Acxiom Digital - Digital Marketing Blog http://blog.acxiomdigital.com/ Acxiom Digital Blog en Copyright 2007 Fri, 10 Nov 2006 09:00:00 -0800 http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/?v=3.2 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss More Choices - Fewer Decisions We live in a world of choices. Any visit to a supermarket, coffee shop or consumer electronics store will tell you – your options are growing. As marketers we’ve apparently learned that consumers want choice and variety. But should we believe that consumers respond to choice?

Studies show that consumers are often less likely to purchase when they face too many choices. The classic study, by Sheena Iyengar and Mark Lepper of Stanford University showed that consumers choosing between 6 kinds of jam were 10 times more likely to buy than consumers choosing between 24 kinds of jam. 10 times! Ms. Iyengar also shows that this is true not just for jam, but also for high involvement decisions. She found that employees become less likely to participate in a company sponsored 401k plan as the number of investment options increased. Indecision reigned even when not participating in the plan meant leaving employer matching funds on the table. That’s a real aversion to choice.

In covering this study a couple years ago, USA Today made an important observation that online retail has found to be true. “… we can avoid being seduced by the lure of choice as the answer in every situation and take advantage of the expertise of others.” Ecommerce sites from Amazon on down agree. The importance of product reviews and recommendations from real people is increasingly important to enable decision making. But as the number of reviews proliferate, as the expertise of others becomes widely available, consumers are presented with the same problem all over again – which reviews to read? Which to believe? If a consumer is 10 times less likely to buy jam when there are 24 choices as 6, how likely are they to buy if there are then 4 reviews of each of the 24 jams?

There would seem to be two ways out of this dilemma. The American Pyschology Association reports that the exception to the rule of more choice resulting in fewer decisions is when a consumer enters the decision making process with an ‘articulated preference’ – people who are familiar with the choices and have already or almost decided. How many of us pick a new toothpaste each time we go to the supermarket? We stick with what we know. Brand and product loyalty still mean a lot, perhaps more, in the universe of choice. As marketers, it is important to understand (and remember) any and all articulated preferences our customers have communicated to us. And we need to remember it on every channel.

But what about consumers who have not studied the issue before and are approaching a new product class for the first time? As they see the infinite number of choices and equally large list of reviews of those choices, indecision could rule the day. My prediction is that two internet trends will merge to enable consumers to again make decisions. Combining reviews with social networks could be a great way to filter the reviews and to identify reviewers you can trust. Hey, if my buddy Dave likes it, it’s good enough for me.

Gene McKenna, Product Management, Acxiom Digital

]]> http://blog.acxiomdigital.com/2006/11/more_choices_fewer_decisions.php http://blog.acxiomdigital.com/2006/11/more_choices_fewer_decisions.php Fri, 10 Nov 2006 09:00:00 -0800 The Digital Divide: Differences Between Online and Offline Direct Marketing In this month’s DMNews, I write about the differences between direct and online marketing. Are you a traditional direct marketer or a digital marketer? Too few marketers in either discipline realize just how big the difference is. The true divide between digital and direct marketing is driven by one simple economic fact: cost per incremental online contact is effectively zero.

The typical direct marketing campaign starts with an offer and the universe of consumers. Direct marketers then “cut a list” – a small subset of the prospect universe – by carefully eliminating great swaths of the population who are less likely to respond to the offer. Good e-mail marketers, on the other hand, take precisely the opposite approach. They start with every person for whom they have permission to mail and then carefully select the best offer for each individual on the list. Read more

Kevin H. Johnson, President, Acxiom Digital

]]> http://blog.acxiomdigital.com/2006/11/the_digital_divide_differences.php http://blog.acxiomdigital.com/2006/11/the_digital_divide_differences.php Mon, 06 Nov 2006 14:29:03 -0800 New Customers Are a Good Thing, Right? If not there are other problems. But if acquiring a new customer is a good thing, why do most companies ignore the opportunity to reinforce the buying decision and setup a positive connotation with the company's email? Yes, I am talking about a "welcome email" or onboarding program. Pretty basic stuff. The reality is that many companies that do business over the Internet don’t do anything at all with a new customer or do it poorly. Familiar examples are transactional messages that are text-based and don't offer value-add information (from the customer's perspective!) such as related items of interest or customer service messaging. Other examples are welcome messages that pretty much say "welcome" and provide little substance or they provide a bland listing of links to different parts of the site.

