Today's digital marketers have to deal with not only banner ads and corporate sites but a whole plethora of media and formats, including iTV, search engines, mobile, email and microsites, dhtml ads, Superstitials, Overlayz and even Toast. Information on these topics has been building for the last 10 years in the archives of sites like ours (www.revolutionmagazine.com), books, email lists and seminars, but most marketers lack the time to research them. We hope this list will shed some light.
ONLINE ADVERTISING
1. A bit of history. The first banner ad was served in October 1994, by HotWired, the site of Wired magazine. It advertised telecoms giant AT&T.
2. The Interactive Advertising Bureau offers guidelines on the standard size and formats available for online ads, which it updates every two years. Currently, it wants the number of formats to be rationalised and is consulting the industry. Future projects promise to tackle pop-ups and rich media online.
3. The IAB's five golden rules of successful online advertising are: big ads work best; effectiveness grows with exposure; target your audience; be bold with your logo, and cut the clutter.
4. Biggest is not always best, but it helps. "Larger sizes do not make good ads, only good ideas do," says Mark Cridge, managing director of Glue London, whose clients include C4 and the Central Office of Information. He thinks the number of formats for online should be rationalised. "By concentrating on a standard set of larger in-page ads, it makes our job as ad creators easier and boosts the impact of our ideas."
5. FT.com was one of the first major media owners in the UK to offer large Skyscraper ads. The IAB suggests these are of pixel sizes 120 x 600, 125 x 600 and 160 x 600. As a result of research carried out in July 2001, the IAB says the larger format improves key branding metrics by an average of 40 per cent.
6. Toast is a rich-media ad format developed by Tangozebra. Rich media technology, which can bring audio, video and animated (Flash-based) content to advertising online, can deliver greater impact and increase branding effectiveness. Firms such as Eyeblaster of the US, Israeli-based CheckM8 and the UK's Tangozebra offer a range of rich-media formats.
7. Unicast's Superstitial rich-media format is perhaps the best online execution for bringing a TV-style ad to the internet. British Airways was one of the first in the UK to use it. In April 2002, BMW used Superstitial 300 technology, with a memory capacity of 300Kb, to let high-res images and sound play for up to 30 seconds after users clicked a page. Superstitials load while users browse.
8. Internet advertising celebrates its tenth anniversary in 2004. In 1996 the IAB set the standard 468x60 pixel format for the banner ad. Though much maligned, it is still the most common online. The IAB has found it boosts brand awareness, message association, favourability and purchase intent.
9. Online advertising is one of the few areas to grow in the last few years of media hard times. It has overtaken cinema spend in annual value, according to the IAB, but the organisation has launched an initiative to raise it from one per cent to two per cent of an advertiser's budget. In the US, total ad revenue online was $1.46 billion (£0.9 million) for Q2 of 2002.
10. The three i's of online advertising are: integration, integration and integration. The medium can stand alone, but is more effective in conjunction with other channels, digital or otherwise. Take the Dove study - MSN in the US worked with the beauty brand to show that raising online ad spend can greatly increase the success of a campaign. If the number of impressions bought doubled over six weeks, the effectiveness of Dove's branding would rise 42 per cent.
11. Content must be local, but for online advertising similar rules apply in different territories. The European Interactive Advertising Association brought the Dove idea across the Atlantic and proved it holds true. Some 15 campaigns were surveyed across UK, French and German markets by NFO Infratest, and showed that raising online advertising and its frequency boosts brand awareness, attributes and purchase intent.
12. Online ads can mimic traditional media with more accountability. Guardian Unlimited allows advertisers to send a sequential message to users and charges them by user session instead of the more usual cost per-acquisition, per-thousand and per-lead.
13. Even advertising body IPA has its own Digital Marketing group. Headed by Revolution columnist and director of Starcom Motive, John Owen, the group includes two deputy chairmen: Nick Gutfreund of i-level and Ben Christie of PHDiQ.
14. There's a backlash against intrusive ad formats that annoy users. AltaVista banned pop-ups from its site in the UK last year. AOL, with women's portal iVillage, has banned them in the US. In the US only, search engine Ask Jeeves no longer has banners on its site and ads are tied directly to search terms instead.
