I have written about several email marketing tools like GetResponse and others before this and while some of them do have some automation capabilities they are not really a full blown marketing automation solution. In most cases, marketing automation tools are prohibitively expensive for small businesses and finding a relatively affordable marketing automation tool is no easy task. I have been researching some of the marketing automation tools recently, right from the major enterprise platforms like Pardot, Marketo, Hubspot etc to the much smaller ones. I have finally found a tool, ActiveCampaign, that is affordable as well as offers the full-blown feature set of a marketing automation platform

In fact, I noticed that MailChimp has also rolled out some marketing automation features, however, on a closer look, I felt that there is still a few miles to go. MailChimp could actually be a great tool for email automation for e-commerce companies though.

Coming back to ActiveCampaign, I will post an in-depth review of the platform very soon and probably a comparison of ActiveCampaign vs. some of the big names in marketing automation. If you are like me, looking for an affordable marketing automation platform, I would suggest you at least take advantage of the Free Trial of ActiveCampaign to test it out yourself.

In a nutshell, ActiveCampaign offers you all the necessary features of a good marketing automation platform including –

• Lead segmentation
• Email Automation / Drip Campaigns
• Lead Scoring
• Unlimited Email sending
• Built in CRM
• Drag and Drop Email builders
• Email Templates
• Subscription Forms
• Conditional Content
• Geo Tracking
• In depth Reporting

While I have just mentioned the broad, most important features, there are two features that clearly stand out and makes Active Campaign a gem.

Facebook Custom Audience Integration

While the lowest package does not offer this feature, this is available right from the next tier which comes at a cost of $49/month – still pretty affordable but this feature alone can make your overall marketing automation so much more powerful.

HIPAA Compliant Marketing Automation

If you are in the healthcare business you know the importance of HIPAA compliance. To find a HIPAA compliant marketing automation tool is definitely not easy, it is even difficult to find a HIPAA compliant email marketing tool. This feature is only available for their Enterprise package but then given the importance of HIPAA in healthcare business, this is definitely one of the best solutions for healthcare businesses looking for marketing automation or even a tool to send email newsletters.

While I get the full review of Active Campaign ready, if you are on this page, I would strongly recommend taking the free trial for Active Campaign.

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Over the years, as a marketer, I have come across many email marketing platforms, used a few of them and also reviewed some email marketing tools in this blog. Choosing the right email marketing tool that fits your needs and budgets definitely requires some effort. There are various factors that come into play, the rule of thumb is to understand your requirements – what is the primary use, list size, third-party integrations, budget etc., and then pick one that best suits your needs.

I heard about GetResponse before but a friend of mine recommended it again a couple of weeks back. He was impressed by its pricing and features. The list of features on their website, especially the one to set-up webinars and manage it from one place, the pricing etc., was tempting enough for me to get a free trial of the software.

Here’s my experience with GetResponse email marketing platform.

My GetResponse review- What I liked in this email marketing tool?

Let’s begin with a quick snapshot of GetResponse features, pricing etc., and then I will move on to detailing key features of the platform.

GetResponse Review :  Features & Pricing:

GetResponse Review : Building a Contact List

It is easy to build and manage your contacts list. GetResponse offer many ways to build lists right from manually copy/pasting to uploading existing lists using a xls, xlsx, txt, csv, vcf, or ods file. In addition, it also supports importing contacts from several applications like SalesForce, Google Docs, Magento, Highrise, FreshBooks, Plaxo, ZenDesk, Formstack, or Batchbook etc.

I imported a list from Google Docs which worked smoothly. In some cases, it may require you to map your fields with GetResponse fields but that is a standard operations process in most email marketing platform. The software allows you to segment your lists and target users based on location, open and clicks etc.

Ease of Creating Campaigns

You can create newsletters in two ways: drag-and-drop email creator and HTML coding. The library of pre-designed templates is huge but I found only a few of them to be of my liking from design point of view. The email creator allows you to design from the scratch or if you are good at coding then you can choose the HTML Source Editor to create your newsletters.

