If you are in the game of registering people and collecting their emails, setup a facebook page and direct your traffic to it. No worries, people don’t have to be signed up at facebook to see your page OR TO ENTER THEIR DATA!

I discovered this by accident when I have been unable to get into FB this am. and popped one of my pages.

Then it dawned on me… some folks don’t need a microsite or blog unless they are restricting access pending a registration.

OK so maybe its not for everyone but a useful tool.

Facebook pages have been out for a month or two. I have two fan pages; one for Frank Sinatra and another for Stevie Ray Vaughan. Both pages have music that I love. Fans can listen but can’t copy the tunes (which I paid for).

Facebook provides information on who your page fans are. For example you get stats on daily traffic; unique visitors, page views and stats on usage of FB apps in the page. You also get stats on fan sex and age.

So here is what I have learned about my  two fan pages.

The Frank Sinatra page  has over 500 fans and they are split 45% female 55% male, with 55% of fans between ages 18 to 24! That surprised me! and another 21% between ages 25 and 34.

Only 7% of Sinatra page fans are above age 35! If you assume that Frank Sinatra has timeless popularity, I would guess this reflects the age distribution of Facebook.

The Stevie Ray Vaughan page has been up a week and has 87 fans.   This page skews heavily to male with 93% male and 7 % female fans. The age distribution is a little older with 17% above 35 years of age, and 66% between 18 and 35 (vs. 76%  for the Frank Sinatra fan page)

By looking at the networks of the fans you can also get a geographic metric – for example, my Frank Sinatra page has a lot of  fans from Turkey. (this you have to do  on your own – not a facebook stat)

Here is the point. If you want to drive traffic to your facebook page, and from there have a "call to action" on the web etc. – you will know about your present Facebook page fan base, and you can use Facebook advertising to target your advertising.

Its a constructive social networking case study of a big company, being responsive in dealing with squeaky wheels and bad press. The Dell website traffic numbers after the Aug. 2006 event, show that the web is the critical service information channel.

IMO when someone has a bully pulpit, in any media, and is unfair and unbalanced, lets first give the consumer some credit for their intelligence and fairness, present the facts, ask for forgiveness, and get to the heart of solving problems. Thats what Dell did with bundles of transparency and quick action.

Dude… you got some good service from DELL!

Other companies should follow suit and not wait for disasters or lousy service to erode their business.

BTW…Ask me about how in my mind, Apple ripped me off in the 1990s for $13,000. in royalty profits from my CD-ROM "Search for Ancient Wisdom"  that was in the Apple CD-ROM collection, by using a middleman publisher (Double Impact Multimedia) that went bankrupt just when the checks were supposed to be mailed. Apple did nothing for the designers, developers and creatives for ours and many other titles.  Today, I would blog that injustice so nasty 24/7 – we would see their response and how they fix the problem.

Debbie Williamson provides thoughtful interpretation of the new features in Facebook. Excellent interview from the Jenn & John Show, Vancouver, BC

http://www.emarketer.com/docs/eMarketer_Debbie_Williamson_Nov_7_07_NPR.mp3

…there are several key metrics in podcasting. First, there’s your
overall audience, download requests per episode, download completes per
episode, unique download requests per episode, and unique download
completes per episode. We also are looking at consumption metrics,
which can be broken out into partial plays and complete plays. 

Then
there are what we call the engagement metrics, which occur beyond the
media consumption. Your RSS subscribers, your Web site/podcast site
visits as a percentage of downloads. Any blog, forum, or page activity
as a percentage of downloads (that shows the relative appeal of the
podcast). Then there are more standard Web metrics, like Web site page
views and time spent on the site and the overall impact of your
podcast. This includes ad awareness, call-to-action responses, sales,
lead generation, referrals, etcetera.

The #1 facebook app is Top Friends and is valued by Adonomics at over $25 million. facebook is a really big business. Oh yeah! How about a hundred billion $? Interested in the business side of facebook? Take a look at the developers page and the developers services inside facebook, as well as the groups related to VCs, advertising and development, and the emerging industry behind facebook is revealed. Not all apps are worth $25 million, however. The #500 facebook app, moon phases is valued at $3,024. It would cost at least that to pay for its development based on going rates. I don’t mean to thrash the Buffalo Bills, but the Bills Fan Statistics app has 2 active users and is valued at $8. It is ranked as the #3,662 out of 5,832  facebook apps. If you don’t have a hot screenplay in you, consider developing a facebook app – don’t lose the dream but don’t forget the lesson of the Buffalo Bills. Your effort may go "wide right" . 

The customer has been conditioned to think… How can you target an offer without my data? How is that data collected and used? Wait a second…How did you get that data? Who else has that data? 

No one likes to talk about Privacy too much. Most Marketers perceive it as a negative in customer’s minds; even the root cause of failing loyalty programs.

There are different ways of dealing with  the privacy issue.

1. You can ignore the issue
2. You can  decide that it isn’t worth the hassle and give everyone the same offer
3. You can point to a privacy policy and convince yourself that boilerplate from a lawyer will make a customer content vs. what it is really designed to do… cut back litigation
4. You can take the high road. 

The high road is to develop target marketing programs that openly target your customers for their propensity to do something, fully transparent and without apology. Remember, in most cases business rules and algorithms cannot handle fully targeted 1:1 offers, so why pretend that the offers are 1:1 Let the customer know that these are offers for "customers like them" – because thats what they are!

What about their data? You get rid of it. That’s right… you build a unique campaign database that strips out all the identifiable data that is not needed. and you tell the customer right on the offer "THIS OFFER WAS CREATED FOR CUSTOMERS LIKE YOU, FROM A SECURE DATABASE   WITHOUT ANY OF YOUR PERSONAL OR IDENTIFIABLE DATA"  You use a unique customer campaign number derived from, or referenced to, the customer’s data that is held in a database elsewhere.  For the campaign, the unique number used is in a group for offer purposes. Essentially, the offers are not personalized down to the customer level. They are not company:1  but company:segment .

