FICCI-PricewaterhouseCoopers Entertainment and Media Report

The reports has good news for folks Media Sales&Marketing. More than anything, it gives a general trend of popular mediums consumed.



Following are the top level figures...
2006... Rs.438 Bln (Rs.43,800 Crs)
2007... Rs.513 Bln (Rs.51,300 Crs)
2012... Rs.1.157 Tln (Rs.115,700 Crs)

This means, 17% growth in 2007 over 2006 and every year after that will grow by 18%, making entertainment and Media Industry outperform a number of sectors. Television, film, print continue to dominate the media space together accounting for more than 90% of the total size of the industry. Following were other highlights...

1. Television attracted more interest among investors than any other medium. The industry has also seen venturing into online and mobile portals to distribute content.
2. Mobile Music is gaining popularity.
3. In print domain, adopted another platform, through internet (e-paper) and mobile (m-paper) to reach out to newer audience.
4. Digital Cinema is gaining popularity, and is becoming widespread with online Movie Ticket Booking and Mobile Booking.

Advertising was a significant part of this pie, and contributed 38%. Last four years (2004-07) the industry has displayed 20% growth rate, which is impressive by any standards.
2006... 161 Bln (16,000 Crs)
2007... 196 Bln (19,600 Crs)

The industry is experiencing a paradigm shift with digital platforms enabling to reach the critical masses. Digital interactive mediums are slowly becoming the advertising mainstream. Internet advertising will reach Rs. 4.2 Bln (Rs. 420 Crs) and 11 Bln by 2012 (Rs.1,100 Crs), which would only represent 2% of the whole adverting projected for 2012 (and assuming 40% advertising contribution). The growth is however very impressive at 32%. The current estimate for the Internet Media Industry is 230 Crs (Rs.2.3 Bln).

Lets look at television industry in the meantime, which is estimated to be Rs.226 Bln (22,600 Crs). By 2012, it is poised to grow to Rs.600 Bln (60,000 Crs) and CAGR of 22%, which would mean that it will still command over 60% to the total advertising pie.

Print Industry size is Rs.149 Bln (Rs. 14,900 Crs) Industry today, is poised to grow to Rs.281 Bln (28,100 Crs) by 2012. By size it would be almost half of TV industry and would contribute 30% to ad revenues. The growth is however low at the rate 14% pa.

Radio will be bigger than Internet industry, with Rs.18 Bln (1,800 Crs) with a CAGR of 24%. The current size is Rs.6.2 Bln (Rs.620 Crs).

More and more content will be digitised and this migration mirrors the global trend. Distribution of entertainment and media content will over digital and mobile platforms like online digital streaming, digital movie/TV downloads, video-on-demand, music downloaded from the Internet, music downloaded to wireless phones, online advertising, online video games, wireless video games, and online gaming, increasingly gain pace in next five years.

Read the full report here ...

Cheers!

Every Click Counts...

The other day I read one good Mediapost article on Metric. You won't be surprised that there are quite a few of them- Buzz Metrics, Engagement Metrics etc. And there is also our old traditional media currency- GRPs or Gross rating points. (Simply put, GRP is reach x frequency) The more you have, the richer would be the brand. However, as we see more and more new media evolve ( internet and mobile), the ground rules have changed. The communication flow is not just one way but it is interactive and more importantly, measurable (this is at the cost of being labeled as cliche).

So, what would be the traditional measure of success in the interactive internet universe. Is it only going to be mere GRPs (reach of the media vehicle times the frequency of exposure) or the measurement of interaction? The new line of thought is to quantify this engagement in a number of ways. Not just look at pageview and visitations, but also look at time spent on the site, number of pages viewed during a visit and proportion of single access visits to the total site visits. In a nutshell, all exposures are not equal, some are more engaging than others. In fact, the beauty of this metrics is that it is not precise and needs to be molded as per the site goals. You can find this discussion "the peterson calculation" by a gentleman called Eric Peterson (obviously :)) by clicking on this link.

And as I was reading through this article, I was also forced to think about media creativity. In fact, I initially tried to build this article around a few creative sites and hence how the measurement differs. But alas, there is no reference content available on this subject. Hence I will concentrate on the first step of this conversion journey, which is the click.

In this whole context of buzz, engagement etc how important is a click.? This click which might come from a search engine, a banner, a creative blog (like mine) and PR sources across the net. What is the value of this click? How relevant is it towards brand building? A click is a click and is measured by a CTR or Click Through Rate (clicks/impressions served%). How important is a creative in this context? And how "Creative" is a creative in an online space?

Traditional Media like TV and Radio is easy, we have Ad recall and various studies. And we have presentations and PR on how good a Television creative was. We have various ad forums like Cannes, which tests the creative mettle. A good creative gets awards and ad recall. But what is the measure of an online creative? I had read another great article, which substantiates that the memory on the internet space is limited (and hence the power to influence brands, I would love to hear your comments on this, if you have reached this point). And I can guarantee you that you
won't remember which banner have you clicked on, what colour was it, what was the messaging and call to action. There are very banners which can contradict this statement. So how do you measure the worth of a banner (or any such communication) in the internet space. In our performance marketing jargon we call it CTR, the definition I described before. CTR gives you the return on your media buys, it brings the browser closer to the website and it is the first link towards the conversion.

Someone rightly said every click is a wish. And the website is to fulfill that wish. The creativity lies in driving the CTRs, which means altering few creative elements here and there to optimise the media performance. I have tried to use bright idea through the banners, but they don't deliver CTR (or bring about the conversions on our website). Banners and text links are the lowest hanging fruits of the internet marketing domain, where the interaction starts.

The greatest impact on a brand through a website is through the website. There are a few links which I think is worth a mention, because they have done a lot good to the internet marketing and getting it closer to building brands (and not just limit it to a performance driver). They are the true testimonials to engagement/buzz/interactive marketing (the order is not a reflection of their ranking)....

1. Sunsilk Gang of Girls. They boast a decent traffic with 100K users within 4 months of its launch. Though originally, HLL had to use a lot of media muscle to drive traction, but they has been very persistent on this front. The best part is that the website is updated frequently, and now has a celeb zone with Priyanka Chopra, DJ Pearl, Piya Rai Chodhary, Dippanita sharma as contributors. The wesbite looks good, but the speed of page down load is very slow.

2. Mentoshelpline.com: I love their communication, (have you seen the latest one, which is called "the missing link"?). It is entertaining, engaging and very innovative. Checkout the helpline lady. You will also come across a great list of problems- love, professional etc. The site tickles you and has a huge brand rub-off. It has a new avatar called Mentosfriendsline.com . If you have any problem, just share.

