Disruption Tour --- Run To Survive

iDEAS to BUILD your brand in a continued downturn

Check out this video from http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/24361.asp and then contact ShoppeSimple who can put your New Arrival and New Seasonal Offerings in front of your consumers every day 365 days.

Worried about being to promotional and as a result loosing contribution margin? Then ShoppeSimple can give you a cost affordable way to let your customers know about merchandise you want to show them.

Through ShoppeSimple's TransactionalRSS (TRSS) Content Management System (TCMS) you can now digital merchandise your product line to consumers who have requested to see you merchandise every day

To learn more check out RSSCheck.com and also ShoppeSimple.net for more information email info@RSSCheck.com or phone 612.349.2740

Take a peek at our new online customer acquisition portal at shoppesimple.net

Email Click Trough Rates...are your ready to try an new online media channel?

E-mail click through rate in Q1 '09 was 6.1% however lower for apparel (4.1%) and specialty retail (3.1%) and declining.

Full report:

http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1007192

With email penetration stats as poor as the above doesn't it just make sense to explore a new online marketing channel? TransactionalRSS can help you build deeper relationships with your customers, send the product information that is wanted and therefore opened by top tier customers, generate higher lifetime value site visits and close more business both from your current customers and convert new buyers from email and your site visits.

For more information check out RSSCheck.com

op-google-advertisers-april-2009

http://seekingalpha.com/article/141369-top-google-advertisers-april-2009?source=email

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.

Amazon/Overstock Gamble May Pay Off

Boaz Berkowitz

Seekingalpha.com

I was surprised to notice how silent Amazon (AMZN) appeared to be vis-à-vis New York’s new tax law during the company's earnings call yesterday.  Thomas Szkutak, Amazon’s Senior VP & CFO, brushed off questions regarding the tax issue as “too early to comment.”  By contrast, in Overstock’s (OSTK) latest Q2 2008 earnings call transcript, the company had much to say about the issue.  What really caught my attention was when Jonathan Johnson, Overstock’s SVP, stated that the New York State Senate had voted to repeal New York’s most recent tax law which would put this whole mess behind us. 

For those of you who weren’t aware, New York State passed a new law that went into effect on June 1, 2008.   The law, dubbed “the Amazon tax,” requires all internet companies with affiliates in NY State to charge sales tax on shipments bound for New York.  The State expects this to increase tax revenue by $50 million. 

Why is this law a problem?  Well, according to the Supreme Court’s 1992 ruling in Quill v. North Dakota, companies are obligated to charge sales tax only for states where they have a physical presence.  That is why New Yorkers may have noticed that they need to pay sales tax when making an online purchase from sites like Best Buy (BBY), Circuit City (CC) or Barnes & Noble (BKS), but not from sites like Amazon, Buy.com, Overstock and others.  The former group has a presence in virtually every state, while the latter set does not. Technically, New Yorkers were always supposed to pay sales tax on purchases from sites like Amazon to the government, but since the web stores weren’t forced to collect the tax, few actually paid.

New York State has found a way around this law by stipulating that New York based affiliates could be constituted as a “physical presence,” though until now, they have generally been interpreted as advertising vehicles.  Affiliates get paid a commission for driving a customer to online stores.  Websites like Amazon have thousands of such affiliates. 

Why is this law important?  It means that one of the major advantages that a company like Amazon had over a company like Barnes & Noble is that they did not have to charge sales tax to New Yorkers.  This often resulted in a lower overall price.  Now these companies do need to include tax and it remains to be seen if their more price sensitive customers may no longer be as loyal.  I, for one, am not.   And while a $1.00 sales tax on a book may not be enough to dissuade a customer from making a purchase, tax on a laptop, which could easily add over $100, might. 

So how have companies responded? The harshest response came from Amazon and Overstock, which have independently filed lawsuits against New York State challenging the constitutionality of the new law (note: by filing independently, they are forcing New York to defend themselves against two lawsuits rather than one; a considerably more expensive undertaking).  Meanwhile, most sites such as Amazon and Buy.com have complied and as of June 1^st, have been charging sales tax to many an unsuspecting New Yorker.   An email to each of these companies inquiring as to why the sites now charge NY sales tax resulted in an almost identical response which can be summed up as:  New York passed this law, if you have a problem with it, contact them.  As a result, I am sure I was far from the only who complained to the New York Legislature about this. 

