ETD: 787 Does advertising work?; Fine-Tuning Spam Filtering;
Is RFID Ready for Rollout? Wal-Mart Says Yes
E-Tailer's Digest
etd_post at gapent.com
Thu May 20 11:16:43 GMT 2004
E-Tailer's Digest --- Everything for the Retailer
Issue #0787 May 20, 2004
George Matyjewicz, Moderator mailto:georgem at gapent.com
Published by: GAP Enterprises, Ltd. http://www.etailersdigest.com
==================================================================
CONTENTS
[1] Greetings
[2] Does advertising work?
[3] Fine-Tuning Spam Filtering
[4] Is RFID Ready for Rollout? Wal-Mart Says Yes
==================================================================
[1] Greetings.
==================================================================
Hi All:
Interesting thoughts today on my query about what advertising works. What
works for you? What do you think works, but you haven't tried?
Spam seems to now represent 50% of all e-mail (over 90% in my case), up
from 10% a couple of years ago. It's hurting discussion lists like
E-Tailer's Digest and business and personal correspondence. I don't know
how much business we lost. What do you think will happen in the
future? Will it destroy e-commerce? Will controls be in place?
RFID is in the news more and more. Wal-Mart says they are on target. What
do you think? Will it be the wave of the future, or is it too far ahead of
it's time?
Tell us about your business which will remain for posterity at
our "Members: Who Are You?" site. We just updated all those postings that
we were delinquent with the
updates. http://etailersdigest.com/resources/members/index.htm And we have
a form there for you to tell us about you. As I said when I first proposed
this idea, we have "known" each other for a long time, yet we often don't
know anything about each other. So, tell us who you are and what you do.
Now, let's get to everything for the retailer.
Sincerely
George Matyjewicz, PhD
Chief Global Strategist, GAP Enterprises, Ltd.
mailto:georgem at gapent.com
http://www.etailersdigest.com
==================================================================
[2] Does advertising work?
==================================================================
I've had mixed feelings about advertising throughout my career, and as I
mature and competition heightens it seems apparent just how important the
'right advertising & marketing plan' really is. I attended a good seminar
on this subject at the last Esthetics Conference in Vegas. The following
points make some sense:
1. In a 4 year period most businesses lose an average of 70-80% of their
Client Base
2. Do it right, with a Parallel Style to your image
3. Start with a smaller budget, & saturate to repeat mailings at least
4-6 times
4. Have a plan (a Marketing Plan)
5. Decipher your Target Market
6. Choose one item or service or "Buzz" to Focus your Advertising
7. Communicate to Clients often
8. Spend about 5-13% of your Revenue on this line item (Marketing)
9. Set a Goal & a method, make it measurable
10. Direct Mail has the return: It's about the Relationship
In this struggling Economy I felt the previous points were really the best
& most helpful.
Let me know what you think.
Daphne Engelken
Daphne Spa Business Development
PO Box 4324
Carmel, CA 93921
daphnedee at prodigy.net
831-583-9111
+++ [Moderator's Comments] +++
Great tips Daphne. Right on target.
+++ [Next] +++
I posted this query to Market-L, the best marketing list on the
planet. Members pointed out that I left off a couple of marketing
strategies to consider:
1. Telemarketing, in particular in a B2B environment.
2. Promotional products
3. High Probability Selling (prospecting).
If you haven't read Jacques Werth's book on High Probability Selling, you
must. It is one of four in my permanent library. Here's a comment from
Jacques:
Please Note: What we call "telephone prospecting" is NOT what most people
refer to as "cold calling."
While telephone prospecting isn't the only type of marketing that we
utilize or recommend to our clients, it's a major source of our corporate
accounts. It's also what we teach to the vast majority of our sales
training students.
The reasons are simple:
o Compared to other forms of marketing, the start up costs are minimal and
the cost per sale is usually very affordable.
o Compared to other forms of marketing, the ROI is usually quite acceptable.
o Compared to other forms of marketing, the learning curve is very short.
o Compared to other forms of marketing, testing is fast and
inexpensive. The results can be measured almost immediately, and
corrective action can be made quickly.
o Compared to other forms of marketing, less additional marketing support
is required.
One downside of telephone prospecting is that it's labor intensive and
requires a disciplined approach with consistent activity.
Another downside that it requires knowledgeable marketing supervision, with
frequent analyses of the metrics and subsequent tweaking of several variables.
------------------------------
Jacques Werth
High Probability Selling
For Free Newsletter:
http://www.highprobsell.com
==================================================================
[3] Fine-Tuning Spam Filtering
==================================================================
The spam crackdown is causing headaches for companies, such as newsletter
publishers, that ship large volumes of legitimate e-mail. Because of the
crackdown on spam, these companies are seeing spikes in the number of
undelivered messages. Consequently, users increasingly are missing
important communications, and often they don't even realize it until they
talk with the senders.
Because the volume of spam has increased from about 10 percent of all
e-mail in 2001 to more than 50 percent today, corporations and ISPs have
been trying to find ways to keep the junk mail from overwhelming users'
inboxes. Filtering products, which rely on several techniques to separate
needed messages from unwanted solicitations, have helped cut down on the
bulk-mail deluge.
