Mackey’s biggest mistake is that he posted under a pseudonym. Even if you’re not setting out to bash an opponent, why would you post anonymously? If you and your company stand behind what you have to say, doesn’t it make more sense to engage your audience in honest and transparent debate? Back your opinions up, convert those who disagree to your way of thinking through the power and strength of your arguments, or agree to disagree. Posting anonymously in this context runs the risk of making you look like you have something to hide.

Mackey disagrees on the issue of transparency: “I do not think that the virtue of transparency is particularly applicable or relevant when it comes to online communities whose custom is to participate through screen names. Within this context, I believed being consistent with the custom was more important than promoting the virtue of transparency as long as my information was accurate and my arguments well-reasoned.”

His argument in essence is that people post online using made up screen names therefore you don’t need to disclose who you are when you post. While he may be right by the letter of the (unwritten, online) law, it’s somewhat silly of him to apply general online community guidelines (i.e. that as a Manchester United fan I’m free to post on a United board as KaiMacRed instead of Kai MacMahon) to a CEO posting about his industry, or even worse his company and competitor. My posts about my soccer team have no bearing on or relation to my job.

If you have a powerful argument, if your company or product really is strong, if your customers really do prefer you… what do you have to be afraid of? If you have issues in any of those areas, instead of bashing, why not focus on those issues, engaging your customers to help you improve. They, after all, know your business best of all. Take advantage of the opportunities for honest and forthright dialogue with them to learn how to improve matters.

One of the most striking things about this whole affair is that Mackey is somewhat of a pioneer. He started posting on the Yahoo boards nine years ago in 1999, surely making him one of the first CEOs outside the valley to post online regularly. That’s pretty cool, and could have brought Whole Foods untold good publicity: ground breaking store breaks yet more ground. Unfortunately he chose to hide behind a pseudonym. An opportunity missed.

On the surface Facebook is not that different from the many other networks: a tool for bringing people together and helping them communicate. Look a little deeper though and this key differentiator becomes apparent: that fact that it’s an open platform, meaning that anybody (you, I or two Indian guys who like Scrabble) can develop an application for it. When somebody bites you to turn you into a zombie… when you get a message inviting you to rate your friends sex appeal… when somebody wants to compare movie tastes with you… chances are a third party developer has created that application which has resonated with the audience and taken off. Light the blue touch paper and watch what happens: peer to peer interaction at its very best. The fact that anybody can develop for it combined with Facebook’s established user base of around sixty million makes it an incredibly powerful tool.

Some of the steps taken by Facebook could only have been taken by somebody as young and willing to buck traditional business ideas as CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg. Opening the platform was a smart move that many older, more experienced (read set in their ways) CEOs in his position would most likely never have taken. MySpace and partners are following with Open Social, and although the concept is certainly not new, Facebook broke new ground at this level.

Why do people create these applications though?  Some do it just for fun: the opportunities presented by Facebook opening up access to their audience are extraordinary. Some do it for exposure: having millions of people use something you created is quite the resume (and ego) booster.  For brands it’s a marketing tool: the potential and value of peer-to-peer marketing is huge. There’s revenue in all three, of course. Scrabulous is reported to generate $25,000 per month. Not exactly Brewster’s Millions, but nor is it chump change, particularly considering the meager resources at the brothers’ disposal. Multiply that across many applications and you’re talking serious revenue potential, although the real value for marketers is the exposure and brand building potential.

The opening up of networks like Facebook and MySpace provides an incredible opportunity for brand and cause marketers alike: all of a sudden you have access to a massive, engaged and connected user base. Look at all the interesting stuff on Facebook at the moment and think how it could apply to your brand. Think about doing something yourself. Peer to peer marketing is unique in that the trust, the most important piece and the piece that we struggle with the most, has already been established. The benefits for Hasbro and Mattel in having Scrabulous around far outweigh the drawbacks, and they should be thanking the makers instead of threatening legal action. A whole new potential audience has been opened up or brought back to the game, but instead of taking advantage they’re threatening to pull the plug.

At the time of writing, a Google news search for “Scrabble” returns over three hundred articles referencing the action. When was the last time the world’s media actually cared about Scrabble? Instead of trying to stamp Scrabulous out, Mattel and Hasbro should be nurturing the game and audience, partnering with the developers and building on the unprecedented online success of the Facebook game. You can bet that’s what Zuckerberg would have done.

