Feat First

Online Value

Sat, 11 Sep 2010 09:24:27 +0200

In this harsh economic climate, most companies are putting their marketing departments under pressure to get the best results for the smallest budget. We believe there's no better way to achieve this than with a targeted and directly measurable campaign that extends across multiple touchpoints: email, sms and web. A campaign that also reaches beyond your existing database through direct referrals; a campaign that can be adapted and redirected on the fly through branch-testing; a campaign that results in valuable feedback from your customers irrespective of the size of your initial mailing.

The Webfeat advantage:
Experience
We've accurately targeted and presented the right communication to the right people very successfully for several large brands. Our team includes some of the most experienced direct marketing experts in the country.

Strategic creative design
Key data targets in traditional CRM (Customer Relationship Marketing) campaigns such as demographic information or customer opinion are acquired indirectly through an engagingly presented interactive communication without the risk of putting people off with lengthy forms requesting personal data.

ROI
We've consistently provided our clients with much more valuable marketing data than they could achieve with any other marketing action.

Why online marketing?

The interactive aspect of an online campaign is proven to be a more compelling method of retaining customer attention and encouraging feedback than any other direct marketing method available.

Web marketing has the unique advantage of being both a direct and a mass-marketing tool. By adding a referral mechanism to a campaign seeded to an existing user base, it can extend its reach exponentially.

By integrating email, SMS and web marketing across a dedicated campaign, our clients are effectively trebling their reach and value for a single effort. No other service is offering as much at this price point in SA.

Online marketing has been the victim of bad press for several reasons: SPAM (unsolicited email); the high cost and intrusiveness of banner marketing campaigns on popular sites and portals; over-promise by inexperienced marketers; lack of understanding of the capabilities of the internet; historically low average bandwidth and low internet penetration in S.A.

WebFeat tackles these challenges in several ways:

By utilizing a strict opt-in policy;
by using banner-exchange programs on targeted up-and coming sites and seeding messages on popular social-networking sites;
by leveraging mobile phone use with its high penetration in SA;
and by hosting optimized content specially designed to achieve maximum usability at low bandwidth.

Our system has all the tracking and reporting tools built-in to allow our clients to measure and analyse the effectiveness of their campaigns at any point. It also has sophisticated branch-testing capabilities that allow the client to gauge the effectiveness of different messages within the campaign.

We believe our web marketing technique is the most cost-effective method available for practically any type of brand, product or service. It achieves the 3 principal goals of any direct marketing excercise: targeted brand exposure; data feedback; and accountability. And adds viral propagation, lead generation and multi-channel data aquisition to the mix as well.

Naturally our service can extend beyond product/service mailings too: we have managed very successful ERM (Enterprise Relationship Marketing) campaigns; and currently maintain a number of newsletters on behalf of our clients.

Designer += Developer

Thu, 05 Feb 2009 09:36:58 +0200

5 years ago, I predicted that designers wouldn't be required to pop the hood on dynamic web functionality in the same way that they don't need to tweak the scripts that drive Photoshop and Illustrator. Of course, this still isn't happening. Even Adobe's efforts at integrating the roles of design and development with the FLEX framework and toolsets like SPRY and ADDT are still largely experimental and work best if you do know how they're coded.

Is this corporate meddling in a traditional turf war that neither side wants to abandon? Designers aren't supposed to code and developers will never 'get' design. Sadly, neither faction seems to recognise that math and logic are part of the same creative process as drawing and layout. We need to break ourselves out of our own little pigeonholes if we want to pull web design and development up to a professional standard of production value and functionality in this country.

There are too many uppity designers and inflexible coders stubbornly doing their own thing without enough understanding and respect for each other's work. I'm tired of hearing the same old complaint from my designers that their wizzbang ideas and painstaking animations don't work because the developer won't accomodate them. And in the same day hearing from the developer that the designer's high-flying Flash extravaganzas are never going to run on the open-source CMS and budget-bandwidth hosting plan he's chosen for the client because they're unoptimized and completely inaccessible.

Get over yourselves, people. You're never going to produce professional standard sites like that. What's needed is a more cooperative attitude and an acknowlegement on both sides that websites need to be built as a joint effort. And both should be part of the initial brainstorming and roughing-out stage of any web-related job.

Designers need to make time to learn about the restrictions and optimum workflows of the popular frameworks and CMS's. At the very least, they should know how to make their designs accessible and adaptible for use in a dynamic server environment. Developers need to be able to accomodate non-standard interface designs and layouts in their systems. Both need to discuss and work out how data is going to be presented and who's responsible for styling the content etc. Developers need to accept that Flash is never going to go away and they must be prepared to integrate animation into their workflow. Designers need to learn that AJAX is a great alternative to Flash in many areas and can achieve similar effects. For example, AJAX is more efficient at presenting dynamic data unless you're running a Flash socket server. And both parties have to realize that each of the technologies should be used for their strengths and can all be integrated into most modern frameworks.

