Recently, a client posed this question (I’m paraphrasing): "I have a list of 350,000 email addresses that I collected over the last 5 years. I don’t know how many of them are legitimate. I haven’t used their email addresses for anything before. I want to announce our re-launch and re-engage users. What’s the most cost effective way to get value from these email addresses?"

The first thing I did was verify that all 350,000 email addresses had, at some point, been willingly provided by individual users. The client confirmed that, while it may have been five years ago, all of these people gave an email address willingly. This is essential, but may still not be good enough (see below).

The second thing I focused on was the idea of "cost effective." Most ESP's will charge for every email sent.  Therefore, it’s tempting to find a way to scrub the defunct email addresses prior to sending the message. I’ve heard of people using email validators; but, I haven’t used one myself. 

Quickly, however, I shifted my attention to trying to understand the potential value of this big list. What makes these email addresses precious to the client? Conversely, what’s at stake if we misuse them?

Continue reading "Wrestling with Big, Old Lists"

It used to be so easy to follow conversations in that quaint old world of the blogosphere - simply follow the comments and track the other blogs linking to the site to read what others were saying. But then Digg and social bookmarking services showed up and extended the conversation to other social sites.

Then Twitter arrived and roundly disrupted the entire conversation by blasting it out into a fragmented scattering of 140-character questions, ideas and comments.

The digital conversation is now truly distributed. How do you keep up?

Continue reading "YackTrack Tackles Distributed Conversations"

I recently posted about Facebook’s new chat feature and white paper, and while I debated writing yet another Facebook post, this new feature is just too good to pass up.

Social media platforms are beginning to realize the need for statistical validation. In other words, people need to see some numbers to back up the buzz. Awhile ago, I mentioned YouTube Analytics. Now, Facebook brings you the Facebook Lexicon. Facebook Lexicon allows you to search for keywords that have been posted on Walls--be it a profile, group or page Wall. The details of exactly how it measure’s can be found here; but suffice it to say that it missed the mark.

Continue reading "Hey Facebook Lexicon, Track This: Disappointment"

In my nerddom, I recently discovered a Greasemonkey script for Google Analytics that is really, really cool. The folks over at Juice Analytics built this clever little snippet that allows for some advanced Google Analytics segmentation.

I recommend just reading Juice’s post on this. But, in summation it basically shows you the last three days worth of new referral links, plus any referrals in the last three days that have increased or decreased by 50%. It does the same thing for your keyword report. And...does all this with the click of a button. It’s really pretty amazing.

One of the reasons I love working at Viget, is because we really are a one-stop web shop. In other words, when I have a design or development question, I have some really incredible people just steps away that can answer my questions. Trace, being the smart chap that he is decided to ask Ben if we could take this script and tweak it a bit to work for the Network Locations report. Because Ben is a genius, it took him about 60 seconds and we now have another really great script...and you can download it if you like.

Continue reading "Sweet Greasemonkey Script for Google Analytics"

A comment in my earlier post raised a really good question about "packets" and referenced an article by Matt Zucker in AdAge who writes about including packets in social media strategy. Zucker defines packets as:

Brand experiences created expressly for networked groups of people with which to engage. They are useful, they are shareable, they support and sometimes they even advance the brand message.

While Zucker cites several Facebook apps and certain types of sharable content, the big idea for brands is to, "Consider how your brand can help meet a real need or real behavior by a small or large intimate group." This convergence of product and marketing to create "packets" (a concept we continue to explore), is an innovative strategy that continues to deliver success. As companies increasingly need to market through content and services—packets are tools that provide a tangible value to the customer, not unlike branded utilities, which are becoming the cornerstone of what’s next in marketing and advertising.

Continue reading "The Value of Branded Utilities"