3. MakeMyTrip.com: Some innovative viral, which is a buzz in the internet circle. I have seen a few guys using this link to define their personality.





There are a few more on these lines, developed by the same agency, Webchutney.

4. Bingo:, A good site, but as great as the communication.

The brand advertisers are definitely getting excited about the medium, pepsibluebillion.com, meethamoments.com (from Cadburys) are a good step in this direction which builds brands through engagement. None of the brand advertisers have a decent website, which interacts and engages the prospective consumer. In today's scenario, web needs to treated as a touchpoint and a medium that can't be ignored. Net is a medium that is designed and built to allow people to do things and get results from those actions.

Simplicity is the name of the game. The only thing that's unreasonable is the use of interactive technology simply to interact. More often than not, you end up with something that's overly complex. And although it may be creative, it doesn't match up with the desires (the wishes) of the consumer. Buzz and engagement is secondary.

Cheers!

Confessions of a Web Analytics Manager

1. Its a mess out here.
2. Numbers don't add up and therefore the numbers are not accurate
3. Where do I belong? I'm having an identity crisis, I don't know if I 'm in marketing or technology
4. What is a visit & a pageview.? How is this different from a unique visitor?
5. How important is a click?
6. Why do I have to make the same reports again and again
7. What is my contribution to the business?
8. Am I a cost center or a profit center?
9. Should I switch over to a new Web Analytic vendor, i think the existing one is not good?
10.Should I pay or get free Web Analytic software?

There are many unanswered question for an budding webanalytics manager. The usual problems in his life will center around The server logs not matching the web analytic
results. He would frequently have to encounter Tech complains that the web analytic
codes are increasing the pagedownload time (There may be javascript error due to these measurement codes). And best of all, the support center may follow US timings and resolution is at least 24 hours away! What ever may be the reason, the position is not very easy, answer lies in the cliche- persistence and determination.

Simply put, a Web Analytics is a set of measurement software tools or hosted online service that records and measures the actions of visitors to a website. The existence of this tool lies in the fact that if you can measure, you can therefore improve. It emanates from the fact that since internet is highly measurable, so there should be a tool. And there is also the flaw- since there are no standard definitions and hence there are multiple interpretations. Case in point, the online publisher might give you a set of numbers affecting your marketing campaign, however, the web analytic tool might give you another picture and these numbers won't be necessarily same. The server side logs will indicate figures for a download, which might be 25% in sync with the Pageview report from the web analytic solution. This is not just the end of woes, there are hardly any marketing matrix available that can provide benchmarks eg how many pageviews are required to increase the visitations of the website by 10%. The Web Analytics manager will swing betweeen the Yin and Yang and discover the true dualities of this existential world.

The truth and lets be honest- most of us don't understand Web Analytics and it is still to be ingrained in the planning process in India at least. I have hardly come across people who judicious use this platform to define goal and not just for number reporting and diagnostics.

The origin of Web Analytics, dates a few years back, when the server side logs were used to identify the call made (and hence the relative popularity) to the server, which is called the log file analysis. This coined the word 'Hits' or the number of times call was made to the server. However of you had 4 images, stored on the server, you will get 4 hits on the website (and hence not accurate)which will be equivalent to a page download in the current context. An improvement on that was the server side web analyser, a good number of these tools is available on the net. One had to run these logs as a batch file in the analyser and you would get the relevant details. There is huge amount of data in these logs and has to be analysed periodically to check the web analytics data accuracy. The only limitation of these logs is that, you can conclusively track an event (defined as a goal) and study the possible cause for this event. There is also proxy/caching inaccuracies.

The method which is gaining popularity is the client side data collection systems, which involves coding each page on the site, which is usually a single snippet (tag) of the code referencing a separate JavaScript file. This is cookie based and data is collected from visitors web browsers. There are tins of advantages in using this method...

1. More accurate session tracking
2. More accurate information of the browser (what type, screen resolution, javascript version, windows platform etc)
3. Can track events (say payment and its entry page along with acquisition source) and hence a great tool for eCommerce
4. Real Time data, no procession of the information required.

The limitations is due to the cookie and its privacy (first party/third party). Most of the popular Web Analytic tool, like Omniture, Corematrics, Webtrends & Websidestory (now a part of Omniture) use this method. Omniture is far superior tool, but is cost effective only for large websites. Webtrends is great for content sites and Hitbox (a product of Websidestory and now a part of Omniture stable) is great for eCommerce business.

By and large the features offered are the same. The criterion that you should use for choosing a web analytic tool should be
1. Cost per event (you buy a block of events)
2. Service agreements, it is very critical, as all the support system is sitting in US.
3. Education and consultancy. You should make this a part of the contract, as it will a good platform for the management and stakeholders who sample the report
4. Implementation, 80% of the success of WA tool rests on thorough implementation and
testing.

The cost should range from 4-6 cents CPM (please negotiate hard before finalising the true Indian way with the firangies). Before anything, you should be ready with the standard Webanalytic definitions. WAA, has a a document which is available at http://www.webanalyticsassociation.org. It is a great site with a number of articles, but few chosen articles are only for paid member subscription.

There are a number of Web Analytics Solutions available in the market place today.

1. Omniture: (Clearly the leader in the market place). They have recently acquired Websidestory. In India, Futurebazaar is using the flagship product- Site Catalyst.

2. Corematrics: Have JC penny and circuitcity.com as one of their clients.

3. Webtrends: Though their site mentions Microsoft as one of of their clients, I still have to come across widespread use of Webtrends. It is a great product and is quite popular.

4. Visual Sciences (erstwhile Websidestory and now a part of Omniture): Airtel, MakeMyTrip and ICICIBank is using the flagship product, Hitbox (which is now Site Catalyst).

5. DC Storm: This is DGM's main technology platform. Please connect with them if you are considering DC Storm.

6. Clicktracs: Tribal Fusion Network and Pioneer use this for Web Analytics.

If you want to check out the web analytics platform for the website you are visiting, you can use this great tool. All you have to do is to submit the url into the browser and it will find the Web Analytic application.

There are other free tool available in the marketplace, the most popular is Google Analytics. It is a great tool, however, the data is not available realtime. There are other few products also...

1. AWstats: awstats.sourceforge.net
2. W3Perl: www.w3perl.com
3. Webalizer: www.mrunix.net/webalizer/

These analyse logs and are processed batchwise to give results.

Web Analytics have to go a long way in India. Though Omniture has opened shops, it is still to get aggressive with business development. The support center sits out of Hongkong and US. Like I said earlier, one critical stumbling block is the implementation and support, which will determine the success of this tool.

This is vast and interesting subject and very new in Indian context. Though we at Makemytrip have been using web analytics in India in some way through PPC and Impression and click tracking, however, the real utility is when Web Analytics will be seen when it is able to establish itself as a strategic tool. I hope I can share more on this subject in the near future ;).

