Old Excel doesn't work past 65

(Before you shout: this post applies to Microsoft Office Excel 97-2003, but like most of us, you probably have yet to upgrade to the newest Excel, so this affects YOU!)

Every marketer opens customer lists in Excel. Yes you do.

Beware the limitations of this great Swiss army knife – yes, it opens up last week’s leads but …(and it’s a BIG but) … Excel stops working at 65 (thousand that is!).

OK, 65,536 to be precise. Excel can’t open data files with more than 65,536 rows (records) or 256 columns (fields) – but a 256-field schema is unlikely). If you were expecting to see more, you won't.

Open your big customers file in Excel and you will see this warning window - but then the file opens anyway:


(TIP: Ignore this warning at your peril, for you will not have all your records loaded in Excel.)

Remember, more than 65,536 rows (records), or 256 columns (fields) and you can’t use Excel to open and view your list.

Your Swiss army knife just fell apart - so how do you do it?


How to open and view data files containing more than 65,537 records:

With money: buy Excel 2007 which does the trick at last (http://ukireland.trymicrosoftoffice.com/).

Without money: download the free PC software HTML Kit (http://www.chami.com/html-kit/download/) or download the free Mac software BBEdit (http://mac.softpedia.com/progDownload/BBEdit-Download-1267.html)

Both these free tools open up BIG data files and helpfully show row numbers so you can check your records are all there - after all, why else are you inspecting a data file with a spreadsheet?

If all else fails, use a database (but we all know that is pure voodoo!).

Robert Bajaj runs in the London Marathon - again!

NEWS: Robert Bajaj is running in the London Marathon on April 22nd, 2007 to raise money for the charity 'Beating Bowel Cancer' (Charity Registration No 1063614). Sponsor him here:


Robert is a partner in the Dispute Resolution Team with Steel Raymond LLP. Steele Raymond have been a TMB client for seven years and we are happy to support Robert (the first partner I met back in the year 2000). A great guy, a great firm and a great cause.

Hmmm... you are right, this post has absolutely nothing to do with marketing, so apologies if I raised your hopes of another golden nugget from Dom - compensate yourself by sponsoring Robert online in under 2 mins (got your card ready?). Remember to click back after the 22nd to see how Robert did.

My next post will back to marketing - probably.

Microsites need memorable URLs

OK, sounds pretty obvious? So why and how do you get a memorable URL?

Why: Microsites are usually short-lived (1 to 6 months) and contain a few web pages to support a specific marketing campaign. They therefore need to work hard - so a short and memorable URL is vital if you want your microsite to stand out.

Example of a bad URL (long, boring, impossible):
http://websolutions.company.com/cms/portal/99/GB/widgets/mc1/

A good URL (hmmm, even I can remember that one!):
www.BoxOfCherries.co.uk

How: Can’t think of a good URL? Too busy and want results in under 30 seconds? Try UK2's Brainstorming tool:







Here is my e-Marketer's Checklist for a short and memorable URL:

• Supports your campaign messaging?
• Pushes one feature or quality?
• Unique?
• Easy to tell others about?
• Simple to spell?

Summary: make it easy for people to remember your microsite after seeing your press advert, banner advert, e-mail footer, hearing your radio advert, chatting with friends, Googling you, etc. The URL could make or break your next campaign - get it right.

Monster.co.uk is a cool web 2.0 site

Monster.co.uk is a cool web application. It's a kind of super-featured dating agency where jobs meet applicants looking for long-term relationships.

Again, Web 2.0 brings together job advertising, candidate matching and selection and recruitment correspondence together in my browser in one Monster web app. Yes another password (aaargh!) to remember, but the pleasure outweighs the pain.

I used Monster recently, and recruited another web designer - Dan - to our team (thank you Monster!)

Summary: some companies know how to interact online - I would give Monster 8 out of 10 (although their text chat 'Julie' couldn't give me the weblink to our new vacancy, so I discovered that by playing with their jobsearch engine) nonetheless, it works well.

e-mail list decay rates

If you are building a permission list of emails - use it straight away, because it will decay over time. If the emails are old the first time you use them, fewer will get delivered, viewed and clicked than if they are fresh the first time you use them.

