Disruption Tour --- Run To Survive

Modern Catalog Marketing: E-Mail Marketing or Transactional RSS

By Kevin Hilstrom/Minethedata.com.

Bold by Thegies

Many catalogers spend way too little time thinking about e-mail marketing.

Not enough and virtually none of them are thinking about how to integrate a product sydications (Transactional Rss) like RSSCheck into their marketing mix.

The modern catalog marketer views the world in a different way.

The modern catalog marketer actively tests varying combinations of catalog mailings and e-mail campaigns to comparable audiences. These folks (those who execute the tests) frequently learn a secret --- e-mail marketing is a much stronger marketing channel when catalogs don't exist.

In the rapid segmentation process, the modern catalog marketer wants to quickly assign customers into the "digital marketing" path. These customers see a reduced diet of catalogs, with the cataloger attempting to make up some of the volume with inexpensive e-mail marketing campaigns. It doesn't always work out this way, but you have to run the tests, don't you?

Using RSSCheck consumers can self-select themselves into the marketing product category of their choice. So when a Merchant delivers a product syndication feed to their Consumer, the Consumer is interested and responsive to recieve it. It is the markerters holy grail of segmentation. Opt-in, Private and Annoynomous

The modern catalog marketer uses tools like e-mail to introduce new items without having to spend money on expensive paper to subsidize awareness.

Better yet what if you can use RSSCheck to deliver New Arrivals and or Sale Merchandise multiple times a day without the fear of an opt-out from over saturation or canibalization from full price to sale buyers.

The modern catalog marketer realizes that a lack of an e-mail address results in a more likely assignment into the "traditional marketing" segment.

The modern catalog marketer has between five and twenty different versions of an e-mail campaign, assigning different customers to different versions.

The Merchant who uses RSSCheck can work with its Consumers to deliver pre-selected catagory choices. These are not picked by business intelligence engines but by the Merchant's Consumers themselves.

The modern catalog marketer uses clickstream data (i.e. what the customer looked at), merchandise purchased, recency/frequency/monetary, and customer preferences to determine which version of an e-mail campaign the customer receives.

RSSCheck provides the Merchant with real time analytics which are delivered for them in their own online dashboard. A merchant is no longer dependent on its own Analytics or lack thereof.

The modern catalog marketer does not measure e-mail campaign success by open rates, click through rates, or conversion rates. The modern catalog marketer evaluates e-mail performance based on the change in annual retention rate, and change in annual customer profitability, caused by e-mail marketing.

RSSCheck provides the analytics and our Merchants manage them as they see fit.

The modern catalog marketer is very willing to deliver a month's worth of e-mail campaigns that do not sell a single item

Conversely, the modern catalog marketer actively plans the sales per e-mail at a customer segment level, planning these metrics months in advance.

The modern catalog marketer is willing to accept $0.05 per e-mail delivered without a promotion, and is willing to forgo $0.15 per e-mail delivered with a free shipping or %-off offer.

The modern catalog marketer lets the customer determine contact frequency.

If you could speak to your customer about sale merchandise or other catagory merchandise that your Consumer self-selected and you can do it several times every day would you want to do that if the Consumer asked to hear from you? RSSCheck enables you to do just that and only for a small transaction fee of what is sold..

The modern catalog marketer gives the e-mail department a seat at the leadership table.

The modern catalog marketer knows exactly how much of paid search expense is caused by e-mail marketing, and blends that aspect of paid search expense (and conversion) into the e-mail profit and loss statement.

RSSCheck can pass along a variable for our product push syndication which allows you to see by channel how your promotions are doing. This is in addition to deliver separate real time metrics.

The modern catalog marketer runs matchback analytics with e-mail getting more priority than catalog marketing, just to understand what the results imply/suggest.

No differerent for the Product Push Channel (TRSS).

The modern catalog marketer executes a post-mortem of every single e-mail marketing campaign, analyzing every item offered in every version of the campaign. Every link in every e-mail campaign is analyzed. The merchandising, inventory, creative, web production team, online marketing team, catalog circulation team, and e-mail marketing teams are all present. The CEO participates on a quarterly basis, if not more often.

RSSCheck provides real time reporting for every client and it is included in your base service (for a limited time) fee. A merchant can see daily number of subscribers, click through by feed, landing pages, conversions by feed and total dollars sold.

The modern catalog marketer tests every possible creative treatment, blatantly disregarding established best practices in an endless thirst to discover new and exciting ways to present merchandise.

