BI Revolution

Excellent Slideshare on the curation and marketing. 

Segments Plus

We Internet marketers work hard to create personas and segments. I think of personas as ABOUT THEM and segments as ABOUT US. Personas classify customers into banded archetypes. Segments group based on internal metric similarity such as "VIPs", "Multi-Buyers" and Recency Frequency and Monetary groups.

If those segments sound like direct marketing it is because DMers are masters of segmenting. The seesaw is to balance personas or how to talk to THEM in relevant ways with segments or how to make sure the way you speak to THEM is also profitable for YOU.

Segments are internal ideas. You can't segment customers who don't visit your website become a customer (in some way). UNTIL NOW, Facebook's new tool says EXTEND your segments into our data. Cool idea since chances of converting are increased significantly if you already KNOW the segment.

This is because not all segments are equal. If Facbook can identify those potential customers most likely to become multi-buyers that information is VALUABLE.

The value of extending a winning message, offer or design to potential customers who should be positively disposed to any of those things is similar to the way catalog merchants cross index lists. Cool that Facebook has created "lookalike audiences" and should be worth a few bucks to marketers who can extend their segments into the great unknown that seems less unknowable now.

Linked: How Everything Is Connected To Everything Else
Barabasi's book is a more important read than is portrayed here. There are key concepts for every Internet marketer. First let's discuss the 6 degree rule.

In the experiment that found the six degrees a psychology professor asked a student to get a letter to someone he didn't know in Boston via loose connections. The letter moved across the country in six steps all right, but the key piece of information is many of the routes went through a handful of uber-connectors.

We all know "uber-connectors"; those with loose connections may number in the tens of thousands. This idea became the basis for the 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon game. Turns out every actor or actress have worked with someone who has worked with someone who has worked with Kevin Bacon within 6 loose connections.

Here again the same "uber-connectors" showed up. If you read Barabasi's Linked, and I strongly recommend it to any Internet marketer, you will discover concepts that explain these "uber-connectors" or "Hubs". Barabasi believes any content network will "hub up". The destiny of any content network is to create uber-connector hubs.

Amazon is a hub. Amazon may be the hub of hubs. Within every business segment there is an "uber-connector" or Hub that is hard to displace. Hard to displace because once "hub-ness" is attained it is self-perpetuating based on Barabasi’s "rich get richer" concept.

The "compound interest" of content networks is the links that carry influence (Klout). Hubs or "uber-connectors" work less to gain and/or maintain these advantages than their competition must work to gain them.

The "rich get richer" inherent (meaning mathematically determined) nature of content networks is why every website wants to achieve "authority" status. Authority websites accrue more and more faster and faster even as they do les and less. Let's call this new idea the Authority = More, Faster, Less rule.

Can Amazon Succed Where Others Failed
Not a month after comScore comes out with their "over/under" report showing verticals such as grocery and health care where underpenetrated by the Internet Amazon opens up an old wound. 

You may not remember PeaPod from back in the bubble days, but others have attempted to solve the grocery dilemma. All previous efforts have been hoisted on the petard of "local delivery". 

Local delivery is a logistical killer. Think about it. The last time I went to my Super Target I purchased 20 items for a little over $100. With an Average Order Value of $100 you would have to add a hefty shipping charge. 

Problem is my Super Target is almost across the street from my house, so any hefty delivery charge seems a foolish waste of money. Funny how human psychology is because we don't hesitate to pay as much as 100% markup on our pizza to have them delivered. 

If Amazon can bring our minds around to the pizza zone they win. The pizza zone is about:

* Being lazy.

* Not wanting to go OUT (to cold, too crowded, whatever).

* Too busy (when I am on deadline it is hard to remember to dress and shower much less cook a meal). 

* Too boring (I started selling P&G soap in Wegman's in upstate New York and HATE going to the grocery store). 

* Not Fun - shopping is the 3rd circle of HELL for many (me included). 

Subscription & Mobile To The Rescue
I think there is a mobile enabled subscription play here. Schwan's has proven home delivery can work. Schwan's limitation is they ONLY sell frozen food. Will we trust someone else to pick our bananas and lettuce? Maybe if they create a creative approach (maybe we get a chance to see what fresh produce they are selecting via an app). 

The other way Amazon could resurrect the RIP PeaPod local delivery is to be creative about the money. If I can JOIN and earn social status and points, contribute input and be SOCIAL then grocery shopping is FUN and worth the surcharge. 

If anyone can do it Amazon can AND pushing more through their expanded distribution centers only lowers their fixed costs. Amazon is all about the arbitrage so Amazon Groceries could happen and could work.  

AGREE Email Marketing Is King
Sure email marketing is under attack from the mobile troops, but as Arthur Huges (http://www.dbmarketing.com/) points out in HBR, Email still rocks profits, engagement and awareness. 

Email Marketing Still King on HBR
http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/08/why_email_marketing_is_king.html 

How Tos of An Enterprise Content Marketing Strategy
This article is a little on the dry side for my taste. Dry doesn't mean it is inaccurate. As content marketing becomes an enterpise idea we are seeing a trend of posts about how to control it, how to scheudle greatness. 

Good luck with that. I agree with the concept of thinking strategically about content marketing even as I know the best way to make it pay is to do it, to love sharing your most important and intimate truths.

Sure there is a role for caution and careful planning, but make sure you don't squeeze out the juice you try to drink. Leave some room for "magic happens here" and adopt some of these ideas. Remember you get better at anything BY DOING IT and you become great only when you risk real things, things that can be LOST and can hurt in their losing. 

We are going to see a lot of these kinds of trends analysis and I'm interested in them all since you never know who will turn over a rock and find a diamond.