This might help. The following quick screencast (less than minute to load, about 40-seconds run-time) shows you how easy it is to create tight segments based on your customer data. That means you can quickly create very specific segments based on real-time information (customer behavior, purchases, preferences, search, etc.) to inform content for campaigns via email, mobile, on your website and/or direct display advertising. See for yourself. http://www.knotice.com/power

It’s fairly obvious why a customer would want a company to use a compact privacy policy. But why would a company want to use one? The answer is simple – optimized performance. For example, let’s imagine a potential customer is visiting my web site. If that customer has her browser security settings set to high, and I haven’t implemented a compact privacy policy, all cookies will be blocked. However, if that user with the high security settings visits my site and I have a compact privacy policy in place, the cookies from my site would have been allowed, which would have enhanced my customer’s experience online, and my ability to interact with and target that customer. In fact, failure to include a compact privacy policy will prevent many users from even being able to login to a site.

As a web site provider, it’s vital to keep your compact privacy policy accurate and up to date. Plus, you have to be certain it stays in sync with your human readable privacy policy.

Generating a compact privacy is fairly easy thanks to online resources like P3P (Platform for Privacy Preferences Project) and http://www.p3pwriter.com. Here are some more P3P resources for further reading.

After using one of these online resources, you’ll get something that looks fairly unintelligible to you, but which will make perfect sense to your customer’s browser. For example, if the letters NOI appear in your policy, that means that your site does not collect identifiable information. On the other hand, if ALL appears, access is given to all identified information.

Have questions about compact privacy policy? Post them below!

Flash cookies can be a useful tool for Web and flash developers. In fact, about half of the Web’s busiest sites are now using them. However, there are currently five class-action lawsuits that involve some sneaky cookie tactics – stuff like “Zombie Cookies.” Great name, these Zombie cookies can re-spawn regular web cookies after users delete them – so after a user goes into their browser and deletes a regular browser cookie, that cookie can be recreated from the data that is stored in the Flash cookie.

But just like the whole “Web cookie” scare in the early days of the Web, not all Flash Cookies are evil. And because of their usefulness, they are not going away anytime soon. With a little education to the Web-browsing public, Flash Cookies can be reined in and managed.

Adobe has provided a settings panel to manage website storage and global storage

These tools allow you to set if and when flash cookies are stored. They also allow you to view and delete flash cookies set by specific websites.

So are Flash cookies an evil force that needs to be stopped? No.

Are they sometimes being used to do some questionable tactics that threaten your privacy? Yes.

These questionable tactics assume that people on the Web don’t know what Flash cookies are, and they don’t know how to remove or manage them. So with a little education and a little information, we can battle the shady side of Flash cookies and use them for good, not evil.

At first glance it may seem as though the email provider marketplace is developmentally stagnant. Most ESPs do the same stuff, so scalability and price become determining factors. The truth, however, is that good email software providers see the relatively stagnant feature development and jump at the opportunity. The result is that ESP shoppers must dig deeper when it comes to email vendor selection because the points of differentiation between ESPs are more subtle and precise than ever. The good news is that the benefits that may seem buried deep within a software platform are worth digging for because the difference they make is enormous.

As usual, with every direct digital marketing consideration, the story starts with data. While blast emails are simple to produce, execute, and measure, the data is vital for more targeted and triggered email programs where personalization should also be an important component. The data is where ESP shoppers should begin their line of questioning.

What most ESPs do a very poor job of is capturing data native to the platform. The superficial but important data points are all accounted for – like click through rate, etc. – but capturing and storing behavioral data natively to an email platform is where the next wave of functionality separates great email providers from the market standard.

An ESP that captures behavioral data gives the marketer many advantages, most of which are better suited for a series of follow up posts. One distinct advantage, however, is the ability to have prior knowledge and important behavioral information already in the database for a NEW email subscriber. Most ESPs begin gathering data – or marketers begin a series of complex data appends – once a subscriber signs up. When the ESP captures behavioral data natively, a host of important and defining information is already stored within that subscriber’s profile. That makes targeted email marketing possible out of the gate, instead of weeks to months of data gathering and analysis before assigning a subscriber to a series of lists.

Are you shopping for an email provider now? If so, how high on your list is data management?

Marketers with decades of experience are extremely valuable. In fact, these types of marketers are usually brilliant, understand the consumer very well, and often carry a great deal of influence. They are a necessary influence to any type of marketer at any age or stage in a career. But sometimes these types of marketers can be particularly susceptible to stagnant thinking and outdated ideation. The danger to improving marketing is self-evident. A great deal of influence, but outdated thinking, is a danger to advancing marketing and critical business thinking. A combination of traditional and new influences is absolutely crucial to success. In short, a professional influence audit makes sense for everyone.