The longer you leave emails after collecting them, the lower the delivery rate falls. As a rule of thumb I found that you lose 5% of the whole list every 3 months.

Fresh emails (0 to 3 months old) are each worth three times as much as older emails (12 months old).

To find out exactly how much value was lost, I measured the value of emails by looking at our clients' UK B2B and B2C email campaigns. I looked at mixed lists of business and consumer emails collected by visitors completing client web forms voluntarily.

I knew the age of each e-mail (since collecting the email) and I knew the effectiveness of the email, measured by delivery rate and clickthrough. The value was calculated using delivery rate, email views and clickthroughs. My own simple formula is VALUE = (D x V x CTR x 100). For example:

email freshness = 0 to 3 months
Delivery rate = 90%
Views = 35%
Clickthroughs = 36%
VALUE = 11.34% (values around 12% are good)

email freshness = 12 months
Delivery rate = 73%
Views = 31%
Clickthroughs = 18%
VALUE = 4.07% (values around 4% are poor)

Summary: if you are collecting emails, use them quickly. Leave them for 12 months and you will get one third of the value you will get if you use them within 3 months.

Adwords - Search Marketing basics

Considering Adwords? This is a quick outline of how it works.

Your advert appears besides related search results. Adwords adverts are those green 'sponsored links' on the top and right of the results. Also known as 'Search Marketing'. See a Dominic Yeadon Adwords advert.

How to use Adwords: You write a 4-line advert like this:


When someone searches for "cruise to mars" your adwords advert displays as a 'sponsored link' (advert) at no charge.

This type of advertising is 'keyword-targeted' and often called CPC (Cost Per Click). It allows you to drive web traffic and control your costs precisely, ie: Per click = £0.15, Daily budget = £1.50 (10 clicks). These are sample costs only. An online tool in Adwords helps you get the costs right - could be higher than 15p, could be lower.

If they then click the advert you get charged 15p (or whatever price you set up). At the end of each month Google takes a payment from your credit card (number of clicks that month x 15p). If your ad has been seen every day however but no-one clicked, there is no charge.

You can simultaneously run multiple adverts. You manage them all in a web browser (or an agency does it for you). You must get 4 things right:

1. Budget - the more you pay per click the more your ad is shown.
2. Keywords - popular keywords get searched often, but cost more, ranging from 1p to (£ unlimited).
3. Copy - poor advert copy with a baffling URL puts visitors off.
4. Arrival page - provide something engaging and of value on the page visitors click through to so you get a good ROI.

Once set up, your Adwords campaigns just keep on running and you keep getting billed by Google (your credit card details are stored online when you become an Adwords user, or your agency will bill you for the Adwords fee plus their management fee).

Summary: Sign up online today and have a play (only £5 to start). It's instant. Write your advert and see it appear online instantly. Tinker with it, fine tune it, see the stats and drive those visitors. Search Marketing should be a part of your e-marketing mix.

Web 2.0 for dummies

What is Web 2.0? Everybody's heard of it but what exactly is it, where is it and why is it? Here is my marketing take on it:

The Web just got even better. Think of Web 2.0 as a major upgrade to Web 1.0, where Web 1.0 was just a collection of websites. Web 2.0 is a much more useful and productive way of using the Internet, and a new take on the software you use every day.

• Web 2.0 sites/services look different.
• They feel new and fresh to use.
• They are fast, fun and interactive.
• Users have a zero learning curve.
• They do neat things by combining neat things [mashups].
  

Web 2.0 can transform your humble web browsing experience into a fully-fledged computing platform serving multiple web applications.

What are the practical implications of Web 2.0?

Ultimately Web 2.0 services will replace traditional desktop computing applications. That means that you don't buy your software (from Microsoft) and install it from a CD onto one PC, instead you visit a web page that has the (free) software running inside your (free) web browser), using any PC in the world.