RSSCheck can help Merchants build customized landing pages and develop work arounds for challenges Merchants have in their own online channel selling channels.

The modern catalog marketer realizes that e-mail marketing is about merchandising and service, not about geeky metrics and tactics.

At RSSCheck we provide a Relationship Manager assigned to each Merchant client who helps them navigat all aspects of their Transactional Product Push Syndication business.

The modern catalog marketer instinctively knows how every single item will perform if offered in an e-mail campaign, and actively shares that information with every employee in the company.

RSSCheck's relationship with Database Strategic Partners drives business intelligence decisions around which products to promote and when. As we are in the 365 day a year merchandise business getting this extra edge is helpful to our client's businesses.

The modern catalog marketer "households" e-mail addresses. In other words, the modern catalog marketer will combine kevinh@minethatdata.com and kevin.hillstrom@gmail.com, and evaluates the performance of the all e-mail marketing activities at the "household" level.

As you can see, the modern catalog marketer views e-mail very differently than the way the average catalog marketer views e-mail marketing.

And Merchant consideration of a Product Syndication Business delivered by RSSCheck is a relevant 2009 business decision just like moving into email was in 1996 to sell product along with using PPC in 2000-present to bring traffic to your website. In both cases, the early adopters leap frogged their competition. Will you be an early adopter or watch from the sidelines as your competitors Product Syndication Business managed for them by RSSCheck bullet trains by your business. For more information on RSSCheck see rsscheck.com

 

Thegies has an equity interest in RSSCheck

Is the social stream the new email?

Certainly with over 100 + consumer actively using social application platforms + the number of mobile users the next frontier is to move from Readers and MyHomepages to a unified social application platform that will pass along all of the consumers desired informational streams.

At Rsscheck we are agnostic where our consumers will want their Transactions RSS content and today we push the information to their Readers, MyHomepages, Social Media Platforms like MySpace, Facebook and Twitter. Plus to all mobile users who have enabled mobile browsers. For more information check us out at RSSCheck.com.

MG Siegler | 

During the “Feed Me: Bite Size Info for a Hungry Internet” panel today at SXSW (moderated by VentureBeat’s own Eric Eldon) all the participants agreed that social streams of data are going to be an integral part of the web going forward. David Sacks, the chief executive of Yammer, went farther, calling these streams “email 2.0.” No one seemed to disagree.

With Facebook’s new redesign now fully in place and focusing on real-time updates in your feed, the concept of social activity streams is moving into the mainstream. And while Facebook previously helped bring the idea of the news feed itself to the mainstream, this next iteration which includes live updates, comments and “likes,” was pioneered by others. But everyone on the panel today, which included representatives from FriendFeed, Microsoft, Yammer and Facebook, seemed to agree that the future of this space was making this data accessible no matter which service you are using.

FriendFeed co-founder Paul Buchheit likened it to the old days of AOL (the dial up, closed system variety), when you could only send email to other AOL users. Eventually, he noted, AOL was forced to open up to these messages to the rest of the Internet. He believes that status updates will eventually become a federated medium as well. And perhaps it’s no accident that Buchheit started one of the services which is already helping to spread this social data around the web (it both pulls in and posts back to Twitter, for example) — when he was still at Google, he helped create Gmail. So maybe the social stream really is the next email.

A lot of these services even look a lot like email. The central focus is on a stream of messages, with the left hand side devoted to filters, which are more or less like folders, as Sacks pointed out. One company, Microsoft, is even using its email service, Hotmail, as the foundation for its social stream. Others, like Yahoo, are starting to do this as well.

During the question and answer session, David Karp, the co-founder of Tumblr, who was in the audience, asked why any of these services really matter — why not just use a standard like RSS to syndicate this data everywhere, he wondered? Dare Obasanjo of Microsoft pointed out that the reason people need services for the social stream is that while something like RSS may be fine for the tech savvy crowd, mothers or grandmothers would take one look at it and not understand what is going on. Seeing everything in a stream on Facebook though, and having a simple publishing tool that makes it clear how you insert pictures and other elements, is the key for the mainstream.

Ari Steinberg, an engineering manager at Facebook, more succinctly noted that while the concept of RSS is sound, the interface has failed. Each of the companies on this panel are attempting to put the right interface on this new movement.

But not everyone agreed on all points. Sacks made it clear that he felt that with Facebook now fully in the social stream arena, it stands a good chance of being the clear-cut winner in terms of users. That doesn’t bode well for other services out there, like FriendFeed. Sacks believes Yammer can excel however because it’s focused on streams for businesses, and he doesn’t believe that users want to mix personal streams with business ones. Of course, he didn’t bring up to possibility of a large business social network like LinkedIn getting into the space.