GetResponse also has a good collection of landing page templates with the ability to design your own page from scratch. I played around with this feature for a while and it took me around 30 mins to design a page. While the landing page template library may not be as good as Instapage and other specialized landing page builders but designing your landing page with drag-and-drop is as easy as on any other place.

You can get previews of your creations on both desktop and mobile form. The software also provides you a ‘spam score’ based on your content which is a good feature to boost your email delivery and open rate. You can start the campaign like sending a mail/newsletter right away or schedule it as per your preference.

GetResponse as a Marketing Automation Tool

I have reviewed several other marketing automation tools like this Activecampaign review and I must also cover the marketing automation capabilities for GetResponse. Building lists and creating campaigns was OK but I was also interested in knowing how good the software is for automation. And it’s fantastic. GetResponse has a robust marketing automation feature with a simple workflow creation process. The various elements used in creating workflows are neatly arranged into: Conditions, Actions and Filters.

The platform also offers other obvious automation features like tags, lead scoring, web event tracking, segmentation etc. I am happy with what I saw in the marketing automation. The automation features may not be as good as a Hubspot or a Marketo but is good enough to meet the marketing requirements of medium/small size businesses and startups.

Those who are new to automation may need some time to orient themselves to create workflows. People who have experience with marketing automation tools will find creating workflows and running campaigns, a breeze.

Analytics & Reporting for Your Email Campaigns

Getresponse offers some solid analytics and reporting options. You can see performance of all your campaigns at one place in the dashboard and then can choose to go deep on individual campaign level. In addition to basic reporting metrics like email open rate, clicks, unsubscribe rates etc., you also get other important data like-

• Mobile view stats: Know which email clients your contacts use to view your emails – Gmail, Yahoo or Outlook. You can also compare desktop vs. mobile clients.
• Real email ROI- GetResponse let you find out how your email campaigns convert on your website. To get this, you need to install a website tracking code to capture the data on the number of sales, sign-ups, or visits that arrive from a link in the email campaign.
• One-click segmentation- You can identify and select responsive subgroups and send relevant content to those who open or click in your email. For example, to subscribers who didn’t open an email, you can change the subject line, change delivery time and send it again.
• Global View- The ‘handy map view’ feature helps you know the kinds of actions your customers take in various locations. You precisely locate contacts all over the globe, monitor and define their response habits.

Webinars – A Great Value Add from GetResponse

Another feature that impressed me in Getresponse is the ability to host webinars on the platform. I checked the pricing with other specialized webinar platforms and GetResponse was the cheapest by a big margin. Gotowebinar charges $199/mo for 500 participants just for hosting & managing webinars whereas with GetResponse you get the complete email marketing package (list size-10,000) at $165/mo.

The free trial doesn’t allow you to host a webinar on GetResponse, hence I couldn’t try it first hand, but the idea of having the feature as part of your email marketing software is brilliant.

Native Integrations

GetResponse has a long list of integration enablement with many popular CRMs, CMS, Ecommerce tools, Social Media Channel and third party platforms. Check out the full list here.

Integration to third-party tools can be tricky. I have wasted a lot of time and efforts doing it with a popular marketing tool in past. So I always prefer email marketing platforms that provide quick in-built integration choices with all popular CRMs, CMS and other third party apps. I integrated the software with a wordpress website and Zoho for CRM and it works well.

Before I conclude, here’s a quick cheat sheet for you-

Pros & Cons Review of GetResponse Email Marketing Tool

Getresponse offers you a lot of email marketing power at one of the lowest prices in the competition. With a free trial that includes 1000 contacts, it’s definitely worth checking out to find out whether it meets your marketing requirements.

I am also exploring other email marketing tools and will write reviews or may do a comparison of other email marketing platforms with GetResponse. In the meantime feel free to share your thoughts on GetResponse if you have already used them or sign up for a free trial to explore.

The post GetResponse Review: A Robust & Affordable Email Marketing Tool appeared first on Adwords Consultant India : DigitalSRC.

However with all emails there has been some specific challenges. Deliverability and Open Rates have always been a challenge for email marketing and there are few factors that are continuously making email marketing difficult – overall increase in number of emails received, stringent filtering criteria form ISPs, Multiple default folders like Promotions and Updates inbuilt in services like Gmail, multiple form / channel factors, all are contributing to the cause. Email marketing services has been continuously improving themselves and bringing in new features to make marketing easier and more effective.

