Marketer's Lab

Bubble Guru

(Vendor Speed Date - Bubble Guru)... Bubble Guru offers a solution to quickly and easily create little video "bubbles" which can be used for a variety of web applications.  They of course sprinkle examples liberally throughout their own site and feature a handful of testimonials as well.  The process looks very simple, either using a web-cam application they provide or uploading video you may have captured on your own.  They offer a free 14 day trial and have packages that range from a whopping $2.95 per month up to the advanced package for $14.95 per month. 

Not familiar with anything quite like Bubble Guru, it looks like an easy way to provide a richer web experience and if used creatively could add a lot of value to any site.      

Your Blog is Talking

First official vendor speed date post here... The vendor is Odiogo.  They provide a service that automatically creates podcasts from text on blogs or other sites.  I've posted previously on the fact podcasts are here to stay as part of the marketing mix so this technology seems like a super easy way to leverage existing web content to tap into the podcast crowd.  Odiogo has a nice demo which provides an overview of how their service works.  Prior to this post I've not tried the service myself, but am intrigued enough to explore a little more.  The automated voice is of course a little stilted and awkward, but honestly not terrible as automated voice bots go.  They look to be easily compatible with all the major blog platforms and actually offer the service for free to bloggers.  Ads (sold by Odiogo) are inserted into each podcast, but they do offer a revenue share model for bloggers at a certain traffic level.  If you have web content that you think might transition well to podcasts, certainly worth checking out Odiogo.

Vendor Speed Dating

Looking for love?  Searching high and low for your marketing technology soul-mate?  I can help.  This post marks the beginning of a new ongoing series under the "Vendor Speed Dating" category.  I've mentioned in previous posts some of the work I am doing in preparation for the launch of Upshot Institute.  Much of that work has involved talking with a LOT of marketing technology vendors and being on the receiving end of plenty of dog-n-ponies.  Upshot Institute will feature a vendor directory that includes over 1,000 of these vendors, but rather than keep everyone waiting I thought it might be nice to showcase a handful of these providers.  In the spirit of speed dating I'll keep it quick and simple, basically who they are, what they do and why it has potential value to you as a marketer.  You'll need to contact the vendors on your own to learn if they like long walks on the beach, cats, NASCAR, skydiving or are searching for that special someone.    

Calling All Marketing Tech Vendors

As part of the preparation for the upcoming launch of Upshot Institute, we've been compiling a huge database of marketing technology providers.  Currently the database features over 1,000 providers and is still growing.  To help navigate this massive universe of vendors, we are launching the Upshot50, a list of the leading marketing technology providers nominated and selected by you, the marketing professional.  Right now we're actively seeking nominations of marketing technology vendors who are doing fantastic and interesting things.  Please nominate any vendors you think are deserving at this link.  Once we have all the nominations we'll open up the voting  with plans to then announce winners this September.  So don't delay, help your favorite marketing technology vendor claim their fifteen minutes of fame!

The Carbon Footprint of a Blog Rant

"What's the carbon footprint of a banner ad?" I don't know, what's the carbon footprint of a stupid question? The banner ad question is from Don Carli of the Institute for Sustainable Communication (ISC) featured on a 3 Minute AdAge segment (segments I typically think are great BTW) taped at the AdAge Green Conference.  As part of Mr. Carli's comments, he highlighted the Institute had gone as far as engaging a team of gurus to build a tool which measures the carbon footprint of all of our horrific, disgusting, resource-sucking online marketing (my words, not his). Of the many ways we marketers consume resources, seems to me there are plenty of examples of resource consumption much more deserving of our immediate attention than online marketing.

To be clear, I'm a big fan, although not a militant activist, of greater environmental stewardship and improving our responsible use of resources.  What prompted my little rant here is seeing how those worthy green ideals are creating rather odd areas of focus. Would the effort that went into building the online tool have been better spent figuring out how to dramatically modify the direct mail industry or shining a light on other marketing areas which are more egregious consumers of resources?

Not to beat up on the direct mail folks but come on, physically moving pieces made from trees, dyes and other chemicals (via oil-powered vehicles) to people who didn't ask to get it in the first place hardly seems like a resource-friendly proposition.  We should be hammering on the whole direct mail industry to go beyond just "going green" by using recycled paper. 

I do believe organizations like the ISC and others in the industry are well-intentioned and have the right basic idea around a concerted effort to reduce the environmental impact of all marketing.  I have spent some time on the ISC site and it does look like they have some good work underway to address the problem, it just feels like a waste of time to dive into something like on-line marketing when there are so many serious offenders and better opportunities to make a meaningful impact on the environment.

Memes and "Temes"

A little bit of a departure here, but  this video from the TED Conference by Susan Blackmore is extremely interesting.  If you are familiar with "memes" and the implications for marketing, this talk takes the meme thing to a whole new level. 

