In that instant the little yellow canary inside my head dropped dead. The fumes of misinformation and general cluelessness KO’d the poor bird.

First, Alexa is flawed. So please stop quoting it. More importantly, stop focusing on website traffic. It’s not a useful metric, unless you’re earning money from ads in which case impressions do matter. No sane owner smiles at the amount of foot traffic their retail store had that day, they’re happy with the cash in the register. Diddo for your website.

What should you measure? Nielsen said it best, the formula for website success is:

B = V × C × L

Where

• B = amount of business done by the site
• V = unique visitors coming to the site
• C = conversion rate (the percentage of visitors who become customers); note that the concept of conversion applies not only to ecommerce sites, but to any site where there is something you want users to do. For me it’s people subscribing to my feeds and downloading my PDF resume and visiting my LinkedIn Profile. You can apply a dollar value to these actions.
• L = loyalty rate (the degree to which customers return to conduct repeat business)

Everyone is trying to increase traffic, this is evident in the number of articles showing you how to get your writing on the front page of Digg. So, if everyone is gunning for volume you can win by better persuading your visitors to take action and providing a reason for them to return over and over.

Focus on conversion and increasing loyalty. Please stop glorifying traffic. If not for yourself, for gods sake, do it for the canaries.

To be considered for your dream job you need to cut through the clutter. Recently I used the following direct marketing techniques to get an interview with Catalyst Direct Inc., a direct marketing agency in Rochester, NY. Three hours after sending the application I had Catalyst Direct calling to set up an interview, that is when you know you have sold the sizzle and not the steak.

• Personalization

  This involves more than changing the company name in your resume and cover letter. It requires diligent research. What is the business known for, what sets them apart, mention something specific. Notice how I reference in my cover letter (sales letter) a singular campaign undertaken by Catalyst Direct, and how I align my resume objective with what the company accomplishes for it’s clients.

• Constrained creativity

  I applied for a Jr. Marketing Analyst position in support of Catalyst Direct Inc.’s Email and Analytics groups. To spruce up my cover letter I sent it as an HTML email message using a service called Campaign Monitor. Pretty straight forward to use, and free if you are sending 5 or less email messages in each campaign. And in my case it demonstrated my technical proficiency for the position.

• Call to action
  You do not send out a $10,000 direct mail campaign without requesting that people call a specific phone number, fill out a form on your website, etc. The same goes for your job application. Ask for the interview.
• Follow Up
  If you hit the nail on the head, you will reveal yourself as the solution to a deep seated need and the hiring manager will call you. However, this is not always the case therefore it is best to let them know in the cover letter you will follow up at a specific time.

  Do not forget to follow up with a thank-you after your interview.

• Measure – learn from your results and improve your future efforts.

  A great feature of Campaign Monitor is that you get reports of who opened the email and the links which they clicked, and if they forwarded the message on to someone else in the company. This definitely helps in gaging the interest level of the recipient.

Following these techniques will definitely set you above the pack, increasing your chances of landing the coveted job interview.

For those of you wondering, did he get hired for the Jr. Marketing Analyst position at Catalyst Direct Inc.? Unfortunately the answer is no, however it did prove to be a learning experience.

While shredding these annoying messages, my curiosity overcame me and I opened a letter from American Express. I say curious in the sense that I wanted to know if they provided an opt-out method. To my surprise AE offered a prominent phone number at the footer for opting out from pre-screened offers. Now with a piqued interest, I set about scouring the web and discovered www.optoutprescreen.com.

Happily I opted out of receiving further pre-screened credit offerings from the Credit Bureaus for five years. Now if only I could pick and choose which advertisements reach my mail box from local companies. The Direct Marketing Association offers a way to remove your name from many national companies lists but that still leaves a lot of noncomplying third parties. A growing tide of consumers are fed up with unsolicited mail and their limited options in preventing it.

According to mailmovesamerica.org:

Advertising mail is under threat. In 2007, 15 states proposed the creation of state Do Not Mail registries, similar to the national do not call registry, or are considering other limitations on advertising mail. This is a significant increase in the number of Do Not Mail bills seen in previous years; three in 2005 and four in 2006.

Considering that consumer control over other communication mediums is increasing this development is not extraordinary but an expected trend. The tone taken by mailmovesamerica is that successful legislation on this front will put hard working people out of work and hamper the US economy. Not a surprising viewpoint, especially since the MMA site is created by the Direct Marketing Association. I partially agree with the DMA, direct mail should continue if it provides personal, relevant communication, however I consider these moves by state governments to be the wake up call Direct Marketers need to clean up their act.

I understand the creative cycle and implementation take longer for print, yet that does not mean the medium should be held less accountable than Internet marketing.

New Standards For Direct Mail:

Definitely not fool proof methods for stemming the influx of Spam bulk mailings. But it is time for the industry to show a little restraint. Direct Marketers must learn to self-regulate, it will be better than the consequences of zero-tolerance Do Not Mail bills.

What do people want when choosing an independent travel agent, rather setting up a trip with a large agency or going the self help route?

A tool I have in mind that will help the travel agent meet these needs is Ning, a social networking platform. Having used Ning to coordinate my company’s 180 person Caribbean cruise promotion, it has potential to drastically improve the travel agent – client interaction.

Personalization: People like to feel they’ve gotten special treatment. Make the network private, which will add an air of exclusivity. Along these same lines, you can set up separate groups within Ning, meaning you could have one group for the Johnson family vacation, and another for the 150 person corporate trip. Personalize the experience even more by posting a weekly blog for each mini-group that gives tantalizing glimpses of what they can expect on the vacation. As Louis Black says, “theres nothing better than living in the moment of anticipation.” Your job is to heighten this sensation.

Immediate Access: So you’ve given them your phone number , “call me whenever you have question.” Great, but people are not paying money to chit chat with you, rather they’re calling because you are a knowledge base. Share your knowledge and save yourself time to focus on more important tasks, add the commonly asked questions, and answers to the social network forum. Even better you can set the forum to send you email notifications of client comments, and reply near instantaneously using your blackberry.

Anal Attention To Detail: Ning lets its users set up individual profiles. On sign-up you can have them answer questions which would prove useful to you in setting up their trip. For example, you could ask their age, or if they smoke, etc. More importantly your clients can add unique content to their own profiles, which you should definitely read. So Mrs. Johnson added a picture of her beloved cat, Fluffy. Use this information to recommend a cat sitter while she goes on her week long cruise. Mrs. J will sure appreciate your attention to detail, giving you good word of mouth. As an aside, it’d be a nice little source of income if you and the cat sitter worked out a referral program.

Social networking using the Ning platform can definitely be a source of competitive advantage for the independent travel agent. Though I’ll stress that the tool is only as good as the person moderating it. Provide regular blog updates for mini-groups, search out You-Tube videos of the places they’ll be visiting and post these, respond promptly to comments,above all encourage user participation and the community you have created will flourish.