Alex Baar | International Digital Marketing | E-commerce

A demosite has been made to demonstrate the consequences for consumer's surf experiences when the new amendment on cookies and storing technologies that has been adepted by the Dutch parliament at the 22nd of june will get into force. In this proposal cookies are set as "personal data" and by making it personal data, it will most likely be necessary to register for a lot of websites before you can visit them. This law still has to be accepted by the Dutch senate. The demosite is an example of a fictive news website that has some third party services integrated, as most big (e-commerce) websites have nowadays. Further information about Directive 95/46/EC Directive 2009/136/EC <more information follows>

A short list of some nice interactive social facebook virals. Virals where you play with brands and share brand experiences with friends. These interactive advertisements can all be played with a facebook login. Jameson Whiskey A real nice Facebook Viral game , I just ran into (altough it is not completely new). It is a big puzzle. A barrel of Jameson Whiskey is missing in the 1780's in Dublin and one of your friends stole it! Discover which of your friends stole the whiskey! I really like it because this game is not only using pictures from your friends, but also works with interests, previous facebook posts and even with small games inside. The only thing that would make it more nice, if they made they could connect choices made in the game to personal information, so a follow up campaign can be started. Just visit the site ! Obermutten Simple, low budget facebook promotion in Obermutten (population 78) results in even more facebook fans then one of the wo...

Behavioral economics is really interesting. How to use social, cognitive and emotional factors to influence economic decisions or user behaviour.  Especially the social factors are more and more important since the web is getting "social". But also from a design and marketing point of view, this is really interesting. At this page I will collect presentations, information and I will write short articles about behavioral economics. Dan Ariely gives a nice presentation about our decisions and how our brains work. "Behavorial economics". Interesting for developing (e-commerce) tests and promotions. Adding options that "nobody wants", can influence choices! Dan Ariely shows this example with a test in the economist. Adding options that nobody wants can influence choices Removing the option nobody wants shifts the results Watch his whole story here: Design for conversion. Small things can hav...

Nice slideshare presentation (167 slides) with Social Media Facts, all around the world. Social media around the world 2011 View more presentations from steven van belleghem

Sometimes people say that Europe is fragmented. I know it is. But  Asia is truly amazing. More then 2000 spoken languages, from extreme wealth to poverty, from democracies to authoritarian governments. That's fragmentation . From a communication/marketing perspective, this is really interesting. Each market has it's own characteristics, demographics, infrastructure and social context. But above that, almost all markets will continue to grow rapidly.  This combined makes it really interesting for me to learn and investigate about the online possibilities in the Asia-Pacific region and to learn about campaigns that are developed or changed to local legislation, habits, communication etc. Ecommerce in South Korea South Korea! A country that is really high on my "visit" list. Hopefully this summer. But it is also the country that has the fastest internet connections in the world. Up to 200 times faster then connections in the USA, and that also cheaper. South...

Marketingsherpa has a few nice email marketing case study's described . Jet Blue  started with a kind of abandoned card campaign. But unlike many others they were very careful by doing so. Good job that they identified four different drop off reasons at which they reacted by use of e-mail. In their case: Flight selection - after selecting departure and destination cities in a search for flights, the visitor was given a list of specific flights to choose from.  Seat selection - after choosing flights, visitors were asked to select their seats on this screen. Ancillary - this page offered additional services such as car rental and hotel rooms in the destination city. Payment - this page collected the visitor's credit card information and finalized the sale.  It was a great succes. According to MarketingSherpa, the emails generated a 1,640% increase in revenue per email delivered as compared to JetBlue's standard promotional emails.  Stran...

The UK government plans to make an end to the excessive credit card surcharges that currently have to be paid (mostly by airlines or travel websites), much earlier then expected. It is now planned for the end of 2012. The office of fair trading , released a report in June about how the travel industry uses this credit card surcharges. The government of the United Kingdom, now has plans to make an end to these excessive credit card surcharges much earlier then mid 2014 (when EU rules will be implemented). Most likely much earlier companies in the UK can only charge the actual cost of processing card payments to the consumers. Usually only 1 or 2 per cent of the total price. So not the 17 pounds Air Berlin charges at the moment.

Airports and Airlines have to go hand in hand in a lot of cases, especially in this online age. If I take a long haul flight with a stop over, I always also take a look at airport reviews. Simply because you want to know where you stay for a few hours (or if anything goes wrong, for maybe one or two days). Therefore it still surprises me that this is not integrated in a lot of booking processes or that airports do not seem to care much about negative reviews at the web. Let's take a look at Dubai Airport , the airport from Emirates. Emirates has a lot of stopovers at Dubai Airport. Look at the results of the search query "Dubai Airport Review" Good thing is that they have 122 Google Reviews (scraped from the internet). But, of course first I click, not at the airport's own website but at the one that says " customer reviews ". It seems independent. If I do, I will see this: Negative Reviews Dubai Airport  The first few reviews are negat...

