Details of a search engine collaboration between two of the three major names in the industry were revealed today, with Microsoft and Yahoo announcing a partnership.

Under the terms of initial ten-year deal, Yahoo’s popular search engine is likely to be enveloped into Microsoft’s Bing platform, with search technologies and profit shares from ads distributed accordingly.

The move is the latest ominous sign that Microsoft really does mean business with Bing, because however mutually-beneficial the deal is dressed up to appear by the respective marketing departments, it has essentially swallowed up it’s nearest competitor in the field. Also, the ten year timescale of the agreement is an interesting note to the episode, suggesting that Microsoft isn’t expecting an overnight result and is in it for the long haul.

However the size of the task in attempting to overthrow Google hasn’t got any smaller. Even combined, Bing and Yahoo’s current share of the search market (28%) doesn’t come close to Google’s domination (65%*).

All in all, Microsoft’s recent moves on search show a certain tenacity for the fight, but it doesn’t look like it has produced a genuine gamechanger… yet.

* Comscore. July 2009.

Microsoft has announced its new line of retail stores are on schedule to open before the end of 2009, as part of their ongoing marketing strategy. Interestingly, or perhaps oddly, Microsoft claimed this week that their shops will be springing up right next door to Apple Stores, highlighting the clear head-to-head idea behind the venture.

In direct contrast to the thinking behind their newly launched search engine Bing (an unofficial acronym for “Bing Is Not Google”), Microsoft is spelling out their aims for the retail store in unambiguous terms, making it clear that it sees it as a like-for-like competitor to Apple’s store.

Whether it’ll be a good move for Microsoft remains to be seen, but there are a number of reasons why the company’s established behemoth status might just not be enough to guarantee success on the street;

1) A Zune is not an iPod

Microsoft’s proprietary products aren’t exactly exciting. If they’re going to fill the shops up with copies of Windows7, Zunes and peripherals then the doors aren’t likely to be broken down with a customer stampede.

2) If it isn’t broke…

The high streets and retail parks are awash with PCs, with the vast majority tied in with Microsoft operating systems and software packages. Adding yet another option for the consumer with a purely Microsoft store risks cannibalising the retail model that helped make the company such a success in the first place. While it might just be intentionally targeting Apple Stores, Microsoft will also need to compete against the major established PC outlets whether it wants to or not.

3) It’s not very 2009

As primarily a software company, Microsoft is in the best possible position to make a stand for the reliability and robustness of downloadable products and services. The company’s own Xbox360 games console is a positive trailblazer in downloadable content and potential – so why not take the expensive and hard-won lessons from the Xbox Live community and create a purely online centre for retailing all things Microsoft? It’s obviously the future of the market, so why not bring it forward? Launching a brand new bricks and mortar venture in 2009 seems bizarrely, almost surreally late in the day.

4) It shows competitive concern

Coming so soon after the negative retort of the the “I’m A PC” advertising campaign, it’s yet another sign that Microsoft strategises in direct response to Apple’s activities. As the vastly smaller of the two companies, being recognised and referenced in such a clear way helps to validate Apple. Maybe Microsoft would be better served by emphasising its market dominance for the right reasons. It’s not through luck that Microsoft finds itself at the top of the pile – perhaps it should be pushing the positives and getting on with its own thing, without looking over its shoulder at whatever Apple are up to.

5) It’s unknown territory

While it’s undoubtedly the biggest fish in terms of market share, Microsoft is taking a leap in the dark on the retail store front, and it couldn’t have picked on a more polished opponent. Apple has already got it right with most aspects of their retail stores. They’ve got the clinical feel of a futuristic spa waiting room, and are stacked with products like iMacs, iPhones and cinema display monitors – all of which perform a tractor-beam pull on passers-by of a certain disposition. Even the exteriors of the stores are desirable – typically chromed steel and glass framed, like artworks planted into the street by a spaceship. Microsoft has its work cut out in providing a style that will match this, let alone surpass it in direct competition.

