Pardon My French

HEY KIDS I MOVED

2006-01-30T23:52:00.000-05:00

HI -

I MOVED OVER TO

WWW.ERICFRENCHMAN.COM

SO UPDATE YOUR BOOKMARK

THANKS

ERIC

See More on Google versus The US Government

2006-01-26T16:20:00.000-05:00

I lot of friends, including my wife, have said to me, "why are you so harsh on Google lately?" This kind of surprises me because I don't think I have been. Sure this is the third article I've written on Google as of late and you are probably wondering if I may dump blospot and pop over to Typepad instead.

Let me set the record straight. I love Google and the products that they bring to the marketplace. I also know a lot of people at Google and they are all great. Google also brings a ton of competition to the marketplace and, it didn't hurt that my former employer was part of the IPO group.

However, they are in it to make money, just like everyone else. Have you seen their stock price recently and their marketcap? It is outrageous. You know what else you need to learn about Google? How about their corporate mantra? Read #4 and #6. #4 is titled Democracy on the web works and #6 is You can make money without doing evil. Interesting huh? Let's see how democracy on the web and making money without doing evil has been forgotten or at least thrown out temporarily when it comes to making money.

Democracy on the web
First, Google decides not to help the United States Government in understanding how existing filtering on the web protects children from porn and predators. It IS a primary part of a ruling on the COPA act. Now, they are the only ones from the Big 4 that stood up to the Government. Some people think that Google is standing up to the US to protect individual freedom and who knows, first this data and then they hand over PII information on individual's searches.

Last time I checked, the US Government, the best Democracy on the great blue spot in the Milky Way protects our individual rights and not Google. And, you know who basically asked for the check on the existing filtering technology - The Supreme Court. Now lets look at the other side of the spectrum - China.

China and Google - Perfect Together?

China - the last time I checked was Communist. You remember those people, right? They were pretty popular up until 1989 or so, when Reagan's pressures finally led to the crumbling of the Soviet Empire and only really left Cuba and China as strong Communist nations.

Fast forward to 2006 and everyone loves China now a days because you guessed it - a billion or so people buy a lot of goods; that is when their government allows them to make some money. You know what the Chinese still practice - good old government censorship. Freedom of speech in China, the kind like we enjoy in the USA, does NOT exits. Hell, you can't even get a good search result without some form of censorship.

Now, Google decides to help the Chinese Government continue to oppress their people by making it easier to censor search results. No, not the Google. we can make money without doing evil company. Yes that Google; well maybe not the Google that originally wrote those words, but the Google that is now making a ton of money. Read this article from CNN entitled Google To Censor Itself in China to see for yourself.

I don't know about you, but when the same company decides to stiff the Democratic US Government in the name of freedom and then turns around and helps a Communist China continue their oppression, one has to wonder who we are dealing with. Maybe Google should re-read their Corporate Values Statement again and decide if they really want to make some money the free speech, democratic way which up until now has helped their stock grow from about $90 to $433.

Think I'm the only one that feels this way - check out Bambi's article over at CBS MarketWatch (require free registration) titled Google Shows Its True Colors. Again, makes you want to move your blog to Typepad.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

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Birthday Gift 3 of 3

2006-01-26T15:41:00.000-05:00

It is January 26th and I think I’ve extended my birthday as long as I can. So, let’s finish up handing out some birthday gifts.

When last I wrote about my birthday gifts, I examined how audience duplication rates can impact your media buying strategy. Basically by understanding your duplications, you don’t have to spread your marketing dollars around. So, that brings us to the next strategy, which is building relationships and getting volume discounts.

Building Relationships
Like all things in this country, media buying depends on whom you know and what your reputation is. Do you like to beat up publishers and/or agencies? You do? Well, guess what, you are probably paying more for the same impression than the next guy. Wouldn’t you mark up your rates with a handling fee for a tough client? I would, no matter how much you spend. If you treat your publishers badly, you will probably burn out your account team, if you even get one, resulting in retraining. Sounds familiar, huh?

Building great media relationships is a pretty straightforward process. Just be honest with what your goals are and try and share as much data as legally possible. I had no issues with sharing click and conversion data with the publishers so they can optimize and see how they were doing. Of course, I got legal approval to do this. Plus, it doesn’t hurt to share your overall media buying strategy. As some of you know, I had a standard stump speech that I would give whenever I met a new member of the publisher’s team.

Remember build good relationships. If you have trouble with that, remember one of my favorite personal quotes:

Be nice to people who give you money, serve you food, provide you with data, and sell you media.

Volume Discounts, Baby
So, now you are armed with duplication rates and good relationships with your media counterparts. Now what? Easy, buy media on as few sites as possible that give you the reach that you are looking for. That way, you’ll maximize the amount of money spent on the sites, probably get a good account team, and then you’ll enjoy volume discounts.

