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Internet Marketing News Briefs

January 1, 2003

How the New Federal Email Law Works.
10:15 A.M. by Bob Thomson

The House of Representatives passed Senate Bill S877, titled the CAN-SPAM Bill, "Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act of 2003."

>> Here is a summary of the new law and its impact:

- The new law took effect January 1, 2004

- The federal law regulates ALL commercial e-mail including solicited and unsolicited messages

- The federal law requires commercial e-mailers to include truthful header information (no aliasing or spoofing!)

- The federal law requires commercial e-mailers to provide an opt-out tool, such as an e-mail or web-based form that works for at least 30 days after receipt of a mail

- The federal law requires commercial e-mailers to use relevant subject lines that truthfully describe the e-mail contents

- The federal law requires commercial e-mailers to process opt-out requests within ten (10) business days of receipt of that request

- The federal law requires commercial e-mailers to put a physical postal mail address in every message

- For unsolicited commercial email, e-mailers must provide a "clear and conspicuous" notice that messages are in fact advertisments, such as "ADV:".

- The email identifies the sender as the advertiser; 3rd party e-mail services that send mail on behalf of their clients are responsible for meeting the new requirements; As such, if you use one of these services, you must keep your service provider updated with "unsubscribes" and "opt-outs".

- All commercial e-mail MUST comply with these requirements

- The only exception is for Opt-in email messages; the requirement to label messages as ads does not apply to senders with opt-in consent.

- Enforcement will be handled by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC)

- Fines can be up to $11,000 per violation; states can sue for up to $250 per message up to a maximum of $2 million; ISP's can sue for damages up to $1 million

- If a Spammer collects email addresses off the Internet, or uses a computer script to randomly generate adresses, these are considered "Aggravated Violations" which can triple the fines; State fines can increase from $250 to $750 per Spammed email address, with a cap increasing from $2,000,000
to $6,000,000

- Advertisers are liable for fraudulent e-mail marketing activities

- There is NO legal recourse for consumers, they cannot sue for damages.

*** Disclaimer: I am not an attorney. The above text should NOT be interpreted as legal advice. For legal advice, please seek out a competent attorney.

|------ CONCLUSIONS ------|

The good news is that MOST of the above requirements are already being met by honest, legitimate commercial e-mail marketers.

BUT, how is all of this going to realistically unfold????

The FTC plans to go after major offenders first, i.e. spa~mmers using fraudulent, deceptive activities.

A primary area of FTC enforcement will be ensuring the speedy removal of "unsubscribes" or "opt-outs". Commercial e-mailers must process these request within 10 days!! This should be easy for most small and medium size businesses, but could be problematic for larger, bureaucratic enterprises with extensive email lists and multiple vendors.

The new law is also open-ended in several areas that will evolve and become part of it over time.

For example, the FTC has one year to come up with a definition of what constitutes commercial e-mail. They have also been given 18 months to finalize a plan for "coding" commercial e-mails to better identify them as ads.

That's going to pose deliverability problems for many legitimate marketers, as the ISP's will use the codes in subject lines to filter out these mails into bulk or junk folders.

There are also "gray areas" that will need to be sorted out.

One such gray area is how to treat Ezines and newsletters under the new law.

Since a newsletter's prime function is to inform or educate the recipient, some legal experts believe them to be exempted from the new CAN-SPAM law. With newsletters, advertising is not usually the sole or prime purpose of the e-mail.

Last but not least, the "Do Not Email" list concept will also be planned and tested for possible incorporation into the law.
However, many experts believe this to be an unrealistic solution to the problems facing e-mail recipients.

We agree.

 

October 10, 2003

Search Engine Visibilty -- A Ranking Primer, Part 2
11:15 A.M. by Bob Thomson

Picking up where we left off yesterday, here is the second half of our search engine ranking primer.

6) Broken Links & Errors - if your site has a high percentage of broken links and 404's, you may be penalized by some search engines. To maintain the most up-to-date index, many search engines will penalize or drop sites that jeopardize the integritry and relevancy of the engine's search results. As a rule, search engines don't like broken links, so you need to stay on top of this and fix links when you find them.

7) Backward Links - many search engines, including Google, will use the democratic aspect of "Internet Linking" as a measure of website popularity and importance. A link to your site is like an endorsement from another site. But, this aspect of improving your Online visibilty is more complex than meets the eye. For example, most link exchange programs and software are worthless unless you use them correctly. A link from a "bad neighborhood" (gray Google PageRank bar) can actually hurt your site's ranking in some cases. Don't forget that some gray bars are not all bad, particularly if the site or the associated web page is "new". A link to your site from a site that has nothing to do with your site's theme will usually provide you no "popularity credits". Also, because many websites are poorly designed, search engines may not be able to access your link at all. I don't even bother exchanging links with sites that have no site map or have no search engine friendly jump link.

8) Content Pages - although the mantra of having index-able content on your website has been pounded to death over the last few years, it's worth repeating because of it's importance. The fact is, the more content pages you have, the more opportunities you have for indexing and improving existing page rankings. You should develop an optimized content page for each of your industries keywords if possible. Use the keyword for the page title in your head tags. Make sure there is a good density of keywords in your body text. Using H1 and H2 tags has also gotten us good results is our testing.