15. SLPs (self-liquidating promotions) used to be limited to the 'send off three vouchers and £4.99 to get this cereal-branded bowl' sector of sales promotion or premium phone lines for competitions and the like. But, online, you can make your advertising pay for itself through downloadable ringtones, SMS campaigns where respondents are charged to respond to competitions or paid-for games. Be sure to make the costs clear to consumers all the time and take care when targeting kids.
MEDIA PLANNING AND BUYING
16. Terms for buying online: CPM ads are paid for per thousand impressions (for every thousand ads delivered but not necessarily seen) while CPC ads are paid for according to how many clickthroughs are recorded. CPA means cost-per-action and can refer to buying CPC ads or setting other actions, like paying for the number of clickthroughs who actually buy.
17. Buying run-of-site (ROS) or run-of-network (where an advertising network positions ads across the sites it represents at its own discretion, according to available inventory) is cheap but about as non-targeted as you can get.
18. Just because an online campaign can be turned around quickly doesn't mean that it should be seen as a bolt-on to an existing promotion. The buzzwords of successful advertisers are integration and media neutrality. "Put all your specialist agencies in one room and get them to work together," advises Graham Darracott at Graphico New Media.
19. Technology such as Applied Semantics' AdSense allows for highly targeted advertising. AdSense matches keywords in web content with the right advertiser, allowing relevant ads to be served. It can act as a filter, so advertisers avoid unfortunate associations between ads and content. For example, it could stop a car ad being run next to a news story about car crashes, which could happen on a web site with rapidly changing content or where the advertiser buys run-of-site.
20. Nielsen//NetRatings says the top sites last year in terms of number of UK visitors were, in order of ranking: MSN.com, Passport.com (MSN's multiple sign-in site, which gives users access to Hotmail and Messenger), Yahoo.com, MSN.co.uk, Google.com, BBC.co.uk, BTopenworld.com, AOL.com and Freeserve.com.
21. The over-50s are the fastest growing audience on the net - a quarter of the online population - and surf longer every month than any other age group. Target them on sites such as 50connect.co.uk or on the home, travel, health and financial areas of portals. Top sites for the over-60s include BBC.co.uk, MSN.com, Google.com and FriendsReunited.co.uk.
22. Media owners should come up with deals for specific brands. Fox Kids Europe has signed a year-long deal with toy giant Hasbro and created microsites to promote its Action Man brand in nine different European countries. Crookes Healthcare pushed its Clearasil brand on avatar-based chat site Habbo Hotel in a Cinema room with pre-programmed Habbo characters talking about the brand, a Face of the Future model competition and links to the competition site. Clickthrough to the Clearasil site was 22 per cent and just over half of a sample of 5,200 Habbo members said their opinion of it had improved.
23. Screensavers may be a bit passe but they are still effective. How much would you pay for a web site to display your branded image on users' desktops when they stopped working? A step up from the screensaver is the downloadable execution that sits on desktops and is updated via the internet. These can be character based or applications like World Cup wallcharts. TheSite.org charity worked with agency Digital Outlook to create a downloadable character called Drugs Boy to warn young people about drug use. It has been run more than a million times.
24. Love 'em or hate 'em, blogs (web logs) are another tool available to digital marketers. Soft drinks firm Dr Pepper not only launched its own blog (www.ragingcow.com) to promote its flavoured milk brand Raging Cow, but also enlisted the help of several bloggers, suggesting ways in which they might reference the drink on their sites in return for promotional items, samples, gift certificates and so on. If you are going to run a blog, make sure it is continually updated as that's the point of the medium and be prepared for criticism from some.
25. Web sites are not the only place where you can buy space. Think laterally. Nestle's Kit Kat brand worked with media buyer m digital to sponsor MSN's instant messaging application for a six month period, tying in its slogan 'Have a break, have a Kit Kat'. The campaign gave a big lift to brand perception, with 75 per cent of users becoming aware of the Kit Kat site through the deal, according to Hauck Research International. Some 87 per cent of consumers felt that Kit Kat and MSN were a good fit and that the campaign was less irritating than banner ads. The activity led to a 1,620 per cent rise in traffic to KitKat.co.uk, which saw page impressions increase by 60 million a month.
