5 Things to Look for in Your Bitly Stats

Mid-year I created a Twitter account (@SerenaHsiOS, ~700 followers) to push out elearning links since it didn't seem like the right venue to push them out my food-themed Twitter account (@nwfood). There are two stats from the Bitly dashboard that I find most curious. The first is the country domain referrer and the second is how users find my tweet--and only 15% them find it through Twitter.

Like most people, I just use Bitly as a link shortener. I know it has link stats and that once you create a bitlink, it can never be deleted (maybe archived these days). And with a mobile device and social sharing permissions, I can use Bitly to push out links to either Twitter account through Bitly with no extra logins required. I can even format the layout of the tweet.

This to me is very strange, considering that I only broadcast business and elearning story links through non-food Twitter account. Let's tackle country referrer first. Here is the last 30-ish days from my Bitly dashboard:

2015-12 Last 30 Days - Bitlinks on @SerenaHsiOS - Country Domain

What in the world?? Why is engagement so high from Germany if my primary follower audience is US-based? I have no answer for this just yet.

The next dashboard shows me how a user got to my feed:

2015-12 Last 30 Days - Bitlinks on @SerenaHsiOS - Refer Type

Even more puzzling is the grouping for the first bucket. What makes me concerned about the validity of this data is that when I look at the list for my top tweets, according to the Bitly dashboard, no tweet has received more than 5 likes. And, on top of that.. how do you suppose impressions are calculated? I would have expected the top two stats to be reversed. How are my tweets being picked up if not through Twitter itself?

2015-12 Twitter Dashboard @SerenaHsiOS

Between Bitly and Twitter, my social analytics dashboards make no sense -- because my followers/following is so small (fewer than 1k each).

Year-end Post

I feel I should write something insightful, but alas, nothing really comes to mind.

Happy Holidays and Happy New Year!

(...and watch out for fire monkeys slinging poo...)

Banner Blindness

Banner blindness was first coined by Benway and Lane of Rice University in a 1998 study on website usability. The study looked at external ad banners and internal navigational ad banners; and found that users skipped over the ads when scrolling through a page and that the traditional method of making large, flashy ads did little to impact interaction by a web user. I should also note that there were only six participants in this study and it was done 17 years ago. If marketers are aware of such an impact, why are so few ads being seen by humans? You'd think that we would have engineered a way for ads to seem more relevant than the web content on a page.

I responded to a Twitter survey earlier today and one of the questions asked if I had seen a tweet or ad about Batman v. Superman, and I hadn't, even though I use Twitter on multiple devices. In fact, I really do have a hard time remembering advertising on Twitter, if it even happens at all.

And, it's not just me.

In a 2013 study about banner blindness, nearly 85% of consumers reported not remembering the last banner ad they saw; and those that did, a mere 2.8% thought they saw something relevant to them.

If I speculate about how the desktop-to-mobile experience is evolving, I'd say that banner blindness will significantly affect how Facebook's news feed works with consumers just skimming over content. Brands and advertisers don't just have to contend with the quirks of Facebook promoted content now they also have to worry about not reaching their intended targets.

Lowes.com Default Store Local Ad

The other top competitor in the Home Improvement space is Lowes. I thought I'd take a peek at their site nav as well between what the site thinks is my local store (based on browser history) and what happens when I try to look at the local ads.

Lowes.com - Default Store Location Based on Browser

As it turns out, there are no local ads for the default local store-based-on-browser history and an interstitial message briefly shows up saying there are no ads for the default local store before redirecting to the default local store ad, in Lowes' case, is a store in North Carolina.

Lowes.com - Weekly Ads of the Browser-Based Location

As you can see in this example, Lowes doesn't have their act together either. If you really wanted to rollout a national ad campaign, you should have a national ad and then add-on with whatever the region dictates, in terms of plants appropriate to the region's season and climate zones.

Home Depot: A bad UX update

Well, that could have gone better. It seems as though HomeDepot.com has rolled out of a site navigation redesign and somewhere along the way, zip codes and local stores has gotten all f'd up. Maybe their license for the 3rd party vendor that handles it expired or something. Not only do my bookmarked local store pages go somewhere other than the local store page, but when I try to find my local store in southwest Washington.

