1.  The Webby Awards

I didn’t have a chance to watch them, but I heard this year was one of the better editions.  It took place here in New York at the Hammerstein Ballroom. They also continued the tradition of acceptance speeches with five words.  Here is a good synopsis of the event. The headline link is a portal to complete video coverage presented by YouTube.

2.  RIM Not Producing Spring Blackberries

Investors came down on the Canadian firm this week after sluggish data on earnings for the last quarter.  They also worry about RIM’s ability to maintain standing in the mobile marketplace.  Android phones and the new iPhone are scheduled to launch in September with upgraded OS servers while RIM plans to continue pushing older devices which have struggled to gain sales traction.  RIM executives feel that their products will produce juice for developers. The cup dryeth for others.

3.  Apple Trying To Shut Down Venue Recording

Many of you know that in the blogosphere, the video of a live concert experience is the new cassette recording. It can be shared in real-time as opposed to being found through tertiary sources like a music vendor or shop.  Apple is looking to earn a patent to stop all that.  According to the headline from Mashable, the motivation lies in avoiding copyright infringement with major content distributors.  The article makes an interesting suggestion that Apple could charge users a fee for recording in a public concert space.  If scaled, it could change the video sharing experience for everyone involved.

4.  The History of Email

This morning, Mashable had an infographic depicting the history of email as a communication tool.  You can view it above in the piece. According to the release, email networks existed in the public sector for a decade before the term was coded.  Some people today wonder about the future of email with the continued development of video content and social media outreach.  Quality marketers believe that email remains an effective measurement of customer preferences and tastes.  It also offers the widest platform to debate and discuss objectives of the day. Viva email!

5.  Senate Reviews Digital Privacy Mandate

From cnet.com, the Senate is looking to revise a 1986 law for modern times to protect the personal data of the public. This law, named the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, has a clause where Internet users have more protection when data is stored locally.  The article also touches on law enforcement obtaining a search warrant before obtaining data records for a criminal investigation.  Other Acts are being debated in Congress now between Republicans who refuse to budge an ounce, forcing Democrats to seriously weaken mandates before submission. Corporations, as we know, need to step up their security encryption policies before the government does it. And fast. I’m talking to you, Sony.

That’s the Blue news on this Saturday at midpoint. Enjoy.

This piece from Direct Marketing News, however, tells us a different story.  This generation makes up 26% of the current population according to the U.S. Census Bureau for a total of 79 million Americans.  They also hold several of the most powerful positions in our global marketplace. Some luminaries include Paul Allen and the President among others, who manage 50% of the country’s discretionary spending.  They feel that the interactive marketing community is ignoring them, and want retribution.

As the writer Anthony Franco asks us, how do we engage this demographic who have such depth of influence? Everything must be kept simple.  Your online advertising campaigns must carry a simple message with clear direction of your business objectives. Your blog or email newsletter can alert your key customers of news updates. Daily tips can be released by the real-time channel, depending on response rates.  Social media portals like Twitter and video sharing sites work great when the message correlates with the product.  Your blog should also have a link that goes straight to customer service for troubleshooting. A labyrinthe website with useless landing pages can really hurt your impression with this demographic. Then the sales do not flow into your business.

Baby boomers will spend time reviewing your site if they know that assistance is available. Web developers must design applications to match behavioral patterns of their customer.  Links with partnerships are always good if your website does not have the answer.

Like any marketer, being prescient is the key to optimizing strategy.  A good website rich in keywords does not hurt either.

Doctors have responded by versing themselves in new applications. They are also stepping up engagement through social media and CRM enterprises.  A personal visit from a sales campaign still pays the biggest dividends, at the tune of 61%, according to research group Knowledge Networks.  Compounded with the emergence of tablet devices, physicians have access to discover the newest developments in medicine at an unheard of pace.

The brisk pace of digital information also is important to consider for a couple of reasons.  Developers must be sure that their campaign promotions are entertaining before anything else. New people to wellness transformations are skeptics at first, lacking the proper confidence to follow through with the steps.  A memorable program with a backbone of interactivity and humor will go a long way towards fulfillment.