26. Infiltration marketing (marketing a product in chatrooms and on bulletin boards) can be used to seed viral campaigns and promote products, but online communities can be hostile to people marketing products. Instead, partner an existing chat site for branding purposes or run your own syndicated chats with celebrities. This is how the Tea Council targeted 25 to 30-year-old working women. Digital agency Bluepool signed up model Kate Moss for webchats after she said she loved tea in an interview. Bluepool made deals with nine sites for the chat, including Telegraph.com, Virgin and Red Direct.
27. Frequency capping is your friend, particularly for more intrusive forms of advertising. If a user is served the same pop-up ad or Superstitial every time they return to the homepage of a specific site they'll become annoyed. Frequency capping uses cookies to ensure each viewer only sees the ad for a limited number of times, limiting the annoyance factor.
28. Beware adware, sometimes referred to as spyware or parasiteware. This is software that users download which has some advertising effect, such as serving ads that are unconnected to the sites users visit as they surf the net. This technology is sometimes bundled in when users download other software, such as e-wallets or virus checkers. It can replace ads and even text links on sites with its own. This can be annoying for sites carrying pay-for-performance or affiliate ads.
EMAIL MARKETING
29. Email is booming. NetValue reports that more than 102 million marketing emails were sent to people in the UK in December 2001 and this was double the amount sent in the same period of the previous year. The Direct Marketing Association believes spending on interactive media marketing is set to increase by 32.8 percent over the next five years.
30. Direct mail and email can combine to great effect. According to Tim Rivett, director of the Royal Mail's Mail Media Centre, email and SMS are complementary to the established strengths of mail media. MMC research shows 42 per cent of users of mail media also use email marketing.
31. Creativity in advertising, copywriting, use of space and graphics effect the success of marketing emails. Mike Parry, managing director of Emailbureau, says the success of a message can be dramatically affected by the subject line, creativeness, and relationship between data owner and recipient.
32. Explicit consent is required for marketing by both email and SMS, unless marketers offer similar products to existing customers, according to the Committee of Advertising Practice Code, which was updated earlier this year to include emerging new media.
33. An EU directive on spam was voted through in October 2002 that says email marketing should follow an opt-in policy. The Government has a year to interpret the legislation. A consultation paper is due out from the DTI and the directive will become part of UK law in October.
34. The quickest and easiest way to put out an email push is to rent a database of email addresses, but it isn't always the cheapest or most effective. Paul Shalet, former chief executive of email marketing specialist Messagizer (now Buongiorno) that aggregates lists from Lycos among others, says an effective list should offer a conversion rate of five to 10 per cent. Even if a company has an in-house list, it may need to rent something more if it is going after a new audience.
35. When renting an email list, check the background of your supplier. Unscrupulous firms can put your brand at risk by harvesting addresses from sites without consent. The 'spammer' label sticks and the response rate will be negligible.
36. To ensure a reasonable return on investment when using email, direct marketers should strike a cost-per-click deal with their list broker, so they only pay for customers who click through from the email and not for the entire list.
37. For those with the time and funds, homegrown email lists offer higher responses in the longer term. Victoria Moffatt, interactive strategist at Ogilvy Interactive, says: "Targetting a list that has specifically agreed to receive communications from your company is always more successful than targeting people cold, which gets a relatively poor response."
38. The most opened emails are those from the travel sector with the least opened from charities, according to email specialist IPT. For the last quarter of 2002, rates for more than 40 million recipients showed the most opened emails were travel (43.89 per cent open rate), business to business (40.81), and employment and careers messages (40.14). Yet, the best financial services emails can get an 87 per cent rate.
39. A regular email newsletter allows you to push products. Lastminute.com claims sales of some products rise by several hundred per cent following its newsletters.