What? Don’t think it is that simple. It is. How do you think the company I formerly worked for was rated as the 17th largest online advertiser in the United States? We didn’t spend as much money as the University of Phoenix, which is EVERYWHERE. Seriously, we were ranked that high because of the three simple steps I outlined over these past few posts – duplication rates, relationships, and volume discounts.

That’s all there is. Happy birthday

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

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Google and The Government Part 2

2006-01-24T13:03:00.000-05:00

A few days back I wrote an article on Google, The Internet and The Government writing that I found it odd that Google was the lone internet giant to withhold non-PII data from the Government as it investigates how effective existing filters are for the Child Online Protection Act (COPA).

Well it seems that I'm not the only one that thinks it is a little odd. If you read the subpoena found on my original post on the subject, the Government claims it bent over backwards to work with Google, but to know avail.

Read this article today found in Marketing Vox, titled Outing Google's Dirty Little Secrets. Or how about this article over at Forbes.com titled Why Google Won't Give In. Interesting huh?

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

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Google, The Government and The Internet

2006-01-20T17:06:00.000-05:00

In yesterday's Wall Street Journal there was an interesting story titled In Threat To Internet's Clout, Some Are Starting Alternatives (link here for seven days) . Basically, it talked about how the US Government, specifically the Commerce Department, oversees ICANN for assigning web addresses and developing all those nifty .xyz's like .XXX for porn sites (coincidently it is delaying this assignment). A lot of foreign countries don't like the fact that the US Government, for all intense purposes, owns the internet and can shut down any internet suffixes in the event of a war or terror attack.

Now, what I found fascinating about this article is how fearful a lot of countries are that we could shut down a part of the internet. So, under an anti-Bush cover, they said they need to build their own country specific internet. These new country internets would allow access to ICANN addresses but not the reverse, in effect, shutting themselves out of US traffic.

I have nothing against setting up back-up plans, but one has to wonder why something that is working so well and has brought the world closer together, would need competing technologies, which would in effect, split the world up again. I think the only group of people that needs to fear discrimination are the folks that are interested in .XXX sites.

Speaking of adults sites, did you see the news regarding Google and the US Government today? It seems that in order to comply with the Child Online Protection Act of 1998 that President Clinton signed into law, the government must prove that existing "filtering software are less effective that the statutory restrictions in protecting minors" from you guessed it sexually explicit material. Remember this is a law President Clinton signed into law.

In order to prove this, the Government needs non-PII data from Google, Yahoo, MSN, and AOL. And you know who refused? You know smart guy - Google.

Now I'm not going to debate the merits of the law and by reading the subpoena, you can see that the Government tried to work with Google, but Google refused. Personally, I think it is about time that Google grew up and realized that it is not some cute little search site and has to behave like one of the big boys. A company with $118 Billion market cap and likes to compete with MSN and Yahoo, should know that if you get big and rich enough, eventually the US Government pays attention to you.

Don't agree with me? Read the subpoena for yourself and decide.

Morals of the story here? 1 - the US Government is in control of the internet. 2 - be careful what you search on - you never know who is looking. 3 - You want to run with the big dawgs, get out of your Cali cube!!!

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

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Advertising Today Jan 18 - The Bad and The Ugly

2006-01-18T08:45:00.000-05:00

Time for this week’s installment of The Bad and The Ugly courtesy of two articles I read yesterday and today.

First The Bad

In today’s Wall Street Journal, there is an article interviewing Richard Castellini who is VP, Consumer Marketing for CareerBuilder.com. The article describes CareerBuilder.com’s strategy for advertising on this year’s Super Bowl. Among other topics covered is using monkeys in advertising and their strategy for running the ads. And, that’s when I started thinking about monkey business for Super Bowl Advertising.

The rationale for running last year’s ad was that brand perception in the marketplace lagged competition (ie, Hotjobs and Monster) and the ads were a great way to get the message out and energize the company. Plus, when they looked at the results they saw record gains in traffic and search the week after the Super Bowl. They seemed very proud of these accomplishments and looked forward to this year’s advertising.

Hmmmm – it seems to me that they should have used the advertising dollars on improving their product (when was the last time you used their site?) instead of spending $2 million per 30 seconds to drive traffic to their website and jazz up their employees. No wonder marketing departments sometimes get a bad reputation in companies.

Now The Ugly

In yesterday’s MediaPost there was an article that WhenU and 1800Solutions are bundled with download disasters. What this means is that these two marketing tools are bundled with - you guessed it – Spyware. This makes my stomach roll around in fits.

What makes advertisers think that they could use WhenU.com to get legitimate traffic? With all of the improvements with ad serving and legitimate behavioral targeting, why not just avoid these types of Spyware companies?

Are you using either of these two for your internet advertising? Unless you are in the porn or gambling business maybe you should just stop it. Once you get 1800Solutions stuck on your PC and can’t remove it, maybe then you’ll try a legitimate alternative.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

The New Blog on AT&T

2006-01-16T21:59:00.000-05:00

Last week I wrote a blog critiquing the New, New, New AT&T advertising campaign and it occurred to me that I made an error. Not a big one mind you, but an error nonetheless and I wouldn’t want to ever be accused of spreading non-truths. Stay with me on this one.

