My route here has been pretty varied – over the last decade I have worked in Spanish hotel entertainment, retail, hospitality, web content marketing and even a stint as a football commentator on Tenerife. My desire to begin a marketing focused career has lead me to Aspect, and in the last few months I have learned a lot about the industry thanks to a great deal of hands on experience and constantly badgering my colleagues for information.

In my spare time I subject myself to watching Liverpool lose football matches all across Europe, as well as writing, laughing at things other people fail to see the humour in and eating pie. Occasionally I will enter the local gym, where I hang around in the steam room for 20 minutes before convincing myself I have worked out hard enough to go home and have a bit of a sit down. My dream was to learn to fly, until one day I forgot to close the door properly and it popped open at 2,000 feet – since then I haven’t really fancied going back up.

Hello. My name is Martyn, and I am completely new to marketing apart from a few marketing modules in my degree.  I have been working in the insurance industry since 2004.

I started working at Marsh Insurance brokers, the world’s No. 1 insurance broker where I had two client account (fiduciary) roles, first in UK Retail for 2 years and then in wholesale group accounts. This gave me great experience in dealing with all kinds of companies here in the UK and from all round the world as well as brokers and account/client executives within Marsh.

After 4 years I went to another insurance giant, Aviva, as a client manager which meant working on the Barclays Finer (High Net Worth) contract in the service department. On a daily basis I was dealing with client queries and underwriting household insurance. The underwriting was varied and challenging however I was unable to develop as I would have liked so after 2 good years headed back to a Senior Accounts Technician position at Capita (Marsh has outsourced its fiduciary operations to Capita). As a senior accounts technician I was given some very challenging accounts in my portfolio for example South Korean Clients and middle east clients where I really had to muck in to complete tasks.

I eventually decided to leave insurance and the opportunity arose for me to join Aspect Web Media. The change of scenery and pace has been great so far and I’ve got plenty to learn so I’m really looking forward to the coming months.

I now have to cycle to work which is great for fitness and also play a fair bit of football. During my younger days in high school and 6^th Form I travelled to Sweden twice to play in the Aros Cup in Vasteras and the USA to play in the USA Cup in Minneapolis and the Dallas Cup (players who featured in this prestigious tournament, Dallas Cup XX,  include Wayne Rooney, Landon Donovan, Robinho, Peter Crouch…. the list goes on…. Not sure how I got there!!)

You can contact Martyn to find out more about how he and Aspect Web Media can help your business to grow.

My name is Scott, I’ve been working in Digital Media for the past 2 and a bit years.

I graduated in 2009 with a Graphic Communications degree after which I started Freelancing  for a year. After that I started work as a Junior Project Manager and Technical Developer for a Digital Outsourcing company based in Norwich and London, I got to manage and work on worldwide brands and with national advertising agencies.

In my spare time I enjoy training at CrossFit Norwich [which involves Olympic lifting and Gymnastics performed at high intensity] and I also do my bit of running.

My dream would be to visit Los Angeles and I’m saving up every penny for that to happen!

I’ve been at Aspect for a while now and I have learnt loads, from optimising HTML to building my own HTML email from scratch. I also dip into the design every now and again which is always fun.

To find out more about Scott, why not give him a follow on Twitter.

Presided over by comedian, Miles Jupp, this year’s Awards took place at The Grosvenor House Hotel in Mayfair and were attended by more than 800 people from across the performance marketing industry. Formerly known as the A4U Awards, the event has re-branded itself this year as the Performance Marketing Awards to encompass a wider range of marketing categories than just the affiliate sector. This allowed entrants from areas including social media, mobile, email, search and display. This and the introduction of several new categories resulted in a record number of entries!  Over 30 winners scooped up awards in areas such as Best Use of Data, Best Lead Generation, and Best Use of Email.

Following a Champagne Reception and photo opportunity from the balcony overlooking the main venue, guests settled at their tables for the main event.  Following a speach from A4U’s Matthew Wood, Miles Jupp took to the stage to unleash his affiliate mareting repertoire whilst the guests began a delicious 3 course meal.

