the sphere of influence, not to mention the boss’ ear.

Step 5: Be relevant – When you’re making a call, the worst thing you can do is to call someone and know nothing about them. You must have a sound, working knowledge of each potential customer and the company.  Perhaps more important, know the issues they face and how your product can help solve them. This step goes a long way in establishing meaningful dialogue.

Step 6: Gain opt-in – When you are speaking with a prospect, it is proactive to request permission to e-mail subsequent helpful information. Most folks won’t mind receiving an e-mail from you to follow up the phone call. This will provide another building block for staying in touch.

Step 7: Always follow up – It is crucial that you follow up in a way that is precise in terms of promptness and relevancy toward your prospect’s needs. And, when you follow up you need to do so in the manner requested. If they decline a follow up phone call and ask that you email them instead, make certain you do as asked.

_________________

Brian Carroll is CEO of  InTouch and author of “Lead Generation for the Complex Sale” (McGraw-Hill) and the B2B Lead Generation Blog.

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I’ve been turning over in my mind a social media survey highlighted this week in eMarketer. The study surveyed nearly 2,000 social media marketers on what works and what doesn’t in their world.  For example, social media marketers see these strategies and tactics as an effective way to do things that have typically fallen into the realm of public relations — influence brand reputation and increase brand awareness — as well as digital marketing practices to increase website traffic and search engine rankings.  They report less effectiveness at improving internal communications, generating leads and increasing online sales.

Marketing Sherpa Study, posted by eMarketer

Perhaps more telling are their responses on their ability to measure social media effectiveness.  In a nutshell, that which the marketers feel are the most effective tactics are deemed the least accurately measured.

Over on the ShoppeSimple blog (a client blog), we noted that reports highlight the gap between creating and participating in social conversation, and turning converting that conversation into sales — there is a need for a way to connect consumers to brands and product offers outside of email.   

From a corporate communications standpoint, the study highlights the dilemma of where and how to invest in social media.  The most effective social  tactics appear to be seen by respondents as only marginally more measurable than that traditonal media relations — where you counted clips and assumed they were having an impact on awareness and attitudes (and while the web makes this more cost effective, most businesses do not have or spend the resources to directly measure impact of media relations on customers).

And yet…and yet…

It’s clear that we believe this stuff is working, just like PR has always worked, and maybe even more so.

There is not doubt that corporations ignore the online communications channel at their peril.  If only from a crisis preparedness standpoint, no company should want to risk becoming the next big case study on what happens when blogs and social networks your gaffe goes viral.  That’s a good place to start.

Beyond that, if you don’t look, you won’t see.  In an uncontroversial environment, the issues won’t be obvious.  I have some thoughts on the matter that I’ll save for my next post, but what do you think?

In corporate environments where additional spending is only for initiatives where you can demonstrate a return, what opportunities does corporate communications miss when they don’t engage with social media?

The buzzword in marketing today is “conversation”.  Social media gives you an unprecedented opportunity hear your customers, become a part of conversations, spread your message and build your brand.  But marketers continue to face the challenge of converting conversation into sales.

A late 2008 Marketing Sherpa survey of social media marketers (as recapped by eMarketer) puts a spotlight on the issue.

The survey found, for example, that most respondents see social media as only “somewhat effective” at increasing online sales.  In terms of measurement, 32% off respondents believe that “Blog or social network advertising” is accurately measured — the most of any social tactic listed — while only 16% found it a very effective tactic.  47%  and 46% said that “user reviews and ratings” and “blogger and journalist relations”, respectively, are very effective, but only 15% and 11% believe these activities are very accurately measured.

The question, then, is how to bridge the gap from conversation to conversion.  eMarketer cites an Epsilon report that finds e-mail click through rates in Q1 ‘09 at 6.1%, while click-through rates in industries such as retail electronics and  apparel saw declines from Q4 ‘08 to Q1 ‘09. And email is often a barrier to turning social media success into sales success.  Collecting email addresses from social network interactions is difficult and considered undesirable in most social networking conversations.

ShoppeSimple bridges the gap from conversation to conversion.  The ShoppeSimple TransactionalRSS feed system combines widely used RSS technology with proprietary SaaS-based publishing system to open an online channel to consumers who want merchant offers on their own time.  It is inherently opt-in, anonymous and private for the consumer — and merchant offers can be accessed, purchased and shared through readers, browsers, from social networks and mobile devices.

You can see  what many retailers are learning about TRSS at www.shoppesimple.com, or visit RSSCheck.com to contact sales.  And let us know what you think!

Online marketing methods are increasingly effective in a recession.

Let’s face it, marketing your product or service in an economic downturn can be challenging. Fortunately many companies are still seeing great results by marketing their product online. Marketing Sherpa released some interesting information about what methods are working today, and what is not.