This Web-centric approach to applications turns the Web into a global server of software and data to end users. Bad for Microsoft, good for Google, great for us. (Try clicking the text link 'personalised homepage' top right when you next visit Google - it's a mashup on steroids!).

Want to see what more Web 2.0 sites looks like?

• http://www.flickr.com/
• http://www.squidoo.com/
  
• http://www.technorati.com/
• http://www.digg.com/
• http://www.yousendit.com/
• http://www.youtube.com/
• http://www.read.io/

See hundreds more Web 2.0 sites here:

• http://web2.0awards.org/
• http://www.sacredcowdung.com/

Summary: Web 2.0 will make your marketing easier and more productive, just sit back and watch the new 2.0 marketing services pop up everywhere. Some cool 2.0 marketing tools are on the way - in a future post I will list them here in this blog.

Postcodes for Marketing

If you are in Marketing, you need to understand how Royal Mail's Postcodes work in the UK.

Your marketing database will contain postcodes, which give you a great way to segment your data. The easiest way is to use the 124 Postcode Areas, to see where your data is distributed around the UK.

There are several levels of detail beyond this.

For example let's look at BH23 1QL:

• BH refers to the Postcode Area of Bournemouth. (There are 124 Postcode Areas in the UK.)
• BH23 refers to a Postcode District within the Postcode Area of Bournemouth. (There are approximately 2,950 Postcode Districts.)
• BH23 1 refers to the Postcode Sector. (There are approximately 9,650 Postcode Sectors.)
• The QL completes the Postcode. The last two letters define the 'Unit Postcode' which identifies one or more small user delivery points (on average there are 15 delivery points per Postcode) or an individual Large User.

There are approximately 2.14 million Unit Postcodes, and a total of over 27 million addresses in the UK.

• View a Postcode Areas Map of the UK.
• View a table of all 124 postcode Areas and Town names.
• View a Postcode Districts Map for Inner London.

How to use web forms to collect emails

If your web form asks for an email address, you simply have to read on. Download this really useful guide for Marketing Managers in the UK.

If you use a web form to build a list of email addresses from visitors, you can send them marketing emails subsequently, but only if you get it right when you collect them. If you get it wrong and then start sending marketing emails to them afterwards you could land yourself in trouble with the law.

• Understand which method you are using to collect emails.
• Decide how you will prove permission was given.
• Reduce occurrences of bad emails.
• Eliminate barriers to form completion and you will build your list.

I wrote this guide to clarify the issues surrounding collecting emails using web forms. Download this 3-page PDF guide here.

Renting or buying lists of emails

The #1 question I am asked by clients is: "Dom, can you get me a list of emails?".

(If I had £1 for every time, etc, etc...) This is a hangover from DM (Direct Mail) where list brokers rent or sell lists of names and postal addresses by the million every day. So why not emails too? A reasonable request, surely?

BUT... and it's a big BUT... it's not the same for emails. You can't simply get hold of a list of emails like that.

You can't put the e-mail genie back in the bottle.
Once a list of emails is rented/used/forwarded/abused, it quickly becomes useless. Thanks to SPAM.

You can't, but just imagine you could get your hands on your dream list of emails for all purchasing officers in UK companies over 25 employees. You would send them your marketing email selling your widgets, but a peculiar thing would happen. A large percentage of emails would be undelivered or never opened, as if the list was really old. You would get a very poor return.

• Think about it: that list would have been rented out and used a hundred times that week. People on that list will have had over a hundred SPAMs (of which yours is just one) and a significant proportion may eventually get a new email address.
• You will also get a backlash because email is easier for Mr Angry to reply to than DM - that will tie you up for days.
  
• You may even get your servers blacklisted.
  

Once a list of emails is out there it is quickly rendered useless by over-use, and you can't always be sure that they have all given their permission. You can't just rent or buy lists of emails. Emails are not like DM lists. Different rules apply.