For example, check out the following pages we have ranked #2 and #3 in Google for the keyword "direct marketing experts"

8) Meta Tags - Meta tags are page attributes or characteristics that provide information to web indexers and search engine spiders. Today, meta tags are generally ignored by the majority of search engines out there. The meta tag "description" is used by some search engines to generate a description of your site when they index it. However if a description is NOT present, the search engine will create a description for your site to go along with your site link.

Today, meta tags are of little use when calculating your web site's page ranking. In the past they were used heavily by search engines to get the "theme" or category of a web page. Because of the abuses of meta tags over the years, search engines made a business decision to ignore or place minimum weight on them in their ranking algorithms. Probably the most ignored meta tag these days is the keyword tag. It is not given much weight if any at all.

Much to our surprise, there are still quite a few people out there who place a lot of importance on meta tags. If you come across an SEO (search engine optimization) consultant that tells you "meta tags are the key" to optimizing your pages, run away. Don't get me wrong, some meta tags are useful, but they have little or no effect on rankings.

The only exceptions are title tags and heading tags, which are helpful to Google and other engines in page ranking and determining relevance/importance.

That's all for now, I hope this primer has been helpful. :-)

 

October 9, 2003

Search Engine Visibilty -- A Ranking Primer, Part 1
11:15 A.M. by Bob Thomson

Search Engine Rancg is still the most critical aspect to sustained web marketing success. Often misunderstood by webmasters, over-reported by analysts and over-complicated by vendors, search engine visibility is really a simple affair when you stick to the basic industry guidelines.

Here is a quick reading list of some tips and pointers on Search engine visibilty and getting good rankings.

1) Submission - some search engines you will have to submit to while others (like Google, AskJeeves and AltaVista) prefer to discover and crawl your site on their own. With regard to submission frequency, once per month is a safe bet to avoid being labeled a spammer, but many webmasters have reported having no problem submitting weekly. Definitely DO NOT submit daily. That's asking for trouble. FYI, there are a few good services that will submit your site for you each month for approximately $200-$250 per year or you can invest in a piece of software and do it yourself. GetHits is a reputable company in this area and that's who we use.

2) HTML Design & Code Elements - Simple page errors and typos (like missing or unclosed HEAD tags for example) can cause a search engine spider to incorrectly index a page or ignore it. You should triple-check each page before publishing it. Bad design such as incorporating FLASH intro's and other spider unfriendly components can really hurt you. If the spiders can't find important HTML components in the expected locations in a page, then the they may penalize your page or simply exit without finishing the indexing of that page.

3) Server Response - Did your website respond when the search engine spiders attemped to crawl it? Having a reliable webhost can make or break you. Sites hosted by "Free web hosting" companies often get penalized. Also, do you use a robots.txt file to direct spiders to certain areas or do you allow a "free crawl". Some webmasters claim using a robots.txt file gives them better results but our research has shown no attributable difference when using this file versus not using it.

4) Database Indexing Barriers - Most search engine spiders will only index static pages, not dynamic pages created by software products like ColdFusion or PHP applications. For example, a dynamic page URL might look like http://www.somesite.com/cgi?ab3h#76.cfm. Characters like question marks and pound signs are warning flags to spiders. Indexing robots will usually avoid dynamic URL's since the spider can fall into a trap of being presented with an infinite number of web page URL's within a single site.

5) The Company You Keep - Many search engines will ban web sites hosted by "free providers" because of spam problems associated with free hosts. You should select a reliable "paid host" and one that DOES NOT host adult sites either. Adult sites are notorious for being some of the worst spammers, so if you are hosted on the same network, you could be in for a nasty surprise.

More tips tomorrow in Part 2. :-)

 

September 29, 2003

Home Page Usability Gurus 'How To' Book Gets More Attention
11:15 A.M. by Bob Thomson

As ecommerce sites seek to improve ROI and conversions, Jakob Nielsen and Marie Tahir's book, "Homepage Usability: 50 Websites Deconstructed", originally released in November 2001, is once again getting attention from merchants. The book uses case studies from Amazon.com, USA Today, IBM and Yahoo! websites as well as other brand name ecommerce players.

The book is organized into what the authors call "major design guidelines to ensure homepage usability.”

These guidelines include:

• communicating the site’s mission or purpose
• developing content
• links and navigation
• search
• graphics and animation
• page titles
• URL conventions
• news and press releases
• advertising

The details of these guideline can be used like a blueprint or template when developing your web projects to ensure optimal site efficiency and usability. The book takes a "highly visual" approach to presenting critical information about home page usability, and includes dozens of screenshots of home pages to make it's points clear to readers.

Related News Items:

Homepage Usability: 50 Websites Deconstructed
WebDevInfo.com Sept 29 2003

 

September 22, 2003

Top 10 Affiliate Programs of August 2003
10:25 A.M.

