U.S. online retail sales to hit $172B this year

According to Shop.Org and Forrester Research U.S. online retail sales will hit $172B this years. Study results show that cosmetics, fragrances and other categories focused at women are expected to grow 33 percent. Also, study results show that sales of jewelry and luxury goods (31%) and flowers, cards, and gifts (30%) are expected to rise.

The report predicts that online sales (including travel) will rise 22.0 percent to $172.4 billion this year. Sales excluding travel are expected to reach $109.6 billion.

"Though initially adopted by men as a shopping tool, women are flocking to the Internet in droves to comparison shop, research, and buy," said Scott Silverman, Executive Director of Shop.org. "Online retailers who sell products that are purchased by women are in a favorable position this year, as we expect those categories to grow substantially."

Also, good news for e-commerce industry is that profitability continues to climb.

"With profitability behind them, retailers can now focus on innovation and growth through things like increased integration of their online and offline businesses and internationalization of their sites," said Carrie Johnson, lead author of the report and Principal Analyst at Forrester Research. "One way retailers will grow sales over the next several years will be by launching country-specific sites and operations to accommodate a growing number of international customers."

Exclusive interview with Mr. Joshua Baer, SKYLIST, Inc.

In this exclusive interview we asked Mr. Joshua Baer, SKYLIST CEO to discuss current trends in email marketing business with the focus on CAN-SPAM and steps that have to be taken in order to minimize SPAM problems.

Joshua Baer's role in shaping email marketing solutions and best practices is unparalleled. Over the last decade, SKYLIST has displayed outstanding growth and remains private and profitable.

While growing SKYLIST, Josh has also continued to actively contribute to the email community at large. His email community contributions include influential roles in industry standards development forums, authorship, and frequent conference and panel presentations. He is a steering committee member of the Email Service Provider Coalition.

In 1998, Mr. Baer co-authored Internet RFC 2369, establishing a standard way for users to subscribe and unsubscribe from email lists. UnsubCentral is his latest brainchild and spin out company dedicated to aiding CAN-SPAM compliance obligations.

Dejan Bizinger: What do you think about the future of email marketing and email publishing?

Joshua Baer: We just went through a scary dip for past year and half since the enactment of CAN-SPAM and the explosion of affiliate marketing, but the viability of email marketing is starting to climb again as people become more comfortable with the new regulations. CAN-SPAM is helping, as is authentication. People are sending more targeted and personalized mail, rather than high-volume mass mailings, realizing that more is not better when it comes to email.

DB: What do you think about the importance of blogs and RSS in e-publishing?

JB: I think they are still peripheral. There has been hype surrounding it, which has been encouraged by the spam problem, but in essence, it is still fundamentally not push technology, which is what makes email “the killer app.” Email is powerful because its push technology, not pull. If you sign up for something you don’t have to remember to go back and get it.

DB: Do you think that a lot of email newsletters and SPAM that cause email overload will have for the result that less people will include email marketing as an item in their online marketing budget and tactics? What does this mean for list hosting companies such as SKYLIST?

JB: People are increasing budgets now, people feel more confident in the viability of email, as spam solutions continue to emerge and grow stronger.

DB: What is the greatest benefit of email marketing?

JB: The efficiency of cost and feedback. Cost, time and functionality. It costs less and takes less time to produce, deliver and get feedback than ordinary channels and you can get much more clear and detailed feedback. It makes marketing more of a science, less of an art.

DB: SKYLIST is one of the first companies that offered CAN-SPAM compliant product StormPost. How effective is the CAN-SPAM law?

JB: It is important to understand how effective any law can be. Murder is illegal yet people are still murdered every day. The law isn’t the end-all-be-all solution to the problem, but it has helped heightened awareness and encouraged best practices. No law can solve this problem outright; it must be combined with best practices such as authentication and reputation. Solving the spam problem is not about figuring which mail to block, but which legitimate mail to accept.

