You need to understand: Drake Morton

Why Do Marketers Love Waste?

By Joe Marchese

Last week, in “Why Web Sites And Online Marketing Suck,” a conversation was started over the metrics that matter for social media. The more conversations I had about it this week, the more I felt I needed a sanity check. The myth is that the goal of all advertising is to sell product. The truth is that selling product is important, but at what price you can sell your product, and what people will do to get your product over a perfect substitute, is where the real money is.
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A Must Read: Drake Morton

Make Them An Offer They Can’t Refuse

by Irv Brechner , Thursday, May 22, 2008

EVERYONE INVOLVED IN LEAD GENERATION should read “Why $0.00 is the Future of Business” by Chris Anderson, in the March, 2008 issue of Wired. It has invaluable lessons for those of us who make our livings generating leads online.
The author, Chris Anderson of “The Long Tail” fame, starts off with the story of King Gillette, a frustrated inventor who essentially started the disposable razor blade industry. Of course, his model has been dramatically refined over the years to the point where the razors themselves are disposable. But you get the point: give away the razors and sell the blades.
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A MUST Read: Drake Morton

Stop It, You’re Killing Me

by Melinda Krueger , Monday, May 5, 2008

The Email Diva is beginning to feel that her days are numbered. A quick view of my three inboxes shows the reigning philosophy of email is “more is more.” As a result of this and the emergence of new communication media, I believe we are on the road to killing the email channel.

In the last 24 days, I have received 20 messages from WOMMA, the Word of Mouth Marketing Association, a group I’ve always held in high esteem. In the past 30 days, I have received 61 messages from DMA, the Direct Marketing Association. These are marketing organizations, so if they don’t “get” email, how can we expect anyone else to?

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Excellent Read: Drake Morton

Seeking Conversions In A

Discovery-Oriented World

by Gerry Bavaro , Monday, May 5, 2008

BECAUSE DAVID Berkowitz has been probing the issue of search vs. discovery in recent Search Insider columns (See: http://blogs.mediapost.com/search_insider/?p=770), I’d like to point out some thorny challenges faced by the search community as we move to a world where information is shared more freely via social networks and discovered through ways that might be termed “less active” — because they depart from traditional search query behavior. How exactly are agencies and marketers supposed to think about the idea of discovery as a critical component of consumer influence toward action/conversion?
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Excellent Read: Drake Morton

Targeting Feeds

by Phil Leggiere , Wednesday, April 30, 2008

Advertising money has long been guided by the adage of going to where the eyeballs are. More recently, of course, that imperative has been refined to mean, target where the right eyeballs for your product or brand are. In pursuit of that premise, advertisers have directed substantial amounts of targeted messages to nearly every online venue available. Yet till now, as Bill Flitter, CEO of Pheedo, explains below, advertisers have under-utilized, if not entirely overlooked, a channel rich in both eyeballs and targeting potential.

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Interesting Information: Drake Morton

Print Newspaper Ads Drive Online

Traffic And Purchases

According to the Newspaper Association of America, new consumer research conducted by Clark, Martire & Bartolomeo and commissioned by Google, among people who research products and services after seeing them advertised in newspapers, 67 percent use the Internet to find more information, and nearly 70 percent of them actually make a purchase following their additional research.
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Very Good Read: Drake Morton

What’s The Big Idea Anyway?

by Chris Copeland , Friday, April 18, 2008

THERE ARE MORE THAN 14,000 books on Amazon when you do a search for “Big Idea.” Donny Deutsch turned himself from ad ,an to TV host by focusing on “The Big Idea.” But perhaps it was David Ogilvy who said it best when he described the importance of the big idea in advertising: “It takes a big idea to attract the attention of consumers…Unless your advertising contains a big idea, it will pass like a ship in the night.”
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Good Read: Drake Morton

Reaching Today’s Multimedia, Multitasking Consumers

by Jere Doyle , Thursday, April 18, 2008

THERE’S NO QUESTION THAT THE explosion of new media has disrupted media buying and left many consumer brand marketers scratching their heads as to how to best reach consumers. Many articles and white papers have been written, with many more to come, about the increasing complexity of the marketing mix brand managers must navigate in order to execute successful campaigns.
Interestingly, not a great deal has been written about how the consumer experience has changed. Think about what you do at home during your down time. Chances are you’re watching your favorite television programs and fast-forwarding through the commercials (you recorded the shows with your DVR), checking multiple email accounts on your laptop (your personal Yahoo account and your work email), sporadically surfing the Web, answering an IM or two, and fielding messages from friends and work associates on your mobile device.
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Good Read and a Must Understand: Drake Morton

Who Hijacked My Email Program?

by Aaron Smith , Wednesday, April 16, 2008

ONE OF THE MOST challenging aspects of managing an email program is the delicate balancing act required to satisfy multiple constituents with different (and often conflicting) priorities. The challenge is intensified when stakeholders take a more hands-on approach, claiming to be “helping” your program when in fact they are more interested in using your program to serve their needs.

While we like folks within the organization to be interested in our efforts, and we hope the C-suite is aware of our work, too much interest can end up hindering rather than helping a program. Messaging is diluted and performance is diminished when email program managers are whipsawed in opposing directions. I like to refer to this phenomenon as “email program hijacking.” (more…)

Understanding the Basics: Drake Morton

Email Production: Keeping the Wheels

On Your Program

by Aaron Smith , Thursday, April 10, 2008

MOST ANYONE WHO’S DRIVEN an email program would agree: it’s a volatile, high-speed, NASCAR-style ride. As you zoom along the racetrack — avoiding the potholes of ever-changing business goals, competing stakeholders, deliverability issues and rendering errors — keeping the wheels on requires precision, a tough hide, plain old elbow grease and dumb luck.
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