The fresh perspective and a new way of thinking is an important element of the influence equation, too, because it helps soften the transition to a new marketing world where accountability and measurement are prominent – and mandatory. Traditional marketers with a great deal of experience in traditional communications channels and mass marketing can, at times, find the idea of direct and immediate accountability a bit frightening. And, who can blame them? But, the mindset of the market has changed and is still changing. Budgets are shrinking while performance demands are expanding. A fresh perspective is vital to ease the transition.

Part of my recent influence audit added two more important perspectives to my learning arsenal. The first is former USA Today technology columnist turned author Kevin Maney, whose recent book, Trade-Off, teaches the value of seeing products through the prism of a trade-off between convenience and fidelity. The cross-section of products Maney gives perspective on spans every type of marketing. Another recent influence is David Meerman Scott, author of The New Rules of Marketing & PR. He brings together myriad new ways of approaching traditional challenges, and methods for tackling the ever-changing environment of online content distribution and consumption. For me, this is part of the fresh perspective I need to push my limits.

Who influences your marketing thinking? Do you have a combination of positive influences from both ends of the career continuum? Do you perform a professional influence audit?

So, with the expectations set sky high, comScore released the final sales figures from 2009’s version of Cyber Monday. While the final figures fell short of the lofty six percent projection, the good news is that the numbers were not that far off. Cyber Monday netted $887M, a five percent increase over 2008. Does that mean the economy and the consumer’s perception of spending this holiday season is reflected in the final numbers? Only in part.

In preparation for what the entire retail industry expected to be a tough selling season, a good deal was very easy to find on the first day back to work after the Thanksgiving holiday break. While average spending per consumer was down by more than a dollar, the average order size was still above $100, at $102.19 to be exact.

The number of shoppers booting up to shop increased by six percent to a total of 8.7M. As a result, the online retail industry also has solid growth upon which to build. Since more consumers turned to the convenience and deals online this Cyber Monday, 2010’s forecast is improved.

Interestingly, more than half America’s work computers were occupied with shopping on Cyber Monday – up nearly two and a half percent from last year. The biggest drop in spending came from international computers, with a reduction in orders at 1.3 percent.

While the rosiest of projections was not what ultimately played out on Cyber Monday in 2009, key indicators like the drop off in purchases from international computers and the nearly flat average order size create optimism about the remainder of the holiday season and 2010. The sound you hear is the collective sigh of relief from online retailers.

The lesson is that Cyber Monday was positive for retailers and for solution providers. The confidence from strong consumer buying numbers helps drive business-to-business buying confidence, too.

The next set of numbers I would like to analyze? The loss of production during Cyber Monday compared with the loss of production during the first day of the NCAA Men’s Basketball tournament each March!

The questions are: Why are carts being abandoned, and how do we, as marketers, get shoppers to come back? Here is the good news – nearly 65 percent of online shoppers end up coming back to complete their purchase. But, what about the remaining 35 percent of shoppers that have abandoned their carts and are nowhere to be seen? Where have they gone, and is there anything we can do to get them back?

First, let’s face one fact – some shoppers simply do not intend to make a purchase and are just browsing. However, many shoppers are likely comparison shopping and have not yet made a decision as to where or when to buy. Perhaps they are searching the internet, looking for a better deal or a coupon. Meanwhile, their cart sits abandoned in an online store. Before restocking the online shelf, let’s consider some options for bringing those shoppers back into the fold.

As a shopper, here is what I like or would like to see more of.

First and most important… notice I’m gone. Send me an email reminding me I’ve not yet made a purchase. Sweeten the deal. Offer me a coupon. Better yet, offer me free shipping!! I often struggle with the shipping fee, especially when I know there is the option of visiting the bricks-and-mortar store. Even though I much prefer shopping online, the shipping fee often leads me to abandon my cart. Yes, guilty as charged. I have lots of abandoned carts in the Internet world. So many that I’ve forgotten! And, in most cases, the company has done nothing to bring me back. Such missed opportunity.

Second, when I return to your website, make sure my shopping cart is still there. Do NOT make me re-shop. I do not want to do that.

Third, before I leave your website, offer me the opportunity to have my shopping cart either emailed or texted to me. Maybe even a reminder text in a few days that I’ve still got some shopping to do. In a few days I may either return online to complete my purchase (with my free shipping promotional code) or end up in your bricks-and-mortar store and have the items selected right there on my mobile phone to help me quickly and easily complete my purchase.