So, what happens is that the end-customer's first email from a company is either a straight promotion as part of some blast that may or may not be relevant or closes a single transaction. The problem is that we are not setting ourselves up for success with this end-customer. What we want to do is to "thank" new customers for their business and point them to the most important features of our site or product so they know how to interact with us. We want create a brand promise that emails from Company X are relevant and add value. So instead of the one-time email try a set of timed messages, each of which are specific to using the site or product purchased. Obviously you want to point out your best features and/or those that once-used affect positively the time an end customer stays with your company. A simple example is bill pay for a retail bank. Combined with this I recommend not sending "blast" promotional messages during a predefined welcome period, unless there is a time-sensitive reason (for the customer).

If you don't know if you have an issue, do a recency/frequency analysis on your customer activity to see what percentage of customers haven't opened or clicked on one of your emails in the last 30/60/90 days or 10 campaigns. The results may be surprising. Implementing a strong onboarding program can help reduce the size of these groups as will focusing more on delivering emails that are relevant to individuals and their particular stage in their lifecycle with your company. The other positive by-product of this analysis is that you'll know who you need to target for reengagement as those non-responders have silently unsubscribed from your email program, which in the end is just another customer life-cycle stage. Another bonus is that until you have the reengagement program enacted you can suppress those people from other mailings and reduce your costs.

Jose Cebrian, Account Management, Acxiom Digital

]]> http://blog.acxiomdigital.com/2006/11/new_customers_are_a_good_thing.php http://blog.acxiomdigital.com/2006/11/new_customers_are_a_good_thing.php Thu, 02 Nov 2006 14:10:44 -0800 It's Like Herding Humans The theme of Forrester's Consumer Forum, just concluded in Chicago, was Humanizing the Digital Experience. For most this probably evokes thoughts of how to bend technology to one's will, how to present a better UI and hide the technology, or maybe how to turn some of those binary 0's and 1's into something warmer and fuzzier like one half.

As Acxiom's Josh Herman laid out in his well-received keynote, it's more often that what stands between us and perfect one to one messaging ala Minority Report, is not technology but humans. Those pesky humans are preventing us from humanizing our message. The illusion of marketing to customers across multiple channels, with consistent, relevant messages means that different groups in different departments with different backgrounds in different marketing domains and with different business objectives and metrics need to come together and speak the same language.

That common language that business groups need to speak, must reflect the goal of marketing to humans. It needs to be the language of humans, of customers, not of a single department in a large business. To really understand if your company is humanizing its marketing, ask yourself these questions:

  • "What would your balance sheet look like if there were no products or business units on it?" Metrics such as "How much are you spending on TV, online, radio, direct mail, and holograms" might become "How much are you spending on customer's in this segment?"

  • Business objectives such as “I want 10MM impressions run-of-site,” might become, “I want my 10MM impressions delivered to those segments I know to be most likely to buy when they show up to the site(s).”

    At Acxiom Digital, we see this problem frequently. To present dynamic, personalized offers in emails we often have to work with our clients to herd the web group and the email group and the IT group together. Enabling free flow of assets between the two so that an offer used on a website can also be embedded in an email and can be automatically updated from the database proves impossible for some companies, yet is technically very easy. Standing in the way is the fact that the web group has metrics related to web site visits, the email group has metrics related to click through rates, and the IT folks have metrics related to up-time. No wonder it's hard. At Acxiom Digital, we believe it's not enough to offer a technical solution. We help our clients understand what it takes for their humans to work together and speak the same language, the language of the human customer.