I pretty much wrote that I thought the $100 million advertising campaign relaunching the new, new, new, and really new AT&T was a complete waste of money. For example, why spend all of that money in the New York market when pretty much the brand name was still recognizable. If you wanted to spend that kind of money, it should have just been spent in SBC territories. Look at all of the red spots on the map; that’s pretty far away from the New York market!!! You also could have saved the money for the inevitable rebranding of Cingular back to AT&T Wireless.

Anyway, all day long you can’t turn on ESPN Radio without hearing that the show was brought to you buy, the really, really, really new AT&T and everywhere you look on the internet you can find an AT&T ad. Heck, the only place that is safe is watching Josie and the Pussycats reruns on the Boom Network with my kids.

BTW – which one is your favorite Pussycat? My favorite was Melody – kind of an early version of Chrissy Snow.

Oops sorry about the diversion. So, I did make an error in describing the campaign as a complete waste of time. It is not. The new, new, new, new, really – I promise it is new AT&T is a complete win for the media agency, publishers, newspapers, radio shows, heck anyone that has advertising space to sell is winning out on this campaign. I even had an ad on my blog, but I didn't get any money from it because none of you readers clicked on the ad. Shame on You!!!

The folks that got any slice of this media buy (except for me) will have a great quarter and I hope some of my friends did make their 1st quarter – oops what am I talking about, 2006 goal in the first month of the year. Congratulations – now go switch jobs before someone asks you to beat out your 2006 numbers.

That’s if for today. Welcome to the new, new, new, new, new, new, new

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

Birthday Gift 2 of 3

2006-01-15T21:43:00.000-05:00

Well, it is over a week since my birthday and I’m still in a giving mood; I’m not sure why because only little kids string their birthday celebration out as long as this. In the last post I decided to give away some of my most treasured secrets when it came to how I turned Harrisdirect into the 17th largest US advertiser on the internet. Unfortunately for you, I waited until this post to give anything away. Oh and one more reminder, these are my personal strategies for online advertising; nothing proprietary to any former employer is being revealed.

Audience Duplication and The Internet

Are you like me and visit a specific site more often than others? You know the kind of sites that are called Yahoo! or MSN and perhaps you even have a customized homepage with one of them. Then from those sites, you go on your merry way to other sites. Some of my personal favorites are Backstreets, WSJ, World of Warcraft, and NY Times. Of course, each one of these sites is putting a cookie on my PC and as well as any 3rd party ad servers that are serving ads on the behalf of advertisers.

Bingo I’m the same cookie visiting multiple web sites. In all likelihood, the individual sites don’t know where else I’m visiting and they certainly count my visits and impressions when selling to potential customers.

Think about how often you web surf. Everyone does it. That’s why the big portals like Yahoo!, MSN, AOL, and even Google are in the game of building tools and adding content to keep you in their family of sites longer. The more visits and the longer the length of stay, the more money they can charge advertisers for the traffic on the site. You didn’t really think that Google is not in the business of making money did you?

However, there is one type of company that knows the duplication rates. They are the 3rd party ad servers and any other types of tracking companies. That’s due to the unique cookie placed on your PC.

Now How Do You Use This Knowledge?

Quite simply it means, don’t waste your advertising dollars on multiple sites within your category. You need to know what your actual audience duplication rate is on your ad buy, not just what publishers or research tells you. And, the best source of that data is your 3rd party ad server because it is centrally serving your advertisements across your media buys.

In the example above, let’s say you are looking for my demographic and have an ad buy on NY Times and Yahoo. Use your ad server to figure out what the duplication rate is between the two. What you’ll find out is that every site in your ad buy will have a huge overlap with portal type sites and perhaps an enormous overlap with other publishers. You’ll be able to eliminate a site or two from your media buy, thus making yourself more efficient and perhaps even plowing those dollars into another site with unique traffic or move the dollars into a site already in your ad buy. The latter part is for the next addition of my birthday gift to you.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

Birthday Gift 1 of 3

2006-01-09T18:18:00.000-05:00

Well, it was the 10th anniversary of my 29th birthday on Friday and I had quite a big weekend. Plus, it was also my first official week not belonging to corporate America since I was a collegian at Rutgers College of Engineering. And, that reminds me of a story.

When I was a Senior I was asked to talk to incoming freshmen on how great it was being an industrial engineer during The Introduction to Engineering Course. So, I showed up in my Bruce Springsteen t-shirt and proudly proclaimed –

“Being an industrial engineer is great. It will help me pursue a career in business and marketing; plus it is a great background for getting your MBA.”

Well, the department head, Dr. Elsayed A Elsayed was not too happy with me because I probably set recruiting into the department back a few years. However, that was truth and it helped me understand analytics, numbers, and problem solving better than the average marketing manager.