Till then you can always look up Avinash Kaushik's blog. He's an institution on webanalytics and is the writer of Web Analytics an Hour a day. Currently, he's Analytics Evangelist for Google.

Believe me Web analytics is that simple. Just requires an hour a day!!

Cheers!

Affiliate Marketing- The Tip of an Iceberg

Amazon are the pioneers of Affiliate marketing, and have more than 500K affiliates. Expedia.com and Travelocity spend very little time in acquiring traffic through Google and other expensive online media, they too have a good network of affiliates. In India, the affiliate boom is still to come. Few of us realise that it is the best eCommerce Marketing tool that one can invest in.

Simply put, in affiliate marketing ecosystem there is a merchant along with an affiliate. Affiliate runs program to send traffic to the merchant and if that traffic
converts, merchant compensates the affiliate by paying him an agreed sum. Since in this equation merchant confirms a cost, the net outcome is high and positive ROI. Better still, you don't have to consider affiliate as a marketing arm, but a sales
channel. This channel needs to be nurtured with equal enthusiasm and zest as the
website.

Affiliate marketing requires a huge investment in technology and manpower. You may
decide to develop a program internally, in which case you will have to go in for ready solutions available in the marketplace. This also means you need to have a dedicated technology maintainence team and also an affiliate manager, who is very critical to the success (and on whom we will touch upon later). However, you might want to outsource the whole program and enroll in an affiliate channel, like commission junction or linkshare. In India, this is provided by Deal Group Media or DGM. Here the situation is almost like a Google Marketplace, where the affiliate will enroll in program of only that merchant who will bring profit to affiliates business. None the less effort and dedication is required in both the approaches and the sooner you start the better will it be for the business.

You might ask So why do we need affiliate marketing, my SEO ranking is high, my Google SEM is ROI positive and I'm running a good email marketing program. So why should I invest in technology and infrastructure? The answer lies in the plethora of genre that exists out there.

1. SEO Optimised domains and Pay Per Click Websites
2. Review sites
3. Shopping comparison websites
4. Niche content websites (parenting golfing etc)
5. Personal Websites and Blogs
6. Loyalty websites
7. Emailer websites
8. Unutilised domains

As an e-marketer it will be very difficult to focus exclusively on these websites, run campaign and optimise them. Advertising network do that, but most of them are blind, hence you will never know about the performance. Affiliate marketing enables
management of these websites, where the agreement is to pay on performance. Hence the
optmisation and making money is not the marketer onus, it is the prerogative of the
affiliate website owner. Affiliate marketing ideally can empower every single user on
the website to start earning, and the initial cost can be as low as Rs.5000 (registering fees for a domain). One of our affiliate partners, Shoogloo, which is
started by LD Sharma has 500 domains.

The affiliate program manager is key to such program. He is more like a relationship
manager and looks at different ways and means to increase the traffic and therefore
sales from these channels. One of the most common problems in affiliate marketing is
the wayward means to credit sales wich could be through any of these means

1. Forced click
2. False advertisement
3. URL Masking (where you can see the changing url, with the click
4. Adware
5. Mature and Adult content
6. EMail Spam
7. Brand and Trademark bidding

The affiliate program manager needs to ensure that the liberties extended to the
affiliate is not misused.

Technology is the backbone of a good affiliate program. In short the technology should ensure

1. Ad serving
2. Tracking and Conversion rule: whether it is last click first click or equal distribution of profit across all the clicks.
3. Sales tracking
4. Integration with Finance, so that the sales get validated and payment is ensured to the affiliate
5. Affiliate login, so that he can see the amount that is credited to him. This is the most important aspect of the infrastructure, as there isn't a motivator like money.

Whatever solution that you may decide on, please stick to one platform, as you don't want to pay the same affiliate multiple times over for the same conversion.

Affiliate marketing has to go a long way in India. As there are very few eCommerce players, dominated by Travel. Hence most of the affiliate are structured around this line of business. Also, we haven't seen much genre coming up. It is the same staple English content, news and Social Networking sites. The development of vernacular sites, special content sites, blogs and reviews, will definitely propel this fledgling industry.

Affiliate Marketing is truly the "Performance Marketing".

Cheers!

Permission Marketing

I always thought that Seth Godin, the well known Internet Marketing pioneer, was great writer. He coined the term a revolutionary concept called "Permission Marketing". The concept severely criticises the traditional advertising method- whether it is TV ads that breaks into the favourite programme, or the telemarketing phone call, it is very intrusive. The goal is to snatch that piece of attention from whatever we are doing, and deliver the message. It might happen when you are watching your favourite movie or even while watching television, interruption is the approach. With the medium becoming increasingly fragmented and limited time, the only way to get through your TG is the noise factor.

The power of Internet as a medium is that extend the onus of decision making to the browser. The medium lets the consumer choose his options. He chooses the sites that he wants to go to, he chooses the content he wants to sample. He chooses the application he wants to downloads. More importantly he interacts and forms a perception. Instead of the interruption marketing, Seth Godin advocates PERMISSION MARKETING, which means that offer consumers incentives to accept advertising voluntarily. The marketer develops relationship, by getting the consent from his consumer and thereby building long term relationship and trust. Here the consumer is the advocate and the medium and advertising is done through the word of mouth, excellent experience and repeated interaction.

I came across the presentation sent by my one of my dear friends and discovered another facet of Mr Godin. This presentation is about Google and how it utilised permission marketing, spent $0 advertising monies, but still is the fastest growing company. Seth analyses the DNA, and goes through few more viral marketing concept of his. Please go through this in your leisure time, though it says 45 minutes, but once you start, you won't realise the time :) The presentation has an interesting subject- ALL MARKETERS ARE LIARS

comScore and Audience Measurement

One of the most frequently asked question in the net space is what is size the internet universe and how much traffic can I target (share of Traffic). There are a few free resources that we usually look up Alexa, Google Trends (to see the relative popularity of a term on Google search engine) . Though these are free, the idea of bribing our friends who have access to comScore, Neilsen NetRating, Hitwise or any such panel information, might be a good. The information provided by these audience measurement companies is far superior to the Alexa.

Fortunately, since my organisation subscribes to comScore data, we don't have to resort to any unethical favours (I'm infact open to lucrative offers). Jokes apart, comScore data helps to access the growth of our site traffic vs the competition and the universe and is a regular feature at the end of the month / board presentation. There were some occasional, where we had to measure the cross visitation/audience duplication matrics to find out our standing in the net space.