If I am searching for a store in Vancouver, WA, don't you suppose that the first listing should be a store in Vancouver, WA; instead, Home Depot's store listing service shows you the closest store to the map location of "Vancouver, WA", in this example, is Jantzen Beach, OREGON.

WTF. I can't even set a local store. It keeps defaulting back to Beaverton, OR. 

Here's what I'm doing:

Go to: HomeDepot.com
Click onto: Store Finder or Change Store
Input: local zip code or city/state

You'd think that UX would be this simple.

What the nav system spits out for results, isn't even correct! Ok. I think I picked my store. It even shows up in green. The link for In-Store Layout is just a PDF of the store's layout. This link mapping is fine and it brings up the right store and store label.

Home Depot store finder - My Store will appear in Green when selected.
You think that session cookies would be in place, but sadly, they are not.

However, after selecting a location as "My Store", click onto the link for "Local Ad". 

Here's what I get:

Local Ad Link Error: The page that loads AFTER choosing a store
from the Store Finder, and selecting LOCAL AD

How do you f--- up with Atlanta's Cumberland store showing up? A bad UX update. That's how.

And then, when I use the top page nav, guess what? The page forgets about my store, and navigates me to.. wait for it.. Beaverton, OR. This is probably because my browser thinks I am in Portland. But, I just told the website that my local store is E Vancouver.

HomeDepot.com Home page AFTER selecting my local store

But wait, there's more! It looks to me like these are two entirely different applications and they are not talking to each other all that well: Store Finder and Local Ads. I can tell these are separate apps when I look at their mapping directions. My store is still green lit, but the map still wants to navigate to Beaverton.

Ad-hoc Flyers

This is probably one of the silliest things I have ever done while on the road at a tradeshow. I created a flyer based off a Pardot landing page. Then had it printed overnight and ready for pickup at a convention center's FedEx Office. It's a tad expensive to print flyers like this, but in a pinch it will do.

Landing Page as a Booth Flyer?

Event-Tracking.com

Still looking under the hood, but at referral traffic.

The usual suspects are there: feedly, social sharing, etc.

Except, this one:

Event-Tracking.com - which looks like this, if you're afraid to click [JPG].

612 visits of the 865 MTD (70% of total blog traffic) or so are attributed to this referral page.

It suggests that something is terribly amiss with the conversion from classic GA to universal GA, or with my inept implementation of the universal GA javascript on my various blog properties.

/sigh

Google Organic Keywords

This blog has had unusually higher traffic than normal (>800 pageviews this month), so I thought I'd peek under the hood to see what was up with that.

And, I found this:

[img] Google Analytics Reporting - organic keyword search

Someone please explain how that could possibly be a search string that ends up at my blog.

Nag or Nurture

I recently was subjected to a very aggressive call from a sales rep of a marketing automation solutions provider who denied knowledge any communications that their marketing team sent out; and during the call it was suggested that I should unsubscribe from their marketing materials if I wasn't interested. Clearly not a thought leader in marketing automation, just another tool in the shed.

IKEA Newsletter

Today I signed up for IKEA's customer newsletter...as an 120-year old person. Seriously! That's the earliest birth year (1895)  that was offered on their sign-up page. It's hard to imagine a 120-year old putting together anything from IKEA. It was the lengthiest, multi-page sign-up I have seen from a consumer catalog company.

IKEA newsletter sign-up, birth year start

IKEA newsletter sign-up, birth year end

It could be that when the e-newsletter sign-up page was first produced, back at the dawn of the commercial internet, 1895 was a possible year for a date of birth. But then, there is also a top range part of the birth year and for IKEA, it's 1997 (or you'd be turning 18 in 2015). It begs the question.. why not just have birth month and birth day like most consumer companies? Why would you target a specific demographic like 18-120 yrs old. 

I'll have to see if I can change my birth month from December to something earlier in the year like July to see if they have a birth year-specific marketing campaign. It would be really surprising to get a "happy 121st birthday!" note from IKEA as a result of this albeit flawed email newsletter sign-up form.

Thinking Out Loud

As I am thinking about where leads should nest, either initially in an email marketing platform or loaded directly into a company's CRM, I wonder about the best possible customer interaction for what we want recipients of our marketing messaging to do or respond in a favorable fashion.