Why is this a revolution though? A lofty claim, for sure. There are four key differences in Web analytics today vs. a few years ago, all of which are significant contributing factors:

Accessibility
It’s so easy to get at your data now. Whether through custom dashboards, the interface itself or your own custom reports populated using your vendor’s API, it’s never been easier to quickly get the information you need in the right format. Huge plus point.

KPIs vs. FGRs (Feel-Good-Reports)
In years gone by, execs would get a 100 page report on their desk that made them feel good (hence feel-good-reports, with apologies to whoever coined the term). Nowadays, the analytics industry is focusing on Key Performance Indicators: specific metrics relative to that particular business, the monitoring of which provides meaningful performance insight. Doesn’t that alone make you feel good?

Integration
Today’s tools integrate beautifully with complex Web technologies. Want to track a fully featured flash movie? No problem. AJAX site? That’s fine too. Being able to fully understand user behavior across your entire site is critical.

Awareness
Analytics is mainstream news nowadays (for example: note the recent news stories around Neilson’s adjustments around “time spent” vs. page views.) Five years ago analytics advocates would frequently encounter blank faces as they evangelized. Nowadays, analytics is so prominent (in part because of the reasons outlined above); it’s a much easier sell.

Wanting to better understand Web performance is nothing new. From the early days of log files (WebTrends) vs. page tagging (WebSideStory), through today where we see analytics working its way into online business processes, the underlying driver of wanting to better understand user behavior in unchanged.  The key difference nowadays is accessibility. With very little overhead almost anyone can deploy a sophisticated analytics solution and quickly start collecting real time user behavior data.

Free packages like Google’s offerings are perfect for non-profits or smaller sites looking for relatively basic functionality. Higher end solutions, like Site Catalyst from Omniture, offer a much more robust feature set (robust is underplaying it, actually, feature rich does not adequately describe what Omniture is doing: further disclosure, Omniture is a partner of ours). In short, there’s something for everyone out there. What’s right for one client may not be right for another, but all requirements are catered to if you’re prepared to do a bit of looking around.

The real power of the current crop of analytics packages (Site Catalyst, HBX, Google Analytics, WebTrends, Index Tools and so on) lies in their versatility and ability to deliver value to so many different types of business. You don’t need to invest a huge amount to get an analytics program up and running, although (of course) the more advanced your requirements, the greater the setup and maintenance cost. For any site with a commerce element, analytics should be a no-brainer, but there are less obvious (though no less important) applications also.

Brand sites wanting to drive users to particular types of content, particular conversion events (email signups, registrations etc) are all analytics contenders. A solid analytics strategy will help you optimize your efforts across all these areas. Although the investment can be modest, it is also important to bear in mind that for your analytics program to be a success, just as with SEO, you need to integrate analytics into your overall process. It’s an ongoing initiative, not a onetime deal. Any and all changes to your site need to be undertaken with your analytics implementation in mind (of all implementation problems, mistagged pages is one of the most common. Incorrect page names or account numbers compromise the integrity of the data that comes out the other end) – this is doubly true when you have multiple folks working on the same site.

What does this mean for us marketers though?  One of the most powerful developments in Web analytics over the last few years, and one of my ‘revolution catalysts’ outlined above is simply how accessible the data has become. Having that real-time window on performance gives you an immediacy of feedback that was simply not possible a few years ago. You can launch an initiative and you get quantitative data in front of you right away.  In short, Web analytics can help you take the guesswork out of your marketing efforts.

If your organization doesn’t have an analytics program in place, why not consider looking at setting one up? If you do have a program, are you getting the most out of it? Are your stakeholders getting the information and analysis they need, and most importantly is the analysis that your analytics program drives helping you and your stakeholders make business decisions?  There’s a dizzying array of data available out there. Are you getting the most out of it?

Measurability is king and ROI is in most cases the single most important factor to consider when developing a campaign. The mix has broadened and matured, and there are a multitude of new channels all vying for your dollar. It’s tougher than ever to apportion your budget, or to even decide which methods are right for you and your business.

One component of the marketing mix over which there should be no debate, however, is organic search. If you’re serious about being in business online, organic should be part of your plan.

