Retailers love the instant stimulus-ka-ching of e-mail marketing. You blast out an e-mail and cash flows in.That's why 54 percent of retailers say e-mail performs better or much better than other marketing programs. And that's why they'll send 158 billion marketing e-mails this year according to forecasts by Forrester Research reported in the current issue of Internet Retailer. But when 77 percent of customers complain they get too much e-mail, marketers have to ask themselves; "how much is too much?" Consider the case of Fashion Outlet, analyzed by Arthur Middleton Hughes, in the same issue. These guys fell so much in love with the blast-bucks cycle that they tripled their marketing e-mail frequency from 5 per month to 15 per month. Working with a list of 500,000 double opt-in customers they were generating gross revenues of $6.5 million which after deducting COGS, the cost of e-mail creative and blasting and the cost for churning names yielded $1.2 million in profit or a nice margin of 19.1% Looking to do even better, they figured some percentage of their list was always up for shopping so the discounter presented more opportunities to more customers assuming many would would shop. By cranking up the number and frequency of outbound campaigns, the revenue doubled to $14 million along with orders and the number of unique buyers. What wasn't obvious were the attendant costs, especially the costs of replacing about half of the opt-in list who bailed under the weight of every-other-day e-mails. In the end while the top line grew, profits fell 8 times down to 2.6% under the weight of the added cost factors. And this doesn't measure or monetize brand preference, which had to suffer if half the list defected! Fashion Outlet went to extremes. What if they increased frequency from 5 to 7 or 8? And what if they were smarter about segmenting the list and instituting a contact strategy limiting the frequency of outbound e-mail per customer per month? As it turns out 44.8 percent of e-mail markets don't segment their lists. Not even the basics like -- geography, responders versus non-responders, products bought or order value. These simple sorts can make an enormous impact in campaign reception, response and profitability. So can A/B testing which carves out a small number of names to measure the relative pulling power of different SUBJECT lines, copy or graphics before a campaign is transmitted to the list. Nervous retailers, especially those facing predictions of holiday doom, can probably increase their e-mail frequency slightly without alienating customers, provoking significant opt-outs or reducing profits. But the key to making additional campaigns more palatable to customers is pre-testing and basic segmentation.

I have a nagging feeling that the economic meltdown is surfacing vital truths about our economic and political system and the way we communicate with each other that will be insightful, revealing and ultimately useful to marketers. Though I'm not sure exactly how, when or in what context it will be so helpful. Maybe I'm a Pollyanna. Or maybe I just love to watch train wreaks. But I have a deep-seated hunch that there's something useful to learn by watching what's going on. And even if I'm wrong, this at least gives me something to do as I helplessly watch structures, institutions, and assumptions that I counted on crash and burn around me. Consider these thoughts as a first draft. 1. Silence Isn't Golden. Everybody is blabbing madly on all sides of every issue. Those who are thoughtful and those who are thoughtless equally access the media and blast way. The net result is a great deal of noise but zero insight or ideas. It's more important to posture and to be seen than to have anything to say. 2. Everybody Knows & Nobody Knows. Where you sit dictates where you stand. No one seems to have a seat above the fray or a macro view of things. Partisans of all stripes speculate wildly but most of the fundamentals, questions like -- who are the people whose confidence needs to be rebuilt and what do they genuinely need to feel safe? -- never get answered. Endless experts and specialists are trotted out and ignored; as if anyone knew which experts to believe and which experts got us into this mess in the first place. Ironically their is a robust debate about Sarah Palin's foreign policy expertise when the unarticulated demand seems to be for a leader with keen appreciation for what we need and a dollop of common sense to edit and put all the expert opinion into context and stake out a practical, workable solutions. What you know or claim to know seems more important than what you can do with what you know or what you learn. If you can pronounce "Ahmadinejad" but don't have a clue how to deal with Iran how impressed should I be? 3. Democracy is About Deals. Our system of government is a trial by ordeal. Claims, counterclaims, partisan interests and facts all get sorted out in a raucous process of horse-trading in which compromises deliver half-a-loaf or less to all participants. The bailout debate has pulled back the curtain on this often loud, messy and sometimes ugly process where success is an amalgam of self-interest,alliances, volume, threats and timing. If a deal will ultimately be struck, how does behavior leading up to it influence the outcome or does it? People aren't that dumb. In fact democracy is based on the idea that collectively we can figure most things out and that 535 heads are better than one; especially W's or a royal one. Most understand that in any given situation there are a couple of real options plus the evergreen and universally-applicable choices; do nothing and cash it all in. So why do we need all the drama and distraction? 4. Class/Caste is a Factor. We don't like to talk about it but Its always just below the surface. The Wall Street versus Main Street rhetoric lays bare considerable class antagonism that has always existed in the US. Getting the maximum relief for the maximum number of people has been the object of intense negotiations and equally intense political grand-standing. There is a history of the working class bailing out the upper class in our a long history of boom and bust cycles. And each bailout leaves its scars and its political residue.

