Top 50 Site Rankings for October Issued, Retail Surges

As various retail categories gained in the run-up to the holidays, the top 10 web properties in October remain unchanged from September.

Yahoo Sites again topped the rankings with 137 million visitors, according to the comScore Media Metrix monthly analysis of activity at top US online properties, reports MarketingCharts.

Google Sites, Time Warner Network and Microsoft Sites — all with more than 100 million unique visitors — rounded out the top 4 web properties.

The October data released by comScore:

http://www.marketingvox.com/archives/2007/11/26/top-50-website-rankings-for-october-issued-retail-sites-surge/?camp=newsletter&src=mv&type=textlink

Can Clear Channel Help Mobile Marketing Take Off?

Giant’s Outdoor Updates, Push to Inhibit Cellphone Spam May Spark Category

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By Andrew Hampp

Published: November 26, 2007

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — Next year could finally be the year when mobile marketing takes off.

Sure, you heard the same venture-capital-driven rallying cry about 2006 and 2007, but Clear Channel Outdoor is betting that 2008 really is the year. It’s updated 1,000 of its venues to take advantage of what Michael Hudes, global director of digital media, calls “Outdoor 2.0,” a vision of the cellphone as a remote control for consumer interaction.

Outdoor campaigns using text messages and Bluetooth technology have been popular and widely deployed by companies such as Clear Channel, JCDecaux and Kinetic in the U.K. and Asia but have taken longer than expected to catch on stateside. That’s probably due to slower uptake of cellphone technologies over here but also, some experts believe, because consumers are concerned that once they make themselves “deliverable” in a Bluetooth or wireless ad network, their phones might start receiving mobile “spam.”

Clear Channel has plans to tackle the spam issue. It’s partnered with mobile-content company Qwikker to ensure interactivity remains in the consumer’s hands by including a call-to-action element in each campaign. At Cemusa bus shelters in New York City this year, for example, consumers had to choose to download video clips from Discovery shows such as “Planet Earth” and “Last Man Standing.” For Pepsi, ads in airports asked consumers to subscribe to downloads from this year’s Pepsi Smash concert series.

‘Last thing you want’
Once a phone is in a network, it will be made “discoverable” by vibrating or ringing, giving the user the option to respond. If there is no response after several times, the phone will stop sending alerts. “The last thing you want for four weeks is your phone jingling in your pocket every time you enter into the proximity of a network,” Mr. Hudes said.

Saul Kato, founder and chief technical officer of Qwikker, said the company tracks about 800,000 mobile-phone interactions per day, a number he expects to double by the end of the first quarter as the technology is adopted more widely.

There’s no doubt marketers have been angling to get into the space for a long time. Michael Collins, CEO of Kinetic Worldwide’s mobile division, said he receives multiple requests each day from clients who want to get into more Bluetooth and text-based campaigns. What will take mobile marketing to the next level will be a widespread view of the mobile phone as more than just a phone, he said, pointing to “American Idol” text-message voting and the iPhone as prime examples.

“It’s not even a consumer issue [anymore],” he said. “It more pertains to the mobile ecosystem, getting the carriers to figure out what their roles are going to be and how to play them.”

More clients
Expanding the client base beyond the traditional entertainment marketers and wireless carriers also will help increase spending in the space. EMarketer predicts it will be a $16 billion industry by 2011.

Mr. Collins cited a recent mobile campaign with an “old-school brand” in which the client used ads essentially to ask consumers to buy its product over the phone. Even though the client paid $100 per phone call, he said, all it needed was a .01% response to justify the entire media spend for the campaign, which “is right now doing better than that,” Mr. Collins said.

With Bluetooth adoption pegged at more than 65% for 2008 and Google’s much-anticipated Android service rolling out soon, projections are already high for the first phase of Clear Channel’s Outdoor 2.0., with 300 venues expected to be up and running by this time next year.

“It’s no longer a question of when. The channel has arrived,” Mr. Collins said. “Now it’s up to the marketers to come up with creative campaigns and be able to execute them.”

E-Mail and Text Us, Consumers Say

NOVEMBER 16, 2007

Just send something.

When US consumers say they are interested in a company, more than one-half of them are open to getting an interactive follow-up such as a personalized or generic e-mail, or text message, according to Vertis‘ “2007 Customer Focus Tech Savvy” study.

Vertis found that 40% of men 65 and older said that an interactive follow-up was acceptable, compared with 23% of female consumers that age.

“Adding an Internet component to direct mail campaigns targeting the older population may greatly increase the overall effectiveness of marketers’ spending,” said Jim Litwin, vice president of market insights for Vertis, in a statement.

