Aaron Khalow started the event off with key points like 63% of website visitors who don’t find what they are looking for will never come back.  It makes a strong case for optimizing your site.   He stressed that your website is your foundation but it won’t matter unless you have the tools to encourage people to find it.  The three pillars were search – with SEO having the largest impact, email – the fabric that holds it all together, and analytics – customization is key. 

Ray “Catfish” Comstock, from Business Online, went deeper into some of these subjects. He illustrated a search cycle that went from ranking to repeat customer.

Ranking – [SEO] → Traffic – [Landing Page Optimization] → Conversions – [Marketing and Sales ]→ Sale – [Customer Service] → Repeat Customer

Why is ranking so important?  90% of traffic happens on the first page of search engines which means you have to be in the top 10 results to have a chance.  Like Khalow pointed out, analytics play a huge factor in how you get to the repeat customer.  Finding out what keywords are relevant is extremely valuable, personalization and location are both key components.

Other strategies Catfish brought up were optimizing video, news and the use of internal linking.  These techniques are effective because there is a lot less competition than with traditional searches.

• Aaron doing a great job getting audience out of their shells at #oms

• Tip to event organizers – learn from aaron – institute the “boo” rule. It liberates the crowd.

• Aaron opening – marketing in a recession. Fear will cripple your decision-making

• management is all about cya, no future vision to give marketing any resources at all.

• Overall mktg budget wacked, but bigger piece of the pie going online #oms

• 100 percent of people prefer to communicate online

• Pillar 1 is search. Pillar 2 is email marketing. Pillar 3 is analytics. Across all pillars is social media

• @aaronkahlow – guessing on aaron’s handle – what % people here at #oms will tweet immediately vs email a couple days later from your biz card

• Email is like yesterday’s fax. Even facebook uses email to pull you back into the online community

• Need to customize web analytics reports to align with business goals #oms

I highly recommend you attend another OMS – there’s also a good chance you will see eROI folks like Dylan Boyd, Alex Williams, or me speak at some of the upcoming cities – Chicago, Austin, Denver, Minneapolis, San Fran, Portland, Seattle – there are others as well – check it out here >>.  I will try to dig up where my presentation from this event is posted – stay tuned.

• @joelbook – speaking now at #oms. 33 years as direct marketing – called out @djwaldow in a friendly way

• Email has become the ultimate social medium

• 34 different marketing channels. We have created an ADD world, now we have to live with it

• The sales cycle has become 22% longer because resources tight

• Retention is the new acquisition #oms

• “The medium is the message” is like hearing at a wedding “love is patient, love is kind” – predictably used at every conf

• Newest dma study shows $45 roi for email marketing which is highest of all channels

• This aft, Need to make my pres interactive. Ask real questions and get user gen answers from audience

• Home depot is using dynamic couponing based on past buying behavior

• J+m uses brwsing history thru omniture to infer your preferences. Very cool #oms

• Question from #oms about where to put images for email campaigns, we have used amazon s3 or bitgravity in cloud.

• Question at #oms about affordable platforms – google analytics great first step before omniture

• Old-school phrase – OH: here’s a dandy way to do that

• @joelbook – nice pres. You know your stuff.

• @djwaldow starts his #oms presentation with his twitter police mug shot

• Recession proof email marketing – adage did article on same topic

• Relevancy is key. Batch and blast. Spray and pray.

• Forrester said in 2008 that email marketers – only 15% – concerned about recession

• Send timely, targeted, relevant emails to subscribers who ask for them

• Perfect email is like the perfect meal. Timely. Relevant. Engaging.

• @djwaldow – good example of sierra trading post email – but do they consciously make their email design less polished compared to rei

• @djwaldow shares @returnpath email campaign example of doing all elements of email right – subject, call to action, reminders