I have used multiple email marketing services from self hosted solutions to popular SAS services like Mailchimp, Aweber and StreamSend. Very recently while researching on new features in email marketing tools I came across SendPulse and the first thing that got my attention is that they are using AI ( artificial intelligence) to improve email open rates. The AI solution automatically choose the best time to send a message by predicting when the subscriber is more likely to interact with it. Based on the subscriber data and behavior the predictive analytics engine creates an user profile and AI is leveraged to optimize emails and other forms of communication for each profile so they deliver the maximum engagement.

The AI also automatically choose the optimal channel for delivery – email, web push, mobile push, SMS etc. The SendPulse platform actually goes beyond traditional email delivery only and allows multi channel delivery through web push notifications and sms as well. In this omni-channel world it is extremely critical that you are able to reach your target audience on their most preferred channel and in the right time – the comfort of managing them all under the same dashboard makes life so much easier.

Anyone who has played with email marketing for some time are aware what a crucial role subject lines can play in deciding the open rate and success rate of the campaign. The inbuilt AI in SendPulse also helps in automated subject line and content optimization.

The other factor that plays a crucial role in choice of such a tool is the cost and the market is highly competitive in that perspective. While AI and multi channel communication management is a big draw I decided to look at their pricing structure to get a feel of how sustainable it might be. For a fair comparison, I took four standard list size ( 5000, 10000, 25000 and 50000) to compare and looked at their monthly subscription packages with unlimited emails. ( Some of them like SendPulse also offers a Pay as You Go model and MailChimp has an enterprise/Pro-marketer package with a $199+ fees). All prices are in USD.

On the pricing front also, SendPulse looks most competitive amongst the compared services. Of course this comparison is purely based on subscriber list, you can also look at specific features while comparing the price.

AI has been the next big thing all across the digital landscape, from AI driven cars, to simple recommendation engines from use of AI in search algorithm to now AI in email marketing, it is indeed an exciting time for marketers. Modern marketing is data driven and contextual and the availability of extensive consumer data across all digital touch points opens up a great opportunity for marketing technology players to offer better services. SendPulse seems to be on the right track and am giving them a shot, it will be good to see how the other players catch up to it.

The post SendPulse Brings AI to Improve Email Marketing appeared first on Adwords Consultant India : DigitalSRC.

email marketing spam trap

Earlier I wrote about how to avoid spam filters, however, there is another kind of similar challenge for email marketers, which is the spam traps. Spam traps could be deadly for an email marketer and could lead to serious deliverability issues. Let’s take a detailed look at what are spam traps, how they can affect your email marketing campaigns and what you can do to avoid such spam traps.

What is Spam Trap ?

Spam Traps are basically honeypots to attract spams. These are email addresses that are made available across the web in various places but these addresses do not belong to any one and are never used by anyone to send emails. So when an email comes to any of these addresses that is a sure shot indicator of the fact that the sender has built his list by harvesting email addresses off the web and can be clearly labeled as spam.

While this sounds pretty reasonable, there could be reasons for such spam trap emails to land up in your email-marketing list and consequently landing you in several blacklists.

Spammers would often use suspected spam trap email addresses to sign up on several legitimate email list. As this happens more often this type of exercise basically reduces the reliability of the spam trap and hurts the credibility of any blacklist arising out of it. Also, there are some email providers who use expired email addresses as spam traps. For example I might subscribe to your list today and then change my email address after a month and if my email provider decides to use my old email address as a spam trap, your mails will keep falling into it.

How to avoid Spam Traps ?

Database Source : Never use a harvested database from the web or buy ready made lists. These lists have the highest chance of having spam trap emails included in them.

Double Opt In – A sure fire way to ensure that you are having genuinely interested people in your list. After your users subscribe to your list , send them an email with a link, that they need to click and confirm their subscription.

Keep The Bots Away – Most spam attacks are typically done by bots. Add in a captcha to your subscription form to ensure that people filling in your subscription forms are real human. Users are often do get a little irritated by captchas and other similar verification methods but this also shows their commitment.