Creating urgency through limited time offers seems to be the most widely used method, and considered one of the most effective by the marketers surveyed.

As always, it remains important to spend your marketing dollars wisely. While some may think spending less is the best way to navigate rough financial waters, studies are showing many marketers are significantly increasing their spend.

Interactive Video Ad

SUMMARY: When Marketing Sherpa asked a sample of marketers using video advertising, either online or on TV, what effect various tactics would have on their video ads, greater interactivity and creating more versions for more consumer targets proved to be the most popular.

If you have ever spent and evening in front of your television and wondered why any advertiser would purposely fill every available ad break with the same ad over and over, or worse, have the volume so high that you must mute the volume, you are clearly not alone. Among the marketers surveyed, cranking up the volume on ads got the biggest negative response; an overwhelming 69% claim that the practice actually decreases the effectiveness of an ad. Like a pop-up ad, a very loud ad can certainly get a viewer’s attention, but by being annoying, that attention may hurt the brand and have a negative effect on purchase intent.

A recent article appeared at Marketing Sherpa with the provocative finding  - at least, provocative to us who are in this business – stating in sum: 

“Two-thirds of marketers who work for organizations that have not used any form of social media marketing or PR consider themselves ‘very knowledgeable’ or ’somewhat knowledgeable’ about this emerging strategy. Their overconfidence in unproven ability can doom social media initiatives to failure.”  

Ouch!

This research doesn’t surprise me, though.  Even when companies engage an agency, they find it hard to commit because they don’t know enough to evaluate the proposal.   ”Lack of knowledgeable staff,” says the study, is “the most significant barrier to social media adoption.”  We know.  We spend a lot of time educating clients and prospects on why and how to integrate social media into their business practices. 

If it were only so simple as creating a Facebook page or having a Twitter account or commenting on the occasional blog or bookmarking something of relevance or interest…  Many of us do these activities regularly on a personal basis, not connected with any marketing strategy for a company.  However, to do it for a company requires more planning and execution, and also a deeper knowledge of how it all fits together to make the strategy successful as a marketing tool.

Of course, social media goes well beyond just a marketing tool, if fully embraced.  It can play a major role in customer service, new product development, corporate responsibility, and many other areas besides marketing.  But to use social media in this way requires a shift in corporate culture, which many are unwilling or unable to take on, in part because they don’t understand enough about it to do so.   

But now that’s changing.   A new study done in March by WhitePaperSource, published by Michael Stelzner, surveys 900 respondents and finds that 88% say they are using social media, but 72% only  just in the last few months.  This was surprising to me – surprising that so many were jumping in so recently.  Wonder if the downturn in the economy and tight budgets are causing people to look more seriously at social media as a cost effective alternative?  Or, given the tight job market, are more people starting up their own businesses and trying to get traction?  The study did find that smaller businesses are more active in social media.

The white paper goes on to say that most (81%) indicated that the main benefit they saw was increased exposure for their business.  Well and good.  That is a good place to start.  But what kind of time commitment will it take to do this, we often get asked.  This survey also looks at this question and finds that those who are experienced spend upwards of 20 hours/week on it, while those just starting out spend only 2 hours/week on average.  

Now link that thought to the Marketing Sherpa finding that people don’t think experience is necessary. Dabbling in social media with limited understanding of what can and should be done and without spending the time to do it well is not a recipe for success. Experienced social media marketers know that if you are not spending time and you don’t have experienced staff or a social media agency to work with, you won’t be successful.  Using it for personal purposes is very different from the disciplined approach it takes to plan and execute an effective social media strategy against business objectives.

Invest for success.  Don’t dabble!

Today more than ever executive managers are looking for low-cost, high ROI channels and agree that Email is still that solution.

According to a recent survey by Marketing Sherpa, “Email and social media are the only budget line items that more marketers plan to increase rather than decrease in 2009″  

What does that mean for you?  It means that you, the email marketer will be playing an even more important role in the success of your companies success. As a marketer, you can solidify your worth to your company by implementing some advanced tactics and data-analysis capabilities into your email campaigns.  These tactics can help you in your career and your company with ROI.

If you seriously think of compressing your marketing and communication budget, you have to read Marketing Sherpa’s 2009 Social Media Marketing & PR Benchmark Guide (executive summary in pdf)!

Well, if there are things you may know about the use of social media in PR and marketing, you may find some of the conclusions interesting (look at the charts) :

So, now you are ready to train everyone in the office to use social media efficiently for the greater good of your organization, aren’t you?! However, you might discover that most of them already use them… everyday at work… without telling you

But, if you want to stick to that old traditional website of yours, at least read Yann Gourvennec’s article on the 15 golden rules for web 2.0 websites… it may help…

What constitutes a viral campaign and how can it help a brand? According to Marketing Sherpa, going viral means when consumers pass marketing materials on to others (i.e. forwarding emails, send-to-a-friend, posting online, etc). Or simply, anything that is shared amongst the public is viral.