    Gene McKenna, Product Management, Acxiom Digital

    ]]> http://blog.acxiomdigital.com/2006/10/its_like_herding_humans_1.php http://blog.acxiomdigital.com/2006/10/its_like_herding_humans_1.php Mon, 30 Oct 2006 12:31:58 -0800 Thinking of Spamming Wireless Users: Fuggedaboutit! On Friday, October 20th, Verizon filed its third lawsuit in as many years against spammers that have sent over 500,000 unsolicited stock tips in the form of a text message to Verizon Wireless subscribers.

    The complaint, filed in US District Court in New Jersey, is against “John Does” because Verizon cannot identify the parties responsible for the SPAM. The four companies who had stock promoted within the unsolicited commercial messages are First National Power, Encore Green Energy, W2 Energy and Armor Electric. The messages were sent through the Internet.

    Under the CAN-SPAM Act, commercial messages that are sent from an Internet domain to a subscriber of commercial mobile services require express prior consent. In addition, each commercial message must allow the subscriber to opt-out of receiving future messages. The unsolicited text messages sent last Friday did not include an opt-out mechanism.

    Verizon has won its two previous lawsuits. Verizon says that it will offer its subscribers refunds for the SPAM (about ten cents for each text message that they received). Each call to Verizon’s customer service center costs the company, on average, $6.50.

    Companies must remember that CAN-SPAM does regulate messaging wireless subscribers. If you plan on sending a commercial message to a user of a wireless domain, ensure that you have prior consent from the recipient. A practice companies should get into the habit of is scrubbing the entire mailing list against the FCC’s Wireless Domain Name List to prevent sending a message to subscribers of wireless domains (unless you have prior consent from that subscriber). Acxiom Digital does this for every campaign.

    Vinay Goel, Privacy and Compliance, Acxiom Digital

    ]]>     http://blog.acxiomdigital.com/2006/10/thinking_of_spamming_wireless.php http://blog.acxiomdigital.com/2006/10/thinking_of_spamming_wireless.php Mon, 23 Oct 2006 14:05:14 -0800     Humanizing the Digital Experience On Oct. 24th and 25th, Forrester Research, a leading technology research firm, is hosting its annual Consumer Forum in Chicago.

    The theme of this year’s event is “Humanizing the Digital Experience,” and marketers from consumer-facing companies will be able to discuss and examine the changes facing their brands and customer experiences, while evaluating tools and practices that will help humanize the digital experience.

    The conference promises to be a thought-provoking and forward looking event and attendees will get to hear from industry luminaries such as Mike Helton, President NASCAR, James Skinner, Vice Chairman & CEO McDonald's; Nicholas Negroponte, Co-Founder & Chairman Emeritus, MIT Media Lab

    Acxiom Corporation is a platinum sponsor of the event and Josh Herman, a senior executive from the company, will be presenting a keynote entitled “Market to Humans, Not Data.”

    As a sponsor of Forrester's Consumer Forum 2006, we are able to offer a special discounted conference rate of $200 off the regular admission rate. Click here to download the Event brochure.

    Gene McKenna, Product Management, Acxiom Digital

    ]]>     http://blog.acxiomdigital.com/2006/10/humanizing_the_digital_experie.php http://blog.acxiomdigital.com/2006/10/humanizing_the_digital_experie.php Fri, 20 Oct 2006 06:46:14 -0800     DMA06 - Segregation of Integrated Marketers? After an enlightening discussion by opening DMA keynote speaker Sir Richard Branson, I entered the main exhibit hall to find that a great majority of the interactive digital direct marketing companies were set up in a separate, distant wing of the Moscone Center. The isolation from the main exhibit hall and other more classic direct marketing companies was disappointing - especially in our age of integrated and cross-channel marketing initiatives. I half-expected Dana Carvey to make a joke about segregating interactive companies to their own "ghetto" as part of his off-color and poorly received routine during the Echo awards. We hope next year that the DMA changes their approach to integrate the interactive marketers with the traditional direct marketers, agencies and data companies. It would make the show a better reflection of the reality we see in the marketplace. I believe that most direct markers would appreciate the acknowledgement that the DMA is changing with the state of the industry.