While these panelists were a solid core of the stream movement, there was one glaring absence: Twitter. One audience member noted as much, to which everyone laughed. (SXSW invited Twitter to participate in the panel, but it turned down the opportunity.)

Twitter, the current media darling of the lifestream movement, may have not been there, but it was on everyone’s mind. In my notes on the panel, I counted 13 different mentions of Twitter by the panelists. Steinberg downplayed Twitter’s importance a bit — notable because Facebook tried to buy Twitter in November of last year, and its new update emphasizes some similar functionality. Steinberg noted that Twitter was pretty simple, but Facebook offered a lot more functionality.

And, the way it handles relationships is very different. On Twitter anyone can follow anyone else (assuming they have an open stream). On Facebook, you need to confirm users are your friends — though, that is changing a bit with its new Pages.

Towards the end of the panel, the issue came up of people being wary of Facebook taking over the social streaming space because of its traditionally closed model when it come to data. Steinberg reiterated the more recent company line that its committed to allowing users to share data both inside and out of Facebook, but that user privacy remains a bit of a road block.

If the stream really is going to be the new email, that road block will need to be removed. Or, as Buchheit mentioned, Facebook may one day suffer the same fate as the old AOL.

When is it time to launch a digital coupon program?

Certainly if you wait around like the newspaper of the past did your business could be facing the same daunting challenges as the article mentions below. Now if you fire up an RSSCheck Feed with a printable Digital Coupon, or deliver a digital Transactional RSS Feed coupon to your browser enabled mobile phone you are not on the bleeding edge but right on the cusp of breakout technology. A technology that will not only differentiate your business but increase your sales at a time when you need it.

Why not checkout a demo of this technology by contacting a sales consultant at RSSCheck.com

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

By Ron Shuttleworth

http://seekingalpha.com/article/126776-is-the-newspapers-shift-in-focus-to-the-web-too-late

There has been a spate of recent announcements regarding the disappearance of traditional print newspapers and here is the latest from Hearst. The market is not surprised, and there is little sentimentality towards the demise of the industry.

According to the Newspaper Association of America [NAA], print advertising revenue has been in decline since 2005. The category has been in free fall since the end of 2007 with Market Research reporting a 16.4% decline in revenues for 2008. Since peaking at $47.4B during 2005, U.S. newspaper advertising expenditures have declined by 67% over a three year period to $28.4B.

The outlook for 2009 may be even more bleak with JP Morgan predicting a 20% decline in advertising revenues to approximately $23.7B. This prediction infers a 50% decline in revenue for the industry in only 4 years. Put into historical perspective, the last time that the newspaper industry generated less than $24B in revenue was when Ronald Reagan was finishing his first term...1984.

The major media companies are obviously suffering. It was reported on March 9 that McClatchy (MNI) cut 1600 jobs as it struggles to service $2 billion of debt. Gannett (GCI), Hearst and New York Times Co (NYT) are also attempting to sell assets and shed jobs in order to cope with the cratering of the ad business. Some, like Tribune Co., have already declared bankruptcy.

Management at these operations have not been completely blindsided by the sudden emergence of the big bad Internet. Although there has been a lot of hand-wringing, spurious plans, ego-coddling, and various other forms of executional doddling, newspapers have been shifting focus onto the web for the past few years. However, this shift may have come too late to effectively compensate for eye-popping declines in print advertising sales.

As late as 2007, online advertising still only represented 7.5% of total revenues according to the NAA, and the industry organization didn't even start calculating online revenue until 2003, a full decade after the commercialization of the Internet. Instead of viewing online publishing as a complementary source of revenue streams, most newspapers initially viewed the Internet as a threat, or worse, a fad. This lack of initial recognition is the root of the damage being wrought on the industry now.

This industry has missed so much opportunity to transform. Here is the laundry list of already missed billion dollar opportunities: search, RSS, ad networks, video, blogsphere, social networking, social broadcasting...uh...the point is made. To be fair to the much maligned buggy whip manufacturers, they only failed to recognize the threat / opportunity of one new innovation.

Just as newspaper publishers have begun to really press forward on the potential of monetizing the Internet, a significant recession has impaired the migration online. The only area of growth remaining appears to be paid search advertising, a category dominated by Google (GOOG). Online display advertising is expected to show a decline in revenues by up to 5% during H1 2009 before recovering. Newspapers were hiding, and now they have nowhere to hide.

