Recently NetFlix found a winner to their long standing, million dollar, contest designed to inspire freelance teams toward creating new algorithms which would "…substantially improve the accuracy of predictions about how much someone is going to love a movie based on their preferences."  The goal was to improve on NetFlix’s existing algorithm by 10%.  Most teams approached this as a math problem.  One guy in a garage, however, saw it as a people problem and made some significant advances. Read the rest of this entry >>

We talk a lot about customer delight and how to turn irate customers into loyal ones, but how often to we prepare ourselves for the opposite?  What happens when we come up with that great idea but just can’t support it?  When we turn happy customers into irate ones bynot supporting our marketing?  In the end, is it a good thing or a bad thing? Read the rest of this entry >>

Kim is a friend, talented professional photographer, and owner of TwoRoads Studio .  She wanted to sell some of her prints online so she came to me to help make that happen.  TwoRoads is just getting started so, like any small business, money is a primary concern.  Time management is also a concern since Kim would rather be out shooting and developing photos than managing the website so the website had to be easily managed and not too technical.  From a technical and marketing standpoint Kim needs a website that will look and perform professionally because sales get lost when customers have to wait for images to load, and her business is all about images.  The website would also need a shopping cart and have to accept credit cards because online shoppers today expect convenient shopping and payment.  What an interesting case.  Here’s what we did: Read the rest of this entry >>

What is the value of an ad not seen?  Worse yet, what is the value of an ad seen but not acted upon?  For years we as marketers have worked hard to turn the Internet into a place where ads are proactively blocked, filtered, and ignored.  Agencies are paid to increase list size, not list quality.  Rather than put time into properly segmenting our prospects and compiling an offering that is relevant, we collect information in any way possible and blast emails to everyone.  This is because we choose quantity over quality thinking we’re getting the best bang for our buck.  We’re not. Read the rest of this entry >>