SEARCH ENGINE MARKETING
40. Google has come from nowhere to be the biggest brand in its sector. Launched in 1998, it regularly rides high in Nielsen//Netratings rankings of the major properties online. Known to be considering an IPO in the future, it has launched a range of money-making services, designed not to interfere with the relevancy or speed of its search results. It is testing its first major sister service, Froogle, a US shopping comparison engine.
41. Pay-for-performance is a great way of getting ROI on your online marketing. Specialists like Overture and Espotting dominate the market in the US and Europe by offering their services through all the major portals. Advertisers bid for a presence when certain words come up in a search which uses their services. Google launched its own cost-per-click service in the UK in September - its AdWords idea allows text-based sponsored links to appear to the right of its web search results.
42. Trusted feed is the latest idea for content-hungry search engines like AltaVista and Inktomi. Sites and search-engine optimisation companies can supply pages direct to the search service if they are trusted partners. The service gets more content and revenue on a cost-per-click basis from the suppliers while the web sites get more respresentation.
43. Search is no longer simply word based. Lycos UK offers picture search which it claims is relevant and both family and user-friendly. Submitted queries are all in text form, but produce a list of images with thumbnail pictures. An Info link offers information about each image, including file name, original size, file size, number of colours, page web address and image web address.
44. If not the year of search, 2003 is definitely the year of search-engine acquisitions. Google purchased weblog specialist Pyra labs while Overture splashed out £88.9 million on AltaVista and some £62m on the Norwegian Fast Search & Transfer search technology specialist.
45. The IAB recommends 10 tricks of the trade for search marketing: relevant keywords; write factual titles and descriptions; deep link your listings; enable the back button; list as broad a range of relevant terms as possible; track sales with tracking urls; make the most of operator tools; delete junk and integrate your campaign; use ad hoc and regular opportunities; and regularly review your bidding strategy.
46. Search marketing delivers precise messages to the right people at the right time. Craig Lister of search marketing specialist Webgravity says that combined with product and business-led propositions, search-targeted marketing is best placed to give low-cost high-quality, targeted leads.
47. Search marketing now places the emphasis on driving traffic to sites rather than just seeing how many top 10 positions are obtained for a query. Dave Turner, director of European operations at Position Technologies, says the introduction of paid-for results has helped to turn the idea into a media buy.
48. Pay-per-click advertising has benefited as businesses are more conscious of ROI, according to Jonathan Bunis, chief operating officer at Espotting Media. "In the context of the downturn in advertising spend, and the pressure to both acquire and keep clients, businesses are now more conscious of their ROI."
49. Up to 88 per cent of users rely on search to find sites. Google says it offers direct access to over three billion web documents and responds to 150 million queries a day.
MOBILE
50. SMS stands for Short Message Service, also called text messaging. It's a service for sending messages of up to 160 characters (224 characters using a 5bit mode) to mobiles. MMS is Multimedia Messaging Service and is often used as a synonym for picture or photo-messaging, but is in fact a message containing a mix of graphics, photos and audio.
51. Three is the magic number - 3G is short for third-generation wireless. Best known for the billions paid by mobile operators for 3G licenses, it offers enhanced multimedia (think sport and movie clips, mapping services and peer-to-peer games), increased bandwidth and high speed. It follows first-generation (1G, which used analogue voice signaling) and second-generation (2G and 2.5G, which moved into digital technologies) wireless communications. Hutchison 3G is rolling out high-speed mobile data services under new brand 3, which arrived in the UK, appropriately, on 03.03.03.
52. According to Netsize's European SMS Guide, one billion text messages are exchanged globally every day and SMS is responsible for more than 10 per cent of total mobile operator revenue in Europe. European mobile penetration exceeds 75 per cent with more than 280 million users. The UK has 80 per cent mobile penetration with over 48 million users. In the UK alone, more than 16.8 billion chargeable text messages were exchanged in 2002. The average price of an SMS in the UK is 10-12p, with premium SMS tariffs up to £5.
53. Teen appeal: the UK average daily figure for texts sent in the UK is 45 million, according to Agents of Change, Teenagers and Mobile Lifestyles Trends, a research paper produced by Spero Communications in association with IMRG, sponsored by IBM. Of texters, 83 per cent are teens, who send 37.4 million texts a day - averaging three per day per teen.
