Marketing: Ben & Jerry's drops emails for Social Media
The U.S. ice cream brand Ben & Jerry's will stop sending promotional emails to focus its energy on social media. This is the first big brand that will proceed in this new direction.
Ben & Jerry's said many fans have reported recently that they did not receive promotional emails. The brand has decided that this approach does not encourage the establishment of a positive relationship with its customers and has therefore decided to change its ways.
On Facebook, Ben & Jerry's has more than 1.3 million fans and her Twitter accounts (@CherryGarcia and @ BenJerrysTruck) are followed by nearly 15,000 users. By giving up on sending emails, the company is now looking at a market that already gathers a great pool of clients.
Although, often recognized for its innovative marketing positioning, Ben & Jerry's gets out the beaten track. Indeed, in general, experts recommend an online promotional strategy that combines sending promotional emails and a presence on social media.
Furthermore, a recent study by Lightspeed Research for the firm e-Dialog has estimated that six in ten Internet users around the world are most likely to buy a product in a store after receiving a promotional email.
A video that demonstrates importance of domain name in SEO :
14/06/2010
Domain Name Marketing
Neo Informatics Corporation launches a new tool for internet traffic generation: Domain Name Marketing. This revolutionnary tool allows you to quickly generate Internet traffic on your websites. Check out all the details on www.domainnamemarketing.ca.
Après la pub dans le métro et les encarts dans la presse écrite, pour son navigateur Chrome, Google étend sa stratégie de communication dans les médias "traditionnels". Pour la première fois, on peut entendre Google parler et ça se passe à la radio française. Google y fait la promotion de son service Adwords sur une radio (RMC) majoritairement écoutée par des commerçants, artisans, indépendants et patrons de PME.
Pour écouter le spot publicitaire de Google pour son service publicitaire AdWords, cliquez ici.
Google invests in firm that tries to predict the future
Google has invested in a startup company that claims to be able to predict the future.
The company's investment arm, Google Ventures, has sunk an undisclosed sum into Recorded Future, a Cambridge, Massachusetts-based startup that "offers customers new ways to analyze the past, present and the predicted future," according to a new Google Ventures Web site that went live on Monday.
Recorded Future's own Web site doesn't list any products for sale, but the company appears to have developed a data analytics technology that could be used to try to predict future stock market events or even terrorist activity, according to blog posts and videos on its site. The technology looks at how frequently an entity or event is referred to in the news and around the Web over a period of time, then uses that data to project how it might behave in the future.
"At Recorded Future, we compute a momentum value for each entity and event in our database," one blog post explains. "The momentum value indicates how interesting a certain event or entity is at a particular time, and is continuously updated. In computing the momentum value, we take into account the volume of news around an entity or event, as well as what sources it is mentioned in, what other events and entities it is mentioned together with, and several other factors.
"The momentum measure is used to present the most relevant query results in our web user interface, but it can also be analyzed using statistical methods to predict possible future changes in momentum, which in turn can be valuable, e.g. for trading decisions."
The startup has claimed its customers include "some of the top government agencies and trading firms in the world," according to a February profile in The Boston Globe. For now it is not granting interviews, according to a story Monday at All Things Digital.
It's one of several companies to receive investments from Google Ventures, which just turned one year old. Google is expanding the investment arm and plans to put US$100 million into startups this year, it told reporters Monday.
What you probably don't know about Google (part 3/10)
The equivalent of Ethiopia GDP to shop
With an annual net income of 6.5 billion dollars in 2009, Google can afford to make acquisitions. Since mid-2009 the search engine has set a rythm of start-up acquisition per month, that it will still be able to hold for at least until the end of the year. As of March 31 st , the group has a treasury of no less than 26.5 billion dollars, more thanEthiopia 's GDP. Google has twice the liquidities than the GDP of Albania.
Its last purchases are the visual search engine Plink and the online photo editor Picnik.
Forrester quantifies the influence of social media
In a study titled « Peer Influence Analysis », Forrester tried to better understand the mechanisms of influence and word of mouth on the web. The research firm estimates that 500 billion "impressions" about products and services are traded annually on social media in the United States. To arrive to this figure, Forrester interviewed a panel of 10,000 people, asking about which sites they give out comments, for what products and services, how often and by how many users were they being followed. From the data collected, Forrester distinguishes two types of influence.