Anyway, back to my original story. Since it was my birthday and I love getting gifts, I thought for once I could turn around and give a gift back to you. That gift is the secret of how Harrisdirect was listed as the 17th largest advertiser in the United States. As you can see from the link, HD was sandwiched between the University of Phoenix and Earthlink, and according to eMarketer, spent $3.7 million in September 2005. Now, that's where the fun begins.

As anyone will tell you, the reported media spend is often incorrect, but since it is wrong for everyone, you usually can believe the rank order. However, the number and the rank order were wildly wrong for HD. I can’t tell you what was actually spent, but what anyone else that was remotely close to the program could tell you, is that our online marketing program was one of the greatest facades and best-kept secrets around.

Now, I don’t like to kiss and tell and some things I can’t tell, but what I will lay out is part of my personal media strategy honed over buying a lot of online media since oh, about 1999. It is so simple and based on good problem solving and logic that even Dr. Elsayed A Elsayed would be proud that I put some industrial engineering skills to good use.

My personal strategy came down to three basic understandings of how buying on the internet really works:

Understanding audience duplication rates

Building trusted relationships with your media partners

And, volume discounts, baby

Well, that’s it for today. You’ll have to tune back for Part 2 because I want to keep my blog shorter and I like to lengthen my birthday celebration. So,

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

I've Seen This New AT&T Before, Haven't I?

2006-01-04T23:38:00.000-05:00

Did you watch last night's Rose Bowl, read this morning's Wall Street Journal, or listened to ESPN Sports Radio yesterday? Well I did and I couldn't help but be bombarded with AT&T's new advertising campaign. As reported in Media Daily News, the new campaign themed Your World, Delivered is supposed to be the biggest of either of the two previously stand-along telecom giants, The Old AT&T and SBC. According to the article, the campaign is valued at $100 million for 2006.

Yes, I worked at AT&T for 10 years and I loved my time there and I still have my long distance with them. Heck, I was happy to see that two of my calling plans that I launched are still active. However, $100 million to launch a branding campaign seems like an awful lot of money. Do the current ads talk about new products or calling plans? No. It announces that SBC and AT&T joined forces to form the New AT&T.

As I recall, AT&T still has huge brand awareness and telling people SBC is now part of it seems like a waste of money. Couldn't the powers that be have spent a chunk of that money on fighting Vonage in VOIP. How about entering the internet space for acquiring customers? I did seem some New AT&T online ads, but they had no call to action and were black and white. Here's another idea. How about saving the money for the inevitable branding of Cingular back to AT&T Wireless?

The Old AT&T used to launch big campaigns to move the needle especially when it came to acquiring customers. Remember the iPlan; I still don't know what that was, but I remember it. How about Beaches which showed a woman working on the beach with her cell phone? That was a great ad. However, the Old AT&T stopped those big monolithic campaigns and started focusing on direct marketing and product specific advertising. That seems like a more modern strategy.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

The Chicken Lady Cometh

2006-01-04T09:40:00.000-05:00

A few days ago I wrote a blog about What Came First, The Chicken or The Blog and I had no idea how popular it would be. First of all, I had my all time high of 175 page views (in the big scheme of things, that's a ring on an gnat) in one day.

Also, my sister started her own blog today. Unfortunately, she didn't go for the url that I had listed (www.chickens4pets.com), but went with chickens4pets.blogspot.com. I could have updated the original post with Toni's new blog, but according to the mybloglog stats, www.chickens4pets.com is my number one link out so why change?

Speaking of MyBlogLog the links on the side are absolutely awesome and are mostly free. I get free tracking on mybloglog and for a nominal fee of $25 per year I get outgoing and incoming links. Through FeedBlitz people can receive emails of my recent posts - for FREE and finally Technorati lets me have a search box. These are awesome.

That's it for today. Welcome to the blogging world NYchickenlady

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

What Came First The Chicken or The Blog

2006-01-02T16:28:00.000-05:00

I was visiting with my sister a few days ago and she was a little bit down on the internet. She has an awesome product that she sells online; they are exquisitely hand-designed eggs. Check them out at http://www.keepsakeeggs.com– she is quite the artist. Anyway, she ran a campaign on Google a year ago and she didn’t get meaningful results from her campaign. So she said, “Eric, how am I supposed to get rich via the internet if a Google search campaign doesn’t drive traffic that converts?” I tried explaining to her the whole starving artist phenomena but she didn’t bite. So, let’s take a look at what went wrong and how a blog on raising chickens could help my sister.

So, You Have A Chicken Farmer for a Sister?

