When launching a campaign, consider more than the website's content -- consider what URL will reel audiences in.

Traditionally, generic domain names such as Vodka.com or Seniors.com were not sought after by established companies because the companies did not understand the benefit of using domain names to extend their brand or web presence. This has changed as companies now have integrated campaigns, using important keywords to drive traffic online. For example, Russian Standard Vodka purchased Vodka.com for $3 million and is now using it for a teaser campaign.

There are a number of reasons why utilizing a generic domain name in addition to the company or brand name can make a marketing campaign more effective. For one, using a keyword in the domain name can help drive traffic through "direct navigation." Vodka.com provides a good example of this, as a web surfer interested in Read the complete article on online...

The Mobile Marketing Association, a trade group that represents more than 600 companies involved in mobile marketing, has released its global Mobile Advertising Guidelines.

The guidelines build on region-specific mobile ad guidelines published last year for North America, Asia-Pacific, and Europe, the Middle East and Africa. The regional guidelines have been integrated into the global version, which includes new guidelines for text messaging. Read the complete article on BtoBOnline.

Answer: Most e-mail newsletters today look pretty much the same, so how can you distinguish yours from your competitors’? By using behavioral targeting to learn more about what customers want and giving it to them. B-to-b e-mailers work with shorter customer lists and often longer sales cycles than their b-to-c counterparts, but that doesn’t mean they should be tempted to oversaturate their most valuable customers with a deluge of nontargeted email. Behaviorally targeted messages provide better response and can even be credited with shortening sales cycles.

The easiest way to obtain behavioral targeting data is through Read the complete article on BtoBOnline.

If your e-mail list includes customers and prospects with Yahoo.com addresses, it’s possible they didn’t see messages you sent in February and March. The company, according to a March 11 blog post, made changes to its inbound mail service in an effort to block spam—a move that ended up blocking both spam and legitimate e-mails from bulk senders.
The snafu is a good reminder to marketers that they must constantly monitor their deliverability. Here are some tips that to help boost and maintain deliverability rates: Read the complete article on BtoBOnline.

mages, video and press releases are optimized for natural search. A new study, published Monday by search agency iProspect, indicates searchers using the major engines are more likely to click on image, video or news link within the main, blended search results page than vertical-search results. (An example of a vertical search would be searching within the Google Images tab for a photo of Warren Buffett.) Vertical offerings from the major engines historically have been largely ignored, according to the study.
The survey, conducted online by JupiterResearch in December and January, found more than a third (35%) of search engine users do not use vertical search at all, and 25% do not recall if they have clicked a result after using vertical search. JupiterResearch said there were 2,404 respondents to the survey.

When it comes to image search, 31% of users click image results within blended search, while Read the complete article on BtoBOnline.

One of the reasons in-text has such strong appeal among users is because it's seen more as information than marketing. Here's why.

There has been a fair amount of interest surrounding in-text advertising as of late, and Vibrant Media has taken the pole position in the space.

In-text advertising -- for those of you who aren't familiar with it -- is essentially advertising that is embedded within the text of a page of online content. This is beyond simple editorial adjacency for display advertising. It is actually having an ad unit married to a word or phrase on a page, within editorial. The way it works is this: I'm an advertiser of, say, soap. I approach an in-text advertising provider and tell them I want to own the words "soap," "shower," and "clean."

The executed buy will be these words in articles or within content on sites the in-text advertising provider has relationships with all across the web, underlined and highlighted. Every time a visitor to a page -- with these highlighted words or phrases -- mouses over the highlighted text, my soap advertisement will show, popping up in a sort of "talk bubble," like those seen in pop-up video or a comic book.

Some providers of this sort of advertising, like ContentLink, do text advertisements. Others, like Vibrant, will actually run video.

Vibrant Media is the largest provider of this kind of advertising, with more than Read the complete article on online...

Blogs, RSS, podcasting, social networks. As the Web has evolved, the time it has taken new technologies—even grass-roots, beneath-the-radar developments—to move from concept to mainstream has become shockingly brief.

And while we've moved beyond the idea that Web 2.0 technologies will replace wholesale what's come before them, marketers more than ever before must remain vigilant about keeping up to date with what's cutting-edge.

Even in the b-to-b world, where the hype bar is set rather high, marketers can't afford to miss the next big thing in online marketing.

So here are the big five Web/tech trends worth watching right now—and what they mean for b-to-b marketing: Read the complete article on BtoBOnline.

