Sean's Articles

• What’s the True Cost of “Free” Online Information?

  January 26, 2012

  Sean Shoffstall, VP Innovation and Technology

  If you’ve visited Wikipedia lately, you’ve probably seen the impassioned fundraising pleas from the site’s founder and his colleagues.

  In fact, you can’t miss them. The banners have been appearing across the top of each page, imploring visitors to make a donation to keep the site running. I was a little taken aback the first time I saw one.

  But then I asked myself: why do we always assume information on the web will be free? After all, this content is often incredibly valuable. It has become fashionable to mock Wikipedia for not being an authoritative source, but at the very least, it’s a great place to begin researching any topic (and many of the articles are, in fact, outstanding).

  Type any term into a search engine, click Search, and you’ll be presented with links to thousands upon thousands of sites. Oh, sure, many of them are a total waste of time. But most contain at least a nugget of value. Sift through these sites for a few minutes, and you’ll develop a working knowledge of the topic you’re researching.

  Best of all, this information is free—at least for you, the searcher. For content providers, though, online information is anything but free.

  Can You Really Afford to Give Away Information?
  Got some knowledge you want to share online for free? It’s gonna cost you.

  Every website is hosted on a server somewhere—whether it’s in your spare bedroom or a massive data center. Each of these servers requires electricity, maintenance, and eventually, replacement. Right there, you can see why even “free” sites aren’t free.

  If you want your content to read well and you’re not much of a writer, you’ll need to hire a professional. If you want those well-written pages to show up in search engines, you should make sure your writer knows something about SEO. Depending on your traffic goals, you may also need to invest in other methods of driving visitors to your site, such as buying pay-per-click ads or ad space in popular e-newsletters.

  It all adds up. Seeking to not only defray these costs, but also make a nice little passive income online, many content providers are exploring ways of monetizing the valuable information they provide.

  Monetization Options for Online Content Providers
  One way to monetize an information website is to run banner ads. Once you have enough website traffic, you can simply charge advertisers a set monthly fee to display their ads.

  An easier way to make money from online advertising is to sign up with Google AdSense or a similar service. Google will run contextually relevant ads in designated areas on your site, and you’ll get paid each time someone clicks one. More traffic means more clicks and more revenue.

  Alas, once you start placing ads on your site, you’ll have to start asking yourself: how much is too much? If two banner ads are generating enough revenue to pay for your site, should you risk running a third? If your Google AdSense box is getting lots of clicks in the right sidebar, should you risk moving it into the main flow of your content?

  Which brings us back to Wikipedia. Their monetization strategy is to come right out and ask us for donations. Do the fundraising banners bug you, or have you donated? Would you look at Wikipedia any differently if they began running banner ads or Google AdSense on the site? Would you pay a subscription fee for Wikipedia—or for any other strictly informational site?

  We’d love to hear your thoughts on the notion of “free” online information. Please comment below, and thanks for reading.
   

   

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  Sean Shoffstall, VP of Innovation and Technology Social media, search and metrics are the driving force behind today's online marketing. Sean specializes in driving the best results for clients in all aspects of their business. He gives them a solid platform to build key learnings in all online media through proven metrics and testing strategies, and by leveraging years of best practice learnings from the top companies online. Email Sean.

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• Preparing for Life After Flash

  December 13, 2011

  Sean Shoffstall, VP Innovation and Technology

  I know it’s wrong to celebrate the downfall of another person. But if it’s just a software application, I figure it’s OK. So….hooray. Mobile Flash is finally dead.

  Just weeks ago, Adobe announced plans to stop developing its Flash Player plug-in for mobile browsers. The company will instead be focusing on alternative application packaging programs and the HTML5 protocol.

  As soon as I got the news, two thoughts popped into my head. First and foremost, my iPhone and I would like to know, what took Adobe so long? And second, how long will Adobe Flash even be around if Adobe is pulling it off mobile devices and suggesting that HTML5 is the way forward?

  Proving Steve Jobs Right
  If Flash does disappear entirely, Apple customers won’t be any worse off. The truth is, Adobe has never really delivered a mobile version of Flash that, well, worked.

  In fact, the late Steve Jobs famously banned Flash from iOS devices. Sharing his Thoughts on Flash, Jobs remarked, “Though the operating system for the iPhone, iPod and iPad is proprietary, we strongly believe that all standards pertaining to the web should be open. Rather than use Flash, Apple has adopted HTML5, CSS and JavaScript – all open standards.”

  Jobs went on to point out that it doesn’t matter that iPhones can’t view Flash videos because most of these videos are also available in the superior H.264 format. And it doesn’t matter that iPhones can’t play Flash games, because there are tens of thousands of free games in the App Store.