Periodic Cleaning – In spite of the above two, you will notice that with time the bounce rates increase on your list. It is important that you do periodic cleaning of your email list to keep it up to date.

In my previous article I mentioned about How Streamsend allows you to avoid the spam box but I was pleasantly surprised to have found in their knowledge base that they if they find known spam trap email addresses in your database they would not allow you to send the mailer. While it is not possible to track down all spam traps, this is a great step that they are taking to not just protect their reputation but also to help the email marketers get more out of their campaigns.

The post Email Marketing Spam Traps and How to Avoid Them appeared first on Adwords Consultant India : DigitalSRC.

Recently I have picked up some interest in email marketing and also did a few blog posts on content strategies for email marketing and email marketing services . This is kind of a sequel to those two, trying to talk about another eternal problem in email marketing : avoiding the spam filter.

Avoiding the spam filter has always been a challenge for email marketers and while there has been certain known triggers that gets the spam filters on a overdrive, there’s a lot more to avoiding email spam.

One of the most well defined guidelines on this is the US CAN SPAM law. You can find the details here. While this is legally binding upon email marketers operating for a US company, there are some general email marketing best practices to avoid the spam filter that everyone can follow :

1. Don’t use false / misleading email headers
2. Identify the message as an advertisement, if it is so. You can simply use [ADV] on the subject line
3. Include a valid postal address for the sender
4. Make sure your Unsubscribe option is included in the mailer and is working perfectly.

While these are some basic principles that are easy to maintain, there is every chance that your emailer content can put you into the spam box. Most ISPs use a point based system that identifies trigger phrases commonly used by spammers. If an email goes over the points it is filtered out. Now the question is how do you know  if your email is about to trigger off the spam filters ?

A Tool to Avoid Spam Filters for Email Marketing

While knowing these terms helps to avoid spam, there might be some tools for the same. I love the one that StreamSend provides. I have been a big fan of StreamSend as an email marketing tool and the Analysis tool they offer has just increased my love for them. While the tool offers four very useful features, the two I love most are :

1. It runs your email through 9 spam filters  for any sign of spam triggering content, helping you avoid the spam box and increase your inbox rate.
2. It also allows your to preview your email in 30 different email clients in various modes ( images on/off, preview pane etc), ensuring your email looks exactly the way you want them to be.

I feel these two features address two of the most dreaded challenges in email marketing and to have these tools integrated right into the email marketing solution you are using makes it a lot more easier. I would strongly recommend trying out Stream Send to anyone into email marketing not just for the awesome interface and analytics they provide but more so for these two amazing features that can go a long way in ensuring a higher ROI for your email marketing campaign.

If  you don’t have a tool like this and are depending on your manual judgement to avoid the spam filters for your email, here are few more common points to avoid :

1. A low ratio of text to image in your HTML
2. HTML and Text parts are different
3. Subject line in all caps
4. Use of “Dear” in address – “Dear ” – No he isn’t so dear to you !
5. “You registered with a partner” – having this in your text tells the spam filters your list is most likely not permission based

Words triggering spam are too numerous to put in this post, instead I have included this PDF with a list of those email marketing spam triggers that you should avoid like Plague if you want your email to hit the inbox.

The post Email Marketing : How to Avoid the Spam Filters appeared first on Adwords Consultant India : DigitalSRC.

Selection of content type as a part of your email marketing strategy is highly dependent on various factors including the type of industry you are in, your campaign objective, the list to whom you are sending the content ( or vice versa, depending on the content you want to send, you create a targeted list) and more. While there is no limitations to it, here in this article, I am trying to lay down a few different types of content that can be used for an email campaign and how they set in with different types of email marketing strategies.