More importantly, my world (read universe) was limited to 26 Mln Indian online population, which is the figure that comScore reports,. All this while I considered it to be a better estimate and ignored IAMAIs and NASSCOM). I also had the notion that based on these numbers penetration of eCommerce was only 10% (roughly 2.6 Mln internet users).

And then, I happen to meet our comScore Account Director last week and had lot of my fancy notion changed. This post is an ode to that meeting and I hope you will find it useful. Please note that comScore is the only source for such rich panel information, as of now...

1. Since comScore uses a panel, and recruits only for household and office usage, 26 Mln number is a representation of this community. This doesn't include cyber cafes (which was 40% in IAMAI 2006 report), Schools & Colleges (6% in 2006) and other sources (which may include net card). This will significantly increase the numbers (and which also suggests that our eCommerce penetration is very low). In some countries, they quantify that the internet usage originates from outside the universe (e.g persons under 15; from public machines (like internet cafe), they do mention that the projections do not reflect this usage. These countries include China, India, Ireland and Mexico.

2. It is not just a traffic estimating tool. It has lot more data to offer. Reach & Frequency Planning (will be a great assets for folks associated with branding), psychographic segmentation, and identification of Heavy/Medium/Low internet users.

3. It has a panel size of 16,000 in India, which is the highest in the region. It is significantly higher than China (8,000) and the next closest panel size is in Australia (15,000) members. Notably, it has a million opt-ins for the application, however most of them are filtered to include Home/Office. Only in US they offer the Office/Home split.

4. comScore collects data for only 15Years+ individual. They identify this through the mouse-use patterns and keyboard usage pattern.

One other objective of this post is to elaborate on the features that comScores provides, which will empower emarketers such as us, to look beyond Alexa and Google trend Data. The idea is look beyond numbers and demographics profiles and get a psychographic rich profile of our site visitors. To some of us who use site analytics, this data might just corroborate the facts. For other, it will define avenues, as all users are not always the same.

comScore's Segment matrix H/M/L serves exactly that purpose. It acknowledges that web behavior varies greatly by segments. Heavy users might have an unequal impact on the overall statictics- they are 20% of the online population, but consumer 2/3 of total online pages and minutes. The light users on the other hand account for only 6%. Using this feature you can understand and take appropriate action points for heavy, Moderate and Light internet user segments. These are key benefits...

1. Behavior analysis: Heavy users are the easiest to target, but light and medium users would be necessary to build the reach. The basis for this is the content they consume. With this report you will be able to get an idea where your consumers go apart from their category (say travel/retail)

2. Reduce waste of online ad spends: comScore Segment matrix H/M/L provides advertisers and agencies the means to identify sites, where advertising delivery is more likely to reach light internet without overreaching heavy users.

3. Get valuable inputs for site development: Publishers can prioritise development of content and features according to different requirements of H/M/L user segment.

4. Increase ad sales/revenue- Publisher can demonstrate the site's ability to reach premium segments. Alternatively a marketer can look at psychographic profile of its site visitor.

comScore has one more good product for search related statistics- qSearch. This tracking provides weekly and monthly views of consumer search activity by search engine, which answers the questions...

1. How large is the search market and how fast is it changing.
2. Which search engine has the greatest reach among all searchers and how is it changing.

qSearch also reports on searches conducted on sites such as eBay, Amazon, Expedia, etc. Furthermore, it also includes search activity from following user activities:

- Searching on Maps and yellow pages
- Search conducted through hosted or affiliate search relationship
- Searches conducted across that various tabs found on most search engine e.g web search -> image search -> Video search. The definition of such fall under
- A user interaction where the user is presented with a search result page
- The search result page allows the user with the ability to refine or change their search parameter
- Search can be initiated from a drop down or clicking a link, as long as first two rules are satisfied.

All push-traffic and non user requested activity is filtered. It reports following searches in addition to all the searches

1. Auto Search: Refers to the search that is conducted by entering a search string into the address box in the browser. DNS error pages are not counted.
2. Toolbar search: Search executed from the Toolbar
3. Affiliate/Hosted search: where the search engine is hosted on an affiliate site.

comScore is at an advantageous position in India with its first mover advantage. Nielsen NetRating is still to start and gain ground. Comparatively Neilsen NetRating has a panel size with lower numbers as compared to comScore. However, they are known for their descipline and method and use the same metered tracking using panels and telephone surveys. Their products are called @plan, which helps in media planning (like H/M/L Segments of comScore). Sooner than later they need to have a foothold on one of the fast developing Internet Markets in India.

Hitwise is another such product, which given share of traffic data. Hitwise studies the browsing pattern at ISP level (in Europe, they have tied up with orange) and has more realistic estimate of share of traffic. Their downside, is on getting the Demographic profile of the audience. They too have to start their services in India.

For any emarketer, Brand assessment, buzz quantification and cross media measurement is a challenging task. Like offline disciplines, the need of the hour is to get used to measurement tools like these, which will help to define and shape up realistic business goals.

Do share your comments.

Cheers!

So, what is Social Bookmarking?

There were Google "bots" and then came the bookmarks. Probably, 3-4 years down the line we might have this introduction for Social Bookmarking websites Del.ici.ous, Readit.com etc etc. It will take some time to pick up and can be considered as the hottest trend right now. My question on linkedin on "how many of you use social bookmarks and are the results effective?" has only two respondants :(

So, what do the social bookmarking tags/sites do? Very simply put, they help you save bookmarks as tags and share it with the community. Sites like del.ici.ous go a step further and show you interesting results. Sites like dig, show you the most popular stories. Consider this, everytime a person uses the bookmark to search information, he has taken one step further away from Google/Yahoo SERPs, indicating a huge traffic potential in times to come. The only difference being, these results of social bookmarks is the collective effort of readers (read humans) who have tagged/indexed the information. They might have researched on Yahoo/Google (and therefore sourced through a bot/algorithm), however the information is filtered and hence richer. Over a period of time, familiarity will pave way for more frequent usage.

Lets go little deep and explore the "semantics". Social Bookmarking is a term for allowing people to publish, categorise and share their bookmarks. Del.ici.ous uses a non-hierarchical keyword categorisation system, know as folksonomy, where user tag their links with one or more freely chosen keyword. This is like naming method (Taxonomy) but authored by users. Once bookmarks are posted and tagged, the keyword that users give them can be combined and shared in powerful ways. Users can see all the bookmarks on a keyword to learn what others feel is important, and see how many people bookmark a particular item to gauge its popularity.

