The Bee Hive

I want to reduce my gas consumption and my carbon footprint. But little by little, I’m getting talked out of my bike commuting plans. Several people in the past few weeks have expressed concern over the lack of shoulder in several places on the road I’d be riding along with the speed of traffic on the road, particularly relative to a (slow) cyclist.

I’m gradually coming to the conclusion that, dammit, they’re probably right.

So now I’m left wondering what I want to do about my commute. Besides commuting by bike, I’ve decided to catalog the options I’m weighing, and see if anyone has any other suggestions:

My first article in Circulation Management’s “Monday Morning Expert” column is now up on their web site:

Can’t believe anyone believes a word I say with a promo picture like that.

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I got email this morning from an editor at Circulation Management asking for clarification on some of the points from the presentation at the Circulation Management show in Chicago a few weeks ago, and since I was writing up some thoughts for her, I thought I’d put them here, too. Enjoy!

Behavioral Targeting: Six Easy Ways to Get Started

1. Read your reports for meaningful segments

   Chances are, you’re already collecting data that, when analyzed and applied, could optimize customers’ experience as well as your revenues. Most analytics platforms can tell you about new vs. returning visitors, and can usually further break the latter group down into first-time buyers vs. repeat customers. Chances are also pretty good that each of these groups is behaving somewhat to very differently on your site, and if you don’t figure out what works best for each, you’re leaving money on the table.

   

2. Traditional direct response tactics still work

   Behavioral targeting and marketing approaches are heavily borrowed from the domain of direct response. Meaningful segments, appealing offers, and consistent remarketing are all part of a well-rounded practice.

3. Focus on your easy-to-segment audiences

   Sometimes you can spot a useful segment, but actually breaking it out for targeting purposes may be trickier than you expect. (Geotargeting falls into this category for many sites). Unless you’re a black belt behavioral marketer and there’s nowhere else to turn for optimization, you probably have lower-hanging opportunities to pursue. Think in terms of both providing the biggest returns and taking on the least daunting setup to find the hidden treasure on your site.

4. Start wide and optimize campaigns

   It’s likely that you can realize substantial gains in your success metrics by thinking at a high level about audience characteristics, and then monitoring more granular groupings for meaningful patterns. Most of the groupings you follow in any given campaign won’t perform in a way that bears statistically significant differences to your control group, but the ones that stand out can always be segments in a future campaign.

5. Match message with media and audience

   The beauty of online marketing is the wealth of data and control you can exercise over context. The content you display on your site and in your ad networks can be adjusted based on any number of factors. Look for opportunities to tighten your message and your call to action based on context.

6. Test, test, test

   The key lesson in all of this is: it depends. It depends on your audience, it depends on your site, it depends on the time of day, the time of week, the time of year, and so on. The only way you’ll know what works for any given audience for any given situation is to test it. And test it, and test it again. Invest in a testing platform and process that provides you with the flexibility and the visibility to act quickly and learn quickly, and it will pay for itself many times over.

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Seen this?

It’s Yahoo’s SearchMonkey program. Hmm. “Searchmonkey.” That’s kind of cute… and very familiar! Where have I heard that before?

Oh yeah! Here:

I’m not bitter, though. They can have it. What with Yahoo’s current difficulties, it’ll probably do them about as much good as it did me.

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This afternoon as my coworker Duane and I were meeting downtown with the ad agency working on our new logo, a storm started kicking up outside. It was just beginning to rain as we got up to leave, and the wind was fierce. I, of course, was wearing a billowy skirt that hit just above the knee. That is, when the wind isn’t gusting — in the wind, it hits just above the shoulder.

Yes, my friends, I walked out of the agency’s office pulling a double-Marilyn — trying to keep my skirt from flying up both in front and in back — and failing miserably. The assistant creative director was gallantly walking me and Duane to my car, trying to cover me with his umbrella and remain chivalrous and composed while I nearly laughed myself into hysterics trying to keep my skirt below my thighs.

