New Product Launch Program Announced by SupplyFrame Media

SupplyFrame Media announced a program to drive activity for new product introductions in the electronics industry. The new launch program aims to supplement customers existing sales channels and extend the scope of their product launches to SupplyFrame's global community of electronics designers.

Products launch program can reach over 2 million of qualified, global engineers a month that engage in several key activities including datasheet and whitepaper downloads, video views, evaluation kits and samples.

The standard duration of the launch program is 60-day and can be extended. Base launch programs include global coverage with 15,000 impressions per week. Enhanced programs include kick-off full or half-day roadblock ad campaigns that blitz the audience with up to ½ million impressions.

Read the full press release.

New: Geo-target Engineers in China with Ads from SupplyFrame Media

Did you know that SupplyFrame Media's largest audience is in China? 

Today we reach 300,000 unique engineers and buyers in China each month with over 2M page views.

Today we rolled out our new geo-targeting service that allows you to place specific advertising, in English or Chinese, in front of this audience.    The China geo-targeted option offers a single advertising system that can deliver ads to users located in China and those using Chinese-language browsers.

Read our press release about our new geo-targeted adverstising for China.

SupplyFrame Media's Global Audience Boosts Digi-Key’s Worldwide Expansion Plans

“Digi-Key is growing new customers around the world, and SupplyFrame Media helps us reach the online engineers in key markets,” said Tony Harris, VP of E-Commerce at Digi-Key Corporation.  

Today we announced our collaboration with electronic component distributor Digi-Key Corporation.  For Digi-Key, online presence is the primary avenue to maintain top position in the minds of engineers and purchasing professionals worldwide.  To fuel its online growth, Digi-Key is leveraging SupplyFrame Media’s ability to reach over 2M unique electronics professionals each month.

SupplyFrame Media can deliver ads in any language into any region and measure the results.  Leading the regions outside the U.S., China is now our largest international audience, followed by Russia, Germany, and Japan.

Read more about Digi-key and SupplyFrame Media.

The e-mail design challenges b-to-b marketers need to consider

E-mail design should be a concern for all marketers because e-mail is the one channel that can completely undo all the creative work you've done.

What does that mean? Well, you could have an amazing creative concept but, when directly applied to e-mail, it may not necessarily translate for a number of reasons.  Corporate email systems are predominantly Outlook and Lotus Notes.   Each of these and each of their versions can cause problems delivering you creative. Here are the three most important design factors for b-to-b marketers to consider, read the full article on the details:

1. Image suppression
2. Code rendering
3. Branding

Read the full post: What e-mail design challenges do b-to-b marketers need to consider? :: BtoB Magazine

Some advertising shines in dark time

According to the “Media Advertising Forecast” from MAGNA, nearly all media sectors will experience advertising spending declines in 2009.  Hardest hit will be traditional media such as newspapers, radio, magazines and TV, each falling by 14% or more.  Even the once-indomitable online ad space is faltering, with MAGNA expecting a 2.2% total spending decrease.

Some Advertising Shines in Dark Times - eMarketer

Suprise! The ads customers like probably don't match your beliefs.

We don't cover a lot of consumer marketing information but feel this article is valuable to all our advertisers.  Take a look:

According to a new LinkedIn Research Network/Harris Poll in June, 2009, of consumers and advertisers involved in the advertising decision making process, there are often disparate views of the effectiveness of advertising types. While over half of advertisers believe ads that make people stop and think (53%) and ads that give people new information (51%) are very effective, just three in ten consumers (30% and 29% respectively) feel the same, says the report.

Where do advertisers and consumers line up best?  Ads that are:

• Entertaining
• Funny
• Informative
• Make me stop and think
• Give me new information

So cheer things up, people are overwhelmed with sales pitches and Fear Uncertainty and Doubt ads.  

The article has considerable information and links to the original survey.  Read it here.

Want the original survey results?  Get it here.

Email Marketing Budgets Up, Ad Budgets Down

According to the June "2009 Marketing Trends Survey" by StrongMail Systems, even in the midst of the current recession, 42% of nearly 1,000 global business leaders polled plan to increase marketing budgets in 2009, and an additional 43% plan to maintain current levels.  According to the report, businesses currently project that 34% of customers will spend more in the second half of 2009, versus only 19% in the December survey, while an additional 31% project that customers will spend the same.