With the first of the new stores opening in the US in the Autumn, we won’t have long to wait to see if it’s a gamble too far for Microsoft.

The new third generation iPhone went on sale at the weekend, and while it proved to be an instant success with customers and critics alike, it seems that Apple might not have thought through the long-term SEO potential of the product – and has gone for a subtle yet drastically-sudden name change today.

Originally titled the “3G S”, the new iPhone is now known as the “3GS”. Apple hasn’t made any official comment on the change, but it’s plain to see on their website that it has happened.

What’s in a space character?

If the move is down to pure search engine motives, then perhaps Apple have made an unnecessarily knee-jerk decision as searches today for the old-style “3G S” are returning iPhone-dominated results on Google, Bing and Ask. (Only on Yahoo was the iPhone denied top-spot, perhaps understandably by the Three/3 mobile phone network official website.) Considering the millions of digital column inches that will be written about the 3GS in the coming months, the product will surely tighten its grip on the search term – space character or no space character.

Conversely, doing a search today for the new “3GS” name brings back a similarly iPhone-heavy set of results across the board, with some high-ranking references dating from several weeks ago, pre-empting Apple’s decision. Perhaps, when all is said and done, it wasn’t very clear that there was a space in the first place…

Either way, it’s interesting to see that maybe SEO can now impact on product launches of even the world’s most marketing-savvy companies.

Microsoft’s latest attempt to gain a greater share of the search engine market went unexpectedly into beta last week. Pitched as a “decision engine”, bing.com comes as the replacement for LiveSearch.

With a fresh look, stunning photographic background imagery and a reported immediate impact with users in the opening test week, is Bing the next big thing in search?

Nice touches, nothing groundbreaking

The homepage is undoubtedly good-looking, but how does Bing fare when it is actually put to work with a search? The results page looks more or less as you’d expect, with a couple of nice touches.

Related searches are bumped up to the top left, instead of appearing in the footer as you’d expect. This could be a slight time-saver if you’re not overly familiar with what you’re searching for, but it’s nothing you couldn’t get before elsewhere.

Each individual result, when hovered over, has a small pop-up containing a synopsis and various links from the same website. Presumably this is to offer as much information as possible before a user commits to a click. This doesn’t seem a million miles away from Ask.com’s thumbnail preview, which offers a sneak peek of a website on the results page. Neither are particularly useful, but at least Ask.com’s effort offers some neat visuals.

Both cases essentially miss the point of the results page and their own faith in the suggested websites – the fact that a site is appearing on the 1st page should be reason enough to click on it. Any in-depth pre-investigation required before accepting the search engine’s suggestion indicates it might not be what you’re looking for.

Advanced search offers a pleasingly flexible and straight-forward set of variables – including country and language – but these aren’t exactly daily requirements for your average web user.

Spammy returns rank strongly

The synopsis tool actually comes in quite handy as a few random searches show that while Bing is returning relevant websites, it often suggests very deep links or spammy findings. These absolutely need to be weeded out before any full launch, or there’ll be all manner of “optimised for Bing” results appearing – a sure-fire way to kill the user experience.

Loose PPC connections

Bing’s suggested pay-per-click websites seem decidedly fuzzy, which is odd given PPC’s highly manageable nature and in particular the sharp targeting available through Microsoft’s own Adcenter system.

A search for “email marketing newcastle” returns an accurate selection on organic – but a poorly irrelevant mix of hotel, job vacancy and football websites on sponsored search.

The same search on Google.co.uk returns a watertight set of paid-for Newcastle-based email marketing results.

Despite the apparently hapless targeting, Bing does repeat the top ranking PPC ads at the bottom of the page – meaning that those advertisers who are paying top dollar get a second bite of the cherry if their main ad is ignored. Good for advertisers, good for Microsoft’s pocket.

