Up here in Canada, we’re hockey freaks.  Simply put.  Before going any further, I want to acknowledge that finally (and I mean finally!) I can bridge my passion for hockey with online marketing… sort of.  I’ve long wondered if I would ever get the chance to talk hockey in an e-Commerce blog and today, it’s now a reality.

Which leads me to a question: Do you know who Mark Gullet is?  No?  Alright, how about Mark Gullet from Tampa, Florida?  Still nothing?  That’s okay.  I didn’t know of him either, until 24 hours ago – thanks YouTube.

Regrettably, Mark is one of millions who’ve recently lost his job due to economic woes and organizational restructuring.  The only reason I even know his name is because he worked as VP of Marketing for the NHL’s Tampa Bay Lightning – yes, this is the hockey tie-in – and because it’s the latest viral YouTube phenomenon made by Ben Gullet, Mark’s son.

A viral job search missing the mark? You tell me.

Upon being laid off after more than 9 years of service for the Lightning hockey club, Ben created a video tribute highlighting his father’s professional strengths and experience with large cue cards and sappy music to help his father find employment.  Ben’s video hit YouTube on March 12th and two weeks later, the video has been seen more than 100,000 times and resulted in numerous job interviews (apparently).

This 14 year old wiz may have a future in internet marketing too (although I’m not convinced his father didn’t have a larger hand in this).  The video’s call to action is engaging and convicting: visit a micro-site featuring his dad’s resume.  I already feel for the guy, so OK, you got me.  I’ll click on the site.  Before you worry about being replaced by the up-and-coming-internet-genius, Ben Gullet, I’ve got good news for you: The plan isn’t flawless and stumbles in the same ways many websites and landing pages do.  If you agree with me, I’ll see to it that you keep your job.  Scouts honor.

MarkbyBen.com features the infamous video, filling the entire front page and then some.  Scrolling below the video reveals a tiny link to Mark’s resume.

But wasn’t the goal of the site to display the resume for anyone and everyone?  Why create any unnecessary barriers by hiding it below the video at the bottom of the page?  And normally, I wouldn’t make a nit-picky comment like “this site doesn’t even have any analytics” – but wouldn’t 100,000+ YouTube plays in two weeks merit it?  Finally, I’m surprised there’s no visible email address or way to connect with Mark.  Sure, you can leave a message through YouTube, but why make it difficult for potential recruiters, contacts and hiring managers to contact you?

The battle certainly doesn’t end once the visitor gets to your site – something I think we see too often in online marketing.  I fully believe that’s when the battle begins and in this case, where the viral job search falls short.  Driving traffic is great, but what happens when visitors arrive to your site?  MarkbyBen.com serves as a great example of time, effort and money invested, yet falls short of the most important aspect: creating a connection with the visitor and getting something out of their visit.  One of the keys to sucess on this site and any other: reduce any and all barriers that block the original goal of the website.  MarkbyBen.com should have Mark’s resume front and center, clear call-to-actions and a visible email address/LinkedIn profile link.  The site should have additional information about him that his resume and large cue-cards don’t speak to.  Much like any online marketer, Mark’s got one shot at a first impression and may be his only shot at converting the visitor.  Removing those barriers should be the first step towards a better site experience and ultimately, make Mark’s job search successful… or not missing the Mark.   But if Mark were a company, the next step should be web personalizaiton to better engage his vistiors.

When we met with some folks from Silverpop for lunch at the DMA08 show in Vegas last week, we were really excited to hear about their developments with email marketing going social.

It’s what Silverpop is calling “Share-to-Social” – and it’s email’s first integrated and measurable social networking solution of its kind.

When users choose to share a message with friends in their social network, Silverpop’s systems are able to report on how many of their friends opened and clicked on the links in the message. This also means that marketers can get the same kind of 360 degree view of social networks as they do with email today.

It’s very much an updated forward-to-a-friend type of viral marketing because now instead of keeping the messages exclusive to the email channel, people are able to share their messages via popular social channels like Facebook and MySpace. It’s a great way of bringing all the channels closer together. And since this is today’s reality, it’s brilliant.

Since Sitebrand partners with Silverpop, this is exciting news for us and all our customers. For our many customers, especially retailers looking to sell more, this will be a great way to extend their marketing reach into the very populated social channels. But now more than ever, this also means the pressure is on to create really enticing offers that subscribers and customers want to share across their social network! Do this well, and you’ll find unparalleled reach.

Looking for how to maximize your email’s social potential? Sitebrand has a team of email experts who would be thrilled to brainstorm with you!

It’s called Rue La La and it’s creating a shopping revolution that has to be one of the most brilliant online retail ideas I’ve seen in a while! It’s got designer brands, exclusivity, urgency, community and incentive…and that’s just the beginning. Here’s the gist of Rue La La…

First of all, you have to be a member. And to be a member, it’s invitation only via email so you have to be connected to someone hip and in the know. In my case, that would be fellow Sitebrander Dan Auns = thanks Dan! In your case, it’s now me, lol – I’m serious, if you’re interested I can send you an invite. It’s totally worth the discovery. Hmm, can you see the huge viral potential here too!?! Especially since when you send an invite to someone, Rue La La will give you a $10 shopping credit when any of your invitees make their first purchase. So bottom line – no membership, no access.