Here are the Top 10 Affiliate Programs of 2003 as ranked by Refer-it. Rankings are determined based on the total number of clickthroughs each program received on Refer-it.com

1. Herbal Sensations Viagra Alternative
2. E-Commerce Exchange
3. Kiss.com
4. ClubMom
5. DreamMates
6. Niche Marketing Research
7. General Vitamin Corporation
8. iSyndicate
9. HotelQuest
10. Amazon.com-Books

 

September 9, 2003

Judge Rules in Favor of Contextual Popups
10:25 A.M. by Bob Thomson

A federal district court judge last Friday rejected a legal argument brought by the U-Haul truck rental company against competitive popup advertising. U-Haul was seeking both financial damages and an injunction against the pop-up ads being served by WhenU, an Internet advertising company.

At the crux of the case are popup advertisements that are pushed to Internet users when they visit certain websites. Companies like Gator Corporation and WhenU give away free software that allows them to track websites a user visits, thus allowing these companies to serve popups that match the theme of the visited websites.

More specifically, U-Haul claims that when Internet users visit their website, they are hit with popups from a rival company. U-Haul claims these popup ads are a violation of its trademarks and copyrights and also violate unfair competition laws.

Judge Gerald Bruce Lee disagreed, stating the ads don't violate any laws since WhenU's software doesn't copy or use U-Haul's trademark or copyrighted material. Judge Lee also concluded that software from companies like Gator and WhenU is legal since computer users must choose to download the pop-up software themselves. It's a matter of choice.

As a result, Lee threw out U-Haul's lawsuit, which sought to ban WhenU's software serving ads to its visitors.

Related News Items:

Judge Rebuffs Legal Challenge to Pop-Up Ads
BizReport.com Sept 9 2003

September 4, 2003

Critics Take Aim at Contextual Advertising
12:55 P.M. by Bob Thomson

At the recent Search Engine Strategies 2003 Conference & Expo in San Jose, California major players like Google and Overture were selling visitors on their new contextual ad solutions for advertisers. For Google, that product was AdSense, and for Overture, the product is Content Match. At the expo, both had the opportunity to extol the benefits of their newest business lead-generating programs.

With AdSense, Google uses its algorithmic search formulas to find pages for certain subject matter and then serve up relevant keyword-based paid listings. Overture's Content Match is quite comparable.

However, a new study performed by search marketing agency NewGate Internet has indicated that contextual advertising is more expensive and less efficient when it comes to registration and sales conversions. According to Brad Byrd of NewGate Internet...

In a cost comparison of Google's AdWords and AdSense programs:

• A large company (for example, pharmaceutical) looking for leads would pay 30% more cost-per-click fees when using AdSense;

• Click-through rates were 4.2% higher for search-based advertising versus content-matched advertising;

• Cost per registration ( for example, a newsletter signup) was 2 X higher for contextual ads versus search-based ads

• For Online retail sales merchants, like a gift shop, the figures were even worse: cost-per-click was 40% higher using Google's contextual ads & click-through rates were 14 X higher using search-based advertising. In this particular case, AdSense came in at a surprising 0.1% conversion rate.

"If I were an advertiser, point-one percent looks like a banner ad campaign not one I would expect for a search ad," Byrd said in an interview with Internetnews.com.

Another firm, DidIt.com claims to validate NewGate's research with their own similar study. Did-it.com CEO Kevin Lee, in an interview with Internetnews.com added "...customers are not necessarily in the same frame of mind when they are reading an article as when they are doing a search."

To be fair to Google, there are certainly other variables which could contribute to poor conversion. Recent studies by Gartner Group and other industry analysts have shown that many ecommerce sites suffer from poor design and usability, which is a contributing factor to poor conversion rates. So for argument's sake, it's possible the random sample of sites tracked by NewsGate Internet suffred from bad design or some other obstacle to gaining a registration or sale.

Susan Wojcicki, the creator of the AdSense program rebuffed Byrd's critique by stating NewGate Internet's research was based on a narrow statistical sample and that Google's numerous, more exhaustive studies in this area show a strong correlation between contextal ads and conversion rates. "I think it's hard to comment on findings when you have only have two data points," Wojcicki told internetnews.com.

According to Byrd, the key is to keep a close eye on your contextual ad performance and expenses and to isolate them in your analysis to get a pure look at the numbers. If you look at the combined performance of both search ads and contextual ads, you will not necessarily see patterns that warrant your attention.

At the end of the day, the real key to contextual ad success is testing and tweaking your ads as well as using good tracking tools to monitor your conversions and ROI.

Related News Items:

Contextual Ad Debate Rouses Critics
Internetnews.com Aug 29 2003

 

September 3, 2003

Is the 'RSS Newsletter' the Answer to Decreasing Opt-in Email Numbers?
12:25 P.M. by Bob Thomson

Spam is wreaking all kinds havoc on the legitimate Internet business world as the email inbox has become the "holy grail" for Spammers, scammers and punky virus developers. Spam is now a daily problem for online businesses, publishers and marketers who simply want to run an honest operation.