Stripped down to its core, social bookmarking is a means by which a group can categorise and locate information based on its own evolving taxonomy. In other words, it's very collaborative and a little unstructured. Users "tag" content and the content is "Bookmarked" for all to see based on those tags. That kind of information categorisation is sometimes referred to as "folksonomy", a hybrid word referring to regular "Folks" and "Taxonomy", a method of organisation. The whole process is democratic. Whereas the search engines use top-down approach to sorting and filing data (the program algorithm shows people what it "thinks"), social bookmarking is bottom-up, grassroot system wherein users tell other users what they think and something of consensus usually forms. In true sense it is not the backlinks referral or SEO optimised content, but the popularity by fellow users that determines the ranking. Items favoured by more than one person percolates up in popularity, helping the user to find interesting things to read on subjects.

Social bookmarking sites fill as unique niche by helping organise truly useful information. It's a bit different from news of the day content covered by sites like Digg, although there is some overlap. People tend to bookmark content they found useful enough to consider revisiting at another time. This could be content thats simple longer than they have time to absorb when first discovered. A person could also subscribe to his bookmark feed using a program like bloglines using RSS link near the bottom of the page.

One limitation of social bookmarks (like del.ici.ous) to date is the privacy control. All bookmarks are visible to everyone else in the system, so this may not be an ideal location to bookmark financial reports of acquisition candidates, the MySpace profiles of prospective employees or other things that may raise an eyebrow. Yahoo has a similar product called MyWeb that does offer the ability to mark bookmarks private, shared with friends, or public, but hasn't taken off like del.ici.ous. Though Yahoo acquired del.ici.ous last year, but hasn't done much to integrate.

Social bookmarking will soon evolve beyond its techie tool avatar. Sooner than later, and as more people use it, netizens will realise that it is not just a web based access to bookmark. It is driven more by a form of implied reciprocation where bookmarkers contribute what they found interesting with the understanding that others will the same, leading to a community which is source of good content; the classic "collaborate and grow" netiquette.

Do you use social bookmarking? If you don't, it is always a good time to start and begin contributing and lend that 'Human touch" to search results.

Cheers!

The Nielsen Global Online Survey

I was generally surfing for articles on general trends and direction on eCommerce and how is it shaping up in India. The good news is that the picture is rosy, which is no different to what you would have heard elsewhere. Its not a new news. Consider this, Indian internet space is real hot, has 37 Mln users, which is a good number (compare this to China with over 100 Mln and US 150 Mln). A robust Indian financial system makes it lucrative for eCommerce growth.

Our central body for internet and mobile- IAMAI B2C reports that eCommerce is expected to cross Rs.9000 crores (USD 2,250 Mln), a 30% growth over last years figures. Travel is the biggest driver of eCommerce and accounts for Rs.5,500 Crores (USD 1372 Mln). OTAs (like Makemytrip.com & Yatra), Tour Operators, Hotels and Railways, form this category. It is needless to say that travel as a category renders itself to online medium seemlessly. The next biggest contributor is online eTailing, where the total size is 850 crores (USD 212 Mln). Online classifieds contributes 540 crores (USD 135 Mln) and online subscription making up the rest of 20 crores (USD 5 Mln).

Rosy picture indeed, when you consider that our huge base of middle class spending
population of 300-450 Mln is still untapped.

Neilson Global Online Survey corroborates this fact. According to the report that it
released on 28th Jan, 2008, over 875 Million Consumers Have Shopped Online -- The Number of Internet Shoppers Up 40% in Two Years. Clothes/Shoes were the fastest growing Internet buys and “Visa” was the Most Popular Credit Card Payment Method. Read the full report here.

Another extract from the report is the following- among Internet users, the highest
percentage shopping online is found in South Korea, where 99 percent of those with Internet access have used it to shop, followed by the UK (97%), Germany (97%), Japan (97%) with the U.S. eighth, at 94 percent. Additionally, in South Korea, 79 percent of these Internet users have shopped in the past month, followed by the UK (76%) and Switzerland (67%) with the U.S. at 57 percent.

Credit card is the most preferred mode of payment ( more pronounced in Asia and Latin countries). Turkish online shoppers (who represent the economic elite in that country) topped global rankings for credit card usage (91%) for online purchases followed by 86 percent of Irish online shoppers and 84 percent of Indian and UAE online shoppers. The report further says, “Shopping on the Internet with the ease of a credit card is especially appealing to consumers in emerging markets who simply cannot find or buy items they want in their retail trade. The Internet has opened up a whole new world of shopping for these consumers". There is a list of online shopping sites covered in the study.

How much ever good we might feel reading the numbers, the fact remains that internet penetration has plateaued. The total eCommerce relevant TG will be 5 Mln, which is only 10%. The month on month growth is dismal. Broadband coverage is not increasing as expected. Moreover, the language websites is not taking off in a big way. Till the next wave comes, we will witness only organic growth.

Do let me know your thoughts and comments on this subject.

Cheers!!

Marketing and the Art of Motorcycle Maintainence

As I was driving back home today and cruising through the chain of thoughts, I was reminded of a few regular comments in my organisation, which my marketing folks will not find irregular- Where are the numbers? Marketing can never get their numbers right? Marketing never backs up data. etc etc.

The war between between sales and marketing lingers on; numbers and leads and conversion. These are eternal debates and has been a discussion point for many research papers and conferences.

However the truth is and the fact remains that at the end of the day and the quarter and the year end, sales is the only factor which has a direct impact on the organisation's bottomline and it is these numbers that builds CFO's confidence (and therefore CEOs). Marketing on the other hand, and till this point this would be still contesting and justifying, which gets me thinking- Is marketing an exact science?

Let me elaborate a little on what I'm talking about. I happen to attend a session on ROI marketing organised by ZenithOptimedia, where panel included Mr.Santosh Desai (Future Brands), Mr.Sachin Bhatia (MakeMyTrip.com) and a gentleman from new Walmart team. Mr Desai's thought were very provoking, he said- Numbers are handled very loosely and sometimes we measure for the sake of measuring. Remember, when we made graphs for science lab test. The line in the graph would come first and then would the figures. Results and targets would come first, then the numbers. All of us would have encountered this situation.

Now, consider marketing, where the greatest tool/invention is the concept of "Brand". Ironically, it never features in the balance sheet. But it is a brand which drives the consumer mindspace, preferences to use the product and therefore sales and market. Organisations spend huge time and money to build a strong brand. An ideal stage would be something like Google, where one doesn't have to spend any money, but before one gets to this situation, one has to do a lot of board meetings and meet quarter end sales pressures.