My sister, Toni, lives in Dutchess County NY and decided that raising chickens would be a great hobby. I was surprised that she knew the difference between a hen and a chicken (side note – this reminds me of a favorite line from Seinfeld – if the rooster is having sex with the hen, then who is having sex with the chicken?). Toni takes the chicken eggs and using a special process that coats the eggs with a colorful polymer layer. Bingo, Toni has a very beautiful unique gift. Raising chickens on her own, she has developed a lot of experience in buying, caring, and raising chickens. Heck, I found out on Monday that she performs autopsies on dead pets to understand what happened to them. Yes it is true; I have a chicken farming sister.

To Google or Not To Google, That Is The Question

So, Toni wants to get rich like every other starving artist and asks me what she should do. I said, start a search campaign on Google and get some traffic. So, she turns on her campaign and you know what happens? Her ROI is pathetic. It turns out that when she does get traffic from her campaign, they don’t turn into paying customers and those clicks turn out to be pretty expensive. You say to yourself, “Eric, aren’t you featured in the press talking about search? How can you bash Google? “ Well, I’m not bashing Google at all. Quite the contrary, here’s what is going on with my sister’s campaign.

Toni is in the gift giving business and is up against MAJOR advertisers (ie – Hallmark) who can outspend her on a per click basis. Also, she is selling decorative eggs, which means she has a very seasonal product (Easter). Net, net she is in a very competitive space going up against big advertisers. That’s why her campaign failed. Any clicks she paid for came at a big CPC and when they did click, using normal shopping cart abandonment rates, the math doesn’t work on a CPA basis. What is she supposed to do?

Blog Where The Fish Are

As you can see, I really enjoy blogging. It’s not that I just discovered it, but being employed by an online broker has some drawbacks and one of them was that I needed to have our compliance team review before I published anything. Now, I love the compliance team at Harrisdirect (some more than others), but I felt uncomfortable with having to get an approval, plus didn’t it waste company time if I need to get these approvals. The big reason I enjoy blogging is that a regular person like myself, can generate CONTENT on the internet with just a laptop, internet connection, and a story. Bingo – you are competing with the big boys for content, and as anyone will tell you, content is KING.

chickens4pets.com

So, Toni should start a blog on raising chickens (http://www.chickens4pets.com/). She could write about buying chickens for pets, caring for chickens, feeding chickens, eggs, toys, building chicken coops, and plus, a whole commentary on performing chicken autopsies. The amount of delicious content is endless. Once Toni has her blog going she’ll need to get traffic to the site. That’s where Google comes into play.

Instead of using Google to drive sales, why not use Google to drive traffic to the blog? Of course the blog will have advertising and links back into Toni’s gift site http://www.keepsakeeggs.com/ so she can monetize the traffic. Plus, if she builds up enough visitors she can turn on an ad sense campaign to generate her own CPC revenue. Hopefully, with enough traffic and paying customers, Toni could really start frying up some eggs. So now instead of competing with the big gift giving retailers on a CPC basis, she can build up her own traffic at a much more cost-effective basis.

See, you thought raising chickens and hatching eggs would have nothing to do with a blog. That’s it for now. I need to make a western omelet for dinner.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

Exit Stage Right

2005-12-21T21:33:00.000-05:00

“Eric, join us in the conference room with the other directors please”, asked my CMO at the now defunct company Impower out of Princeton NJ. This meeting was how the company was having cash flow issues and the CEO wanted all of the directors to take a 20% across the board pay-cut.

Well, my mom didn’t raise a complete fool and I neglected to volunteer for the pay cut, but the company was in such dire straits that they cut my salary anyway. “Of course it was by accident”, the CFO explained to me as he reversed the problem.

“Enough is enough and my time with this .com is over”, as I confessed to one of my employees Angela E. So, like any good job hunter with no severance and a need to move fast, I went to Monster.com and submitted my resume on a job. It was a lark, but the job description went like this:

VP Online Advertising
DLJdirect
Weehawken, NJ
Pay: Big salary+bonus
(you didn’t think I’d actually reveal my comp, did you?)

You know what, I got the job after our HR director Lauren T. pulled my resume out of the scrap heap and walked it into the then current CMO, Debra Isenberg. Debra picked up the phone and asked me “What the hell are you doing at Impower?” and my answer was trying to get out.

Well, a few interviews later I landed a job with CSFBdirect, which was rebranded from DLJdirect the day I walked in the door. I couldn’t tell the difference between a money market and a mutual fund, but I knew how the Internet works and I sure as hell could bring in online sales. Unfortunately, the first major problem went like this:

About two weeks into the new job, I was wandering the halls in Jersey City trying to find the men’s room, when Debra stops me and says “Meeting in my office in 5 minutes. There is something wrong with the AOL Personal Finance Deal and you need to fix it!”

DLJdirect signed the AOL deal with the assumption that AOL would bring in accounts just liked it did earlier when the company basically was built on AOL and Prodigy. Well, I couldn’t turn the numbers around because we were up against three other brokers, but I did increase the sales by bending up the conversion into sales from clicks. In the end, we renegotiated the deal and extracted some value from the contract before it was ultimately cancelled over a lunch meeting at a lovely Greek restaurant in lower Manhattan.