In the pre-internet world, viral meant hoping someone mentioned your brand in the press, on the radio, or on TV. Or in layman’s terms, PR. And obviously, free PR does wonders for brand recognition and market growth. But, new, free media outlets have made it easier to flood the public with creative executions  that are specifically made to go viral. Whether they succeed or not, is up to the viewing public. But they do offer cheap and creative ways to get a message across.

Some of the successes from last year, according to Campaign Magazine, can be seen here.

So, you're the marketing manager and we're in a recession. It's time to review your budget and your CEO expects sound justification for every line item. Feeling lucky, aren't you? Actually, you are. All you have to do is show them ROI! How lucky are you that we live in a world now where marketing efforts can be tracked?! It's easy to defend your budget when you can directly tie it to the overall objectives and revenues of your company. There are some great marketing tactics available that will enhance your online campaign performance despite the economy being a bit under the weather, so let's discuss a few.

First, what’s the big picture trend for online marketing in an economic downturn? According to Marketing Sherpa, email stands out as the key tactic for 2009 (subscription required). We all know that when done right, email can play an essential role in generating and nurturing leads, and eventually, sales.

But you need to be careful – with many marketers turning to email, competition for the inbox will be more intense than ever. It is essential that your message be relevant. It no longer makes sense to “batch and blast” your emails. In this economy, blasting to poorly managed databases only adds to your cost. Don’t wear out your list with repetitive, irrelevant messages. Know your core audience and don’t be afraid to talk to them directly.

So, as we tighten the belt on the budget, let’s also tighten the reins on our email list. Focus on segmenting your lists, optimizing your content, testing your content… and don’t forget your landing pages! Landing pages are an essential part of your communication with your customer. Apply the same rules to your landing pages as you do your email communications – test and optimize. If you have useful data about your customers, spend some time with it. Once you’re educated about your customer – their interests and needs – you can tailor a message to them. Spend some time testing things like subject lines, offers, and creative. Use dynamic content to speak specifically to your target customers’ behavior, and carry that relevance to every touch point! After your campaign is complete, review your results and make educated decisions about your next campaign.

The key in this economy is to find a software solution that can execute each of these tactics so you don’t have to waste money on redundant software expenses and very expensive software integrations.

Remember, with great power comes great responsibility. And with great email comes great power!

A new study conducted in November from Marketing Sherpa reports that from a sample of over 1,000 US marketers 56% were happy with the results of the video they have run on their website. Interestingly those that were not believe it was how they executed the video, and still believed that the results were there given the right implementation.

This is another encouraging survey reporting video is delivering for websites, particularly given the sample size. A cynic may suggest that marketers would be happy given they probably made the decision, however Marketing Sherpa has good survey track record and the volume of positive attitude is undeniable. The question that is more interesting is to those marketers that have not tested video is why not?

Every so often we take some time in this space to let you, our loyal and growing readership (thanks for a record November, everyone!), know when Knotice is in the news.

Our CEO, Brian, once again had his thoughts published, this time by DM News. He talks about the importance of unifying all online marketing data in one spot (whether it’s known customer attributes or behavioral data), and how it empowers better targeted online marketing programs that increase sales.

Also, it was mentioned in another post, but it’s worth re-posting that our email delivery assurance partner, ReturnPath, mentioned our software in a recent blog post from Stephanie Miller. Specifically, she talked about the advantages to recognizing a website visitor as an email subscriber, and how that can positively impact the buy-flow and the conversion process.

Two more quick mentions. One is from Nation’s Restaurant News where Brian spoke to the benefits of email marketing for restaurants, and that relevance is king over frequency. And, our local paper (the Akron Beacon Journal) did a story on businesses with unique cost cutting ideas – Brian gave a very interesting answer.

Here’s what to look forward to in December: We’ll post some online shopping tales that will include some pointers on how to improve the stuff that wasn’t so good, or why the good stuff was good. Stay tuned for this Monday’s post, too. Our systems administrator, Joe Minadeo (and another Knotice musician) will be posting on some super-cool email delivery assurance trends.

As usual, there is no rest for the weary here at the Lunch Pail. In fact, it would be decidedly UN-Lunch Pail to take time off, so, we refuse to do it. That means you can still count on posts every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, regardless of the holidays. I know you’re all excited to wake up one morning during the holidays, grab your coffee, and then check for the new post on the Lunch Pail. Enjoy!

Natalie Myers at the Marketing Sherpa recently interviewed me for a piece she was writing on my article “The Cheapskate’s Guide to PR.”

I like Natalie’s article better than the one I wrote.  I guess that’s why she’s a professional journalist and I’m just a hack.

Sigh…