I’ve been laughing about it all the rest of the afternoon. But as soon as I got home, I changed into safe, reliable pajama pants.

Oy.

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You know all those articles I’ve been linking about Maghound? Well, in case it wasn’t obvious, it’s an initiative I’m keeping my eye on. Time Inc. is launching this online magazine service in late Q3, and oh by the way, Time Inc. happens to be an investor in an online magazine service called Magazines.com, too, so… I guess that’s a little weird, right?

Anyway, last week at this conference I was speaking at, I got chatting with Dave Ventresca, president of Maghound. We’d met once before and were having a nice enough conversation, and then… someone approached us with a camera.

Quick: what’s the best thing to do when someone wants to take what they think will be a caption-worthy photo?

Why, make it MORE caption-worthy, of course.

Your caption suggestions welcome here.

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I got an email response from Amazon customer service:

Thank you for writing to us at Amazon.com.

I’m sorry for the trouble you had with your shopping cart.

I’ve reported the problem, and our technical team is working on taking care of it right now.

Often these errors are corrected after only a short time, so please try again after two or three days.

I understand that this might be causing you lot of inconvenience. Please understand that we are doing our best to resolve this problem, but technical glitches cannot be predicted and at times it is unmanageable.

Thanks for your patience while we fix this problem and thank you for shopping at Amazon.com.

[…]

Best regards,

Muzeeb
Amazon.com Customer Service

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I’ve seen some cool wordles, but it wasn’t until a friend posted one she created using a recent research paper that I got inspired to create one of my own. This wordle uses my “manifesto,” which was a 37-page, 6,889-word document outlining a proposed strategy for how we at Magazines.com interact with our customers to optimize lifetime value.

No surprise that “email” and “customers” are the prominent words for a visualization of a document describing, essentially, how best to communicate with our customers.

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I don’t know about anyone else, but I’ve been using that “save for later” feature in my Amazon cart for years, and I frequently go back days or weeks later and purchase items I’ve set aside. One of the best reasons to do it that way is that Amazon provides messaging in the cart when an item’s price changes, whether it increases or decreases. So it’s a great way to check in on what items are on sale and go ahead and pick them up. But today when I logged in, my cart appeared to be empty.

I sent Amazon customer service an email about it, but I’m curious: does anyone else out there use that feature, and if so, is your cart empty too?

What gives? That’s a pretty jarring experience for me as a ridiculously loyal Amazon customer. If they’ve done away with it for whatever reason, I’m going to have to rethink my loyalty to their site.

Edit: See my update.

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Yes, they screwed up by announcing they would take away the Profiles feature. But then, when it became clear that customers were upset with the announcement — and by upset, I mean ready to cancel their accounts — Netflix retracted their decision, and sent one of the best apology emails I’ve seen.

We Are Keeping Netflix Profiles

Dear Kate,

You spoke, and we listened. We are keeping Profiles. Thank you for all the calls and emails telling us how important Profiles are.

We are sorry for any inconvenience we may have caused. We hope the next time you hear from us we will delight, and not disappoint, you.

-Your friends at Netflix

Short and sweet, and to the point. “You spoke, and we listened.” That’s the essence of managing customer experience, even when it happens a little after it could have. Well done, Netflix.

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I had stress dreams all night about work. Not just work, but, um, well, strategic issues that influence the future of the company.

Maybe I already need another vacation?

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• Can A New Netflix-Like Service Save Magazine Industry? - Media Money with Julia Boorstin - CNBC.com

  “I can imagine using it– I like not being locked into any commitments and it could be fun to try out magazines that are hard to find in ordinary airport newsstands. […] While working on home construction I’d sign up for all interior design magazines.”

  (tags: maghound magazines)

• Kevin Allman: Desperate times in the newspaper & magazine industries

  “The whole point of magazine subscriptions is the set-it-and-forget-it model, which is why they always try to entice readers with steeply discounted 2- and 3-year plans.”

