EpikOne and Champlain College’s 3rd Online Marketing Bootcamp opened eyes and provided both the strategy and tactical guidance for interactive marketing pros – all here in our backyard of Burlington, Vermont. Propeller represented well with our crew present all week.

Dr. Elaine Young of Champlain (Social Marketing Maven) setup a Tweme (Twitter group) for people to post their impressions throughout the event. I can’t say that I fit the Twitter user profile, however If I were age 15 and maestro of the cell, I might have entered:

> Dave Winslow from EpikOne. MC and driving force behind the event. GA Dude.
> Dave: design democracy via testing
> Dave: segmentation clustered with unique paths/offers
> Dave: changing media buying to media investing, where investment principles are applied to marketing decision. Analytics provides the measurement for ROI
> Dave + flip flops + bike = leg in cast

> Avinash Kaushik from Google makes analytics “sexy cool”? Occams Razor. Job title : Analytics Avangelist…
> Avinash > Bounce Rate > “They came, they puked, they left.” Key metric to keep under 50% with less than 25% ideal.
> Avinash > Segmentation: “Data in aggregate is crap”. Just seeing that X visitors came to your site is useless without the context of the source and behavior. Use to measure long tail value.
> Avinash > Surveys. Big surprise to everyone. Most annoying and poorly designed survey – 24% success rate. WOW. On-Exit surveys very very powerful tool to gather information from the user you’re targeting. Tool to combat the HPPO and test assumptions.
> Survey tool: 4 square

> Champlain College is one beautiful campus. Food is amazing. I want to go back to school.
> Pizza rocks

> Alec Newcomb from MyWebGrocer
> Alec: Time spent online: 30%-40% yet only 9% ad$ spent on online tells us that much more spend is coming.
> Alec: 82% of iPhone users browse Web on the device. GPS enabling will make local/geo targeting super relevant.
> Alec: Social/Consumer generated content providing ad space inventory.
> Alec: Average age on social networks: 34. Badge value for marketers key tool.

> Mark Boujould – from EpikOne : ONLINE ADVERTISING
> Mark: SEO – no change in the rules
> Mark: Inbound links and PageRank: Link harvesting via competitive research: compete.com
> Mark: Value of Google Webmaster tools to see what Google sees in your site.
> Mark: SEM/PPC: Google owns over 75% of online ad spend feeding over 90% of Google revenue.
> Mark: Email: Still incredibly effective on an ROI basis
> Mark: Email: Use the service providers with built-in testing, reporting and to ensure delivery. Link tag.

> Efe Cimrin – from EpikOne : SOCIAL
> Efe : Threadless.com models the power of open source/social with a company that pulls its product and consumers from its own social network. Recently on cover of Ince: http://www.inc.com/magazine/20080601/the-customer-is-the-company.html
> Efe: Difficult to manage – similar to value of brand. Loyalty and WOM marketing. SEO
> Efe: Break.com – ad supported model profiting by pulling only the good user generated video.
> Efe: Social Resources: Kickapps, Pluck.com, Ning
> Efe: Social analytics: “persistence of engagement”. Social tracking: Socialmedia.com, techrigy

> NOTE: The word “recession” only mentioned by someone noting that its not affecting this group. Probably propelling it.

> Paul Skarvinko from Epik : GOOGLE ADWORDS
> Paul: GA trackable 800 numbers: Mongoose Metrics and Adwords offers its own: Google to find.
> Paul: Competitive intelligence: use adguru.com or compete.com
> Paul: Local geo targeting
> Paul: Pay per action (still in beta) : don’t pay unless visitor converts
> Paul: Google’s expansion into media buying/placement: game changer.
> Note: The lack of traditional ad agency representation at this event: must be busy digging their sand holes. Good.

> Dani Giandomenico – from EpikOne : USABILITY
> Dani: Digs Optimus Prime and Theory
> Dani: Robert Rubinoff: Usability is a balance of Branding, Usability, Functionality, Content
> Dani: Ethnography (new word for me) – anthropological focus on ethnic groups. Applied here to creating personas (again, Segmentation).
> Dani: Comedian
> Dani: F Pattern & Jacob Neilson
> Dani: Homepage usability: 30 seconds, won’t read > scans for navigation options, won’t scroll, will select things in the featured area (top line of the F)