Overstock, followed by other online retailers were even more creative and decided to dump its 3,400 New York affiliates.  Not only did this protect the company from having to charge sales tax in NY, but it sent a clear message to Albany: keep this law and you will hurt New York small business owners.  As a result many sites like 5StarAffiliatePrograms.com have started a grassroots effort to pressure New York to repeal the law.

There are a lot of online shoppers in New York, and while Amazon and Overstock complain that such a law is unconstitutional or too hard to implement, what it really comes down to is that 10% or more of their customer base is affected by this new law and may defect to the competition.  This poses a major threat to these companies’ profitability which is already being affected by the economic downturn.

Why should those of you who do not live in New York care?  If you ever want to ship an item to a friend or relative in NY, you’ll have to shell out a little extra for NY sales tax, one of the highest in the country.  Even worse, if New York gets away with this law, other states may follow.  California has already considered implementing an “iTunes tax” which would have charged tax on all music downloads, but the law was defeated in committee.  At least for now.

So where do we stand at this point?  It seems that Overstock and Amazon’s gamble may have paid off.  Faced with angry customers, worried affiliates and looming lawsuits, New York State may be about to back down.   The Senate voted unanimously on a bill to repeal the law and the bill has now been passed on to the Assembly for review.  But there is a long way to go until the battle is over. Regardless of what happens, I will likely never see the $15.11 in sales tax I just paid to Amazon for my most recent order.

Microsoft's "Cash Back" Google Search Killer: Great Idea, Won't Work

Microsoft will announce its Hail Mary attempt to stave off a Google search monopoly this morning: It will give some searchers some cash back when they make a purchase after using Redmond's search too. At first blush, the plan sounds as though it will turn the industry on its head, forcing Google to implement a similar plan or go bust. So why won't it?Three reasons: 1)Microsoft will not likely offer enough "cash back" on each purchase to make the service worth using for most users. 2) The program only covers "participating" retailers and "participating" products, at least initially. Although the initial names involved are impressive, right away you have concerns about breadth of coverage and objectivity. 3) If necessary, Google can always respond with a similar plan--and its economics will always be far better than Microsoft's.

The Evolving Web

from the ecommercetimes.com

Click here for the entire interview on Meebo

TechNewsWorld: How do you think widgets are changing the Web?

Martin Green: I think they're changing it in a huge way. I think the major thing is that the Web is undergoing a little bit of a transformation -- like the PC industry did, maybe 20 years ago -- where it's going from vertically integrated to specialist. In the PC industry, it went from the vertical integration of chips and software and assembly [to] specialists.

The Web is doing the same thing. There are specialists in ad sales, and you see even the big guys like Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) , Platform A at AOL, and Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) excel at that. Then you see specialists in aggregation of audiences and content, and you see people like social networks -- as well as portals -- do that.

Widgets is an interesting specialty in and of itself. It provides content out into the Web, and you see people like RockYou -- which emerged over the last two years to reach one in five people on the Internet . They have done it by providing content into the social networks and portals ... and they're a specialist in doing that.

TechNewsWorld: What do you think is the next phase for widgets?

Green: We have a horse in this answer, in this game. One of them is for them to be rich applications -- not just display -- but to have true interactivity. That could be like Facebook applications, where widgets morph more into applications than, say, just a slideshow with glitter text. Then, I think the next phase after that is that they go live.

TechNewsWorld: Are you describing something similar to Google Gadgets?

Green: Google Gadgets is a step in that direction, but I think the next phase after that is that they become true applications where people can interact with the widget, make it into something else, and be doing it at the same time. The Web has traditionally been organized into billions of pages where there are a couple of people at any given point in time on a different URL (Uniform Resource Locator). These rich Internet applications using Ajax and Flash that are distributed throughout the Web can aggregate audiences so that they are there together.

For example, we work with record labels, and one of them, Universal, launched Kanye West's album in the second week of September. They had a listening party online and at their label, where people could stream the entire album, check it out, talk with other people who were listening to it at the same time. They did that for a week. All of the broadcast networks are doing the same type of listening- or viewing-party thing, where people are coming together for a shared experience.