At the University of Southern California, members of the ICT MxR laboratory went into the Microsoft Kinect platform to write messages without touching a keyboard.  All in all, it looks nothing more than an extension of the Gmail Motion prank. But it’s amusing nonetheless. Enjoy. Who would have thought that MSNBC News posted such quirky content? Kudos to them for the find.

Either way, my industry colleague Lauren Carlson talked about the white paper on her corporate blog.  She speaks about marketers continuing to use the white paper as a sales tool when integrated CRM solutions offer a lot more reach in real-time.  Consumers don’t have time to sit and read about unfamiliar items.  She also breaks down the value of Twitter hashtags for chat rolls and microsites. Here is her introductory paragraph….

“I have no interest in reading a War and Peace-style sales pitch — and, let’s face it, that’s what most whitepapers are these days. Once scholarly in their ambition, whitepapers have devolved into thinly-veiled, lengthy sales pitches that no longer appeal to the educated buyer’s shortened attention span. Companies need to find new and more direct ways to reach the buyer 2.0 without going all Tolstoy on them.”

Read more: http://bit.ly/hNPvSY

E-mail marketers who need to make budget improvements should consider this new tool. These marketers would include anyone from social media managers to donor specialists in philanthropy.  As this story from Direct Marketing News suggests, the San Francisco startup has 20% of their customer base being small businesses. Therefore, the site carries an air of professionalism in its toolkit. The startup continues to work with vendors like SendGrid to ensure that subscribers receive messages regardless of channel. This new e-mail marketing tool integrates your daily blog post with an update for social media networks and newsletter campaigns.  You kill four birds with one digital stone. The story revealed one more interesting feature.

When a customer signs up, they can configure their preferences like any site.  For example, someone post to the platform, then a message is sent. The catch here is that the marketer appears as the sender, and the post title appears in the subject line.  Any multimedia content in the post transmits with the newsletter. Again, you can simplify your campaigns with a tinker and virally spread on a controlled level.  Managers would love that flexibility.  Posterous executives plan to integrate more tools this summer. Positive feedback of the new e-mail marketing should increase their small business base along with spurring subscriber diversification.

E-mail marketers interested in Posterous, click here.

If you invest in Billboard Advertising, then you can take some initiatives to make your display more interactive while effectively measuring it’s ROI.

Using a Landing Page URL

A website on your billboard is good for marketing and branding  but does not allow you to properly measure ROI from multiple campaigns that direct on your domain. The best way to measure ROI, is referring to an alternate URL, one that does not disturb your expected web traffic.  For the URL, you can:

• Create a new isolated/orphan landing page on your site (make sure it is blocked from search engines and not used in other web marketing campaigns)
• Purchase a new domain and refer the billboard visitors to that site (you can also make it redirect to the landing page on your site or just use URL masking or use frames/iframes)
• Use the existing landing page with parameters built by Google URL Builder (it allows you to see custom reports in web analytics from ad variations reports)
• Use an easy to read bit.ly shortened link. bit.ly specifically delivers analytics that you can use to measure traffic from your advertisement. Other URL Shortener Services that supply analytics will work just as well.

The URL visits can be easily tracked with Google Analytics or any other Web Analytics application. This gives the campaign transparency and allows for high ROI visibility. The URL you refer on the billboard should be easily readable. Long URLs won’t typically generate action. Often, most conversions happen after the fact, so it is wise to help the readers remember your URL.

Using QR Codes

QR Codes have been around for long time, but the use of these 2-dimensional codes for Interactive Marketing is a new trend.  It helps you to download information or generate a specific action on your mobile phone using widely available bar-code scanners. For the iPhone (Semacode), Android Phones (QuickMark), Blackberry (ScanLife), Symbian Phones or Nokia (UpCode) are among several competing apps that can read QR Codes from any printed media or digital screen.

