Yahoo has introduced thumbnail previews for its image searches. The new feature will allow searchers to quickly see the results of their searches and, if dissatisfied with the results, modify their searches accordingly.
Not to be outdone, Microsoft has released its own image search innovation this week. You can now use an image on Microsoft’s search engine, Live, to look for similar images online.
Some sobering news from eMarketer: fewer consumers worldwide are opening marketing emails, according to a November 2008 study by MailerMailer.
MailerMailer found that the average marketing email open rate was just 13.20 percent in the first half of 2008, compared with 16.11 percent in the first half of 2007. Click through rates also decreased - from 3.18 percent in the first half of 2007 to 2.73 percent in the first half of 2008.
MailerMailer found that some industries had higher open rates – namely banking/finance, religious/spiritual, government and telecommunications.
It also found that shorter subject lines performed better than longer ones. Subject lines of less than 35 characters had an average open rate of 19.6 percent and a 3.1 percent average click-through rate. Meanwhile, emails with subject lines of 35 or more characters had an average open rate of 14.8 percent and an average click rate of just 1.9 percent.
As we’ve discussed before, lower open and click-through rates are to be expected as more people use email clients that require them to actively download images. Since an ‘open’ is only recorded when a small image is downloaded, a lower open rate is almost inevitable. Also, the study focused on email subscribers in general… NOT on customers, which would be expected to generate higher open and clickthrough rates alike.
Having said that, it is likely that with more email hitting people’s inboxes than ever, fewer people will actually open and click on their emails.
In any case, it’s DEFINITELY worth monitoring the trends in YOUR open rates and clickthrough rates, and aiming to continually improve responsiveness by testing subject lines, content, offers, email frequency, and other variables. Watch for sharp spikes or drops which may indicate content and/or offers that do or don’t resonate with people… or may even indicate deliverability issues.
Source: eMarketer, “Consumers Opening Fewer Emails”, eMarketer, November 14, 2008
A recent MarketingSherpa case study is instructive for anyone selling a high-priced subscription or membership based product or service, and wishes to boost renewals.
MarketingSherpa profiled Corbis, a photo licensing agency, which was having difficulty handling the renewals of its content licenses.
The solution? To introduce a process for identifying licenses about to expire and allow sales representatives to target those account holders with about-to-expire licenses and persuade them to renew. Sounds simple… but Corbis had licenses covering 4 million online images with varying types of licenses as well as varying license periods. Around 7,000-10,000 image licenses were expiring each month. And at the time only about 2.5 percent of those licenses were being renewed.
Corbis developed a renewal program that used automated emails to remind clients that their licenses were about to expire, and gave a prioritized list of account holders to sales reps who could then contact the relevant members. While this is relatively easy to set up in most off-the-shelf membership scripts, it’s not so easy when you’re a large company and need to modify existing technological infrastructure.
Essentially, the steps which Corbis took - and which YOU can model, especially if you’re running an expensive membership program - are as follows:
Corbis’ automated email efforts resulted in doubling its online renewal rates – from about 2.5 percent to 4-5 percent. The follow-up calls further boosted renewal rates to 10 percent in some locations.
What I find particularly compelling is the use of follow-up phone calls. So many Internet marketers seem averse to contacting their customers by phone… but if you have members paying, say, a few hundred dollars per month, isn’t it worth it?
It’s never been easier to download images, movies and music from the Internet. Which means you can literally pull images, videos and music off all kinds of sites - from royalty-free sites to torrent sites – and use them in your marketing.
Except that… you may be breaking the law.
Just because you can readily download and repurpose content doesn’t mean you have the legal right to do so. That may seem obvious when it comes to downloading images off just any site or movies off torrent sites… but even where it appears possible to, for example, buy royalty-free content, there are typically terms and conditions that apply.
For example, when you purchase content from a royalty-free site you are really purchasing a ‘license’ to use that content. That license is typically limited, the limits of which are described in the license terms – you know, all that stuff you ‘click’ your agreement to when you buy the content.
As an example, many standard royalty-free licenses enable you to use the given content for promotional purposes, but do not allow you to resell the content in question. There are often other restrictions on how you use that content too.
So… read the terms and conditions before you make assumptions about what you can do with the content!
Now, let’s not all panic. There are sometimes implied licenses to use certain content. For example, on sites such as YouTube, video contributors must specify if they don’t wish to allow others to embed their videos. If they don’t disable the embedding feature they are taken to have agreed to letting others embed their movies. But again, read the YouTube terms before assuming anything!