DoubleClick Performics Releases 13 Searcher Mom Vertical Reports for Top Industries as Advertisers Fine Tune Holiday Shopping Search Engine Marketing Strategies

These reports coincide with the completion of a holiday shopping study with Opinion Research Corporation. The findings of this study shed light on the holiday shopping plans of men and women with children less than 18 years of age, factors stymieing consumer spending, and differences in planned holiday spend by product category and consumer demographics. A summary of the findings is available through DoubleClick Performics upon request, but some of the study’s highlights include:

• When asked how toy recalls and lead paint dangers would impact their shopping, more than half of respondents (58 percent) said they plan to go online to research and eliminate dangerous products from their shopping lists.
• Sixty percent of respondents who researched a product online went offline to make a purchase.
• Once in the store, 35 percent bought the item they researched online as well as additional items.
• Men plan to spend an average of $893 on holiday gifts this year, significantly more than women ($673), but age and income also have a strong impact on intent to shop.
• Only 28 percent of shoppers younger than age 35 plan to spend at least $600; while 39 percent of those age 35-44 and 40 percent of those older than 45 plan the same.
• Fifty-five percent of households with income in excess of $75,000 will spend at least $600; while 30 percent of respondents earning $35,000 – 49,999 and 15 percent earning less than $35,000 will spend at least $600.

 

“In addition to toy recall concerns, consumers reported a wide range of factors impacting their holiday spending in 2007,” added Larkins. “Gas prices, the top limiting factor among respondents, will limit shopping for 52 percent of consumers. Twenty-eight percent of consumers reported feeling the effects of the housing/mortgage crunch, and another 25 percent listed unemployment as a limiting factor. All of these issues have implications for advertisers trying to balance the online/offline mix.”

 

With a longer holiday shopping season this year and three full weeks remaining until Christmas, plenty of time still exists for marketers to adjust search campaigns and reap additional benefits. Search is a dynamic channel that can even be refined many times a day, and DoubleClick Performics recommends marketers take a step back now and review their performance to date to determine what has worked so far, what has not, what’s missing, etc.

 

 

About DoubleClick Performics

Since 1998, DoubleClick Performics has delivered consumers to our affiliate and search engine marketing clients. Our structure provides high-level strategic planning and integrated services resulting in a deep knowledge of consumer behavior. As committed industry leaders, our innovative approach to digital performance marketing enables us to anticipate and shape the future while ensuring our clients’ marketing investments are efficient and effective.

Mark Cuban’s Radical Idea: Facebook Classifieds that Pay You to Sell

from mashable.com

Mark Cuban’s latest radical idea: classifieds. His latest Facebook application, Radical Buy, lets you buy and sell items through the popular social network. It doesn’t sound all that radical, but it has an interesting twist. Borrowing from the affiliate advertising model, sellers can offer a commission for users that help their items get sold. That means you can post Jimmy’s “Wild Animal Trofees” listing on your profile, and if a sale is completed through you, then you earn the commission.

 

Sellers get to choose the commission percentage (if they offer commission at all). If you peruse through the listings of this application, you’ll see that the selling price and the potential commission are both displayed. This should get your juices flowin’. The more you promote other people’s items, the more money you stand to make. It’s a simplistic attempt at a self-regulating marketplace where referrals do the promoting, and the incentives are staring you in the face.

And because Cuban has chosen Facebook to launch a classifieds system like this, it takes advantage of the fact that you might be more comfortable buying something from Sally that lives in MoJo Hall instead of the nameless man on Craigslist. Many classifieds sites approach college campuses in the same manner, because it’s comforting to buy things from people you know (or know where you can hunt them down if they sell you a piece of crap). Lending Club has taken a similar approach to its peer-lending system both inside Facebook, and as integrated services with universities across the nation.

Fanista - Bringing Amway into the 21st Century

from mashable.com

It would seem Amway, that company the brought the term “pyramid schemes” to a whole new light in the 1980’s, has decided to have a go at the 21st century by backing a new site named “Fanista“. With a focus on CDs and DVDs for now, Fanista will later be adding books and digital downloads. And, yes, there is a pyramid scheme involved. Now named “Common Interest Commerce” (or CIC), the idea is that you bring in your friends and you earn 5% of what they buy, and then you get 5% of whatever their referrals buy. You will earn “insider perks” and “achieve social status” for being a “tastemaker”. Gee… this sounds so much like one of those Amway pitches I got trapped in to listening to every few months in the late 1980’s. While it sounds loosely like an affiliate program that we’re all familiar with nowadays, it’s the active recruitment that hearkens back to the old Amway business model. Considering the bad taste that the name Amway leaves in most people’s mouthes probably won’t help this site gain much momentum, if any.