For many US retailers, the problem is that even when they have an e-mail sign-up program, many do not follow up with consumers. Two-thirds of personal care companies surveyed sent neither a welcoming e-mail nor a sales offer, according to the October 2006 E-Mail Data Source‘s “2006 Retail White Paper” report.

Even in the hardware industry, where only 16.67% of respondents sent no e-mail, that is 16.67% too much.

Such behavior might be seen as similar to unsolicited commercial e-mails, the “better” quality of spam. In both cases, the consumer gets confused and frustrated, and the whole e-mail marketing environment is degraded.

Even those respondents who sent only a welcome message in the first month—such as about 18% of apparel retailers and 14% of department stores—might be considered tardy if they fail to send the e-mail within a few days.

“Just as the CAN-SPAM Act makes it illegal for marketers to take longer than 10 business days to unsubscribe someone from their e-mail program, perhaps it is unwise (if not illegal) to take longer than 10 days to respond to a customer who has subscribed on a company site,” said David Hallerman, senior analyst at eMarketer.

News, events and advice on agency compensation matters …
The following is excerpted from a letter from an AAAA member agency to a major client, in response to a new-business RFP, October 2007:

“ABC Agency received your RFP dated today. The terms of the RFP are not acceptable to ABC and therefore we will not be responding to this RFP. The following terms of the RFP would not conform to our standards or our industry’s standards:

• You have asked for speculative creative work without offering any compensation.
• You have stated that you would own any work that was submitted, even though you would not pay consideration for the work product.
• The outcome of the process may be to not choose an agency or to retain as many agencies as you wish — making it difficult for us to evaluate the level of investment we would be willing to attribute to this review.
• You have not provided an anticipated budget that you would ask an agency to work within.
• The timing of the RFP is not reasonable — speculative work for a major brand in eight days.

We would not agree to work on a cost-plus basis for the majority of our work product. We believe that our marketing strategies in the category are significantly more valuable than those used in your example.

If you choose to reevaluate your RFP process to one that is more in keeping with the protocols of both the American Association of Advertising Agencies and the Association of National Advertisers, we would be pleased to revisit our participation in your review. Thank you for considering ABC to be among a group of qualified marketing partners that you would consider.”

For more information, AAAA members are encouraged to utilize the resources available in the New Business Tool Kit, available on the AAAAgencySearch.com Web site.

Cheat Sheet: How to Get Your Email Address Into More Address Books – Tips & Rules for Top 10 Receivers + BlackBerry Users

It’s pretty clear that marketers don’t do enough to get their brands whitelisted or added to their subscribers’ address books. Studies have shown that more than a third of consumers check their junk bins regularly for email from trusted senders because that’s where so many legitimate messages end up these days.

And when you think about the transaction emails to confirm purchases or the other possible kinds of important financial statements being sent, it’s unnerving that these messages get misrouted or lost for good.

What’s more, 38% of consumers said commercial messages rarely or never prompt them to add senders to their address books, according to the April 2007 ‘Email Spam Consumer Attitudes and Behaviors’ study by Epsilon And 57% said they weren’t encouraged (i.e., nudged, directed or incentivized) to add them to their address books either.

Delivery rates, image rendering and response rates would improve if more marketers show customers how to add them to their address books.

Landing Page Tips
Tip #1. If you aren’t already doing this, always remind new subscribers in your Welcome message to add your email address to their address book. Surprisingly, not all eretailers do this.

Tip #2. In each campaign, provide a link to a landing page with information about how they can add you to their address books, including instructions for every major email brand (more landing page how-to below). Most importantly, don’t hide the link. Place it prominently at the top of the message.

Tip #3. Test your email with the objective of getting into people’s address books. For instance, segment your list according to the recipients’ receivers and send them copy instructing them only on how to add to their type of account.

Use a targeted subject line, such as “Only for Hotmail Subscribers,” for each brand segment. In this case, you won’t even need a landing page for the instructions.

Tip #4. Talk to your email service provider about tracking options. While they will definitely be able to track how many people click on the landing page link, it’s pretty unlikely they will be able to keep tabs on the number of recipients putting your brand into their address books, but they may be able to help resolve this issue.

Building the Landing Page
There are many ways to build the landing page. Here are three rules to live by:

Rule #1. Make sure the instructions for as many email receivers as possible can be seen *above* the fold.

Rule #2. Use your normal header with its product categories, search box and whatnot. The consistency and normalcy should make your readers feel more comfortable about adding you to their address books.

Rule #3. Use a clean white background for the instructions copy so it’s easy to read. This also encourages consumers to print out the page or copy and paste the instructions into another document.