In a situation where all leads are being entered into CRM regardless of the source, from a 3rd party list (bad idea), a hosted webinar, a tradeshow, or due to a non-transactional web conversion, often times the communication strategy is mixed for who is really a prospect (no expressed interest in your products or services) and who really is a lead (more than just contact information, but also a potential sales opportunity).

In either case, prospect or lead, neither party is really ready to buy from you after a few touches or website impressions. And, calling to qualify leads and prospects into a warmer lead may not be the best approach.

As a marketer, I'd say, sure.. let's load everything into our email marketing platform. If and when a prospect converts in a favorable way, e.g., multiple downloads of e-books or whitepapers, participation in the company's webinars or product demos, then the messaging tactics need to change. And then, you could push that prospect into being a lead.. and subsequently into a CRM where salespeople can call on it or nurture the process with more emails or calls.

How is this process in your company?

Microsoft SmartScreen Filtering: False Positives

I have recently run across two scenarios where Microsoft's SmartScreen service for Outlook mail has flagged single-opt-in subscription content as spam. It's annoying because one of those subscriptions is from Microsoft's Virtual Academy; which also has a glaring email autoresponder issue that I'll address in another post.

Imagine if you could: a giant inbox funnel with a mesh strainer on top of it called SmartScreen. The difference is that with Outlook.com (formerly live.com, hotmail.com, etc), it captures 110% of all incoming mail. Even the legit emails get caught in this spam trap.

What is SmartScreen? It's an Internet Explorer safety feature, really intended to be a phishing filter security feature. This is weird because I'm experiencing its affects using Chrome so I suppose Microsoft has separated its function from IE and made it app-centric instead.

What's the cure for businesses with legit email?

One possibility is to report the false positive to Symantec through this link. Another, is to contact Microsoft, but that like asking Google customer service to reset your free Gmail account password (which, if you signed up with verification service before you had mobile phone service, it just might be a problem for users trying to reset their password through automation tools. Just how many people have tied a landline w/o caller ID to Google's text verification password reset?).

Basically, you're nearly stuck.

But, what you should have been doing all along..

• Have an unsubscribe or preferences link
• Have your company name and postal address listed in the email's footer
• Double opt-in for promotional content, if your ESP has that capability
• Have legit unique content that's relevant to the receiver; even when they sign up for your services. Receipt nor open of an auto-generated welcome email does not constitute an acceptance of newsletter subscription; especially not in Canada

Contact Curation

Once a year I glean through my entire roster contacts on LinkedIn and push people off the island. It's not a long list and I do like to stay in contact with people. Perhaps this is due to the marketer in me. Usually it's people who have done one of the following things:

• Not made a post, comment, or share by social media, email, phone or mail
• Recruiters who have not done the above
• Connections I have never met in real life who do the above

The exception to this are those I've added to my LinkedIn roster because they have a skill or expertise I want to know more about (e.g., I met this Caucasian guy who is fluent in Mandarin whose role is to mitigate between domestic US and foreign subsidiaries.. that is very, very cool), I want to meet them some day, or their company makes something awesome and meeting their CEO or founders would make a great memory; or I met them in person and they would make a fantastic connection.

It's hard to tell who you can connect to based on LinkedIn settings. I don't mind writing referrals for people who are connected to me to their 2nd degree contacts. I do mind getting pinged by invite hoarders. People whose claim to fame on LinkedIn is 5000+ contacts on LinkedIn. I think you're just setting yourself up for a lot of spam if you do that. Just how many people connections do you need to become a rain maker? Would these connections want to refer business to you?

Having never made a LinkedIn article post, it bugs me that my profile has 500+ followers, most of whom I'm not even connected to on a 1st degree basis. I'm not sure how LinkedIn came up with this feature. Maybe you automatically follow someone if you comment on their shared links or posts.

Supercharge Your List Growth

When I'm at social or networking events, one of the most commonly asked questions I get from small business owners and nonprofit groups is how to grow their membership or customer list. Even having the option to sign up for a newsletter or special offers on one's website can provide enough incentive to get prospective customers to sign up. 

Here are a few tips:

More is better.  As in adding more opt-in forms to your site. What you are aiming for with any mailing list is quality, not quantity. Many times I've seen the newsletter sign-up link below the fold (if you have to page-down to see content, it's below the fold) or buried under layers of content, like hidden where a company's press releases are. You want this web contact form to be found easily and not just by search engines, but by prospective customers.