There are 3rd party lists of emails out there.
You can use them but you can't have (or see) them. They are tightly-controlled subscriber lists that sit behind managed e-publications or e-bulletins, in which you can rent a space. You send your creative to the publisher and they broadcast it. These can be monthly or weekly. See eMedia. (This is not a cheap option with prices around £1,000+ per issue per week.)

SUMMARY: Build your own list of emails.
This is the most cost-effective method. Start today and build a permission list of prospect emails of people who are interested in what you have to say (and your customers of course). Your list will quickly grow and your response rates will be far higher. This decision pays off handsomely over time, fortunately, as it is the only other option!

Why is your brochure PDF download free?

If you have sales brochures on your website, are they just available as weblinks to download PDFs, free for any (anonymous) visitors to click?

• Q. Have you ever wondered how many visitors downloaded your brochures this week, and who they were? Wouldn't you like to have stored their details and now follow them up? Maybe sell them something? We like selling.

If you struggled with the question 'should I ask visitors to complete a web form before they can download our brochure?' then read on. Does it put potential customers off if they have to enter their name and email first? The answer is 'yes it does' and 'no it doesn't'.

Yes it puts off some visitors - but these are mainly 'tire-kickers' not buyers. (You don't want to waste your time and resources on these guys do you?)
See how Oxford University Press give away their research tool brochure.

No it does not stand in the way of a real buyer on a mission with a budget. Real buyers will trade their details for your brochure because they see value in your product/service. (You want their details because you will follow them up, they will see that you are a professional firm and they can buy from you.)
See how to download Actilingua's German language courses PDF.

Summary: not every visitor to your website will buy, so start to qualify the leads you generate by asking for a name and an e-mail. Send the brochure instantly by email and tell them on screen that you have just sent it. Why is your brochure PDF download free?

(Remember: A PDF in an email is 100 times more portable than a file on your desktop. From email a PDF gets shared amongst other decision-makers. Once you have your visitor's email, you can follow up, either automatically or manually, with more info and special offers to tempt them back for more.)

List of key words in Microsoft's Junk E-mail filter

Picture the scene: you have just written a great special offer e-mail, and so out it goes to your customers. You sit back and watch the clickthroughs online... Nothing. Silence. No clickthroughs. What happened?

It's likely that some innocent text in your email (in the from, subject or the body) triggered Microsoft's junk e-mail filter and your e-mail was never read. All that hard work gone to waste. It is avoidable.

These examples are all filtered as junk:

• From contains "sales@"
• Body contains "for free!"
• Body contains "must be 18"

and there are plenty more here in Microsoft's list of key words.

Summary: check all text before you e-mail. Test it by sending to a PC with Junk E-mail protection turned on, just to see how it fares. Also, ask your agency to score your email using their professional SPAM filters (ie: Spam Assassin) to get a points score. Keep the score below 5.5 and you should be alright. It is possible to score 0.0 if you are careful.

Remember, this is NOT a way to get SPAM past the filters, it is a way of preventing your professional permission-based e-mails from accidentally triggering filters when they needn't.

Is your marketing invisible?

Answer these four simple questions to find out:
Q1. Will your customers buy from you when they can't see you?
Q2. Is your latest offer so strong that it can attract customers to your website, simply by being there?
Q3. Do you expect your customers to have the time to think about you unprompted?
Q4. Are you their #1 priority today?

Answers 1-4: no, no, no and no. No sale. You're INVISIBLE. If your marketing is invisible, you are in BIG trouble.

So become visible, and do it by being proactive. Here's how:

• What: simply send a strong, relevant offer to your customers.
• When: on the day when they are ready to buy*.
• How: an email that clicks through to more info online with a call to action.
• Why: because without proactive marketing you are invisible (yes, even to your best customers, and that's when the competition steals them from you).

*OK, you can't know which day they are ready to buy from you, so increase your chances of being visible on the right day by being FREQUENT. Keep your offers strong and relevant. Stick to a regular timetable. One day it will be the right day.

Summary: you have no divine right to your next sale. You must keep proactively marketing to earn it. No Marketing Manager ever lost her job by working too frequently to retain her customers! Don't be invisible.