They must forge ahead...but with what?

A really valuable data asset that newspapers retain via editorial systems is... context. One could even extend this value to historical narrative. Unlike social networks where history is a mere 3 years at best, and content portals where history is at most 10 years, newspapers have the potential ability to seamlessly link today's breaking events to literally millions of local and historical events, opinions, and commentary that are decades deep.

Newspapers could be the gateway to context for online users, however they interact with information, or each other. And the technology is there. Nstein [EIN.V; NNLFF.PK] has some advanced web content management solutions that can help newspapers create context on the fly. It has the ability to extract and index meaning from any article, advertisement, or caption. The system can then connect the meaning of multiple articles to deliver narrative and insight on-the-fly. This is pretty powerful stuff, and could represent some value-add that only a newspaper editorial system could deliver. Hearst became one of Nstein's biggest clients last year as it got serious about re-inventing itself.

In order to be relevant and make money, already leveraged media companies will need to find ways to continue to invest in the federation of proprietary data sources. Clearly, there is a lot of ongoing investment required in infrastructure, storage, middleware, and at the application layer. Besides Nstein, which is a micro-cap with limited liquidity, Open Text (OTEX) should still be considered a good bet to benefit from the continued need for advanced content management solutions.

For newspapers, the geographic monopoly is long gone. the primacy of context, the "why" things happen has been deeply eroded. The print production and distribution techniques that were once barriers to empires are largely irrelevant. It took the leadership at once seemingly invincible newspaper empires a decade too long to recognize and then act upon the threats and opportunities posed by digital media. It may have been Mark Twain who said that history does not repeat itself, but it sure does rhyme. Newspaper = buggy whip.

Those media enterprises that are reacting now are investing as aggressively as possible into enabling technologies. Not all of the ideas will work, not all of the transforming media companies will succeed, however the technology companies that provide content management, storage, and data solutions should continue to benefit from this mad scramble for the next 4 to 6 quarters

Is the inbox the beating heart of the Internet?

Stan Rapp, known as the father of direct marketing, threw some of the following nuggets (based on a real-time Twitter play-by-play of Rapp's keynote):
• "The inbox is the beating heart of the internet, and email is the tightest link ever invested between seller and buyer."

Really Stan...

If it was the tightest link why is the open/delivery rate maxing out at 15%?

Why is email looking a lot like throwing bytes against the consumer digital wall with conversion also parked at 2% or less?

• "Advertising's new role is to drive prospects to the web for relevant opt-in experiences."
• "Email is the backbone of all digital communications."

But have you thought about entering the new Transactional RSS Channel?
Have you thought about the potential for your business to connect with your consumers and have them pre-selected offers from your business?
Instead if talking to just 2% what if you could have a 5X increase in response with a 20% increase in average order.

Epsilon's new research echoes this. The firm found that 50 percent of consumers surveyed said they're more likely to buy products from companies that send them email, whether their purchases are online or at a place of business.

What is the percentage for the Transactional RSS Channel?

The money and resolve is following these sentiments, recession and all. The Aberdeen Group found that while 60 percent of marketers plan to cut their traditional marketing budgets this year, 47 percent of marketers plan to boost their email marketing budgets. A Datran Media 2009 survey of marketing executives found that email marketing was viewed as the strongest advertising performer.

Now if your follow these stats and want to learn more check out RSSCheck.com and discover how you can join the new digital revolution around Transactional RSS Feeds.

What do you do when you read Kevin Kelly?

From the Thegies...I read the below and thought if every client and merchant I know does what Seth suggests they would they jump in, test and optimize a new online opportunity just like they did with email in 1995-2000, affiliate programs in 1996-2003, search in 1998-2004, remarketing programs from 2005  and a few years ago to present the social web. Now why don't you check out RSSCheck.com and see how you can jump into a whole new marketing channel with zero cost or risk.

From Seth Godin's Blog.

The Rorschach test question is this: When you read big ideas online, do you nod your head knowingly, do you argue in favor of the status quo or do you actually do something? Kevin wrote his book ten years ago. If you had known then what you know now, what would you have done differently? Of course, you did know it then. So, what do you do when you read stuff like this?

Do something as in start a new division, change a major policy, quit your job, launch a project, change everything? When people read great ideas online, I often wonder what happens to them after that... it's not too late to start a Permission Marketing campaign, but it would have been better in 1999. It's not too late to start treating your customers with respect or build ideas that spread either.