  And then he mentioned that Flash crashes Macs. Smack!

  Steve Jobs may have left us, but today, Adobe is practically admitting he was right.

  What Comes Next?
  Standards come and go. Remember Shockwave? It slowly faded away. Will Adobe simply allow Flash to do the same?

  If so, what will come next? Will Adobe fully embrace HTML5, simply come back with a modified version of Flash, or go in a different direction entirely? Will website developers use HTML5’s support for semantic markups to dramatically enhance the accessibility of websites? Will they tap into its features for enhancing SEO? For preventing piracy?

  And with HTML5 as the new web standard, which other technologies may be on the chopping block?

  We’d love to know what you think. Please take a moment to share your thoughts below about the demise of Flash, the rise of HTML5, or the future of web technology. 

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  Sean Shoffstall, VP of Innovation and Technology Social media, search and metrics are the driving force behind today's online marketing. Sean specializes in driving the best results for clients in all aspects of their business. He gives them a solid platform to build key learnings in all online media through proven metrics and testing strategies, and by leveraging years of best practice learnings from the top companies online. Email Sean.

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• In Case You Missed It: "Power of eMarketing Conference" Recap

  June 30, 2011

  Sean Shoffstall, VP Innovation and Technology

  Did you catch the Power of eMarketing Conference in San Francisco?

  On April 19 and 20, I had the privilege of speaking on three panels at the conference. Naturally, social media and SEO were the hot topics of the day. But the conversation also trended toward lead nurturing and how to drive conversions from your social conversations.

  Here are a few quick thoughts on the three panels I participated in.

  Don’t Stop at CAN-SPAM Compliance
  On the morning of April 19, I was on a panel with a Director of Compliance for a large corporation. The conversation focused on best practices in subject lines and email formatting, and how they apply to spam traps. These three ideas really resonated with the audience:

  1. CAN-SPAM compliance is the bare minimum. If you want to avoid spam filters and get your message delivered, you need to go much further.
  2. Keep subject lines short and sweet, yet descriptive and honest. Remember that if your subject line is longer than, say, 70 characters, it will only be partially visible in a preview pane or mobile device.
  3. Image-only emails not only provide a bad user experience (most of your clients probably set “images off” as a default), but are also a spam filter trigger.

  
   “You Can’t Handle the Truth” About Email Content
  For my second session on April 19, I shared the stage with Loren T. McDonald from Silverpop. The conversation was much more detailed. In fact, I felt like we were two old war buddies sitting up on stage reminiscing about battle scars and answering questions. We covered deliverability, content creation and relevancy, frequency, and, of course, CAN-SPAM.

  We even had a “You can’t handle the truth!” moment when an audience member complained that he didn’t have any content. We spent the next 5 minutes covering all the different ways you can generate content.

  If you face a similar problem, look at these simple facts:

  1. If you sell products or services, you have content. Go to your people who know the product best. Interview them and create a top 10 list.
  2. If you have customers, you have content. See point #1.
  3. You can repurpose existing content to create new content. If you’ve captured a video, do a write-up about it for your newsletter. If you’ve published a popular blog post, make a web clip summarizing the top points. If your CEO is giving a presentation, have him or her write an article about the subject.

  
  Protecting Your Online Reputation
  Our session on email and branding covered everything from tone and voice to email and newsletter design. Across the board, everyone agreed that having a consistent tone and communicating and fulfilling on your customer’s expectations is key. There was some disagreement about using comical versus professional tone, and about how often to send communications. But much of that hinges on whether you’re writing B2B or B2C emails.

  Here are some of the high points, which may seem obvious but are easy to overlook:

  1. Naming your constant communications helps boost deliverability and open rates. So, name your newsletters, webcast series, and any regular postings (especially your blog).
  2. The fastest way to lose the branding battle is to do a bait and switch. Be consistent, and deliver what you promised.
  3. Protect your online reputation. Don’t spam, don’t incite flame wars, and keep the conversation on topic.

   If you were at the Power of eMarketing Conference, I’m glad you could join us.

  If not, there will be another conference coming up in October in Rhode Island. Ozone Online’s Joel Lockwood and I plan to participate. It’s always good to get out of our bubble and swap best practices with others who are in the trenches.

  See you there?

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  Sean Shoffstall, VP of Innovation and Technology Social media, search and metrics are the driving force behind today's online marketing. Sean specializes in driving the best results for clients in all aspects of their business. He gives them a solid platform to build key learnings in all online media through proven metrics and testing strategies, and by leveraging years of best practice learnings from the top companies online. Email Sean.

