Christmas is a great opportunity to boost your email marketing results. Here are our top tips for making the most of it: 1.Timing is everything: If you’re in a business to business sector, this may be a slow period for you - use your emails to give you a seasonal boost, or to help you line up extra business for 2008. Bear in mind that during the build up to Christmas, workers take more half days off, therefore send your email in the morning. But be considerate about the quantity of mailings d... Read Full Story

With the IPv4 internet addresses running out and the move to IPv6 over the next few years, will this have an effect on our own personal information and freedom?While the move to IPv6 will allow IP starved countries have more addresses, and will support an increase in net security as well as allowing for greater interface interaction, it could also open a Dystopia which would have Orwell salivating at the typewriter. Forget the furore about ID cards…what if every kid born was given h... Read Full Story

In times of less cash, it’s all about about sustaining revenue.  With customers being more discerning with their disposable income, you need to work a lot harder to keep existing clients spending or from shopping around at the competition. Email is a great channel for making sure that you are communicating as effectively as possible with your existing customer base. There’s no harm in having a review of your basics to make sure that you are keeping your customer’s attention and are their no b... Read Full Story

Gaming ads are to make a reappearance on Google adwords. No doubt the rush of revenue this will bring as gaming brands, affiliates, gambling aggregators and consultants all rush to get a pieceof the traffic will provide a financial comforter when marketing budgets get cut. It’s hoped that the more scientific approach to analysis of traffic sources and user behaviour will in some way curb the rush for gold in them thar Google hills… but there’s always going to be the chumps w... Read Full Story

Tom Tom subsidiary Tele Atlas have signed a deal with Google to provide them with updated mapping in 200 countries over the next 5 years. Mapping is increasingly becoming mainstream for Mashups - the overlaying and linking of different streams of information. To the extent that many people think that mashups are only about maps. That Google maps will continue to be kept up-to-date is great news for digital marketing as the manipulation of the Google maps api has ever more commercial applicati... Read Full Story

Search behaviour - increasing impatience of search engine users 49% of search users change their keywordphrase before checking out the second page. Does this mean that searchers are growing increasingly impatient with the results served by search engines. Absolutely, there’s no doubt that in the “think-it-get-it” environment of the web, users expect to have the right information at their fingertips. Additionally if you appear after page 3 in the SERPs for a phrase, you can e... Read Full Story

How are searchers choosing to search? Blended search, also known as Universal search, has shaken up the search industry over the last year. This is the serving of different types of content in a search engine returned page (SERP). Vertical search is the ability for searchers to look in content-type channels in a search engine e.g. news or images. According to a study by Jupiter Research, searchers are still a little shy of vertical search, but when different content types are presented in t... Read Full Story

MSN and Yahoo! are back in talks.  You’ll remember that MSN approached Yahoo! with a $40 billion evaluation which was later sweetened by $7.5 billion. On refusal Carl ICahn started getting vocal with his 4% of Yahoo! and a threat to depose 10 of Yahoo’s directors. Google are in the sidelines watching as the number 2 and 3 in the market (leaving Yandex out of European figures for the moment) disuss becoming a possible number 2 with a third of search market share. something not to b... Read Full Story

How do you get to be a futurist? Is there an application process or do you just keep ontop of trends and extrapolate forward like some kind of commercial sci fi writer. The Society for New Communications Research has some futurists on their board and they’ve come up with some interesting research on how Web2.0 is affecting consumer behaviour: 59.1% of respondents use social media to “vent” about a customer care experience 72.2% of respondents research companies’ customer care online pr... Read Full Story

Matt Cutts has come out and said it.  Search engine optimisation is not spam. The white hat stuff that is. I’m tempted to download his presentation at the web2.0 conference, “What Google knows about spam” onto my iPod to play to those caught somewhere in 2000 who think that all online marketing is spam. Nice presentation which covers some of the basics of protecting a site from web spam - worth a look. Read Full Story