What does this mean? Well, probably not too much if you are above the age of 100 and don’t know what a computer does, or if you just hate giving gifts. But, if you are like the rest of us and usually find yourself in a shopping time crunch during the holidays, let it be known that sales in movies, jewelry/luxury goods, flowers, greetings and gifts grew substantially within one month and we are reminded of the simple joys our home can offer during the hectic holiday season.

This also could mean something for companies without a strong online presence. Of the top 50 web properties with a focus on advertising, The Google Ad Network came in first place, engaging 93% of Americans. Also, more than 6.6 million people visited a tax site to make sure their books were in tact for the upcoming year.

If you haven’t jumped on the online shopping, advertising or researching train, I would go ahead and take that leap; you won’t be disappointed.

Check out these articles from Eyetools – the inventors of eyetracking heatmaps, experts in eyetracking analysis – for some of the reasons why.

Avoiding Rate-Limit Schedules
Nobody ‘really knows’ what formula actually triggers an ISP to put a rate-limit on your bulk delivery. Sure you can put down a mix of a few variables that include volume, along with complaints, and of course sending attempts per instance or even per hour. But nobody really knows the formula, or for that matter, the time schedule in which those rate-limits are imposed. And anybody claiming that they do know, or that claims a perfect reputation will remedy this, is selling a tall tale of fantasy. I can’t imagine how a perfect sender reputation would hurt you in this situation; however, I can tell you that it has little to do with how and when you might be rate-limited. This is tricky because sometimes it doesn’t matter what you do. You might have all of your elements of deliverability in order, the stars are aligned perfect for your email and then – BANG!, you still get nailed by an ISP with rate-limits. I think that sometimes an ISP will impose rate-limit schedules simply because its cloudy outside.

There are a couple ways, among others, to try and remedy a problem with untimely and over the top rate-limit schedules that you may be incurring. First, you can call the ISP and ask about their schedules – LOL! I’ve actually tried that one, granted you are lucky enough to get a human on the phone that holds any power at the ISP. Information like this is highly sensitive and closely guarded by the engineers. A more realistic way would be to add or repurpose more IPs to your delivery structure in order to spread around your bulk delivery. It’s costly, and for those who have done it, can tell you that it helps immensely. Lastly, and above all else, better node management can also play a huge factor. You can try reducing the amount of sending attempts per minute/hour from your server. In time you can find what is a better fit, given the resources you have available.

More Inbox Placement
Sure your sender reputation is perfect, but are all of those messages you send actually hitting the inbox because of it? Having a perfect reputation score never hurts, but the answer is a resounding – NO! I have a couple years of delivery management under my belt.. not as much as some other experts in the industry, but certainly enough to tell you that inbox placement is bent around user engagement, more so than anything else. Their is no bible or industry certified manual that illustrates this as a fact(that I can find), you have to base these facts off of months and years of analyzing delivery results. In time, you will come up with this same conclusion.

What does user engagement mean? Well as an ESP, we aren’t necessarily the only ones counting opens and click traffic; ISPs do this as well. They use their own formulas that plug in their subscriber’s activity with messages coming from your domain(e.g. Opens, Clicks, Complaints, etc..). If someone opens your email for the first time, then participates by clicking on a link in your content(other then the unsubscribe), then I would bet the farm that their is a really good chance your next email correspondence, given a successful delivery, will land in that person’s inbox.

Measures of success obviously can vary from project to project, but they can also vary within a project. In most cases there exist three levels of measures, for our purposes we’ll call them primary, secondary and tertiary.

Usually primary measures of success relate to an offline activity. Although some people may spend more time in front of a computer than away from it, there is still a real world out there – a world that revolves around exchanging money, voting, construction and other human activities. Thus some examples would include making a donation on a mobile phone, getting people to vote for a particular candidate, or winning approval for a new hospital. One or more of these are usually the “problems” a client will have when looking to partner with another firm. These are easily the most important measures of success.