Stay above the fold on your web pages

'Above the fold' is the section of a web page that is visible without scrolling. (It originated from a newspaper when you see the top part when the paper is folded.)

On your web page, put your most important content [above the fold]. That way it gets seen more, and clicked more. (We all like visitors to click almost as much as we like them to buy!)

Yes, we are used to [scroll bars] and scrolling on a deep page is no real effort BUT any content just below the fold only gets seen 60% as much as content above the fold. Content that sits further down below the fold can reduce down to as little as 10% depending on the page depth.

Summary: OK, deep web pages are unavoidable, just keep your best content/text/banners/links above the fold.

The Stupid Company - is this you?

This PDF is called 'The Stupid Company'. Such a great title I had to read it. And I'm glad I did.

(Don't you just love it when you try something, maybe hoping it is as good as it promises - and it actually is? I say this is a must-read, after all... it's packed with comments and opinions from your customers!)

The National Consumers Council (NCC) have just published this compelling report on how British businesses throw away money by alienating consumers. (Yes, it mentions 'marketing' 19 times, and there are lessons for all of us marketers in there!)

Download the Stupid Company Report PDF here.

Best day for sending emails

Q. Which day of the week is the best for sending out emails?

Are there good days and bad days? Does the same email message perform better if it sent on a Monday, rather than on a Friday?

A. Yes, there are good and bad days.

MON...............15.1%
TUE....................19.6%
WED.......................22.8%
THU....................19.7%
FRI..............13.7%
SAT.....5.0%
SUN....4.1%

(Source: emaillabs open rates)

Actually as I write this post, today, Monday 23rd January, is the worst day of the whole year! (The BBC reports that Monday 23rd January is apparently the most depressing day of the year. The calculation is based on a combination of the bad weather, fading Christmas memories, failed New Year's resolutions and a general lack of motivation.) Make sure your agency puts this date into their calendar, and avoids it!

Yes, it's true that other factors affect response rates too, but putting those to one side, we are looking for the best day of the week.

Summary: as is our own experience here at TMB (sending out B2B and B2C email campaigns to clients' own lists) the midweek hump peaks on Wednesday.

Want to submit your press releases online for free?

Have you just written a great press release and now want the whole world to read it and buy from you? I have compiled a new list of websites that offer a free online submission service. Spend a few minutes online and get your press release distributed around the world. For no money. Mmmmm!

(Yes, some of these sites require registration first. But it's all free. As always I recommend you register with a 'safe' email address like Yahoo Mail or Google Mail, etc, so you don't have to keep reading any unwanted 'hey customer' emails over time.)

They do work! I tested several including www.press-world.com myself nearly 4 years ago. My original 4-year-old test Data Harvesting press release is still being found in search engines today, and it didn't cost me a penny. (It cropped up in several syndicated websites afterwards too, and still does. I think that's great value for money!)

Dom's new list of free press release sites here.

(Let me know if you have any comments on these, so I can keep this list updated. Thanks.)

Get your corporate ID bible e-ready

Ensure your corporate identity elements consistently appear in the same position and the same size in all places and on all corporate documents, and now in your e-marketing too.

Codify these decisions in a set of guidelines (some call it a 'bible'). This establishes and strengthens your overall company [brand] so that your audiences see the same image of your company at all times. It is this repetition of image - such as McDonald's 'golden arches' or the Coke logo - that begins to form a lasting impression in the minds of your key audiences.

The Coke and McDonald's guidelines are huge, so I found this smaller example on Trader's website. Simple language, easy layout and compact, but they don't have any guidelines for websites, microsites, banners, email, screensavers, etc which, let's face it, is where we are spending more and more marketing budget now isn't it?

It details how to use their [corporate identity] properly in the traditional channels. The colour palette, background colours, typography, stationery, Powerpoint, etc. It's a 30-page PDF available on their website. This is going to need updating to become e-ready.

(When you update yours to include onscreen/online usage, this is a great place to start. Download the PDF and chat with your designers about how they work with it in online marketing projects.)