So get under that hood, designers; teach yourself a little Actionscript, a little Javascript, a little PHP. Its not that hard and you'll be amazed at how it actually opens up opportunities for better design instead of restricting yourselves as you traditionally believe. Developers, you can design. And stop thinking of design as this arty-farty mess you have to somehow turn into a properly structured webpage. Communicate, both of you. Find out more about each other's disciplines and you'll both start producing better work.

Get more bang for your marketing buck

Thu, 29 Jan 2009 08:13:25 +0200

There's definitely a trend in the UK and US right now towards shifting adspend into the digital channel - which has always made perfect sense to us of course. Marketers may be cutting advertising budgets overall but they are trying to be smart about where they promote. With 'measurable return' as a prime mandate, the web is the best place to be.

I want to see this going even further than simple click-tracking. With a dedicated promotional microsite, our clients can actually decide what they want to know about their customers and their reaction to a brand, product or service up front. By plotting and analysing user behaviour through an interactive presentation, our clients are able to build a highly detailed picture of their target market that goes way beyond simple demographics.

For roughly the cost of a single banner placement on one popular portal, we can build an interactive presentation with a back-end programmed to 'listen' to the choices and input a user provides while being entertained and informed about your product. In this way, you can survey exactly the information you need, unobtrusively, while potentially generating referrals, leads and sales.

Brand new year

Tue, 13 Jan 2009 15:51:15 +0200

Ho Hey, another year of challenge and triumph!

First off, a sincere and heartfelt GOOD LUCK to everyone in the industry in these beleaguered times.

For us, its straight into a couple of projects that will consume our attention for the next few weeks:

- IN THE WORKS -

Sentech website redesign - our first bash at a Plone implementation... so far so good - thanks to the guys at OpenNetworks for growing us a skin almost overnight! Now we've just got to plug away at the new content...

Social Lites - dynamic catalogue site with a clean, uncluttered look (nice one, Kerry!). Currently building the DB and sexy Javascript thumbnail gallery.

Plus ongoing work for our regular clients - your loyalty is seriously appreciated!

Tracking + Analytics = R.O.I.

Fri, 09 Jan 2009 10:51:30 +0200

I've noticed a trend lately where online marketing seems to be taking a turn away from the 'deeper' approach to direct marketing with respect to web analytics - toward a more superficial (and in my opinion, less effective) attitude that seems to be satisfied with basic hit rates. To me, the purpose behind the measurement of visitor traffic on a website or microsite is to track their behaviour in order to build a database of information that can be analysed and converted into an accurate picture of why and how prospects use that site.

Sadly, marketers still seem to be going for the 'shotgun promotion' angle in their online presence - if they do anything at all beyond counting page impressions on their corporate website. Instead of building a database of behavioural information over time, they are running ad hoc campaigns and only measuring performance from simple click-rates. Its all 'acquisition' over 'retention'. (I must point out that this is no fault of the media companies who place banners, for example, but more an indictment on the lack of understanding or responsibility for how to use and analyse the data).

While this is unquestionably a quick and easy 'dipstick' measure of interest in your brand, or even a specific promotion, it tells you nothing about the prospects themselves and offers no means of follow-up or opportunities for further communication with them. Those essential elements of database marketing that were once highly prized are largely being ignored. Ironically the Web is the most valuable medium we have for developing a relationship between your users and your brand and its being treated like a newsagent magazine rack. The nature of the Web is that it allows you to see who visits, where they go, what they do and even where they click out to.

One of the causes (in the UK market specifically) and on larger websites and portals in this country, is the volume of data - which makes processing and analysis difficult for marketers and sales staff not specifically trained to do it - even when using popular and well-built tools like Google Analytics. All the more reason, if you are experiencing such good traffic, to try to convert browsers into buyers with a little professional help.

In South Africa, I blame a simple lack of insight into the possibilities of online marketing and the unfounded perceptions that the web is a high-LSM luxury; and that South Africans don't use it to make purchase decisions. Local marketers don't seem easily convinced there's a significant enough ROI to be made from their online presence to justify any more spend than is necessary to maintain a basic 'brochureware' site.

To my mind, the information that can be learned from a targeted, measurable web campaign is surely a significant competitive edge for any business and worth the small additional cost to build into every interaction they make with their users online. With such potential to leverage data and achieve the sort of closed-loop cycle that marketers dream of, its painful for me to see the opportunity being wasted by not even trying.

All our campaigns are developed with the prospect database foremost in mind - its what determines the angle, approach and treatment required for each promotional element. Its why we've consistently achieved outstanding conversion rates with our referral and banner campaigns (better than the usually 'acceptible' 2.5% in most cases - up to 10% in some). Its why we even know what those conversion rates are! Talk to us - please - before planning your next online campaign!