You don't have to be a member of the Federal Reserve Board to know that marketers across all sectors are hunkering down and searching for the fastest and cheapest ways to acquire and retain customers as budgets evaporate. In the race for low cost/high yield tactics suspicion naturally falls on digital and online media with its well known but often unharvested ROI promise. According to Lee Odden's Online Marketing Blog, posted on September 16th, blogging, SEO, PPC social networking and e-mail are the top 5 tactics marketers will emphasize in the next 6 months. Though not all of these moves will yield quick or positive results if you're not already working on them. Here's a few things to consider before embracing these tactics. Blogging. Considered the human face of corporations and businesses, blogs without traffic and without a point of view don't matter. It's not enough just to craft customer-friendly messages in blog formats. You've got to get customers to click, read and believe. This demands content that's more textured than the party line sufficient to bring them back, buy something or talk up your brand. There is no hard research linking blogging with increased brand awareness, preference or advocacy. Though company blogs with large audiences should logically develop these things. Similarly there's not a lot of cases that show how blogs drive traffic to brand or ecommerce sites. If you aren't already blogging and building audiences now isn't the time to start if you want measurable results in the near term. SEO. Seven of ten searchers click on the natural results first. But if you're not on the first page you're toast. Getting to the first page requires huge investments of skill, tools and dedicated players. If you have them in-house or can outsource them efficiently, this is a good bet though improvement is incremental and sometimes glacial due to intense competition and almost constant gaming by both search engines and optimizers. PPC. Play per click search advertising is the fastest and easiest thing you can do. With even modest budgets you can incrementally improve traffic and results. If you're willing to monkey with it daily, you can have the illusion of control and can quickly and easily see your progress, parse your dollars and experiment with new or different key words and phrases. Even from a standing start PPC advertising can quickly have a positive ROI on your business. Social Networking. This is the most hyped and least understood marketing tool. Reaching out to large numbers of customers linked to each other in social forums using the images, language and customs they expect and like makes good sense. Some brands have amassed large numbers of "friends" others have distributed information and coupons, prompted interaction and feedback, run contests, collected data and even sold some merchandise. But so far no reliable messaging or media formulas have emerged. Now the sites, eager to monetize their memberships and prove their financiers right, are aggressively selling different flavors of behaviorally targeted advertising; which itself has no track record or widely accepted success stories. At relatively modest costs social networks are a great experimental tool and marketing test lab well worth your time and attention, though keep your expectations for a fast payoff low. E-Mail. In site of widespread hatred of SPAM and the near ubiquitous deployment of increasingly sophisticated spam filters, outbound opt-in e-mail is the most cost effective and reliable tool you can use. E-mail works. You can create and transmit campaigns that work fast and cheap. Real-time feedback on delivery, opens, clicks and action allow you to revise, re-target and re-engage customers quickly at modest costs. And frequency works much like direct mail with each sequential blast of the same message generally yielding 50% of the previous one. The key determinants of success are a clean opt-in list, a credible FROM line, a motivating SUBJ line with an actionable offer inside. Shorter copy with minimal graphics but clearly marked and highlighted calls to action work best. If you have only enough budget to do one thing. bet the farm on e-mail. Affiliate Marketing. This approach offers the prospect of everyone helping everyone else.Though in reality its about finding the right balance between greed and self-interest. The affiliate networks offer automated platforms and minimal advice. For most programs the 80/20 rule applies -- a minority of sites will yield the biggest payoffs. Affiliates are looking for opportunities to generate no-fuss incremental revenue with minimal effort and involvement. In some cases this...