Endless images

When using the images tab, Bing doesn’t seem to limit the result thumbnails, returning as many as 1000 at a time. While this helpfully removes the need to click through multiple pages to find what you’re looking for, it also produces reams of loading thumbnails as you’re scrolling the page. Maybe that’s why every other search engine, ever, uses multiple pages.

“Verbing Up”

Google is so synonymous with the very act of searching online that it comfortably reached the brand nirvana of becoming an associated verb some years ago. While Google’s top brass have made noises in the past that this is something they’re not too happy about – it “dilutes” their other offerings apparently – it is surely the pinnacle of brand domination. This obviously isn’t lost on Microsoft, with Chief Exec Steve Ballmer openly stating that Bing was chosen as a name that can be easily “verbed up”.

First impressions…

So will we all be “binging” for our information in years to come? On the evidence of the beta, the answer has to be a pretty clear ‘no’. Bing needs to offer something that Google doesn’t, and at the moment it isn’t doing that. However, with a reported marketing budget of $100m to ease the full introduction, Bing is likely to be around for a while. We’ll see how it goes, but with such a glitchy opener and the absence of anything really new, or even useful, it doesn’t look very promising.

Of course the beta phase of any project is intended to iron out the creases, so perhaps the niggles mentioned above can be forgiven for the time being. Perhaps the full launch will be a little slicker…

All in all, it’s good to see that someone is taking a determined run at Google’s domination – it’ll certainly be interesting to see how the market leader responds in due course.

The credit crunch has forced a widespread rethink in the way that companies advertise their products and services, and the change in approach is now being experienced across the board. As we’ve said for a while here on Green Notes – the customers are still out there, the marketing just needs to reflect the times to be effective.

The NFL Superbowl final, the American Football showpiece characterised by its incredible viewing figures and therefore marketing potential, is an accurate indicator of the advertising industry as a whole – and Sunday’s US broadcast underlined the marked shift in emphasis. A Hyundai offer of clean slate credit in the event of losing your job during a repayment period perhaps highlighted the new advertising landscape better than most.

Back here in the UK, the examples are numerous, if slightly less stark – a longstanding Virgin Media offer of three months cheap rate services has been hastily repackaged as “brightening the credit crunch”. Sainsburys supermarket has gone from overpromoting its premium “Taste the Difference” and “SO Organic” lines in favour of the budget “Basics” range. These examples, picked from many, again underline the way in which the biggest of corporate names are redirecting their focus.

From a marketing perspective, it’s a new challenge to appeal to customers and prospects with genuinely reduced buying power, but the key point remains the same – the customers are still around, they haven’t disappeared. It’s absolutely essential for advertising to keep pace with the changing demands of these customers to get results now.

We’ve facilitated such a shift with our own clients over the last few months, and found that a strategised change in copy tone and offer presentation really can reap rewards. Some of our email marketing during this period has achieved record responses, and the return on investment has continued to tell its own story.

So if you’re wondering how best to market your products and services during the downturn, get in touch, we’d be happy to show you what we can do for your business.

We were delighted to hear about the response to a recent email marketing campaign for one of our Jaguar clients, which again proved the overwhelming business benefits of advertising through the downturn and the incredible potential of email marketing. The e-flyer, for Lancaster Jaguar Sidcup, was mailed out on Friday 5th December and led directly to the sale of ten brand new Jaguars and forty-five enquiries of interest for possible future purchases.

The mailer was sent to a datalist containing 1946 registered customers and achieved a 42% open rate – far higher than the industry average. The decision to broadcast on a Friday helped to create momentum throughout the weekend, as highlighted by the results.

The stunning sales results emphatically demonstrate that email marketing is still the most effective pound-for-pound promotional medium available, continuing to make an impact even in the hardest-hit sectors.

If you’re looking for a low-cost and effective way to get your message out to customers and prospects, then email marketing is likely to fit the bill. This series of articles is designed to highlight the key issues – explaining what to do, what not to do, and why. In this piece, the first of the series, we’re looking at some of the most commonly-spotted problems in email marketing, and the ways they can be avoided.