Ryanair ....not all people like the airline, but they are doing a nice (online) marketing job if you look it from their perspective. It is thinking in a different way, not the standard brand awareness, viral's and GRP's or the standard social approach. They produce emails and advertisements without agency's so very cheap, but also they make them fun. And "fun" works. Just like in the online world. Fun goes viral = reach. However how is Ryanair going to stand in these web 3.0. times? The times where people expect webcare, and the use of twitter or facebook? I think they will do fine, as long as their prices continue to be low. As long as it is possible to fly around Europe for an average of 50 euro's people will keep on flying Ryanair. They can do a much better job, I think, by at least use social sharing buttons at their website (I think the low fares will be shared massive) and also implement these buttons in their e-mails and  by making more fun , vir...

Usability and UX mini-checklist As short summary of important usability and interaction design checks, including links to (online) tools for usability testing. 1) Give "more" signup and signin options. Think of OpenID, but also the very popular Facebook login. It's simple: the easier it is, the more users you will get. Use one page where you can sign up and login. Give people a choice, between Facebook Connect, OpenID, your own registration module etc. Lonely Planet uses Facebook Connect 2) Show your social sharing and like buttons and also how many people liked or shared. It's a great way to gain trust among your visitors. 3) Take a good look at your internal search engine. The results are important, but don't forget to make an excellent page for when the search query is not found. People do not want an "error" page. Give them options. Boots search result page Boots here above, can do a much better job. Either by working with ...

Infographic: How Google killed the long tail strategy Infographic: SEO, the pyramid of needs Keep in mind that social media signals are rapid increasingly more important. The pyramid is not finished at the top. It is a continuous loop. Campaigns evolve. Infographic: content is fuel for SEO. 

The Responsys E-mail Design Look Book 2011. An interactive PDF full of inspiring e-mail marketing examples. Download the book here .

My own email marketing checklist . An excel file with a tab "checklist", a tab "goals" and a tab to copy and archive the newsletter. The excel file is devided in sub checks, like personalisation, general settings, tracking etc. Use a new checklist for each test you are going to do. Screenshot checklist

Some e-commerce and internet marketing quotes "People become brands and brands become people" -  Brian Solis, Bazaarvoice "The new currency of advertising is the voice of the customer" "Your online identity is determined not only by what you post, but also by what others post about you – wheter a mention in a blog post, a photo tag or a reply to a public status update" – Google "Zappo's.com is a service company, that happens to sell shoes" - Tony Hseih "In five years, the idea of broadcast will be gone" - Tim Kring "Best Buy’s messages has to be where people are. Today, that means being on social networks." - Brian J. Dunn - CEO Best Buy “Social Media is about sociology and psychology more than technology.” – Brain Solis Principal of FutureWorks  “Social networks aren’t about Web sites. They’re about experiences.” – Mike DiLorenzo, NHL social media marketing director ‘Ultimately, brands need to have a r...

Hoi An, Vietnam I visited Vietnam a few times and I really like the country. It is amazing how this country is developing. You can feel the vibes when you are walking in the streets of Ho Chi Minh City. Vietnam's internet usage grows very rapidly especially compared to the region. Vietnam has experienced the fastest growth in internet penetration in the region. Vietnam has or will very soon catch up with China and Thailand in terms of internet use. Vietnam has a population of 90,549,390 and has 28,625,393 internet users (may 2011). This is 31.6 % penetration. Facebook access is still sometimes difficult in Vietnam, when I was in Vietnam late june this year, I could still not have access to Facebook everywhere. But the amount of users, using Facebook is increasing extremely rapidly. So I guess the limitations are getting less and less.The last three months there was a 50%!! increase of Vietnamese Facebook users! This ranks Vietnam at number 4 of the incre...

Online marketing is great. It can be effectively done from everywhere around the globe. But local (language) knowledge gets more and more important. When you are active in bigger organisations with branches around the globe or when you want to start exporting to other countries, it is important to know how effective your campaigns will be and how much local knowledge you need. I created this graph to give more information. However realize that the graphic below it is not valid for every branch. Especially the effectiveness depends on your KPI's. International digital marketing effectiveness (central vs decentral) Online Banner campaigns: саn реrfесtƖу bе done without specific local knowledge οr offices abroad. It іѕ simple tο bυу ad space nowadays, аnԁ уου саn rυn a perfect effective campaign using banners іn a country abroad frοm уουr οwn office. Email Marketing:  E-mail marketing service providers have great tools nowadays that can be setup from one spot a...

The first DHL Global Connectedness Index was released last week. It gives a detailed country-by-country analysis of the flows that connect the world. The calculation consists of the following types of flows: merchandise trade, services trade, foreign direct investment, portfolio, equity investment, international telephone calls, international internet bandwith, international trade in prined publications, international tourism, international education and international migration. Interesting set of reports with details about 125 countries across the world. Details can be found and downloaded here .

Some pictures that I used in presentations or can use in the future. Some made by myself some found on the internet. Reviews and comments are there for a real long time! So make a good review plan and a good customer contact strategy! E-mail marketing effectiveness Ikea emotioncurve. The last customer contact is very important Klantcontact in de bedrijfsprocessen Superambassadors for your brand! Use them! Think multichannel European search engine optimization Give a reason to become a fan Multichannel: offline vs online Make complainers ambassadors Deliverability is an important part of direct mail but also e-mail Error pages, like 404 error pages, cannot be just an image or plain text page. Make it interactive. The broadcast period is over! Welcome poster when I entered a Japanese Ramen in Bangkok Interactive Twitter wall Dutch Railways at Utrecht Central Station (NS...