But once you’re a member (which is free), Rue La La is a destination that’s always changing. Any time you visit, you’ll have different and exciting offerings. No more of that same old, same old. And they love feedback because they want to be responsive to what members want most.

Now for the really cool part. Each private sale boutique is only open for 2-3 days!! Talk about creating a sense of urgency! When they say don’t delay, they mean it! And when you check out the featured boutique, there’s a days, hours and minute countdown ticking away. Now of course, they’re not foolish. In addition to seeing “Today’s Boutique”, you’re also teased with a mini list of the “Next Boutiques”. In this listing, you’ll see the upcoming days and hours of operation.

I love it because this concept is totally maximizing so many of the things you need to do to be successful online. On top of it all, the entire concept is awesomely framed around building that sense of community through social marketing.  With this post alone, I’m clearly feeding right into it!

Who are the brains behind Rue La La you ask? I wish it was me but it’s actually part of an exciting new division of Retail Convergence, Inc., featuring ”a portfolio of e-commerce companies leveraging a common technology platform, customer database, and management team to revolutionize online shopping”. In addition to owning the Rue La La brand, Retail Convervence also owns SmartBargains.com which just happens to be #100 on the IR500 list.

They are a self-proclaimed group of people who love shopping. They’ve built the connections required to negotiate private sale prices on some of the most sought after brands in fashion and home. And they have the exacting standards required to present only the best-edited collections. I should mention that Rue La La is not about trashy stuff that’s going to rip, tear and break. I’m talking about high-end designer brands that just happen to be selling at fabulous prices. Right now they are featuring Joseph Abboud. But only till 11 am EST. As of 11 am today and for only 2 days, they’re opening a boutique for vineyard vines.  Then 2 days later it’s PUMA, and so on…

So there you have it! If you want to get a taste of the ooh la la shopping experience at Rue La La, let me know and I’ll send you an invite. Just send an email to cgardner(at)sitebrand(dot)com 

Happy Shopping!

Our blog has been officially “twitterized” and we’re doing some social experienting along the way…

Starting now, every post title and link will be simultaneously pushed to Twitter-mania! To be a part of all the buzz - including random ”what’s Sitebrand doing?” updates - follow “Sitebrand” on Twitter.

QUICK POLL!

By the way, TIME Magazine says Twitter is on its way to becoming the next killer app. Is this more social marketing hype or do you agree? Take a 2 second quick poll and tell us where you fit in the Twitter mix…

The traditional website is becoming de-centralized, as most traditional websites are fragmenting into hundreds of micro-footprints through blogs, social networks, newsgroups and multiple wholly owned properties. 

At the same time, the market at large is calling for online marketing management software to become centralized (see Forrester), so that more cohesive campaigns can be built, and disparate datasets can be merged together for better visibility.

 To quote a great Ottawa personality: Isn’t it ironic.

 I think the answer to this ironic situation is in another quote (and source of online flame wars) – “Web analytics is hard”.

 While it is definitely a legitimate hot-button and market requirement, a centralized online marketing suite is not a silver bullet.  There is no doubt that it is impossible to make decisions about current successes and future plans if you have fifteen sets of reports from fifteen disparate tools. 

 We deal with this on a day to day basis at Sitebrand.  If a customer uses us to personalize messages to a visitor from a particular affiliate with the goal of growing conversions, they now have three reports from three vendors, none of which connect, and all of which have different numbers.  Yikes.

 Given the aggressive adoption (and evangelization) of 2.0 technologies and marketing methods however, no online marketing suite will ever be able to solve problems out of the box.

 In five years from now, it might be effective to push a viral video out through RSS specifically to mobile browsers, with the hope that they click through the video to a Facebook widget created to have friends push coupons to your products to each other, which can be used online or in store.

 And I can promise you, even in five years there won’t be enough Red Bulls and developers in the world to build transparent reporting around that initiative.

 All that is going to happen is that the leading thinkers in the space are going to say “Online Marketing Suites are hard”.  And they will be right.

 Build a plan, work the plan, show the plan worked.  We are still struggling with it as we come to the end of Commerce 1.0, and we will keep struggling with it until we standardize on ‘what should be done’.

 Perhaps this is a job  for the WAA standards committee.  They are doing a great job in standardizing the common terms in analytics so that the industry stays on the same page.

An interesting next step for them might include a practical document standardizing what a team of web practitioners should be doing for procedures, tools usage, documentation etc.  Better yet, including a scoring system so that readers could self-evaluate. Think Gartner maturity model, but for eCommerce. 

 The moral of the story is that there is no piece of software, in present or future,  that will help execute on a plan when no plan has been built.  I think if more web teams knew where they ranked based on holistic best practices, they could take some of the ‘hard’ out of web 1.0, and be prepared to reap more value than hype from the next generation of technologies and practices.

 Cheers,

 Jim