DB: Do you think that Microsoft SenderID is the first big step in fighting against SPAM? What have to be done more in order to minimize SPAM?

JB: Authentication is the first step, it helps identify legitimate sources, and has cut a wide swath in the amount of fraudulent senders. However, it won’t solve problem by itself. We must build on a foundation of authentication with accreditation and reputation, making it a transparent open process.

DB: Should regular business e-mail be encrypted?

JB: No, encryption of all business email is overkill and unnecessary. In the future, business email will be cryptographically signed, i.e. validated but not necessarily encrypted.

DB: Please describe your three products: StormPost Hosting, StormPost Software and UnsubCentral (target companies for each product) and how they help companies to do their email marketing more effectively?

JB: The StormPost™ Software License is a top choice for organizations who want an internal solution that will deliver both email campaigns and cost savings.

StormPost customer benefits include:

• Enterprise level email database marketing capabilities.


• Unparalleled scalability and deliverability


• Advanced personalization, targeting, tracking, and reporting


• Unique reporting shows true deliveryStormPost Hosted Edition ( ASP ) provides self-service access to secure and private email marketing accounts.
• All StormPost hosted accounts are managed by a dedicated account team that provides both technical and ISP relationship support.
  

Hosted customer benefits include:

• Dedicated account management


• 24 / 7 emergency support


• No hardware costs


• Free, immediate upgrades


• Sliding scale CPM pricing based on email message delivery requirements

UnsubCentral, Inc. provides email suppression and consumer preference management solutions to leading advertisers, ad networks, and affiliate networks. The Austin, Texas-based corporation offers solutions that create a secure environment for managing opt-out lists across the enterprise, affiliates and various third parties. Integrated with major affiliate networks and email service providers and reviewed by TRUSTe, the solutions ensure clients comply with the CAN-SPAM Act and data privacy requirements. For more information, please visit www.unsubcentral.com.

DB: You are a steering committee member of the Email Service Provider Coalition. Please tell us the main roles and activities of ESPC.

JB: The Email Service Provider Coalition is a cooperative group of industry leaders working to create solutions to the continued proliferation of spam and the emerging problem of deliverability. Our membership provides volume mail delivery services to an estimated 250,000 clients - representing the full breadth of the U.S. marketplace. The ESPC is currently working on solutions to spam and deliverability concerns through a combination of legislative advocacy, technological development, and industry standards. The ESPC is comprised of three sub-committees:

Legislative – This committee guides our lobbying efforts on federal and state spam legislation. We provide direct advocacy before the FTC and Congress. For state issues, we have partnered with the Internet Alliance for monitoring and coordination. The geographic breadth of our group has allowed us to respond to many state spam statues directly, using members on the ground. This group meets weekly, with ad hoc meetings called from time to time to respond to state developments.

Technology – This committee is evaluating and developing technological solutions that would allow more accurate responses to spam (and fewer false positives). A technical working group has been formed within this group to explore and propose such solutions. This group meets as needed, with in-person meetings scheduled occasionally

Communications – This committee provides broad public affairs strategy for the Coalition. We have been actively working to highlight the consumer harm associated with false positives and filtering. This committee also provides guidance and support for our press relations.

DB: Describe a day in the life of Joshua Baer?

JB: A day in the life of Joshua Baer begins at 6am and usually consists of talking to customers and prospects as well as industry leaders. Many days involve press or analyst interviews and very often I am traveling all over the world to speak at conferences and trade shows.

Wanna talk with big names at one place?

Look no further. Just read on Jason Calacanis web log an interesting report about the D Conference organized by The Wall Street Journal. I think that if you visit conference web site especially their speakers list you will be aware why is the registration price $3,495.

You can't be everyday on the conference where you can listen speaches from Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Jerry Yang, David Filo, Barry Diller...is this enough :-)?

Good news for bloggers

In previous article I wrote that Google loves blogs and there are more facts that support that. Google announced that as of Wednesday they launched its beta program for contextual advertising in RSS feeds based on AdSense.