Dealing with the Spam problem has forced these entrepreneurs to develop counter-measures for the onslaught of email filters, blacklists and growing numbers of angry subscribers who mistakenly believe the opt-in newsletter they subscribed to is Spamming them. There's a lot of chaos in the email marketplace and it's leaving a lot of dead soldiers in its wake. According to Chris Pirillo, an email newsletter entrepreneur that sends out 400,000 newsleters a week:

"E-mail is dead, period, I don't care what kind of legislation goes through, people aren't signing up for newsletters anymore. People are assuming that every e-mail publisher is a spammer." Pirillo also estimates that only 5% of his total subscriber base is actually reading his email newsletters, after factoring in all of the Spam noise, mail bounces and filter fallout.

Email readers and publishers alike are frustrated to the point where something will probably have to give. Some online analysts believe RSS (Really Simple Syndication -or- Rich Site Summary) is the answer.

RSS is an XML-based syndication method that allows publishers to post content to news aggregators, who in turn offer it to subscribers. The feeds are read through a browser like application called a newsreader. Some readers can plug into popular browsers like Outlook. The real benefit is that RSS is totally Spam free since it's a closed, one-way information channel.

According to About.com's Heinz Tschabitscher: "The best thing about RSS is that if you subscribe to an RSS feed, you only get what you want. If you tell the feed reader to stop collecting a site's feed, it will stop. And there's no spam."

Nick Bradbury, developer of FeedDemon, an RSS news reader application for Windows, agrees: "The main benefit of RSS is the one-way communication. I see RSS changing the way publishers communicate with readers because it provides a secure channel...No one has to worry about spam."

However, using the RSS format as a Spam-free newsletter solution does have its critics.

SitePoint.com editor Matt Mickiewicz believes that RSS needs to evolve into a more efficient platform in terms of the resources it uses to syndicate news. Mickiewicz points out that RSS was only developed to syndicate headlines and short descriptions, not lengthy and weighty newsletter texts which can suck up bandwidth. He also said it's nearly impossible to track ads and other metrics like how many people are receiving and reading the RSS newsletters.

Related News Items:

Is RSS the Answer to the Spam Crisis?
SiliconValley.Internet.com Sep 2 2003 5:48AM ET

RSS Feeds are the Better Email Newsletters
About.com

 

August 29, 2003

AOL Time Warner Sued By ISP
11:15 A.M. by Bob Thomson

A Texas-based web hosting company by the name of C I Host has claimed that AOL is illegally blocking e-mails from CI Hosts' paying customers. CI Host stated that AOL is also violating a court order in doing so. A temporary restraining order was issued late last week by a District Court Judge to keep AOL from further blocking the ISP's emails.

AOL claims they are simply ratcheting up their filtering systems in a fight against the growing Spam problem, but C I Host contends that AOL unfairly blacklisted the ISP as a major source for Spam and as such has cut off all of its customers from sending e-mail to AOL's customers. C I Host is promising further litigation to recover monetary damages.

AOL claims the suit is without foundation and plans to fight it to the fullest extent in court. AOL has also stated that it is complying with last week's court order to the extent it could.

At the center of this controversy is AOL's new policy of blocking dynamically generated e-mail addresses on residential broadband networks. Some small businesses have complained that AOL is blocking their mails as well. Some small companies route their emails through residential broadband cable networks and as such are being blocked by AOL.

Nonetheless, the portal giant says it will continue its war against Spam and that it's new filtering policy has reduced customer complaints about Spam by 90 percent. The next hearing on this case is scheduled for September 12.

[Complete Story at Internet.com: ISP Wants AOL to Stop E-mail Block ]

 

August 28, 2003

Alabama Spammers May See Slammer
10:03 A.M. by Bob Thomson

Earthlink, a major Internet Service Provider in the U.S., is seeking $15 million in damages from an Alabama spamming ring that illegally used its service to send out hundreds of millions of Spam emails. The Spam ring used stolen credit cards to purchase hundreds of dial-up accounts that were then used as "Spam machines" to blast out 250 million plus email solicitations.

EarthLink is suing the group called the "Alabama Spammers", whose name was given because of the ring's use of Birmingham, Alabama telephone lines to connect with Earthlink email servers. The suit is seeking damages related to spamming, theft and email spoofing (using false sender addresses in email headers).

The investigation is ongoing to identify as many as 100 participants in the spam ring in both Alabama and Vancouver, Canada. When appropriate, subpoenas will be issued to domain name registrars and other email vendors to help identify all of the spammers.

Earthlink is confident the perpetrators will be caught and will win their suit. In May of this year they won a $16 Million fedral judgment and an injunction against a rogue email marketer called the "Buffalo Spammer".