    Scott Engstrom, Product Management, Acxiom Digital

    ]]>     http://blog.acxiomdigital.com/2006/10/dma06_segregation_of_integrate.php http://blog.acxiomdigital.com/2006/10/dma06_segregation_of_integrate.php Wed, 18 Oct 2006 10:20:51 -0800     It's DMA Time Increasingly the worlds of offline marketing and online marketing merge, collide and remix themselves and the premier event for this is the Direct Marketing Association event next week in our home, San Francisco. Please stop by and see Acxiom Digital in the Acxiom Corporate booth, #1802. On hand we'll have Acxiom Digital Account Directors, Product Managers, Sales people and collectively a lot of knowledge and experience for marketers of all stripes.

    Gene McKenna, Product Management, Acxiom Digital

    ]]>     http://blog.acxiomdigital.com/2006/10/its_dma_time.php http://blog.acxiomdigital.com/2006/10/its_dma_time.php Wed, 11 Oct 2006 16:04:55 -0800     Blogs are for listening too! As leaders in online digital marketing, and with the world awash in blogs on subjects as varied as Travel, Finance, and Toothpaste, many continue to ask us for our point of view on blogs and rss. Generally we and others talk about what kinds of messages our clients can send in a blog or RSS feed and we help them understand the differences between this new channel and 'old' online channels.

    An important difference is that blogs go in both directions. Customers can blog too, and many do. Robert Scoble, who pioneered blogging at Microsoft, explains in this article how Microsoft read the blogs of others who mentioned "Microsoft" or a Microsoft product to hear what they had to say.

    From the article:

    We used blog-search engines to find anyone who wrote the word "Microsoft" on their blog. Even if they had no readers and were just ranting, "I hate Microsoft," I could see that and link to it, or I could participate in their comments, or send them an e-mail saying, "What's going on?" And that told those people that someone was listening to their rants, that this is a different world than the one in which no one listens. It was an invaluable focus group that Microsoft didn't have to pay for.

    So I would often e-mail a Microsoft product team leader, like Dean Hachamovitch over at the Internet Explorer team, and say, "Hey, man, here's someone out here complaining about your product, what are you going to do about it?" That would prompt him to blog about a lot of things, to tell people what they were going to do about CSS [Cascading Style Sheets, a design tool for HTML and XML pages] support and security, or crashing, or whatever. I think that helped improve the products. The One Note team [One Note is an application in the Microsoft Office suite that syncs text and audio] told me they got a lot of feature requests through their blog, features that they actually implemented in the next version of the product. They thought it was an important way to listen to customers and give them what they wanted.

    Gene McKenna, Product Management, Acxiom Digital]]> http://blog.acxiomdigital.com/2006/10/blogs_are_for_listening_too_1.php http://blog.acxiomdigital.com/2006/10/blogs_are_for_listening_too_1.php Tue, 03 Oct 2006 11:26:15 -0800 Google News Adds 200 Years of Articles Coming from a research background in my speech and debate years, spent in the stacks at libraries across the US, my access to news, articles, and trustworthy information online just keeps getting better. Google has unveiled a News Archive Search that allows you to search through printed articles from the past 200 years.

    The Archive includes access to news from Time Magazine, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and many other trusted news sources and news aggregators. Some of the sites listed require payment to access articles, some of the sites like Time have full access for free.

    As you search through a topic, on the left you’ll see date indicators that group the topic into general categories of time. I did a search for “jazz new Orleans” and the navigation grouped the timelines of 6 topical periods, including 2006 and going back before the 1940’s.