Now is the time that multi-channel retailers rush to tweak their websites,to optimize holiday sales. From now till October 20th, e-tailers are making pinpoint investments in technology,messaging, functionality and applications desperately hoping that a dime spent now will pay off in a torrent of dollars after Cyber Monday 2008. Shopping for my nephew on PacSun and SkateAmerica gave me some good insights into the things online merchants need to address. In some cases these sites have built-in sales prevention mechanisms that need to be fixed quickly. Consider this Fix-it list: 1. Don't Bury the Goods. Both sites allow you to search by SKU number. That's the good news. The bad news is that probably as a result of their search engine tool choice the search returns a page that you cannot buy from. It's some geek's idea of confirming the search. But its a bad idea because it forces an added excruciating click to get to a page that you can actually buy from. Imagine my torment. I had SKU numbers. The kid tells me what he wants. The search works. But I can't buy in one-click! And in the case of SkateAmerica, I have to guess which store the stuff might be in and then hunt for the search by SKU box which is buried at the fold and appears in 8 point white type on black -- hard to find and easy to miss. Not everybody is so intrepid in making good shopping promises. 2. Serve Your Customers. Shopping online is much harder and much less intuitive than you think. Customers, even veteran shoppers, need much more reinforcement and help than most retailers plan for. Staff the site at least 18 hours a day. Anticipate all the glitches that a customer can encounter on the way to your site. For example, Paxon's form kept telling me that my e-mail address was already in use. They didn't accept or process my $314 order which I ultimately abandoned. But somehow they managed to capture 3 separate e-mail addresses I tried to use and sent me 3 welcome e-mails. PacSun offers live chat -- good news. But -- bad news -- only 7a-4p PT. Maybe they handle this in the backroom at some of their West Coast stores. I guess the dudes are out hanging ten the rest of the time. It was called out in tiny text type maybe to signal how lame these guys are. But in general if you go to the trouble of licensing and installing live chat you ought to call it out with a LARGE button and you oughta be there there when customers want to engage you. When you send customer service an e-mail they promise to get back to you in 2 business days! For this target audience you might as well advertise response in two millenia. The 800 number exists but is buried on internal pages. And guess what? The phone folks also only hit the air waves from 10a-7p ET.Kind of funny hours for a brand squarely aimed at the 15-25 crowd who are likely to be busy at school, work or texting from 7a-3p across all time zones. The 800 number, preferably one dedicated just to your website, should appear consistently on every page. 3. Reinforce Customers By Channel. I signed up for the e-mail newsletter to get a 15% new buyer discount. Instead I got an e-mail inducing me to shop with a prominent orange button but only offering me a discount at the store. Its a shame because they don't have stores on my coast. So in an instant they raise my expectations and dash them. The welcome message is deceptive and annoying. Either drive the copy by geography or reinforce customers in the channel you acquired them. While retailers fantasize about cross pollination, most buyers have a dominant buying channel. Its usually the first one they used to initially find you. 4. Cross-Sell. Both sites displayed standard cross sell items. Neither were memorable. Neither site dynamically understood what I was doing. Nobody noticed size, color or merchandise preferences. In my e-tail fantasy, the site does what my Mom used to do in her store -- recognizes what I'm buying and hooks me up. If I'm buying medium sized goods a site should dynamically point out and serve up discounts and deals on my size. Or the site should notice I'm loading up on black and red items and offer me either more of the same or matching...