[Complete Story at Silicon.com: "Alabama Spammers" sued by ISP ]

Related News Items:

EarthLink takes action against 'Alabama Spammers'
ZDNet Aug 28 2003 4:56AM ET

EarthLink files lawsuit against 100 spammers in Alabama, Vancouver
Miami Herald Aug 27 2003 2:21PM ET

Amazon Sues Web Marketers for Faking E-Mail
Yahoo! via Yahoo! Aug 27 2003 4:28PM ET

 

August 27, 2003

Spammers Using Mostly HTML Tricks to Fool ISP Filters & Users
11:15 A.M. by Bob Thomson

It's estimated that 50-70% of email that arrives at a company's doorstep is Spam. Thus, the battle rages on between ISP's and Spammers and the newest generation of email filtering has Spammers working furiously to find new ways to get their solicitations past them. HTML mail is now the most common email format used in getting Spam through the ISP filters.

According to industry expert John Graham-Cumming of ActiveState Corporation in Vancoucer, approximately 80 to 90 per cent of all Spam is being sent using HTML. This has caused some people and businesses to take a negative position on sending or accepting HTML mail. It is considered potentially harmful since objects (like a virus) could be hidden in the code with users unaware of its presence.

Images and web bugs can also be embedded in HTML, which can fool filters and be harmful to computers.

Nonetheless, Spammers have a few new tricks up their sleeves for getting past the filters. One method is simply using plain text instead of HTML formatting. Since most Spammers are now using HTML, plain text emails with cleverly modified stop words have an excellent chance of getting past the filters.

The other methods being used are HTML and MIME (Multi-purpose Internet Mail Extensions), a process by which e-mail sends attachments and other non-textual data. According to Graham-Cumming, MIME is used heavily by spammers to fool the ISP's. Spammers also like HTML because of it's ability to include rich graphics in mails and the ability to obfuscate messages (i.e. use hidden code tricks).

In contrast, the newest generation of spam filters is working quite well and Spammers are feeling the pinch. As a result, they are actively developing new techniques to get past the filters. Most of these tricks revolve around fooling highly simplistic keyword-based filters.

Using HTML obfuscation, Spammers can even tell when when a recipient has opened the mail, thus validating the email address as "active". This is accomplished when a graphic loads in the recipients email client. The graphic acts like a beacon, notifying the sender that the mail was received without problems.

The easiest method for fooling the simplistic filters is to place characters or spaces between the letters of a word. A character such as a tilde ~ is quite popular. This technique allows people to recognize the filter words easily, but a filter would most likely be confused by it. For example, Vi~agra.

The newer, "smart filters" actually break down the word string and reconstruct it to determine if it is possibly related to Spam. In fact, Spammers using these character tricks may fool the simple filters but they are actually "training" the newer generation of filters to detect the trick in the future.

Another clever method used by Spammers is slicing email messages vertically into strips, making it hard for the filter to read. Once the strips are past the filter, the message is stitched together and presented to the user.

It's going to be interesting to see how things develop in the coming months and years in what appears to be a never-ending battle.

[Complete Story at Canadait.com: HTML e-mail an open invitation to spammers: expert ]

 

August 26, 2003

Arms Race for Users and Advertisers in Full Swing
09:37 A.M. by Bob Thomson

As you may already know, Google, Yahoo! and MSN are embroiled in a continuing battle for Internet market share, for users, clicks and advertisers. Even eBay has gotten into the mix. Here's a quick overview of the emerging landscape of the search and search advertising markets:

According to U.S. Bancorp Piper Jaffray, search-based advertising is estimated to top $2 billion in 2003 and is expected to grow by 35% per year and reach $7 Billion by 2007.

Online advertisers are placing ads beside search results because it provides much better results than banner ads.

Google is at this point the leader in the online search industry.

Yahoo! is purchasing Overture to add to it's portfolio a search-based advertising business. This was done to compete head on with Google for this high-growth market.

Yahoo! will eventually dump Google's non-paid search results once it's own systems are integrated with AltaVista, Fast and a new and improved Inktomi engine.

Microsoft is developing its own advanced search technology and is now crawling the Web with MSNbot to index as many pages as it can find.

To combat Yahoo!, Overture and MSN, Google has been working furiously to to bring new features and products to bear including news search, the Froogle.com price comparison engine as well as an updated browser tool-bar. Other improvements include a tilde operator ~ which can be used in front of a search term to find listings with similar terms and phrases.

Some marketers are swithing over to search advertising from auction-based advertising companies like eBay.

According to U.S. Bancorp Piper Jaffray, search advertising could rival the efficiencies created by eBay in the long term.

[Complete Story at Siliconvalley.com: Net giants battle for targeted ad market ]

 

August 21, 2003`

FTC Claims 'Do Not Email List' Would Not Work

According to various industry experts, Spam now makes up more than half of all outbound e-mails. Due to growing concerns, the US Congress has been pushing hard to create legislation to fight the mounting Spam epidemic.

The success of the FTC's 'Do Not Call' registry has prompted requests for a similar list to prevent unwanted email solicitations. 32 million phone numbers are currently on the FTC's do not call list, which will be enforced beginning on October 1st.

However, on Tuesday Federal Trade Commission Chairman Tim Muris claimed the Congressional push to establish a 'Do Not Email' list to prevent Spam won't work.

According to Muris, the facts that Spammers are already ignoring current laws and that many operate in foreign countries puts them well beyond the reproach of current anti-spam legislation proposals. In contrast to telemarketing, Spammers can mask their identity and also operate without controls when they do so in other countries.