Killing A Fly With A Shotgun

I was inspired by this piece on AdAge.com written by Greg Andersen to challenge some of the thinking about the use of marketing technology and the various new communications platforms.  Greg's piece leads with an example of his young niece questioning his foray as a 40-year-old into the world of Facebook.  He goes on to explore how from a branding and media standpoint it's important to consider why "because all the cool kids are doing it" isn't always a good excuse for running non-traditional media.  I really like Greg's style, it's a thought-provoking piece I encourage you to read.

The cool marketers are...well, doing something to leverage the latest, greatest marketing technologies.  It seems like we all want to "be cool" and plugged in using the newest social media tools, the super-whiz-bang integrated marketing platforms or the sophisticated behavioral targeting solutions.  I'm obviously a huge fan of all the emerging marketing technology, (hence the creation of this blog to focus on such things), but I think its important to be mindful of how much technology we employ.  I've seen plenty of examples of marketers "killing a fly with a shotgun" taking on the expense and complexity of big marketing technology solutions only to use a small fraction of the features and capabilities.

"The right tool for the job" strikes me as one of those timeless expressions that lends itself well to our current day and age.  My parting suggestion would be to become absolutely passionate about understanding the new marketing tools out there, but be selective in how, and if, they make sense for your situation.   

It's Aliiiiive!

Email marketing is alive and kicking.  In this eMarketer piece, email is clearly still going strong as a viable way to reach adult Internet users.  The problem with email is it just doesn't have the sizzle that things like social media, mobile marketing and web video have these days, but the chart below illustrates email is still a great medium for communication.  Another interesting little tidbit in this piece is there doesn't appear to be a drop off in the preference for email over the next five years, so email seems poised to continue to be an effective element in your communications strategy.  The caveat on email effectiveness is that its done using the right opt-in practices and the right mix of behavioral and personalization features.  Continue to invest in improving your email marketing programs since it would appear email will still be a meaningful piece of the marketing pie in the years to come.

Put Your Marketing on Autopilot

Wow, another marketing superplatform!  The concept of the "Marketing Superplatform" is something I have posted on before and an idea I predict is still very much in its early phases.  I had an opportunity recently to get an overview from another player in this emerging space called OfficeAutopilot.  One of the really interesting things about all the superplatform players is how different their various approaches are.  Some providers are taking the "mash-up" approach of bundling up a variety of marketing tools and providing access via a single portal without a ton of integration across the tools.  Others take a couple of anchor marketing modules such as email and analytics and build additional functionality around that.  There are plenty of other approaches, but OfficeAutopilot gets a hats off for doing something I think is truly exceptional. 

Basically they've built an application that provides a strong suite of functionality for salespeople, and have also built and integrated a ton of innovative features for us marketing types.  Think of it as a great salesforce automation tool with a powerful suite of email, analytics and behavioral targeting functionality.  For me a quick look at their web site demonstrated how clearly they have defined the audiences for their application and how they have approached providing the key elements for each audience.   

All the superplatform applications have way too many features to highlight in a post like this, but OfficeAutopilot seems to have one of the best ranges of features in each area.  Typically these platforms have pretty clear weak spots, either they're something the marketing team would love but the sales team wouldn't be happy with, or the inverse where they provide good sales functionality but don't provide much for marketing.  This is a pretty common complaint with Salesforce.com. (Note-OfficeAutopilot works with Salesforce.com if you need it to). I was told about 70% of their clients use it as a standalone. 

The overview I received was very quick (but very good, thanks Landon) so I was not able to see every trick OfficeAutopilot is capable of, but I came away very impressed by the interface, functionality and integration.  Even with the quick overview, I see them as one of the leading providers in this fast moving space.  Love to get any input on other players anyone is aware of or get any other input on the whole marketing superplatform concept.   

Introducing The PrinterStitial

50% of all home printing is from the web. If you think about that for a moment it makes sense based on typical home usage. The natural follow on thought for me was what a massive volume of printed pages that represents.  Add to that the web printing from the business world and you’re talking about a lot of dead trees. Format Dynamics has created a simple but brilliant marketing technology that allows marketers and publishers to tap into the power of the “printed web”.Format Dynamics offers three products; CleanPrint, Click4Print and PrintTracker. All these products are built around the “PrinterStitial” concept. Basically their technology enhances a printed web page so instead of getting all the web page navigation elements and the always funky pagination, you get a nice, well-formatted and truly print-friendly page. CleanPrint assures that any ads featured on the web page are optimized for the printed version which is nice for the user and of course a nice feature for publishers and advertisers.

Their Click4Print product provides the ability to print a product brochure or other material straight to your local printer directly from the online ad. The PrintTracker product provides all the detailed metrics on how these features are being used.   The Format Dynamics site has demos for their products and of course a lot more information on how everything works.What I really love about this is its simplicity, they've taken something we all do every day and shaped it into a new marketing opportunity.  So many of the new marketing technology solutions are focused on the social media realm or some other complex integrated technology, its refreshing to see some innovation happening around something so straightforward.