"The idea is simple: advertisers have their ads placed in the most appropriate feed articles; publishers are paid for their original content; readers see relevant advertising."-published on Google Blog

This is great news for bloggers that can start monetizing their RSS feeds with AdSense.

Google Acquired Dodgeball.com

It seems that Google likes blogs very much. After buying Blogger and announcing mobile options in Blogger, Dodgeball.com announced that as of May, 11th Dodgeball.com and Google joined forces. Dodgeball.com is a very popular mobile social software company that offers services for finding a date using a mobile phone with a Friends-of-Friends option. You can find more info about this aquisition at www.dodgeball.com

Make Your Web Site User-Friendly!

Making a web site is easy. Making a good web site is not so
easy. There are many things you have to consider if you want to
make a good and successful web site.

Everyone who knows at least something about marketing knows that
you have to fit your product so that suit customers need. Don't
expect that customers will accommodate to your web site. If, from
some reason, they get an impression that your site is confusing
and that you didn't tried hard to make their visit as easy as
possible. As you know, there are many web sites, so why do you
think that anyone will bother to stay at your site if it is not
enough good.

So, how can you make your web site user-friendly? I will try to
explain you now.

Loading

In order that your visitor see your web site it must be loaded
pretty fast. I could never understand someone who's web sites
is loading several minutes. Do these people think that people
will really wait for their masterpiece? You bet that they won't.
Your page shouldn't be bigger than 30K. When you design your
web site you should first put one table above you web site
content where you will put a sponsorship banners. This is because
that your advertisers can get good visibility. Also, your logo
and company name should load very fast. One of the main
marketing principles is that people have to remember your name,
logo and your message. You probably have many competitors. Your
brand-name have to be remembered. Otherwise, it is most likely
that they will forget you and never come back again.

You can test your web site loading page at:

http://www.websitegarage.com

Colors

OK, let's suppose that your page have a decent loading time and
that visitor decided to give it a try to your web site and your
product. So, you better that they find complementar colors on
your web site. I guess that after they have come to your site
you don't want that they leave with eye-sight problems. You
should know some basic knowledge about how certain color fits
to some other. Colors on your site can also depend about the
your web site's type. It means that if you want to have some
kid site your site can be very colorful with some animated
images. Business sites, in most cases don't have to be to
colorful.

You can find useful info about designing your web site at:

http://www.htmlgoodies.com
http://www.webreference.com
http://www.dynamicdrive.com
http://www.useit.com

Information

If someone would asked you what is the single most important
thing on web site, I hope that you would say that is
information. You won't have many benefits if you hired someone
who is expert in programs like Dreamweaver, who will make fancy
animations in Flash, who will make extraordinary images in
Photoshop and Corel Draw if people on your site can't find
something because they come in the first place. That is
information. Unless your site should be some kind of reference
for company who wants to hire a web designer and you want to
show them what you can, people in most cases are not much
interested in design. Take Google, for example. Its design
could make anyone with a basic web design design knowledge.
Google is the best search engine not because some fancy images.
It is the best because of the information he provides. Remember
that when you design your web site. Beside information about
your product, people should be able to find a contact
information on the first page. Also, it is not useful to have
many info on your web site if people can't easily to find. You
should try that all info on your web site be accessible with
3 or less clicks.

Automatization

It is very useful that you put some automatization on your web
site. Why is that important? Well, if you expect that your
visitors do something for you, first you have to do something
for them. What I mean is that you have to help them to make some
actions. I will tell you several examples where automatization
can be used.

Let's say your site have a lot of visitors. It won't be very wise
solution that everyone who would like to ask you something
contact you via email. It is not very convenient because you
would get a lot of emails that takes up considerable time to
answer. Good solution when you want to offer your visitors a
choice to contact you about several topics to contact you via
form mail. Then you ask for necessary info they have to provide.
This is good because you won't get emails that are too broad nor
to narrow. There are other use of form mails. For example for
subscribing to newsletters, to order products, to send your
listing etc..