And if I were to ask, how big the brand should be, what is the measure of a big brand and how can it drive business goals, to what extent does it effect the bottomline and will shareholders buy it? Well, it is very debatable, but surely, it is not as easy as to have a future projection for sales. It is like defining the "Quality", which might empirically precedes any intellectual constructions. Deriving formula for numbers and projection is easy, but creating a brand isn't. Sales is easy, Marketing isn't. Thats why there are few marketing guys and very few of them become CEOs :)

Let me elaborate a little more and dwell on the realm of philosophy. World's fastest growing company, Google didn't know what it would become when it launched "Adwords". Best of the discoveries were not planned. It happened with a mixture of conscious effort and magic (call it hands of god, stoke of luck, belief etc). Robert R Prisig's book "Lila" (he also wrote "Zen and the art of motorcycle maintainence") has a very insightful story. P wanted to reach Newfoundland, and prepared well for it. He trained himself as a sailor, gained proficiency in reading stars and maps. And so one day, he started on his journey to Newfoundland. There was a terrible storm and he lost his map, but then his inspiration kept him going. He used his instincts to guide him towards coast. He saw an island and he remembered that newfoundland was 10 kms to the right. Though he could not measure 10 km, he went further and saw some people. In order to ensure that his calculation was right, he asked these people how far was newfoundland. To his surprise he found that he was in Newfoundland!

In the process to get the right numbers, right target, right stretch target we seem to suppress our instincts and loose the feel for numbers (read business) and can't look beyond. If we can't differentiate between business goals and targets, the numbers become useless to reach goals. We loose the bigger picture. We measure for the sake of measuring and we make numbers to defend our options and resort to precision and more precision. The qualification of success would be how precise we are. And so would be the bonuses!

Marketing is philanthropic in its construction and all about hopes, dreams and aspiration and philosophy, which may not follow a polynomial regression equation and extends beyond the number business. Marketing is an inexact science and a creative profession. It is laidback, but performs, we should try to force fit its statistic correlation with bottomline.

Or shall we? I would love to hear from you :)

Cheers!

Microsoft's bid for Yahoo!

$45 Billion is the figure. Steve Ballmer's offer, a "bear hug" in M&A parlance, was the first step. The letter ended with a mix of conviviality and veiled threat that suggests what might come next. "My leadership team and I would be happy to make ourselves available to meet with you and your Board at your earliest convenience," he writes. "Depending upon the nature of your response, Microsoft reserves the right to pursue all necessary steps to ensure Yahoo shareholders are provided with the opportunity to realize the value inherent in our proposal."

Sanford C. Bernstein analyst Jeffrey Lindsay wrote in a research note that "the Microsoft bid of $31 is very astute" because it puts pressure on Yahoo management to take actions that could unlock the underlying value of Yahoo assets, which he estimates are worth upward of $39-$45 a share.

If the Yahoo board digs in its heels, reject Microsoft's offer, and resorts to its "poison pill"—an anti-takeover maneuver to dilute the value of a hostile bidder's stake in the company—Microsoft's next shot would be to file a tender offer and nominate a new slate of independent directors. This is otherwise known as throwing the bums out.

Under Yahoo's bylaws, the notice for such a proposal and new slate of directors must be issued by March 13—enough time for the Yahoo directors to consider Microsoft's offer, while each side burns through some very high-priced legal advice, and Microsoft heads toward a possible proxy fight.

Google Lawyers have been blogging about the antitrust, with Microsoft's bid. Will they succeed? There are lot of action in this space. These are few good articles on this news...

The War for the Internet: Why Yahoo! is Microsoft's best chance to "kill Google." is my favourite ;)

Accenture Global Digital Advertising Study 2007

My friend Anuj Anand shared a very interesting report with me last week and as usual i was about to junk it ;). A better sense prevailed and I didn't regret a bit going through the report.

Though it is called "Accenture Global Digital Advertising Study 2007"and you might think that it pertains only to US (no wonder their local baseball competition is also called World Cup), it does have something for all of us. Coming back to the report, the key takeaways were...

- 79 percent of our survey participants agree that advertising will become more performance-based, as the industry moves towards precise measurement of results, rapidly delivered. This will impose a performance discipline on an industry that has rarely felt this kind of pressure.

- 87 percent agree that analytics will become more accurate and more critical to the business. This shift will drive a decline in the use of traditional success measures — total audience per advertisement — but will enable advertisers to gain increased return
on investment through more accurate targeting of audiences.

- 97 percent agree that advertising relationships with customers will become more interactive, and the other 3 percent say they don’t know, meaning that not a single respondent disagrees. As a result of this greater interactivity, capabilities such as clickthrough buttons on TV will enable a two-way dialogue with the consumer all the way to purchase. These capabilities will also create a more meaningful feedback loop on advertising effectiveness.

- 43 percent of the respondents believe that digital media will become the primary form of programming and advertising content within the next five years, and a further 33 percent say this will happen in between seven and 10 years. The impact of this transition may be
accelerated by the typical pattern that early adaptors tend to be from higher income
demographic groups that are more attractive to advertisers. Traditional advertisers are largely unprepared for the wave of digitally driven change about to engulf them.

- Only 29 percent of executives believe the industry is technologically prepared for the resulting changes in performance measurement. The proportions are even lower in terms
of customer analytics (25 percent), targeted advertising (21 percent) and customer interactivity (13 percent).

- Largely as a result, the highest proportion of respondents (43 percent) believe advertising agencies have the most to lose in the transition to digital advertising, followed by broadcasters with 33 percent.

- Correspondingly, 46 percent believe that online search companies have the most to gain, followed by digital advertising specialists with 19 percent.

- 77 percent agree that advertising will be viewed in an integrated way on three screens — television, computer and wireless handset.

Indian scenario can't be more rosier. Digital agency Zenith Optimedia expects Internet ad spend to double, from 210 crores 2006 to 450 crores in 2007 and can potentially rise to 2,250 crores mark in 2009 (a 10 times increase). As a share of advertising pie, the share will rise to 6.8%, which was 1% last year. There is another interesting report on digital industry.

It just certifies a fact that we already know, that the advertising industry is facing a radical transformation — in terms of its technological and cultural impact. We need to focus strongly on the use technology to offer advanced customer interactivity. Targeting and analytics are gaining real competitive differentiation.

Therefore the implications for us are...

- If you are a new media company — build, partner or buy systems (sales, reporting, delivery) to support products across three screens and to deliver targeted advertising in privacy-compliant ways.
- If you are a marketer — escalate your integrated marketing and advertising initiatives across three screens, keeping a critical eye on performance metrics.
- If you are a technology company — focus on developing front-end and back-end systems specific to each medium’s unique needs.

If you can't locate PDF on the net, do write to me and I'll send you a copy :)

Cheers!

Internet- A Sales Channel or a Branding Medium?

A food for thought, it didn't strike me even when Google was making a presentation on Branding strategy. Spends more on building brands, as the cost of conversions on a brand keyword would be the least (roughly 5-10 times more than your average conversion). So invest in brand and reap benefits, increase your ROI and lower the cost of conversion. Perfect theory, instantly buyable. Another large part of their presentation was on how the brands will be built online- Content, display ads, RIAs video ads. You name it and it is on the internet. As a marketer and a category leader what would you do? Where would you
put the money and how much.