In January 2002, having survived a few rounds of layoffs, the Bank of Montreal acquires CSFBdirect and begins the rebranding process to Harrisdirect. I am happy to report at this time, that I do now know the difference between a money market and a mutual fund because I passed my Series 7. We launched an ad campaign in May 2002 around the glorious Elsie Lee online ads (that’s a blog for another day).

Growth was moving along, but by fall 2004 we had an executive management change and over the years lost valuable ground in the share grab game. What was once the leader/inventor of online brokerage was now far behind others. Finally, when it looked like the business finally changed for the better, Harrisdirect was acquired by another online brokerage firm.

What went wrong you ask? I guess as an online advertising person you would say, “sure it was a lack of spending in advertising to generate the accounts”, but that’s not the correct read on the situation.

Nothing went wrong at all.

First, the product that was built was best in class. Even at the end we won #1 Discount Brokerage Firm from SmartMoney in August 2005. You know what else was built, a great customer service team that not only spanned the actual client services team, but also permeated through marketing, product, trading, compliance, legal, and operations. Finally, it had an unbelievably great team of people, people that I will truly miss who really tried to make a difference.

In the end, why do you go to work each day for a corporation? Is it to change the world for the better? How about, promote a product you are very proud of? How about just something simple as, I need to do something and I may as well get paid.

You see, 15 years in the corporate world taught me a few things. One of them is, you need to get high enough up the food chain to protect yourself and really make a difference. Even a Managing Director at Harrisdirect wasn’t high enough (not bad for a 10 year veteran of the telecom world huh?) because you can be let go in the end.

So, you know what you are left with if you can’t get high enough in the corporate world? Friends, family, memories, hopefully some cash, and integrity. Nothing wrong with that.

Nothing went wrong at all. In the end, consolidation will continue just like it has in the telecom world where SBC can swallow up my former company AT&T.

As you might have guess by now, today was my last day at Harrisdirect after 5 years of hoofing it into Jersey City NJ. The one thing I won’t miss is that awful commute. You know it is not so weird, not being employed by corporate America. In fact, it is a relief.

Thanks for the memories everyone. Thanks to Scott A, Lauren T, John C, Charlotte F and the rest of the crew that spent this afternoon drinking with me in Baja.

If you want to find me, you should know by now where I’ll be. I’ll be right where I’ve always belonged; here on the Internet.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

You Mean Someone Else Manages Your Homepage - BAH HUMBUG

2005-12-12T21:51:00.000-05:00

I had a meeting a few weeks back with a fellow internet advertising executive and she told me that she had no control over the promotion on her company's homepage. I was completely surprised that she would allow this to happen. In fact, not only did she not have control over her homepage, she also had no involvement in retention of her clients.

Before we tackle organizational design and retention marketing on the web, let's talk about how NO internet advertising executive should allow someone else to manage the sales from their own website.

I read a while back on emarketer that 15% of marketing executives listed their homepage as having the highest ROI. 15% doesn't sound like much, but it was the third highest ROI and 2 notches ahead of advertising (direct sales was #1). So, why would you let someone else in the marketing organization manage your homepage sales?

When I first joined Harrisdirect back in 2001 when it was known as CSFBdirect, the homepage acquisition box consisted of a text ad with a $75 offer in it. Sales you can imagine, were dismal from this unit. However, I was able to convince the executives in the company that this should be replaced with a photo and graphic promoting our latest acquisition offers; this image was also closely aligned with the rest of our online campaign. Now, I can't report the actual number because my friends at the company actually read this blog (will you please drop me a message here), but let's just say that the sales turned out to be our 2nd highest internet advertising channel. Plus, if you actually understood how many hoops we had to jump through to get the image changed, you'd guard that placement with a couple of hungry pitbulls.

You know the other great aspect to owning the homepage sales is that they don't come with any media expenses. Sure, you might have some miniscule creative charges for designing the page and people hour to change/host. However, any media buys you are conducting will have media and ad servering expenses layered in with the respective buys.

Do you still need convincing? Ok, well now take a look at your weighted average cost per acquisition. If you have ownership over the homepage sales then you would be counting any sales from that channel with a next to zero cost while the remainder of your internet sales buy will have media and ad serving cost. No matter how efficient your media buy is, including the homepage sales with a next to zero cost will make you look that much smarter. And after all, making your numbers will make you look smart and that's what this is all about anyway, right?

So, go out and grab ownership of the homepage or promotional box. Do what ever you need to (of course within reason) to convince the powers that be that it is good for the company to have everything synched up on the internet. You know, drop a buzz word like "branding" (hah) and message consistency, and perhaps the owner of the promotional box will be happy to off load some of their work. Once that happens, watch your sales go up and your CPA go down.

That's my early Christmas gift to you. You can thank me later with a little

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

Revisiting Latency

2005-12-04T22:09:00.000-05:00

A few weeks back I wrote a post explaining the virtues of latency and why it is key to online campaigns. However, like a cheap romance novel, I left you hanging at the end with how to interpret those latency numbers.