54. Verifiable parental consent should be obtained before communicating via SMS with minors, according to the IPA's Guidelines to Mobile Marketing. This can be collected via SMS, online or offline means. Always seek legal advice.
55. The average mobile campaign achieves a 15 per cent response, which is more than twice the average for direct mail, according to an Enpocket Insight report, The response performance of SMS advertising. Best performing mechanisms are: reply to message (eight per cent average), visit a site (six per cent), visit a store (four per cent) and buy the advertised product (four per cent). Research shows 94 per cent of texts are read and 23 per cent are forwarded to a friend.
56. Be respectful, relevant and engaging. "The basic rules of good direct marketing apply," says Lars Becker, chief executive of mobile marketing agency Flytxt.
57. Be creative. Most mobile campaigns rely on non-visual communication, so interaction is key. Becker explains: "Most marketing creativity relies on colour and pictures. We don't have that with SMS, so you need to create richness and this means relying on interactivity." An example is the mobile drive backing UIP's film Long Time Dead. Flytxt ran an interactive wireless campaign that was planned and bought by The Digital Edge, with creative work by Curio and adapted for SMS by Feref. Messages were sent to an opt-in database of 18 to 24-year-olds interested in clubbing. Members were invited to 'contact the spirits on UR mobile' and ask questions on sex, love, death and money. Replies came from the virtual ouija board, which used intelligent response technology to generate answers. Mirror the text language used by the target audience.
58. Comply with opt-in regulations. Mobiles are a very personal communications channel, more so than email, and if people feel their private lives are being invaded it won't do much for your brand. The EU Directive on Privacy and Electronic Communication was agreed in Brussels last year and is due to become part of UK law in October. It calls for all electronic communication to be on an opt-in basis. Likewise, the CAP Code guidelines of the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) have been updated to include emerging new media. Explicit consent is now required for marketing by SMS unless marketers are offering similar products to existing customers.
59. An integrated push is best. "Mobile is really the glue between other types of media," points out Flytxt's Becker. Best practice is exemplified by Coca-Cola's 'Txt For Music' on-pack promotion. It was developed by bd network and Flytxt. Users can build a virtual bank account of music credits by texting in or using the web to enter unique codes found on more than 200 million special cans, bottles and packs of Coca-Cola and Cherry Coke. The promo is being supported by a consumer awareness campaign across TV, print and radio. Remember that wireless complements and is complemented by other digital mediums.
60. Build long-term relationships. People rarely change their number so keep in contact with your customers.
61. It's likely that a small proportion of users will want to unsubscribe to your campaign. Make it easy. The IPA guidelines say you should offer the target audience the chance to unsubscribe from receiving SMS messages during the campaign period. For example, let them text 'STOP' as an instruction to remove their mobile number from your database.
62. SMS allows immediate tracking, so you can test the response rate of different channels and mechanics.
INTERACTIVE TV (iTV)
63. A third of all UK homes receive digital TV, according to the ITC and Forrester Research says European iTV will generate 18 billion euros from interactive services by 2007.
64. Why should advertisers use iTV? Advocates cite its lead-generation potential, longer exposure (three minutes instead of 30 seconds), its ability to achieve stand-out, build databases and contribute to CRM as key reasons.
65. Remember it's still TV. Plan your campaign as a whole. The ads you use in your iTV push will probably be the same as a normal TV ad but have an interactive element.
66. Be very clear about your campaign objectives - do you want to generate response, increase awareness, or a bit of both - iTV can do both, so choose the right application.
67. Press Red. The now familiar call to action on iTV. Though some, like Simon Smith, creative director at iTV agency Weapon7, thinks 'press red' has become too 'normal', and that marketers must work harder to get campaigns noticed.
68. Best practice (1): Domino's Pizza. If there's one brand that's synonymous with iTV success, it's Domino's.
69. Best practice (2): An iTV push in November 2001 on Sky Active allowing users to sign up for a Rimmel London sample had 50,000 actively interested users. By digital agency OMD Digital, the campaign won Best Consumer Marketing award, sponsored by dealgroupmedia, at the Revolution Awards this year.