Aspect sponsored two awards on the night, and no sooner had the starters been cleared from the table than Managing Director, Jonathan Erwin, was invited to present the award for Best Lead Generation Campaign to winners Arena Media for Red Instructor Training and Aspect’s Chairman, Steve Whatley was next up to practice his presenting skills, handing the Best Use of Email award to Vouchercodes.co.uk for The Body Shop.

Other lucky winners included 7thingsmedia for Best Agency; NHS Blood and Transplant for Best use of Social Media; Criteo for Best Consumer Targeting and Trade Doubler became the first network to take the Publishers’ Choice of Network award from five-time winners, Affiliate Window.

With the formalities over, the celebrations began! Guests enjoyed their dessert and the occasional glass of wine before preparations were underway for the spectacle that is Rockaoke (that is live band karaoke for the uninitiated) and festivities continued into the night.  The Performance marketing awards brings affiliates, merchants, agencies and networks together and so often proves a fantastic networking opportunity in a relaxed environment.

All in all a good time was had by all, particularly the winners, though there were almost certainly a good number of sore heads on Wednesday morning.

In 2011 we achieved significant success on this campaign and a decision was taken in March 2012 to ensure that we were well prepared ahead of the race on 14th April. The team analysed the performance from April 2011 to ascertain what had worked especially well and most importantly, when it had worked. The focus for this year was to achieve a 100% increase in sales delivered the year previous, whilst spreading the risk where possible. Last year, 74% of all volume delivered by Aspect Web Media originated from the day of the race.

During the weeks prior to the Grand National we spoke with many publishers and data owners with a view to acquiring access to a large number of email records at a cost effective CPM. This was essential considering that any revenue generated by Aspect would be via a CPA and so would pose a risk. We selected a mix of data partners to offer exposure via CPA, CPM and CPO coupled with regular email broadcasts to our internal data base, starting on the Thursday and gradually building to the morning of the race when most of the sales would be expected. Knowing that hitting an inbox on Saturday would already give a high probability of success, we chose publishers who could also offer a route to prospective customers on the Thursday and Friday to help spread the risk and increase overall sales volume.Over Thursday and Friday we executed a number of email broadcasts, applying the logic that the end of week wind down plus likelihood of office sweepstakes would generate interest in the campaign.  This approach, along with the beginning of our in house promotion and CPM buys increased the return for Friday compared to what was seen in the previous year (26% vs 25%), yielding more than 900 sales – over 60% of the total volume delivered last year.

On the day of the race itself, all publishers were advised to apply maximum effort and combined with a successful in house campaign a further 1900 sales were delivered taking the total over three days to over 2800.  On average there were just over 3 sales per minute from our top performers between 8am and the beginning of the race; with the busiest period between 1pm-1:30pm (9% of all volume) and half of all sales generated coming between 11am and 1:30pm at a rate of almost 4.5 per minute. In 2012 not only did we reduce the emphasis on volume from Saturday (down from 74% to 68%) but total volume for the three day period was just short of double what was seen before – an increase of 99.3% on 2011.

]]> http://www.aspectwebmedia.com/blog/programmes/planning-prevents-poor-performance/feed/ 0 http://www.aspectwebmedia.com/blog/industry-events/aspect-web-media-sponsors-performance-marketing-awards/ http://www.aspectwebmedia.com/blog/industry-events/aspect-web-media-sponsors-performance-marketing-awards/#comments Fri, 30 Mar 2012 17:40:50 +0000 admin http://www.aspectwebmedia.com/?p=349 It is with great pleasure that we can announce our involvement in the forthcoming Performance Marketing Awards.

Aspect Web Media are the official sponsor of the “Best Lead Generation Campaign” and “Best Use of Email” categories at the annual event, taking place on 15th May at the Grosvenor Hotel in London.

Speaking earlier this week, Managing Director Jonathan Erwin explained the decision to become more closely involved with the awards.