1. The “Our Products” Emails : These are most common with e-commerce websites and honestly I don’t see this as any long term strategy. Here each mailer is like a campaign by itself, where you send a list of products that are in your store, at times some discounts, coupons etc and expect people to click through to the site and make a purchase.
2. The “Promotion” Emails : These are also offered by e-commerce websites as well as almost any and every company that offers some product/services for sales. This would typically be a short piece of content explaining the product/service, and feature a discount code / promotion code etc. You expect people to click through and make purchase on your website. This could be very effective, when you have a relatively large inventory for certain items or want to give your sales a shot in the arm. The main difference between the earlier one and this one is that, the earlier email was more about featuring a wide range of products, whereas in these emails, the Promotion/Discount is the hero of the content.
3. The “Short Course” Emails : When a person subscribes to your list, it is your responsibility to deliver some value and these short courses are an wonderful way to do it. Develop a short course that is broken down into smaller modules of 4,5,7 or 10 days. Send one module in one emailer and pace it our evenly – not everyday, not once in two months but may be once every week ( depending on the depth and seriousness of the content).What do you achieve with it ? A well designed course would actually deliver value for users, regular short paced emails would really help in establishing your brand and will have a good recall. Also, if you are in any knowledge business, this short courses could be a great precursor to promoting your paid courses.
4. The “Content Hero” Emails : Yeah, I loved this name, because indeed content is the real Hero in these emails. When you produce a great piece of content, like a White Paper, an Infographic, some big shot Interview etc, you love people to know about it and these emails are meant for that. These emails would be extremely short, with small description about the content and prominent placement of call to action that would take the visitor to your website, where they can savor the content. While you could have served the content right inside the email, it is always better to have the user over to your website to view the content – you wont serve champagne in a water tumbler, would you ? It gives you more page views, chances are your users would also visit a few more content pieces that you have created and engage further with your brand.
5. The “Monthly Newsletter” Emails : These could be very interesting and probably one of the most easier ones to create. If your content generation capabilities are limited, this is the best approach for you. These newsletters typically use a magazine format, where you serve a mix of industry news, update, events and similar information along with some updates about your company and what you are doing. While there is a drawback in this type of mailers because you might be promoting news and articles published by other websites – you can always make it more interesting by adding your perspective to those news. From a receivers perspective, they would most likely read this email because this keeps him updated about all the industry happening. At the same time it helps you to push in your company updates to the readers. These emails are typically sent monthly or once in two weeks and are great for regularly connecting with your prospects and customers and creating a strong brand recall.

The post Email Marketing Strategy : Planning Your Content appeared first on Adwords Consultant India : DigitalSRC.

The need and importance of email marketing has been proved beyond any doubt and it is still one of the very effective ways for lead generation and brand building till date in certain industries. For an email marketing campaign to work well though, it is critical that you have a proper software to run the campaign. The days of desktop software are however gone and it is easier and much cheaper to use any of the online email marketing services that are way cheaper yet offers pretty robust solution.

So, why do you need an email marketing service? You can always send emails from Outlook or any other email client There are a lot of email marketing services available online like StreamSend, Constant Contact etc and it is often a challenge to select the right one. Here are few points that you must be looking for while selecting an email marketing services :

Creation of Emails / Template : Most of these email marketing services offers a template library, but you should be looking at what are the options beyond using those templates. While in most cases the templates are customizable, full customization is often not possible which could be critical for proper branding. Ideally an email marketing service should give you the option to use your own HTML mailers, use any of their templates as well as have provision for sending a version for non-HTML supported mail clients.

List Management : Again a common feature in most email marketing services however, the ease of operating the same is critical. The system should allow you to not just do bulk uploads of email address but also group/ classify them into separate lists, offer download options, manage unsubscribes etc. managing unsubscribes is one of the most critical features, the system should be able to automatically able to take out all the unsubscribed emails from the lists and make sure that future emails are not delivered to those addresses.

Delivery : Delivering emails to inbox has always been a challenge for email marketers. A good email marketing service takes different steps to ensure maximum deliverability. Some of them includes setting up SPF records for the senders email address, throttling the email blast over a reasonable period of time, analysis of email content etc. Before you select an email marketing service try to check these options, they are critical to ensure the visibility of your emails.

