The Root of the Matter

I just got introduced to a new web offering that has real potential. It's called RootOrange, and it allows you to split a domain name geographically.

Split a domain geographically? Huh? What? Yup, a single domain name can now be used (or better yet, sold) to multiple companies that operate in different regions using some intriguing new technology.

The business model of RootOrange is simple: they procure short, common, easy-to-remember domain names for different industries, then "sub-lease" them to regional companies that want the benefit of the convenient domain names. It's a simple, clever concept, and it gets me thinking about geolocation and targeting technology.

Apply the RootOrange concept to your home page: could you timeshare this valuable real estate so that different visitors saw different advertising based on their geography? This could be very powerful in some markets.

Could you as a publisher create some domains of your own and resell them to smaller advertisers with limited site traffic? I think so. And you could also supply some content to give these domains an SEO bump as well? I don't claim to know all the technical ins and outs, but I suspect you could.
Could you regionalize your own domain, creating versions for different geographic regions where the advertising and content were all both adapted to the geography? Why, yes you could.

Push the concept further. Could your search results page vary based on the geography of your visitor to push local listings closer to the top? If it makes business sense, the technology appears to be there.
Let's go into orbit now: could you present your database search results based on not just geography but say the job function of the visitor - a CFO would see different results from a sales manager? Well, I think about services like Bizo that target ads exactly that way. This concept may or may not interest them, but again the technology and the data exist.

There is lots of fresh thinking that can sprout from this root.

When Words Collide

There's certainly been a lot of buzz about the lawsuit against popular online business review site Yelp. Most of it is a misreading of the situation. What's going on in this lawsuit will not have any impact on those of us with business reviews of any kind, nor is it a "potential death knell" for online reviews as some are breathlessly claiming. What the Yelp lawsuit is about, pure and simple, is alleged extortion. The company suing Yelp is claiming it was told that if it advertised, negative online reviews would be hidden or removed, and if the company didn't advertise, the negative reviews would remain.

What this lawsuit does highlight, however, is something I have discussed previously: the inherent friction between user reviews and paid advertising. The case of Yelp points up an important but subtle distinction. Usually the issue is how a publisher can add user reviews to paid listings. In the case of Yelp, the question is how a publisher can add paid listings to user reviews. Same difference? I think not.

For the buying guide publisher, the business model is already established: companies pay for an enhanced presence within the buying guide. To add user reviews is not simple: advertisers want a positive environment in which to advertise. Don't expect a paid listing surrounded by negative user reviews to be renewed. Even the most enlightened advertiser will have trouble finding the value in that equation. There are ways to walk a fine line where reviews and advertisers can peacefully co-exist. Capterra was awarded a 2009 Model of Excellence award for, among other things, devising a successful approach to this. But the reason that a middle ground can be carved out is that user reviews are an additional feature for a buyers' guide. They are not the reason the buyers' guide exists.

Contrast that with Yelp. Yelp's success is entirely due to it achieving a critical mass of reviews. Users respond to it and value it because it lets users have their say - the good, the bad, the ugly. Yelp strikes an unabashedly consumerist stance. Without this positioning, which fostered a critical mass of reviews, Yelp would be just another also-ran in the highly competitive local business directory space.

So how does Yelp sell advertising? It can't be that easy. The business with glowing reviews could quite reasonably see no need to advertise. The business with horrid reviews could quite reasonably have no desire to advertise. Yet the moment Yelp starts fiddling or filtering its reviews to accommodate advertisers, it puts its business at risk. Nothing would kill Yelp faster than a general perception (amplified by social media of course) that it had "sold out." Bottom line: the reviews are not an additional feature; they are the product.

I don't see an easy answer to this one. If Yelp wants to succeed selling local business advertising, it's going to need to make compromises that one or more of its constituencies won't like. The strategy and its execution are both critical. And the object lesson is that it does matter which came first: the directory or the reviews.

Labels: capterra, yelp.com

Unsubscribe is Forever

I admit to watching the subscriber list to this e-newsletter very closely. I feel good when I see a sudden surge of new subscribers in a given week. I’m disappointed when people unsubscribe, but if it’s not of interest, better to know it.

Things started to get strange about six months ago. Suddenly, I started seeing people unsubscribe who I knew. Even stranger, some of the people had gone out of their way to compliment me on this e-newsletter at various events. Had my topics become too dull? Was my commentary no longer on point? I let the first handful go, but it kept happening. When a few clients showed up on the unsubscribe list, I knew I had to get on the phone.

The story I heard was consistent: they all absolutely wanted to continue receiving this newsletter, and they blamed their clicks on the unsubscribe button on “fat fingers,” “going too fast” and “cleaning up my mailbox.” What became clear to me is a lot of people, reacting no doubt to the avalanche of mail in their inboxes, are aggressively unsubscribing to everything that looks even vaguely promotional, and since they are going for speed and volume, a lot of good stuff gets unsubscribed along with the bad.

