Marketer's Lab

Two Clicks Are Better Than One

I talk to a lot of marketing technology vendors.  Sometimes I come across someone interesting and initiate contact, sometimes the PR or marketing folks at the vendor will approach me.  In this case the PR folks over at AdFusion found me a couple weeks back and encouraged me to learn a little more about what they're doing.

Scott Severson, President of ARAnet/AdFusion provided the dog and pony.  At first glance AdFusion looks pretty similar to most other ad networks, aggregating multiple web sites and providing advertisers various options for getting their message out across network sites.  It became clear pretty early on in my conversation with Scott that AdFusion does some things very differently from the other ad networks. 

AdFusion works with over 2,500 publisher sites including big names like MSNBC, Yahoo, Reuters and an impressive roster of others.  While their roster of sites is impressive, what makes AdFusion unique is their business model.  Where many ad networks are impression-based, AdFusion works on an innovative  cost-per-click model.  CPC in itself is not incredibly revolutionary, but AdFusion takes the basic PPC approach and tweaks it a bit. 

A client scenario might look like this: website visitor sees interesting content (not an advertisement or text ad) on one of AdFusion's publisher partner sites.  Visitor clicks link to content and sees an article which is primarily focused on a key message or idea defined by AdFusion client.  This content is focused on delivering value on its own, not just being thinly-veiled advertorial-style material.  Within the article there is a link to the client's website/jump page.  Clients only pay for visitors who click from the editorial content page or what Scott referred to as the "second click".

I love this approach for two reasons; first, traditional PPC is notorious for driving a lot of junk leads, the AdFusion process provides an additional filter.  Second, the editorial pages function as landing pages of a sort, and likely do a better job of assuring that better quality prospects are making the second click. 

They do both B2B and B2C and provide pricing that ranges from $2 - $25 per click depending on volumes, target and other variables.  Creation of the editorial content is included as part of a campaign.  They have a nice overview on their site that provides more detail.  Amidst the mass of ad networks and PPC consultancies, AdFusion has an offering that seems to provide some of the best qualities of online marketing into a single solution.   

The New Online Personalization

The term personalization bothers me a little, maybe because it's one of those terms that's been hijacked by so many marketing technology vendors and used to describe too many disparate features.  Feels like it's been rendered a little vague.  Regardless, the term does still at least convey an idea that's becoming much more important to marketers at companies of any size. 

George Hadjiyanis at Valtira does a great job describing how the approach to personalization has become very multi-dimensional.  I'm going to let this Upshot Studios podcast do most of the talking on this, great information on this rapidly evolving topic.

Is Your AdReady?

Vendor Speed date - AdReady - Looking for an easy way to create an online campaign?  AdReady provides an application that makes it easy to create a complete online campaign.  They provide tools to do everything from developing creative all the way through to performance measurement.  Here's how it works:

Create banners - pulling from a library of over 600 banner design templates, users can customize banners to integrate your message and call to action.  Banners are made available in a host of sizes.

Create a campaign - AdReady has predefined target segments including B2B, Consumer, Education and Government categories and number of subsegments within those.  They also provide the ability to target geographically down to the state level.  Similar to PPC campaigns, users define a daily budget for each program.

Pick your publisher - Campaigns can run over Google, Yahoo, Right Media or United Media networks.  Google is selected as the default. 

Reporting - Once all the above steps are completed and the campaign is submitted, AdReady provides a suite of reports to track program performance. 

Certainly not for everyone, but for organizations looking for a quick, easy tool for creating online campaigns, AdReady is an pretty interesting solution.

 

Put Your Marketing on Autopilot

Wow, another marketing superplatform!  The concept of the "Marketing Superplatform" is something I have posted on before and an idea I predict is still very much in its early phases.  I had an opportunity recently to get an overview from another player in this emerging space called OfficeAutopilot.  One of the really interesting things about all the superplatform players is how different their various approaches are.  Some providers are taking the "mash-up" approach of bundling up a variety of marketing tools and providing access via a single portal without a ton of integration across the tools.  Others take a couple of anchor marketing modules such as email and analytics and build additional functionality around that.  There are plenty of other approaches, but OfficeAutopilot gets a hats off for doing something I think is truly exceptional. 

Basically they've built an application that provides a strong suite of functionality for salespeople, and have also built and integrated a ton of innovative features for us marketing types.  Think of it as a great salesforce automation tool with a powerful suite of email, analytics and behavioral targeting functionality.  For me a quick look at their web site demonstrated how clearly they have defined the audiences for their application and how they have approached providing the key elements for each audience.   

All the superplatform applications have way too many features to highlight in a post like this, but OfficeAutopilot seems to have one of the best ranges of features in each area.  Typically these platforms have pretty clear weak spots, either they're something the marketing team would love but the sales team wouldn't be happy with, or the inverse where they provide good sales functionality but don't provide much for marketing.  This is a pretty common complaint with Salesforce.com. (Note-OfficeAutopilot works with Salesforce.com if you need it to). I was told about 70% of their clients use it as a standalone. 

The overview I received was very quick (but very good, thanks Landon) so I was not able to see every trick OfficeAutopilot is capable of, but I came away very impressed by the interface, functionality and integration.  Even with the quick overview, I see them as one of the leading providers in this fast moving space.  Love to get any input on other players anyone is aware of or get any other input on the whole marketing superplatform concept.   

Track Phone Responses Online? Who Knew?

When there’s so much buzz about the latest social media widget or some other killer online marketing application it seems a little retro to be talking about tools for measuring inbound phone responses to marketing programs. That said, even in this age of IM, text and email, people do still pick up the phone to respond to various marketing programs or to get more information after visiting a web site or other destination.  Often most of us have little, if any, meaningful tracking for these kinds of phone responses.  If you’ve ever tried to wade through phone records or gather this information from multiple sources it can be a huge hassle and usually just doesn’t get done.

Enter CallSource. CallSource was founded in 1994, originally doing a lot of work in the automotive and rental housing industries. They now serve a variety of industries, primarily providing marketers the ability to track inbound calls.

Basically they provide the ability to establish local or toll-free phone numbers and through a web interface route and track responses in near-real time.  Their service allows you to understand call volumes by lead source, how/if the call was answered, when the call was placed and the number name and address of the caller. Depending on how you use the numbers, it’s possible to track the performance of different ad types, promotions or other variables. They can also record each call if that’s desired.

CallSource also provides a number of other services, but the call tracking capability seems to be the flagship offering. If you’re looking to get meaningful tracking information about phone responses, CallSource looks like a great solution. More info at www.CallSource.com