Million Dollar Home page

An end-of-year update to this internet phenomenon:

Remember Alex Tew? A brilliant UK University student who didn't want to graduate with a big student overdraft, so he set up a website with the aim of making a million. It's been a profitable few months since then. Alex created the website www.milliondollarhomepage.com - a website selling pixels for $1 each.

Advertisers buy pixels in $100, $500 and $5,000 blocks. They buy pixels to advertise their websites. Alex has sold 900,400 out of his 1,000,000 available pixels.

I watched this story break months ago and saw Alex's site back when he had sold only 200,000 pixels (only $200,000 - who am I kidding? - wow!). He has now sold 900,400 pixels and I am still wondering whether to buy one of the few available blocks. After all we all want traffic.

Yes, Alex's advertisers are getting traffic, but my guess is that 60% are search engines and some are pixel-curious procrastinators, with only a tiny proportion being 'targeted' traffic. Hmmm... maybe I would end up with more traffic but not much more business as a result. (I think I just talked myself out of buying again!)

At the last count there were 1,300 sites in Google linking to Alex's website. Well, now there's one more, thanks to this post.

(Keep up the good work Alex. As marketers we need reminding that a brilliant idea can turn into a runaway success. Watch this space!)

Crazy Frog Marketing Millions Facts

The Crazy Frog [ringtone] proves that there is no accounting for taste.

But look at this for the remarkable multi-million pound marketing story that it is.

(As marketers, we might not all want that ringtone on our phones, but we do need to know the facts when something succeeds like the Crazy Frog. Marketing ringtones to teenagers?)

Here are the facts:

1. Marketed by German ringtone provider Jamba! (also known as Jamster!).
2. Jamster! have earned an estimated £14 million from the ringtone.
3. It costs £3 a week to subscribe to Jamster!'s service.
4. It is the most commercially successful ringtone of all time.
5. The ‘ding-ding’ sound was an impression of a two-stroke moped.
6. It soon became the most recognisable commercially available ringtone in the UK.
7. 'Axel F' was originally a 1985 hit for Harold Faltermeyer, and was the theme from the film of the same year, Beverly Hills Cop.
8. 'Axel F' by The Crazy Frog reached number 1 in the UK Charts and stayed there for 4 weeks.
9. In Feb 2005, the ASA received complaints that the Crazy Frog had genitalia (the offending items were subsequently black-boxed out).
10. In May 2005, the ASA received complaints that there were too many Crazy Frog adverts.
11. The intensity of the advertising was unprecedented in British television history.
12. Jamster! bought 73,716 spots across all TV channels in May 2005 alone – an average of nearly 2,378 slots daily – at a cost of about £8 million, just under half of which was spent on ITV.
13. 87% of the population saw the Crazy Frog adverts an average of 26 times, 15% of the adverts appeared twice during the same advertising break and 66% were in consecutive ad breaks.
14. An estimated 10% of the population saw the advert more than 60 times.
15. The album Crazy Frog Presents Crazy Hits and second single "Popcorn" continue to enjoy worldwide chart success.
16. Google lists: 6,940,000 pages, 24,600 images and 98,558 blogs for 'crazy frog'.
17. See Amazon.co.uk for the range of merchandise and toys (available under "The Annoying Thing" due to copyright and licensing restrictions).
18. Negotiations are also underway for a TV series.

Summary:

• Annoying? Yes.
• Successful? Undoubtedly.
• Repeatable? You tell me.

Learn Google, get visitors, make sales

Q. How many of your website's pages are in Google? And which pages?
A. Go to www.google.com and type in site: followed by your domain. Example: site:news.bbc.co.uk returned 42.3 million pages for BBC News in Google this morning.

Refine your search by adding a space and some words afterwards. To search for news stories about the iPod type: site:news.bbc.co.uk "ipod" and you get 35,100 pages returned.