Muris said a combination of governement intervention and technological improvement will be needed to make any real impact on the Spam problem. He believes that ISP's need to provide users with more advanced tools for Spam filtering.

Muris added that the current Senate proposals being considered may actually make the problem worse by allowing Spammers to stop or move their operations before they can be charged and prosecuted. One Senate bill would even make it more difficult to prosecute sales organizations that use Spammers to promote their products or services.

[Complete Story at BizReport.com: FTC Chair: Do-Not-Spam List Won't Help ]

 

August 19, 2003

Website Failures a Leading Cause of Lost Sales

According to a new study designed to evaluate the performance of the top e-commerce sites, website application failures caused Internet retailers to lose significant revenue. The study performed by the Business Internet Group of San Francisco and TeaLeaf Technology revealed website problems on 10 of the 16 sites that were part of the study.

Summary of Findings

• ecommerce site selection for the study was based on a Keynote index of the leading business sites (based on performance & availability).

• ecommerce sites studied: Amazon, Best Buy, Eddie Bauer, JCPenney, Office Depot, Office Max, Sears, Staples, Target, and Wal-Mart.

• Website problems resulted in $278 in lost revenue per transaction on average.

• The study also found that consumers spent an average of 7 minutes on errant pages in an effort to complete their transaction.

• Of the errors that ocurred, 12% involved application and Web server problems, such as blank pages and 404 errors (file not found).

• 18% of errors were associated with user failure which prevented users from completing transactions (ex: wrong address).

• 35 percent of sites had incorrect data errors associated with software programming, database applications and user errors.

• Eddie Bauer ranked highest in website performance.
  
  

[Complete Story at CyberAtlas: E-Commerce Evaluation Reveals Errors ]

August 18, 2003

Google Envy and Fear Shaping the Future of Search

There's no denying that Google is the king of search engines. Millions of web surfers use it to search approximately 3 billion Web pages to find information on just about any conceivable topic. Google now handles 200 million search requests per day, having risen like a phoenix since their humble beginnings in a Stanford University dorm room five years ago.

Google's value proposition is simple: find the best, most relevant information as quickly as possible for its users. Google does a great job of this, better than any other engine out there in most cases. They have also outdone most of their competitors in terms of paid contextual search platforms and programs.

As a result of Google's mega success, competitors like Microsoft and Yahoo! are spending huge amounts of money and resources to capture more than their current piece of the market pie and to unseat Google as the king of the hill. Both are searching for unique ways to erode Google's market share, which could end up reshaping how and where people find information on the Net.

It's estimated Yahoo! will end up spending $2 Billion to thwart Google and similarly Microsoft will spend an undisclosed chunk of its $49 Billion dollar nest egg.

And, the search engine king is attracting critics. Google's dominance has created fear and loathing in its competitors as well as online businesses that depend on monetizing their Google SERPS (search engine result pages). Getting dropped by Google for whatever reason can be devastating to an online business. Make one simple mistake and your site could be off the radar.

Additionally, some analysts believe that Google has created the equivalent of a "website cast system" through its PageRank platform.

PageRank rates the relevance of websites based on the number of relevant links from other websites. The fear is that Google is creating a sort of "page ranking oligarchy", where the popularity of most small and medium sized commercial and non-commercial sites is largely determined by a smaller group of high-ranking authority sites.

As of yet, Google has not publically disclosed how it intends to protect itself from Yahoo! and Microsoft. Company executives continue to decline interviews. Nonetheless, Google is moving forward with it's own growth plan and will soon move it's offices to a new 500,000 square foot complex.

Fueling the competitive search engine market is the fact that advertisers will spend $2 billion this year for paid listings, with significant growth predicted in the future.

At this point in time, Google is still in the best position to maintain and gain market share in this cut-throat industry.

[Complete Story at Miami.com: Google Power: Heavyweight foes look for ways to steal thunder from the Internet search engine ]

 

August 14, 2003

New Study Finds 17% of Legitimate Email is Being Blocked by Spam Filtering

An email deliverability study released by Return Path, Inc. finds that a whopping 17% of opt-in e-mail messages are being incorrectly blocked or filtered by the top U.S. ISP's. The delivery rate of opt-in email dropped 2% compared to fourth quarter 2002 and dropped 5% from the third quarter of 2002.

Summary of Findings

• Study period covered the first 5 months of 2003

• Study utilized "Mailbox Monitor", an email deliverability tracking service.

• Study tracked rates of delivery, blocking and filtering of nearly 10,000 e-mail campaigns (sent by clients using Return Path’s Assurance Services).

• Blocking and filtering rates in the study ranged from 1% percent to 46%

• Worst performing ISP's (most false positives/delivery failures):
  

• Mail.com (38%)
• NetZero (34%)
• Compuserve (31%)
• AOL (25%)
  
  
• Best performing ISP's (least false positives/delivery failures):
  
  
  • Yahoo! (4%)
  • Earthlink (7%)
  • BellSouth (7%)

   

Conclusions

As ISP's ratchet up to protect themsleves and their subscribers from Spam, a substantial percentage of legitimate email is being caught in filters.

