The Marketleap Report
Volume II, Issue #16, October 3, 2002

The Holidays are Here
Are You Behind on Your Holiday Marketing?
by Keith Boswell

It's hard to believe that the 2002 holiday season is upon us. Once the Halloween costumes and candy started popping up in the aisles in August, you knew January 1st, 2003 would be here faster than a priority overnight delivery from FedEx.

A recent report by Jupiter Research puts this holiday season in perspective for online retailers. The report predicts $13.1 billion dollars in sales online during November and December, a growth of 17% from 2001. If that total is met, the amount would account for 32% of all online spending for the year. Jupiter's research also indicates that shoppers are planning on spending their money earlier this year, up to four weeks before Thanksgiving.

Companies that want to succeed online have to be found in search engines. Jupiter's research into online buying patterns has revealed that 55% of e-commerce transactions begin from a link they find at a search engine.

If your search engine marketing strategy is lacking and you need to ensure you're being found by online shoppers this holiday season you have two choices at this point: pay-per-click keyword bidding (Overture, FindWhat) and/or paid inclusion services (Inktomi, MSN).

Pay-per-click buys at sites like Overture or Google have the disadvantage of putting you into an auction for the terms and phrases you want to be found for. If others are willing to pay more for a certain term, you either have to increase your bid or slip in your positioning.

Most marketers are willing to stomach a fixed monthly budget for a pay-per-click keyword or ad campaign if they are convinced that a set of keywords or their ad is the best way to attract the clients that will convert to paying customers. If the budget runs out before the end of the month because your costs are more than anticipated you won't be visible again until the first of the month.

Paid inclusion on the other hand works to the marketer's advantage by helping to control costs and guaranteeing that the pages they want to be found are available to people searching for them. Paid inclusion programs through providers like Inktomi, FAST, Teoma, and Altavista were created to ensure that businesses could reflect as much of their website in a search engine index as they choose.

Paid inclusion programs allow you to enter as many pages as you'd like from one page, up to multiple-thousands. Over time you have the ability to remove non-performing URL's (web pages) and enter new URL's at your discretion. Some of the paid inclusion programs even allow you to participate on pay-per-click basis or a fixed annual fee.

Some paid inclusion providers like Inktomi also provide exceptional reporting for the sites that utilize the service. This gives marketers keyword and click-through data directly from sources like MSN that they can't get anywhere else. And because most paid inclusion programs include 48-hour recrawls, marketers are able to see quickly how changes they make to their site impact traffic and conversions.

John Hingley, COO of wine.com, says, "In two months, we have generated over 20,000 clicks from Inktomi Index Connect. For us, this surpasses all other forms of online marketing that we are involved with. For the investment, paid inclusion ensures us that thousands of our wines are available to people searching for them online."

"On average, for our clients that participate in paid inclusion programs like Inktomi Index Connect, almost 75% of the keyword queries that lead to their website are unique but highly targeted. This proves to us that a websites potential keyword market reach is much larger than people typically assume" says Noel McMichael, President of Marketleap.

The web's true search engines like Google, Inktomi, or FAST include more than 2 billion documents in their databases. They typically review anywhere from 6 to 8 billion documents to build their database. Their technologies crawl the web through links and submissions to catalog as much of the total Web as their systems and software allow.

Only 25% - 33% of the total web pages the search engines know about are actually available at sites like MSN, Yahoo, AOL, and Google. The effort and capital spent to build your online business can go unseen as search queries deliver buyers to the websites they do find in search results.

Paid inclusion is a smart first step for companies that are struggling or behind in search engine marketing. It gives you the flexibility and benefit of timely inclusion, frequent reviews, and real reporting data. It gives you intelligence and deft ability to move quickly and explore the ins and outs of your customers and their needs.

What are they finding? Where are they going? What terms are they finding you for? These are all vital stats for marketers looking to understand the evolution of doing business online. Search engines are driving business online today and for the foreseeable future. Paid inclusion gives you time during the holidays to close business, not close it down. To read more about paid inclusion visit www.marketleap.com/paidinclusion.