Analytics : One of the key advantages of digital marketing channels over all others is the availability of precise analytics data. Email marketing is no different, almost all email marketing services provide analytics to some extent but I would strongly recommend that you go with one that gives you a really detailed level of analytics. I have been personally using StreamSend for last 3-4 years and they have been extremely satisfactory in this count. You should be able to track not just the inbox delivery and open rates but also click throughs, which are the links clicked, unique viewers, unique clickers, forwards, social shares, bounce rate and numbers along with the category( reason why it the mail bounced), domain level breakdown of delivery, bounce, delivery rate per time increment and tons of similar intricate details that can help fine tune your campaign. Also, as most of us use Google Analytics, what I love in StreamSend is its extremely easy integration with GA, so I can get all the data in my analytics dashboard.

While these are the primary features and functionalities that you should be looking for while selecting an email marketing service the fact is most of them does offer these features to some extent but what makes the difference is the robustness of the solution provided, the ease of use for the interface and any additional tools that they might offer. For example, in StreamSend they do offer an Analyses tool which I really love. It allows you to preview your email in different mail clients, runs it through 9 spam filters to check whether its triggering any signs of spam content also do some spot checking using thumbnails of your mail content. A tool like this could be highly effective in saving your emails from landing in junk and can increase your visibility substantially.

 Having said all these, one crucial factor remains to be discussed. Pricing. Well most email marketing services offers various packages based on your needs and even have some free trial package with limited features/capacity. I started with the free trial that StreamSend offers but then eventually upgraded to higher packages as my requirement increased . I think that is a better model as it helps you to understand and get comfortable with the system before you start paying but with packages starting as low as $19.90, its definitely affordable if you are serious about email marketing.

The post Email Marketing Services – What Should You Look For ? appeared first on Adwords Consultant India : DigitalSRC.

(I have cropped out the intro part and just put the “forms” part here)

The Many Forms of Web Marketing:

1) Corporate Domain
This has been a standard since the late 90s, nearly every company, mom and pop boutique now has a web presence. The primary purpose of this is to provide the public with information about your company, it’s products, and anything else they may need. Corporate websites often compose of several features that are listed below.

1. Corporate Site
   Little explanation is required here, today’s standard requires for every company to have a home on the web. The methods and tools are highly discussed in a variety of locations, books and conferences, but do remember that some tools are creating an impact on their relevance and marketing in general.
2. Portal Strategy
   Widely popular in the late 90s this strategy was intended to serve up all user information on one page, and keep users on one’s domain. A few well known portals now exist such as MyYahoo which is a form of a feedreader. Most modern marketers realize that content is now distributed.
3. Microsites for Segmentation
   Typically deployed around new product launches or campaign focuses, or specific market segments, these often short term websites are used for calling specific attraction. They typically have a unique URL and are tied to an integrate campaign. See Microsoft’s Origami microsite. Caution: some companies overly deploy these microsites and end up with a distributed and unfocused web strategy.
4. Interactive Web Marketing
   The web is more than a ‘read only’ medium, unlike other mediums, companies can make the website interactive, encouraging a new dynamic of engagement. There’s a variety of technologies to use from uses of Javascript, AJAX and Flash based. (Thanks Lisa D for suggestion) Of course, one can only go far where the limitation is that it is still a ‘user to computer’ interaction. A few examples include Subservient Chicken experience, What kind of M&M are you, and Geico’s Caveman Crib.
5. Intranet/Extranet
   The web isn’t just for communicating to prospects and employees, simliar strategies apply to both your employees, resellers, partners and suppliers. You can get more information by joining the Intranet User Experience Group, or find other online resources to this specific field.
6. Regionalization
   In today’s global web, websites are translated, reformatted and segmented by region, culture, class. Be sure to focus on France, China, Japan as fast emerging languages. Also see report on internet usage in third world countries.

2) Search Marketing
Ever heard of Google? Many prospects use google in the ‘hunt’ phase for a product. By paying a third party or a search engine directly you can obtain a strategy to get your website listed in search results. I’ve heard a variety of stats demonstrating success of natural vs paid results, however the ROI is usually positive. It’s likely your competitor is also present on the Search results page. View my few posts on Search Strategy or contact Andy Beal, David Berkowitz or Brian Keith.

1. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
   Many web groups at large corporations have a document, a process, or even a dedicated resource who’s goal is to make sure web content is easily found, indexed, managed and correctly served in search results. There’s been some recent discussion the state of the SEO industry.
2. Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
   Frequently, companies will hire a specialized search company to purchase keywords that will help drive contextual links in search results. These ads are contextually displayed based upon the search query. There’s a growing and sometimes controversial industry focused on these techniques.

3) Out Bound and Syndicated Web Marketing

1. Email Marketing
   While certainly not completely native to the web, they certainly are tied. Modern email campaigns (sometimes even direct marketing) involves barely personal emails blasted out to indviduals on a mailing list. These modern versions typically have the option to be HTML based, and have hyperlinks brining users back to the corporate site or Microsite. I hear the conversion rate for these are 2-5%, and typically deploy a positive ROI. Having spoken with many Web directors and Marketers, this is a task best suited for an outsourced vendor. Be sure to read the research on the growth for this industry in 2007.
2. Invasive Marketing
   “Pop-ups”, and “Pop-Unders”, trojan and tracking software are both disruptive methods to obtain the attention and data of users. Research indicates this form of marketing is diminishing, use with caution, or not at all (ask your Ad Agency if they are doing this without your knowledge) remember the market can associate your brand with the way you reach them, and users are now in charge.
3. Syndicated Content and RSS
   I lump Syndication into this category as I see it as being an evolution as marketing shifts from Push to Pull. RSS is quickly becoming a method where users can opt-in for additional content. For more information start with Six RSS Resources for the Internet Professional or Web Strategist, when you’re ready to deploy read Web Strategy: Understanding Syndicated Feeds for your Corporate Website.

4) Brand Extension
This is not a new concept, it’s simply been applied to web properties. The concept is simple, where your audience is, your brand should be also.

1. Web Advertising
   I’m sure you’re all familiar with the banner, tile, or skyscraper advertising model on websites. This age old strategy simply suggests that if there are eyeballs your brand should ‘impress’ upon the users. Click through rates are typically in the 1% or lower rate, sometimes success is measured by brand impressions, (visitation by traffic). These ads are static and do not change even if the content on the webpage changes.
2. Contextual Advertising
   These targeted ads will be served up on the webpage depending on the content that’s on the page. This is a more ‘intelligent’ and therefore more relevant than Web Advertising, which may not be targeted at specific content. This form of advertising can be text, images, media or other form and are common on websites, blogs, and are now appearing on web based emails sites. (Submitted by David Berkowitz: Feb 13th. 2007)
3. Sponsorship and /Cross branding/Affiliate
   This is a method of promoting your brand with the right audience in which the property is rewarded for integrating your brand. This can occur on content sites, shows, media properties, blogs, podcasts, and just about everything else. This is expected to increase in 2007.

4) Community Marketing and Social Media Marketing
eMarketer’s research indicates that this is the fastest growing area of growth for Web Advertising and Marketing is in the Social Media space. In my experience, the awareness rate is around 30% and deployment 10-20% for most corporations. Some of the tools listed below are not new, while some become critical in how prospects find information about products. For a high level overview please read 10 Social Media Strategies for the Fortune 1000 Corporations.