The Wall Street meltdown upended the positioning and customer credibility of most financial institutions. Catastrophic loss and universal shock forces an almost complete re-positioning and messaging to consumers by the surviving banks, brokerages and insurance companies. Rethinking fundamental marketing concepts and messages come in the wake of widespread feelings of helplessness, fear and loss which are frequently followed by anger, resentment, finger-pointing, name-calling and blame. Every financial services advertiser who promised safety and security was found wanting. Those offering growth and insight were caught flat-footed. And those promising customized service were either overwhelmed or on radio silence. Nobody really knew what was happening, when or what to do about it and consumers were basically on their own; adrift in a turbulent sea.. Now with personal finances and macro-structures in disarray consumers are reeling over losses and struggling to salvage savings or portfolios. The task of rebuilding trust and growth will require much more than a snappy new tagline or a shiny new spokesperson. It will demand a basic change in how financial services firms address customers. Since 9/15 nobody believes that a banker, a broker or an insurance agent can protect them. And many consumers blame their trusted advisor's for getting them into trouble. Financial service marketers have to take these five steps to have even a shot at rebuilding credibility and reducing defections. 1. Face Facts. Admit that the cascade of actions overwhelmed you and apologize. Don't try to stonewall. Don't whine about your own losses. Don't try to appear to be fellow victims. Your customers see you as the bad guy worthy of blame regardless of the facts or your perspective. 9/15 was an emotional flashback to 9/11 with more, personal consequences for more of the population.You cannot swim against this perceptual tsunami. Think like a Japanese -- bow deeply and apologize. 2. Place Yourself in the Food Chain. Explain clearly to customers where you fit in the bigger picture and explain which stressors on the system (sub-prime debt, credit default swaps, low liquidity) affect your operations. As soon as the Feds figure out their plan, map your services and offerings to it. Present yourself in the new marketplace context. And it wouldn't hurt to offer free consultations or services, extended hours and financing planning resources aimed at retirees, parents paying for college, newlyweds, new homeowners and other segments with common anxieties and needs. 3. Don't Make Excuses. I'm sorry will work best. Nobody will buy the reasons why you didn't know what was going on or the reasons why you didn't proactively warn your customers or advise them to move earlier, faster or smarter. The damage is done. Focus on digging out. Credibility will rest on the degree to which you acknowledge it and the number and quality of ideas you have for helping people get back on their feet and back on track. 4. Show the Way Forward. Map your offerings and services toward the common goal -- rebuilding, growth and safety. Don't look back look ahead. Present your offers in terms that directly align with customer goals which are to recover as much as they can and protect whatever they've got left. Incentives, special offers and clear education and direction on what to do will be appreciated. 5. Be Part of the Solution. Offer direct pro-active advice. Do what your customers think you should have been doing all along. The biggest element driving the panic was the sense that individuals and even institutions could do nothing but watch the dominoes fall. As the pundits and the media struggle to offer solutions, proactively take a position. Offer clear advice on what to do based on distinct investment objectives. Don't hedge. Don't equivocate. Pick a few smart things to do and push them loud, clear and often.