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• Reducing Sales Cycles, Part 1: Using Web Analytics

  March 31, 2011

  Sean Shoffstall, VP of Innovation and Technology

  
  Everyone says they want to reduce their sales cycle. But most of us find the task daunting at best. If we’re going to get serious about improving the way we move prospects towards a purchasing decision, we’ll need to break down some lofty concepts into actionable chunks. This is the first in a series of articles that will do just that.

  So, where to begin?

  I’ll start by expressing my fervent hope that you’re tracking your website visitors. Whether you’re using a free tool like Google Analytics or have invested in a powerful solution such as Adobe Site Catalyst, you’ve laid the groundwork to minimize the time from first customer interaction to sale.

  We’ve touched on all these points before. This article will explain how you can use those tracking metrics to identify your hottest prospects and close the sales cycle faster. First, I’ll share two tips on converting faster through optimization and acceleration. Next, I’ll give you two ways to highlight the opportunities that are ready for your sales team.

  Build a Follow-Up Strategy for Conversions
  This tip is the most basic of the four. After your visitors have responded to an offer or downloaded a trial, provide them with an appropriate follow-on. For example, on the thank-you page that appears after you deliver the offer, you can supply a few additional offers to drive further engagement.

  The key, of course, is relevance. If someone downloads an industry white paper, don’t follow up by offering a 5% discount on top-of-the-line server hardware. Your prospect is probably not ready to make a purchase decision.

  Instead, the follow-on offer should be mapped along your nurturing flow. Offer something that will drive the visitor from awareness to interest, such as a case study or an interactive educational tool. Then use your web analytics to see which offer combinations have the highest take-rates and which also increase social sharing and return visitors. These metrics indicate relevance with your visitors and can help your sales team drive the direction of the conversation.

  Analyze Funnel Conversion Drop-Offs
  For this next idea, it’s critical that you take the time to set up your goal conversions and funnel path. We all hope that someone will land on our site, read a page or two, and then click to have a sales person contact them. Unfortunately, that rarely happens. It’s our job to lead the prospect, step by step, to that glorious conversion. But some of our prospects have SOS (Shiny Object Syndrome) and drop off our path to enlightenment.

  That’s where funnel conversion analysis comes in. When set up properly, this analysis can help us understand where prospects are falling off. We’ll then need to take a look at our flow and see what adjustments we can make – in terms of how information is presented, what type of information is shown, and in what order – to optimize the prospect’s experience and drive better conversion performance.

  Measure Multiple “Goal Page” Touches
  This strategy plays off the previous one. After your prospect has converted once, watch to see whether they come back and convert multiple times. Start building a “hot leads” list (this is a basic scoring that we’ll examine in depth in a future article) based on people who have touched n goal pages.

  A goal page is a page that contains high-value content. If a prospect visits a goal page, it’s an indication that they’re looking for information to help them make a buying decision. With Google Analytics or Omniture, it’s easy to create and apply segmentation, and then look into your Marketing Resource Management or Customer Resource Management system to generate your hot leads list. You can also use the segmentation to find optimal flows for your site – and then apply these learnings to other key pages.

  Monitor Return Visitors or Multiple Visitors from the Same Company
  WARNING: Custom coding ahead

  This last strategy is the most fun. In the B2B space, I’ve worked with many clients who want to target not only specific customers for lead nurturing and scoring, but also their associated companies. Google and Omniture both have some basic domain reports that can help you find out which companies are visiting your site.

  Want to take it to the next level? Capture IP addresses in a custom variable. Here’s where to do it in Google Analytics (Omniture also has this capability).

  Why capture IP addresses? So that you can target specific companies. It makes sense that when a company wants to do business with you, multiple people from that company will probably visit your site for research. You may get visits from end users, Finance, IT, Legal, and possibly even an executive or two. Use your web analytics to set an alert that identifies any spike in the number of visits from a set of key accounts. You can then identify which pages and products they’re most interested in and have your sales team follow up proactively.

  Next Steps
  We’ve only scratched the surface here. You can easily take the foundation I’ve given you and create any number of different scenarios to leverage your web analytics. In future articles, we’ll explore how you can also use Lead Nurturing, Lead Scoring, and Testing and Targeting to shorten the sales cycle. Subscribe to our RSS feed to stay up-to-date on these and other topics.

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  Sean Shoffstall, VP of Innovation and Technology Social media, search and metrics are the driving force behind today's online marketing. Sean specializes in driving the best results for clients in all aspects of their business. He gives them a solid platform to build key learnings in all online media through proven metrics and testing strategies, and by leveraging years of best practice learnings from the top companies online. Email Sean.

