iCrossing Expands into Germany

Source: Earth Times - iCrossing (http://news.icrossing.com/), a global digital marketing company, announced today that it has acquired German digital marketing agency 3GNet GmbH.  The acquisition extends iCrossing’s leadership in the U.S. and U.K. into the pan-European market, further establishing the company’s global footprint and client base.  The terms of the deal are not being disclosed.

One of the longest established digital marketing providers in Germany, 3GNet provides natural and paid search marketing as well as affiliate marketing services to a number of global brands, including eBay and ESPRIT, as well as leading European brands Gortz, Allianz 24, HSE24, baby-walz and O2 Germany.

3GNet will continue to be led by founders Patrick Bertermann, Oliver Grunig, and managing director Gottfried Hauserer, who will report to Don Scales, president and COO, iCrossing. Headquartered in Munich with an additional office in Berlin, 3GNet will be transitioned to the iCrossing brand.

3GNet’s search and affiliate marketing expertise enhances iCrossing’s ability to serve its global clients — including The Coca-Cola Company and Toyota, among others.  The deal brings iCrossing’s headcount to 620 employees across 15 offices in the U.S. and Europe.

“3GNet has a track record of delivering excellent results for global brands in the European market,” said Jeffrey Herzog, founder and CEO, iCrossing. “Their understanding of the European search market, particularly in leveraging affiliates, as well as their technical expertise, makes them a perfect fit for iCrossing.”

“We were not only impressed with 3GNet’s capabilities in digital marketing,” said Don Scales, president and COO of iCrossing, “but also with the cultural similarities with iCrossing.  Their creativity and passion will serve us well in the European market.”

“iCrossing has become one of the largest independents in the world, and they have the right mix of people, technology and vision to continue that growth,” said Patrick Bertermann, co-founder of 3GNet. “We will draw upon their deep pool of expertise in the areas of search, social media and analytics to broaden our market among current and new clients in Europe.”

Car Rental, Education and Real Estate Traffic up in February

Source: comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR), a leader in measuring the digital world, today released its January rankings of the largest and fastest-growing Internet properties and site categories in Germany based on data from the comScore World Metrix audience measurement service. The month saw increases to travel, career, real estate and politics sites as German Internet users reflected on the year past and prepared for 2008. eBay, with 17.6 million unique visitors, grabbed the second position among all Web properties, trailing only Google Sites.

Top Gaining Site Categories for January 2008

* Excludes traffic from public

Top German Gaining Properties for December

comScore: Action experience retailer Jochen-Schweizer.de gained 63 percent to 1.6 million visitors, making it the top-gaining property for the month in Germany. Several other online retail sites saw significant gains, including Sony Online (up 32 percent to 2.7 million visitors), Weltbild Publishing Group (up 28 percent to 2.9 million visitors), idealo Internet (up 21 percent to nearly 3 million visitors), and Guenstiger.de (up 17 percent to 1.5 million visitors).

Online directory specialist Allesklar.com AG Sites increased 42 percent to 4.4 million visitors, while women’s community site, auFeminin.com Network jumped 18 percent to 2.3 million visitors.

*Ranking based on the top 100 German properties in December 2007.
** Excludes traffic from public computers such as Internet cafes or access from mobile phones or PDAs.

Top 10 Parent Companies - December 2007

Source: http://www.nielsen-netratings.com/press.jsp?section=pr_netv&nav=3

German Online Retail Traffic Leaders

Throughout the Christmas shopping season, visits to online retail sites in Germany were led by multi-channel catalogue specialist, Otto Gruppe, with a 13-percent share of the online retail visits for the period. Amazon Sites – also a popular choice in the U.K. and France – ranked second with a 9-percent share. Arcandor AG, owner of multi-channel catalogue specialist Karstadt.de, had a 5-percent share, followed by Apple, Inc with 4 percent, and 02online.de with 3 percent.  