  (tags: maghound magazines)

• Your choice of magazines « Lou Heldman on the News Media

  “Some major challenges would seem to be: Rising paper and postal costs. The magazine industry’s traditionally slow execution starting new subscriptions. More and more magazine content being accessed on the Web.”

  (tags: maghound magazines)

• Finally! Mix-and-match magazine subscriptions : Carolyn Erickson

  “I’ve been waiting for this. While I hate to pay the newstand price for magazines, I often do. Why do I pay $4.95 for a single issue when I could subscribe for about $15 per year?”

  (tags: maghound magazines)

• Maghound Sniffing for Long Tail | Media Industry Blog | BNET

  “But, unless I’m missing something, we have a small problem here, and it has to do with the length of the magazine-lover’s best-friend’s tail. The company says it has 280 magazines signed up so far, and hopes to have 300 by launch.”

  (tags: maghound magazines)

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My colleague pointed me to a letter a friend of his wrote to American Airlines, “breaking up” with them.

Dear American Airlines,

I don’t think we should see each other any more.

I know that’s hard to hear. But you’re not the same airline I met a few years ago. You’ve changed. And not for the better. Sure, you say you love me… that you’ll take care of me… that I am “Elite” in your eyes… but those words just seem empty now. I need you to show me that your love is genuine.

There’s more. Lots more. And it’s brilliant. Check it out.

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I’m in Chicago to speak at a pretty big conference, and my co-presenter is a guy I’ve never met, and our topic is one I know a thing or two about but have never spoken on before. We still haven’t finished writing the content of the presentation. Our session is three days away, and he doesn’t get into town until late the afternoon before.

And yet I’m strangely relaxed today. I’m either completely delusional, or I know what I’m doing enough to feel like we’re going to pull this off anyway.

Or maybe a little of both.

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Please don’t cry

Originally uploaded by Kate O’
My coworker Andy told me a sad story about a coyote killing a cat, and then left me a little chin-up note to counteract it. This place is nutty.

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My work day today consisted of almost 6 hours of driving, an hour and a half of meetings, and two hours of watching a minor league baseball game. (Our team won.)

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Tell your friends! Tell your enemies! Tell your cat! But be warned: this position reports to me, and it is well known that I am a hard-bitten meany-head.

Customer Experience Specialist

We know you’re out there: an excellent problem-solver, equal parts tech-savvy and marketing-minded, great attitude, maybe just a little too smart for your own good… and frustrated because there aren’t a whole lot of e-commerce jobs around Nashville. We understand – you haven’t had a lot of professional web experience. Sure you’ve built your own web site and you set up your own Wordpress blog, complete with every cool plugin you could find, and you know your way around Photoshop enough to have done your own graphics. You know a little something about usability, and you find yourself analyzing web sites and know how they could improve. But what employer would consider that relevant experience?

We feel your pain. And we have just the job for you.

(more…)

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Web-forward people, particularly iPhone users, what’s the next thing after Quicken? Mint? Wesabe? Quicken online? I’ve tried all of these, and I have some complaints about each. Quicken no longer affords me the convenience it used to before I had an iPhone, when I used Pocket Quicken on my Treo to record expenses as I transacted them and could sync them up back at my laptop whenever. Now I have a stack of receipts piling up and no motivation to do anything with them, but I miss the granular visibility I used to have into my finances when that system was working well for me.

So what now?

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My staff is the best

Originally uploaded by Kate O’

Edited to add: Oops. Must have misformatted my email to flickr-blog this photo, because I had notes with it and they didn’t make it. Oh well. What I was saying was that this was on my monitor when I came back to my desk after a particularly difficult day.