When you buy keywords, you typically get access to a report back detailing who clicked on what, and how much it cost. But when the money runs out, so do the clicks. Organic is different: a correctly optimized site will be generating qualified leads for you 24/7 for as long as it remains optimized. As your business grows and matures, so should your optimization program. SEO should be as much as part of your build cycle as QA.

Measuring SEO traffic is easy once you’ve done the initial legwork. For detailed results your search terms will need to be mapped to your analytics package, and you’ll need to create (or access if your analytics tool already has this set up) a report to break out traffic generated from organic results. Once you’ve done that, it’s real easy to see which keywords and engines are driving traffic. Even if you don’t want to go to the effort of breaking out the keywords, all the major analytics packages will give search engine referral data, so there’s no excuse for not monitoring where your traffic is coming from.

So we’ve established that you should be paying attention to organic search: everybody should. What to do now? Below are five of the most common SEO mistakes marketers make as they get started down the optimization path:
Mistake #1: Optimizing Once, Then Forgetting About It.

SEO is not a onetime deal. Just as the indexes are constantly changing, so optimizing for organic search is an ongoing process. It’s all too common to do a onetime optimization, and then forget about it. Any and all modifications to your Web properties (new content, changes in IA/navigation) can and will impact your search status. What seem like small changes can have big consequences, so all should be undertaken only after considering SEO implications. We’re not talking about a huge investment here, either. Smaller sites can get by on as little as a few hours a month, though we would typically recommend more, particularly for larger sites. Anything is better than nothing though. Put some time aside every month, whether in-house if you have the expertise or outsourced if you don’t, for SEO.

Mistake #2: Ignoring the Search Engines. (They are not the enemy!)

Engines make money off traffic. That traffic will only come for as long as the organic results are good. Ergo, the engines will do everything they can to ensure the relevance and integrity of their results. The better and more accurate their organic results, the more revenue they generate off the paid results. They are just as keen as you are to get you placed correctly. In the long run it will serve you better to be in the #1 position for a number of specific terms that are relevant to your business (‘north county auto dealers’) than it will to be #1 in one larger, broader term (‘autos’). There are guidelines for each of the major search engines. Feel free to email me if you’d like me to send them to you, but above all remember to pay attention to them.

Mistake #3: Cutting Corners

This is a cardinal rule, do not try and dupe the engines into displaying you where you shouldn’t be, or into giving you a higher ranking than you deserve. Optimization is playing by the rules, listening to the engine’s guidelines and getting the best possible placement based on your business, sector and goals. Cross the line into shadier areas, and you run the risk of getting blacklisted. The engines rule with an iron fist by necessity (because people are constantly trying to scam them), so it’s not very smart to get on the wrong side of them. Getting excluded from an index is a very bad thing. If you’re running a genuine business and you optimize correctly (on an ongoing basis, of course) you can ensure good placements. In the long run you’re better off driving qualified leads like this than effectively spamming the Web by trying to dupe the engines. Don’t do it.

Mistake #4: Failing to Look Beyond The Big Guys

Yes, Google is the 500 pound gorilla and yes, they account for around 50% of the market, but that still leaves a huge amount of traffic elsewhere. Consider optimizing for the more specialized engines that cater to your vertical. Look at the regional versions of the engines. There’s more to life than Google. Of course they’re incredibly important, but don’t make the mistake of optimizing for them and ignoring the others. There’s a boatload of traffic to be had elsewhere.

Mistake #5: Diluting Your Efforts

One example of this is having multiple URLs; this can severely dilute your SEO efforts. Worst case scenario you start to cannibalize your own traffic and end up with a number of weak programs instead of one real strong one. Roll all duplicate URLs under your master (usually dot com), and focus your optimization efforts on that. Maximize your traffic by routing all your organic traffic through your primary URL. More exposure = more traffic = more qualified leads.
Every business is different, and only when very familiar with each business’ unique set of goals and objectives can you recommend which marketing channels are right for that business. Organic search is the one exception to that rule. Every single site should be optimized for the Web, no debate. If it’s online, it should be optimized. If your agency doesn’t provide SEO services as a matter of course, find one that does. It’s too important to ignore.