Great for marketers:

• find out how you look in Google (discuss improving it with your agency)
• compare yours with your competitors (why are they better than you on some searches?)
• check search terms in your domain only (can visitors find your latest widget on your site, or just on your competitors' sites?)

(Summary: your customers use Google to find you. You must learn how Google can help marketers. Have you seen Google Labs lately?)

Web form metrics: 1000:400:120:60

How many visitors complete your web form? Here are some numbers I crunched from web forms I have worked on.

Only 60 per thousand visitors who could complete your web form actually will.

• 1,000 visitors view your home page,
• 400 (40%) notice the link to your web form,
• 120 (30%) click the link to see your web form,
• 60 (50%) complete your web form.
• Conclusion: Only 6% complete your web form.

These figures are an extract from my Web Forms Handbook Volume One. Download the full PDF here for free.

(These numbers are the average for optimised web forms. If your web form has not been optimised, you can expect smaller returns than these.)

Brand New World 1.0 downloads

Latest research into how the Internet is modifying brand perceptions and buying behaviour - Brand New World 1.0 by AOL and The Henley Centre.

Download the report here:
AOL_Brand_New_World.ppt
AOL_Brand_New_World.pdf

"The implications of this research are quite clear: once people get online their behaviour changes dramatically. This will be something of a wake up call to marketing managers who should address, as a matter of priority, their online marketing strategy."
Andy Jonesco, VP Interactive Marketing, AOL UK.

How I got my site to #1 in Google

So what's new? Everyone wants to be #1 in Google - but can it be done? I ran an experiment to find out.

Results: I did it - I got to #1 with my own name: Dominic Yeadon see it in Google here. In fact at the time of posting this I was not only # 1 but also 2, 3, 5, 6 and 7 out of the first 10 natural rankings listed, plus the only Adwords advert. OK I hear you say, but Dominic Yeadon is a pretty unique search string isn't it? (Hmmm... could THAT be how those darn Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) companies get your money?)

OK, OK! Maybe they're not ALL snake oil salesmen. Tell me if you've found a good one please.

Google don't publish how to get to #1 in Google (obviously), but many experts have found out the factors that affect ranking, and here are two:

• SEOMOZ have a list of the top 10 factors : SEOMOZ.org's list.
• Vaugh's have a more scruffy list of 100+ here: Vaughns-1-Pagers.com list

Get your webmaster/web agency to check out these 2 links, because just reading these lists will make a big difference.

For speed however, my tip is still to use Google's Adwords which will get you to #1 inside one hour. If you have a campaign going live in the next week, you can't afford to wait several months to get out of Google's sandbox and score a natural ranking, just put some money into an [Adwords campaign]. Works every time and because it's [CPC] you only pay for visitors, not ad impressions [CPM].

Bill Gates UK video - digital marketing

Bill Gates in the UK on 27th October 2005 at the UK's Interactive Advertising Bureau's Annual Conference, talking on video about digital marketing. Watch the online video here.

Plus several other videos of key note speakers in this IAB conference, giving their opinions on digital marketing. Really worth viewing. Set aside some time and view them all.

From the centre to the edges

The Internet lets big companies empower their dealer network. Tools such as marketing [microsites] in the centre now encourage users around the edges to download [banner ads], PDFs and html e-mail templates for use in their own offices, and publish blogs with RSS [newsfeeds].

The company provides the tools, and the individuals in the network pick and choose the tools that work for them. Whilst not ideal, it is OK for their customer lists to be in Excel, and for them to [BCC] forward a quick html email to their address book. That's as technical as it needs to get at the edges, because it works.

Thought: Sometimes big needs to be small again to be truly beautiful.

Printed Postage Impression (PPI) download

Calling all direct mail nuts: download your own [PPI] design from Royal Mail's website, personalised with your PPI licence number. Choose between First Class, Second Class and Mailsort 3, and between English and Welsh PPIs, as JPG or TIFF.

You're right, what has traditional direct mail got to do with e-marketing? (Useful to see if your agency is printing the right PPI on the next mailer that is driving traffic to your website though.)