Planned investment in email marketing has also increased, with 81% of businesses planning to increase budgets targeting this channel, versus 73% in December 2008. Additionally, social media has emerged as a significant focus for increased investment, as reported by 58% of businesses.

Read the full post: MediaPost Publications Email Marketing Budgets Up, Ad Budgets Down 07/28/2009

More than 50% of marketers improved ROI through Email testing

According to the eROI newest study on the Use of Analytics in Email Marketing Campaigns, of the 37% of marketers who don't test their email campaigns, 33% say it's because they do not know how, 27% say they don't have time and 13% say their platform doesn't have testing capabilities. For those that are testing, 85.2% test subject lines, 54.8% test calls to action, 50.9% test designs, 49.1% test copy, 41.7% test offers, 36% test timing of campaigns.

With 73% of marketers planning to increase email as a priority in their future marketing plans, eROI set out to discover why more than a third of marketers are not testing their campaigns, and for those that are testing, what is being tested and its perceived relative importance.

Read the full post: MediaPost Publications Email Testing Layers Peeled Back 07/29/2009

Asia to be 43% of Online Population in 4 years. N. America only 13%. WSJ

Asia’s share of the world’s online population will swell to 43% in four years, while North America will represent just 13% of Internet users, according to a new report by Forrester Research.

The total world-wide population of active Internet users (defined as those who have been online at least once in the past month) will be about 2.17 billion in 2014, up from 1.46 billion last year, Forrester says.

Faster adoption in Asia will lead to a widening gap in the global distribution of users. The continent will represent 43% of the world’s online population by 2013, up from 38% in 2008. The U.S. and Canada, in contrast, will see slower growth, and their share of the world-wide populace will shrink to 13%, compared with 17% in 2008.

In addition, China’s online population is poised to surpass the U.S.’s this year (though a Chinese research organization believes it already has), says analyst Zia Daniell Wigder, the report’s author. “The U.S. is not going to be the center of the Internet universe.”

Online population doesn’t directly tie to e-commerce, she added, since spending is relatively low in Asia. But the audiences in countries such as China, India and Indonesia will represent a potentially lucrative market for some businesses because of their sheer size and rapid online growth.

Read full post:  The Gap Widens in Online Population - Digits - WSJ

Data Suggest Rebound In Online Ad Demand

Some encouraging signs are mounting that suggest the online advertising marketplace may be leading the U.S. ad economy out of its longest recession since the Great Depression. New data from a variety of sources indicate that demand for online advertising has turned the corner as is once again ascending despite the continuing uncertainty of the general economy.

PubMatic, shows that the price of the online advertising inventory it tracks has increased 35% since the beginning of this year, when it had reached its low point. The study, which is based on the month-to-month tracking of ad price data compiled from more than 6,000 publishers that utilize networks and ad exchanges affiliated with PubMatic, indicates that online display ad prices still more than 10% lower than they were in June 2008, the baseline month tracked in the report, but they have growing steadily each month during 2009, and jumped up 15% in the last month alone.

"Online ad pricing is turning the corner, possibly leaving the worst days behind us," the report concludes, predicting that, "ad pricing may continue to rise throughout the remainder of 2009."

Importantly, the PubMatic report also shows that advertising sold through "indirect channels" such as networks and exchanges has been growing at an even faster rate - up 47% since January - indicating that the rapid growth of the new sales channel is not, as many publishers fear, commoditizing the price of online display ads, but is finding a new market for their unsold advertising inventory.

Read the full post:  MediaPost Publications Data Suggest Rebound In Online Ad Demand: Display, Pre-Roll CPMs Rising Again 07/23/2009

List Rental Prices Begin to Stabilize

Prices for marketing list rentals have begun to stabilize across all major categories, though permission-based B2C and B2B email list prices show the largest decline vs. last year, according to the Summer 2009 List Price Index from Worldata.

The index, which serves as a barometer for pricing and trending of list rentals, shows that permission-based email B2C experienced the largest price decrease and percent drop from the previous year.  The second-largest price decrease occurred in permission-based email B2B lists.  Permission-based email B2B is the highest-priced category, with a Summer 2009 straight average price of $288/M, a decrease of $11/M from last year.

