Search Marketing Gurus | Search Marketing Tips, Advice, Strategies & Tactics From Internet Marketing Professionals

Overstock Terminates All New York Based Affiliates

Months before the Former Governor of New York, Elliott Spitzer was in the news for his scandalous behavior he was making news for his potential major impact on e-commerce.  The buzz was from his attempt to pass legislation that would make it necessary for online merchants to collect taxes on Internet sales made by New Yorkers.  Specifically, the legislature would make it necessary for merchants to collect taxes from New Yorkers if they work with any Affiliate Marketers based in NY.

Current NY Governor, David Patterson has move forward with the Spitzer plan.  Starting June 1, 2008 merchants will be required to collect taxes or face repercussions.

On May 2, 2008 Amazon filed a complaint in State Supreme Court in Manhattan objecting to the law.  Amazon is challenging the constitutionality of the law.  According to a New York Times Article, Amazon states, "It is impossible,...for it to determine which of its affiliates are actually in New York State".

Yesterday, Overstock dealt with this issue by removing all New York based affiliates from their program.  Below is the email sent to their affiliates.  It will be interesting to see how this plays out.  How will other large online only retailers react?  Will other states follow suit?

ABestWeb, a forum for Affiliate Marketers has started a conversation on this topic.

*Image credit - downtown ecommerce blog

 

Online Marketing Tips: Conversion Types - Purchase, Email Sign-ups, Time on Site, & Page Views

Last week Brian presented our Tuesday's Tips in Online Marketing and spoke about Web Metrics for your website.  I'm back this week with our next edition of Tuesday's Tips in Online Marketing, taking that web metrics theme a little further by bringing the post about Conversion Rates I did to video.

This will be a two part series, this week I discuss 4 types of conversions you can track for your website.  Keep in mind, different types of websites will want to track different types of things, so not every conversion type discussed is something every website will want to track and measure.

Full video transcript after the jump....

Twitter Policy - Do You Have One In Place?

Twitter is growing at a phenomenal pace.  There's no doubt that as more and more companies adopt new communication platforms like Twitter into their marketing strategies, as well as allowing their employees to use them, some rules should be set up along the way.

Back in December I wrote a piece about "Is Twitter Really Dangerous?", which was prompted by Michael Krigsman's "Twitter Is Dangerous" article.  I was reminded of this again, when I happened upon TwitterLocal.net  (shout out to Drew Olanoff for the tip), and I stumbled across a local user in my area, who actually had his own Twitter policy.  He's just an individual blogger, but he has a link right in his profile on twitter to his policy about who he will and won't follow, and what his guidelines are.

I don't want to put a finger on this person, as I believe he does have a right to privacy, but I just found it fascinating that this person actually took the time to write up his own Twitter policy.  Here's just two of his disclaimers:

• If you’re twittering more than 10 tweets a day, I may have to stop following just so I can keep up with other folks.
• If you add my feed, I will certainly check to see who you are, but if there’s zero identifying information on your profile, why would I add you back?

And he's got a few guidelines he himself tried to follow:

• I’ll post links to things only now and then, since I know Twitter is very often used in (and was intended for) mobile contexts; and when I do, I’ll give some context, rather than just “this is cool …”
• In spite of my best intentions, I’ll probably break these guidelines now and then, but hopefully not too much, whatever “too much” is.

Now why do I find this so fascinating?  Mostly because major brands are out here on twitter and haven't even taken the time to define a Twitter policy. There's a lot of things to consider when you start an account on a place like Twitter or even Facebook or MySpace.  Thinking about the following items might help you come up with a decent Twitter policy that can define it very easily to your audience how you intend to communicate with them.

• Who will you follow?
• How do you hold conversations?
• What will you talk about?
• Who is the account with? (Who Owns The Account?)
  
  • Is it a company representative?  If so who's the rep?
  • Is it a number of company representatives?
  • Is it an authorized twitter account from the company?
• What's the twitter account's purpose?
  • To hold conversations with an audience?
  • Get feedback on products / services?
  • Promote special sales or events?
• Why do you "unfollow"?
• How many tweets do you tweet a day?
• How do you respond to direct messages or replies? (@'s)
• Do you promote others on twitter?
• Is your blog part of your twitter account?

As you can see these are just a few things that companies should think about.  Heck, even popular individuals probably should think about having a twitter policy.  This can help to head off a lot of hassles, headaches and misunderstandings a head of time.  It can also lead to a much better conversation with your community if they understand where you are coming from in the first place.

When big companies start a Twitter account these days, sometimes its because they see it as the "latest" thing they should be involved in.  Without even thinking about some consequences, before they know it things can spiral out of control. 

Quite the opposite can happen, like in the case of Delta Airlines.  Delta Airlines has a twitter account but it's not the official account from the company.  Its actually kind of sad, because it is such a great tool and it's just an employee, not an "official" channel Delta customer could speak with.  If you are a big brand, or a popular brand, you should at least snag up that twitter account name so well-intentioned employees don't do it for you.

