I had a business trip planned to San Francisco for Ad:Tech, but had to cancel at last minute due to my wife’s father going into the hospital and my wife needing to travel (I have kid/dog/house/dinner duty and deeply appreciate the job my wife does on a daily basis). Expedia was very helpful in assisting me with cancelling and refunding the money paid for airline tickets and hotel. The hotel required extra calls and Expedia handled it very professionally and quickly.

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For the last few weeks, I have had to focus on all of my knowledge and background within Digital Marketing. I have had to look at everything that has transpired in the last 10 years and how much Digital Marketing has changed during that time and this has led to a few random thoughts that have been regularly going through my mind.

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Avidian Technologies, recently launched Prophet 4.0 - an update to a great Contact Management and Sales CRM Software for Outlook. The new version adds a powerful search feature for finding virtually anything in you Outlook and harddrive, improved contact management features like adding time date stamp notes to contact regardless of whether you have a sales opportunity active or not and improved ease of use and performance. Avidian is Brand Digital’s first client and we continue to work with them on website content, paid search, email marketing, customer acquisition and marketing strategy. As part of the Prophet 4.0 launch we have re-vamped the website - check it out at www.avidian.com.

The Marketing Sherpa just released a report that highlights an issue that I have been focused on since the launch of Brand Digital almost 4 years ago (wow!). Small Businesses are getting squeezed out of the internet as a communication vehicle due to the fact that things are getting more complex not easier. The report is titled Special Report: State of the Search Marketing Agency Industry 2006 and focuses on search which is the primary driver for small business marketing dollars online. SEM agencies are requiring minimum monthly spend of $3,000 or more (in service fees) and of the 62 agencies interviewed - only 1 actually goes after the economy-value part of the market (small businesses). The focus is on mid-sized and larger firms that can support larger service fees.

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AOL Labs recently released the search results log of 650,000 members for research and educational purposes. The 30 million line database includes an anonymous ID, the search query, the click through URL, the date of the search (not the time unfortunately) and the item rank for the url they clicked on. It does not appear to include paid search items. You can search the entire DB at this link http://czern.homeip.net/aolsearch/ and dig in to look at individual user searches. I’ve been using it for keyword analysis (how many ways can you spell CRM?), search funnel analysis (type in your brand keyword, the click on a user id who typed that keyword in to see what other words in your category they have used and when) and general interest (there are a lot of depressed/sick people out there looking for answers to very specific questions). It is extremely interesting and the first time I’ve seen an exposed DB like this. Check it out.

Just back from the Emetrics Summit in Santa Barbara. Here is a quick run down of what I learned:
1) Santa Barabara is a beautiful and expensive place to be (my first time)
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Deliverability of e-mail is critical to having a healthy list and on-going campaign. This list will help you discect why your emails are getting bounced.

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