Buy the Numbers? Making sense of head-spinning retail data

Posted April 29th, 2009, by Stephen Cobb

Some days I think I’ll explode if one more person asks me “How’s it going?” Because I just don’t know. The nightly news is full of recession stories but in the morning I go to work in a business that shows no sign of slowing down. It’s enough to make your head spin.

On April 15, the Wall Street Journal grimly reported that “retail sales tumbled in March as job losses and tight credit left consumers cautious and constrained, damping hopes for a rapid economic turnaround.”

Now I wouldn’t say that the Wall Street Journal is wrong. Indeed, I would say it’s more objective than NBC Nightly News (where NBC apparently stands for Nothing But Crisis). And I certainly don’t think anyone is expecting a rapid economic turnaround. But I work in online marketing and the impression I get at work each day is that the ecommerce department in most companies just didn’t get that memo about the economic slow down. And there are some numbers to back that up. Read the rest of this entry »

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Posted in Industry, Personalization, Strategy

Join Our Table: The Monetate Roundtable at Shop.org Online Marketing Workshop

Posted April 21st, 2009, by admin

Hopefully you’ve seen today’s news release about the roundtable on May 6 at Shop.org’s Online Marketing Workshop in Scottsdale, Arizona. We’re pretty excited about it and we’d love to see you there.

Shop.org chose “Optimizing Your Online Business” as the theme of this workshop and they chose our roundtable proposal from among many. The title is “Map Your Path to Online Optimization: A whole new way to reach your goals.”

We’ll be talking about an effective new way of looking at your ecommerce data to prioritize the biggest opportunities for improving the bottom line. Our CEO, David Brussin, will be leading the roundtable, which will feature an online retailer who has had impressive results with the techniques that David will be sharing. David will show you how to perform this analysis and teach you how to do it yourself, using tools and data that you already have.

The news release “Finding Best Opportunities to Improve Online Retail’s Bottom Line” is now online at PRWeb or you can download a .pdf version of release here.

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Posted in General, Housekeeping, Industry

60 Second Post-click Marketing Integration Guide Published

Posted April 20th, 2009, by Stephen Cobb

Do you ever ask yourself “Exactly what does it take to get started with post-click marketing?” If so, you’re in luck! We have answered that question in a new publication.

Our 60 Second Post-click Marketing Integration Guide is now available for downloading (in .pdf format, no registration required, just right-click the image on the left to save the file).

I should warn you that that the file downloads very quickly (go ahead and try it). That is not an error. There is a reason for that speed: the file size is just 25 kilobytes.

In fact, the whole integration guide is only one page in length and you can probably read it in 60 seconds, hence the title. So what have we ommited from this slender integration guide? Read the rest of this entry »

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Posted in General, Industry, Personalization

Post-click Marketing Release Notes: To infinite personalization and beyond…

Posted April 9th, 2009, by Stephen Cobb

When I started writing this blog post I thought it was just an update about two items in our latest Release Notes (you may want to read this post if you are new to our Release Notes). Then it occurred to me there was more to it than that. But first, the two items, both of which expand Monetate’s targeting capabilities.

First, we have added the ability to target messages and promotions based on the amount of time a visitor has spent on the site. We also added the ability to target based on number of pageviews. This pair of new targeting dimensions will be useful when our personalization experts are creating campaigns to target “window shoppers.” For example, we can now extend a discount specifically for visitors to your site who have viewed a lot of pages or spent a lot of time on site but have not yet purchased (my guess is that these visitors are ripe for conversion into customers, so even a small discount might push them past the tipping point).

And as I’m writing this, it occurs to me that Monetate’s targeting dimensions just keep expanding, often in response to client requests. If you’re one of our clients and have requested a particular targeting parameter you are likely to know when it is available, but you might not be aware of all the targeting choices that have been put in place to date. Read the rest of this entry »

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Posted in Housekeeping, Personalization, Strategy

What April Brings: Jokes and Spring Cleaning

Posted April 3rd, 2009, by Stephen Cobb

There was an article in ClickZ last week that got me thinking about this question: Should Spring cleaning come before or after the First of April? The answer probably depends on what the weather is like in your part of the world and what exactly it is that you’re cleaning.

When it comes to marketing strategy, Robin Neifield, CEO of NetPlus, suggests that the right time to start the process, if you haven’t already, is now. Her article, “Spring Cleaning Your Online Marketing Strategy,” is a handy checklist you can reference when you get started. And if you want an incentive, how about cash?

That’s right, as I wrote in my comment to Robin, now is a great time to step back, review, and realign; and the process could pay for itself. For example, Robin pointed out the need for “appropriate landing pages for all marketing efforts and promotions.” I agree that’s one area where we all tend to get out of sync. Sadly, there is often a timing gap due to the rapid pace at which PPC, banner ads, and other online campaigns can be rolled out, relative to the more glacial pace at which site changes tend to work their way through IT.

However, as I commented to Robin, it is possible to close that gap these days–using one of the available dynamic site personalization technologies–and when you do close the gap, the numbers can be impressive. In my experience, few things sabotage the sales process more effectively than a mis-match between an ad and the site to which it brings me. Conversely, few things create revenue lift better than bringing a site experience into sync with the marketing program that brought the visitor to the site in the first place (and I’m not just talking about personalized landing pages–although those certainly help–but consistent messaging and creatives synced across search pages, catalog pages, all the way to the shopping cart).

So, now that April Fools’ Day is behind us and we’ve had our fun, it’s time to Spring Clean. It’s good form, prudent strategy, and a potential money-maker. Hey, what could be more fun than that?

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Posted in Industry

Monetate Pivots: Catch a whiff of Smellr, our latest iteration

Posted April 1st, 2009, by admin

That’s right, Monetate has taken a U-turn, pivoted on a dime like the nimble startup that it is, and taken the plunge into social networking for personal fragrances. It’s a niche play to be sure, and it might be a risky move, but we think the world will love our latest iteration: Smellr, a social network for noses.

But why would a red hot startup with a very successful full-service post-click marketing solution make such a drastic move? After all, the company has been blowing away milestones and exceeding revenue goals ever since it was funded. So what gives?

The answer will only surprise you if you’re not a believer in Web 2.0. On Sunday we read a blog post titled “Yogi Berra wisdom for startups” and it seemed to say it all. The great ball player famously said “If you come to a fork in the road, take it” and on Monday we did.

And we think our clients will understand. They too are on the cutting edge. They have embraced exciting new post-click marketing strategies and Monetate has boosted their conversion rates and revenues.

So we trust they will understand that the future beckons and we must answer its call. The online world moves at warp speed and we have been warped. We are now all about the virtual aroma. The smell of success is on the digital wind. The future is Smellr and Monetate is making it happen. We hope you enjoy it as much as we do.

Team Monetate

Update: We’d like to extend a special thanks to Smellr’s first investor, Jason Calacanis. Jason, we appreciate your vision and your unerring nose for a great new opportunity, but above all, we thank you for believing in us.

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Posted in General, Housekeeping