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We’ve just launched a promotion on Magazines.com that spotlights titles printed on recycled or sustainably harvested paper. Earth Day wasn’t originally on our seasonal marketing calendar (silly oversight) so we pulled this together on very short notice, and I’m proud of us for making the effort.

http://www.magazines.com/ncom/mag/main/earth_day

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After reading Mike and Jon’s laments about being “off the grid,” I did a little ego-surfing on Google Maps street view, and, hey whaddya know, we’re on it. They must have driven by before our transom and sidelights went in on our doorway, so it looks a little unfinished, but we’re there!

So, um, yeah. That was really important to determine. And now back to work.

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CNN Money, that is.

Omniture put out a press release about some of the success Magazines.com has had using their Test & Target (formerly Offermatica) tool, and it got picked up on CNN Money’s Marketwire.

And look!

“When specifying our testing and optimization goals, we wanted to deliver more personalized content to different types of people who visit our site. We just needed an easy way to do it,” said Kate O’Neill, director of customer experience at Magazines.com. “With Omniture we have one platform used by marketers for both testing and targeted content.”

And:

“Everything you think you know and every intuition you have as an online marketer can immediately be tested so you can determine if your marketing is working or not,” said O’Neill. “Omniture Test&Target has brought reliability to our marketing campaigns.”

Woot!

Update:

Also picked up in techrockies:
Omniture Signs Magazines.com

AND in the Huffington Post, complete with a really cheeky video “explaining” what Omniture does.:
Omniture Works Its Mojo For Magazine.com (Luckily, Magazine.com redirects to Magazines.com. Whew!)

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I’m not one to take glee in others’ misfortunes - schadenfreude just ain’t my style. But there’s something about this email mishap from Amazon in my inbox this morning that just made me giggle, and it’s not the likelihood that someone in Seattle has just lost a job. Maybe it’s the idea that even in a company as big as Amazon, where the job functions are no doubt as specialized as insects in the rainforest, where filling in a few lines of text in an email is probably the bulk of what someone is paid to do on a daily basis, that this kind of thing can still happen. It amazes me.

(In the words of long-lost Brittney, click the image below to embiggen.)

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Yes, each of these probably merits a post of its own, and my blog has been sorely neglected of late. But since I’m powering through my to do list, I’m giving them each a bullet point, and I may choose to come back to one or more of them later.

• I’ve been working very, very hard. If you visit Magazines.com over the next few months, you may see some cool changes start to take place.
• I’ve been traveling a lot. Since the beginning of February, I’ve been in San Francisco, New York, Cincinnati, Salt Lake City, Chicago, and Boston. And not in Nashville very much, clearly.
• My 17-year-old cousin (well, first cousin once removed) has lymphoma. But she’s got a great attitude and a lot of fight in her. I’m thinking a lot about my cousin and her family.
• My coworker’s 10-year-old nephew just died from cancer after 9 months in the hospital. And then, at the funeral, the same coworker’s mother-in-law collapsed, had a heart attack, and died. I’m thinking a lot about that family.
• Karsten and I are about to go on our first cruise. It’s a vegetarian cruise.
• This weekend is the fifth anniversary of the crazy little experiment Karsten and I performed that we like to call “getting married.”
• I finally convinced Karsten to join Facebook. We’re now married on Facebook! I feel so hip.

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It’s not in my particular group, so you won’t even have to report to me! But my colleague is hiring a writer, and I know there are a lot of writers amongst my friends. So here’s the description:

Are you a marketer who enjoys writing? Magazines.com, the leading online provider of magazine subscriptions, is looking for a creative writer and search engine content creator to join our team.

Your responsibilities will include:

• Writing: articles for search engine marketing

• Text, images, and HTML handling for email marketing

• Proof reading and copy editing

The successful applicant will be imaginative, flexible, self-motivated, work well on deadline, pay attention to detail, and be passionate about e-commerce and pop culture. To apply, please send your resume and writing samples to Michael Utley at meutley@magazines.com.

Responsibilities: Produce and distribute 20 articles per month with links back to Magazines.com. Post social site links and content back to Magazines.com. Assist with email production and more.

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