Using Trade Shows, Conferences, and Other Meetings to Create Profitable and Long-Lasting Client Relationships

It is important for technology vendors and solutions providers to remember that every single customer touch point presents a valuable opportunity to create affinity. And, events are no exception. By organizing your presence at trade shows, conferences, and other types of face-to-face gatherings with the customer in mind, your organization can leverage your investment in events to build affinity. This, in turn, will lead to the kind of strong, long-lasting relationships that result in optimumclient satisfaction and retention, as well as sustained profitability and growth. Download the complete CMP white paper "Events: Building The Bridge To Customer Affinity.

Answer: When a marketing program does not work, always go back to the basics of marketing 101: right target, right message, right timing, right channel.
Despite advances in scenario-based Web design created to track customer online behavior and build profiles, or personas, for targeted marketing campaigns, your customers are still bombarded with tons of irrelevant messages—often the result of batch-and-blast campaigns sent by stove-piped e-mail applications and outsourced e-mail service providers—each day.

If you aren’t getting responses, it is quite likely that your customers view your correspondence as spam, rather than relevant or valuable information, regardless of whether or not they have opted to receive your e-mails. Relevance is key in e-mail. Read the complete article on BtoBOnline.

Proving ROI, using new technologies and leveraging partner marketing were key topics at Red Herring's CMO 2008 conference in San Diego last week.

The conference drew more than 300 senior marketing executives, mostly from b-to-b companies, who shared strategies for competing in today's challenging business environment.

One of the hot topics was partner marketing, with presentations by several executives whose companies use channel marketing models.

Stephen DiFranco, corporate VP-corporate and channels marketing at chip maker AMD, discussed how the company has leveraged its partner channel to confront rival Intel Corp. Read the complete article on BtoBOnline.

E-mail marketing managers love to include quick surveys in their e-newsletters—so much so that they risk overdoing it.

Melissa Read, VP-research and innovation at Spunlogic, an Atlanta-based full-service digital marketing agency, believes managers send surveys too often, causing respondents to burn out on the novelty of providing feedback. Eventually, she said, they’ll stop responding.

“Surveys should only go out when you want to understand something about the business respondents,” Read said. Otherwise, “it will become the survey who cried wolf and the next time you really want to know something, respondents won’t be as interested in telling you.”

Paring down the number of surveys is a good start, she said. Read offers these other helpful tips... Read the complete article on BtoBOnline.

Answer: I am always amazed at the still-prevailing idea that list size trumps list quality. Don’t get me wrong: Volume is good. Every record in your e-mail address list has an inherent value that can be reduced to a dollar amount. This leads us to the idea that your database should be viewed as capital and should be treated just like any other useful marketing asset. So why, then, do so many marketers mix bad data into their lists?

A bad e-mail address can have a dramatic impact on your ability to market with e-mail. Bad e-mails come in the form of addresses from third parties (list renters, etc.), complainers who have not been removed from your list and dormant addresses—e-mail addresses of people who have not opened your e-mail in more than 90 days. ISPs view all with equal disdain. While it is not illegal to send to these “bad” e-mail addresses, doing so is a sure way to increase complaints and damage your sender reputation. It’s also a good way to waste money.

So how do you build your list and maintain quality data? Consider these tips: Read the complete article on BtoBOnline.

The subject of search engine marketing click fraud made headlines last year. Advertisers and publishers alike criticized the search engines for not doing enough to combat the problem. But the topic has not been in the spotlight recently. Does that mean click fraud is no longer an issue?
BtoB recently spoke with Dan Robbins, director of marketing at Lyris, a marketing software company, about click fraud and what marketers can do to avoid playing the victim.

BtoB: Is click fraud still a problem?

Robbins: It depends on your vertical. In mortgage and finance categories, you’re paying a lot more for a click. For the lower end, general market is less of an issue. But marketers need to pay attention to it. Read the complete article on BtoBOnline.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could figure out today what your marketing plan should look like in six months? Crystal balls don’t exactly grow on trees, so we’ve asked two industry experts—Jordan Ayan, president of SubscriberMail, and Joel Book, director of eMarketing Education at ExactTarget—to weigh in on what’s coming in 2008. Here’s what they said.

1) More CRM integration, especially with software-as-a-service (SaaS) offerings.
2) Increased use of automated tools.
3) Closer alignment of marketing elements.
4) Using rich video with e-mail marketing.