1. eCommerce/Rating Sites
   For most consumer products and a majority of enterprise products, there’s a variety of websites that rate products both by expert (sometimes called analyst) or peer review. The most popular site that has done this in the text industry is CNET reviews which deploys both editorial reviews, video demos, and user ratings and opinions. Content can be both positive and negative about your company as well as your competitors. Ratings and voting has evolved with popular news voting sites like Digg.
2. Social Networking, Forums, Wikis, Collaboration
   I’m tying these two together as both features are starting to merge in many modern versions. While founded from early usenet days, forums allow for communities to form around similar ideas and collaborate. Approximately 33% of companies deploy forums. Wikis have also been used to tie industries together as well as. Savvy marketers are starting to also realize the power of social networking sites in every flavor of focus, including image sharing sites like flickr for marketing. I’ve created a list of all White Label Social Networking platforms.
3. Syndicated Marketing
   See section 3C above.
4. Podcast Marketing
   Many corporations are reaching their community though on demand content on mobile devices, the key to this medium is certainly in the ‘pull’ strategy. I’ve listed out my recommendations in a recent post called Corporate Podcasting Strategies for 2007.
5. Blogging
   I estimate about 30% or less of businesses are considering blogs (web logs) as forms of business communication. The subject has been talked about quite extensively, I recommend reading Naked Conversations, the Weblog Handbook, and the Corporate Blogging Book. To learn about all the forms of businesses blog. If you’ve not yet deployed a Corporate Blogging program, I reccomend learning from my experience as a corporate blog evangelist.
6. Widget Marketing
   Widgets are light weight web applications that are being embedded in websites, blogs, forums, and social sites. Flickr badges, MyBlogLog, and in ways even the Firefox community marketing campaign are companies that are engaged in this way. This isn’t anything new, I noticed this trend before the term gained popularity, and called it Viral Chicklets, to learn more there’s a growing list of examples on Widgetbox.
7. Online Video
   While Online Video has existed for many years on the web, it’s most notably been gaining traction from the video blog, or video sharing sites of great popularity such as Google Video, or it’s recent acquisition YouTube. In addition to third party video sites, colleague Robert Scoble is well known for being the ‘Video Guy’ at Microsoft, while he took behind the scenes footage and shared on a Community networking site. Other companies have seen the success in this and have also launched online video sites such as General Motors. I recommend starting with thinking about Video for your Executives and thought leaders.
8. Instant Messaging, Presence
   Clever marketers are figuring out how to involve real time conversational media using Instant Messaging tools, presence, and status tools, such as Twitter. These tools tie to online and mobile devices. My experience with Generation Y is that they are using IM as their primary way to communicate over all other mediums.
9. Tagging, Collective Tools
   I’ve discussed how tagging can be used to harvest marketing intelligence as well as help your SEO results. See using Delicious for Market Research. Properly tagging content as well as researching how tags are used will help communities find your content.
10. Infinite Other Flavors
    The list of potential applications can go on and on, from Toolbar plugins such as Delicious plugin, Alexa Plugin Attention recorder, etc, to web based mobile applications. User voted news sites are rapidly appearing such as Digg. There’s a whole another category (read all my posts tagged Community Marketing) on the many different forms the above tools create when they’re combined, from Community sites like Microsoft’s Channel 9 to real time Conversation indexes like Techmeme or Technorati’s WTF, new ways to find, sort and harness information will emerge over the year. The notable attributes include a ‘community’ or ‘viral’ and ‘conversational’ tone to them.

5) Emerging Mediums tie with the Internet
The web will be a platform and will extend to other mediums as well as create new ones.

1. Internet TV (IPTV)
   While still emerging, the web will marry the TV and content, communication will evolve to a new form of media we’ve not yet seen yet. I doubt it will be as simple as ‘TV content online’ or ‘Reading websites in the living room’. Something new will appear, and it will impact your web team. See all my thoughts on IPTV.
2. Mobile Content
   Websites are already being viewed on mobile devices, either full browsers, or fast load browsers. Many executives, decision makers, road warriors and techies are accessing the web using mobile devices, so a strategy to deliver correctly to this medium is necessary. See all my thoughts on Mobile Technology.
3. Online Massive Multi Player Games, Console Games
   If you’re not heard yet, Second Life is being trialed by large companies such as IBM, Microsoft, Sun, Sears and a variety of retailers. Also popular are Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPG for short) are appearing online such as World of Warcraft (WoW), and Club Penguin a growing online game for kids, teens, and some adults. XBox 360 has IPTV capabilities and most console games have online components, so there are multiple experiences to tap into.

Real World and Virtual World are Tied
What happens in real life echos online. We’re seeing that more and more as politicians, CEOs and organization involve bloggers, podcasters, and other influentials to real life events. The role of Online/Offline Community Relations is becoming more and more important. I’ve dissected how Microsoft hosts blogger dinners. Train your orginsiation to tie both strategies together. Read my post on Web Strategy: Overlaying Social Media for your Corporate Events

Putting it all Together
Whew, that’s the major families, but remember for many corporations, these elements will not be successful in a vacuum, the opportunity for momentum happens when they are combined and used strategically. At least one person or group should have full knowledge of how your brand is being used online and in other mediums.

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