Twitter is a great way to hold a conversation with your community.  A great way to make sure the conversation stays on track and doesn't get derailed or ended, it to put a Twitter Policy in place.

*Twitter Shirt Picture Credit: Luisdrk, Twitter Art Picture Credit:  jmtucu

Fun Photo Fridays: Cindy Krum Doing a Tea Trick at SES Denver Training

At the beginning of this week, I had the pleasure of doing the Social Media training in Denver for Search Engine Strategies Training event there.  It was a lot of fun, and was also my first time in Denver.  Those of you who follow me on twitter, saw how I was shocked about how far off in the "boonies" the airport was!

While there, Denver local, Cindy Krum of Blue Moon Works, entertained a few of us.  The first night we met at the Blake Street Tavern - formally the Flying Dog Brewery.  For anyone going there, try the Scratch Ale, it's great!  Then, Tuesday night Cindy took us to Mataam Fez, a Moroccan restaurant that was just a great experience.  Cindy even did a tea trick for us - Cindy, not only are you brave, but you rock! :)

If you like this photo of Cindy Krum doing a Tea Trick at SES Denver Training, feel free to comment and favorite it as that's how we'll be judging the photos at the end of the year! Check out the rest of the fun at SES Denver Training, there's over 60 photos to view.

WOMMA WOMM-U: Jen Gulvik Presents Houlihan's WOMM Case Study

Houlihan's went through an entire restructuring, down to even changing the forks and the music.

Half the people who live within a 3 mile radius of the restaurants, have never been to a Houlihan's or were lapse customers.  The only people who really knew about Houlihan's was employees, current customers and a "few" others.  They do limited mass media advertising.  They really win their customers over one at a time.  They are in an environment where their competition have millions of dollars to spend in mass media.  That climate made them look at other ways to work with marketing.

They started with emails to 100,000k members.  Customers are focused on culture.  And Houlihan's focuses on the customer.  The CEO reads every single customer comments, Jen responds to 70% of them.  What they have noticed lately, they have been getting more fan mail.  She believes this is because of the change in the environment, that customers want to help take control of the brand.

They get a ton of fun, funny comments.

WOMMA WOMM-U- Pick a Charity Workshop Results

Following on from the Pick a Charity Workshop sessions yesterday and this morning, the ideas and results for each of the 3 different charities were presented over the lunch sessions.

Overall, some interesting solutions were generated and presented, with ideas ranging from generating basic awareness to eco-terrorism.

So here's what each group came up with, just to give you an idea of how the thought processes differed within each group:

WOMMA WOMM-U- Jordan Corredera Keynote

With the previous keynote running 10 minutes over it's timeslot, and technical issues further delaying the start, this keynote shrank from a 45 minute presentation to a 30 minute presentation, which as it turned out was probably a good thing.  Unlike the previous, more polished / rehearsed presentations, this one came off as more like a time filler.  Which isn't to say that there weren't a few interesting pieces of information, but they did tend to be few and far between. 

The presentation was given by Jordan Corredera of Carnival Cruise Lines, the Head of the Interactive Strategy Team, and was moderated by Ted Wright, the founder of Fizz.

WOMMA WOMM-U: Bob Pearson from Dell Keynote

Bob Pearson, of Dell is presenting the first keynote of the morning.  He hates podiums so he's actually walking through the crowd.  So what Dell's Learned so far?

#1  the online world is undergoing the most significant transformation so far.  There is growth ever second.  A month ago China over took the US with the number of people online.  Over 500k people go online for the first time everyday. Do we know their purchase habits?  Do we know their searching habits?  No!

#2  The # of conversations is exploding.  Digital data is exploding. It's increased 6 times over the past 4 years.  The amount of conversations is going up exponentially.

#3  customers want to speak with us in their first language.  English reaches 1/3 of thw orld in a good day.  People want to do business in the language they are comfortable in.  2/3 of what happens in the world is in 9 other languages.Japan is actually the #1 country in the world for conversations - text messages and blogs contribute to this.

WOMMA WOMM-U- Carla Hendra Keynote

The last keynote of the day is delivered by Carla Hendra - Co-CEO Ogilvy North America, Chairman of Ogilvy New York.  Her take on WOM - "Brand Marketing: It's all word of mouth now!"

There currently exists the opportunity to engage a global network of brand activists, and what's better than having the consumer do our jobs for us?

WOMMA WOMM-U- Pick a Charity Workshop

One of the elements of the WOMMU conference is interactivity, and working together on case studies.  To this aim, over lunch (a lunch with  choices of sandwich, none of which a vegetarian such as myself could eat, grr), three different nonprofits were presented. 

1. The Wilderness Society
2. The Overtown Youth Center
3. 1 Sky