Sorry but thanks to Answers.com

Sorry but sometimes I tend to talk in (marketing) tongues in this blog, so when you see a word in square brackets like this: [spam] it links to a definition from answers.com

What's under the sun then?

Remember our TMB News e-zine? Now it's back as a [blog], and it’s called 'Under the sun'. We all know there is nothing new under the sun. Or is there?

A new season of marketing classics - taken down from the shelf, the dust knocked off them, and now presented in a fresh new e-ready formula. Common sense, golden rules and all-time favourite classics. Success strategies adapted from all-time classics to be ready-to-go e-strategies out of the box. Perfect for the post-grad marketing newbie, and the seasoned campaign veteran - this is the ultimate no-nonsense e-marketing boot camp.

Remember, in the a-z of marketing, there is nothing new under the sun... (except for all that new stuff under the letter 'e'.) We demonstrate that old school is uncool, and now e-school is the only e-cool. There is a new e-mindset required to succeed in today's e-marketing world. We present challenging ideas in a fresh way.

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See what I saw?

After writing 63 issues of the TMB News e-zine, I took a break to develop our new portfolio of e-marketing services instead. Whilst I worked, we continued to help UK marketing departments buy into e-marketing as fast as they could. That's when I saw an opportunity for a blog from TMB.

Here's what I saw:

UK Marketing departments are getting internal pressure from above to 'get going with some e-marketing' whilst the marketing departments all scratch their heads to know where to look, and what service to buy in from which agency.

Yes, these experienced marketers are all used to email, and they have corporate websites, some even use URLs in adverts, but beyond that is the edge of the known world. E-marketing is a dark and forbidding land, threatening to swallow inexperienced marketers whole. But they have to do something.

These marketers are e-literate - they know [SPAM] is bad, [eBay] sells everything, [Amazon] is cheap and [Google] is cool, but that’s not enough to embark on e-marketing with the same confidence that you would if you were posting out a mailer to your database. Being willing is very different from being experienced, and these marketers are stuck - can't not do e-marketing, but don't know how to do e-marketing. When it comes to getting help, they can't tell one e-marketing agency from another.

If you are standing at the edge of your known world, and beyond looks black and unknown, help is at hand. This blog heads safely off into the e-abyss and helps you find a firm footing until you feel you can make your own way across.

As marketers we all know there is nothing new under the sun, (except for all that new stuff under the letter 'e'.)

Hey look at me!

If you're going to read my blog, you might want to know a bit more about me. After all, I could be anyone.


Usually I keep my posts small and easy to swallow, but the first thing I am going to do is break my 'short posts' rule and wander around a bit here. So, here goes, this is me...

My name is Dominic Yeadon and I am an e-marketing consultant, (there, I feel much better now that's out in the open). Also I'm Managing Director of both of my two UK-based marketing and internet businesses - The Marketing Bureau TMB and Data Harvesting, since 1995. I am passionate about helping our clients get the most out of their marketing using everything 'e' they can lay their hands on. (Yes I swap between 'I' and 'we', meaning everybody here around me at work, that's how I write, sorry grammarians!) Over the years we have undertaken over 4,200 (at last count) separate marketing projects for clients. I won’t be listing my e-marketing accomplishments here (not that you care about reading all that waffle) but just rest assured that we have done everything I talk about, many times over and successfully for the most part. (Yes, early days ground-breaking e-marketing fell over sometimes, but not only am I open about the lessons learned but I will also show you how to avoid any problems when you get around to doing it).

Tip #1: Take care when your next marketing professional claims to be e-skilled, and take time to question them.
Not all e-marketing consultants, agencies or specialists are as experienced as they look. Some get out of their depth very quickly, so be careful. After all - you have to be happy for them to lead you blindfold through a swamp. Ask about their track record and listen up. I can give you the questions to ask when hiring an e-expert to make things easier. And yes, you can ask us those questions and hire us if you like what you hear.

OK, I admit it, I am into blogging right now. If you’ve ever heard the Ken Radio Show then you know that co-host Andy Abrahamson rav