Higher Education Online - More Great Insights from Contributor Jennifer Wood

In case you missed the fabulous first part of this mini-series from Jennifer Wood, Web site and enrollment marketing coordinator for the University of Charleston, you can check it out here. Last month, Jennifer took us inside of her audience. Here, she gets into the nuts and bolts of marketing a university to prospective students. Jen is a longstanding member of the Marketing Genius family and a genius marketer in her own right. We're thrilled to have this guest contribtuion from Jen!

The Who, What, When, Where, Why, and How

If you ask the important question of “How did you hear about us?” then you will have insight into how students find you. If you realize they are not finding out through electronic means, then I would say that you need to look at what strategies you’re carrying out electronically. If your web presence is lacking or difficult to find or navigate, your chances that students find out about you via electronic means is probably fairly slim. Tracking communications of who you send what to, how they receive it, how many conversions you have (applicants / deposits / registrants), you can find which tasks result in good leads and enrollment. This question can help you figure out where you should spend, cut, reallocate, etc. It’s interesting how much information and insight you can obtain through one question.

In higher education marketing, it’s now becoming evident that students are applying for college differently than before. In the “good old days”, students filled out an inquiry card or completed an online form to receive more information about the school in a follow up communication. We have seen a shift from that original process. Now students go right for the online application and avoid the other means of initial contact, at least electronically. Our web analytics show that students who complete online applications are twice as likely to be new visitors instead of returning visitors. So what does that say about our marketing strategy? How do we shift our promotional materials to accommodate that shift? Honestly, we’re still figuring that out.

As I write this blog post, I’m rethinking our electronic marketing strategy here at UC. Many times, daily operations take precedence over other marketing aspirations and get put on the back burner. I use that “excuse” all the time. My goal now is to find out what our resources are to improve our tracking system of applicants or “customers”. This of course, it will need to be an integrated effort with admissions, student life, communications, the registrar, and probably the IT department (to make appropriate changes to our systems).

So, I’d like to hear from folks out there….Anyone else experiencing this shift to “secret” or “discreet” customers? They don’t browse around first…they go right for the application or shopping cart? What is your conversion rate of these folks?

I’d love to find out how other industries are coping with this shift and how they are marketing through this new process. Not all questions in life can be answered merely by asking them. However, in marketing, many customers want to have a dialogue about their choices.

And for a bit of fun and humor on your way out, check out this really illustrative YouTube video, "Breaking Up," which shines some light on marketing dialogue.

I look forward to hearing from you with a comment here, or via e-mail:
Jennifer Wood
jenniferwood@ucwv.edu

More on E-Mail Overload

The gurus at Silverpop continue to provide coverage of what's coming in email inbox technology. Here's an excerpt from their newest article:

Is Email Taking Over Your Life?
Another guest posting that contemplates the future of email, from my colleague, Scott Voigt...
From Scott:It dawned on me the other day, that I spend more time with my inbox than I do with... well... anything! Seriously, this is sad, but totally true. Staring at Outlook (or at least having it stare at me) for more hours than I spend with my wife and daughter, what's up with that? Even worse, given the inordinate amount of time that I allocate to the inbox, I still don't feel in control of it. Calgon, take me away!

And here's the link to the full article:
http://emailmarketing.silverpop.com/archive/2008/02/is_email_taking.html

More on the Monetization of E-Commerce Relationships

Thanks to our very good, very smart friend, Paul Helmick of Premier Strategies, for sending this article from "Mashable" - the social networking news site.

As a publicly traded company, SNAP Interactive (formerly eTwine Holdings), the company behind Facebook apps “Meet New People” and “Are You Interested?” is required to file their earnings every quarter with the SEC. Thus, we’re able to get a peek into how much money Facebook applications are actually generating.

SNAP reported $388,000 in revenue for their fourth quarter, which was up from $35,383 in the third. They attribute the growth to their applications: “Are You Interested” finished December with 5.2 million users, while “Meet New People” claims 350,000. Thus, it can be determined that each user was worth about 7 cents in revenue to SNAP in the quarter, or about 28 cents per year (388,000/5,500,000 * 4).

As deals become more common in the Facebook application space, the question becomes how much is a user worth? As a publicly traded company, SNAP is sporting a market value of around $10 million. At its current pace, the company looks to pull in $1.5-$2 million in revenue this year, meaning its price-to-sales ratio is 5:1. If you assume a 5x price-to-sales ratio, that would mean each one of SNAP’s users is actually worth around $1.40 (each user pulls in $0.28/yr, if the company is valued at 5x sales, you arrive a $1.40 per user valuation).