More on the "high road" If you need an email address or a name and street address to deliver the offer, you add that to the note to the customer… "THIS OFFER WAS CREATED FOR CUSTOMERS LIKE YOU, FROM A SECURE DATABASE   WITHOUT ANY OF YOUR PERSONAL OR IDENTIFIABLE DATA – YOUR (EMAIL) ADDRESS HAS BEEN APPENDED TO THE OFFER FOR DELIVERY PURPOSES ONLY"   

When the campaign is over,  you preserve the high road policy, by using the intelligence from  the campaign selectively to analyze and optimize. The next campaign uses unique campaign ID numbers again.

There is enough opportunity for dynamic offer optimization to challenge the savviest marketers with the biggest technology resources, while staying on the high road.

Now the Customer is being conditioned differently.

How can you target an
offer without my data?
- I’m part of a group getting the offer

How is that data collected and used?
- My personal and identifiable data isn’t being used

Wait a
second…How did you get that data? Who else has that data?
- I trust the company judging by the effort they have made in communicating how they use my information

Next time I’ll share my thoughts on… delivery offers.

Much of that conventional wisdom is wrong, say ICOM Information & Communications
marketing and consumer insight experts Peter Meyers and Steve Litt.
Their assertion is based on redemption trends derived from a 20-year
database ICOM built in the course of designing 6,300 targeted
direct-mail programs and issuing 425 million coupons to 28 million U.S.
and Canadian households that voluntarily provide information about
their purchasing preferences. ICOM’s database uniquely differentiates
redemption behavior between current, competitive and new users of
products.

According to Meyers and Litt, these are the top ten myths about coupon redemption:

Myth #1: Short-term expirations drive immediate sales.
Fact: Consumers need more time. A short expiry often cuts redemption far more than any increase in value can make up.

Myth #2: Higher value always equals higher redemption.
Fact: Value alone isn’t enough. Maximum redemption comes from an optimal value-expiration sweet spot.

Myth #3: Store brand users aren’t worth pursuing with target coupon offers.
Fact: As
store brands upgrade their quality, fewer store brand consumers will be
price-centric and more will be quality and feature conscious. They’ll
often redeem targeted offers at rates as high as other competitive
users.

Myth #4: Targeting the most loyal users of a competitor’s product yields the best return on a coupon program.
Fact: Light to moderately loyal competitive users are more likely to try a new
product and will do so on a lower-value coupon offer.

Myth #5: The presence of a sample is a requisite for driving high redemption rates.
Fact: There
are other factors much more likely to drive redemption rates. Some of
those include expiration, value, current vs. competitive user, and
frequent vs. infrequent coupon user.

Myth #6: The current users of a product don’t need long expirations to get them to redeem a coupon offer.
Fact:
Even for current users, to gain more than two-thirds of potential
redemptions, offers must be six months at minimum, and in the 10-12
month range for personal care categories like skin and beauty products.

Myth #7: Coupon clutter is pervasive in all delivery strategies.
Fact:
Escalated volume is not a factor in targeted coupons mailed directly to
homes. Notably, targeted promotion redemption rates are up in this
sector for household products and pet products.

Myth #8: Coupon offers on frequently purchased items are redeemed quickly, so an expiration of less than six months will do.
Fact: Targeted offers with expirations shorter than six months in general have only half as many redemptions as longer term offers.

Myth # 9: Current and competitive product users need the same coupon value to be motivated.
Fact: In
any product sector, current users typically require much less offer
value to drive them to purchase. Sectors vary, but it often takes 40
percent less value to move a current user than a competitive user.

Myth #10: Americans and Canadians share the same coupon redemption behavior.
Fact: There
are shared traits but the difference in absolute redemption rate is
substantial. Americans receive 10 times more mail than Canadians and
are less likely to respond to offers. Canadians favor contemplation
over quick action and require longer expiration terms. The net result:
the decline in overall coupon redemption rates is steeper in the United
States.

To build this list, I surveyed Scansave, LLC (the company I founded) and 4 other companies that specialize in delivering targeted offers in-store. I am very happy for my own selfish reasons to see validation for these new business methods. The over-arching framework for in-store target marketing has to be the interface to the shopper/customer; where and how do you make contact, and what do you give as a value exchange? 

So here is my list of benefits for those considering target marketing in-store, which in my mind only qualifies if your efforts are measurable, targeted, and can be optimized.

1. offers are relevant and personalized – it demonstrates you know your customer
2. delivered at the best place; the point of decision
3. flexibility; electronic or paper with multi-channel integration opportunities
4. increased frequency; not the program but the result of frequency offers
5. increased basket size without diluting profit margins; cross-sells and no pantry filling
6. product trial; see it, touch it and an instant incentive to try it
7. level playing field for store brands; its your store… promote your private brands efficiently
8. data-rich; if the offers are targeted, the data  collected is valuable and powerful
9. less waste; more efficient than broad-based direct marketing via mail
10. $; increased spend, increased revenues and increased profit margins

see it here

Top Trends in Web Metrics & Analytics:

1. Upper Management Demands Proof

2. The Desire to Measure Everything Gets Serious

3. The Need for Integrated Marketing Becomes Obvious

4. A Common Language Is Born

5. Defining Engagement Remains Elusive

6. Reputation Management Grows in Stature

7. Finding Experienced Web Analysts Continues to Mystify

8. The Web Analytics Consulting Market Mushrooms

9. New Web Analysts Flood the Market

10. The Industry Continues to Consolidate

Bonus Trend. The Rich Get Richer

see it here