Models of human interactions that help manage the convergence of social media and mobile marketing
Social and mobile are two of the largest growth areas in the technology world. It is therefore inevitable that commentators are keen to identify (and understand how to monetise) convergence between the two. There is great synergy between the two areas. Both are focused on communication, both are undeniably personal and both are very immediate.
Which new propositions can you offer though combining mobile + social?
Whilst a computer is a window onto the web and into your social connections, a mobile, be it an iPhone, iPad or Android smartphone, is your personal window. And unlike a computer it brings extra data and functionality with it. With a mobile, you can share where you are and what you’re doing, generally in a much richer way than a simple status update. This is all becoming fairly commonplace and the…
Are your customers sunny sharers or walled worriers?
Value/Importance: [rating=4]
Recommended link: McCann London Facebook Page
Our customers are understandably worried about how the data they provide online is used and protected. But how worried are they really? How do their attitudes to privacy vary and how can we reassure them? This should be a concern to all marketers who collect and use data online, which must be the majority of marketers today.
I thought this was a really useful piece of global research based on a 6,525 sample in the US and five other markets with qualitative research from twelve markets.
Which are the main consumer privacy concerns?
The study has a lot of rich detail about specific consumer concerns and the actions they take. For example, this data shows that a sizeable proportion of customers prefer to closely control their online privacy.
…
Benchmark the priority areas for your digital marketing strategy
The fact is, there isn't a perfect time for any benchmarking, so now as good a time as any to take a little time to reflect on your team or your organisations strenghts and weaknesses and how you feel that's bearing up against your top 2 or 3 competitors. So much changes in a year, internally and externally, and there's a lot to be said for a pragmatic review to ensure that your focus and undoubtedly limited resources are in the right place for 2012.
With this in mind, we decided to create a new Internet marketing benchmark tool for our Expert members.
What exactly do you health check?
[caption id="attachment_9345" align="alignright" width="271"] The Healthcheck tool now available to Expert members[/caption]
It's a little like going to a health clinic for a check-up, we believe, there…
In our previous guidance notes on solutions to comply with the "cookie law" we have covered:
A cookie-free analytics system
The Cookie Collective cookie audit and toolbar toolkit
In this article Tim Gurney of Wolf Software takes us through his cookie privacy software solution which uses a modal dialog similar to the one below. Thanks for your detailed response Tim!
We think it's great this has been made available as a fee free solution if the Wolf Software brand mark is shown - a good option for SMEs? For larger companies the system can use the companies own brand ident for a fee. This is an example of a un-tailored implementation:
Question 1. Please describe your solution to cookie opt-in compliance?
Our current solution evolved from our original standalone solution for Google Analytics. This provided a simple drop in compliance solution specifically…
Our interview with Richard Beaumont of the Cookie Collective
This is our second look at a technology solution to help marketers comply with the new "cookie law". This was the first - an interview about a cookie free analytics system.
The Cookie Collective have created a toolkit which can help site owners do a free cookie audit and place a consent message on the site giving information about cookies. This is how the consent message looks for the Cookie Collective script:
So, onto the questions, thanks to Richard for his clear responses.
Question 1. What solutions do you have to help marketers many compliance with the EU directive relating to cookies?
The Cookie Collective wanted to create a complete end to end service enabling any website to become compliant with the new law, and we have built a suite of products to achieve this.
The…
An interview with Oliver Birleson of Maxsi Limited
Following on from our posts and discussions on how to best implement the cookie law by May 2012, we're going to take a look at some of the technology and consulting solutions available to help marketers comply.
Our first post is an interview with Oliver Birleson of MaxSi Limited who are offering a cookie free analytics system based on their established eVisitAnalyst product.
Question: Why have you developed your solution?
We have developed eVisit Analyst 8 due to the demand for an analytics system which retains optimal functionalisation regardless of whether or not visitors have disabled cookies. Moreover, as the Information Commissioner's Office have deemed analytics as 'non-essential' cookies, there is the need for an analytics system that is not reliant upon visitors giving their positive consent to store cookies. Users of eVisit can therefore have an analytics system which does not fluctuate dependant…
Will the W3C browser proposals help EU businesses implement the new Privacy Directive?
Value/Importance: [rating=5]
Recommended link: W3C announcement and BBC Summary
On Smart Insights, we’ve discussed the challenge for marketers of the new laws requiring disclosure on how cookies affect privacy which come into full force in May 2012. Many marketers and site owners have hoped that a browser-based solution would stop the need for expensive and disruptive system updates to their sites. Well, if you’re in that category, this looks like good news. The World Wide Web consortium (W3C) which sets many online standards has worked together with many well known online companies to help define a solution. These include Adobe Systems; Apple Inc; Center for Democracy and Technology; Deutsche Telekom AG; Facebook; Google Inc.; IBM; Mozilla Foundation; Microsoft; Opera Software; Stanford University; The Nielsen Company; TRUSTe; and Yahoo! Inc.
The new approach released on the 14th…
Major changes to how products are sold defined in 10 new consumer rights
Value/Importance: [rating=5] For transactional sites - retail, travel, etc
Recommended link: EU Official summary
A summary of the new directive
We're alerting you to this EU press release of 10/10/2011 that has a good summary of theses 10 new consumer rights which will affect all transactional sites. You can also read a full description of the new directive.
The most significant changes are:
Pre-checked tick boxes opting into additional products banned (I was a recent victim to this - a hotel cancellation insurance for a booking - it’s that sort of thing)
7 day purchase refund period extended to 14 days
Total costs have to be displayed (low-cost airlines beware)
Timing
The new directive was first discussed as a proposal in Oct 2008. Following publication of the final directive governments have 2 years to implement the rules at national level. So there is…
It seems infographics are popular, but they have a flaw - they're instantly out-of-date. Well not any more. Thanks to HTML5, if your data sources are updated, the infographic can stay up-to-date too!
This is a great initiative by Online Schools which also uses HTML5 to add interactivity - check it out - it's one of the best examples of the power of HTML5 we've seen:
Created by: OnlineSchools.org (link removed by request)
…
Google has updated two of it's main sources. I thought I'd alert readers to them since I often find that people reach for their pens to make a note of these on training courses.
Google Agency Toolkit
Many readers will know the many great tools Google provide to encourage marketers to spend more with advertisers. The ones we've written about before and recommend are most useful are:
The Google Keyword Tool - for seeing the number of searches on a topic
Google Keyword Planner - a new tool supplementing the keyword tool
Google Ad Preview tool - shows marketplace players in different countries
Google Trends - for spotting search trends by country
Google Ad Planner - for finding site popularity and audience composition for media sites/publishers
But I find many don't know about the Google Agency Toolkit which groups these together and provides many others - check it out!
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