My daughter and I are shopping for colleges. We just completed an illuminating west coast swing where we toured 7 schools in 4 days. And while this year will see the largest number of students chasing a fixed number of slots since the 70s, its fascinating to see how each school presents and positions itself. Some seem to have learned and internalized the lessons of personalization, engagement and customer-focus. They anticipate and manipulate the process for sifting and comparing data from equivalent institutions and the process for sorting out the conflicting rational, emotional and financial needs that arise between college-age children and baby boomer parents. Others strike a take-it or leave-it posture. And still others get half-way there. Here's what I observed and learned along the way. Put Your Best Face Forward. Tour guides are archetypes. The kids who lead the tours are the face of the college. As you walk around, you assume that these kids are the people your kid will interact with and befriend. They are a primal indicator of what the school and its student body are like. Their ability to handle questions and tell you "what its really like" play a huge role in how prospective students perceive the college and project themselves into a future experience. In some cases their choice of words and turns of phrase, posture, outfit, eye contact and energy level provoke immediate and visceral responses. There were several hat she loved and I hated and visa versa.Most are cute, energetic and eminently presentable, though what they know and what they say count too. Think carefully about who you put forward as your face and spokesperson. You are perceived as them. Rehearse and train them well. Teach them to understand their task through the eyes of their audience. Focus more on engaging the audience rather than spewing out the statistics about the biology labs or the art studios. Practice pacing, anticipate FAQs, understand how your prospects make decisions. Prioritize and Target Themes. Every school had a positioning and a shtick. One claimed to have the largest number of PhD candidates. Another had the biggest number of Fulbright Scholars. Another was the greenest place on earth. Yet not every school aligned the party line with the visiting party. In one surprising case, the emphasis on multi-dimensional environmentalism that included vegan offerings in the cafeterias,the low-volume flush toilets in the dorms and returning all the lawns to their natural desert habitat overwhelmed all the other more relevant selling points. Consumers remember one or two things about every product they encounter. This shorthand is stored and becomes the point of comparison with like products. Marketers need to start by deciding what take-away they want prospective customers to remember. Then they need to engineer how to frame and communicate that message. This requires a prioritization of messages and mapping messages to discrete constituent audiences. In the case of the green college, the green message probably plays very well to current students, alumni and prospective donors. But for us, prospective students looking for criteria to sort a school in or out of a consideration set, being green isn't a useful or relevant criterian. Differentiate. Every college invests in campus facilities, good faculty, innovative curriculum and student life. Most kids and parents are trying to figure out how one is different from the other and/or better suited to the personality and interests of the prospective student. Most schools have an identifiable student psycho-demographic and most know who they generally compete with. But few pro-actively draw the comparisons for you. When one guide explained that 2/3rds of the campus were introverted nerdy kids, it was a clear differentiating and persuasive statement. It would also be interesting to test different messages to prospects with different levels of interest. Imagine if the schools really laid it on for early decision prospects and soft-soaped saftey school prospects. Crafting a USP is the fundamental marketing task. Consideration and purchase is driven by differentiation. Draw the differences early, clearly and often. Customers want to understand what you have and what they will experience if they chose you. And they need to have a way to quickly and accurately remember you separately and distinctly from competitors who look and feel a lot like you. Influence the Influencers. The kids express preferences and the parents shape the final decision. Both sets are affected emotionally and rationally by a full range of stimuli and responses during the shopping process. Colleges have to play to both audiences...

iPost figures marketers need to get more bang from their e-mail campaigns. So they've formulated and bottled the classic, proven direct marketing tactic known as RFM (recency,frequency, monetary value) into an automated tool called AutoTarget that works withtheir platform and soon can be added-on to any ISP solution. Since 96% of marketers use e-mail as a marketing channel, according to Forrester, VP Marketing Craig Kerr thinks, " Marketers don't need any more data. Most mid-tier companies don't have the time or the people to process all the data they already have. They need fast, easy and intuitive tools to help them use the data they have to get better results and bigger ROI from the e-mail campaigns they're running." Its a simple premise aimed at kick-starting the use of metrics and analytics in a medium considered to be cheap, fast and somewhat effective. Take the most valuable DM concept -- the first, best cut at the data. Bake it into a tool that e-mail marketers can easily access. Upload purchase histories and e-mail lists. Spit out segments graphically. Get the most lift with the least effort. And while AutoTarget will not be a substitute for a CRM system, a BI package or a stand-in for insightful thinking about segments, offers or creative, it will take the purchase histories of names on an e-mail list and in 24 hours parse them into 125 cells based on recency of purchase, frequency of purchase and cash value of purchases. Ranked from 111 for one-time low value buyers to 555 for frequent high margin customers, the data is displayed in punchy bar graphs to help marketing and executive types to quickly see patterns in the business which will drive decisions about where to apply their finite time and money for maximum incremental effect. E-mail marketers get better results faster by abandoning the practice of blasting often and hoping for the best. Looking at the segments will give even novice marketers a quick feeling for which customers are most engaged and which can yield the most incremental sales. Knowing this can lead to decisions about who to address, what to offer and how often to contact them -- basically a metrics-driven mindset in a box. The data will also help marketers make the case for the business value of the e-mail channel, which is often undercut by its low cost and frequent use.