So, let's say that you are an online purveyor of widgets and you let your ad server tag your widget confirmation page. So, here's what you should be seeing:

Number of direct widget sales
Number of indirect or view thru widget sales
Plus, you should be able to see the average time it takes to complete the widget sale or the latency time.

So, armed with a good calculator you add up your total sales and determine the % of direct widget sales and indirect sales. Now what? Well, here's your first quiz.

Quiz Question #1 - Is a 0%-5% indirect sales number good?

Answer #1 - Maybe not. Since a majority of sales should not be occurring in the same session (hell I abandoned a Target.com shopping cart tonight because their site was slow), you either have a tracking problem (dropped tag) or a placement that does not allow dropping a cookie at the impression level (paid search campaign on Google).

Quiz Question #2 - Is a 95%-100% indirect sales number good?

Answer #2 - In my experience, definitely not, but that doesn't necessary mean that the buy is bad; it just means you better research why you are advertising on the site. Here's why.

Since the indirect number is based on an impression seeing your ad it is assigned by your ad server and even though the sale occurred, you can't be 100% sure where the sale came from. Unless, you think that nobody is clicking on any of your ads and the sales are just magically appearing on your site from say, a television campaign (I'd love to see your widget spokesperson). Plus, when you add another site to your mix, you might see those sales originally assigned to your favorite site being assigned to the new site.

Quiz Question #3 - How long should you leave a window open to count a sale?

Answer #3 - It depends on what you're selling and what the placement is. For example, in two industries I've worked in, approximately 85% of sales occurred within 30 days and the majority of sales within 15 days. However, I've seen the vast majority of sales from my paid placement efforts occur within 2 days. So, I set my display advertising window at 30 days and my search advertising window at 2 days.

Quiz Question #4 - Should you pay a CPA for an indirect sale?

Answer #4 - I always did and in fact, I paid out on a 30 day window which seems awfully generous. However, if you've negotiated CPA (cost per acquisition) deals you'd like to get as much visibility as possible; you know for that branding thing which you denied occurs when you negotiated the CPA deal in the first place. The best way to get as much visibility is to count all legitimate sales and give the credit where it is due.

Ok, enough with the quiz. One more latency issue you need to watch out for is a sudden drop off in sales at a particular site when you add another site into the marketing plan.

Let's say you have a very successful acquisition campaign on www.nytimes.com that has been running for years and then you add in www.msn.com. All of a sudden that same creative, offer, landing page combination on www.nytimes.com no longer pulls the same way. Is it that the readers just stopped clicking on your ads or perhaps every Times reader has purchased your widget? Nope. The site has an audience overlap and those lovely www.nytimes.com view through sales just became direct sales on www.msn.com. Time to panic? Well maybe, but first determine what is really happening on your ad buy. Perhaps, you'll find that internet advertising has other uses besides acquisition, maybe even a little branding.

That's it for this week and I need to get going so I can finish burning a few more bootleg CDs. Take care and

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

My Thankful View

2005-11-26T22:42:00.000-05:00

Sure, every website you visit these days has some schmuck writing about why they are thankful this year. I guess if the malls can window dress on a seasonal basis than why not your favorite columnist. Well, this site will not be the exception, but of course I'll give a different spin.

What am I most thankful for these days? Simple, I thank the big guy upstairs for making sure I wasn't retained by the firm acquiring my current employer. Sure it is a little scary with a wife at home that needs medical treatment and two little kids, but what was the alternative? Bad benefits, a commute from hell (not the current one that sucks the life out of me), and trapped in an industry that I only joined because the Monster.com ad looked interesting. As a good friend of mine said, "Eric, it is time for a course correction". So, what has this change resulted in and why do I seem so happy?

Severance and bonus that would take me to September 2006 if I had NO income coming in.
I started my own website and this blog and considering I've been marketing on the internet since 1998, it is about time.
A chance to start my own consulting business so I can work on interesting projects with interesting people of my own choosing.
The consulting business lets me alleviate one source of anxiety, you know, the one where you can't control your own destiny no matter how hard you try and succeed at your current job.
A chance to stay in touch with people that matter most to me and cut off the people that are obviously only interested in me because I could buy a lot of media from them.
No more bad commutes.
The world out there seems new to me again with a lot of possibilities - with all of the positions out there I feel like a kid in the candy shop.
I always wanted to write a children's novel about time travel and now I'll have the time.
I booked a trip to Disney World and didn't need to check with my boss first.
For the first time since I left AT&T in June 2000, I feel like I belong somewhere; not with the unemployed of the country, but with people who work for themselves. You know, what the country really produces today - services.