Nodding is fun to watch, but largely ineffective.

In Search of Dolphin Leather

From Seth Godin

There's a story in the bible with very specific instructions for building an ark. Included in the instructions is a call for using tanned dolphin leather. Regardless of your feelings about the historical accuracy of the story, it's an interesting question: why create an impossible mission like that? Why encourage people who might travel 100 miles over their entire lifetime to undertake a quest to find, capture, kill, skin and eventually tan a dolphin?

My friend Adam had an interesting take on this. He told me that the acquisition of the leather is irrelevant. It was the quest that mattered. Having a community-based quest means that there's less room for whining, for infighting and for dissolution. Having a mission not only points everyone in the same direction, it also creates motion. And motion in any direction is often better than no motion at all.

All around you, people are telling you two things:
1. whatever you want, forget it, it's impossible, and
2. sit still, preserve resources, lay low.

And yet, the people who are succeeding, creating change and (not coincidentally) are happier aren't listening to either of these pieces of advice. Instead, they're on the search for dolphin leather.

Frank Sinatra had it wrong. Your dream shouldn't be impossible, but it sure helps if it's improbable. Don't choose your dreams based on what is certain to happen, choose them based on what's likely to cause the change you want to occur around you.

How far away is your emergency?

As a merchant how frustrated are you with with your current email program to communicate your messaging? What are your open rates to your customers. What are your deliverables? What is your conversion rates? Do you feel a sense that your consumer isn't listenting to you anymore?

Do you feel like your email marketing efforts are facing an emergency?

Now as one of your consumers how do you think they are feeling about your email efforts? Are they giddy, excited and interested or they hitting the delete key each time you send out an email? What does your email stats tell you? Can you remember a differerence in what was to what is now?

When was the last time your consumer expressed a pre-selected interest to communicate with you. If you are thinking and or concerned about the above...continue to read on...

Then check out RSSCheck.com for the next waive of solutions that will help you overcome your current CRM emergency by jumping into the Transactional RSS revolution. Why not learn more by contacting an RSSCheck representative at info@rsscheck.com.

From Seth Godin's blog

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/03/how-far-away-is-your-emergency.html

It's amazing that people have so much time to fret about today's emergency but almost no time at all to avoid tomorrow's.

A glimpse at the TV and internets shows one talking head after another angsting about today's economy. These are the same people who needed to devote entire hours to mindless trivia nine months ago when they could have done an enormous amount of education about avoiding this mess in the first place.

Six years ago, I gave a mildly controversial talk to the newspaper publishers at an annual convention. I explained in detail why they were just a few years from bankruptcy and how they could use the momentum and assets they had to build up a hyperlocal internet presence and permission asset now, because it would be too late when the emergency hit. Of course, my talk wasn't an emergency, they had other priorities, and so the dire protection comes true.

When gas is $10 a gallon (and it certainly will be), we'll have plenty of time to obsess about what we can't change and what a mess our world is. So I wonder...Where are the groundbreaking reports about how this device or that organization are wasting so much energy today, when we can still do something about it? Why not shine a light on the holes we're digging today as opposed to the canyons we'll have to deal with years from now?

They say the best time to look for a job is when you don't need one. And the best time to invest in a new Purple Cow is when you're still milking the old one. Move your emergency back in time and you'll be amazed at how far your money goes.

It's amazing that people have so much time to fret about today's emergency but almost no time at all to avoid tomorrow's.

A glimpse at the TV and internets shows one talking head after another angsting about today's economy. These are the same people who needed to devote entire hours to mindless trivia nine months ago when they could have done an enormous amount of education about avoiding this mess in the first place.

Six years ago, I gave a mildly controversial talk to the newspaper publishers at an annual convention. I explained in detail why they were just a few years from bankruptcy and how they could use the momentum and assets they had to build up a hyperlocal internet presence and permission asset now, because it would be too late when the emergency hit. Of course, my talk wasn't an emergency, they had other priorities, and so the dire protection comes true.

When gas is $10 a gallon (and it certainly will be), we'll have plenty of time to obsess about what we can't change and what a mess our world is. So I wonder...Where are the groundbreaking reports about how this device or that organization are wasting so much energy today, when we can still do something about it? Why not shine a light on the holes we're digging today as opposed to the canyons we'll have to deal with years from now?

They say the best time to look for a job is when you don't need one. And the best time to invest in a new Purple Cow is when you're still milking the old one. Move your emergency back in time and you'll be amazed at how far your money goes.

Thegies has an equity interest in RSSCheck