Posts Tagged "video"

FeedBurner FAIL

Posted on Apr 13, 2008 in Rambles |

Something wonky happened a few days ago and I didn’t notice… sorry feed readers!

Here’s the posts you may have missed…

• Effective Email Case Study – TubeMogul
• Link Glossary – Alt Text
• Comfortable Branding by Name (Video)
• Hard Sell Tactics DON’T WORK
• Developing Professional Business Cards with Sharp Company Logos
• Link Glossary – Backlinks
• Cribbed Content for April 11th
• Twittermethis v. Twattermethat (Podcast)

Comfortable Branding by Name

Posted on Apr 9, 2008 in Marketing | 3 comments

The name of the marketing game is branding, and using your name as your personal brand is a time honored tradition. Watch the video and I’ll tell you more!

Effective Email Case Study – TubeMogul

Posted on Apr 8, 2008 in Marketing |

I hope that last week’s case study was helpful in looking at the email campaign efforts of a well known, well established company. The next email I want to highlight came from an online service that isn’t nearly as well known as Expedia.

The Company: TubeMogul.com: This free online service allows users to upload a video one time and have it distributed amongst many different video websites.

The User History: I don’t have a lot of experience with this website. I heard mention of it in a podcast a few weeks ago and decided to give it a try. I went to the website and created an account at the time I heard about it, but I’d sort of but it out of my mind and didn’t use it.

The E-Mail:

The Effectiveness: Their team has clearly done their research (or flagged my account properly) to know that I only logged in once. It’s been long enough since I signed up that this email serves as a great reminder to go back and check out this service. It’s not overbearing, it’s just a pleasant reminder that the service is available.

The Result: I will definitely use the TubeMogul service the next time I need to upload a video. I’ve been politely tapped in the email to remind me. And it’s free, so why wouldn’t I use it?

Do you feel differently about the effectiveness of this email? If so please, by all means fight me on this!

Effective Email Case Study – Expedia

Posted on Apr 2, 2008 in Marketing |

Checking my email last night I noticed some ingenious, personalized email marketing campaigns that I think more businesses should consider (including my own). I felt the need to share these as case studies. There’s a lot to cover, so I’ll split them up. Hopefully I can continue to do these case studies to give props to what works in marketing and why.

The Company: Expedia.com: I’ve always had great service and luck with Expedia, so they’re my go-to travel site when referencing flight prices, hotels, etc.

The User History: a few days ago I booked a cruise vacation with some friends out of Port Canaveral, 60 minutes or so outside of Orlando. The trip isn’t for almost a full year, so I wanted to just get an idea of flight prices from Oakland to Orlando. I headed over to Expedia to just check out the price ranges and get a feel for how much I’ll have to put aside for a flight. Since the trip is next February, I don’t plan on actually making this purchase until sometime this summer or next fall.

The Subject Line: Find your flight to Orlando backed by our Best Price Guarantee.

The E-Mail:

The Effectiveness: It’s directing a sale that they’re already running to me, a person who has already shown that they are interested in this particular destination. The email contains just enough text to show that it’s paid attention to my user habits and is offering it’s help without trying to make a super hard sale. The links are targeted and there’s not much in the email that’s off topic (see the Seattle to San Francisco rates in the yellow box – unrelated but I don’t blame them for throwing it out there). I do acknowledge that this may be a total coincidence that I happened to be in the market for a flight to Orlando and this routine email may just be perfectly timed, but at least it shows that they do know their audience.

The Result: I honestly think that I may be a bit more likely to make this purchase sooner than I had anticipated because of this email. I am a little bummed that the sale advertised doestn’t lower the price any more than I’d already found on the website (which was probably a sale price in the first place). I will definitely keep an eye out in regards to their Best Price Guarantee, a service that I never realized they offered until receiving the email.

So in conclusion, email marketing can be effective, even when sending to other marketers. It’s always a great learning experience to pay attention to the emails you get and think to yourself, “What can I learn from this?” and apply what you’ve learned to your own job. It’ll improve your performance and you’ll be better off.

March BAAMC Meeting

Posted on Mar 26, 2008 in Affiliate Marketing | 2 comments

Last week I was happy to attend the March lunch meeting of the Bay Area Affiliate Manager Coalition. It was a great meeting and I was super jazzed afterwards. I found, when trying to sit down and write this blog post, that I was way too excited about it. I’ve been looking for a subject to test out a video with, so I decided to bust out my trusted Aiptek HD Camera and throw a little HD action at you.

Please feel free to give me any feedback. And leave comments! Thanks!

Day 2 of Affiliate Summit – Suck All!

Posted on Feb 26, 2008 in Affiliate Marketing, Conferences & Networking |

Almost a month ago I was granted a press pass for the Affiliate Summit. I was excited to get into the bloghaus and blog about the day as it happened. I was thrilled to walk around and network with people. I really wanted to get some great coverage of the Keynote (coverage hell, I wanted to just listen too), but… none of that happened.

Why? Because Las Vegas hates me. And there are far too many germs here. And somehow during the day on Sunday…I developed a cold. A bad one. Damn this dry air & germs!

So I didn’t get up in time to make it downstairs to have breakfast AND make it to Jason Calacanis’ keynote like I wanted to. I managed to grab some breakfast and share some stats about our affiliate program with my colleague here with me from PsPrint to help out and then to man the booth. I sent her out to get the table top sign made that wasn’t made in time for the show. I station the booth for awhile and talk to some good people before it’s time for me to head off to the morning session I planned on going to.

Oh, incidentally, for anyone who wants some GREAT coverage of the keynote, check out J. Botter’s Blog.

I digress.

I attended this morning’s “Video Innovation in Affiliate Marketing” panel. Good stuff, although I was a bit disappointed in moderator Melissa Salas reading off a prepared script pretty much verbatim. But I really enjoyed the insight from video professionals, and it’s comforting to know that content really is king, and that production value isn’t as important. Woo Hoo! I was wondering how you’d go about monetizing a video, but Revver.com seems to answer that. I’ll definitely be checking that out when I get back to the joy that is desktop computer (this older laptop isn’t that great). I really enjoyed Gary Vaynerchuk’s sense of humor & ballsy honesty. I’m excited with my new Aiptek A-HD 720P 5MP CMOS High Definition Camcorder

Some great points from the panel session:

• Most people come on the internet for two P’s – pleasure or problems. If you solve someone’s problem, it’s a good video.
• KNOW what you’re talking about. As long as you know your subject, you can produce great content.
• In the next 12 months, you should test video on your site. By 18 months from now, if you don’t have video on your website you may be in trouble.
• Video really works to sell as it gives your brand more credibility & builds brand equity.
• Depth of information is quality will translate to a successful video.
• Work on integrating video into your current web experience for the most effective video experience.
• The average video watched online is about 2 minutes long.
• An enormous amount of video watching is done at work, so keep that in mind. Melissa added that a Click to Listen button is much appreciated by these people.
• In terms of size & format, go for the best quality you can when shooting, even if it has to be compressed when uploading online. If you can afford it, shoot in HD. It’s where everything is headed. (Side note – this makes me really glad that I bought my new HD mini cam! It’s the one in the picture.)

Day 3 should be good – hoping for some informative sessions and to feel better.