Marketer's Lab

It's Aliiiiive!

Email marketing is alive and kicking.  In this eMarketer piece, email is clearly still going strong as a viable way to reach adult Internet users.  The problem with email is it just doesn't have the sizzle that things like social media, mobile marketing and web video have these days, but the chart below illustrates email is still a great medium for communication.  Another interesting little tidbit in this piece is there doesn't appear to be a drop off in the preference for email over the next five years, so email seems poised to continue to be an effective element in your communications strategy.  The caveat on email effectiveness is that its done using the right opt-in practices and the right mix of behavioral and personalization features.  Continue to invest in improving your email marketing programs since it would appear email will still be a meaningful piece of the marketing pie in the years to come.

Put Your Marketing on Autopilot

Wow, another marketing superplatform!  The concept of the "Marketing Superplatform" is something I have posted on before and an idea I predict is still very much in its early phases.  I had an opportunity recently to get an overview from another player in this emerging space called OfficeAutopilot.  One of the really interesting things about all the superplatform players is how different their various approaches are.  Some providers are taking the "mash-up" approach of bundling up a variety of marketing tools and providing access via a single portal without a ton of integration across the tools.  Others take a couple of anchor marketing modules such as email and analytics and build additional functionality around that.  There are plenty of other approaches, but OfficeAutopilot gets a hats off for doing something I think is truly exceptional. 

Basically they've built an application that provides a strong suite of functionality for salespeople, and have also built and integrated a ton of innovative features for us marketing types.  Think of it as a great salesforce automation tool with a powerful suite of email, analytics and behavioral targeting functionality.  For me a quick look at their web site demonstrated how clearly they have defined the audiences for their application and how they have approached providing the key elements for each audience.   

All the superplatform applications have way too many features to highlight in a post like this, but OfficeAutopilot seems to have one of the best ranges of features in each area.  Typically these platforms have pretty clear weak spots, either they're something the marketing team would love but the sales team wouldn't be happy with, or the inverse where they provide good sales functionality but don't provide much for marketing.  This is a pretty common complaint with Salesforce.com. (Note-OfficeAutopilot works with Salesforce.com if you need it to). I was told about 70% of their clients use it as a standalone. 

The overview I received was very quick (but very good, thanks Landon) so I was not able to see every trick OfficeAutopilot is capable of, but I came away very impressed by the interface, functionality and integration.  Even with the quick overview, I see them as one of the leading providers in this fast moving space.  Love to get any input on other players anyone is aware of or get any other input on the whole marketing superplatform concept.   

Introducing The PrinterStitial

50% of all home printing is from the web. If you think about that for a moment it makes sense based on typical home usage. The natural follow on thought for me was what a massive volume of printed pages that represents.  Add to that the web printing from the business world and you’re talking about a lot of dead trees. Format Dynamics has created a simple but brilliant marketing technology that allows marketers and publishers to tap into the power of the “printed web”.Format Dynamics offers three products; CleanPrint, Click4Print and PrintTracker. All these products are built around the “PrinterStitial” concept. Basically their technology enhances a printed web page so instead of getting all the web page navigation elements and the always funky pagination, you get a nice, well-formatted and truly print-friendly page. CleanPrint assures that any ads featured on the web page are optimized for the printed version which is nice for the user and of course a nice feature for publishers and advertisers.

Their Click4Print product provides the ability to print a product brochure or other material straight to your local printer directly from the online ad. The PrintTracker product provides all the detailed metrics on how these features are being used.   The Format Dynamics site has demos for their products and of course a lot more information on how everything works.What I really love about this is its simplicity, they've taken something we all do every day and shaped it into a new marketing opportunity.  So many of the new marketing technology solutions are focused on the social media realm or some other complex integrated technology, its refreshing to see some innovation happening around something so straightforward.      

The Marketing Vortex

I was sucked into the marketing vortex by a white paper I came across a couple days ago called Modular Media Technologies produced by a firm called Real Time Matrix.  Vortex happens to be a Real Time Matrix product that provides an interesting combination of video, rss aggregation, custom categorization and tracking capabilities all in a highly brandable, slick interface.  Essentially a widget on steroids, Vortex provides the ability to easily distribute content via social media applications such as FaceBook and iGoogle and also offers a desktop version.  Current clients include Major League Soccer (MLS), TechCrunch and Social Media Today, case studies on these clients are featured on the site.

Anyway, back to the white paper... All vendor white papers have an implicit, and sometimes annoyingly explicit, "salesy" element, but this paper provided some interesting perspectives outside the typical vendor hyperbole.  As you would expect it showcases Vortex as a great solution in the space, but the paper does a decent job of talking through the big picture and providing some context for the various portable media technologies.  Modular media/portable media/widgets/etc. are evolving as extremely powerful tools, this piece is a great way to deepen your understanding of the space no matter what you call it.

Cognitive Surplus Marketing - Huh?

This is a really interesting bit of video from the Web 2.0 Conference that has big implications for all of us as marketers.  Clay Shirky's talk focuses on the "cognitive surplus"  created by the shift in media consumption, primarily the shift away from TV.  He also talks about our innate need to not just consume media, but participate in some way by producing and sharing  information.  Worth the 15 minutes, and drives home the need to really understand how technology fits into the lives of the audience we are trying to reach and how important it is to use the most appropriate tools to reach them.