According to the study, email deliverability continues to be problematic with consistent downturns in email delivery percentages.

Companies should monitor, analyze and make the required adjustments to consistently improve deliverability.

 

August 13, 2003

Forrester Predicts 5 Million U.S Households Per Year Increase in Online Shopping

According to industry analyst Forrester Research, approximately 5 million new households per year will shop online during each of the next 5 years. This translates to a growth rate of 67%, bumping the online shopper community up to 63 million households by 2008.

Forrester Research Summary

• Retail & travel industry revenue will grow at a rate of 19% (from $95.7 billion in 2003 to $229.9 billion in 2008)

• Majority of ecommerce growth is expected in product categories that are either non-traditional in ecommerce or have not really been embraced by online consumers historically, i.e. food & beverage, sporting goods, home furnishings, etc.

• The most growth will occur in food and beverage product categories (online sales increase from $3.7 billion to $17.4 billion)

• Online sales of sporting goods is predicted to grow by 350%, an increase from $1.7 billion to $6 billion. Approximately one-third of online sporting goods sales will be of used products.

• Forrester predicts online sales of books will fall to 3% of total online sales by 2008, from 14% of total e-commerce sales in 2000

• Web site usability and user-friendly design features are creating improved sales conversions. According to Forrester, 84% of the top 92 e-commerce sites (by total sales) offer some form of zoom feature for viewing product pictures in addition to other user-friendly features.

[Complete Story at Internetretailer.com: 25 million new households to shop online over next 5 years, Forrester says ]

 

August 11, 2003

Squeaky Wheels Get 'Google Grease'

Some web publishers participating in AdSense, Google's contextual advertising program, went ballistic last week forcing the search engine giant to pull back from a new feature that displays "related search results" and blank Google-branded text ads when Google cannot find relevant ads to serve.

Google claimed the blank ads and related search listings help bring relevance to otherwise unrelevant or less-than-interesting pages and would make publisher ad space more valuable. Publishers bluntly disagreed, firing back that if Google will not credit publishers for clicks on these links, then they are stealing traffic and potential revenue from them.

Following a slew of emails from disgruntled AdSense customers, Google quickly announced last Thuresday it was discontinuing the new feature until further improvements can be made to address publisher concerns.

Google may be in for real fight here, as it claims it will not pay publishers for clicks on paid listings contained in related search results. Google claims that tracking the user path from these links would be too difficult.

Now hold on a second, isn't complexity and overcoming technical difficulty one of Google's calling cards? This excuse may seem disingenuous to many publishers.

Nonetheless, Google said it will re-release the feature but will provide the publishers with controls to adjust it.

Some industry experts think Google will have to give in to its publisher demands for revenue share on paid listing search results or risk having publisher's end their participation in the AdSense program.

It seems Google will have to come up with a system for tracking and crediting these clicks in order to please it's web publisher partner sites. Anything less probably won't cut it.

[Complete Story at Internetnews.com: Google Backtracks on AdSense Changes ]

 

August 7, 2003

Direct Marketing Association Publishes 'International Anti-Spam Law' Report

In an effort to help its members keep commercial email promotions sent abroad legal, the DMA published a summary report of the spam laws in 41 countries as well as the European Union.

The report summarizes important information rules and regulations concerning the various national laws. For example, opt-in, opt-out, procedural conditions, etc. are all outlined for each country.

The report comes at a critical time in Europe, where by October 31st is the deadline for the European Union (EU) to establish "opt-in" email as the industry standard for accepted commercial email practices for its member nations.

The report also comes on the heels of mounting pressure on the DMA's subsidiary, the Association for Interactive Marketing (AIM), to release it's detailed Spam guildelines and best practices document.

That document's release has been delayed several times over the last few months, causing some AIM members to question the motives of the independent interactive marketing standards group.

The big problem the DMA faces is coming up with a set of standards acceptable to the DMA and AIM as well as its member communities. The major rub has been the DMA's refusal to define Spam as "unsolicited commercial bulk email", but rather as "email sent fraudulently".

In fact, the rift between the DMA and some of its members is so large, that several have terminated memberships and or resigned from DMA committe positions.

The Interactive Advertisng Bureau (IAB) email committee chairman, Michael Mayor, has also made his position clear. He stated this week that if the DMA submits a weak set of commercial email standards he would not accept them and would instead publish AIM's original set of best practices (a document with specific definition of Spam and which was created prior to the DMA acquiring AIM).

It's quite obvious the DMA has a serious conflict of interest on its hands which will be sure to produce firey debates for many months to come.

[Complete Story at Internetnews.com: DMA Releases International Anti-Spam Law Summary ]

 

August 6, 2003

Top 10 Affiliate Programs for July, 2003

As ranked by referit.com, a media & analysis unit of Internet.com focused on the affiliate industry. Ranking is determined by the monthly total # of clickthroughs each program receives from refer-it's web site.