Where to Put the Landing Page Link
You want to get consumers to the actual landing page. We recommend that you put an “Ensure Delivery” or “Address Book Help” link at the top of your emails where they can easily see it, whether it’s the Welcome message or a campaign offer.

Instructions for BlackBerrys, AOL, Yahoo!, Outlook, Hotmail, Gmail and Other Email Systems
Here, we have simple yet detailed instructions on how your recipients can add your address to their address books. Just insert the right “From” or header language into where you see [newsletter] and plug your brand into wherever you find [YourCompany], and you should be ready to copy and paste it onto a landing page. Also, we recommend personalizing the landing page language with the “you,” “we” and “our” that’s appropriate for your brand.

BlackBerrys
1. Scroll up to the message header.
2. Get to the field where their name is listed, click the Berry button and then click Show Address.
3. Select and copy that address to the clipboard.
4. Go into Address Book and find the user.
5. Select Save.
6. Click to edit it, and then click the Berry button to add another email address.
7. Paste it in and click Save.

AOL (for version 9.0)
New subscribers need to add the “From” address, “[newsletter]@[YourCompany].com,” to their address book:
1. Click the Mail menu and select Address Book.
2. Wait for the Address Book window to pop up, then click the Add button.
3. Wait for the Address Card for New Contact window to load.
4. Once loaded, cut and paste “[newsletter]@[YourCompany].com” into the “Other E-Mail” field.
5. Make our From
address the Primary E-Mail address by checking the associated check box.
6. Click the Save button.
7. For existing subscribers that are seeing messages in the spam folder, open the newsletter and click the This Is Not Spam button.
8. Add “[newsletter]@[YourCompany].com” onto your Address Book as outlined in the New Subscribers information above.

Comcast
1. Sign into Webmail.
2. On the left navigation menu, click Address Book.
3. Click Add Contact.
4. Under the General tab, in the box under the Email Address, enter “[newsletter]@[YourCompany].com”.
5. Click the Add button.
6. If you have enabled “Restrict Incoming Email,” also do the following:
Sign into Webmail.
7. Select Preferences.
8. Select Restrict Incoming Email. Note: If Enable Email Controls is set to Yes, then you are restricting incoming emails.
9. Select Allow email from addresses listed below.
10. Enter “[newsletter]@[YourCompany].com”.
11. Click the Add button.

Earthlink
1. Click the Address Book button to open your address book in the browser.
2. Click the Add Contact button (if you use EarthLink 5.0 or higher, click the Add button).
3. Type in “[newsletter]@[YourCompany].com” into the email address slot and then click OK.

Gmail
1. Click on Contacts in the left column.
2. Click on Add Contact on the upper right-hand-side of the Contacts screen.
3. Enter “[newsletter]@[YourCompany].com” in the Primary Email field.
4. Click on Save.

Hotmail
1. Click on the Contacts tab at the top of your account.
2. In the left hand menu, click on Safe List.
3. Enter “[newsletter]@[YourCompany].com” into the blank field.
4. Click the Add button to the right of the field.

Mozilla Thunderbird
1. Click the Address Book button.
2. Make sure the Personal Address Book is highlighted.
3. Click the New Card button. This will launch a New Card window that has 3 tabs: Contact, Address and Other.
4. Under the Contact tab, copy and paste the “From” address, “[newsletter]@[YourCompany].com” into the email dialogue box.
5. Click OK.

Outlook 2003
1. Go to your Contacts page.
2. Click on New in the upper-left-hand corner.
3. Enter “[newsletter]@[YourCompany].com” into the email address field.
4. Click Save in the upper left of your window.

SBC Global
1. Go to the SBC Global Mail page and click the Options link.
2. In the Management section, click the Filters link.
3. Click the Add button.
4. In the “From header” rule, in the field to the right of contains, enter “[newsletter]@[YourCompany].com”.
5. From the Move the message to pull-down list, choose inbox.
6. Click the Add Filter button to save the filter.

Yahoo!
1. Click on the Addresses tab in the upper-left part of your account screen.
2. Click on Add contact just under the Addresses tab.
3. Enter “[newsletter]@[YourCompany].com” in the email field – the rest can be left blank, if desired.
4. Click on Save at the bottom of the page. You should see a confirmation screen.
5. Click Done in the upper left.

Verizon.net
1. Go to your account and click on the Address Book link in the left column. 2. Select Create Contact.
3. The Add Address Book Entry screen appears. In the Email field, type “[newsletter]@[YourCompany].com”.
4. In the Nickname field, type [YourCompany].
5. Select Save.