QR Codes are now being used for Internet Marketing, Mobile Marketing, and even Word of Mouth Marketing. With QR Codes, any camera-enabled smartphone users can:

• Be referred to a specific URL
• Get a phone number, allowing them to can call instantly
• Download business cards to save on their phone and make calls at a later time
• Get an email address and/or enable them to send emails from phone instantly
• Be referred to a geographical location on Google Maps and help them to come to your place of business
• Can be sent an event invitation, which can be saved in phone’s calendar
• Be shown a text message (This can also be a coupon)
• Get an SMS template to send queries to your business cellphone number
• Gain access to your sponsored WiFi Network, etc.

The interaction with QR Codes are increasing day by day and steadily becoming the bridge between the real and virtual worlds. Determine the type of interaction that will deliver the best visibility of your ROI. There are many sites that allows you to generate QR codes (e.g. Zxing Projects QR Generator). A major service currently in use is the Google Chart API. Here is an article on how you can generate QR Codes in bulk with Google Chart API.

Using Coupons

Coupons are one of the best ways to track where a customer has come from.  You can mention an easily readable coupon code for all (e.g. gimme20%less) or generate a custom coupon code from any specific URL mentioned on the billboard. The URL can be a purchased domain, a landing page on your site,  or a easily readable shortened link. This enables you to distinguish between regular web traffic and traffic from your billboard.

Numerous softwares and online services will allow you to easily generate custom coupons through the URL. If you are sending the billboard reader to a URL with a custom coupon, it is recommended to have them visit a custom landing that is blocked from search engines. Once people use their coupons, you are able to retreive information on traffic sources using the database. It is imperative that you make sure that the coupon codes can be tracked. To get a true ROI on that particular segment of your campaign, ensure that it is not made available in other forms of media (e.g. search engine, word of mouth, etc).

Using Call Analytics

HostedNumbers.com, AdInsight.eu, and Mongoose Metrics have call tracking services that you can be monitored from Google Analytics. However, there are several other call tracking and analytics softwares that your can use. They generate a unique phone number (even toll-free) that you can use on the billboard. When someone calls, you can see how much traffic came from your billboard advertisement and then use Google Analyitcs to see how long they were on the call.

Again, it is imperative that this phone number is not made available elsewhere. There will always be a risk that word of mouth marketing will ruin your direct analytics. This information being shared is beyond your control.

Email Tracking

Email is one of the most convenient ways of communication, even on mobile devices. Make sure you have a different email address on the billboard than the one you use in other media campaigns. This will allow you to verify the emails you get on the allocated address are coming from billboard advert. If you incentivize people sending emails to that address e.g. with coupon, then you can also trigger the behavior of the billboard audience to send emails to the custom address rather than other addresses or web contact forms.

Bluetooth Advertising Near the Billboard

Bluetooth Adverts are the newest trend in mobile marketing. If your billboard is in convenient location, then you can send more interactive information and coupons to your billboard Bluetooth users. You can easily transmit richer content to your viewers. Moreover you can also digitally track the Bluetooth downloads.

When Facebook launched an e-mail service last year, traditional direct marketers worried that their tools would become obsolete.  The relaunch of Bloomberg Business Week was a tale of hope.  According to this piece in Direct Marketing News, e-mail surveys to its subscribers about content produced a 2 to 3% response rate.  Alec Casey, head of circulation at Bloomberg, makes this known proclamation.  ”The days of sending paper surveys in the mail are gone.  We find e-mail surveys a reliable gauge in terms of what might work longer term with a broader consumer audience. ”

E-mail service also is far more dynamic.  An outreach letter could have a video installed that demonstrates new products while testing their compliance.  This is just one example to gage reader interest.  I find progress bars helpful when completing customer surveys. They give you a tangible goal to strive for when answering questions.  The whole idea is to build a community where ideas and concepts are shared.  The personalization of e-mail marketing can do this when streamlined.

Urban has an extensive strategy reach across multiple channels.  They publish a monthly mail-order catalog, which spotlights designers who are rising on the independent fashion circuit.  Women are the primary demographic, wearing featured pieces along with various accessories and jewelry.  The men do get a small section, mostly filled with durable goods such as sweaters, boots, sneakers, button down shirts, and denim.  The latest catalog for December covers 55 pages of holiday goods for your friends and neighbors.  Urban Outfitters also promotes rising musicians on their blog from the independent rock circuit, but also gives credence to several other genres and styles.  You can find a select mix of 12 free songs available for immediate download to your laptop, which can then be transferred to your audio player.  