Ok, so why did I really write this post today? It wasn't to brag about how good I feel, but it was meant to help anyone in a similar situation. Don't sit around waiting for something to happen or a mentor to pull you into a new position. Grow up and make your own luck and use the time and new found freedom to pursue something you always wanted to do, but a company's golden handcuffs prevented you from going after it. With a little luck, you too could have a cheesy website and a little

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

Latency What Is It Good For?

2005-11-20T22:55:00.000-05:00

I was asked a few days ago to explain latency or view through/impression sales in a beautiful office overlooking the Potamic River. And, if you don't know either, I'm honored to be the first to explain it to you. Now maybe we can explain a lot of those unknown sales you've been tracking on your sales reports!

Have you ever been looking to buy something at your favorite e-commerce site while at work and just before you hit the next button, your pesky boss pops up from behind, so you close your browser. Sound familiar? Well it should. Industry studies (although an old one) show that 75% of all shopping carts get abandoned. Are we to assume that these items are never bought or are they sometimes bought later? Perhaps when the boss is at lunch?

Let's say (really write) that you are an online marketing manager for a shoe company and you use an ad server to place your ads on your media buy. A potential buyer clicks on your banner, visits your site, and just before they complete the shopping cart, that boss shows up again, and they abandon the cart. However, they show up the next day without clicking on the same banner and complete the sale.

Now what? Well, armed with a cookie courtesy of your ad server, a completed sale, and a click on a banner, your ad server should be able to determine which cookie completed the sale and which banner generated the sale. Therefore, you have a latent sale. Sometimes, those pesky consumers never click on your banner and then mysteriously arrive at your site and make a sale; this is called a view through or impression based sale.

Doesn't sound like a big deal to you? Well it should because I've seen average latent sales in the 55%-60% range and the % varies from site to site and from product to product; especially when the product has a long sales process or sign-up page. Several companies that I'm aware only started tracking latents recently and up until then had a large % of sales generated from unknown channels.

Think you know everything now. Well there's a lot more to it especially when it comes to interpreting the number and running campaigns using latent sales. However, that's for another week.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

The Art of Self Promotion

2005-11-11T23:33:00.000-05:00

I attended AdTech in New York on Monday and I ran into a friend that I haven't seen in a few years. The first words out of his mouth are "Eric you must be the most famous man on the internet". After what passes for blushing on my part, which doesn't amount to much of anything, I replied, "actually no, just good at a little self promotion and long term planning".

I worked for 10 years at AT&T and 5 years at Harrisdirect (the company formerly known as PCFN, DLJdirect, and CSFBdirect) and one of the key things I learned was you have to learn how to build, manage, and plan for your self promotion, because at the end of the day, that's all you really have. A rumor I heard at AT&T led me to managing my self promotion, so here it is in its entirety.

When C.Michael Armstrong was named chairman and CEO of AT&T a Vice President walked into the PR department and said "make me an internet genius" and of course they did. This VP had AT&T's press machine in full press and he ended up with plenty of speaking engagements, case studies, and press releases; even a few of these that he couldn't handle ended up on my desk. After a few short months, this VP becomes AT&T's internet czar.

So armed with this knowledge when I leave AT&T, I look for my own self promotion opportunities while at the company formerly known as Harrisdirect. Besides a little self glory, it helps with my own position as VP of Online Advertising because there is nothing better than generating a little free press for your employer while building your own reputation and getting good advertising rates. While negotiating media deals, I notice that several publishers were willing to go beyond what I should be receiving based on my spend if offered to participate in case studies with them. I said "sure, but with one condition, my name is in the case study".

So, when you hit the link on the right for My Google News you can see the list of case studies, magazine articles, and press releases that I've participated in since 2002. All this with a little planning, quid pro quo, and an eye to the future. Oh by the way, never, never, do this without your own PR department and legal involved; play by the rules of your own company.

The self promotion has helped me over the years and it can help you too. So the next time you are at a conference a friend will walk up to you and call you famous. Oh one more thing, that friend is Dan Lynn, co-founder of the full service marketing firm, DigitalGrit.

Good luck with your own self promotion and a little PardonMyFrench

Eric

Why Now

2005-09-26T20:02:00.000-05:00

Why now, why this blog?

Pretty simple. Like a lot of people I'm at a cross roads and not due to any choosing on my part. Recently, I was given a severence package, but you shouldn't feel sorry. In fact it is great news - hell it is a lot better than hoofing it into 57th and Lexington on a daily basis. So instead of worrying I decided to take a stab at going off on my own - and a free blog seems like a place to start.

Why this blog? I'm annoyed there is never a voice of the client. Someone that understands what you are going through and not someone that is worried so much about building a huge client base. Most of the help that is available is not marketer focused - so I decided to change that and be the voice to the regular marketing manager - a person for the common marketing folks.

In the coming weeks, I'll share my own views and techniques for helping marketing folks improve their business. Plus, every once in a while some NMC (non-marketing comments), because well - I can say what I want and you'll just have to

Pardon My French,

Eric F

2005-09-26T19:49:00.000-05:00

Free Time At The Beach