Lets go a little deeper, and recall the definition of brands (a difficult one and to my mind one of the very misued terms). A brand is a sum total of Product's Physical attributes and its experience and has a name. A strong brand should be able to conjure images and experience (good/bad) in your mind. It is the holy grail of marketing, and in an ideal state, if your brand is big enough, you don't need to advertise and waste monies (but you do that till you get there). All our B-school course, our strategy is around how to build great brands (Mr Arker has written 4 books on this theme and Mr Kotler tome must be in its 11th edition by now). However, we marketers are still pondering over on how to do it. More so, how to do it online. Or should we not?

Lets consider this small example, TV has 70 million households, and more than 500 channels. The black box has been the greatest invention for marketing so far (in my opinion and have no hard feeling with my other online loving folk). Experiments have proven that a communication has a greater impact and lasting impression when sound and Vision are in tandem. And then came the other inventions Computers and Mobiles (also with screens). And so it happened that someone (and followed by a number of whitepapers) announced the birth of second and third screen (please note that the first screen was television). And marketing was to be dominated by this genre.

In US it started about 20 years back and now they have 50% internet penetration, Singapore is 60% and Taiwan is 90%. For India, I only know the number of users and it also varries greatly, 25 Mln as per comScore, 35Mln as per IAMAI and 45 Mln as per NASSCOM. In short, though our sheer number is high, our penetration is very poor (i'll update the penetration figures as soon I get it). In India, internet is still not a mass medium. Please consider the time spend by today's youth on each medium (Source Business World Youth Report 2006, IAMAI 2006)

TV: 124 minutes/day
Newspaper: 30 Minutes/day
Radio: 84 minutes/day
Internet:61 Minutes/day

People do spend time online, where does the communication stick and occupy that little space, which creates a brand. Video ads, Social community, RIA, Viral, Flash Movies and webisodes are the answers. Huge engagement, huge interaction and best of all it is by choice and recommendation (by search engine). But is this good enough to create brands? Good enough to create recall and not to use the search engine to come to the website? Will it be a talking point?

Lot of brands have done it, and have been hugely successful. Google didn't do any advertising (and maximised PR to its advantage). eBay utilised the online community and so did YouTube and MySpace. Orkut is very popular in India and they did it with 0 advertising.

And the most differentiating factor of our medium is the measurability. Internet is one of the few mediums that can define ROI (Direct Marketing is the other). So now we can use it to define goals and plan backwards to derive the ROI. The campaign have set goals and marketers can now be smarter and more accountable. However, this brings us back again to our moot point, can it create brands. At least in India can it replace TV. And will an emarketer choose Internet whole heatedly to drive the strategy to build brands?

CPM/CPC or CPA?

The other day I had a tough time negotiating with one of the big online publisher. "We sell only on CPMs", the publisher said and were ready to discount the price by 20%. CPM is the usual discussion starter for any media negotiations and vary from publisher to publisher (at times can be as high as Rs.500). CPM stands for Cost Per Million, but in reality is only cost per thousand (CPT). Let me illustrate with an example

If you buy 1 Million impressions on Yahoo at Rs.350 CPM, means that at the end of the campaign you will have to pay Yahoo
1,000,000
_____________x350= 350,000 Rs.
1000

The other way to handle the negotiation is to get a fixed spot in prime real estate, at a fixed cost. e.g if you block the DHTML position (LHS position below the header). You might have to pay Rs.200,000 and would generate say 3 Mln impressions. See the following example to access if effective CPM might be a good idea to take a fixed position.

200,000
___________x1000= Rs.67
3,000,000

Thus indicating that given monies the same, Rediff is a better buy.

Most of the publishers keep revising the rates, depending upon the popularity of that position. internationally, it the third party auditing sources like comScore or Neilson net rating that corroborates this, however in India, it might be decided by the availability of the inventory (which brings us to the second most used term in discussion "Our inventory is sold out" ;). How many come to the website, what is the rightmatrix for measurement, time spent/Pageview, audience profile is a different discussion and Pandora's box. Check this article.

CPM is the starting point of any discussion and can actually multiply into lot of mathematics. The first such matrics is GRP, which brand advertisers will find most relevant. You might recall that (like television)

GRPs= Reach x Frequency

comScore has a special tool in its module that will help you to access the reach and frequency of your campaign. I'm not familiar with Neilson Netrating (as they don't have their services in India), but I'm sure they will also have this standard tool. This matrix will help you to synergise online campaigns with the other mass media component. However, the online world has a different brand dynamics. You might note, the first trigger of an offline campaign results in search for the keyword/website. Please note that this is an inexact science and as of now has no valid data point to corroborate assumption :).

There are other bunch of guys who swear by SEM. It is only by trial and error that you will find the solution to this misery and find that optimum Offline and Online mix.

CPM also brings us to the next big currency- CPC. You might get this standard reply from a big publisher- "We don't sell on CPCs ;)" or "We can lower the CPM". All they mean is that they don't have the right technology to support CPCs. Let me illustrate CPC by example. If you buy 1 Million impression on Yahoo with Rs. 3.5 Lacs as the outlay and a fixed spot on Rediff Home page for Rs.3 lacs, how would you measure the deal.

One way to do this is to use the Media Planner reach and frequency through comScore and come about a GRP number (which a brand guy should).

However, if you happen to be a marketing manager of a website, where traffic is paramount and you need visits to increase the bottomline (with your bottomline at stake), you will consider clicks. Say Yahoo creative has a an average click through rate of 0.6% and Rediff has 0.3%. The number of clicks that you will get from respective Publishers is as under...

Yahoo..... 1,000,000 x 0.6%= 6,000
Rediff.... 3,000,000 x 0.3%= 9,000

CPCs will be as under

Yahoo.... 3,50,000/6,000= Rs.58
Rediff... 3,00,000/9,000= Rs.33

Indicating that Rediff real estate works better and is more cost effective to drive the click traffic (maybe Rediff should sponsor my blog). Please note that the numbers are only indicative and for the sake of discussion.

As a performance advertiser, you would want a real estate that drives traffic and converts, not necessary a property that gets you eyeballs. CPC when used will remove this doubt from a planners mind (a smart marketer will further better this by using a better performing creative and up the CTRs). The benchmark CPCs (and effective CPCs) should be in the range of Rs.3 and upwards depending on the category. If you are jobs, it is easy and becomes tough for a luxury product/service.