1. Respect your Subscriber

The most important rule there is. Disrespect your users and you’ve shot yourself in the foot right away. The whole point of your email marketing program is to get your message, whatever that may be, in front of your users in a way that resonates with them. Annoy them and you compromise that goal. Disrespect them, whether by ignoring their direct wishes or failing to listen to the underlying behavioral messages, and you jeopardize your entire program. It’s about trust and permission. Work within the boundaries you laid out at the onset of the relationship and you’ll give yourself the best chance to win. Whatever you do do not abuse that all important trust.

2. Focus on Relevance

You invest a lot of money in your ESP, right? And you spend time and money, whether in-house or with an agency, to build and produce your emails? So no matter how big or small your lists you owe it to yourself and your audience to get the most out of your ESP and to make your campaigns as effective as possible. The better and more relevant your end product, the better the experience for your subscribers, and the better for everyone involved. Are you using dynamic lists, for instance? Are you segmenting your users based on their behavior, region or preferences? Is what you’re sending relevant? Increase the relevance of your communications and your conversion and response rates will increase in parallel. This should be a no-brainer: it’s the contextual thinking that built Google.

3. It’s a chess game: Think three moves ahead

Rather than thinking of them as individual pieces, it’s better to think of each of your mailings as individual parts of the greater whole. This week’s mailing is all very well, but what are you doing next week? What about next month? How will what you’re doing today impact future efforts? Does each piece of communication exist in a vacuum, or are they part of a greater whole? Strategize, then execute. It’s all too common to be so focused on the here and now that you forget about the big picture. A useful exercise is to print out your last three months worth of emails, and tape them in chronological order on the wall. What story do they tell? Take a minute this month to think about the flow of your campaign, and whether each piece helps tie things together for your subscribers.

4. Always Solicit User Feedback

Email is one of the most direct forms of marketing there is: how often are you given a direct link to a group of people that want to hear from you? And think about taking it one step further: email can and should be a two way street. I don’t care how many people you’re sending to, you need provide an easy way for users to talk directly back to you. Your list is basically a permanent focus group, so you may as well take advantage of it. These people know your brand, they know why they signed up, know how you’ve communicated with them in the past. In many cases they’ll have had more exposure to the brand than you or members of your team have, so who could be better placed to tell you what they want from you? Take advantage of the opportunity that’s right in front of your nose: ask them what they think.

5. Analyze, Test & Analyze Again

I can’t stress this enough: analyze the numbers, the secret of your success is therein. Everything you need to know about the effectiveness of your campaigns comes down to your analytics. Are your emails generating sales? Building brand loyalty? Deploy email and web analytics successfully, and you turn that data into information. Understand your key metrics and how they relate to your business goals from the very beginning, then measure your performance against them.

Test everything you can to refine and optimize your campaigns. Send people what they want to receive, and you’ll see your conversion and response rates increase. Send them the same old generic blurb, and you’re basically leaving it to chance.

A really good piece of email marketing, providing me with exclusive content, reinforcing how special I am and also reminding me that 2007 season tickets were going on sale. The team might suck, but at least they’re on top of their email marketing efforts.

On the surface email marketing certainly doesn’t have the excitement or buzz of a good viral campaign. It’s not as cutting edge as mobile or as grass roots feeing as word of mouth. It’s not exactly sexy, but when done right email marketing can be exceptionally effective. Think about it: a direct connection to a group of people who have already expressed an interest in your brand or product by opting-in to receive communication from you… thinking rationally you’d be a fool to not pay them special attention. Normally you’re spending time and money trying to convert folks, not talking to folks who’ve already converted. All too often email gets relegated to the bottom of the class, when the reality is email marketing should be a top priority for almost all businesses. This is an opportunity to talk to your core audience: why be slapdash about it?

One of the most important factors consumers cite in deciding whether do business online (or at all, in fact), is trust. Do they trust your brand? Do they trust your site? Essentially do they believe what you’re telling them? Simply put, email is one of the most effective ways of helping to build that all important trust. Inform your users & keep your brand at the forefront without pushing it down their throats. Provide them with useful and interesting information when you’re not trying to sell to them and you’ll have an easier time of it when you are.

Giving users who have already expressed an interest in your relevant content or information is only going to benefit you in the long run. Much more effective than simply mailing them product or special offer information, still a depressingly common approach to email marketing. Some brands continue to flog the same dead horse week after week, without pausing to consider whether they could be targeting their base in a more effective way.

