On this website we'll be discussing business and marketing from different angels. Keep a lookout for news, articles, videos and more which we'll update several times a week.
Merkle Signs Samsung as Email Marketing Client.
25/03/2008 13:50:00 Business Wire Merkle (www.merkleinc.com), one of the nation s largest and fastest growing database marketing agencies, today announced its selection by Samsung as its email marketing agency. As part of the agreement, Merkle is providing a complete range of services - including email program strategy development, creative design, email data management, message deployment and campaign analysis to support Samsung s permission-based email communications. As Samsung s email marketing agency, Merkle will support multiple divisions for the global consumer technology leader, including Samsung Electronics America, Samsung Electronics Canada and Samsung Telecommunications America. Through cross-divisional collaboration Merkle will serve to coordinate Samsung s email efforts across the enterprise.
It seems like the weather’s going to be terrible for almost every game today. Bad luck or more terrible schedule making? (Remember Cleveland last year) Would it kill them to schedule the first week mostly in warm weather cities and domes? Or would that kill the big cash bonanza of having opening day in the big markets up North?
http://NicheTrends.net
If you’re stuck trying to find niche ideas for your niche marketing, here are some free tools that I use to find hot trends that may help you as well. You can also download a free report of the hottest niche marketing trends of 2008 at
March 28: This week… Adam and Matty ship off for an extended tour of duty with Ryan Phillippe as they discuss “Stop-Loss,” the latest film from “Boys Don’t Cry” writer/director Kimberly Peirce. Plus, in honor of Adam’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” man crush on “Stop-Loss” co-star Channing Tatum, the boys share their Top 5 Up-and-Coming Actors.
Also on the show: Listener Feedback, Massacre Theatre and our Pedro Almodvar Marathon continues with 1999’s “All About My Mother.”
Music by Dick Prall from the album “Weightless” courtesy of Authentic Records.
Filmspotting is presented by SpoutBlog and the FilmCouch podcast. Find out why The New York Times says, “SpoutBlog’s got it all,” at blog.spout.com.
CONTESTS Submit your best Filmspotting Poll question idea to feedback@filmspotting.net and if we use it next week, you’ll win Walk the Line Extended Cut, a new 2-Disc Special Edition that includes 17 minutes of bonus footage, extended musical sequences, director commentary, featurettes and more.
Spout.com invites Filmspotting listeners to recast “The Last Dragon” and get a shot at great prizes at lastdragon.spout.com.
Filmspotting #203 :24-14:35 - Review: “Stop-Loss” Music: Dick Prall, “Halfway To Hollywood” 15:36-19:10 - Corrections, Notes 19:11-27:03 - Listener Feedback (Fourth Wall Movies) Music: Dick Prall, “The Cornflakes Song” 28:09-31:42 - Massacre Theatre (Winner: Renee Stern) 31:43-39:56 - Almodvar #3: “All About My Mother” Music: Dick Prall, “If It Bends” 40:28-45:38 - New DVDs, Contests, Donations 45:39-49:38 - Top 5 Setup, Poll Questions 49:39-1:03:40 - Top 5: Up-and-Coming Actors 1:03:41-1:06:10 - Close/Next Show/Outtake
- Matty and I realize that we have a tendency to lump any ‘war on terror’ movie into the same category even if that’s not really appropriate. For example, “Taxi To The Dark Side” is a movie about the U.S. policy on torture and not really an ‘Iraq movie’, though a good chunk of it does deal with Abu Ghraib.
- Matty commented that “Stop-Loss” is basically “Varsity Blues” goes to war. Am I crazy, or were the marketing folks apparently thinking the same thing? Check out the posters here and here.
High hopes that the FCC spectrum auction would provide competition in the wireless market were dashed as Verizon and AT&T won their bids for large portions of the airwaves. And the Chauncey Bailey Project continues to honor the work of the slain reporter by uncovering more information about his murder and his Oakland, California community.
Frank Stoltze: The California Air Resources Board will consider a plan that would reduce by nearly two-thirds the amount of emissions-free cars that automakers market in California by 2014. The proposal would require automakers to put 75,000 thousand low emissions vehicles on the road between 2012 and 2014. KPCC’s Frank Stoltze spoke about the proposal with Mary Nichols, the chairwoman of the California Air Resources Board.
Linked below is the first of a series of Black Pearl Marketing Minute podcasts that Brian Brady and I will be putting together. We want to take marketing ideas that we have discussed on BloodhoundBlog and flesh them out to real-life strategies while connecting them to other synergistic tactics.
It’s an old idea and it’s not mine … but if you are targeting just a certain areas then getting your flyer on the local pizza delivery box can work wonders.
Brilliant! Never thought of it, but that’s why I love this place: We bring bright minds together and set off a blinding brilliance. My reply:
Oh, very cool. I tend to think in terms of things we can do on our own, but this is actually an interesting cross-promotion:
“Visit our custom web site for 123 Mulberry Lane and your next pizza is on us!”