70. DAL (dedicated advertiser location) lets users click on an icon in an interactive ad to leave the broadcast and go to a site about the product. Usually incorporates video. A Mini DAL uses text and graphics, but not video.
71. Creativity. "It's really, really important," says Robert Leach, interactive advertising controller at Sky. "You should extend your creativity from your existing TV ad to the DAL. Quality and theme should be consistent." Kit Kat recently launched an iTV and online brand-building game to back its new salmon commercial encouraging people to take a break.
WEB SITES AND MICROSITES
72. Consumer-facing sites should be useful, usable and desirable. Keep repeating this mantra, says Ross Taylor, digital director at digitalTMW, when designing any site.
73. Your main site should be for permanent aspects of your brand like product information. It can take considerable time to schedule in changes into the major interface.
74. Microsites work best when supporting an integrated marketing campaign which has time restrictions as they can be created quickly. Users are driven online with a specific purpose and the microsite amplifies that interest. They can also be used to give additional information on a product. Muller's Valentine's Day Love Louder campaign directed users to the mullerlove.com microsite. Carlson Marketing Group created the online element of the integrated push where users could enter a competition to win prizes like a trip to Monte Carlo. Last year's campaign, also created by Carlson, drove 19,211 unique visitors to mullerlove.com and 9,047 entrants to the prize draw.
75. Use your site to build your brand. It's a lot more than just sticking your logo on the home page - your site can bring your brand to life via interactive experiences, such as games and chat with other users. Check out huggiesclub.com.
76. It is possible for sales reps to interact with users of their sites in real time using chat or avatar technology. Collabor8's NetRep lets sales advisors, armed with information about the pages users visit, to talk to them when online.
77. It's important to keep the site regularly updated and fresh. Keep customers interested and they'll return.
78. Make sure you're fully aware of disability issues and have a strategy to support the needs of different users. The World Wide Web Consortium's (W3C) Web Accessibility Initiative has a series of guidelines (www.w3c.org/wai). These include providing alternatives to auditory and visual content, and ensuring that texts and graphics are understandable when viewed without colour. It's advisable to be compliant from the start rather than having to overhaul your site. Car manufacturer Nissan targets disabled customers with a mobility site: www.nissan.co.uk/ mobility was designed and developed by directTMW, the digital arm of direct marketing agency Tullo Marshall Warren.
79. Keep checking your site's page integrity, like download times. There's nothing more annoying for users than 'page not found' messages. Web reporting software will deliver error reports and it's the web manager's job to keep up to date.
80. "Understand the value you're delivering to consumers and base the extent of information exchanged on this value," explains Taylor. "For low-value sites, consumers will be unwilling to invest time and effort in giving you valuable information, so keep this optional and minimal. Equally, however, where the site is providing information or services of a high perceived value to users, they will be more willing to exchange personal information to increase the value of the service."
81. Tailor the sophistication of your site to your customers - you might have broadband but not all of them will. Go easy on the all-singing all-dancing sites that take ages to download. The same goes for webcasts. Thomas Cook gets round this by using both a standard site (www.thomascook.com) and a broadband version (www.thomascookbroadband.com).
82. Less is more. Understand what users want from your site, not what you think they should know.
83. According to The Henley Centre, 83 per cent of users prefer a site to supply another channel of contact, such as a phone number. A step further is the 'call-me' button on a site, which users can press to receive a call from the firm.
84. If you must have a Flash-based intro to your site, be sure to include a prominent 'skip intro' button.
85. Most sites have some kind of data capture tool, but make sure that you comply with guidelines of the Data Protection Act. Companies handling data are obliged to notify the information commissioner of the information kept. This is mandatory, has to be done every year, and costs £35.
86. In the 80s, seven generic top level domains were created: .com, .edu, .gov, .int, .mil, .net, and .org. Domain names may be registered as .com, .net, and .org without restriction; the other four have limited purposes. In 2001 and 2002 seven more were created: .biz, .info, .name, .pro, .aero, .coop and .museum. In addition there are also country code level domains. In the UK, .co.uk is the most popular, but some sites like to use country domains, such as .at (from Austria).