However, these filtering products have a dark side: They can inadvertently
block wanted messages, often without the user ever being aware of the
block. This is a significant problem, one vendors are working diligently to
fix, but such a remedy seems more of a long-term than a short-term
probability.
Everyone agrees spam has evolved from a minor annoyance into a significant
drain on corporate resources. "Curbing spam is the top priority for many
corporate IT staffs," said Michael Osterman, president of Osterman
Research, a market research firm focused on spam. "Users not only complain
about it, but they also spend a lot of time sifting through a growing
number of spam messages."
In response, companies such as Brightmail, Cloudmark, MailFrontier,
Postini, Trend Micro (Nasdaq: TMIC) and Tumbleweed Communications (Nasdaq:
TMWD) have developed products to deal with the problem. Two techniques
have been widely used to block unwanted messages.
As Clear as Black and White
The first technique, called either whitelisting or blacklisting, examines
the origin of e-mail messages. After monitoring incoming e-mail, companies
develop two lists (a whitelist and a blacklist) and two different routing
actions based on the lists. A whitelist is a collection of senders whose
correspondences should always pass through the corporate network without
being checked. Blacklists are the opposite: Everything sent is considered
spam and is therefore blocked.
The problem with this technique is that companies never really know who is
generating a message. "Spoofing (the process of putting another person's or
organization's e-mail address in the header) is a major issue, and more
than one out of every three spam messages does not come from the address
listed," said Richi Jennings, leader of the antispam practice at Ferris
Research, a market research firm.
Content filtering has been the other main technique used to block spam, and
Bayesian filters are the most popular technique within this category. Such
products examine transmissions and then assign statistical probabilities
concerning the likelihood that a particular message is spam. The
probabilities are based on message content. For instance, a message with
the word Viagra will result in a higher rating than one without it.
As a piece of e-mail passes through a filter, each message is assigned a
ranking, such as from 1 to 99. The higher the number, the more likely a
message is spam. A network operator then selects possible actions based on
the ratings. If a message scores a ranking of 97 or higher, for example, it
could be blocked. At thresholds of 85 to 96, a note saying "this may be
spam" could be added to the subject line as the message is relayed to the
end user.
The spam crackdown is causing headaches for companies, such as newsletter
publishers, that ship large volumes of legitimate e-mail. Because of the
crackdown on spam, these companies are seeing spikes in the number of
undelivered messages. Consequently, users increasingly are missing
important communications, and often they don't even realize it until they
talk with the senders. More and more employees are becoming frustrated
because they expect e-mail delivery to be guaranteed, and they are putting
pressure on IT departments that have few technical alternatives at this stage.
Creating Customer Dissatisfaction
The end result of this give and take in the e-mail world is that few
companies are completely satisfied with today's filtering capabilities, and
many are pressuring vendors to improve them. Osterman Research found that
just 25 percent of users in a survey were "very satisfied" with their spam
filter's ability not to generate false positives, and 16 percent expressed
a degree of dissatisfaction.
In response, vendors are searching for better authentication techniques,
and researchers are working on the problem from several different angles.
One technique, championed by companies such as Microsoft (Nasdaq:
MSFT) and Yahoo (Nasdaq: YHOO) , involves use of "domain keys," which use
public-key encryption technology to verify e-mail senders. If this
approach were implemented, ISPs could enable authenticated e-mail messages
to reach end users.
Details at
http://www.ecommercetimes.com/story/33843.html
==================================================================
[4] Is RFID Ready for Rollout? Wal-Mart Says Yes
==================================================================
During his opening remarks on Tuesday, keynote speaker Mike Duke, Executive
Vice President and CEO of Wal-Mart Stores Division USA, told the crowd,
"RFID won't just transform; it'll revolutionize." One revolutionary aspect
made itself abundantly clear during the morning's presentations: as RFID
continues to gain momentum, the relationship between retailers and
suppliers will continue to morph from buyers and sellers to equal and
integrated partners, creating truly collaborative commerce.
"Implementation is inevitable," he said, "so you need to plan, and you need
to start now, because you don't want to be the last one on board." He
recommended companies join Wal-Mart in getting involved with EPC Global,
and that retailers and suppliers work together at every step of planning
and implementation.
Duke shared Wal-Mart's RFID roadmap to an extent, declaring that contrary
to some reports, the company is exactly on track with its plans and is not
slowing or reducing deployment. RFID at the case/pallet level, he said,
will go live with the top 137 suppliers in January 2005, followed by a full
US rollout in 2006 covering all stores and suppliers, and international
implementation initiating in 2005-06.
Article from Retail Info Systems News
(http://www.imakenews.com/edgellris/e_article000261721.cfm?x=a2RFwC1,a1CY7bKF)
==================================================================
Links to follow
==================================================================
GAP Enterprises, Ltd. http://www.gapent.com/
Sarbanes-Oxley 2002 http://www.sarbanes-oxley2002.com
E-Tailer's Digest http://www.etailersdigest.com
ETD Archives: http://topica.com/lists/etailer/read
Prior to 29 Dec
1999 http://etailersdigest.com/archives/index.htm
Marketing Your Web http://www.gapent.com/myweb/
Automated Press Releases http://www.automatedpr.com
More information about the ETD
mailing list