Build a PDF coupon in the site and redeem them with the pizza joint once a week. Meanwhile, your contact info is on the fridge for weeks or months.
That’s a Brian Brady-style idea. I must be channeling…
But nothing’s perfect in the first draft. My correspondent thought springing for the whole pizza might be too expensive as a “pay per click.”
Okayfine. How about this?
Buy the soda instead, then. It’s an upsell for the pizzeria — bigger mark-up, and therefore often deferred. Your cost is down to maybe three bucks — only on redemption — for the most valuable real estate in the house, the front of the fridge. That’s a smokin’ deal, and you can turn it into a locals versus The Big Chains thing, too: We support Luigi’s because Luigi’s supports Littleton Heights. There’s a lot you can do with this.
Make them fill out the coupon prior to redemption, then take them all back from Luigi — and share your database with Luigi; he’ll love you for it. Then send two more coupons to everyone who uses one. Better yet, hand deliver them. Sales is getting belly-to-belly. Everything else is either prospecting or marketing.
Sales is getting belly-to-belly. That’s not news. The news is that I invented and perfected a hyper-local online/offline marketing strategy today — in my spare time.
The local merchant doesn’t have to be a pizzeria, and the flyer on the box could easily be a custom-made business card. In both cases, the offline strategy is devised to promote online marketing, and that online marketing can in turn be focused to foster future belly-to-belly contact. The compelling thing about these ideas is that they are so cheap to implement, you can test one tactic against another to discover what works best for you — Direct Marketing meets Guerrilla Marketing.
In the spirit of under-promising and over-delivering, the first Black Pearl Marketing Minute runs just shy of 17 minutes. Be sure to let us know how we did.
Bubble Motion is a startup looking to justify a fairly large recent investment by dominating the voice SMS market, having just received a $14 million second round of financing yesterday. They’re one of a large number of players that exist in what is apparently a growing market, according to Wireless Week.
Quite honestly, I was only moderately aware that this sort of service lived on past the Nextel push-to-talk feature, but it is alive and well as I learned from Alex Quilici from YouMail last month when he joined me on Mashable Conversations. Interestingly, most of these products aren’t monetized by ads, and are more or less, after a tipping point pure profit for the creators of the service. This is because most of them enter into revenue sharing agreements with the carriers based upon usage.
As if that weren’t an easy enough business model, the system markets itself virally, after an initial seed marketing campaign. If I use one of these services to leave you a voice SMS, and you determine you want to voice SMS me back, it’s usually instantaneous and easy to create an account to message me back. Just like social networks, your rolodex becomes their marketing tool.
As such, it’s a race to see who can capture the most marketshare the quickest, so marketing is what a lot of this round of funding is likely to go towards, despite the claims by Bubble Motion that it’s earmarked for “allow[ing] the company to further develop and expand the award-winning BubbleTALK platform, and enabl[ing] the company to focus on securing additional operator partnerships around the world.”
The funds raised this round came from Sequoia Capital and Comcast Interactive Capital.
To learn more about this technology, check out the conversation I had with Alex Quilici from YouMail. The embed is available below or you can download the MP3 file directly here.
Marketing material is something that every business needs, as it is an essential part of doing business and creating revenue. Without marketing material a company doesn’t have a leg to stand on, they simple can’t compete in the same business arena as others.
There are many different aspects to marketing material, all of which are used to simply generate more business. Brochures are a must have for any businesses looking to showcase their service to consumers within their community. Flyers and email advertising is another great way to create marketing material that will reach your community and beyond, raising the likelihood of gaining more business.
All of these types of campaigns can also lead to word of mouth or consumers passing your marketing material along to others, making your efforts pay off even more in the long run. Believe it or not, business cards are not only used as a way for people to contact you, but it is also a vital piece of spreading the word about your services, which is why it is so important to make sure those business cards are looking good!
Websites are quickly becoming the leader in marketing tools today, because so many people use the Internet to research products and services. A website is a great way to showcase many different aspects of your marketing material like your flyers, brochures, business information, and any other information you want your prospective customers to know.
Press releases can make a big splash and they’re great start to creating your marketing material. Using a press release will gain you exposure and give you an opportunity to market your product or service to a wider customer base.
Signs on vehicles have been known to be a successful way to gain clientele, and is also another part of the whole marketing material scheme of things. Almost everyday you’ll find yourself driving alongside a vehicle that sports a company’s name and logo on the door.
Testimonials have been a favorite for many companies that offer services or products to help enrich consumer’s lives. Testimonials help to ensure consumers are not making a rash decision in giving you business and it helps them to feel like they are not alone in needing the services or products your company offers.
All in all, there are many different aspects to marketing material and it will all depend on the size of your company and what your unique goals are. Thinking outside the box when it comes to creating a marketing plan is probably the best way to attract new business and help you reach your goals.
March 31st, 2008 by 
Business Marketing
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