Marketing Pilgrim

Social media is great for the fast hit, but email is still the option of choice when it comes to delivering a customized marketing message.

A new study by Harte-Hanks shows that overall delivery rates are at 95% for 2010, slightly up from 2009 and unsubscribes are down to .19%.

When it comes to the all important open and click, it varies by industry. Overall, open rates dropped to 17% from 26%, but Harte-Hanks says this might not be an accurate depiction of the facts. They say that many emails only report as “open” once the images have been downloaded, but many people will skip the images, rather than deal with the potential for a virus or simply because it’s an unnecessary step.

When asked what types of metrics they use to measure success, the majority of marketers responded with the good old clickthrough. Now, I’m all for “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” but we’re starting to see that, especially with social media, counting clicks isn’t the best way to gauge success.

So what is? eMarketer has seven answers in their new book, “Digital Impact: The Two Secrets to Online Marketing Success.” Written by eMarketer CEO and co-founder Geoff Ramsey and Vipin Mayar, EVP of McCann Worldgroup, the book states that there are seven types of metrics, that if mastered, will give you a clear picture of how you’re doing.

Let’s take a closer look at a couple of them.

Qualified Reach, or Qualified Visits

Looks like the world will never be the same.

Google’s +1 has gone global. Here are some of the partners that are helping Google do this.

Now my question to you is: Do you care?

I have been the managing editor of Marketing Pilgrim for the past six months and I have learned a lot.

First, it’s a lot easier just writing for a popular blog. You can create a post and send it in and not have to worry about too much (unless, of course, the editor finds the post to be, well, lacking or if he just finds that it sucks out loud).

As the managing editor, though, I also have business responsibility of Marketing Pilgrim but, honestly, that’s fun. I get to talk to some pretty cool folks who are into the Internet marketing world in a big way. They are excited so I get excited with them. It’s fun, it’s informative and it’s never dull. If you want to talk to me about being a business partner of MP please start the conversation here. I would love to create a solution that works for us both.

I sense that something has truly shifted at Google during the Page-ian Era. It’s not some kind of 180-degree about-face but rather something more subtle but yet very real.

The latest evidence of this change is a ‘product’ called “What Do You Love?” The address is www.wdyl.com. When you get there you are greeted with the classic Google simplicity.

Now, type in whatever it is you are interested in get something a little surprising. MG Siegler of TechCrunch described it as follows:

The new service, which Google apparently did launch this morning, is called What do you love? (hence, wdyl.com). While it seems to be more of a cute gimmick at this time, the idea is to return users a single page of relevant results across many of Google’s products for whatever query is typed into the wdyl search box. The “search” button is even a heart. Cute.

Spending is up! Spending is down! It’s just another week in the world of marketing and this time AdAge has both stories running in the same day.

First we have stats from Advertiser Perceptions which show that advertisers are planning on spending more money in the coming 12 months. You would think that an increase in spend, signals confidence in the economy but apparently one thing has little to do with the other.

Advertiser Perceptions CEO Ken Pearl says,

“The biggest surprise was that in the face of what appears to be a weakening economy, optimism is not just maintaining but increasing among advertisers.”

Or maybe advertisers have become delirious from the stress of falling profits and are going on the spending equivalent of a drinking binge. Think I’m off the mark? Check out this chart.