“Aspect Web Media has been on the cutting edge of direct response marketing for 3 years now and I felt it was time to let everyone know about it. For us the Performance Marketing Awards is a great opportunity to network with top industry talent as well as strengthen existing relationships. We chose to sponsor the Best Lead Generation Campaign and Best Use of Email because it is important for us to raise awareness about how effective lead generation and email marketing are in creating lasting value for advertisers.”

Shortlisted for the Best Lead Generation Campaign are:

• 7thingsmedia for Secret Sales
• Arena Media for RED Instructor Training
• iProspect for Acuvue
• Mindshare for Mazda
• Valueclick Media for Canderel

The shortlist for the Best Use of Email category are:

• Aimia for Nectar
• Azam Marketing
• Freemax Media & iProspect for Aunt Bessies
• Freemax Media for Broadband Genie
• SaleCycle
• Vouchercodes.co.uk for The Body Shop

Please join us in wishing all nominees for the awards the very best of luck.

For the latest Aspect Web Media news, why not follow us on Twitter or “like” our brand new Facebook page.

Despite the dramatic growth in internet marketing, many companies still use outdated tools for validating information in their databases. They still use the traditional tools like PAF validation  to check postal addresses or rely on fuzzy logic and simple algorithms to check the accuracy of email addresses and phone numbers. Unsurprisingly these tools can leave you with false positive rates of up to 11% as well as other inaccuracies and omissions.

For example, we recently used our new Pure List email database screening service to clean a file containing 1.2 million active consumer email addresses. We discovered 157,373 potential threats, 24,570 known complainers and 2,602 bounces. The list was consequently reduced by 15% and this contributed to a reduction in potential deliverability issues with major ISPs such as Hotmail or Yahoo.

Clearly it’s important for companies to be confident that their databases contain a high proportion of valid email addresses. The reasons why are numerous but principally include reduced strain on IT resources such as storage and bandwidth consumption as well as costs savings from not delivering to duplicate, invalid or dangerous email addresses. Many marketing managers we speak to agree good email data hygiene makes the difference to avoiding damage to their ISP reputation and thus email delivery.

A new breed of sophisticated tools keep you safe

Traditional data hygiene tools are simply too limited in their capacity to clean data properly and have not kept pace with the growth and sophistication of the internet marketing industry. There is now a new generation of tools which not only do more they enable you to, for example, distinguish between hard and soft bounces. This means you can tell whether an email address really exists or if it is returning an automated response such as an ‘out of office’ message meaning it is still valid.

Importantly these new tools also remove threats in the email database such as serial ‘complainers’, spam traps, honeypots, seeds and click bots – so your reputation with your ISPs remains intact.

Validate before rather than after

Companies should look at the value of validating data from a data capture form (‘front end validation’) as opposed to the more traditional method of validating data once it is in the customer database (‘back end validation’).

We recently compared 500 ‘back end’ leads from a well known lead generation company employing online coregistration surveys to a similarly sized sample of ‘front end’ leads from our own coregistration survey. The back end leads yielded nine (9) customers who went on to buy from one of our clients indicating a lead to sale conversion rate of 1.8%. Whereas the front end leads yielded twenty-four (24) customers who went on to buy from the same client. With a lead to sale conversion rate of 7.6% we had effectively quadrupled the conversion rate for our client.

We note that companies often use back end validation to clean data because it is seemingly easier to collect leads from an online form this way. However, whilst implementing front end validation adds a small amount of extra cost the benefits far outweigh the costs as evidenced by the quality of leads being produced for our client.

Don’t use it? Lose it!

Missing data; stale or inactive files; enterprise silo data; inaccurate data entry – all of these “sins” can creep into a  database and wear down the success of prospect and customer engagement initiatives. Regularly cleaning customer databases to root out old data is essential to retaining existing customers.