The choice of Sarah "Barracuda" Palin as the GOP "Trophy Vice" candidate has set off the most intense and creative political debate in my lifetime. John McCain's gambit short circuited Obama's post-convention momentum, shifted the terms of debate, refocused and energized our examination of the issues and brought huge numbers of people off the bench and into the rhetorical, if not political, fray. This move has six profound lessons for marketers. We Can Still be Surprised. America's new favorite hockey mom was a bolt from the great white North which caught us all unaware. But Sarah's ascendance immediately provoked strong reactions so much so that feminists were caught on both sides of every nuance. Its life affirming that somebody other than Apple can instantly capture the attention and imagination of our our post-modern, cynical, seen-it-all citizenry. There's always a market for something new and something different. Success depends on timing and packaging. Attack Existing Assumptions. Ms Palin's origins and pedigree crosscut all our notions about the national political elite. She's a small town girl out of the far west with a bachelor's degree from a former land grant college. No eastern or western coastal sophistication, no Ivy League politesse, no old-money, political dynasty or WASP lineage. Add to that a so-so dye job, the wrong eyewear and cheap shoes and you begin to understand why she provokes such a visceral reaction both pro and con. Maybe if she were the same girl from an Ohio political dynasty with a Harvard degree, we'd react differently. We have preconceived notions about things. New data is compared and processed against preconceptions, which are usually subconscious and unarticulated, and either squared up with them or rejected. In this context you can understand why we default to moose jokes. Account for the Decision-making Process. The choice of Sarah Palin might just be the greatest test of Malcolm Gladwell's blink theory in which he argues that snap decisions can be as good as and often better than more deliberate and rational choices. When fly-boy McCain revisited the maverick instincts of his youth in picking this unknown, he moved fast and relied on his gut more so than a team of vetting agents. Given the performance history of all the properly vetted bozos we've endured over the years, it will be interesting to see how things turn out. Consumers/Voters make snap decisions with equal speed and deliberation in a majority of the choices they face. If you don't anticipate and prepare for this dynamic you miss the chance to persuade them. Perceptions Can Be Manipulated. Have you noticed how effective highly charged words (liberal, right-winger, right-to-lifer) are in the political arena? Did you see how in one fell swoop a party of old pasty uncaring, indifferent , elite white fat cats was transformed into a young vibrant army of PTA-attending, child nurturing, tax reducing Sam's Club Republicans? Labels and slogans matter. They are the short-hand tools that drive public debate. In politics and at retail, its the label and the volume not the facts or the nuances that triumph. It ought not to be. But it is. Marketers must take heed. Reputation Management is a Fantasy. Nobody, not even the world's greatest PR guy or the propaganda department of the Chinese Communist Party, could be prepared for the onslaught that Sarah Palin has endured. Imagine an army of reporters investigating your life, scores of instant experts and pseudo-psychiatrists pontificating about who you are and what you stand for or represent or an army of bloggers writing snarky comments about every aspect of your life or dredging up kids you hated in high school for their 15 minutes of revenge. The rush to judgment --with or without the genuine facts -- is real. In a 24/7/365 always-on multi-channel media world you can never nail everything down or spin all that needs spun. So you have to work to create an overall impression. Ignore anyone who tells you they can manage the buzz. The Conversation Counts. The most valuable aspect of the Palin nomination is the fast-acting hyper-energy injection it gave to the global conversation about America's future and our presidency. The terabytes of commentary in words, pictures and music from the big corporate media superstars to the nobody solo bloggers is the essence of democracy and the dynamo that powers and shapes our evolving culture. In this crucible of babble and ideas the big issues of experience versus promise will be hashed out. In this maelstrom without manners...

