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CONTENT TYPE: Article | TOPIC: None

In his last article, the author defined multivariate testing and how it can optimize your Web marketing, as well as five common errors to avoid. Now, he looks at what to measure in your tests and how to define your criteria for success. Before you start formulating a test hypothesis, or begin running your tests, the first and most important step is to ensure that you have clearly defined objectives for your Web site. You'll want to examine your marketing goals in order to determine the appropriate success factors that all of your organization's stakeholders can agree upon. Let's start with typical measurable Web site goals.

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Launching new products, services, or segments is the lifeblood of growth for most organizations. Yet, despite its importance, the launch process is often mishandled or assigned inadequate resources. Many of the mistakes that companies make are basic—yet frighteningly frequent and consistent across various types of businesses and industries. Here are six common fault lines in the launch process that very company should look out for.

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Today, leads flow to Marketing from ever-increasing online sources—email campaigns, the company Web site, Google AdWords and Google searches, webinars, online advertising, blogs, and virtual trade shows—as well as from traditional marketing activities. The sheer volume of leads, or "suspects," can be overwhelming. How does Marketing prioritize all these suspects?

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The modern email inbox is a perpetual promotion machine of colors, styles, and sales pitches all fighting to be seen. In an attempt to break from the herd, many email marketers ironically adopt a herd mentality of more clutter, more content, more, more, more. This misguided pursuit of increased visibility merely leads to increased invisibility. Before joining the invisible ranks of the "clutter cult" of email marketers, consider that a huge body of marketing research demonstrates that the human mind is a sucker for simplicity and focus. The eye embraces that which can be easily digested. Less is more.

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Isn't direct mail pricey? It can be. But don't think that you have to create big, flashy mailers. In fact, when your goal is to generate sales leads, simpler, cheaper formats often work better. Here are five basic direct mail tools that you can use to generate sales leads quickly and inexpensively.

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You've probably heard phrases such as site optimization, search engine optimization, event optimization, and campaign optimization. A more recent concept with broader application to marketing is the idea of marketing optimization.

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As marketing managers seek to keep their brands fresh and relevant, many are tempted to jump on the latest trends and fads. You know: online and major media advertising with new imagery... new slogans and taglines... new product packaging... all playing to the latest pop-cult phenomena, hot colors, and new vibes. But is that really the solution? The short answer is "no."

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Marketing professionals know that careful, accurate, and constant campaign tracking and analysis are just as important as delivery itself. Your email marketing campaigns, integrated with Google Analytics, make this possible—and easier to do than ever before.

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Luanne Tierney, Senior Director US and Canada Channels Marketing at Cisco, has had a 20-year career in technology marketing—the past 12 years at Cisco, and before that at Apple, HP, and 3Com. She is a "Marketing Champion," because she drives cash flow for Cisco by helping channel partners market more effectively. Excerpted here is her philosophy of leadership in marketing.

CONTENT TYPE: Article | TOPIC: Writing

Email marketers are perpetually caught in the middle. On the one hand, we are celebrated for being the go-to resource for generating short-term revenue results. On the other hand, the applause dies down when the budget talk comes around and we continue to be handicapped by limited investment and strained resources. What's an email marketer to do? Here are five ideas.

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Building a list of responsive subscribers via a Web site that has a bit of traffic and quality content is surprisingly easy. But sometimes, when working with users, we're surprised to see low conversion rates. So, we take a look into just why that might be. Here are five factors to consider when growing your list.

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By looking at your company's readiness in conjunction with your market, your competitors, and your buyers, you'll be able to determine what the potential is (or isn't) for social media. What's more, you'll be able to assess where you should be diving in, or what's a realistic starting place.

CONTENT TYPE: Article | TOPIC: Branding

Many brands and companies today are constantly reinvigorating their businesses and positioning them for growth. There is a constant need to innovate, reinvigorate, update, recalibrate, or just simply fend off the competition in an effort to better explain "why buy me." To move forward, companies and brands need to first take a look at their current brand positioning. But for a moment, it makes sense to go back to the brand drawing board to answer the question, "Just what is brand positioning, anyway?"

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If you're a marketer, every undelivered message translates into lost revenue. Luckily, there are ways to improve the odds of delivery and decrease the chance of running into problems in the first place. The key to email deliverability lies in earning the trust of internet service providers, or ISPs. Because these companies need to provide quality service to their subscribers, they devise standard protocols and policies regarding unsolicited bulk email.

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Should your company should start a blog, open a Facebook account, or be on YouTube? Start by taking a giant step backward and assessing the social media landscape as it relates to your market, your buyers, and your competitors. Here are three key factors to consider.

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Your media plan likely contains all the usual, well-known media options: TV and radio ads, print ads and outdoor advertising. We've all been going with these options for years, decades in fact. We've always known we wouldn't be fired for nominating them. Just like an IT guy wouldn't be fired for installing an IBM solution. But this security is fast disappearing. One day soon, you might be fired for limiting yourself to these options.

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Today's diverse consumers are looking for more than just talk. They want companies to be an authentic part of their niche community. They are savvy and skeptical. They are watching to see how sincere you are in including them—as employees, senior managers, board members, media partners, vendors, and so on...

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At a recent conference, Sylvia Reynolds, chief marketing officer for Wells Fargo, asked, "When did Marketing become the make-it-pretty department?" Reynolds then reminded conference participants that the fundamental role of Marketing has always been about the customer. Essentially, Marketing's role is to find, keep, and grow the value of customers. So what does that mean, and how does a marketer get beyond the "make it pretty" syndrome?

CONTENT TYPE: Article | TOPIC: Social Media Marketing

Considering the stakes, it's no surprise that the online sales channel is becoming increasingly important to the bottom line of top-shelf brands as consumers of luxury products and services continue to demonstrate their willingness to spend as much through commerce-enabled Web sites as they do in stores. Despite this trend, many luxury brands continue to separate their online and mainline marketing efforts, confusing customers with disconnected messaging and missing golden opportunities to cross-support expensive marketing initiatives. What few realize is that the best experience—the experience that the customer wants—results when all channels work together and complement each other. Here are some guiding principles to help brands achieve this goal.

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Nonprofits are confronted with many of the questions that any other enterprise often ponders: How do I connect with my customers? Which communication vehicle will provide my organization with the highest return on investment? How can I determine what my target market wants? While many of our corporate friends have turned to email marketing to help answer these questions, the concept is comparatively new to nonprofits. Email marketing may not be the silver bullet for every problem, but it provides us with an efficient and affordable tool to communicate with our constituents.