Include mobile as an option. Should your customers check their email from web-capable phones, tablets, or other mobile devices, you may also want to add a SMS option to the newsletter sign-up form and optimize its accompanying landing pages for mobile. 
Examples: OfficeMax, Bed Bath & Beyond

Attract like honey. Give your subscribers a perk for signing up, thanking them for opting in. Types of perks vary by organizational type. For example:

• Schools or PTAs: a discount card to be used at a local business
• Retail: discount next purchase (online or in-store), free small item, free points on loyalty card program, early preview on upcoming sale items
• Nonprofit Assn: inclusiveness messaging (news and events just for members)
• B2B: actionable insight from industry news/trends

Oracle Topliners Opt-in Override

The wording on this one is certainly something to note, or at least comment on. It reads as though I was opted in without having actually subscribed to the list. Oracle, on the whole, does not market to marketers all that well. The content certainly wasn't all that compelling, and the newsletter format is weak. I can't decide if this is being driven by Eloqua or Oracle.

Oracle Topliners email newsletter, 2015-01-29

Long ago, I did join an Eloqua community user group called Topliners. It's morphed into this years later. Eloqua pitches a better marketing automation solution than the one it just executed on behalf of Oracle. It begs the question.. why wait three years before sending an user newsletter?

5 Things Learned at Vancouver's Economic Breakfast

This year's event at the Vancouver Hilton attracted 500 businesses, politicians, and other movers and shakers that work in and around the Clark County region. The keynote speaker was Ken Fisher of Fisher Investments, whose dry wit humor either met a really tough crowd or it was too Californian for the Pacific Northwest. After hearing his speech, I wondered if I sounded like to PNWers that when I relocated from California to Washington.

Get there early, at least a half hour before breakfast starts. You can mingle and network with other early risers before settling down on a table for breakfast.

Bring your "A" game in social networking to this event, because social + networking has nothing to do with posting a status online. As a commercial real estate agent said to me at the event, it's all about schmoozing.

Dress to impress, like you would if you were going for a job interview. The event has panel sessions after the breakfast. This your chance to ask industry insiders about their take on what's happening in the city or county -and- make an impression. You never know what opportunities may arise from meeting each panel of speakers.

Sit with some rain makers. You may not know who they are or what companies they work for. Heck, half the attendees look like they could be retired. You are better off sitting with old geezers (men and women) for their wealth of knowledge, than with younger, snappy dressed people.. unless you are trying to pick someone up as a dating prospect. Vancouver's economic breakfast audience is made up of four distinct types: older generation (50+ yrs old), local government officials and their staffers, CEOs and entrepreneurs, and students. Ok, there are really five groups but the fifth doesn't want you at their table (these people have purchased a table just for their company and/or friends; it's very clique-ish). It makes for interesting table discussions during breakfast. Because of the noise of the banquet hall, you are limited to intimate conversations of people sitting on either side of you. The first time I attended, I sat at a city official table before reading the sign on the table. That was awkward.

The breakfast is a venue for making connections happen. Be that guy (or gal) who knows a guy (or gal) that knows a guy (or gal). Everyone brings something to this event. And, everyone has the potential of becoming more than just that guy (or gal) you met or sat with at breakfast.

Sometimes, Automatic Scripting Errs

One of the many problems plaguing crowdsourced traffic data are the errors. Part of this is due to Google partnering with Waze, a mobile app that crowdsources traffic data from users on the road. Sure, Interstate 5 is a very long freeway and it spans across the western US coast. Given the masses of regional data that Google has at its disposal, one would think that having a traffic incident related to the King County metro area wouldn't show up in the Portland/Clark County metro area, 170 miles away. Why this incident shows up at the Washington/Oregon border is anyone's guess.

In the Waze smartphone app, users can indicate the speed and flow of the route they are currently on. An incident happening on I-5, might not actually be in Seattle but be somewhere on the Portland portion of I-5. For example:

2015-01-20, a Seattle incident reported in Portland

Email Layouts

Don't treat your whitepapers like they're just something to read. Think of your audience. Think of how they'd react when they seem something like this:

It could just be that it's late at night and I'm tired. Doesn't this layout just scream "delete me"? And, you'd think that a publication whose audience is made up of CMOs that the little things like content layout and a thought-provoking headline would be used. If I didn't know any better, I'd say that this entire email was packaged and sent by a bot.