Internet Marketing, Social Media, Business | StuckInTheFunnel

Cyber Monday Sets Single-Day Email Record for 2009

I’m usually the guy that avoids the door busters, afternoon and even the early evening crowds on that day of shopping mania we have all come to know as “Black Friday.” However, this year a new shopping day emerged that existed online known as “Cyber Monday”  (Nov 30, 2009). It turns out that this day was an active one for online retailers. That is, if you guage the day’s activity by observing their email marketing metrics.

Data analyzed by Chad White, a research director at Responsys and author of The Retail Emal Blog, shows a 3% spike in week-over-week email activity last week. According to White, retailers flooded their subscribers with an average of 3.7 emails on that day.

In addition to marking a 3% increase from the average of 3.5 emails top online retailers sent the week of November 27, 2009, last week also marked a 44% increase from 2.4 the week of November 6, 2009. On a year-over-year basis using a four-week moving average, retailers sent 12% more emails than the approximately 3.1 they sent during the equivalent four-week period in November-December 2008.

It will be interesting to see if this trend continues the day before and the day after Christmas this year.

Tags: black friday, cyber monday, Email Marketing

Facebook to Ditch Regional Networks, Make Privacy Changes

Facebook has grown up a lot since it was first started in Marc Zuckerberg’s college dorm. A site that was once limited to students is now a worldwide phenomenon. In it’s early days, a  key seperator between Facebook and Myspace was how it controlled who you could access in a network. Facebook kept you fenced in to other users in your region, business or school.

The floodgates are opening:

Facebook will now remove regional networks in it’s entirety so people can connect around the world. I am sure this is also tied into their new online translation efforts. Facebook started removing regional networks a few months ago, but some new privacy settings will also be incorporated that should help you maintain the seclusion you are accustomed to. In fact, you will be able to limit what types of posted content is displayed on a friend by friend basis. What does that mean? No more incriminating pictures for your boss to see. Woohoo!

Here is the entire press release from Facebook’s Marc Zuckerberg:

“It has been a great year for making the world more open and connected. Thanks to your help, more than 350 million people around the world are using Facebook to share their lives online.

To make this possible, we have focused on giving you the tools you need to share and control your information. Starting with the very first version of Facebook five years ago, we’ve built tools that help you control what you share with which individuals and groups of people. Our work to improve privacy continues today.

Facebook’s current privacy model revolves around “networks” — communities for your school, your company or your region. This worked well when Facebook was mostly used by students, since it made sense that a student might want to share content with their fellow students.

Over time people also asked us to add networks for companies and regions as well. Today we even have networks for some entire countries, like India and China.

However, as Facebook has grown, some of these regional networks now have millions of members and we’ve concluded that this is no longer the best way for you to control your privacy. Almost 50 percent of all Facebook users are members of regional networks, so this is an important issue for us. If we can build a better system, then more than 100 million people will have even more control of their information.

The plan we’ve come up with is to remove regional networks completely and create a simpler model for privacy control where you can set content to be available to only your friends, friends of your friends, or everyone.

We’re adding something that many of you have asked for — the ability to control who sees each individual piece of content you create or upload. In addition, we’ll also be fulfilling a request made by many of you to make the privacy settings page simpler by combining some settings. If you want to read more about this, we began discussing this plan back in July.

Since this update will remove regional networks and create some new settings, in the next couple of weeks we’ll ask you to review and update your privacy settings. You’ll see a message that will explain the changes and take you to a page where you can update your settings. When you’re finished, we’ll show you a confirmation page so you can make sure you chose the right settings for you. As always, once you’re done you’ll still be able to change your settings whenever you want.

We’ve worked hard to build controls that we think will be better for you, but we also understand that everyone’s needs are different. We’ll suggest settings for you based on your current level of privacy, but the best way for you to find the right settings is to read through all your options and customize them for yourself. I encourage you to do this and consider who you’re sharing with online.

Thanks for being a part of making Facebook what it is today, and for helping to make the world more open and connected.”

Mark Zuckerberg

I embrace these changes, as I think it will make the world more transient while maintaing the privacy neccesary to create great online relationships.

The Futility of Banning Text Messaging While Driving

I’m back from my Thanksgiving hiatus and have been monitoring some local Twitter trends. Today, there was lots of talk about the new law in North Carolina that bans drivers from sending SMS or email messages on their cell phones. In all honesty, I don’t think this a bad idea. I have had a few close calls with drivers who were staring gazenly at their screens. However, I think the law won’t have much effect.

There are more than enough technologies to distract you while driving in North Carolina that are not banned by the government such as:

• Regular phone calls (adult drivers.)
• CD players
• DVD players and screens. (Some DVD Players even have screens that come out of the deck.)
• GPS units
• Luxury cars that have more in-dash controls than an airplane’s cockpit.
• Etc.

Social media and the web have changed how mobile phones are used:

I think this law will pretty difficult to enforce as it only bans “texting and email”. Think about the nomenclature. What does texting entail? I could be browsing the internet with my BlackBerry and get pulled over for texting. I could rebut with “Actually, I was browsing by using my jog dial, not the keyboard. Therefore, I was not texting.”  Or what if he caught me as I was dialing a phone number (adult drivers can still make phone calls in NC) and accused me of texting?In-car surveillance would be necessary for claims to hold water. Bottom line, this is mostly a scare tactic. A scare tactic with a hefty fine of $100.

In fact, NC senators even thought the bill would be difficult to enforce and Ron Wyatt, president of a local chapter of the North Carolina Fraternal Order of Police was quoted saying:

“It’s all about safety, and I think we have a lot of law-abiding citizens, If people know it’s illegal, we’d hope they’d abide by those rules.”

Hmmm…does not seem to stern.

As more and more gadgets fall into our hands, driver distractions will not be erased until cars start driving themselves.