If women buy most things, moms buy most of what women buy. The search to find, understand, serve and sell moms is a huge business which has spawned a virtual online cottage industry. Now one of the pioneers of the mom world, Lolita Carrico, a single mom and founder of ModernMom.com, is positioning her site as an early warning radar for trends and product ideas and as a flexible vehicle to reach, survey, measure, understand, interact with and persuade moms. Her 100,000 registered users can be accessed online and offline to test, review or approve products, collect front line consumer intelligence, measure attitudes and outlooks or directly connect with target customers in live events or local clubs. With 10,000 active super-users, marketers can dice and slice the database to build research or sampling panels of 500 highly targeted moms. Moms can be targeted by a broad range of psycho-demographic selects that include age of moms or age of children, family size, income, education, geography and even step-moms. The proprietary database is regulated by a contact strategy which limits the number of contacts per mom per year to avoid burn out and to circumvent built-in sampling error. Driven by requests from clients like Procter & Gamble, General Mills or AOL led Lolita to offer marketers practical insights into product satisfaction and to offer site visitors "Mom Tested" product reviews that get 5 times the page views of editor-written reviews. Marketers can create and select panels of moms, place full size samples in the hands of target customers and get direct feedback and/or generate online buzz. Using this service P&G has given products to target customers to test, distributed coupons, sparked online reviews at ModernMom.com and elsewhere and proactively identified practical product problems and even a few clunkers. For Mattel, the site organized "Playdate" events in 10 markets where mothers and daughters road tested a new Barbie and Barbie DVD in backyard parties. For Mr.Clean Magic Eraser, the site was an early proponent and recommender of the product which has become a standard tool among American moms. This access and research service is growing faster than advertising on the site and is contributing almost 50 percent of the site's gross revenue. The body of reviews will be collected under a "Mom Tested" tab on the homepage in September and over time could become the digital equivalent of the Good Housekeeping seal. In the near term, Lolita is planning a series of Modern Mom"Connect" reports to document attitudes and preferences among moms to monitor trends and "word of mom" and to offer moms and those looking to reach her insights and tips on coping with the world's toughest job. All this mom stuff indicates a bigger array of marketing opportunities presented by sites with registered user databases and activist leadership. ModernMom represents a nexus between online content and communities and real world behavior that offer fast, efficient ways to research, understand and engage customer segments.

The 16th annual DMA State of the Catalog Industry study documents a drop in online sales as a percent of total sales by catalogers and Internet retailers; the first such decline in a decade -- which comes as the industry reports essentially flat performance between 2006 and 2007. This 2% decline in sales attributed to online customers drove the provocative DM News Headline " Where Did Internet Sales Go?" and naturally prompts an immediate debate -- is it real or is it a false decline based on how they counted? Weighing in the side of bad counting is everyone's favorite metric wonk Kevin Hillstrom who says catalog guys under mail online buyers which explains the missing sales. DMA researcher Anna Chernis thinks that the study, the one she ran, might understate online sales brought in by search or social networking, both of which get decent spending from the catalog crowd. Others cite the need for viral tools, blogger outreach and still others think we've maxed out on online buyers. I think the decline is probably real and certainly the result of doing the same old stuff over and over again and expecting something different to happen. If you get as many catalogs and as many online e-mails as I do, you realize that things are tame and templated. Promotions are predictable and pedantic. All the old retail tricks from the weekly rotos have been recycled into digital formats with huge cost savings. There's nothing new, there's nothing different and there's no urgent reason to buy other than price or immediate need. But worse, catalogers and online retailers have not realized the genuine power of the digital media because they haven't invested in the tools to move the needle. Very few make offers based on triggers like price, merchandise or frequency. Hardly any seasonal or lifecycle communications reference my size or the category of merchandise I've previously purchased. Even fewer make offers or communicate on the basis of purchase history data. You'd think after I bought socks 10 times, someone would score me as a sock buyer and make me a special offer! And surprisingly few contact me based on an anniversary of a sign up date, my birthday or based on a product cycle. Surely somebody knows how long those cotton boxers ought to last after repeated washings! And these are just the basic plain vanilla marketing concepts. They are not the creative, inventive, viral, blog-friendly, video or social ideas that all kinds of players are peddling. So rather than gnash their teeth or argue about methodology, if online retailers expect to grow their business, especially in the current climate, they have to dig into the data, truly engage their customers and do something different. Its the most cost-efficient and customer-centric thing to do.