As for SNAP Interactive’s stock (STVI.OB), shares are up more than 400% in the past 12 months. However, it’s important to note that the company is traded Over-the-Counter (OTC), which means it’s highly risky and speculative. Nonetheless, it’s an interesting company to watch, if for no other reason than it lets us see the actual financials of Facebook applications.

Considering recent deals in the Facebook application space reported in the low-seven figures for apps with a few million installs, $1.40 per user seems to be a reasonable approximation of what an app user is worth, at least for apps with an advertising-based revenue model.

Please let us know if you see addtional information on this topic of increasing importance. We'd love to have it to share with the community of marketing geniuses.

Valuation of an E-Commerce Relationship

Recently we've been working on an e-commerce project for a client. The client's project involves a major Web play. And so lately I have been scouring the Internet and reaching out to smart friends to find the answer to these questions:

1- What is the monetary value of a registered member (i.e., an opted-in community member) on a retail Web site? This person has purchased a product or content from you.

2- What is the monetary value of an opt-in, e-mail address for an e-commerce prospect. This is someone who has not yet become a customer but who has granted you permission to add their contact information to your database.

The answer of course is: "It depends." But thanks to good friend and marketing guru Jeff James (a Microsoft alumnus), we can all refer to the following primer.

Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) is the dollar value of a customer relationship based on the present value of the projected future cash flows from the customer relationship:

Customer Lifetime Value ($) =
Margin ($) X (Retention Rate (%)/1+Discount Rate(%) – Retention Rate (%)
In a web ecommerce scenario, that should be relatively easy to figure out based on the average dollar amount of a sale, average frequency of sale, etc. On a site where ad revenue is generated, it can be more complicated, but still doable.


Prospect Lifetime Value is the expected value of a prospect minus the cost of prospecting:

Prospect Lifetime Value ($) =
Acquisition Rate (%) X [Initial Margin($) + CLV ($)] – Acquisition Spending ($)

Acquisition rate above refers to your closing percentage, i.e., the percentage of prospects who will actually buy. In the case you reference below, the firm should have some idea of what percentage of prospects come to the site and registers, and what percentage of the registered prospects turn into buyers before they could factor this value.

Finally, here are a couple of other good sources for this topic and related ones (e-commerce, e-mail marketing, search engine strategies, etc.):

Marketing Sherpa
Silverpop

If any of our marketing genius readers have relevant info and would like to contribute to the knowledge base, please leave us a comment.

2007 Holiday Retail Report A Mixed Bag

According to this excellent report by ComScore, the Internet economy (or eCommerce if you will) has been quite robust lately. Internet spending was up 19% for the 2007 holiday season over the previous year. That is incredibly strong! For the record 2006 was up 26% over 2005, but that does not dampen the robust nature of the 2007 holiday e-commerce retail spending data.

But what about traditional commerce? How's the old economy doing? Despite a strong, promising start (Thanksgiving weekend traffic was reportedly very strong - measured at 6.5% increase vs. 2006), bricks-and-mortar retail was weaker this holiday season. According to the New York Times, consumer spending for the 2007 retail season was up only 3.6% from 2006. The comparable year-over-year rates of increase were 6.6% and 8.7% for 2006 and 2005 respectively. [The analysis in the article also adjusts for higher gasoline prices to conclude that the net increase in retail spending for 2007 was more like 2%. Still it was an increase. That's not entirely bad.]

Finally, there's more of the overall holiday retail assessment to be gleaned from the following report from Thomson Financial (via ddi magazine online):

According to a preliminary same-store sales tally by Thomson Financial, 16 retailers missed projections, while seven surpassed forecasts and one met expectations. While weak results were posted across all retail categories,apparel retailers, such as Limited Brands Inc. and Pacific Sunwear of California Inc., were the hardest hit. Limited reported an 8 percent decline in same-store sales--financial analysts had predicted a decline of only 4 percent. However, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and Costco Wholesale Corp. reported same-store sales increases for December. Wal-Mart's same-store sales rose 2.4 percent, surpassing a forecast of 1.8 percent, while Costco posted a 7 percent increase in same-store sales, above the 5.6 percent prediction.

All in all, the 2007 holiday retail season was a mixed bag: somewhat weak overall, with a few bright spots. The notable exception was online retail, or e-commerce.

Any marketing genius who dares to say that the Internet is becoming increasingly important to business success is absolutely correct!

A Window into the Blogosphere

Have you checked out Blogger Play? It is a simple to use Web site that plays a stream of all the photos that bloggers from around the world have recently posted via Blogger. Check it out. It's fun to watch. (And I'll bet it looks great playing on the new iPhone.)