Another good choice for using web site automatization are
multiple subscription check-boxes. In case you don't know, this
enables that your visitors can subscribe to several newsletters
at once, which means by entering their email address only once.
It is very important to have this script if you have several
newsletters. Don't expect that many people will bother to
subscribe to several newsletters if you don't make them easier
to do it.

You can see an example at:

http://www.marketingsherpa.com
http://www.emailuniverse.com

People often ask their visitors to recommend their site.
Recommending a site can be done very effectively if you use
a recommendation script. There people can enter email addresses
of their friends and they will receive an invitation from hi or
she to visit that web site. There are many scripts for this
purpose.

You can find useful scripts for your site at:

http://www.hotscripts.com
http://www.cgi-resources.com

There are companies which offer this service:

http://www.letemknow.com
http://www.recommend-it.com

You have just read some tips for making your site user-friendly.
Of course, there are many more to do. When you design your web
site you have to put yourself in your visitor's shoes and ask
yourself how would like that a certain site look like. I want
you to make great friendships!

Be Smart, Swap Links!

Once you've made your web site and put it on the Internet, the next thing you need to do is promote it. If you don't, then people won't find your site. Same with newsletters and blogs: people are not going to find you unless you tell them you are there.

There are many ways to promote your web site or newsletter. You should already know that it is very important to publish your own newsletter to keep in contact with your customers, visitors and as a means of promoting your site.

You could try to have a high placement in the search engines, but that's not easy. Especially, if you are trying to get listed with some popular keywords which will bring the most traffic.

Then, another option are newsgroups. This technique can be pretty useful, but you have to be careful to make sure you post appropriately to the right groups and joining in the discussions takes up a considerable amount of time.

I think that best means of promotion if you don't have too much money for advertising is to exchange links with others. Then you both benefit from it. Also, having many links to your site also improves your ranking on many of the search engines, because of the way their algorithms work, so its a win-win situation.

How to find swap resources

If you want to have many visitors or subscribers, then logically, you should have your link in as many places as possible. Many studies show that most visitors will come to your site from the links on other sites. OK, you think, now I only have to have many links on other sites.

Do you think that it is easy? Well, it is not too hard if you know ways to achieve it.

First of all you have to decide which are those sites where you want to have your link. You have to choose a target audience. It is not very effective to have your link on a totally unrelated site, but, on the other hand, you don't have to have your link on competitor sites. So you need to find those sites that complement yours. Then it is more likely that people will actually click on your link.

Now, how can you easily find good places to advertise? You could try the search engines. You will get many results, but many of them are useless for your marketing campaign. You will get far more results with less approaches if you find people who are also already looking to swap resources from among specialist search engines and directories.

When you have found good sites that match your target, you have to contact them, of course.

Newsletter for people interested in swapping ads and links

Swap Resources

How to make a contact

It is very important to write a good email. You can't simply say: "Hey, I want to have my link on your site". It doesn't work that way.

First of all, you need to personalize your swap request. For example it is better to say: "Dear Dejan..." than "Dear Webmaster...". Include their site or ezine name in the email too.

After that you have to explain why are you interested in swapping links with them. For example you can say that they offer valuable information and you think that that it will be useful to your visitors to come to their site. You have to tell them why they should put your link on your site: i.e. what's in it for them.

By swapping links you can make some great online friends. After that, you will be able to cooperate on many other things.

When you swap links don't only use the number of subscribers or visitors for determining whether you will exchange links with someone or not. The value of a certain blog, email newsletter or site should also be important to you.

Also, another important thing is to know where your link will be and how many other ads will be in the same place where you will advertise. What is better for you; to have your ad placed in amongst many in an ezine with many subscribers, or in newsletter with less subscribers but where your ad will be only one? I think that many of you would choose second option.

As you can see, swapping links is not so easy as it may sound. There are many things you have to consider when you choose your swap resource. It's a good thing that swapping links is one of the smartest ways of free promotion of your site, email newsletter and blog.