I really started thinking about this when several clients began complaining about the same problem: paying customers of theirs clicking unsubscribe to a promotional email, then being lost to them for email purposes forever.

Most of us still utilize this hair-trigger unsubscribe approach: one click and the recipient will never hear from you again by email. That’s a powerful statement that marks you as a responsible online marketer, but the results can badly damage your business. Forever is a long time.

There’s a simple solution that far too few companies utilize: qualify the unsubscribe request. Perhaps the recipient just doesn’t want promotional email from you, but would still be interested in other communications. Perhaps the recipient is very interested in emails about your data products, but not your conferences. The simple point is that by asking, you can often keep the email channel to a customer or prospect open just by asking specifically want they want and don’t want to receive.

One-click unsubscribe sounds great, but it’s a dangerous weapon in the hands of recipients who are, increasingly, just trying to “clean up” their mailboxes. Don’t get swept out with the trash.

Growing a Backbone

I just downloaded the new LinkedIn Outlook Connector that brings my “LinkedIn Professional Network tight within my Microsoft Outlook Inbox.”

That may not seem like a hugely significant development, but as I have noted many times previously, I think LinkedIn is slowly (and perhaps not even consciously) starting to become a global business backbone directory.

Okay, you’re probably wondering right now what I mean by “backbone directory.” I’ll admit I am not entirely sure myself, even though I know I am right! What I increasingly see is LinkedIn playing a supporting, background role within a growing number of directory products. Typically, those directories let you easily connect a person listed in their directories to your professional network on LinkedIn. It’s an easy way to see how you might be connected to somebody, which is wonderful for salespeople. It also lets you readily peruse an individual’s LinkedIn profile, more times than not a current and detailed resume and an indicator of who they are based on who they know.

Where I see particular opportunities for LinkedIn is in professional services buying guides. What better way to pre-screen a prospective lawyer, accountant or financial advisor than by quickly determining who you might know in common so that you can get a trusted opinion?

But back to my Microsoft Outlook inbox. After installing the LinkedIn connector (you must also install the Outlook Social Connector from Microsoft), I got a glimpse of what the future might hold. When you view an email from someone with whom you are connected in LinkedIn, you see their LinkedIn photo right along the message. There is also a new window that almost instantly organizes all your emails to and from that person along with your prior meetings with that person. You can also quickly isolate email attachments received from that person, making it easy to review documents that person had sent to you. In short, my email inbox has become an entry-level CRM system. I also have easy access to the email addresses of everyone in my LinkedIn network each time I send an email.

Actually, the information being pulled from LinkedIn right now is pretty limited. But start thinking out a bit. There’s no reason I couldn’t filter and prioritize my emails based on whether or not the email sender was in my LinkedIn network. Indeed, what if LinkedIn was to supply me with information on anyone who was in LinkedIn, whether or not the person was in my network? Imagine seeing a photo, company name and title, and information on who you know in common on more, if not most, of your incoming emails? There’s information value, to be sure, but there’s also a “trusted sender” play here. Yes, LinkedIn could be used to validate the integrity if not the identity of email senders. You might even someday filter out email from anyone without a LinkedIn record. Push this out a bit further, and you can see a day where you need a LinkedIn record just to be in business. At that point, LinkedIn’s position as a “backbone directory” is secure, and the revenue opportunities are many and huge.

Labels: LinkedIn

Contemplating Curation

Though the buzz around e-books and mobile is deafening right now, I'm hearing another word entering the buzz zone at rocket speed, and it's a word much more relevant to our businesses: curation.

Yes, it's become trendy and mainstream to acknowledge that with so much information so readily available these days, there is real value in plucking out the information that really matters. Malcolm Gladwell, speaking at the recent ALM LegalTech conference, reportedly summed up the problem beautifully, saying "Until search engines can filter as well as they can find, they only add to confusion."

Filtering is something of a geeky way to describe curation. Others may be more comfortable with an older term: editing. Yes, as I have said so many times before, there's not much on the Internet that's really new: it's mostly old ideas sporting flashy new names.

We've spent the last fifteen years on the Internet focused on aggregation. Everyone was trying to build huge pots of content, the most notable examples of this being the search engines. Now it seems that after this frenzy of aggregation, we're starting to stand back and say, "Well that's not very useful." Hence the race to curate.

Another interesting thing to note about this interest in curation is that the experts seem to agree that it's a task for humans. Only a few years ago, we would all have automatically assumed that "there's an app for that," or more precisely, some algorithm or technology that would solve the problem with point-and-click ease. Now, we're starting to appreciate how much nuance is involved.

Of course as data publishers, we have long been practicing a form of curation. We analyze, interpret and add value to information by normalizing it and fielding it. Further, we typically limit ourselves to standardized subsets of information that won't solve every need, but are amazingly powerfully for specific applications. Even better, our selected, normalized and fielded data is easily filtered, meaning that users can easily get to the nuggets most valuable to them. The lesson I take away from this is that it's easier to extract meaning and value from smaller, focused sets of information rather than trying to find small needles in large haystacks.