Charleston Leading the Way with eBay

Scarborough Research, the leading consumer research firm measuring the lifestyle and shopping patterns, media behaviors and demographics of American consumers, released an analysis which finds that the South reigns for eBay Visitors.

Charleston, WV, is the number one local U.S. market for eBay Visitors. Forty-four percent of adults in Charleston, WV who accessed the Internet during the past month are eBay Visitors. Nationally, almost one-third (31 percent) of Internet users are eBay Visitors.

Scarborough’s local markets are based on DMAs, or Designated Market Areas, which include a city plus its surrounding counties. “Many of the market areas where eBay ranks highly include more rural counties, so Internet shopping may provide a convenient way for consumers who live in more outlying areas to satisfy their retail needs,” said Gary Meo, senior vice president, Internet services, Scarborough Research. “Utilizing the Internet – a global medium – to target and engage consumers locally is considered a top priority among leading Internet companies.
Local information that clues in to the unique lifestyles, demographics, retail patterns and media habits of Internet users is useful to any brand seeking to expand its business online through local targeting.”

Accroding to the report, eBay Visitors are among the Internet’s top spenders, and they are more likely than other Internet users to be young and male. eBay Visitors are 37 percent more likely than the average Internet user to have spent $2,500 or more online during the past year. They are 16 percent more likely to be ages of 18-24, and 12 percent more likely to be male.

The difference is that eBay Visitors are more likely than the average Internet user to buy online, particularly in big-ticket categories. For example, eBay Visitors are 71 percent more likely than the average Internet user to have bought a vehicle online during the past year. In fact, more than half (53 percent) of all online vehicle buyers are eBay Visitors. Additionally, they are 71 percent more likely to buy consumer electronics online, and account for 53 percent of all online purchasers in this category.

On a local level, eBay shoppers also have distinct online buying habits. In Charleston, for example, the top online buying categories for eBay Visitors are clothing/accessories (32 percent of Charleston eBay Visitors bought clothing/accessories online during the past year); books (32 percent); CDs/tapes/music (19 percent); computer hardware/software (14 percent); and toys/games (14 percent). Charleston’s eBay Visitors account for a whopping 62 percent of all of the city’s online consumer electronics buyers, and 60 percent of Charleston’s online computer hardware/software buyers.
[The above information was excerpted from a press release from Scarborough Reseach Corp., July 31, 2007]

What does this mean for Charleston businesses? One does not have to be a marketing genius to see that any legitimate business better have a Web presence. In addition, it means that e-commerce is very real, even in smaller, more rural markets like ours. I believe that it also indicates a potential opportunity for Charleston merchants, especially those selling electronics, software, clothing, books and music. What if local merchants could capture some of this market, offering local service and presence on top of immediate availability! The means and the tools to do this exist. We can utilize well-placed Internet ads and paid-search phrase mechanisms like Google Ad Words to get in front of these Charleston online shoppers.

If you are looking for valuable insights like these for your West Virginia business, talk to Maple Creative. We are the state's only licensed Scarborough/Arbitron partner among advertising and PR firms. We'll help you take the guesswork out of understanding your audience and their habits.

You Looked at my WHAT Before you Hired Me?

Go ahead, Fess Up. If you’re on a blogging site reading entries from fellow bloggers, you can admit that you have probably checked your Facebook or Myspace account today. Caught you, didn’t we. :)

So, here’s the question. Just what kind of information ARE you posting on these famous networking sites? And, more importantly, are you aware of the risks involved with these sites?

Employers have caught the frenzy of these sites. They are logging on and checking on potential employees to see just what kind of activity is on their site. With everything from pictures, interests, previous jobs, groups and comments from your friends, an employer can learn a lot about you before you step foot into their office for an interview.

So, what kind of reputation have you given yourself from your profile? If you are allowing some promiscuous photos to be viewed on your profile or listing your favorite activities as “bar hopping,” you might not be sending out the best impression to others.

It is important to keep your information private, letting only your friends view your profile. Also, remember that the internet is uncensored…If you’re putting yourself out there, be ready for the risks and consequences that come along with it.

So, clean it up. Because if you’ve left anything behind, it could come back to get you!

Great Advice and Great Newsletter

Here's a wonderful insight in an excerpt from this month's "Jugglezine," a great e-newsletter published by the Herman Miller Company. What I love about most "Jugglezine" is its format: easy to read, useful and concise. Marketing geniuses always adhere to The Rule of 3 B's. Be brief. Be brilliant. Be gone!