Respect the user by putting yourself in their shoes for a second: provide them something they can’t get elsewhere and you give them a reason to stick around. Bombard them with messages about how there’s a $5 discount on a certain product and you risk alienation. There are exceptions to the rule of course (if you’ve segmented your users and you know for certain that a particular product applies directly to a particular segment, for instance), but it’s a good rule of thumb to follow.

One of the main reasons that people so often overlook email marketing is the sheer number of emails in their own inbox. I’ve received hundreds of mails today, they think, therefore the channel is devalued. A better way to look at that is to turn it on its head and think about the effective mails you’ve received, and how clearly they stood out from the crowd.

Most people can recall one or two really interesting pieces of communication they’ve received over the last couple of weeks: your objective should be to produce one of those interesting pieces. Put the brakes on the acquisition train for just a second, and apply a little thought to how you communicate to those you’ve already converted. Email might never be all that sexy, but done right it really can be extraordinarily successful.

The Weather Channel is a great example of mobile done well: package the right content correctly, put it in front of the right people and it’ll be a success. Where mobile is concerned, it’s all about context; I don’t want to read a thousand word article on my mobile screen as I dash about town, but snippets of personalized (or localized) data work perfectly. Weather is the perfect candidate for this, but as we move into 2007 I expect to see significant growth in other verticals that deal with bite-sized chunks of immediately relevant information, such as classifieds and sports.

It seems like we’ve been talking about it for an age, but 2007 is finally going to be the year that mobile marketing comes of age in the US. Granted we’re years behind Europe and Asia, but once we get going we’ll catch up pretty quickly: in this technology and communication obsessed nation it’s only a matter of time before we do so.

Before long I’d like to see Bluetooth enabled billboards in Times Square, collecting data from opted-in participants and pushing relevant requested content. How about GPS enabled cellphones alerting you when your MySpace friends are near, then navigating you both to the nearest starbucks to meet up? I’d like to be able to send an SMS to a parking meter to pay for my parking, or to a vending machine to buy a can of coke. A little ambitious to expect any of these scenarios to play out next year, but they’re all happening elsewhere in the world, and we’re definitely going to see significant growth in the US mobile space in 2007. Let’s aim high.

Word of Mouth

Word-of-mouth marketing is going to continue to mature into 2007, as marketers get more sophisticated about how they communicate their message. New iterations of (much maligned) services like Pay-Per-Post will sprout up as businesses continue to grapple with how to operate in the blogosphere. The issue with Pay-Per-Post is not that advertisers are paying for placement, it’s that they’re doing so without full disclosure, blurring the lines between editorial and advertising. Some would call it unethical but I like to think of it as an industry finding its way: the television model was established over decades, we work ours out on the fly as new technology dictates. I have no doubt that we’ll find a model that works for the blogosphere, I just don’t think that Pay-Per-Post is it.

You Don’t Have to Monetize Everything!

Lastly, I wanted to make the (actually not as obvious as you might think) point that that we don’t need to monetize everything. Of course revenue is good, but just because there’s not an immediate positive ROI doesn’t mean that an initiative wasn’t worthwhile. Long-term benefits such as lead generation, positive brand impression and dissemination of information are all valuable in their own ways. Brand perception, visibility and awareness count for a lot and a well executed campaign that increases visibility can build the foundations for future revenue-generating campaigns. Sounds obvious, but it’s always amazing to me how many times this step is skipped.

The future is bright: we’re very much in the midst an online marketing renaissance as more and more brand marketers open their eyes to the huge potential that’s out there. Measurable results, access to previously difficult to access demographics and across the board increase in online activity are all doing wonders to help our cause. Roll on, 2007.

Websites without analytics suffer from blindness. Lacking clarity in your strategy can be detrimental to your plan and can lead you to costly and avoidable mistakes. The use of analytics to define business objectives and goals will aide in early identification of strengths and weaknesses to curb unnecessary work. Analysis is also needed to effectively monetize your site’s content. You can also identify and eliminate underperforming advertisements. Eliminating wasteful outlets taking up valuable real estate on your site allows you to usher in the construction of more profitable tenants.