However, if you just need the benefits of great email marketing but perhaps don’t need to know all the ins-and-outs discussed here, then get in touch with us – we’d be more than happy to demonstrate how effective it can be when done properly.

Copy for email

Copywriting for the web has its own distinct set of rules, largely based around hitting your point straight away, avoiding unnecessary words, maintaining clarity and giving the reader a pay-off as soon as possible. You’ll find that these themes come into sharp focus when writing email marketing copy. All too often it is bogged down with a long-winded and dawdling style, and this lack of clarity can effectively kill a whole campaign, regardless of how good your offer is. Just as deadly to email marketing is copy that is too brief, as this can fail to engage readers.

If your marketing email is vying for attention amongst a hundred or so other emails throughout the course of a day then it absolutely must make an impression and stand out – and the copy is a clear opportunity to do this. Your opener is crucial – engage the recipient straight away by making it clear precisely what you’re offering, what the benefit is to them and why it’s worth reading on. If these things aren’t obvious in the first couple of lines then you’ve lost your chance.

Image-heavy mailers

Email marketing that over-employs imagery can look incredibly good, but it can fail to be effective in terms of results for various reasons.

With increased awareness of viruses and security threats it’s quite rare these days for people to have their emails set up to show images immediately. So email marketing that is overly reliant on images is completely dependent on recipients clicking to see them – which they often won’t!

Even if an image-based email does make it through to a viewing, there are several different email clients and systems that display HTML messages in very different ways. Your carefully crafted masterpiece that was designed to perfection might look unrecognisable on certain clients. Be sure to code around this, and don’t leave out any of the popular email clients.

Despite the image minefield, some brands have fantastically effective e-flyers made up purely of images – Schuh is a good example of this, as well as a lot of the high-end fashion retailers. However these mailers work on the strength and recognition of the brand itself, often in the subject line or from field. If a recipient sees a respected and trusted brand name (obvious phishing aside), they’re far more likely to click “show images” or allow the flyer to upload. Once the recipient has seen the email quality, it’s likely to be assigned to a safe senders list from that point onwards. However, if it’s an unknown or unexpected brand sending the email, then no amount of “can’t see this email? Click here” messages will encourage the reader to open it.

It’s best to achieve a balance between text and images, so recipients can see immediately what you’re trying to say and it’ll look the part as well. For more information on this, see our dedicated article.

From fields and subject lines

These two underappreciated factors are the first things that appear in an inbox, so they deserve as much consideration as anything else in email marketing. As mentioned earlier, if used correctly they can instantly win over a recipeint. However, if either of these are fluffed, then you’re risking the failure of the entire campaign, regardless of how brilliant it might be in every other respect.

First off, the from field – it’s not exactly complex stuff, you’re just saying where the email is coming from, but there are definitely some rules you should be following here. Again, if you’re marketing a big brand or respected name then take the opportunity to reference it. Don’t bother with an email address, especially not a clunky “donotreply@” style one. Using names in from fields is an option, but it depends entirely on whether the recipient will be expecting it and will know who the named sender is. A name in a from field can add a neat personal touch in certain cases, and you’ll find that personally written newsletters often carry the name of the author in this field.

Next up, the subject line – this continues to be one of the most poorly executed elements of email marketing, but again is a fairly straight-forward thing to get right. The golden rule here would be, simply, don’t look like spam. Don’t use words like “best” or “cheap”, and avoid full subject lines in capital letters, as these are likely to trigger spam filters and send your marketing directly to junk mail folders. For the same reason avoid using characters such as “£”, “$” or “!” even if there’s an entirely credible reason to do so. Once you’ve got these spam issues out of the way, think about how best to present your message in the most succinct fashion. Don’t make it too long or cryptic. It needs to be quick-fire, contain a selling point or an intriguing line to encourage an opening. It’s a vitally important factor so make the most of it.