Read the full report: worldata-list-price-index-straight-percent-average-ppm-july-summer-2009.jpg

Twitter Turned into an Electronics Research Tool by SupplyFrame Media

Hooray!  We launched the new Datasheeter service for electronics pro's to retrieve specs on components via Twitter.  The service is for all you Twitter users that have a Twitter application sitting on your desktop begging to be turned into something more powerful.

SupplyFrame Media has turned around the use of Twitter from a micro-blogging system, to a query tool.  Datasheeter automatically returns technical specs on any query received via a Tweet. 

If you use a desktop Twitter application, the service provides a simple and fast mechanism to locate technical information as an alternative to hunting through thousands of links from Google in a browser.

This is a work in progress so please send us comments and feedback!

Follow Datasheeter on Twitter here: www.twitter.com/datasheeter

Ad Spending Plans are Trending Up with New Optimism in Marketers

Economic pessimism among marketers and agency media buyers appears to have bottomed out last spring and their ad spending plans are trending upward for most major media, according to the most recent data from an every-other-monthly tracking report surveying the "advertising confidence" of key media decision-makers. The latest Advertiser Optimism Report, being released this week by Advertiser Perceptions Inc., shows plans are improving for every medium except for local newspapers, and that digital media such as online and mobile advertising are indexing well on the optimistic side of advertising spending plans. 

Read the full post: MediaPost Publications Ad Spending Confidence Rebounds, Improves For Most Major Media 07/17/2009

8 Dimensions Of Excellent Landing Pages

Are your landing pages feeling tired? Is your conversion rate stagnant? Not quite sure what to try next? To re-energize your post-click marketing, it can help to step back and evaluate your approach from several different perspectives.

Here’s a quick exercise, the Landing Page Wonder Wheel—as in, “I wonder how to improve my landing pages?”—that can give you fresh inspiration.

Landing Page Wonder Wheel

The Landing Page Wonder Wheel consists of eight dimensions on which you rate your current landing page creative and management capabilities, on a scale of 1 to 10. A 1 means you’re not doing very well there, while a 10 means you may be the best in the world at it.

1. Message match. How tight is the continuity between your adverting and your landing pages?
2. Visual design. How good do your landing pages look?
3. Depth. How much substance do your landing pages have?
4. Freshness. How frequently do you revisit your existing landing pages to update them and inject new life?
5. Interactivity. Are your pages flat text and images, or do you provide interactive ways to capture a respondent’s attention?
6. Launch speed. How long does it take you, concept-to-completion, to launch a brand new landing page?
7. Non-conversion value. How well do you do with the respondents who don’t convert on your landing pages?
8. Boldness. Do your landing pages charge forward with bold, new ideas—or are they tepid and formulaic?

Read all the details here: 8 Dimensions Of Excellent Landing Pages

B2B Email Marketing Comes of Age

B2B marketers are catching up to their B2C colleagues and, in many cases, surpassing them with the breadth and depth of their email marketing programs. They're finding ways to deliver greater utility and value without risking channel burnout, as we've seen on the consumer side.

These examples show how some B2B companies use email to build better client and prospect relationships and generate greater ROI from their marketing efforts:

1. Upgrading the regular monthly newsletter.
2. Creating dedicated message streams for online resources, including Webinars, white papers and other lead-development tools.
3. Using email as the foundation of a lead-nurturing program.
4. Using email for client retention and penetration.
5. Integrating email with CRM and SFA systems.

Read all the details in the full post:  MediaPost Publications B2B Email Marketing Comes Of Age 07/16/2009

6 in 10 Marketers to Cannabilize Traditional Media Budgets to Fund Interactive Marketing

There’s bad news for those who sell traditional marketing channels: Six in ten marketers surveyed by Forrester Research Inc. will increase their interactive marketing budgets by shifting funds from traditional media.

And direct mail was cited by more marketers – 40% -- than any other channel as being one to cut, outranking newspapers (35%), magazines (28%) and television (12%).

There’s more growth looming for emerging media. According to Forrester, “Because of the recession…firms have been too resource-constrained to trial untested media. With the exception of creating social media assets – which 86% of marketers expect to do before the end of the year – adoption of emerging media is currently flat.”

Among the interactive channels, Forrester sees social media and mobile marketing spending expanding significantly between 2009 and 2014, with social media jumping by 34% on a compounded annual basis and mobile marketing increasing by 27%.