The process of appending is an effective means of removing old data. It works by comparing the information of two opt in databases to consolidate recent, up-to-date information. In other words, if the databases contain information on the same customer, it is possible to flag out of date information and replace it. Although appending is not a new concept, this technique is being employed in more advanced ways such as with the inclusion of behavioural data and is particularly effective when performed with data protection laws in mind.

Of course we shouldn’t underestimate the value of keeping in contact with the customers on your database either. It’s important to keep in touch with your lists on a regular basis – every two to four weeks at a minimum – by sending out newsletters, small surveys or topical tips. Remember, a period of inactivity could lead to opt-outs and complaints from consumers, resulting in the loss of good prospects.

Norwich, UK, October 2011 – Aspect Web Media, one of the UK’s leading performance-based internet marketing specialists, has launched the UK’s first major email database screening service for digital marketers. Pure List screens email addresses, in lists ranging from hundreds to millions of accounts, to verify their validity, remove duplicates, eliminate bounces and identify threats such as spam traps. It has been launched following research by Econsultancy which shows that email marketing to in-house lists is the second most widely used online lead generation method – up from 74% in 2009 to 83% last year.

Pure List can distinguish between hard bounces where addresses no longer exist and soft bounces where there is an automated response such as an ‘out of office’ message. The service can also remove data threats such as spam traps, honeypots and seeds, as well as click bots. It is even possible to screen for known complainers. Aspect Web Media recently used the Pure List tool to clean a file containing 1.2 million active email addresses. They discovered 157,373 threats, 24,570 complainers and 2,602 bounces. The list was consequently reduced by 15 per cent thus reducing potential deliverability issues with major ISP such as Hotmail or Yahoo.

Jonathan Erwin, Managing Director of Aspect Web Media said, “Pure List ensures that companies can be confident that their database contains a high proportion of valid emails so money is not wasted delivering to duplicate, invalid or dangerous addresses. Traditional data hygiene tools have been limited in their capacity to clean data, relying on algorithms or large caches of historical data to screen databases. These tools cannot perform the comprehensive screening which customers require to maintain good ISP deliverability.”

“The advantages of regularly cleaning data with Pure List are that active email addresses can be consolidated and prioritised, whilst the stigma of sending spam emails and potential damage to the ISP reputation is avoided because there is a significant reduction in the mailing of non-existent customers,” he concluded.

In addition to two year on no interest on balance transfers, the Barclaycard Platinum Visa also offers a highly competitive balance transfer fee of 3.2%, which is reduced to 2.8% after a refund. plus the card also offers £20 cashback for customers who transfer a balance of more than £3,000 directly through the Barclaycard website.

While the card is being lauded by money saving consumer sites having further cemented its already strong grasp on the top position of the credit card tables, it hasn’t escaped criticism for the exclusivity of the deal or its encouragement of so-called ‘reckless’ attitudes to spending. As with its predecessor, the Barclaycard Platinum has proved difficult to obtain for those with anything less than a very good credit score, and this has presented something of a catch 22 situation, as many individuals wishing to take advantage of this opportunity to reduce their debts are very often those whose debt has caused them to have a less than perfect credit record.

Another important question is why Barclaycard has improved its offering by such a significant amount. As reported on this blog back in March when Barclaycard launched its previous 20-month offer, lower levels of lending have led to a fierce battle among card providers competing for consumers’ business. Barclaycard has been the only card to offer the 20 month deal since it came on the market, but the recent launch of the Halifax balance transfer card matched this offer, prompting Barclaycard to secure its place in the lead with an unprecedented offer. Although the APR has risen from 17.5% to 17.9% the length of balance transfer period and the lowered fee make this card once again unrivaled in the top spot.

Slow reporting is one of the biggest obstacles to success for publishers, especially those delivering large numbers of transactions. The wait for an approved transaction interferes with data analysis and slows decision making. Traditionally, the finance sector has produced the slowest reporting of approved transaction due to the time it takes to process applications.

With this in mind, Aspect has established a system with some credit card issuers that allows us to pull in live acceptance data into The Aspect Network.