Timing

The day and time that you send out your email marketing can play a large role in deciding the end result. Sending out on a Monday morning will all but guarantee failure in most sectors. Think about the start of your own working week… do you have time to peruse and respond to unexpected emails? It’s unlikely.

With newsletter-style email marketing, decide on a regular mailout day and time – and stick to it. Recipients will expect the email to drop into their inboxes at the same time each week, month, or however often you send it, and it’s this regularity that will guarantee and maintain a certain level of interest.

More sales-driven email marketing should be timed around key buying times, depending on the product or service you’re promoting.

Call to action

The last point in any email marketing is the call to action, the element that turns a recipient into a customer. It’s incredible to think that any email marketing could be sent out without a cast-iron call to action, but it does happen.

Don’t leave your reader in any doubt whatsoever as to what they need to do to take you up on your offering. Walk them right through to the phone number, email link or web link that takes them to a conversion. Ideally give them an option of all three, different customers have different preferences so you should cater for them all.

Warmest thanks to all of the clients and partners that we’ve worked with throughout 2008. We hope you all have a great Christmas and New Year, and we’re looking forward to achieving further success for you in 2009.

We’ve got some fantastic new projects in development at the moment, including some major site launches set for the beginning of 2009. Keep an eye on the blog for updates, which will be coming very soon. Our industry articles will be continuing apace in the New Year, with an insider series on email marketing just about ready to get going.

If you’ve been looking at what we do and you’d like your company to be one of our 2009 success stories, then we’d love to hear from you.

Last of all – our studios are closed from 19th December to 5th January – all the best from everyone here at Green Media.

Google’s Matt Cutts had some interesting comments this week on the question “is ranking dead?” in an excellent interview with Mike McDonald from WebProNews, which vindicated our entire approach to SEO here at Green Media.

“I’m not sure I would say ranking is dead but it’s not as important as it used to be,” said Cutts. “The fact is the smart SEOs (search engine optimisation companies) are not just necessarily looking at the rankings. They are looking at conversions, they are looking at their server log. It’s great if you’re ranking for a phrase but unless that leads to sales that doesn’t help you very much.”

“The challenge is not to pay so much attention to ranking, pay attention to traffic, pay attention to conversions and keep building good content and don’t worry about ‘can I show people that I rank number one for my trophy phrase,’” he added.

These sentiments echo precisely what we’ve been saying here at Green Media for a long time now. We mentioned the problems with purely ranking-orientated SEO in a blog entry back in July 2007, when discussing our own approach to search. As we pointed out way back then, it should always be about conversions and ROI – something that’s only now being acknowledged by the wider SEO industry and those at the very top of Google.

If you’re still using an SEO company that is preoccupied with getting “1st page rankings” over all other considerations, then you’re wasting your time and budget. SEO, like any other type of business marketing, simply needs to be accountable – and there’s no value whatsoever in boasting about a 1st page result on a term that absolutely no-one is searching for, no matter how it’s dressed up or shouted about. When your SEO is delivering massive ROI and genuine business benefits across targeted markets, then you’ve really got something to boast about.

Today’s financial climate demands that you keep on marketing, but it also demands a more pragmatic approach to your advertising in order to continue being effective. Marketing for marketing’s sake simply won’t deliver the results you need now.

Prospective customers are resistant – even immune – to traditional hard sell advertising during an economic downturn, and you could be wasting budget to carry on with the same approach that perhaps worked for you two or three years ago. Think about what you’re offering, and how you can offer it in the most suitable way for today’s buyer.

A recent email marketing campaign for our client at Cloverleaf Honda took a direct conversational copy style, outlining Honda’s response to the credit crunch and showcasing some models with massive savings. This moved away from the typical salesy marketing that a customer might be expecting, and towards a more open tone. We combined the copy with a clearly laid-out branded design and a personalised email subject line, and as a result achieved a click-through rate of almost 30% – smashing the industry average of between 5-10%.

These results show that the customers are still out there – it just takes a different approach to successfully connect with them now.