1. Herbal Sensations Viagra Alternative
2. Niche Marketing Research
3. CenterDreamMates
4. Kiss.com
5. iSyndicate
6. E-Commerce Exchange
7. ClubMom
8. General Vitamin Corporation
9. HotelQuest
10. Amazon.com-Books

*Notes: No new programs made the list. All of the above affiliate programs were in June's Top 10, only the ranking order changed for July.

Source: Refer-It

 

August 5, 2003

Some Think 'Association for Interactive Marketing' is Defending Unsolicited Commercial Email

The Direct Marketing Association is caught up in a battle with some of its members about it's upcoming guidelines for accepted business email practices.

Just this week, the Association for Interactive Marketing (AIM), a subsidiary of the DMA, again delayed the release of e-mail guidelines which were supposed to bring "best practices" to the email marketing industry. The new guidelines were promised in early June and have since been put on hold twice.

According to Ian Oxman, a member of AIM, the delay in publishing the current version of the guidelines was due to the DMA's fear that it may confuse US legislators as they review various spam bills to become law. The DMA's definition of spam is also unclear, but it openly states it supports spam bills that only punish commercial emailers engaged in fraudulent activities, not non-fraudulent senders of unsolicited commercial e-mail.

In sharp contrast to the majority of commercial email marketers who have accepted the opt-in business model, the DMA has not embraced this as an industry standard. At first thought, this might seem inappropriate or unethical, but when you look at the 80-year history of the DMA it actually makes some sense.

Before the Internet became a commercial marketing vehicle, the DMA focused exclusively on supporting traditional direct mailers and direct advertisers. With postal direct mail, there is no such thing as "opt-in" or "opt-out" marketing. So it seems a logical extension that the DMA would want to protect unsolicited commercial email just as it has protected unsolicited commercial postal direct mail.

In some ways, it could be argued that this perceived "protectionism" by the DMA is similar to what the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) does to protect free speech. The DMA is afraid that there's no turning back once laws are enacted that outlaw unsolicited commercial email of any kind.

However, there is one major flaw with this line of thinking. With direct mail, there are substantial physical limits or restraints that do not hinder their email counterparts: cost and time investment.

Spam is easy to send and it's cheap, often much less than a penny per email address. This makes email marketing an easy target for abuse. In contrast, direct mail is not something that can really be abused since it is so expensive to execute. Think about it, how many times have you received the exact same spam mail? I have received the same Spam offer 5 or 6 times in the same day. This doesn't happen with direct mail due to the high cost of distribution.

Nonetheless, it's going to be very interesting to see the DMA's guidelines when they are finally published.

[Complete Story at Internetnews.com: DMA Delays E-mail Guidelines Again ]

 

August 4, 2003

Yahoo! Sponsors Amateur Yodeler Search

So, you want to be a TV star huh? Well now may be your big chance!

Yahoo! has launched a nationwide promotion and contest to find an amateur yodeler to appear in its new TV commercial.

Yahoo! is slated to visit eight cities across the US and kicked off the promotion in New York City last Friday. Cities to follow include Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Seattle, Minneapolis, Kansas City, Missouri, and lastly Austin, Texas. Contestants must yodel the Yahoo! theme and also perform a one-minute yodel of their own design.

Don't worry if you can't make it to one of above cities, video submissions will also be accepted Online. Professional yodeler Wylie Gustafson, the guy that performs the now famous Yahoo! yodel, will host the yodeling events. Judging panels for the contest will be comprised of local celebrities in each city.

To facilitate the contest, Yahoo! has setup a yodeling site at http://yodel.yahoo.com. Here, surfers can vote for their favorite semi-finalist from each of the eight cities and from the pool of online video entries. The resulting nine finalists will compete for the Yahoo! amateur yodeler "national championship" to be held in New York City.

The First Place prize is $10,000 and a Yahoo! TV commercial spot.

[Complete Story at Internetnews.com: Yahoo! Searches for Yodeler ]

 

August 1, 2003

Website Usability Still Key to Online Retail Success

According to a new study conducted by Forrester Research, website usability is still the leading design problem facing Internet retailers and other commercial sites today. The study reviewed and analyzed a representative sample of over 300 web sites, of which a large number were retail-based.

Forrester used a proprietary scoring system that measured the effectiveness of each site's usability. Features like navigation, presentation of content and the usefulness of main features were benchmarked.

Out of a possible 50 point maximum score, the surveyed sites averaged a measly .15 (15 one hundredths of a point!) and the highest single site score was an anamolous 26. Retail sites faired slightly better than sites from other industries, averaging 3.1 out of 50.

Forrester concludes that poor website usability remains a big problem for commercial websites today. This reinforces preexisting research indicating that a website’s true value is based on how effective it is at addressing and fulfilling the needs of users. This is the most critical element to site design, a concept Forrester refers to as "Scenario design methodology".

[Complete Story at Internetretailer.com: Retail site usability scores 3.1 out of 50 in a recent Forrester review ]

 

See Also:

 Internet Marketing Articles June, 2003
 Internet Marketing Articles July, 2003