Live Blogging from Internet Retailer Post #3

I’ve blogged earlier on my earlier KEY TAKEAWAYS from Internet Retailer 2008! (Post # 1 & Post # 2)

Here are key takeaways from the Marketing panel which was right up my alley. Some of the speakers were: Alison Twiner Director of Marketing from Live Current Media, Mike Masse of Potpourri Group, Jamie Stone from iCrossing, and Shari Thurow from Omni Marketing Interactive.

The KEY TAKEAWAYS I received from these speakers are:

#1.) PPC – Don’t drop Broad Searches! – Broad searches help earlier in the buying cycle and provide lift to more specific searches in PPC later in the buying cycle.  The "Specific Search" ultimately gets the credit for the conversion (sale). An example of this is someone searching for "Carribean Vacation" but later converting with "Aruba Hilton reservation". Marketers should be aware of the “lift” impact exclusion of terms have on other terms dependent on where they target customers in the buying cycle.

#2.) Email Optimization – Alison had a great email tip: Segment out users based on ones who clicked through but did not purchase and resend them a better offer. They tested this tactic on a 10% offer then increased to 15% off, Simple Idea = Big Results. As with any other online marketing idea test to see if it impacts your customers.

#3.) Watch upcoming CSE’s – Keep your eye on new CSE’s (Comparison Shopping Engine) to exploit early marketing opportunities as they get more popular. CSE’s to watch include This Next, Style Hive, Pronto, and Kaboodle.

#4) Where to put the $$$$ - Spend money where your customers spend the most time! I know our readers are more than intelligent enough to know this but its worth reiterating frequently ;)

#5.)  Don’t forget image search when you think of SEO. - Image search accounts for more than 15% of searches and can have a big impact on SEO results. We know this also but it’s easy to forget if the data isn’t screaming out “Optimize more Images”!

FYI – Alison Twiner from Live Current ( Perfume.com and Cricket.com ) wins the Rockstar presenter of the day award.  She showed off her cross functional knowledge!  She showed off her knowledge on SEM, Email, and Persuasion Architecture and always advised from a customer centric perspective. She even mentioned NPS surveys in the Q&A which is a favorite tool for us Boosters!!!! 

More Key Takeaways to Come tonight from Nick and Evan and during the rest of the week!

~Micha Blogging Live from Chicago @ Internet Retailer 2008!

Comments

[Johnny Chan]

Nice! Love that sequential email sends are becoming more popularized - Forest has been espousing its effects for our clients. Also, I have to admit that it's a good refresher for me to read about images and SEO ... it's something that slips between the cracks sometimes. 15% is a big deal!

-johnny