    Many of the results for this search required payment for access to the article, which brings up an interesting point. Many of these articles could be accessed for free through your local library. This assumes your local library is paying for subscriptions to content like this, which is likely, and that you have good library research skills to access the data you are looking for.

    For remote researchers with few local resources, and researchers who are willing to pay as they go for the convenience, this new feature from Google opens up a wealth of access to printed history like never before.

    Keith Boswell, Search and Acquisition, Acxiom Digital

    ]]>     http://blog.acxiomdigital.com/2006/09/google_news_adds_200_years_of.php http://blog.acxiomdigital.com/2006/09/google_news_adds_200_years_of.php Wed, 20 Sep 2006 14:29:50 -0800     CAN-SPAM Violations and Weak ISP Relations Costs Millions The FTC isn’t the only one having all the fun. More and more ISPs are pressing charges against spammers. On August 31, A US District Court awarded ISP EarthLink $11.6million in a lawsuit that accused Nevada-based Internet marketer KSTM of sending millions of spam emails.

    EarthLink accused KSTM of violating the CAN-SPAM Act, the US Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, the Georgia Computer Systems Protection Act, and state and federal racketeering laws. KSTM was accused of using false and misleading header information in its mortgage-related emails promoting the website “lmlgdnhk.info.” EarthLink was able to prove that KSTM’s violations of CAN-SPAM were “knowing and willful.” In addition to the $11million judgment, KSTM is prohibited from spoofing, cloaking, selling email addresses and obtaining or accessing EarthLink accounts.

    Following the judgment, a major ISP released that “This judgment should be fair warning that if you spam, we will sue.” Allow me to paraphrase after the Field of Dreams’ voice from above leaves my mind, “Strong ISP relations, in addition to CAN-SPAM compliance, mitigates risk and increases email campaign deliverability.”

    Vinay Goel, Privacy and Compliance, Acxiom Digital

    ]]>     http://blog.acxiomdigital.com/2006/09/canspam_violations_and_weak_is.php http://blog.acxiomdigital.com/2006/09/canspam_violations_and_weak_is.php Wed, 20 Sep 2006 08:55:53 -0800     Lost in Translation Should international anti-SPAM laws apply to emails sent within America? A US court ruled that it doesn’t. Spamhaus, an England-based non-profit organization that provides spam fighters across the globe with real-time blacklists, disagrees.

    On September 13, the US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois ordered that Spamhaus must pay $11.7million in damages to Illinois-based e360insight. The court also prohibited Spamhaus from causing any email sent worldwide by e360insight to be “blocked, delayed, altered, or interrupted in anyway.” In addition, Spamhaus must apologize to e360insight and state that they are not a spammer. The ruling was heard in a US court under US laws. Spamhaus did not provide a defense, which caused the court to make a default judgment. Spamhaus believes that “default judgments obtained in US county, state or federal courts have no validity in the UK and cannot be enforced under the British legal system.”

    Spamhaus refuses to declassify e360insight as a spammer. According to Spamhaus, e360insight’s email messages violate UK anti-SPAM laws, which prohibits commercial email messages sent to a household address without prior consent; an opt-in approach. The US court has agreed that e360insight sends email in compliance with the US’ CAN-SPAM Act. e360insight positions itself as an opt-in email marketing company that only sends email messages to those that have signed up to receive it, apparently bringing it in compliance with UK anti-SPAM laws. However, Spamhaus refuses to declassify e360insight until the case is heard in a UK court. And until that time, e360insight will remain on Spamhaus’ RBLs that are provided worldwide to fight SPAM.

    While it’s still too early to call which side (and anti-SPAM law) takes precedence, it could make every company pay closer attention to its marketing practices. If the court decision does not stop Spamhaus from blocking legally-compliant messages under US law sent from e360insight to US recipients, a scary precedent is in the making: CAN-SPAM compliance isn’t enough to avoid RBLs. Instead, e360insight will have to comply with, in this case, UK anti-SPAM laws. And, will a US court be able to stop a RBL in another country from mandating the same? We will have to wait and see.

