e-commerce – Maroon Interactive

June 7, 2011

Spirit Airlines Jumps on Hard to Resist ‘Weiner’ Keyword – Should You?

High performance keyword?

They say, ‘any publicity is good publicity’, but embattled U.S. Congressman Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) may not be in agreement with that statement these days. The Congressman’s ‘x-rated’ sexting has made him both a laughing stock and a trending topic. But while his colleagues were busy rebuking him, Spirit Airlines’ marketing team were busy launching their “Want To See Our Weiner?” e-mail marketing campaign – all puns intended.

Thousands of Spirit Airlines customers got an email today with the subject line “Want To See Our Weiner?”, announcing their “BIG Weiner Sale” with “Fares Too HARD to Resist” (yes, emphasis on ‘big’ and ‘hard’ included). No word yet on open rate, unsubscribe or click rates but this bold move is bound to have businesses wondering if it is ever a good idea to capitalize on trending topics from negative press.

If you are not sure jumping on a negative trending keyword is for you, here are three steps you can take to get in the limelight.

Start your own trending keywords – promote your events, sales and overall business with keywords that are powerful enough to anchor your campaign. Seasonal keywords are great examples – “summer”, “Memorial Day”, “pool party” are just a few.
Associate your brand with positive trending keywords. “International Women’s Day”, “Yoga”, or “love” could do the trick.
Find your customers funny bone – How? Ask them. You can get a sense of whether your customers might find something funny or irritating by asking them about their favorite TV shows, songs and pastime. You might be surprised by what you learn.

One thing’s for sure – if Spirit Airlines’ “Want To See Our Weiner?” e-mail campaign is a success, we’ll be seeing a lot more bad puns in future interactive marketing taglines.

March 9, 2011

Google Search Algorithm Updates-What’s New

If you’ve got a Website or any type of Web presence, search engine rankings should be important to you. Last week Google made some dramatic changes to their search algorithm which is changing the way search results are generated – and affecting companies that invest heavily in staying on top of rankings. According to the company –

Our goal is simple: to give people the most relevant answers to their queries as quickly as possible. This requires constant tuning of our algorithms, as new content—both good and bad—comes online all the time.
–Google

Here’s what’s in and what’s out with Google Search algorithm changes:

1. Websites with “better quality content” will move to the top of search rankings.
There is much contention about what constitutes “better quality content” or a “high-quality” Website. Google is describing this as original content and information such as research, in-depth reports and thoughtful analysis.

2. Users will get the “most relevant” answers to queries.
The most noticeable updates here are location-based results, and the increasing inclusion of “Real Time” results picked up from social media Websites such as Twitter and YouTube. Also, if you have the type of name that typically deliver porn sites when Googled, those types of results will now be pushed back to 2nd or 3rd page of results – bad news for those type of Websites, good news for you (if you are not in that type of business).

3. “Low quality sites” will be suppressed in search results.
This has caused uproar in the Web development and business community because Google used information from “Personal Blocklist “, a tool that works with their Chrome browser. This tool allowed Chrome users to rank and block sites they found sub-par or sites that promoted content they didn’t agree with. Although Google say they don’t rely totally on the results from Personal Blocklist, it’s still a factor in rankings.

4. Hacked Websites and domains responsible for spam are being eliminated from results.
‘SPAM’ in this instance means repeated “spammy words “, automated content, and Web sites with too many comments that originated from content authors. ‘Content farm’ Websites are taking the biggest hit with this update. According to CNN “..sites like Mahalo.com, Wisegeek.com, Ezinearticles.com… [are] among the biggest losers in the algorithm tweak. Google-generated traffic to each dropped more than 75%…” The bad news is that Google has not clarified why a hacked Website should be punished or how the site can get off the blacklist.

5. Copy-cat Websites will move to the bottom of the search results pile.
If you steal, borrow, take, liberate or copy content from other Websites – stop. Hire a copy writer and start over if you care about your Website’s place in search results. New changes to Google’s search algorithm are not kind to Websites mirror the content of other sites. See #1.

So what does this all mean? Content, my friends, is about to become king again!

December 9, 2010

Non-profit fundraising – from email to donation form

Care2 hosted a great Webinar today: The Procrastinator’s Guide to 2010 Year End Fundraising. We’ve remixed four great take-aways for organizations using email to get visitors to give through online donation forms:

1. Get to the point
So, you’ve sent your appeal with a nice “click to donate” button. When your readers click that button they should be taken to the donation form – not to another ‘please donate’ pitch. Your email already made the pitch and the donor is ready to give; inserting another pitch before donation form can be distracting and could lower your conversion rate.

2. Keep your donor focused
Suppress your global navigation if you can. This will help your visitor to focus on why they came to your Website: to make a donation. Continue reading “Non-profit fundraising – from email to donation form”

December 2, 2010

Location-Based Mobile Ads – Advertising’s Next Cash Cow

If you haven’t considered a mobile based advertising campaign for your business, perhaps these numbers will get you started. The latest BIA/Kelsey U.S. Mobile Ad Revenue Forecast (2009-2014) is predicting that mobile ad revenues will grow from $491 million in 2009 to a whopping $2.9 billion in 2014 – that’s right!

So what are businesses spending this money on? Here are some products that were included in the forecast that your business should Continue reading “Location-Based Mobile Ads – Advertising’s Next Cash Cow”

November 30, 2010

Event Ticket Sales Made Easier with Mobile App

Social commerce company Eventbrite recently rolled out a key improvement to their iPhone application “Easy Entry” that should put the company leagues ahead of the competition – event organizers using their service to sell tickets can now scan and verify ticket sales using the Eventbrite mobile phone application Easy Entry 2.0. According to Eventbrite, the bar-code scanning feature is “a game-changing feature that makes ‘Easy Entry’ even easier.”

Event organizers that prefer not to use the iPhone (or Droid) application can check in their attendants using a laptop. An improved “Day of Event” toolset makes it easy for organizers to provide a seamless check-in experience for their event. Continue reading “Event Ticket Sales Made Easier with Mobile App”

July 9, 2010

Facebook closing Gift Shop – but not for entrepreneurs

Facebook has announced that they will close their Gift Shop on August 1st. But their exit will not end party for others. The company made it clear in their announcement that third party gift applications such as Birthday Cards and Hallmark Social Calendar etc. will continue to work, and gifts received through their own application will continue to be visible on user profiles. Continue reading “Facebook closing Gift Shop – but not for entrepreneurs”