Successful people know the power of stick-to-itiveness--whether it's used to launch a business or lose weight. In addition to not giving up easily, they also learn from their mistakes by embracing a temporary setback as a chance to reassess their game plan.Psychologist Angela Lee Duckworth, a researcher at the University of Pennsylvania, calls it "grit"--a quality that she defines as "tenaciously pursuing something over the long term." She believes it's more important than I.Q., grades, leadership skills, and talent when it comes to succeeding in work, school, and other areas of life. In her study of high achievers, Duckworth found that grit was one of best predictors of achievement for Penn undergraduates, West Point plebes, and national spelling bee contestants, among other survey participants.

New Phishing E-Mail - Frighteningly Realistic

Continuing on the e-mail saga, I was reminded that we cannot be too careful these days. Whether you are a marketer or not, you should be wary of opening anything from an unknown source, anything that is unsolicited--and especially anything with embedded files or code. I share this story in the hope that it will help you avoid the hazards of e-mail viruses, phishing scams or identity theft. This one almost got me.

Earlier this week I was shocked to see an e-mail message from the Better Business Bureau notifying me that someone (a Marcia E. Whittington - I have never heard of her) had filed a complaint against Maple Creative. While I was not aware of anything that we had knowingly done to warrant such a filing, I was troubled by the message.

It looked official to me ... at least initially. The message originated from a sender with the Better Business Bureau suffix (bbb.org). Plus, it had the organization's logo masthead graphic embedded into the message. Topping this off was an apparent case number that had been assigned.

However, upon further examination, I noticed in the message text a hyperlink. Through my message preview pane I placed my mouse over the hyperlink and saw that it was linked to an odd URL with ".exe" at the end. This indicates an executable file, or progam code. I knew better than to click on any hyperlink to executable code or files. At that point, I became more suspicious and set out to search for "Better Business Bureau e-mail hoax." After some surfing and searching, I found the following press release on the BBB site.

BBB Issues Alert for Phishing Attack Targeting Thousands of Businesses and Consumers

Scam uses the “BBB” Name to Attract Victims

For Immediate Release

UPDATE - Arlington, VA, March 1, 2007 - The Better Business Bureau System warns all businesses across the United States and Canada of a spoofing scam using the BBB name and a false BBB e-mail address to entice recipients to access potentially damaging hyperlinks.
In February, a firm had its computer system hacked and that firm's system generated thousands of counterfeit messages to businesses and consumers, purporting to be a complaint filed with the BBB. Recently, another firm was hacked and similar emails have been received by businesses across the country.

The attack has NOT affected the computer system of any BBB nor have any of their data been compromised. As with most other phishing attacks, the perpetrators have attempted to pose as a respected business to gain the confidence of phishing victims. The BBB is working with authorities to thwart these malicious attacks.

The most recent e-mail has a false return address of consumer-complaints@bbb.org and a phishing hyperlink citing a BBB complaint case number, for example, "DOCUMENTS FOR CASE #BBA749BED0". These links actually direct access to a subdirectory of the hacked firm's website where users are asked to download documents related to the complaint. The download is actually an executable file that is believed to be some form of a computer virus.

All recipients are advised that any e-mail from the consumer-complaints@bbb.org address is not coming from any BBB and should be considered counterfeit. The BBB strongly encourages recipients of any such message to delete the message immediately without clicking on the "DOCUMENTS FOR CASE" links.

The phishing e-mail return address of consumer-complaints@bbb.org does not exist and is being "spoofed." Spoofing occurs when an e-mail address is altered to appear as if the message originated from a legitimate source. This is a common practice for both spam e-mail and phishing operations.

Phishing is a term coined by computer hackers, who use e-mail to fish the Internet hoping to "hook" recipients into giving them logins, passwords and/or other sensitive information. In all these scams, the phisher first impersonates a legitimate company. In a typical scam, the phisher instructs recipients to click on a convenient link to receive or provide information that can then be used by phishers to access the recipient's sensitive personal or business information. For more information about phishing and for tips to avert other scams, please visit www.bbb.org.

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CEO Roundtable Presentation on Blogging

What a fun collaboration today at the Charleston Area Alliance. I had the pleasure of teaming up with Bob Coffield, Matt Ballard and Tom Kittredge in presenting the basics and benefits of blogging to a group of 25 CEOs and business leaders.

I learned quite a bit, and if you were in attendance, I hope you did, too. If you are visiting the Marketing Genius blog for the first time today, as a result of the conference, please post a comment and say, "Hi."

We'll have our PowerPoint slides very soon. Meahwhile, here are a few photos from today's gig: that's Matt at the top of this page, Bob below.