    Vinay Goel, Privacy and Compliance, Acxiom Digital

    ]]>     http://blog.acxiomdigital.com/2006/09/lost_in_translation.php http://blog.acxiomdigital.com/2006/09/lost_in_translation.php Mon, 18 Sep 2006 11:46:09 -0800     Websites of Top 100 US Corporations Rated for Communications, Usability & Trust The Customer Respect Group recently released its ratings of the user experience provided by websites operated by the world’s largest companies. Not surprisingly, almost half of the top fourteen companies are Acxiom Digital clients, including Intel (recognized overall), Hewlett-Packard (noted for online responsiveness and communications), Wells Fargo (noted for usability), IBM (noted for trust), CVS, and Sprint. These and other top-rated companies are increasing their email marketing, collecting more customer information, and clarifying privacy and permission practices according to the Customer Respect Group.

    Kevin H. Johnson, President, Acxiom Digital

    ]]>     http://blog.acxiomdigital.com/2006/09/websites_of_top_100_us_corpora_1.php http://blog.acxiomdigital.com/2006/09/websites_of_top_100_us_corpora_1.php Mon, 18 Sep 2006 10:23:56 -0800     Flash - not recommended for email At Acxiom Digital, we often get the question: Is it ok to put Flash in an email? As the following research article makes plain, the answer is an unequivocal “no”. The article contains screenshots of the most common email environments and is quite detailed: Flash is not supported in any major web email environment and is not displayed by default on any major desktop environment. Flash will not load in Outlook, nor will it display any alternate content, but it will display a security warning. Flash will not load in any of the other main email clients either, nor will it display any alternate content unless you are one of the few people using Apple’s own Mail application. And let me tell you, I’m on a Mac all the time and I never use Apple’s mail application.

    If you need more convincing, we add a final note: Macromedia, the company that created Flash, sends millions of emails a year to their customers. And not one of their emails contained Flash.

    Mark French, Creative Services, Acxiom Digital

    ]]>     http://blog.acxiomdigital.com/2006/09/flash_not_recommended_for_emai_1.php http://blog.acxiomdigital.com/2006/09/flash_not_recommended_for_emai_1.php Sat, 16 Sep 2006 10:30:50 -0800     Pay Attention to "Lonely Wives" Brands who use affiliates beware! The FTC has made clear that the brand is liable when affiliates promoting a brand do not follow CAN-SPAM.

    In January 2006, the Federal Trade Commission charged that Cleverlink Trading Limited’s “Date Lonely Wives” spam violated almost every provision within the CAN-SPAM Act as well as the FTC’s Adult Labeling Rule. Before Thursday, September 14, settlement terms for violations of the CAN-SPAM Act have halted spamming operations, stipulated damages and required monitoring if the spammer stayed in business. On Thursday, the damages of “Lonely Wives” were revealed. In similar fashion to previous settlements, the FTC slapped Cleverlink with a steep fine, halted spamming operations, and required monitoring for Cleverlink to stay in business. However, with “Lonely Wives”, the FTC has entered into a whole new arena - it has imposed additional requirements on how Cleverlink must enter into agreements with affiliate marketers.

    The FTC settlement lists specific affirmative steps that Cleverlink must take to ensure that affiliate marketers, both present and future, will be in compliance with the settlement terms, the CAN-SPAM Act and the Adult Labeling Rule.

    What do we learn from “Lonely Wives”? Hopefully more than to stay away from them (and by them, I mean the emails). Companies that use affiliate marketers should be prepared to provide adequate assurance, if necessary, that affiliates are following applicable laws.

    Vinay Goel, Privacy and Compliance, Acxiom Digital

    ]]>     http://blog.acxiomdigital.com/2006/09/pay_attention_to_lonely_wives.php http://blog.acxiomdigital.com/2006/09/pay_attention_to_lonely_wives.php Thu, 14 Sep 2006 09:05:28 -0800