The opportunities are there. Marketers just have to take advantage of them with smart direct digital marketing strategies.

A recent report from Forrester Research uncovered some interesting statistical nuggets. First, only 32 percent of marketers have an understanding of what their customers do across channels. Channel silos in internal marketing organizations not only fracture effective communications across various channels, silos make the marketer’s job much more difficult. Not only is a lack of message relevance and message redundancy a reality, but consumers become frustrated with brands that fail to understand how they browse and buy. Marketing silos are a fast track to customer attrition.

The other interesting statistic that demonstrates the same internal disconnect amongst the vast majority of marketing organizations is the 37 percent of marketers that actually do know how their customers prefer to receive communications. So, if a customer prefers to receive communications via mobile, or only email, or both, most marketers have no clue. Given that the technology exists to create customer/marketing databases solely for the purpose of better understanding and communicating, what is the hold up?

Well, Knotice’s Director Strategic Services – Bryce Marshall – was recently featured in Chief Marketer on the topic of relevance in marketing communications. He details some effective approaches that circumvent the natural silos that develop within internal marketing organizations as online marketing has evolved over the past 15-20 years. The article is a good read as he provides specifics on how to build relevance into an overall marketing strategy in an incremental way. There are myriad barriers to relevance, created primarily by the natural evolution of digital marketing. The established barriers are not going away through one department realignment or new software partnership. Incremental strategic relevance is the key to unlocking better relationships with customers.

Here is one last statistic that fully demonstrates the barriers to better customer communication. While 80 percent of marketers pay lip service to the value of customer preferences, only 12 percent of marketers actually ask their customers basic questions like the frequency they prefer to receive email at. Twelve percent!

Opportunity for customer relationship development – the kind that translates into real incremental revenue – exists. Now it is up to marketers to make it happen.

The marketer must understand first how to get customers and prospects to opt-in, how to enable easy subscription management for them, how to manage the hundreds or thousands of different “events” (e.g. a new sale, a new product, a concert, a spa discount at a resort, etc.) available to customers, and how to manage versioned messaging and creative to satisfy the requirements for each event AND each segment. If every one of those questions is appropriately answered, then the marketer must figure out how to manage the complexity of each of the events and segments against the actual multi-channel delivery of the communications. Shew!

The end result? Few marketers are doing event based multi-channel communications… even though it has become more accessible and far easier than it used be. Satisfying all of those requirements is difficult because of the expense required for implementation (read: partnering with several different online marketing companies, then integrating their solutions) and the difficulties encountered when trying to manage a complex project (read: hiring the required number of experts to manage each of the new relationships). Fortunately, much of the overhead and inconvenience that plague marketers when it comes to event based multi-channel communications has been eliminated with direct digital marketing.

A primary advantage of good direct digital marketing software is the ability to manage the customer profile information, the versioned content and creative necessary for delivering a relevant experience for all customers, and the program execution and message delivery through multiple channels. The power of direct digital marketing is found in the balance of customer relevance and multi-channel message delivery.

Check out this screencast that demonstrates how easy it is to setup and execute event-triggered email and mobile communications across two of the three primary direct digital marketing channels.

Here is a question to ponder: What marketing strategies and tactics have you ruled out because they are too difficult to execute or cost too much?

Forrester Research’s Vice President and Principle Analyst, Shar VanBoskirk, sees the uncertain economy as a prime opportunity to overcome what she terms as marketer’s “common aversion toward innovation” in her new report entitled, “Accessible Innovation (subscription or purchase required).”

VanBoskirk reinforces the notion that all good marketers live by – the idea that marketers should be the driving force behind innovation in any organization. Opportunities to drive innovation are especially prevalent in the digital space.

The best example of a marketing channel innovation right now is mobile marketing (in case you missed mobile expert Bryce Marshall’s three part series entitled Making Sense of Mobile, you can check it out here). The board room inclination to use direct digital marketing communications solely for conversions is the surest way for the CMO to protect their tenuous position. However, using mobile technology to invest in loyalty programs that improve not just the consumer experience but also the consumer perception are valuable and well worth the investment. When the economy improves – and there are indications that it is beginning to – the consumers that have strong brand perception will help revive sales.

Mobile marketing programs are cost effective and simple to begin. Leverging the technology and the personal nature of the communications channel, is a great way to improve consumer engagement right now. The better a consumer’s perception of a brand when the economy is down, the more likely that brand is to be in the consideration set when the economy improves and the padlock comes off the wallet.