SolutionSet blog

After seeing a blog post regarding recent research from Seewhy & Nielsen regarding the top ten converting websites, I was struck by the fact that nine out of the top ten use a print catalog as part of the marketing mix. As reported in Internet Retailer, research suggests that online shoppers who received a catalog in the mail spent on average 163% more than those that didn’t! It got me thinking about whether or not our clients can afford not to have a print catalog. So many merchants have sent catalogs to pasture in the name of cost-cutting as year-over-year growth rates in web transactions out-pace percentage growth in print-triggered conversions. For certain categories, this can be terribly short-sighted.

I … Read More

So, you are communicating with your best customers using email. And, your strategic business objective is to append more of your customer file with email addresses, and increase the number of opt-in addresses you email. Because, of course, email is much cheaper than marketing using other channels, it presents opportunities to better target, and personalize, and improve relevancy.

But do your customers see it the way you do? Do your customers sense the value you have for their business as a result of your email communications?

Arguably, email does not enhance the emotional connections you want your best customers to have with your brand. Email doesn’t say “thank you” or “we appreciate your business” or “you’re special” very well. Certainly … Read More

In the past I’ve posted about trends in IE6 usage and how that might affect our approach to building websites. Before I had predicted that the adoption of Windows 7 would be a heavy factor in the phasing out of IE6. I downloaded the latest stats from the Stat Counter website for Operating Systems and Browser Versions since Windows 7 was released in October, 2009 and there’s some interesting trends in there that closely match what one would expect.
IE Continues to Dominate

(Browser market share since October 2009, the release of Windows 7)

Above you can see the browser market share from October, 2009 through … Read More

Social media marketing is a mystery to most business people today. Most marketers think they should be doing something, but where, or how? Here are 12 video tutorials that advise business people on some of the important and most basic functions of social media marketing. Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook… How to best use Twitter for your business? How to automatically update your LinkedIn status from Twitter? How to give and get recommendations on LinkedIn? How to create a basic Facebook fan page also known as a Facebook business page. How to create a Facebook ad campaign? Yes, these are just the basics, but there’s no faster way to understand them than here.

Exponential increases in computer storage, processing power, graphics, networks, the web and now, the cloud, are stimulating changes at the interface level, too. The future of UI design is becoming less and less machine dependent, and more aligned with the body and the mind.

Minority Report science adviser and inventor John Underkoffler calls the future of UI design “the spatial operating environment.” Your hand replaces the mouse. The display is the room. Navigation in 3D, and so on.

Underkoffler demonstrates the future of the computer interface. Is this how tomorrow’s computers will be controlled? Take a look.

These advances in technology reflect design integrated with people and peoples’ needs. And this goes way beyond ergonomics, and fitting humans; rather, … Read More

The CSS3 transform property
The emerging CSS3 specification defines the functionality for 2d transformations. The most useful of the transformations is the ability to rotate, but there’s some other cool stuff, like skewing and scaling. All the major browser vendors support their own version of the CSS3 spec except IE, however, IE has had support for something similar since version 5.5 (released in 2000). Similar to the @font-face specification, the other browsers are finally catching up to IE. Of course IE’s support is proprietary and lacking some important features.
Using it cross-browser
To use these features, you can simply use CSS. The MDC article on the -moz-transform property is really informative. Here’s a list of the browser-specific CSS properties … Read More

Did you know that today 78% of consumers trust peer recommendations and only 14% trust advertisements? These facts are included in the recently updated and even more awesome video by Erik Qualman here. These facts are according to the latest Nielsen Global Online Consumer Survey of over 25,000 Internet consumers from 50 countries, and Larry Weber in “Marketing to the Social Web,” respectively.

These facts also support the claim that social media isn’t a fad; rather, that it reflects fundamental shifts in the way people communicate. And the way marketing initiatives must be deployed. It used to be that marketers delivered advertising messages to consumers and tried to persuade them to buy. This was the top-down approach. Then … Read More

A recent McKinsey quarterly report by David Edelman goes further than most in paying off on the proposition to get more out of your digital marketing initiatives. McKinsey has found that “the most successful digital marketers focus on managing four core sources of value as they increase the percentage of marketing and channel spending that is directed to digital activities. First, they coordinate their activities to engage the consumer throughout an increasingly digital purchase journey. Second, they harness interest in their brands by syndicating content that empowers the consumer to build his or her own marketing identity and, in the process, to serve as a brand ambassador. Third, they recognize the need to think like a large-scale multimedia publisher as … Read More

Email remains one of the most effective and inexpensive ways to engage, educate, and compel customers to act. Today, getting results means staying on top of the latest industry trends and building on what you know about your customers. We have it down to a science.

Timing is everything
Customer relationships are a lot like dating. Once you’re introduced, you need to strike that careful balance of staying in touch without coming on too strong. Here are three rules of thumb to progressively get more involved in your customers’ lives: 

• Start out friendly. Send a welcome email within minutes of registration. To optimize delivery rates, be sure the email asks customers to add you to their address books. Offer incentives to first-time … Read More

During the past 24 months marketing budgets have shifted more and more into interactive channels, fundamentally because of measurability. While this broad shift was happening before the recession, business pressures have caused it to accelerate. Agencies are re-organizing and breaking down walls in order to facilitate integration and nurture collaboration. Clients, too, are seeing the light, and bringing “channel” based organizations together under strategic leadership. Finally, our industry is beginning to catch up and map marketing initiatives to the ways consumers want to transact.

The proverbial purchase funnel model — beginning with generating awareness at the top, and driving down through interest to desire and effecting action — is outmoded and outdated. Bill Kanarick, chief strategy and marketing officer … Read More