In the performance marketing space the "IN THING" is the CPA (cost per acquisition), which a further distilled version on CPCs and effective CPMs. The most expected answer from a Publisher will be- "What is CPA?" and "There is a policy against CPAs". As a smart buyer you will chance upon and start the CPC discussion with the publisher again.

Truth is, CPA deals are a potential source of loss for a publisher, unless he is in a dire need to sell his inventory. By far, Google and Other Search engines will give the Best CPAs, followed by Affiliates (if your price and conversion rates are attrctive). Another fact of the matter is that a publisher would need huge investment to CPAs, MSN has Atlas, Komli has it own technology and so does Yahoo (but they still have to start monetising it). Let me illustrate it with one last example. Suppose Yahoo campaign converts at 0.5% and so does Rediff. The cost per conversion will look as under

Yahoo Total conversions= 6,000 clicks x 0.5%= 30
Total Cost= Rs.3,50,000/30= Rs.11,667

Rediff Total conversions= 9,000 clicks x 0.5%= 45
Total Cost= Rs.3,00,000/30= Rs.6,667

Indicating that Rediff drives much cheaper conversions (Now Rediff should definitely sponsor this blog;). This however depends on a number of factors, but most importantly what a publisher must realise is that most of the conversions is brought about by Non-prime real estate or the remamant inventory. This opens their inventory to a completely new set of clientele and huge potential to monetise their inventory. Check out this mediapost article...

Please do note that the smarter you buy, the better you can justify the value and at the end of the day it your numbers and board meeting that matters!!

First Step (Part 4): Email Marketing

Email Marketing is not CRM; treat this as the most precise communication weapon that you have in your arsenal. EMails are personal and if used using "Recency" concept can deliver fantastic results. This is a bit of cliche, but studies have shown that personalized attention and getting to know when to connect with the consumer increases attachment and relationship (Marketingsherpa). And therefore EMail Marketing.

The conversion of an EMail campaign to a established base can be as high as 4-5% (and more) depending on the product category, which makes it even better than Search Engine Marketing. There are few other advantages...

1. The media spend spend is 0, you will spend only in technology to maintain the Email Platform and maintaining the response and conversion data.

2. EMail Marketing is also insulated from the bid fluctuation due to competition, and therefore the inconsistencies of the response and expected conversion.

3. The targeting is more precise, as the data is completely yours. Ideally you should have all the information- right from age to location and his buying pattern. Targeting coupled with right product mix would work wonders for the business.

4. Faster turnaround and results. SEM campaign will take 2-3 days to kick off, whereas Email can start getting your responses and conversion from the next day itself.

However, before an eMarketeer would reach this ideal stage (where he exactly knows who is he targeting), there's lot of groundwork to be done. An Email infrastructure requires an immense Technology backbone, coupled with data mining & history of communication plan. The goal should be to create identifiable and profitable clusters. These clusters are the cornerstone of this internet marketing tool, and needs to be studied continuously to determine how much focus should be given to a particular cluster. One of my friends who worked for Citibank direct marketing told me that they had 120 such groups (and is growing everyday). This segmentation is the foundation on which Email marketing works. Though initially traditional parameter like age, education, location, income level etc might dominate, but gradually one should move towards non demographic traits like preferences, tastes, which are more likely to influence the purchase.

The decision on which EMail platforms to go for will torment you for days. Better idea will be to get test account from two-three vendors, before you finally decide one. At MakeMyTrip, we used CATAPULTMAIL, which is the homegrown product of erstwhile Webshatra and now Position2. This is a very basic emailing platform, which helps to broadcast email with nice performance dashboard (# Broadcasted, # Opened, # Links Clicked). There are few advanced ones, notably Dartmail, which has a good relation with all the ISPs and inboxes. The precision and analytics are of very high standard. There are also specialised agencies which deliver this solution, solution integrated. Another late entrant is Epsilon International, which uses Dartmail. They have started an Indian office headquatered in Mumbai.

Before you start sending EMails, you should have a very clear idea of your database profile- total numbers, active base, targeting information like age, location, sex and transaction history (if possible). This should help you to divide the database into few groups and hence target communication. Every campaign that you execute should make you more intelligent about the base, about their preference and about their buying capacity. Here again, I would want to emphasise the need to integrate Web Analytics with the EMail platform, which would help you to measure the response down to the level of conversion. Again, when you use this data to enrich the profile information (in the database) it will make you next campaign stronger.

Though all the above points were in favor of technology and Emailing platform, one shouldn't ever neglect the power of content, the creative and the subject line. Like all the other form of internet marketing, these too should be optimised. An average open rates is 20% (30% in case of super efficient database) and click through rate (on open) is 15%.

Through EMail Marketing, marketing and organisation overall will not only save valuable marketing monies, which it would have spent to acquire the same users and increase conversion, but also make the brand stronger through a relevant interaction. The method encourages the marketeer to segment and thereby gain valuable and psychographic insights about his consumers and business. What could be a better competitive edge?

The First Step (Part 3): Invest time in building an Affiliate network

The best part about an affiliate is that they work on remuneration. This is a boon for for an ecommerce site, where the ROI is always under pressure and every quarter, the CMO has to justify the spends.

This model started well before SEM, the pioneers were Amazon; where they rewarded every click responsible for a transaction (read the interesting article here). In Europe, Affiliate Network is a very popular Internet Marketing strategy and even preferred over SEM.

Affiliates use a variety of methods to get the clicks- SEO, SEM, Email Marketing, Display banners to send traffic to your site; but the best part is that you pay only for a purchase. Review and recommendations are other few ways to get relevant traffic which converts. The remuneration can be basis Pay per Action (read conversion) or revenue sharing (% of profits).

There are a number of advantages in starting your own affiliate network Vs joining an existing one. These are...

1. The relationship with the affiliate is stronger and can work in favour of the merchant (the entity which pays for a conversion)

2. The affiliate can work as a partner and not just as a publisher in the network (where he can switch to another merchant the next day)

3. The payment rules (last click/first click/distribution of revenues as over last three clicks) is
more flexible and hence few performing affiliates can be nurtured and honed.

4. The payment process is smoother and faster (and hence the affiliates will be happier)

5. They can be used for a variety of techniques that will help SEO (link sharing etc).

However, developing an affiliate network require a lot of investment in technology and manpower. You will realise over a period of time that it is the relationship that matters and hence the "Affiliate manager" plays a key role in developing the network and maintaining it.

There are also existing affiliate network that you can join (both as a merchant and as a publisher), if you cannot build your own affiliate platform. In India, DGM is the most promising one. They started about a year back, but the superior technology platform, DC Strom, gives them an edge over the others. They are also quite big in Europe.

Which ever route you choose, start you Affiliate Network asap- the sooner, the better ;).

Happy New Year!!