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• Social Media Engagement for the Modern Brand

  October 20, 2010

  Five Steps to Tweeting Without Being a Twit

  Sean Shoffstall, Director of Product Marketing
  

  For many brands today, social media is a touchy subject. Figuring out how to get your message out there (and where) is often a daunting task for marketing departments.

  You hear about it from executives: “Why aren’t we on Twitter?” You hear about it from agencies: “For only X dollars per month, we can put you on Facebook!” But what does social media accomplish if you don’t get out the right message, can’t track engagement – or worse yet, make a mockery of your brand in the social media space?

  Fear not! Social media can be fun and profitable if you take the right precautions. Follow this easy five-step process as the starting point for your company’s social media success. It all centers on being L.A.S.E.R.-focused.

  Listen
  Too many companies jump into the social media space without taking the most important step: listening. Social media isn’t about your brand – it’s about your customers. With tools such as ScoutLabs, Visible Technologies, Radian 6, and a host of others, you can listen in on how your customers perceive you and your competitors’ brands. These tools give you instant insight into not only how and where your customers are talking about you, but also the sentiments of those conversations.

  Analyze
  Now that you have the tools to listen, be sure to analyze who your customers are and when and where they are active. The answers may surprise you. Facebook and Twitter aren’t the only social media avenues – you may find that other platforms make two-way conversations easier. For example, blogs, forums, YouTube, and Flickr might be more appropriate for your audience.

  Find your advocates and detractors; see how they lead their networks to learn key messages. This analysis can also reveal new keywords or phrases your customers are using that you can incorporate into your website or marketing campaigns. Look for trends among your key advocates, and don’t forget to do some research on your competitors’ pain points.

  Strategize
  Now that you know whom to engage with and where, the next step is how. If you really want social media to work for you, you have to work for your customers (are you starting to see a common theme?).

  Who in your organization will be part of the social media team? Think outside the marketing box. Look deep in IT, operations, PR, and even among your administrative staff and interns. Create guidelines to help people understand where to engage (but it is not always best to tell them how to engage). For most organizations, it’s enough to provide employees with simple rules such as, “Keep it professional” and “Our brand stands for X,” and to provide them with paths of escalation for when issues are beyond their expertise.

  The last step in strategizing is tracking. What are your goals and how do you measure them? Be smart about using URL shorteners such as bit.ly to embed tracking codes and drive people to landing pages or specific content pages. Make sure your analytics system can properly credit social media sites for referrals. Just for fun, here are a few of my favorite social media KPIs: Sentiment, Message Amplification, Number of Advocates, and Employee Involvement.

  Engage
  Notice that the “E” in L.A.S.E.R. doesn’t stand for Execute. It stands for Engage, because this is a conversation. Prepare to engage your prospects – not just today, but over the long haul. You might start by presenting a contest or commenting on a blog. The key is to offer something specifically for your readers.

  You’ll run into detractors. Craft a plan to turn them into advocates. Meanwhile, provide your advocates with tools to carry your message to their followers. Always remember: this is one of the easiest ways for your customers to engage with you, whether you are in the B2B or B2C space.

  Report
  In the Strategize phase, you defined your metrics and KPIs. Now, see how you’ve moved the needle. Using listening tools and properly tracked URLs, you can gain significant insight into the effectiveness of your social media. Don’t necessarily expect social media campaigns to drive direct sales (although sometimes they do), but see how they increase awareness of your brand. They may surprise you and help reduce your support costs, or they may simply help drive downloads. In any case, report results constantly and update your strategy according to the results you’re seeing.

  With a L.A.S.E.R.-focused approach, you’ll not only engage your customers how and where they want, but also be able to understand the value of those interactions. Don’t forget that your customers are your best sales people. Keep them happy and give them the tools to engage with you.

  A final thought: While many of us still tend to think of social media as being “out there,” we have ample opportunities on our sites and in our marketing communications to let our customers engage with us. Provide tools (such as forums) that allow two-way communication. On your web pages and event sites and in your marketing communications, give your customers a way to amplify your message through sharing technologies such as ShareThis. Above all, never forget: social media is about your customers, not your brand.
  

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  Sean Shoffstall, VP of Innovation and Technology Social media, search and metrics are the driving force behind today's online marketing. Sean specializes in driving the best results for clients in all aspects of their business. He gives them a solid platform to build key learnings in all online media through proven metrics and testing strategies, and by leveraging years of best practice learnings from the top companies online. Email Sean.

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