*Average share of total visits to online retail sites by German visitors for the period Oct 29 – Dec 23, excluding auction sites ** Excludes traffic from public computers such as Internet cafes or access from mobile phones or PDAs

Five short Webanalytics Hints

Webanalytics is one of the most important parts of the online marketing business. Measure your success - but do you know hat your success is? Five short things to think about, when it comes to metrics

1. Define the goals of your website
   Think about the goals of your website. If you don´t have a goal you don´t need to improve. There are many different goals: shop want to to sell, or you can have branding goals for your products. Webanalytics doesn´t make sense without being absolutly clear about the goals you´re reaching for.
2. Decide by the numbers
   When you have defined your goals and you collect the data, look at the numbers and act. The easiest way is the set a basic rue set with the goals. For example: Goal is to improve your search engine rankings for specified keywords and your search engine traffic is lower as it was last month? Have a look which keywords are struggling exactly and try to optimize the specific page against the competitors.
3. Define Key Indicators
   Define your Key Performance Indicators (KPI) - and have a look at them regulary. Compare it in different timelines and have a look at the trends. Those few numbers will give you a quick inside of the health of your website. If a KPi does change rapidly - that´s normaly not a good sign.
4. Run tests
   As web analytics are an ongoing job, there will always be tests and measurements of the outcomings. Only if you try something new and look at the numbers afterwarts you can improve the quality of your website.
5. Look at the segments
   Have a look into your segmented data - which region does enter your website with which keywords? Are there any regional hotspots? Do women look at different things on your site as men do? These specified segment insights will help to improve the website experience for your customers.

Top 10 German Properties for October

Google was the most visited property in Germany, with 23.1 million unique visitors age 15 or older, reaching 69 percent of the total German Internet audience. It was followed by eBay which attracted 17.4 million unique visitors, a 52 percent reach. T-Online Sites and Yahoo! Sites were the fastest growing of the top ten properties in Germany, both growing their visitor base by 8 percent from September to October. T-Online attracted 13.8 million visitors while Yahoo! reached 12.1 million. Source: comScore.

* Excludes traffic from public computers such as Internet cafes or access from mobile phones or PDAs

Emailmarketing: Sender Reputation

The sender reputation is one of the most important factors to deliver your email. One the one hand, it is the reputation with the ISP, who decide which mails to deliver to their user´s inboxes. And on the other hand, it is the reputation with the recipients of your emails, which decide to open and click your emails or just mark it as spam.

But what does make your sender reputation? There are some indicators, which are used by the major ISPs to select the good from the bad mails:

1. Spam complaint rate: The most critical part of the process is the user himself. The more people complain about your emails, the more likely your emails will get blocked by the ISPs. The limit of complaints seems to be 1% - if you exceed this limit - you will have to face the ISP blocking all your emails.
2. Unknown user / Hard Bounce rate: Sending repeadidly to e-mail addresses that don´t exist, will cause the ISPs to have a closer look on your emailmarketing doings.
3. Spam traps: An old Emailadress that is inactive can be used by the providers to build a spam trap, because these email adresses won´t have signed into any subscriber list, and will show the providers that you have a bad customer acquisition tactic.

As we have seen the three elements to avoid (Don´ts), we can conclude the elements to build up a good reputation (Dos). Let´s have a closer look on them:

1. Permission practices: Always make sure that you collect the direct consent of the subscribers of your mailing listst. Best practise ist still the Double Optin for this.
2. Technical infrastructure: Use authentication like SIDF and DKIM, to build up a good technical reputation of your email marketing program.
3. Relevancy: Make sure that the email communication to the users always holds a specific benefit for them. And make sure you you send the users what you promised them, that they would sign up to.
4. Recognition: Always ensure that your emails identify where they’re coming from, to give the users the chance to buidl up a trust to your sending domain.
5. Mailing list cleaning: Immediatly react on unsubscribe requests and remove bounced e-mail addresses and aged, unresponsive e-mail addresses on a regular basis, so that you always send to an agil and active subscriber list..
6. Easy unsubscribe: Let users sign off easily, because if you make it too hard they will hit the spam button instead and your reputation will lower fast.

Further reading:

Three Metrics that Make Your E-mail Reputation
Your email sender reputation: the timing problem
E-Mail Reputation: An Important Factor in Restoring Trust
6 Steps to Higher Email Delivery Rates