Read the complete article on BtoBOnline.

Question: What is the best way to optimize search marketing for international markets?

Answer: As the evolution of the Internet continues, b-to-b marketers are reaching a crossroads in determining what tactics have worked in the past to attract traffic to their sites versus what approaches will work in the future. According to Internet World Stats, two-thirds of global Internet users are non-English speakers. This growing volume of search activity means that marketing opportunities will continue to evolve on both regional and global levels.

So how can b-to-b marketers capitalize on this trend? Is the answer as simple as translating all Web pages to the targeted country's language?

Translation is one component of optimizing for international markets, but it's in no way the end-all answer. A word-for-word translation of a Web site is ambiguous. Instead, Web sites should be translated according to concepts. A simple translation does not take into account cultures, customs and preferences specific to various countries. Additionally, a simple translation loses targeted keywords. Read the complete article on BtoBOnline.

Answer: Addressing e-mail received while out of the office for extended periods of time can be one of the most frustrating phenomena in business today.

People subscribe to receive e-mail communications that are relevant and useful to them in their day-to-day jobs, but when those messages stack up in the in-box for whatever reason, the recipients don’t reap the benefits of those communications. And what do they do with all of those messages? They sort by “from name,” highlight and delete.

And depending on the volume, they may potentially be annoyed with the organization that sent the e-mail, which could be detrimental to future interaction. Read the complete article on BtoBOnline.

Despite online’s reputation as the most measurable of all media, marketers continue to grapple with how much to invest in the medium because of the sheer abundance of data generated and the myriad ways to measure them. Read the complete article on BtoBOnline.

Many companies aren’t coordinating their various departments’ e-mail marketing efforts, according to a Jupiter Research report released last month, “Maturation of E-mail: Controlling Messaging Chaos Through Centralization.”

Some 24% of executives surveyed said six or more departments manage their e-mail messaging activities separately. Almost half the executives questioned (44%) said they believed their e-mail would be more effective if it were managed from a central platform. Read the complete article on BtoBOnline.

When designing your holiday greetings, a well-planned e-card can effectively enhance your public image and may even result in added business in the new year.

Here are some tips to keep in mind when developing your holiday e-card.

1. Tie in your product or service with a holiday theme.
2. Take advantage of what the e-card format has to offer.
3. Make your message viral.

Read the complete article on BtoBOnline.

Doing your homework can help event planning for international attendees go more smoothly

As globalization makes the world smaller, more U.S. companies find themselves creating b-to-b events for an international audience. Whether marketing at home or abroad, building an event for a crowd from abroad requires special attention to detail.

Taking an event abroad can be expensive and it is nearly impossible to plan for all the eventual pitfalls. However, doing some legwork in advance can curtail unexpected costs and issues.

"Anytime you're going overseas you have to be aware that things are going to be different," said Carol Krugman, director-client services at experience marketing company George P. Johnson. "You would be amazed at people who believe everywhere in the world everything is the way it is at home. Those are the people that run into tremendous trouble. You have different languages, customs, business practices, different hours of operation, electrical currencies, video standards, even dial tones on telephones. Be aware that everywhere you are going to be working, you must educate yourself." Read the complete article on BtoBOnline.

Small and midsize businesses are increasing their use of Web 2.0 tools as information sources, providing greater opportunities to marketers that are trying to reach this audience, according to a new study from market research company Bredin Business Information.

The study was based on an online survey in August of 338 business executives at companies with fewer than 500 employees. It examined which online tools SMBs use, how they use them to receive business information and the implications for marketers using Web 2.0 tools to reach SMBs. Read the complete article on BtoBOnline.

Answer: Most businesses—anywhere from 50% to 80%—use Outlook as their e-mail client. What’s more, a recent survey suggests that nearly 40% of these companies will migrate to Office 2007. If the majority of your marketing e-mail list is business domains, you may need to rethink the design of those marketing e-mails. Otherwise, your potential customers may quite literally not get your message. Read the complete article on BtoBOnline.

Second Life has been called virtual reality and said to work like a 3D social network, heralding the emergence of the 3D Web. But all these terms fall short of accurately describing this unique environment. And the baggage they bring with them menaces literal-minded marketers looking to exploit Second Life's huge potential for reaching and engaging with qualified customers.