The e-commerce website is one of the more sophisticated in apparel.  It contains a multimedia mix of Adobe Flash Interactive, drop-down selection boxes, video, and photographic slideshows.  Products are featured with attractive models in crisp photographs easily navigable with your cursor.  You can swipe and click the accompanying looks to find your preferred taste.  The website also has a section for online exclusives in each category, along with e-mail and text updates on sales of those rare items.  This does wonders for building brand equity with preferred customers that have a lengthy online history. Product categories also allow extensive navigation with select subcategories.  Shoppers can sort through inventory according to price, most reviewed, highest rated, or brand.  Some consumers may find this flexibility overwhelming, but Urban’s demographic demands choice, and they get it.

Since we live in New York, the consumer can research the product features then call the closest store for availability.  The consumer can create a profile and tailor a level of communication to their tastes. Then they start receiving exclusive promotions and digital goods such as music or coupons.  The Gift Center section on the website offers standard services like gift cards with other stocking ideas at fixed price points.  Their blog, on the other hand, is a diorama of trends. The content could be a music video of an emerging band or an interview with a young designer.  You don’t even need to be on your home computer to view all of this content.

Urban Outfitters made a seamless transition with their website onto a mobile phone.  The mobile commerce site can be accessed on your phone’s Internet browser or through an application module for the iPhone and Android.  Mobile commerce is developing into a force within the consumer industry.  Customers can gain a brief but thorough review of their preferred product without the haggling of salespeople.  Images can be shared through all of the familiar social media networks.  The inventory is limited on a mobile phone due to the inherent limitations of mobile technology such as a smaller screen size. Nevertheless, the design has won favor with industry experts.  According to The E-Tailing Group, Urban Outfitters ranks number one on the list of best mobile gift centers during this holiday season.

E-Tailing cited the retailer’s focus on creative categories and fixed price points that hold kitschy merchandise.  They also mentioned the multiple offers for gift cards as an asset, which reinforces the efficiency of mobile browsing.  It requires little more than your personal account, which can be created on the desktop website.   One last observation I noticed is the colloquialisms. For example, when I tried to log into my mobile account, an error message with “BUMMER: We don’t know what went wrong, but refresh this page and try again. It’s probably not a big deal.”

A similar instance comes up if you forget your password on the desktop website.  This quote rises:  “We Got Your Back.  Just Give Us Your Email Address and We’ll Send You Your Password.”  Unlike many websites, which send a link to create a new password, Urban Outfitters simply sends the password created when the profile was first registered.  You don’t have to extend yourself with yet another unique code for access.  Customers will appreciate this loyalty over time as traffic on e-commerce sites continues to grow.  These minor but crucial details reinforce the retailer’s commitment to their young, mobile demographic that is a step ahead of other retailers.

In this piece from Direct Marketing News, Tom Sather delivers some insight into how e-mail marketers can use web interfaces like Yahoo’s Beta Email to gain ROI on their service campaigns.  Yahoo! just released an interface dubbed “Minty”, which integrates text, a status update box for social media portals, video, and photo uploading boxes.  As we know, Facebook just launched their own revamped email service in their quest to be the first stop on the browsing experience.

Nevertheless, Yahoos’ roots as an e-mail service provider can provide a professional hub for philanthropic organizations who have employees with digital marketing acumen.  Agencies can also benefit by using the interface to experiment with new digital campaign strategies at no cost to their balance sheet. As Sather mentions, using web analytics that can segment the data will prove invaluable to measure campaign effectiveness.  Some basic examples could be special event invitations, staff news, executive announcements, and so on.  We haven’t even discussed much the possible benefits of updating your social media portals without leaving the interface. That is because some folks already understand and have maximized this advantage.  Variety is still the spice of life, and e-mail services can be the spoon for Yahoo.