The stats from Cyber Monday are in. The latest data reveals that online purchases are up 14% over last year. Yet it doesn’t necessarily mean that retail spending is back in high gear.

Now more than  ever retailers need to be out there pulling in buyers.  Tactics such as retargeting are more necessary than ever. In fact we just conducted a survey with SEMPO which revealed that online marketers believe retargeting (or remarketing) is not used nearly enough. Check out our Facebook page for all the details.

For those of you who would like to know more info about Remarketing, please view the video below or visit our Remarketing page.

Happy shopping season!

-The Advertise team

In the digital marketing world, with proper planning and support, information can flow between the prospect and marketer without the need for human intervention , and can be reviewed, analyzed and responded to in a a much more timely basis than with traditional marketing tools.  The net effect of customer acquisition planning in digital marketing is the reduction of marketing costs and increase the success of the marketing campaign and goal achievement.

When shifting your advertising online or otherwise increasing the number of customers you receive via digital marketing, you have to be prepared to handle the influx of new customers.  By being proactive in aligning your CRM with the electronic opportunities realized through online marketing, better meet goals.

If you already work with a CRM tool, make sure that it can integrate with the data you receive from your website.  How can you integrated data from your online marketing tactics directly into your CRM system?  Google Adwords, double click and other high tech methods have API’s in place.  Web based CRM solutions like Salesforce.com and make it easy and highly customizable.  robust integration points built in.   You may want to create a home grown CRM solution that is customizable and extensible.  Make sure whatever CRM system you use that it exposes the data to the right people at the right time.

Salepeople should be able to follow up.marketing department should have access to the data it needs to make informed decisions. key component is to help company get paid as quickly as possible and take care of back office functions. front end data to flow into back office applications.  Consider an extranet for your customers to log in, see billing summaries, past invoices and pay bill. You will have created another channel for re-marketing to those customers.

If you ensure strong handling of customer data, you can plan for remarketing.  This will include initiating new touch points with your customers. Personalization is a major benefit. You have also eliminated the highest cost and first step – acquiring customer.  remarketing provides a lower cost per conversion and a higher conversion rate – through remarketing you can define a target and segment a database, tailor your message and offer, time of day and day of week for your outreach.

Customers should feel that you know them, understand them and know what they want. This will start to build trust and loyalty. Don’t send irrelevant information to your customer though.  They will doubt if you know them. Use newsletters to keep your company top of mind. Make sure newsletter is full of quality relevant content. Use segmenting to achieve this. Don’t just send to send if you have nothing relevant to say. If you provide real value and customized content,  customers to look forward to it.

Use print as an ancillary. Create a PURL – data specific to that customer. Features customers name as part of the customer’s name.  When customer logs into that PURL, customers content is relevant to them – when they log in you can track logins and areas visited to enhance the customer profile data you already have.

Want to get even more personal? Create a a community as extension of customer extranet.  Make sure it is personalized and relevant to customer based on what you know about them – offers, discounts and specific messages to each audience using segmentation.  For example, past purchasers of electronics may be interested in cases.  You can also share information tailoring affinity offers to customers based on past purchases or activity within a community. Can be two way so that your own products get exposed to your partner’s as well.

If activity and types of visits, you can attract banner ads, and you may be able to monetize your email newsletters. If you treat customers like gold they will trust and appreciate. if you provide them engaging and relevant content on a consistent basis they will be more receptive to the additional offers you include. Do not alienate with too much extra advertising or too many emails. You can watch your opens, click throughs, opt-outs to gauge best thresholds.

Planning for handling an influx of customers is part of good marketing planning. Make the most out of the nature of digital marketing, integrate with accounting and other back office to increase efficiencey and turnaround time for analyzing data and trends and then can remarket through emails, purls, newsletters, building communities.

We celebrated October’s MVP’s today. Great job to the following employees…

Operations MVP’s

Cedric Copeland

Tyson Hendry

Sales MVP

Matt Edwards

Administrative MVP

Dave DelRosario

Company MVP

Rodrigo DeSilva

In our review of articles over the past week one that caught our eye is ClickZ’s Flavors of Search Retargeting: Google AdEx, Yahoo, and Beyond by Kevin Lee. He notes that searchers have incredible receptiveness to marketing messages during search sessions, and that the high level of receptivity continues sometimes days and weeks after the search. No quibbles there.

One popular use of retargeting or Remarketing is reconnecting with online shoppers who have abandoned shopping carts to remind them of the benefits of the site they’ve left and to perhaps sweeten the deal to increase conversion rates.  We understand that behavioral targeting is evolving before our eyes. In the not-too-distant future there will likely be better ways to measure intent of the user. Perhaps that can be understood from the pages they visit when they are on a given site, for example. This type of segmenting would give the advertiser a better insight to intent as well as provide a better experience for the user.