The first is the communication on blogs and forums. Forrester estimates that 1.6 billion messages and comments are written annually and that each is viewed an average of 150 times. Which generates half of the 500 billion impressions recorded by the research firm. The other half comes from the impressions that are exchanged via social networks with, not surprisingly, a large dominance of Facebook (see figures below).
The study authors also point out that a minority of individuals generates the majority of impressions: 80% of the 1.6 billion messages posted on blogs and forums are produced by 13.6% of web users and 80% of impressions on social networks are made by 6.2% of the members. This minority, which still represents 28 million Internet users in the U.S., represent according to Forrester the mass influencers. The base of the pyramid is formed by the potential influencers. They have a small network and speak little but are more credible to their direct entourage. The tip of the pyramid welcomes the cream of bloggers and social networks stars. They play a major role in the diffusion of information but have a lower approval rating than the other two categories.
Based on estimates from Nielsen Online, the authors realise that these last 500 billion impressions represent less than a third of those carried by the online ads (1.7 trillion). But since they are considered more credible, because they come from the entourage and friends, they seriously compete in terms of influence with traditional advertising. A fact which becomes essential when it comes to arbitration on the budgets of marketing campaigns.
What you probably don't know about Google (part 2/10)
Recruitment by mathematical problems
Google brags that it receives 1,300 CVs per day and 3 000 unsolicited resumes. To assess the potential of these candidates, recruiters do not hesitate to submit mathematical problems, sometimes very hard. How many golf balls are needed to fill a school bus? How muck would you get paid to clean all the windows in Seattle?
The goal is obviously not keep only candidates whose responses are accurate (recruiters themselves don't always know the answers to these problems), but to evaluate how they respond.
In a recent study, Forrester cabinet took interest in the new mechanisms that now govern all marketing planning related to social networks. We understand that some players, very active on the social web are more and more influencing the masses. Forrester identified three levels of influencers:
The " Social brodcasters " I.e. those with a very wide audience on their blog or on different web channels such as Twitter, YouTube, Flickr etc ... They have access to information before others, see test products, not far short from journalists.
The " Mass influencers " divided into two sub-categories, the " Mass connectors " who create, share, turn to Twitter and Facebook, I would say with general trendy buzz and almost considered sensational, and the " Mass mavens " that I would describe as connoisseurs-experts in a niche. They will use a wider range of media such as Flickr, YouTube, Del.icio.us or SlideShare to reach their audience.
The " Potential influencers " are small but with strong network credibility, very important not to overlook them.
In a second study, Forrester looks much more in depth the two categories that make up " Mass influencers " With, among other things, statistics for the U.S. market where it can be read that 16% produce 80% of comments, recommendations, product analysis and social network services.
What you probably don't know about Google (part 1/10)
3 billion invested annually in R & D
Google knows better than any other company the importance of technological innovation. In 2009, the group invested 2.8 billion dollars in R & D, same amount as in 2008. Google had invested 2.1 billion in 2007, 1.2 in 2006 and 600 million in 2005. However, the ratio of investment in R & D declined compared to its gross margin in 2009.
On its 20 000 employees, 7 500 are engineers, nearly 40% of its workforce. Moreover, the engine has no less than sixty R & D sites worldwide, including a dozen in Europe and the Middle East.
Social Networks vs. Email: the futile gain the upper hand over the useful!
Morgan Stanley’s last edition of "Internet Status Report" is publishing for the first time an interesting chart about the evolution of communication services. On an international scale, it shows the number of social network users has become greater than the number of those using emails in the third quarter of 2009 to bring the number to around 800 millions users worldwide, Facebook having a good half to itself...
The above chart is to be completed with the one below regarding the time spent on these networks: the blue area on the top of the following graph demonstrates that we now spend a significant part of our time online on Facebook, to the expense of MSN (yellow area).
At home, Junior did the transition in the past months: no more MSN even for the chat tool he used so often, only Facebook! With its instant messaging it has replaced MSN.
We clearly see that these social services are now a strong part of our lives, at least part of our digital one: Facebook pages are viewed 400 billion times each month .