Baptie Online has invited John Jainschigg, Executive Director of CMP Metaverse, the virtual worlds consulting and custom events business of CMP Technology, and Fiona Gallagher of Sun Microsystems to share their insights, experiences and the interactive opportunities to reach target audiences.

This webcast is hosted exclusively on Baptie.com, the leading community of sales and marketing executives in the technology industry. To view this webcast archive, you must be a member of the Baptie community. If you are not yet a member but qualify, you should register on the baptie.com site.

For more information about CMP's Metaverse services, email John Jainshigg, Executive Director, CMP Metaverse.

In 2006, a decision was made to consolidate under the “Sunstone” brand and align all search marketing under that name. After the brand consolidation took place, the company also wanted to boost its conversions, and Bob Schnyder, Internet products manager at Sunstone, knew that would mean refining the landing page strategy.

All of that would require a search agency partner, as Sunstone’s search marketing program had grown to such a degree that it was no longer manageable in-house.

“I’m a [certified] Google AdWords Pro myself, so I know what I’m talking about when it comes to paid search,” said Schnyder, who set the bar high when he started looking for an agency. “I needed to find someone who could do it better than I could and a company that not only understood search but b-to-b search.” Read the complete article on BtoBOnline.

The attached document contains the questions, and their answers, that were posed to John Jainschigg from CMP and Kathy Mandelstein from IBM during the September 26 Webcast "How BtoB Marketers Can Achieve ROI in the Virtual World of Second Life." Download the complete Question and Answer document. Contact John Jainschigg, Executive Director, CMP Metaverse for more information about creating a virtual presence for your company.

Here is a summary of the questions contained in the document:

* Does SecondLife provide aggregated audience/user data or demo cuts
somewhere on the site? If so where?

* Would recommendations/best practices be applied to Playstation
'Home' coming up in April?

* How many attendees can attend an event on Second Life at one time?

Answer: As a b-to-b sender, there are a number of things you can do to help increase your delivery rates. Read the complete article on BtoBOnline.

When it comes to e-mail marketing, Americans are more sophisticated than almost all their European counterparts. This is significant, according to a new JupiterResearch report, "E-mail Marketing Adoption: Assessing Multinational E-mail Marketing Sophistication," because it may give U.S.-based marketers an edge as they move into international markets.

If you’re thinking of making a move into international waters, there are a few key things you can do to increase your odds of success, said Nate Elliott, senior analyst at JupiterResearch. Read the complete article on BtoBOnline.

On the eve of the start of a two-day “Town Hall” hosted by the Federal Trade Commission titled “Behavioral Advertising: Tracking, Targeting and Technology,” privacy groups are calling for an online “do not track” list, an Internet version of the popular Do Not Call Registry, according to reports.

Event marketers are increasingly turning to the virtual world for staging large- and small-scale events. A recent white paper released by FactPoint Group, a market research firm, studied events created by Unisfair, a virtual event provider, and found that moving events to the virtual world can reduce spending and boost attendance, lead generation and attendee interest.

The study examined more than 200 Unisfair virtual events that totaled nearly 3,000 sponsors and 500,000 attendees. The results found that the average virtual event has a registration of 3,102 people with an attendance of 1,587. Leads generated for each sponsor totaled 348 per event, and attendees spent an average of two-and-a-half hours at each event while visiting an average 16 locations and completing at least five downloads.

Aside from convenience, event marketers have found that the reason virtual events have proven so successful is because they can mimic nearly every aspect of live events. "We do events on a real-world scale," said John Jainschigg, executive director of CMP Metaverse at CMP Media, a media and marketing solutions company that holds its virtual events inside Second Life. "[Our events are] six days long, [with] 50 presenters, a weekend of tutorials, a full convention center show floor, social events, networking events—it's a comprehensive thing." Read the complete article on BtoBOnline. Contact John Jainschigg, Executive Director, CMP Metaverse for more information about creating a virtual event for your company.

The numbers are nearly parallel: About 53% of marketing executives responding to a recent survey said they have experienced a business crisis resulting in negative news coverage, declining sales or reduced profitability. But just about the same number (57%) said their company does not have a crisis response plan currently in place.

The online survey, which was conducted in mid-September by BtoB and Eric Mower and Associates, group b2b, took the pulse of 251 marketing executives about their crisis preparedness.

Among the 43% of companies that do have a crisis plan in place, 10.1% worry about their ability to implement it, and only half have trained spokespersons.