The ever-evolving world of website participation has ushered in a wave of new industry challenges. These are the factors that drive the need to understand who the consumers are and to entice them to your site. Chances are one or more of these challenges have touched your organization:

• More and more consumer dollars are exchanging hands online. Does your company know how many potential hands there are in your market and how many of those hands have opened their wallets on your site?
• Online marketing spending often accounts for the largest line item in today’s budgets. Do your executives have the data they need to justify the money they spend?
• Who is visiting your site? Inquiring minds (otherwise known as potential advertisers) want to know.

The age old questions of Who, What, Why, Where, When and How must be asked about your website. Leverage the answers to these questions to make informed and effective strategic decisions. Save yourself and your organization time and hassle by asking questions and finding comprehensive solutions.

Web analytics help eliminate your question marks. Through analytics you gain peace of mind and increase your odds for success by making strategic decisions without uncertainty:

• Use analytics as a guide to measure the effectiveness of your marketing efforts such as Search Engine Optimization and Pay-Per-Click. Both are pricey and often ineffective because the targets are not fully understood.
• Reach out and shake the hand of your visitors through your site. Analytics adds individual characteristics to a faceless numbers and define specific genres of recurring visitors.
• One-dimensional understanding is replaced with a 360 degree perspective of online users. You can walk in your user’s footsteps and follow their paths.
• Prioritization is simplified when you use metrics data to identify areas of critical need. Don’t waste precious time squashing minor problems when a fire storm of problems is burning out of control.
• Engaging your online community increases customer retention and promotes customer loyalty. User generated content and polling strategies make your site interactive and encourage return visits.
• Monitor your user traffic to see if the volume of eyes is what you anticipated. If you then reorganize your content to accommodate those eyes, you will simultaneously succeed in increasing brand awareness.
• Track downloads then analyze the data to weed out content that is past its prime. User behavior is further understood through analysis of download patterns.

The range of possible data available can be overwhelming to someone unfamiliar with analytics. Another challenge many organizations struggle with is the ineffectiveness of untrained self-analysis of data. Once the data is obtained, it should be analyzed thoroughly by an expert to gain the highest level of feedback from the results. It is often difficult to find a one stop shop that offers all of the required analytic functions. However, there is infinite value in finding an agency you trust that can offer analytic software implementation, administration of the software and the ability to decipher the data to offer pragmatic solutions to the subject organization.

You want your decisions to generate value for your organization. Without employing analytics to supplement your strategic decisions, you are embracing unnecessary risk and uncertainty. Having more of your questions answered opens the door for more progressive innovation. By providing clear metrics, you will be able to gain valuable support for your decisions within your organization.

Stop the guesswork by applying analytics to assess effectiveness of existing strategies and test the potential of concept strategies. The use of analytics should not be limited to a one time fix for a specific problem. Broaden your vision to see the benefit of continually monitoring such key web site features as content and user paths. Trends are always changing and it is important that you stay on the forefront of change. Maintaining a reliable system of metrics allows you to avoid conflicting and overly risky strategies.

Implementing analytics deepens and expands your understanding of not only your website’s functionality, but of its potential as well. You are only limited by the knowledge you have and within the scope of your imagination. Extend the reach of your imagination with the increased knowledge and insight gained with thorough analytics.

Digitaria Engages In The Analytics Space With A Broad Range Of Clients
Most recently, Boot Barn sought our help in defining and executing their site-wide analytics strategy. We implemented a well known analytics software package and helped them use this tool to identify and harness key data. Specifically, we collected and analyzed the following:

• General and commerce site usage statistics
• Each query and parameter used in the advanced search feature
• Content categories and page names
• Link tracking

With this data, we were able to help Boot Barn define their KPIs, which in turn formed the cornerstone of their baseline analytics report. This led to further customization of the analytics implementation to ensure the proper areas were under scrutiny. The recommendations that followed the initial implementation included:

• Improvements to page names
• Improvements to content organization
• Enhanced link tracking
• Website redesign

Our analysis showed us that visitors were searching for brand names and navigating through deeply nested site categories to get to product pages. We also noticed visitors exiting the site before arriving at a product page. An analytics fueled redesign followed — we highlighted categories and brands on the homepage, and showed clearer category hierarchies in the global navigation. By identifying paths taken by our most committed visitors we were able to drive all site visitors to product pages faster improving Boot Barn’s overall rate of conversion.