In his analysis of the information’s ecosystem. Pierre Chappaz names social networks called Futile, as opposed to word of mouth (Twitter) and Information / Opinion (blogs and forums). If we add to his panorama the Useful is represented e-mails for personal use that allows more and more to oil the wheels of civic life’s informational and administrative aspects, in addition with staying in touch with family and friends, then we see that Futile now prevails according to Morgan Stanley on the Useful !
And why? Well, in my opinion, because in the end, the human is playful, more fun oriented than towards daily recurrence. It's funnier (and less arduous ....) to share and comment on our latest photos with friends on Facebook than write long letters to close-ones as it was during periods of great literature.
We must also admit that the gratification is much more instantaneous, which is a driving force for many of us!
2009 thus, has marked the first overtaking of the Useful by the Futile but this will be changed in 2010 with the burial of one another, for purely personal and social activities. Indeed, the days of emails to invite friends to a party / a drink or send the most recent pictures are numbered. All this is beginning to mutate onto Facebook very quickly: at home, it's what I notice every day with Miss and Junior.
The fact that Facebook is working with his Titan project for a decent mail service (finally) will only accelerate the phenomenon!
Ever wonder how big businesses are leveraging social media? Burson-Martseller recently released a report highlighting the Fortune Global 100 companies and how they were using social platforms including: Blogs, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. We have complied a graphic illustrating the most interesting of their findings:
Here is a short video presenting the different services and products offered by Google, all while focusing on the various risks associated with the dominance of Google in many areas.
This video, made by the Australian television channel Hungrybeast to illustrate one of its shows, is representative of the growing sense of doubt and mistrust faced to Google : it presents Google as a society that wants to take possession of our emails, our phones, our digital lives, electrical networks and of Internet to flood us of targeted ads.
As a reminder, the short video made by Google last year to summarize its 11 years of existence:
The powers that be at Twitter have been vague about how they plan to monetize the service. As marketers have flocked to the microblogging site, Twitter has considered charging for business functionality as one possibility.
According to a survey commissioned by Internet marketing solutions companyWebBizIdeas.com, a plurality of business users of Twitter are unsure whether they would pay to use extra business features on the site. About one-quarter said they would.
Defining what those extra features might be as well as how much they would cost could push less decisive business users into one camp or another. Among respondents who said they would pay, most were willing to spend less than $50 per month.
In addition, 8% of all respondents said they would pay for analytics alone, if Twitter offered that service.
Advertising, another possibility for Twitter monetization, may have more appeal. Businesses were largely uninterested in advertising tactics that would increase their follower count, but nearly seven in 10 respondents said pay-for-performance ads would bring the greatest value for them.
While marketers have jumped on the Twitter bandwagon in large numbers, they are still focusing onquantifying their own social media results. If Twitter does roll out paid business services, companies will be sure to think of their own ROI before shelling out.
A study conducted by Yahoo! amongst its users partly explains why Internet users click on contextual advertising links that appear at the top of the search results. It is estimated that in 2009, this type of advertising represented more than 40% of the online advertising market, or 880 million euros.
Usually presented within good position on search engine’s results pages, these links appear the same way as a classic search but with a discrete mention and sometimes with a slightly different background.According to Yahoo!’s study, three-quarters of Internet users know they are in fact advertising links.
"We wanted to know how these ads are seen, and whether or not the reading contract was clear", says Jean-Christophe Gombeaud, Director of planning and strategies for Yahoo!. "For us, there is no doubt: Internet users know that this is advertising, and when they click on it, it is because it meets their query."
Internet users surveyed gave three main reasons to click on an advertisement: a third explained that the link is very visible; another third believed the result is relevant; and the last third believed advertising is a guarantee on finding a serious or "official" website. "We had not identified this aspect of bail in the past", says Jean-Christophe Gombeaud. "In the end, it is somewhat the same mechanism as the 'seen on TV'."
Yahoo!, like most search engines, makes most of its income from these ads. A few days ago, the company announced the closure of its "publisher network", a system of placement of ads on other websites to "concentrate on what he does best". In 2009, the enterprise agreed to a partnership with Microsoft in the hopes of competing with Google, the market leader.
Neo Informatics launches it's newest line of services: NeoDomains.ca
Easy to use, NeoDomains.ca offers ICANN and CIRA domains starting at $12.55 per year. Smart Domain Finder suggests you with traffic generating domains. Historical WHOIS database of virtually all domains names on the Internet.