When it comes to Remarketing we’re big believers in the effectiveness in engagement—up to 400% increase across many of our clients. Click here to learn more about Advertise.com Remarketing, and as always we’re here to any answer questions you have about this powerful tool.

–The Advertise team

Today we should all take the time to thank our boss for all they do. Happy National Boss Day!

Today we celebrated Jeff Jones’ birthday. It was followed with icecream cake and blowing out of candles.

We recognized the top performers in September. The winners were…

Operations MVP’s

Freddie Ramos – DAR Team

Tony Taylor – Shipping/Fulfillment

Company MVP

Tim Farrow

Tim gave honarable mention to the entire sales team and the group effort in making this month very successful!

Michael Monti also gave kudos to his team and the success of the repair line to date.

This may be the month of ghosts and goblins, but it is also a time to celebrate October Birthdays and Company Anniversaries.

October Birthdays

Bo Hamby – 10/4

Jeff Jones – 10/13

Shanton Hines – 10/26

Company Anniversaries

Marcus Hall – 10/3 – 1 Year of Service

Mo Hussain – 10/13 – 3 Years of Service

Ryan Young – 10/16 – 1 Year of Service

Remarketing targets previous site visitors and brings them back with highly customized ads that maximize conversions and return on advertisers’ interactive spend.Through the use of a simple visitor tagging technique, advertisers create a custom population of highly qualified web users for current and future marketing campaigns.

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

Another month of Birthdays and Company Anniversaries! Make sure to acknowlege as you pass by them.

August Birthdays

Dustin Goss – 8/15

Eric Yarborough – 8/23

Chrisotpher Re – 8/26

Company Anniversaries

Sandra Duncan – 8/01 – 4 years of service

Michael Slocumb- 8/12 – 1 year of service

Mark Redding – 8/22 – 2 years of service

Dustin Goss – 8/25 – 1 year of service

Today we celebrated the top performers for the month of June. Without further wait, the winners are…

Department MVP’s

Penny Jones – Administrative

Melita Mitchell – Sales

Thiago Brito – Operations

Company MVP

Michael Monti – Operations

Congrats to all of our winners! Let’s keep up the great work!

Not only do we get to celebrate our Independence this month, but several others get to celebrate their birthday or years of service with Apto Solutions. These following individuals will have more to celebrate this month…

July Birthdays

Matthew Alston – 7/7

Kevin Stepney – 7/9

Gabriel Gullia – 7/16

John Howell – 7/27

Dave DelRosario – 7/30

July Company Anniversaries

Bo Hamby – 7/6 – 5 Years of Service

Seth Thompson – 7/9 – 2 Years of Service

Melita Mitchell – 7/9 – 1 Year of Service

Taure Anthony – 7/9 – 1 Year of Service

Eric Yarborough – 7/28 – 1 Year of Service

Gumball Run3000

Hi, I know I was not around, I’ve been busy with my crazy industry. The minute GM announced they’re potentially going out of business, followed by the auto rental industry, the gov’t jumped in, and with our tax money bailed them out. But us, the small business, which does create jobs (yes, we’re even hiring –  we’re all going together  thru tough time, and I am very tired  so I decided to run on 05/01/2009 gumball and  this is my car:

i was running around in the last year trying to rise money for my company, and the best think that happened to me, I NEVER GO ANY,   at the same time a financial  tsnumay started, i am again  in debt car sell crashing  and i am broke again, lucky i have no 401K has most of my friend do have now 201K! did not own a  home that drop 25% in value, and finely understand what happen: good friend of my had this Credit Crisis   on is facebook, this is a great simple way an average Joe like me understend,  THANK you Ben, but what now? are we going to quite? not us at automoti we allways look at The Bright Side of Life  

When googling for how to buy a rental car, the first results are not the best results as you’ll see below.

A recent Google search about buying a rental car led me to this:

The reality is that very few rental cars are trashed by joyriders this way and it could just as easily have happened to any used car.

Most rental cars are used by people like you and me for everyday needs. Which is why my last car rental was more like this:

With your last car rental in mind, why wouldn’t you buy a rental car?

this from the car rental news:

Dollar Thrifty Automotive Group Inc. posted a wider fourth quarter loss, hurt by lower consumer demand as well as a softer used car market, the company reports.

The auto rental company said lower demand led to unfavorable pricing and a decline in the use of its vehicles.

Dollar Thrifty reported a net loss of $30.6 million or $1.45 a share, compared with $2.7 million or 11 cents a share a year ago. Excluding items it posted a loss of 88 cents a share.

Revenue fell marginally to $389.2 million.

Tulsa, Oklahoma-based Dollar Thrifty said it expects to report a first-quarter loss, excluding items, due to higher fleet cost increases early in the year. Analysts expect earnings of 1 cent a share for the first quarter.

For 2008, the company forecast a profit $1.00 to $1.50 a share and said it will increase revenue growth during the year through expanding international sales, small business corporate accounts and the number of non-airport locations.