Ignorance of the law is no defense!
The United States Department of Justice has indicted David Kernell, the son of a Tennessee state representative, alleging he hacked into vice-presidential-candidate Governor Sarah Palin’s Yahoo email account.
The indictment alleges that Kernell gained access to Palin’s Yahoo email account, changed the password, took screenshots of the account contents, and posted the password and images on the Internet.
The indictment potentially carries a $250,000 fine and up to five years imprisonment.
GoldMail has built a platform that allows you to send media-rich messages.
Basically, you can use GoldMail’s client to create a Flash slideshow that can include images, Powerpoint slides, and text, all accompanied by your voiceover. The slideshow is uploaded to, and hosted on, GoldMail’s servers. Then an email is sent containing a text introduction and a link to the full multimedia presentation.
Hmmm… sounds a bit like sending an email with a link to a video.
Then again the service may make it easier for you to create and send multimedia presentations if you can’t whip up a video or slide show yourself in 10-15 minutes (the average time it takes to create a GoldMail presentation and email).
And the cost? Until recently it was a hefty $5,000 for an initial license and $500 per user. Recently GoldMail dropped the price to around $100 per user, per year, with no initial license fee.
Source: Jason Kincaid, “GoldMail Brings Media-Rich Presentations To Email”, TechCrunch, October 4, 2008
A case study published in MarketingSherpa recently illustrates how to convert a percentage of shoppers who abandon your shopping cart.
Diapers.com set up a system whereby an email was sent to any registered user who abandoned their cart. The email went out at least 24 hours AFTER abandonment and featured the items left in the cart.
Why the wait? Many of Diapers.com’s customers ordered online late at night. The company reasoned that it was better to give these customers some space before contacting them again.
The emails were:
personalized, using the customer’s first name;
included three text paragraphs in order to get the key message to readers who might have images turned off in their email program; and
included a “View Cart” hotlink to allow customers to click through and complete the purchase.
As a result of this approach…
Diapers.com’s conversion rate was 129 percent higher than that achieved by any previous marketing campaign; and
The emails sent after abandonment made up 10.4 percent of the total revenue from Diapers.com’s email marketing program despite constituting just 2.7 percent of the total volume sent.
We have long advised clients to specifically follow up on customers who abandon their shopping carts. We also do this for our own sites and have been exceptionally pleased with the business we’ve received from customers who, for a range of reasons, didn’t complete their original order. (Hint: it’s not necessarily because they’ve changed their mind about buying from you…)
Next month, Apple will release an application to provide iTunes users with interactive albums. These albums will include such content as lyrics, behind-the-scenes images, and artwork.
Don Reisinger from TechCrunch makes a good point: now that downloadable music albums will come with all this extra multimedia content… who needs CDs?
(Well, those of us with CD-only players in our cars I guess… I know, we’re a dying breed…)
Source: Don Reisinger, “Apple Puts One More Nail Into the CD Coffin”, TechCrunch, September 1, 2008
Nielsen Online’s “topline” U.S. Internet data for July 2008 reveals that 48 percent of users were male and 52 percent were female. The largest age segment were those aged between 35 and 49 years of age (27 percent), followed by the 55-64 age segment (23 percent).
18-34 year old users accounted for 20 percent of U.S. Internet users, while teens aged 12-17 (11 percent), users aged 65+ (10 percent), and children aged 2-11 (9 percent) followed.
Although slightly more females used the Internet than males in July, males spent more time on the Net (71 hours per month) than females (65 hours per month).
Here is the breakdown of active Internet users in terms of gender, age group, average sessions per month and average time spent per month (make sure you have loaded images in your email client to view the table):
Nielsen released its “topline” U.S. Internet data for July 2008 on Tuesday.
Google, Microsoft and Yahoo all attracted more unique visitors than in July 2007, with Google achieving 129 million uniques in July 2008 compared with nearly 118 million in July 2007 (a 9 percent year-on-year increase), Microsoft reaching 122 million, just 1 million more than in the same month last year, and Yahoo reaching 117 million compared with 111 million the previous July.
Here is the list of the top 10 parent companies/divisions in terms of unique visitors and average time spent on one or more of their sites or applications per person (make sure you have loaded images in your email client to view the table):
The top brands were as follows:
Sources: Press Release, “Nielsen Online Releases Topline U.S. Data For July 2008″, Nielsen Online, August 12, 2008, Press Release, “Nielsen/NetRatings Reports Topline U.S. Data For July 2007″, Nielsen Online, August 13, 2007
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