Another Super Bowl is behind us, and advertisers eagerly wait to see whether the hard work of their brand managers and agencies has paid off. This year we saw many common themes (sex, animals, and cute babies come to mind), but we also saw advertisers take some risks. Audi may be criticized for missing the [...]

Inevitably, community management boils down to one ginormous (and nerdified) popularity contest – getting in with the right crowd, becoming a trendsetter, and managing your reputation. It’s high school, sans acne, but still disturbingly angst-ridden. And despite moving on to complete collegiate aspirations, comfortably settle on a retirement plan, and fall into a consistent multivitamin [...]

In online marketing, everything is good to do, and nobody wants to be left out. That is to say, all sub-disciplines, sectors, channels, tactics, and professional organizations in online marketing and advertising compete for marketing budgets, and most claim effectiveness. Many have a good claim. As I pointed out in the last column, we often [...]

Derek Harding |  September 2, 2010 Recently I’ve found myself discussing a commonly used e-mail marketing metric that, quite frankly, has me puzzled. The metric in question is “click-to-open” (CTO) or “click-to-open ratio” (CTOR) and a number of marketers use it. I’ve seen it described as “an important measure of the effectiveness of your e-mail message.” [...]