Are you behind in preparing for the holidays? Drop us a line and let us know what your company is doing to ensure holiday sales growth at report@marketleap.com.

Responses to the Marketleap Report about Email and Clear Pixel Tracking:

Several of you wrote in thanking us for taking the time to explain the email tracking issue. We're here to help as much as we are to rant. The whole issue for me in this debate is that marketers have to be up front with their audience. Just because we can perform all kinds of tracking doesn't mean we should without informing those we are targeting.

Here are a few responses to the last article that I thought our readers might appreciate.

Based on your last issue, I thought there was some kind of "plant" program running on client side, along with the email, that would mail track basic information such as how long it was opened, whether it was trashed, etc. So far as I'm concerned, marketing is a game. So long it happens on server side no problem - on the other end, client side, umm that would be the dark side of the force.

The name pixel "tracking" is actually misleading because you come to think that you are actually tracking the pixel -which would mean following it- while in fact, all you are doing is checking out whether it was downloaded from your server, and by who (if not using a fake IP).

Thanks again for the explanation.
--Sylvain

Sylvain's questions and another spawned the last complete issue. I agree that calling something pixel tracking is confusing because it sounds like you are trying to trail a bit of information as it darts amongst the routers and switches of the web. We're not some white-knight hackers trying to learn more about information technology and computers, we're marketers trying to learn about our customers and their audience.

Another reader was kind enough to send in a brief description of how to setup tracking for an email campaign on your own. If you're looking to track an upcoming email campaign of your own, follow the advice below so that you can track the campaigns success.

Hey All,

I thought I would follow up Keith's comments with some juicy details on how to actually set up the clear.gif and use it within your newsletters. A year ago i was trying to figure out this very problem and was looking everywhere for the info. I found it, now I'll share with all of you. Sorry if this some of this info is remedial for some of you.

Collecting Open rates is extremely simple; If your web site uses a traffic measurement tool like Net Tracker or Web Trends then collecting an open can be achieved.

1. First with some kind of graphics program (Photo Shop, Fireworks, etc) create a clear 1 x 1 pixel image and upload it to a specific spot on your web server
2. In your html message somewhere within the <body></body> tags you drop in your clear.gif. If you place directly in front of the <body> tag then it load quickly especially if your readers are using the preview panel-- although they may be deleting immediately while the clear.gif still records an open, leaving you with a less accurate measurement. However if you place the clear.gif at the end of the page it will take longer last. By doing this you can will be closer to a true open rate-- you also know the reader at least scanned your great content before deleting.

The tag should look something like this:

</tr>
</table>
<img src="http://www.yourwebaddress.com/images/
clear.gif"></img></body> notice the <img> tag is just inside the closed </body> tag.
</html>

To take a step farther add a unique identifier to the image to look like this

</tr>
</table>
<img src="http://www.yourwebaddress.com/images/
clear.gif?email=volume14"></img></body>
</html>

If your email software can merge personalization into the message you could use the same tag or code to merge the readers email address as the unique identifier. However I would be careful about doing this unless you have an exceptional relationship with all your readers and you have specific intentions for doing so--- like re-marketing to those who opened your last offer or segmenting those opens into an HTML email only database instead of blasting out multi-part messages to everyone. But don't use this info in such a way that would be intrusive of your readers' privacy.

There is a really inexpensive email metrics platform offered by www.eztrackz.com and its pretty basic and it can be set up to track opens and click through rates. I was a beta tester for the product and I've been using it for last 2 email campaigns. The nice thing is it is real-time where other, similar programs are not. If you use Net Tracker, the best you get is yesterday's results today. But I'd have to say if you use Marketleap's email platform-- the reporting is probably the best you'll ever get.

Good Luck to all of you!
--Sammy Russo

Sammy is a great guy and one to be trusted. He works with Jamie and crew at searchenginemarketing.com. Marketleap met their team at the Search Engine Strategies conference back in August in San Jose. They are a really sharp team and they were kind enough to take a group of us river rafting through a sister company they work with called All Outdoor Rafting.

Thanks to everyone who wrote in. We'll be back again real soon.