87. Register variations on your domain name, such as misspellings as well as the right spellings under different top-level domains (such as .com, .co.uk, .net and .org). This not only mops up the bad spellers and those with a poor memory, but stops other firms hijacking those looking to visit your site.
88. If you are launching a new brand, make sure the relevant web site address is still available or is at least cheap. Some companies are making a business from buying up likely generic words and selling them on to other companies at a profit when they are needed by someone. Hutchison paid out £102,000 for the domain name www.three.co.uk. It couldn't have www.3.co.uk as single-digit domains are not available.
MEASUREMENT
89. According to the Office of National Statistics, 46 per cent of UK homes (11.4 million) could access the net in July to September 2002. Some 62 percent of UK adults (28.6 million) have accessed the net at least once. And during September 2002, around 52 percent of UK adults went online.
90. Industry rules for site-centric audits (as opposed to panel-based data, which comes from firms such as Neilsen//Netratings) are managed by industry body JICWEBS (Joint Industry Committee for Web Standards), which launched in April 2001 and can be found at jicwebs.org.
91. ABCe, the electronic arm of the Audit Bureau of Circulation, does not only audit sites but also iTV, SMS, email and online ad campaigns. The minimum fee is £1,280 + VAT.
92. Clickthrough rates, particularly for intrusive forms of advertising such as pop-ups, can be skewed by the number of people who were trying to close the ad but clicked through by mistake. Set relevant metrics before your campaign launches. Set conversion rates if you're trying to boost online sales and measure these, as well as the clickthroughs.
93. The web provides a channel for dissatisfied customers to make their voices heard, whether through negative postings on bulletin boards, anti-corporate sites or emails which get passed around the online community. Make sure you are monitoring the internet for opinions about your company or brand, as well as looking for sites using your brand name without permission, for example as a search engine keyword. Brand protection companies, such as Cyveillance, NameProtect and Markmonitor will scour the web for you.
94. Online surveys increase the speed by which you can gather customer opinion. Firms such as BrainJuicer (www.brainjuicer.com) and WebSurveyor (www.websurveyor. com) can provide you with the appropriate software.
AFFILIATE MARKETING
95. Affiliate marketing is a way of driving sales through partnerships with other sites, which earn commission on every sale. Affiliate networks Be Free (www.befree.com), Commission Junction (www.cj.com) and also Performics (www. performics.com) have established a Code of Conduct for best practice in affiliate marketing, which they are looking to establish in Europe. Publishers cannot interfere with referrals, alter another publisher's site or bundle downloadable shopping applications if installation is not obvious, easy or complete.
96. Some 20 per cent, or less, of your affiliate partners will drive at least 80 per cent of your traffic. Nurture these super affiliates with special promotions and more regular communications. Advise them on where they should place ads on their web site to increase clickthrough rates and so on.
97. Affiliate marketing can work well. John Lewis claims its affiliate network - it works with TradeDoubler and ukaffiliates - drives 10 per cent of total revenue for John Lewis Direct, its direct sales division which includes a catalogue as well as the web site.
98. Deep linking, whereby affiliates promote specific products, perhaps in the context of a review or related editorial piece, and deliver users directly to the particular page where they can buy that product, rather than to the general home page, can significantly boost sales.
99. Most affiliate partners will not accept schemes that give them a purchasing window of less than seven days. In other words, if a surfer clicks through a link on an affiliate web site, that site will gain a commission if the visitor returns within seven days and buys the product.
AND FINALLY ...
100. It may seem like a digital jungle out there, but there's an awful lot of industry bodies to help you hack your way through. These include the IAB (www.iabuk.net), the European Interactive Advertising Association (www.eiaa. net), the Direct Marketing Association's Interactive Media Division (www.dma.org.uk) which covers iTV and email marketing, the Mobile Marketing Association (www.mmaglobal.com) and the British Interactive Media Association (www.bima.co.uk).
.jpg)
.jpg)