But these are young channels, at least as compared with relatively mature interactive mediums such as e-mail, display advertising and search. Social media’s increase reflects a starting point of $716 million in 2009 (seen as increasing to $3.11 billion by 2014). Mobile marketing expenditures stand at 319 million this year, and are seen as jumping to $1.27 billion by 2014.

In comparison, online display advertising, which currently stands at $7.83 billion, will rise by 17% annually, ending up at $16.9 billion in 2014. Search marketing, which currently sucks up $15.39 billion in spending, will jump by 15%, to $31.59 billion, and e-mail, now at $1.25 billion, will increase 11%, to 2.08 billion.

Read the full article:  Interactive Marketing Will Cannibalize Traditional Channels: Forrester

IC Industry Rebounds in Q2 to Double Digit Growth

According to IC Insights, "after the worst two quarters in the history of the IC industry," Q4 2008 and Q1 2009, Q2 sales rebounded more than 16% and "signaled that the healing process is under way." IC Insights noted that in the past 25 years, only the 18% quarterly IC market increases in Q2 1984 and Q2 2006, and the 17% surge in Q4 1999 topped Q2's results.

Read the whole article:  Q2 revenue grew 16% or more, researchers say - 7/13/2009 - Electronic News

Did You Appease the Google Gods Today? A Call for Regulation and Transparency in SEM and SEO.

Imagine, if you will, that the entire Internet is contained within a single continent. That continent is filled with countries, states and cities. Each jurisdiction is autonomous, relying on visitors to cross on to their turf to engage in commerce. Now, imagine if the only way to get into this continent involved just two methods: SEO and SEM. Let’s further imagine that the borders to this continent were controlled by a single company. Let’s also hold that the rules for search engine optimization listings and search engine marketing were not only defined but were completely controlled at the whim of this single company. Of course, we all realize that word-of-mouth marketing and viral marketing also contribute to traffic to individual websites. That said, the primary methodology for all users to reach any individual website destination is still search, of either paid or organic listings.

Or suppose the paradigm is the streets of Los Angeles. Let’s imagine that in order to enter the city you had to pass through a single gate. And once you entered that gate, the streets you were or were not allowed to go down — and thus the businesses you were or were not allowed to visit — could be randomly blocked from your access. Blocked to a point where you might not even know they exist; whatever streets were available for you to traverse were in essence the only streets you knew where business could be transacted.

Whatever the scenario, it’s unsettlingly close to the situation that prevails today in search. It’s now conventional wisdom that search engine optimization, representing the organic result sets on any search query, is more voodoo than science. Through an uncontrolled set of factors search engines determine which listings appear at the top and bottom of any individual query.

Read more:  The Time Has Come To Regulate Search Engine Marketing And SEO

A Spark of Social Presence Grows in the EE Community

Call it the engineering paradox: The same engineers who helped invent the Internet are trailing adopters of its technologies.

Whether it was in the mid-1990s when engineers were unable or forbidden to go online at work or today when their involvement in social media platforms seems muted, EEs don’t have the presence online that software engineers (their Internet co-inventors) and consumers do.

“In software, there’s a culture of social media acceptance because they made the tools, and they’re involved with them,” said Jeff Hardison, a director with Portland-based high-tech public relations and advertising firm

Read the full article: EEs, vendors search for their voice, and answers, in social media - 7/7/2009 - Electronic Business

Online marketing to hit $55B by 2014

The latest forecast from Forrester Research predicts that interactive marketing in the US will hit nearly $55 billion by 2014 and will grow - at a compound annual growth rate of 17% - from 12% of overall ad spend in 2009 to 21% over the next five years.

According to Forrester’s  Five-Year Interactive Marketing Forecast Report,  search marketing - which now composes more than half of 2009’s overall interactive spend, will continue to make up the biggest portion of interactive dollars, rising from $5.4 B in 2009 to $31.6B in 2014 at a compound annual growth rate of 15%.

Social media marketing and mobile marketing, however, will experience the highest growth rates among the digital tactics, the report stated. Social media, which represents only $716M today, is expected to balloon to $3.1B by 2014, and grow at the highest compound annual growth rate, 34%. Forrester  noted that owned social media assets (such as internal blogs, community sites) are currently the only emerging media getting traction in today’s economic climate.
Similarly, mobile marketing, which accounts for $391M in 2009, will grow to $1.3B in 2014 at a compound annual growth rate of 27%.

Read the full post: MarketingCharts