Secondary measures have to do with the activities that lead to one of the primary objectives mentioned above. Since primary measures involve a serious commitment on the part of the end-user, a gradual process of building up to the ultimate goal is required. These nodes of engagement could include participating in an online poll or survey, posting a message on a Facebook Wall, or forwarding an email.

The way to judge the likelihood that the secondary actions will be taken by supporters remains the hard data of the tertiary measures. These indexes – like pageviews, open rates or Twitter followers – are the things successful managers follow on a daily basis; and their analysis will uncover trends among your audiences.  This will in turn allow you to optimize campaigns to drive up the response rates measured in the primary and secondary goals.

Taking a step back we have seen that measures of success directly correlate to a campaign goal.  Measuring those goals can be done on a variety of levels in this case primary, secondary, or tertiary.  These levels could also be called Offline, Engagement, and Indicators, respectively.

The goal of this post was to pass on some knowledge for the offline world, I hope it is measured as a success.

Nonetheless, Internet Explorer retains the lion’s share of the market with 63%, followed by Firefox with 25%. This has important implications when designing and developing a new Web site. However, the most telling sign of what browser your readers are using remains your analytics data.

Looking through the Google Analytics reports of several clients, the market share broke down a little differently. On average, our client Web site were view in Internet Explorer 74% of the time, Firefox 17% and Safari 6%. However, I noticed a wide disparity among browsers depending on target audiences. For instance, for a trade association client whose subscribers average between 40 and 55 years old, the breakdown is Internet Explorer 82%, Firefox 12% and Safari 5%; while a sports blog with a younger following had a breakdown of Internet Explorer 46%, Firefox 32%, Safari 17%.

One explanation for this discrepancy has to do with mobile phone usage and age. A poll by the Marist Institute for Public Opinion shows that more than one-fourth (26%) of those younger than age 45 own a PDA, compared with just 10% of those ages 45+. This means a lot of younger readers are using their mobile device to view Web sites. Generally these devices do not use Internet Explorer as their browser – with the ubiquitous iPhone using the Safari browser.

Therefore when it comes time to test your new Web site in various browsers and allocate resources to ensure compliance, it is crucial to understand your audience segments and recognize which browser they most likely use.

Of course I have to say, search engines (plural) in most cases when I’m talking about SEO, but lets face it, for now there’s really only one that matters. Who is this king of the search engines you ask? This internet moderator who answers those tough questions in life, like “Who delivers Chinese at 2 am?” or “How many feet are in a mile??”  Well I could let you take a guess out of……hmmm, I’ll say three, but I’ll just give you a hint instead. His name begins with G and ends with duh.

For most of you who know him, Mr. G is a pretty neat guy. He’s very popular, hip, clean cut, savvy and for the most part, friendly. Friendly of course, only if you speak his language and dress in his style… and guess what, he can be very choosy. Mr. G is at times extremely judgmental, especially if you try to climb his LONG ladder of friends unfairly, by bending his rules. The fact is, his popularity has given him certain rights. There are certain standards he has set in place that allow him to govern how you or your company rank on his coveted list of friends. Oh and by the way, just because you dress Flash-y doesn’t mean you’re automatically buds with G either.

Ahh, the science of SEO… this is where I come in. Though this “science” is complicated, tedious, and dull with outside opinions; I am a firm believer that the basic underlying concepts of SEO will for the most part remain the same. By following a few key rules any site can attract G’s much needed attention. These rules are simple: Have interesting, up-to-date content on a well-designed and developed infrastructure and, bing! your website will skyrocket to the top of Mr. G’s friend list faster than you can say Balloon Boy.

Maybe you love him, with his quick responses on how to spell words like “unconstitutional” or his perfect timing to remind you that, yes, it is actually Sesame Street’s 40 birthday. Maybe you struggle with Mr. G and his fickle, ever changing taste in websites and where he decides to rank them in importance. One thing is for sure: like him or not, the next wave we get from G….. probably won’t be a wave goodbye.