Dollar Thrifty also expects vehicle cost increases to be more challenging in the early part of 2008 as it absorbs recent declines in used car prices.

if a bad economy is great for used cars,  why this loss? i will tell you why. REMARKETING! cut your remarketing overhead and get more $$$ when you sell your cars!!!

Today we rewarded May’s Top Performers. The winners are…

Operations

Carlos Solivan

Sales

Tim Cavanaugh

Administrative

Sean Tracy – From the great State of Michigan

Company MVP

Tim Farrow – Sales Manager

Thanks to the entire company for helping to make May’s Sales forecast. Let’s keep it going into June!!!

June brings more birthdays and company anniversaries to celebrate. Let’s make sure we save these dates in our calendars!

June Birthdays

Neil Hutcheson – June 12th

Mo Hussain – June 15th

Sean Tracy – June 27th

Ryan Young – June 28th

Company Anniversaries

Phillip Dodson – June 17th – 1 year of service

We would like to congratulate Michael King and his wife for their new baby girl. A few words from Michael: “

MACI JOY KING

ENTERED THIS WORLD ON, SUNDAY,12:43 AM. MAY 31, 2009-

4LBS. 15 OZ. —- AND THE EPITOME OF BEAUTIFUL AND HEALTHY!

Today Jeff Clark informed us that his wife delivered their New Baby Girl Madeline. Everybody is doing well. We will have more info and pictures coming soon.

On Monday, May 25, 2009, Apto Solutions will be closed to celebrate Memorial Day.

Memorial Day is a United States federal holiday observed on the last Monday of May (May 25 in 2009). Formerly known as Decoration Day, it commemorates U.S. men and women who died while in the military service. First enacted to honor Union soldiers of the American Civil War (it is celebrated near the day of reunification after the civil war), it was expanded after World War I to include American casualties of any war or military action.

If you are looking for activities to celebrate this weekend, check out the links below…

Gwinnett Daily Post Memorial Day Concert & Celebration

Veteran’s Remembrance Day

Atlanta Jazz Festival

Memorial Day Weekend Salute to the Troops

2nd Annual Rockin Blues, Brews & Barbecue Fest

Memorial Day National Moment of Remembrance

Roswell Remembers

Atlanta’s Official Memorial Day Ceremony
The Capitol Building
7 Martin Luther King Drive, Atlanta
The State celebrates our veterans with a ceremony at the Capitol featuring Governor Sonny Perdue as the host. Guests include Gen. Charles C. Campbell, commander, Army Forces Command, Fort McPherson, and Brig. Gen. Maria Britt, commander, Georgia Army National Guard. Music will be provided by the Army Ground Forces Band. This is a free event.

Annual DeKalb County Memorial Day Service
Liane Levetan Park at Brook Run
4770 N. Peachtree Road, Dunwoody
Service begins in the theater with guest speaker, the Rev. Robert Certain, and music by the Callanwolde Band and moves outside to the Veterans Memorial.

This month we celebrate our May Birthdays and Company Anniversaries, which you can view on our blackboard in the kitchen. Check it out above.

We have officially passed our ISO Audit for the 14001 and 18001 Certifications. Each of these Certifications are to prove that we have effective and efficient processes and systems in place for Environment and Safety Compliance. Thanks to Tino Velazco for managing and training on this tedious project. Also, we would like to thank Baskar, Michael, and Krishna at Quality Systems Enhancement for assisting in implementing and consulting on this project!

Can a single algorithm deliver relevance… across seasons, different web properties, between global cultures and among differing offering categories? Personally, I have troubles trying to predict behavior in the people I’ve known for many years. The human heart and mind act in sometimes strangely unpredictable ways. Isn’t that the part of humanity that’s really great? I think so!

Algorithms to deliver relevance need to accurately reflect consumer information – behavior, demo / psycho-graphics, and other.  The difficulty with this model is that only the smallest of slivers of a consumers life revolves around any single brand – though we would all like to believe differently:-)  Also, until you get reams of data surrounding an individual, how do you actually recommend. In the on line world this is particularly debilitating because over half of website traffic bounces from good sites right away and only a small sliver (used the word twice) of traffic actually makes it to a conversion… and an even smaller sliver (gotta stop using that word) comes back and makes it to a second second conversion. So, algorithmic personalization or recommendations really are only capable of helping a small portion of your consumers, after you get to know them.

An actuary can build statistical models that deal with vast population samples, telling the breakdown of what will proportionally happen in certain events. That’s interesting but it also deals with averages across large groups of people. Not necessarily valid to the point of algorithmically driven recommendations or optimization of an individual and their purchase potential or drivers.

I don’t intend to close the door on the subject, I do believe these approaches are helpful when other data is not available or when you have A LOT of information and you want to solve a retention / lifetime value issue… which are both great issues to solve. From my experience though, many brands believe they can use these technologies, in particular recommendation engines, to help solve an acquisition problem. Hmmm.

Love to hear your thoughts!

Mark